Steps 1 – 9 – Amarillo – Mark H.

My name is Mark Houston. I'm an alcoholic, and God blessed me with sobriety on October the 19th of 1982, and I am extremely grateful for that. I want to thank the committee for asking me. I get a chance to travel a lot in this job that God put me into because it's not one I would have chosen. My thinker's not that good, and Amarillo's one of the few cities I haven't had a chance to get to, so I was excited about coming up here and I've certainly enjoyed the time that I've been here, immensely so. And I want to tell you a little bit where I come from and there's a sentence in the third step prayer and it says, take away my difficulties so that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love and thy way of life. So anything you hear up here, and anything that happens in here, is about His power and His love and His way of life. Today I come from a place of what doesn't God do? I didn't wake myself up this morning. I get awakened in the morning. I don't plug into 220 current and some life force begins to move through me. What doesn't He do? What doesn' God do?" I do nothing without the power. There's a line in Bill's story. Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works. That's the place I come from today, but that wasn't the place I came to when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm not a big joke teller, but I heard a couple lately that I want to share. It will lighten things up here a little bit before God takes me for wherever He takes me. Several people said to me, you know, good luck. And the thing I love about whenever I'm asked to speak is, see, I only have to do one thing. I went back to my room and I meditated for 15 minutes and I went into the silence. And I asked my loving Father to get me out of the way and do with me as He needs to do with me, and so I come up here with complete faith that He will do that. I don't need luck when I operate on the will of God. I just need to tap into that will. But we have some Al-Anons in here? A couple Al-Ans? Well, there was an Al- Anon golfer and she was out in the golf course one day and she hits a golf ball off into the rough and she goes over to get it And this little leprechaun comes up to her and says, I'm going to give you three wishes. She said, okay. And he said, but there's one condition, and that is that if I give you the wishes, your husband's going to get ten times whatever you get. She said well, that's okay. And so he said well what's your first wish? And she says well I'd like to have a million dollars. And he says okay, you've got it, but you know your husband is going to be ten times that. She says yeah, I know that. It's okay, and he says well what is your second wish? Well my second wish is that I want to play scratch golf. Well, I'll give that to you. But, you know, your husband's going to be ten times a golfer. She said, That's fine. That's okay with me. He said, Well, you've got one wish left. Use it very carefully. What would you like? She said. I'd like to have just a little teeny heart attack. And when I was drinking alcohol, let me tell you, there's some women that that's exactly what they would have prayed for. And then I got one more. I love picking on drunks because I am one. I'm at peace with being flawed today, but this sums me up too. When your dog and you, when the dog and the alcoholic both walk into the house, what's the difference between the two of them? The dog stops whining. And I have two dogs, and that's exactly what happens. They come up to greet me, and I walk in the house. And sometimes there's no one there, and they're happy to be in thehouse, and I'm just still going on. You know, I got sober in Denver, Colorado in 1982. 1982, my sponsor Don P., who was down here I believe last year, told me to pass on his aloha and love to all of you. He's moved back up into Colorado again, and I have quite a bit of contact with him. But I was at a convention one time in Denver, and this woman has been sober a long, long time. And speakers who get up and say they're not going to talk about drinking very much anymore really scare me because about 55 minutes into this talk there was drinking and there there was drinking and she leaves over and she says to me, I think I want that guy to get sober worse than his family. And I'm not going to talk much about what it was like. And the reason is very simple. The things I did once I took a drink, my ego uses to separate me from you. You see, because we all do different things when we take a drink. Andthe reason is if you're a real alcoholic, the drink takes you. Some people sit at home and drink and some go to bars and and some go to the penitentiary, and some wreck cars. None of that has anything to do with why I'm an alcoholic. Born and raised back in Iowa. That is not Idaho. We do not raise potatoes. They raise corn back there. Raised in a Norwegian farming community. A friend of mine gave me a book one time and said, Norwegian humor, another myth. It's like, you know, what are you trying to say to me, you know? I love that when members of AA, they'll say something to you and it'll hit you. And it's like your response is, what do you mean by that? but I didn't drink until I was 16 years old I got three brothers and the reason I didnít is I had a dad that died of alcoholism in 1986 and I said that I wasnít ever going to be like him and Iíve written up inventory to know that I turned out just like him and I took a drink of alcohol when I was sixteen years old and I drank until I Was 36 when God removed the obsession for me to drink alcohol and I didnís ask for him to do that I just asked for help he had his own idea how he was going to give me that help and I have three brothers today they're dying of alcoholism and I kind of felt as I look back over my life on the Johnson side the Norwegian side they're either massively obese or religious fanatics and on the Houston side they're just all drunks you know I was bound to be trapped in there somewhere but I like the effect of alcohol a lot better than I did religion so you can tell the path I went down but you know I finished high school I went to