Steps 8 and 9 Edwards House Big Book Workshop Retreat – With Nate F. and Chad A. – Part 5 of 7

Welcome back everyone. It's been a great day so far for certainly for me, I know for Chad and I both really enjoyed the time we've been able to spend together thus far and it's not over yet. So anyway, before we dive in, I actually just am going to do a quick plug and some of you may or may not have heard of this. Has anyone heard of the Northeast Fellowship of the Spirit Conference in Portland, Maine? So this is our home conference. You know, it's basically the Fellowship for the Spirit conference, the mothership we call out in Denver. It's kind of where it all originated and they popped up all over the place. They have one out in Seattle. We have one in Portland Maine. And they're all over to the other side of the country and the world actually. But it's a phenomenal big book conference not too far from here. And this coming March in particular, the speakers that are coming, our sponsor is going to be there as one of the speakers. His wife, who's a big book Allen on, will be there. My wife is actually speaking Friday night and another real good friend of ours is speaking Sunday morning. So I think if you wanted to make the trip, it would be a phenomenal weekend with phenomenal content. So, I've got a pile of flyers here for anyone that would care to take them with you. I'm not selling it. It's more just a friendly invitation. So, go for it. So, steps eight and nine. The size is dwindling, right? We don't want to make amends. If you're new here, we pay the money back. all the money back right so when I got to amends the first time again I didn't read ahead when I kind of grew up or where I grew up in a it was this thing of like I remember being at this table at the meeting after the meeting you know and we're sitting around it was like my sponsor and another guy he sponsored and another that was sponsored by him and a guy they were sponsored by him you know there's like four or five of sit around the table and one of the guys says to me he just did your inventory what's it like you know what was it like and one of the other kind of older guys stopped me before I could say anything and he said don't give away any of their secrets and there was just like taboo like you didn't talk about inventory and meetings because you didn' want to scare off the newcomer. And I think that's nonsense today. It's just my opinion. I'm here to share my experience. And, and I've listened to people talk about amends before I got to amends. And it was highly inspirational for me to know that I could walk through and I could do some things that I was terrified to do. You know, when you talked to me about amands, I was like, there is No way I'm doing that. And so when my sponsor read to me in the big book, it says we're going to make this list of all the people we've harmed, but the trick, the gotcha, is you've already made it. You made it when you took inventory. And I thought, wait a minute, wait another minute. Surely not everyone needs an amends on this list. And the truth is, is not everyone on the list needed an amends. Because there wasn't maybe a direct harm. But there was a lot of people that needed an Amends. And there were people that weren't on the List that needed An Amends, you know? And so how do I do that? How am I going to make Amends? So what my sponsor had me do is I made like a separate list. And Nate and I talked about how into technicality do we want to get in some of this stuff. And so I won't go deep. If you want to pull me aside and go deeper into it, we can, which is totally fine. I'll be around all night. But what I did was three-by-five cards. In the middle of the three-bye-five card, I put the name of the person I harmed. In the upper right-hand corner, I'd put a negative or a positive sign depending on how willing I was to make the amends. What I didn't know is it's a trick, right? Because it's really easy to make a negative into a positive. You just add another line, right. And I was an AA superstar so I was willing to make them all. I had a plus on every one of them. Whether I was willingly or not there was a plus in the upper right hand corner. And then I was given what we call the five step amends process. And it's essentially the approach, the introduction, why I'm here. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous and through inventory that is necessary for me to stay sober, I found that I harmed you. Sometimes that sounds ridiculous to say because they know you've harmed them. But that's the way I was taught. And then we give them the, we do the amends. What did I do? Here's what I did. And then it's, is there anything I left out? What, if anything, do you need to tell me how that made you feel? And then lastly, and this is the killer, what can I do to make it right? What can I give you to make you feel better? Make it right. And then I've got to be willing to do that. um so my sponsor had me initially go out and make amends to people in the program and um to really to correct my behavior and amends is why he did it i don't know i don's do that anymore with people i sponsor um but mainly because we're going to talk through these amends i went over every single amends what i'm going to do how i'm gonna do it what i'm going to say i bring the three by five card with me i go in the bathroom and pray before usually meet at a coffee shop or some you know place there's a lot of reasons for that one i was nate and i were joking about uh upstairs i um i had broken up with this girlfriend and all of a sudden I like have this overwhelming God consciousness that told me I needed to go make amends to this old ex-girlfriend and I called my sponsor and said hey I need to make amends you know whatever her name was and he said wait a minute wait a moment this is not inspiration you're not making amends for her I made amends her later when when there wasn't this like obvious ulterior motive sneaking in the deal here right and I could go and be truthful some of my favorite immense stories I'll try and tell some of them just to kind of share what the process looks like did you amend so this one girl that I dated for a while or took hostage already want to say we didn't live together though but my favorite thing that she said to me was because you know we hear immense stories and it's like oh there's this like beautiful embrace and this amazing experience so we all come together years of damage is melted away and she just looked at me and I said is there anything I can do to make it right and she says the fact that you drove all the way out here to admit that you're a creep is good enough for me and that's that and I was like Thank you. Right? Thank you, because that's the truth. That's who I am without a God in my life. Do you want to add anything about eight-step before I just charge us right on into amends? I just would like to highlight the necessary conversation with a sponsor when building that, right? I was encouraged to list every name, institution, whatever that I owed an amends to regardless, right? That way we could come back together and kind of walk through one by one and basically say, okay, well what was the direct harm in this situation? Was there direct harm or was it embarrassment that I was trying to repair, right. Was it some sort of ulterior motive situation like Chad was referring to, right And it's, you know, in the book that's the one, I guess, the one thing, right, that you could contest at times is that if I have just hated someone for years and they have no idea that I've hated them, to go and tell them that is going to do more harm than good, right? Someone needs to know that I have harmed them for me to go and say I have harmed you, right. I mean, just imagine if the goal was to go back and fill everybody in on everything they didn't know that you did that would hurt them, right That's not an escape route. That's a lack of willingness. We cannot throw anyone else under the bus to save our own skin is what that is, right? And that was very unclear to me when I was first kind of walking through this process. So I needed some help, some guidance. And I didn't really get that until my now sponsor where I was just kind of rolling with what I thought might be best and it was a bad plan. You know, if you have to make amends for amends, that's not the way to go