college at the end I flunked out of college I get drafted get sent to Vietnam and, you know, I never wanted to be an alcoholic. I wanted to Be a Disturbed Vietnam Vet. And God, I milked that one. You know what I'm saying? You'd drink too, right? You'd Drink Too. And alcohol, you know, I've always been envious. If you read the history of some of the early members of AA, like you read about Dr. Bob, he does the first eight steps, he has a major relapse, he comes back and in one day he makes all of his amends. Well, that's because he lived in the same town. Alcohol took me to seven states. I mean, first time I got through the work, I had to go to seven States to make amends and that's expensive and takes a lot of time. But alcohol took me to California and it took me to Oregon, it took my to Washington, it took mi to Alaska and then eventually it took m to Colorado. And what I will tell you is this, the last seven years that I drank was an absolute nightmare. When I checked myself into treatment October 19th of 1982, In 1982, I weighed about 260 pounds and I had brain damage, kidney damage, liver damage and everything I owned you to put in a duffel bag and there wasn't anybody on the planet who wanted anything to do with me. I'm not the kind of person who if a woman was in my life, she said, Mark, you need to quit drinking or something's going to happen. I said, no, I don't. It's already happened. You're not in my wife anymore. And the reason is very simple. There have been two powers in my lifetime. One's alcohol and one's God. And alcohol is the only thing Bud talked about it last night. I drank for effect, and I'll tell you what the effect was. There's some lines in the big book that describe this better than anything I could come up with. I'm restless, irritable, and discontent, and when I drink, I'm not that way. And there's a paragraph on page 52 that when I drank, it treats this as part of my spiritual illness, my unmanageability. It says, Mark's having trouble in personal relationships. Starting with myself, I can't stand to be in my own skin. See, I Can't Stand Who I Am. And when I drink and when alcohol works, I'm okay with Mark. When it works and I can't control my emotional nature and I'm afraid of misery and depression and I feel useless and I am happy and when I drank and alcohol worked, it treated that. You see, what I didn't know then is I suffered from a spiritual malady then. I suffered form a spiritual illness. And nothing outside of myself would treat that. But I didn' t know that and alcohol treated that And I drank alcohol for 20 years. And finally, when I got sober, my life is so full of paradoxes, just much like the program. But when I Got Sober, I was working as an orderly in a nursing home. Now my head, my alcoholic crazed brain was telling me I was writing the great Jack London story. But you know what I was doing when I was sober? I was working as an orderly in this nursing home. And because of my size, there were eight men in there who could virtually do nothing for themselves. And what I would do is these men, I would bathe these men on a daily basis and I would put diapers on them. And that's what I was doing. And that is just another one of the paradoxes. I was almost dead in every way that you can be. But yet here is what God has me doing at that time. And I am going to share two periods of time for me in AA. hey, and then what I want to do is I want to come current with you. Because the big book talks about on your first visit with a man, give him this big book and ask him to read it. And in the interval, if he wants to see you again, what you must tell him is that desire to find God must come from within and if he likes you, if he's willing to do that, you're willing to help him. And what I'm going to talk to you about is currently where I'm at in my life with seeking God because that to me is what the steps are all about. This whole thing is about a relationship with God. At various times in AA, I have worshipped the fingers of AA instead of God. I've worshipped The Big Book, and all it is is a set of tools so that I can develop an intimate, conscious, personal relationship with this power. But I'll tell you about my first three years in AA. You know, we tell people a whole bunch of things when they come into AA, and I was told all these things. I was called to go to a lot of meetings, and I did that. And I was pulled to read The Big Books, and as I was telling someone earlier today, telling an alcoholic to read a book that's designed to transmit a spiritual experience and expecting an alcoholic to get something out of that book on his own would be like me parking a jet outside this hotel giving you a 164 page manual telling you to read it and go fly it I'll tell you this, when you got ready to take off I'm not going to be around so you all told me to read this book and you told me go to a lot of meetings and I did that and I went to conventions did big book studies And in that first three years, I asked two men to sponsor me. Some of what I'm going to talk about here is the things that I've heard in Alcoholics Anonymous, which I know today are not my truth based on my experience, that have nothing to do with this fatal illness that I suffer from and have nothing to do with God. One of the first lessons I learned is if a blind man leads a blind fine, man, you're both going in the ditch. And the first man I asked to sponsor me, we meet at Denny's. And I was probably about six months sober then, going to a lot of meetings, going to big book studies, reading the book. I overnight became a parrot. You know, I mean, it's about you've got to look good and sound good at meetings, right? If you're like me, I was telling a friend the other day, I was three years sober before the fear left me about getting up in the middle of the meeting to go use the bathroom. I mean, the fear was just incredible in me. But I asked this man if he would sponsor me and we made it to Denny's. In about 15 seconds, he took me through the first three steps. See, here is the bad news. I was at AA for three years telling you all I was an alcoholic and you know what my truth is today? I didn't have a clue what that meant. God kept me sober in spite of that. But He said to me, are you an alcoholic? And one of the things that I've learned along my way in Alcoholics Anonymous is this, is when you ask me a question, there's a part of me called my ego that uses an answer to not consider anything. I will use an answer to not considered anything and I've learned what I call the path of consideration. And that is when I'm asked a question today about the spiritual life which is something I've got to live, I can't theorize about, I need to sit with that and ask God to let me consider that in an open mind. But this guy says, are you an alcoholic? And I said yes and you know at that time I think I'm an alcoholic because of the consequences of drinking. And I tell him, yeah. And he says, do you believe in God? And I say, yeah, I do. And I'm telling him, yes. Sometimes I think I've sponsored two atheists and sometimes I think their concept of God is not anywhere near as confused as a whole bunch of us that come in here with a whole lot of other ideas. And we do a third step prayer in Denny's and he gives me a few instructions on inventory and I write this inventory, which is rather short in detail and we do it fifth step and I do sixth and seventh And I come out of that with eight amends. Now, you've got to understand, I lived in seven states. By then, I'd been married and divorced twice, numerous jobs, and my blood family's got more than eight people in it. I missed just a little bit in that whole process. A friend of mine said later, You were so wide open, you missed the whole thing. So I did the only right thing is I figured the reason... Because see, here's what goes on in me. The further you get away from a drink, there's a condition inside me. The book calls it spiritual malady. And this condition is internal, and you separate me from alcohol, and you leave me untreated. This condition gets worse and worse and worsen me, and this condition's getting worse. I don't know what to call it then, though. I just know that I'm getting worse inside. And so what I did is I held him accountable, and I went and got another sponsor. Some of you can relate to that one, probably. and so this sponsor basically did the same thing with me so here I am at three years sober now there's a tremendous confusion going on I'll tell you why because in the in the first three years of my sobriety I'd bought a home and I had a job that was paying me about 50,000 a year and I Had a home group and I HAD a bunch of friends in my life but this condition I told I've told you about this unmanageability which is inside me. It's growing, it's getting worse, and it's gotten worse, and it gets worse, and I'm full of fear, and I am restless, irritable, and discontent. And so that's about the time that I hooked up with Don P. Don was one of those guys that initially, you know, he'd talk about the big book, and he'd talked about God, and there was a sense of power and peace around him. See, there was another thing I didn't know at that time. I didn't know that We Agnostics describes two groups of people in A.A. Sober. And it says about one group that if they're willing to meet a few requirements, that they'll come to believe, and if they have a certain attitude, that the way they think and live will be revolutionized. Revolutionized. And it said that this group will also be given power, peace, happiness in a sense of direction. and it says this group has God as a central fact of their life. Well, I know today I didn't have God as the central fact of my life because I'd never picked up the kit of spiritual tools, the steps to develop a relationship with God. And the other group I've already talked about. They're on page 52. They have trouble in personal relationships, can't control their emotional nature, prey to misery and depression. They're full of fear, can't make a living. They feel useless. They're unhappy. happy. They have themselves as the central fact of their life. And that's where I was at three years, but I didn't know that's where I was. So I went and I called Don, and I went over to see him, and I told him. I used what words I could best explain to tell him where I was at. And see, the confusion came from this. I got more distance between me and alcohol than I've ever had before. I got a bank account. I got two cars in the garage. I I've got a home that I bought. I'm married. I'm in a career, and I'm dying. And I know I'm real close to drinking alcohol. You see, I'm confused, and I've gone to a lot of meetings, and I am reading the book. You see? I have also learned something else in Alcoholics Anonymous. There are two languages for me in AA. One is the language of knowledge, and the other is the langauge of experience. And here is another confusing thing. Every other area of my life, knowledge equals power. In the spiritual world, it does not equal power. The spiritual life is not a theory. I have to live this thing. I have an experience with this thing." I cannot conclude about God. One of my major defects for years was I loved to give you my opinion on experiences that I'd never had. And I asked God today to let me share with you experiences that we've had. And Don sat me down and we turned to the title page of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous us in about ten minutes, I got a very, very clear picture of exactly what was wrong with me and what the solution was. And he took that circle and that triangle, and when we were given those three legacies, we were giving recovery first, because my primary purpose is to stay sober. If I don't stay sober, I'm not going to be going to meetings, and I cannot be of service. And he asked me what I thought that meant, and you know, I'd been around long enough enough to be dangerous to myself and others. And I said to him, well, that's working the steps. And then he asked me, have you ever gone from the title page of the book to page 164 and done that? And it's another strange observation I noticed about myself. You ask an alcoholic a yes or no question, and 15 minutes later they'll give you the final yes or No. We can't answer yes or NO questions. We have been dishonest for so long we've had to explain elaborately. You know, I mean, I love to ask a new alcoholic, you know, are you married? And they get a little glazed and they just get ready for a long talk, you know. So I begin to pontificate with him and he stopped me and said, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Wait a minutes. When I ask you a yes or no question like a yes to no response. So let me try this one more time with you. Have you ever gone from the title page to page 164 and done everything the book said? And I said, no, sir, I have not. Then he said, you've never been in recovery. Now, I didn't like that. He didn't care that I didn'T like that I'll tell you something the people that I have in my life today they love me more as a child of God than they care about my sensitive feelings and the people that I am the people that I care about in my wife today the men and the women what I care about is you better be telling me my truth that's the greatest form of love that you can show me you better be more concerned about my life than you are about my feelings and he taught me that and that's the place I come from today we love people to death in AA we love them to death so I'm three years sober and discovered that I'm not in recovery and then he asked me what I thought unity was and that's the fellowship and of course I'm in that part of it so he said you're taking your body to your meetings uh huh so he talked about service and he asked where I thought that was and ashtrays and coffee cups and he laughed and he did then and he still does today he said Mark if you are willing if you want what we have and you're willing to go to any length when you get to the tenth step you will have entered the world of the Spirit, and you will take your awakened spirit out to be of service to God and your fellow human beings in every area of your life. And since you've never done that, you're not in that part of the program either. So let me explain, Mark, what's going on with you. A circle represents wholeness at one, Mark. At one with God. He said, You've been in one part of a three-part program expecting the results of the other two. And I heard everything he said. See, what I know today and what I love about the steps out of the big book is the steps will speak to my spirit. The condition of my spirit, I don't care how long you're sober. I don' t care how long you are sober. And I knew that everything he said was the truth. So he and I started that journey and we completed that journey. And I would like to tell you that I stayed involved in the spiritual program of action, but that's another key piece of something I want to share with some of you. There's another part of my being in a man named Dr. Harry Tebold who has written a lot of stuff up on this, talks about what happened to me is from about three years sobriety to right around eight years sobrietty, my ego had begun to rebuild. And I'd heard enough times in AA that you work one through nine and live in ten, eleven, twelve, and I bought that. I bought it. I bought the job. I got the job, I got a job, and now I've got a new job. I bought a job. But here's what happened in the midst of this. There's a part of my being called my self-will, called my ego, that begins to rebuild and there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. And very gradually and very subtly, I basically begin to pull away from my home group and I begin to pulling away from the people in AA. And I begin to be interested in a woman and making money and doing all those other kinds of things. And to make a long story short, I went into a severe depression. And in June of 1991, 1991, I wound up in a nut house in Houston, Texas. Now, I've got to tell you a little something about that experience. When I was in treatment in 1982, and I could look at alcohol and say, that's why I'm in this state, that's one thing. But when you're almost nine years sober, and they lock you up in an nut house, and the guy does this thing with a smile, and Mark, I got the keys, and you ain't leaving until we tell you. I said to myself, Mark, you really missed some things here. What did you miss? And I'll tell you something, I picked up that basic textbook and I said to God, God, I've got an open mind and I want some help. Because I'll telling you something. They wanted to tell me that I was in there because of Vietnam. I'm far enough removed from that to tell you that is not the truth. I was there because I was dying of untreated alcoholism. Nine years sober. Having had an incredible experience with these steps one time and with this power. I was lying of untreatable alcoholism my spiritual malady and I almost took my life behind that now I want to try and bring you current this is another lesson that I learned my body today is not existing off the food that I ate last week and this is my truth today what I did with the steps in 1994 has absolutely nothing to do today with my experience with the God we finish every one of our meetings with the Lord's Prayer that says give us this day our daily bread and based on my experience winding up in that nut house I begin to really look at the book and I begin to see that the book gives me a severe warning in one place that says Mark it's easy to let up in the spiritual program of action well I knew by then my spiritual program of action was all 12 steps and I'll tell you what my truth today is the arrogance of me to think that I could operate in 10, 11 and 12 and that's all there was and go through that one time absolutely astonishes me For me to think an inventory that I wrote seven years ago and the truth that I saw in that inventory has anything to do with my life today was so arrogant of me. So since then, I've gone through the steps many times and I will tell you this, the last four years of my life have never been so blessed and I have never seen so much as peace. Peace with God and peace with me and peace for all of us. Peace with you. So let me bring you current. In April this year, third week in April, I sat down with one woman and five men. Today, I work the steps because I love God. I do not work the footsteps because out of fear. I do now work the step because of the unmanageability of my life. It is my method of seeking a relationship with God. God is the most central factor in my life today. And that's why I work these steps. And so we sat down as a group at 9 o'clock in the morning and we meditated for 20 minutes. And we ask God to come in, and we ask God one other thing. The very day that I want to have a new experience with God, because the 11th step says improve your conscious contact. It doesn't say rest on your conscious contact. The very day I choose to do that, I'll tell you the noose around my neck. My last experience and everything I think I know. So, in that 20 minutes of meditation, I said to God, God, please, Please, please free me from everything I think I know about you and my steps and my illness for an open mind and a new experience. For an open mindset and a good life. An open mind in a new experiment. We got done with that meditation. We started on the title page. And we went through the forwards. And we got into the doctor's opinion. And here's what I looked at from the doctor'S opinion to page 23. I looked to me and alcohol. I looked up one thing. Mark, when you take a drink of alcohol, what happens to you? I'll tell you another thing I love about the big book. What the big book does is it takes everything that my ego wants to use to separate me from you and it skims it all aside and says, Mark, we don't care about that. Here's what I mean. The big book doesn't care how young and old I am. It doesn't care if I'm a male or female. It doesn' t care what my race is. It doesn n't care what m y educational level is. It doesn n't car e how much money I have. It asks me a simple question. It says, Mark, when you take a drink of alcohol, Hall, does a drink take you? And I looked at that and I turned statements in the doctor's opinion into questions. And I discovered something else about myself. I'm so selfish when the big book uses the word we, I think they're talking about you. So I put my name in there. Mark, is this you? Is this you?" And I'm looking at one thing only. Am I powerless over alcohol once I take a drink? And do I have to go back into drinking? And A woman who I'd never written inventory on, who I loved immensely, and I got up home if there was a she to leave. My experience is I drink if she stays and I drink when she leaves. But I heard this in meetings all the time. The day Fred picked up a drink, he had eaten a full meal. He wasn't hungry at all. He wasn'T angry at anybody. He'd just closed a big deal in Washington that he was a happily married family man. Fred wasn't lonely, and he got a full night's sleep. I don't think HALT has anything to do with whether I drink alcohol again. I told guys I sponsor, if you buy that one, your only problem is you're going to weigh about 300 pounds. So that's another belief system that goes dancing away. Here's another one. Put the plug in the jug. Now I go back into my experience to find out my truth. You know what my experience confirms? I pulled the plug out of the jug I don't have the power. That's an expression that refers to people who don't drink like me. Here is another one. Don't drink even if your glutamate maximum falls off. Your butt. If my butt even hiss of falling off, I go drink. See, I would hear these things, they would come in, and I would lay them alongside my experience, and I was thinking, see, that's not my truth. And as I begin to work with the big book over and over again, I begin to realize I can't find it anywhere in the big book. Over and over again, these things that I've heard, they've had to go away because it's not consistent with this illness I suffer from. And this illness that I suffer form is fatal. A friend of mine works at Intergroup in Houston, Texas. 1993, they gave away 33,000 desire chips. You know how many one-year chips they gave way in 1994? 3,000. That's an 8% recovery rate. This book promises 50% of those who come never relapse again. A few more relapse and come back, that's 75%. How did we get so far? How did We Get So Far? I think I have an idea how we got so far removed. When I sit down to work with another alcoholic, there's two things I always do. The first is we pray and we ask God to come in. Same way Chess opened this meeting. And the second thing is this book is always open between us. because the book says, I'm to show you how I recovered from a hopeless state of mind, body, and spirit. I remember one time a man said to me, don't you ever be an accessory to murder. This is a fatal illness and its solution is spiritual in nature and this solution was given to us in 1939, Mark. Don't you every play with somebody's life? And I don't. I carry this book everywhere I go with me. So I get done looking at that. I'm at the bottom of page 43. Almost 13 years sober. Here's me. me. Mark, at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. My defense must come from God. And at that point in time, experientially, I once again see how badly and desperately I need God in my life. And then I start to look at the unmanageability of my life, and there's a paragraph on page 52 which sums that up for me. Here's my experience with unmanangeability. It's not outside of me. Nothing outside of of me will ever treat this. It's an internal condition, it's the reason I drank. It is the reason that I'll drink again. Because the big book says the symptoms of the body and mind are symptoms, Mark. Well, doctors don't treat symptoms, you've got to treat the problem. So what's the problem? The problem is this spiritual illness. Guess what? No human power can treat a spiritual illness, only God can treat his spiritual illness! So I look at myself right now today and I ask myself, where are you at in all these these areas of your life, Mark. Are you having trouble in personal relationships? So I look at the relationship with myself. I look at every area of my life with myself and I look around me and yeah, I'm still having trouble. With the power, grace, love that God has given me up to this point in time, I am having problems in personal relations with some people. Can't control your emotional nature. How do you deal with that, Mark? You ever had someone one and say, boy, you get mad over such a little thing. Gee, I wonder why that happens, Mark. Says you're prey to misery and depression. Says you're full of fear. Mark, are you having trouble with fear at times? Yeah. Feel useless at times. Yeah. Can't help others at times, yeah. And here's what I get a chance to look at. I get I get a chance to see this unmanageability in my life, once again. And I see that it's a spiritual illness. And I feel that only God can treat it. For brief periods of time, something outside of me will treat it, a woman, money, career, travel, brief periods of time. But ultimately, this thing stays with me. And now I've had an experience with step one, to come up with one conclusion, and that is that I need to go seek power. I need a deeper relationship with God. And now I look at my second step. This is also my experience. When I'm sitting in meetings of AA and someone says I'm struggling with the fourth step, my experience is steps 2 through 12 are always about one. Faced with writing an inventory to face and be rid of the things that have me blocked from the only thing that's going to give me peace and power and keep me away from alcohol. Faced mit writing an inventory of drinking alcohol, writing inventories is like kissing a baby's butt compared to what I do when I drink. Take the worst amend you've got to make, the person you harm the most. Ask yourself one question. Make the amend, drink whiskey. If you're like me, making the amends is very easy compared to whatever happens to me when I drank alcohol. My experience in Steps 2 through 12, if I'm balking, it's not about that step, it's always about my truth in Step 1. Big Book says, Mark your building, building a spiritual arch through which you walk a free man. The foundation of it all is my truth in step one. Experientially, I know that I have an illness of body, mind, spirit, and no human power can treat what's wrong with me. And I need power. And you know, once I had that experience, I still remember from the first time, and it's no different today. Once I had an experience with step one, he'd look at me and my eyes would just... Whoa! Because I saw. I saw my truth. After three years in the A, I saw my truth. I just saw my Truth again. My only question to Him was, how do I find the power? You think I'm going to debate at that point in time about God? No. I had one question. Big Book says, Mark, seek recovery with the desperation of a drowning man. And I sit in meetings and I hear people say, take your time. Take your time! Take your time. I suffer from a fatal chronic illness that is progressive in nature and only a relationship with a power greater than myself will treat it. And I need to do what the book says, seek recovery with the desperation of a drowning man. So in my second step, two parts to it. Mark, you're willing to believe there's a power greater than yourself? And maybe, Mark, consider something else. Can this power take you into areas of your life, dimensions of your like, Mark? That you don't even know exist? this, because I'll tell you something, for me and for every one of us in here, if this is the best it's ever going to get, then God isn't everything. He's limited, He's finite. And I open myself up to the idea that with God, with God being at one with God He can take me into areas in my life I have no experience with. I have relationships with people today, day, men and women, that two years ago I didn't have the power to have. You see? This is not everything and this is not all. I know there's more. I knew that God can take me into other areas, deeper levels in terms of that relationship with Him. But then I'm faced with a crisis. You know what it is? Lack of power once again. Lack Lack of power. So I've got to make a choice. God's everything or He's nothing. What is He? For me, He's going to be everything. Why? Because of what I looked at in step one. And then I love what the book says. If lack of power is my dilemma, the book said where and how are you going to find the power? And it tells me only one place, Mark, deep down within you. Now that's another paradox. Hell, I did peyote on mountaintops with Indians and traveled all over the country trying to find God. And you all tell me He's deep down inside me? What a deal. Right here, right now. Amarillo, Texas. It says in the final analysis, Mark, that's the only place you're going to find God. Isn't that interesting? But it also tells me how in the big book I'm going to found this power. It says, Mark you've got to be willing to search fearlessly. Are you willing, Mark? Based on my truth in step one, yeah. I was willing. And then I get up to those ABCs. And I ask myself experientially, is this you? Mark, are you an alcoholic that can't manage his own life? Today? Yeah. Mark, do you believe any human power can treat your alcoholism? No, I do not. Based on experience. Mark, you believe that God can and will if you seek Him? Absolutely. And so I know my responsibility. Mark, are you willing to seek the power? Yes, I'm willing to see the power. And now I'm at step three and I get to make a decision. I was in AA several years before I realized there's a requirement I've got to meet before I can make a third-step decision. Big Book said, here's the requirement, Mark. Are you convinced your life running, your will doesn't work? So I go back and I look at my life. And I once again see that my life running and my will doesn'T work, that at my very best I create confusion instead of harmony. He says, even when my motives are kind with you, I'm selfish. And I see that once again, and I once against experience my truth. And then the book gets to the part I don't like, and that's what's wrong with me. They wrote up my problem. Mark, you're selfish and self-centered. Is this you? Yeah. Mark, you're driven by fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self-pity. Pictures always work good for me. And every time I read that, I visualize this. It's like a limo pulls up in front of my house in the morning, okay? And I go out and get in. The driver turns around and he says, Mark, my name is Fear and I'm going to drive your ass today. day. And he does all day long. I go into work, I know they're going to fire me. I walk into my home group, I knows someone's going to say something to me that's going hurt. I mean, I'm just driven by it all day along. Or another day that I get in, the driver says, hi Mark, I'm self-pitying, I'm driving you today, buddy. And they ain't paying me enough and you don't treat me. Over and over again. Then there's a line in there that says, Mark, your troubles are of your own making. You know what? AA did a couple things for me and I balked a little at him. Here's one of them. You all said to me, Mark, that was then and this is now and buddy, you better grow up. You also did something else to me. This one I really didn't like. You basically said this to me See, most of my life what I did is I lowered my conscience to my behavior. I cheated on this woman because lower my conscience to my behaviour A.A. and God, you know what you all did to me? You really screwed me up. You said, Mark, we're going to raise your behavior to your conscience. Oh, no. There's no such thing as a white lie. A lie is a lie. And every time I violate my conscience, God, consciousness, consciousness. I suffer consequences today. I told a friend of mine the other day, I can't even do my mistake what I used to do on purpose. So my troubles are my own making, but here's the great news in that. That is a great statement of hope. Here's why. If my troubles or your making, I'm in trouble. Because what if you don't ever change or get any different? Thank God my troubles were my own makings. I think Martha said it well last night. I love what she said. She said, you know, I love freedom and if I'm blocked from you, I am not free. And that's my experience and it's not about you. It's always about me because my troubles Are my own makeings. and then the book lets me look at something it says above everything Mark you've got to get rid of this selfishness or you're going to die it says it kills you now see I had to see the hook between my selfishness and dying an alcoholic death and I know exactly what the hook is today I don't care how long I've been sober I've got a look at this if this selfishnes that I can't do anything about if this selflessness stays in me here's what's going to happen when I'm selfish I'm playing God. You're not going to do what I want. I'm going to get resentful. When I'm resentful, I'm blocked from God. That will not keep me in a state of comfortableness. The obsession to drink will come back and I'll take a drink and die an alcoholic death. You see now experientially when I get to the bottom of page 62, the book says, Mark, you had to have God's help. And I know now why I need God's health because I'm chained to Mark, and there's nothing I can do about it. And then it tells me how I'm going to get God's help. It says, Mark, you're going to quit playing God. And it tells Me why I'm going to do that. It says Mark, if you play in God, it doesn't work. What you need to do, Mark is let God be God and you be Mark. You want to talk about freedom? Let God be God and I just be His child. And then I sit with my third step decision. God's going going to direct my life and I'm the actor. God's the principal, I'm the agent. God is going to be my employer and God's my loving father and I am his child and I sit with that for five minutes and I imagine what it's going to be like to go through the rest of my life with the creator of the universe. See, I want to tell you something. People ask me whether I speak or anything else I'm ever asked to do. Aren't you afraid? No, I am not afraid. God 20 feet tall and I got my hand around him. He's got his arm on my shoulder and the God of my understanding will let nothing touch me except what He wants to touch me and if it touches me, He'll give me the resources to get through it. You see, that's the God I've come to know and love. And then I did that third step prayer and then I wrote some inventories, a four-column resentment inventory. Interesting thing about those resentment inventories. Second column is the truth, right? You write the truth in the second column. I particularly like it when I've either wrote it or I'm working with somebody. Second column, that she left me, right? Second column. She left me. And that's the truth. Then you get to the fourth column and you see that you drove her away. How can the truth be a lie at the same time? But it is, isn't it? And so I wrote that resentment inventory and I wrote a fear inventory. And I wrote affection inventory. And then we drew names in a hat. I want to mention something else about inventory. The book is very clear what I do inventory for. I'm going to find the truth I'm gonna face and be rid of the things that have me blocked from God. How do you not get excited about inventory? I do not present to people that inventory is some horrendous thing. For me, it's more like this. If you've got children, if you ask your child to go clean your room, they'll balk at it. But if you say to your child, tell you what, you go down to your room and you take everything out of your room you don't want and I'll take you down to Neiman Marcus and buy you all new stuff. That kid will run you over. Well, that's what happens when I write inventory. You see? I'm going to face and be rid of the things that have me blocked from God and myself and from you. So what we did, since there were six of us working together, we threw names in a hat and we made an agreement to do multiple fifth steps. The big book says when I do a fifth step, to do it with person to person. So I drew three names and one week I did three fifth steps Now I've got to tell you something about that. I started doing that last year based on the experience of a man who just celebrated 48 years in August. And I had no experience with multiple fifth steps in the same inventory until he suggested I try it. And I want to tell you something, it's one of the greatest things I've ever done. See, I didn't know something. I didn' t know that the more people that knew how flawed I am, the more at peace I was because I don't have to pretend to be something I'm not and I never knew that. So I did those three fifth steps with three different people. And I did steps six and seven. Took a look at defects. Defects in me move me into behavior I either take or don't take. And I like to write that stuff down. What are the behaviors that you do, Mark, based on these defects? And I sit with that. And then I did a seven-step prayer and I made my list of amends, and I had seventeen amends. Four of those amends were at graves back in Iowa, and over the Fourth of July I drove back to Iowa, which is where I was born and raised. And then went and made an amend at at the gravesite of that grandmother whose funeral I missed. And in that same cemetery was a great aunt, and I made an amend to her. And a good friend of mine who died in 1968, and I mad an amend for him. And a lady who was in my life for a little while in the early 60s, she had been killed in a car wreck, and I mated an amend into her. The book says if I can't see people, I write them an honest letter. So I write letters to the spirits of these people and I read them to somebody and then I go to the gravesite and make amends. See, this program is about freedom. You know, I had a father that I just hated. Beat me a lot. I hated him. Embarrassed me in public over and over and again. And I was able to make amens to him while he was alive but I wasn't able to say much. It's just the way my family was. You don't talk about stuff. So I never felt complete with that and he died at 86. He got up one morning and his aorta burst and his death certificate doesn't say he died of alcoholism but he died of alcoholism. And about three years ago, I went up to Colorado and he was buried at the Veterans Cemetery up there. And if you've ever been there, they all look the same. They're all just white crosses everywhere. And I pulled in there and I didn't have a clue where he was and I said a prayer and I got directed to his grave and I read that letter to him. And I'll tell you what, I got free that morning. And my father resides with me all the time. Whenever I think of him, it's about tremendous love and respect. so I finished all those amends but three I want to tell you some other things that I never knew in my life I didn't know got to share one other experience I had around this issue and this really was last year I did a lot, a lot of blackout drinking and when I did blackout drink I loved chasing women I loved women and in the process all that blackout thinking I could not remember a lot about one night stands and other things and last year when I came out of meditation patience. I picked up a pad of paper and I couldn't remember names, but God gave me a videotape replay of a lot of that blackout drinking and I got situations that were crystal clear to me and I knew I'm supposed to do something with them. So I wrote letters to the Spirit to all these women and I found a woman in the program and over a period of time I read those letters to her. And here's what I want to tell you about that. The very next day after that experience, my relationship with all women changed. There was a shift. What that taught me is that if there's harm in my past I haven't cleaned up, it's connected to me right now, right here today. You know, Martha said that again last night. I want freedom. I want to be here. And when I do these steps and I have this relationship with God, then you see I can be here and I can operate in steps 10 and 11. I do a lot of work with meditation. I sponsor a lot OF people. I'll tell you something about sponsorship. Every single human being that God has put in my life to work with, whether it be a man or a woman, that's a gift He's given to me out of His love for me. I don't care how they look at me. I know that's about His love from me. And there's nothing I enjoy better. Big Book says, Mark, you can recover and you're given the power to help others. That's what God gives me the power for. He doesn't give me thepower to be rich or famous. I'm here on borrowed time. He gives methe power tohelp you. That's it. And when I'm not helping you, I choke on this thing. So that's what it's all about for me. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I love this program because it got me in touch with a God who loves me in ways that I can't even begin to describe. God is closer to me than breathing today. The conscience presence of this power resides within me. And I got that through 20 years of drinking alcohol and coming to you. And you're saying things like, Mark, are you willing to surrender to a way other than your own? Yeah, yeah, I'm willing to do that. I'll close with one thing and it's all I've wanted my whole life. Here's what a relationship with God did for me. It came about through working these steps and being a part of this fellowship. I have never read about another human being nor will I ever read about who I'd rather be than me. Mark Houston. and there has never been another group of people that I've ever been with or ever will be than I would rather be with than you and there's never been a place in my life that I have ever been or could ever read about that I'd rather be than an Amarillo, Texas in this room right now that's what this program did for me because the only place God is is right here right now wherever I am and I don't have to drink alcohol and I'm given power, peace happiness and a sense of direction. You know, the book told me that the best years of my life lay ahead of me and that's been my experience. I'm going to close with a prayer. The 11th step gives me permission to go out and seek out religious people and see where they're right. Two years ago I was directed to read a lot of the books by a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton. And when I read those books I'm looking for spiritual tools I can pick up and the spiritual tool he gave me was meditation. But it's called A Prayer of Surrender. It says, Do this, you will lead me through the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, God, though it may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my peril alone. God bless each and every one of you.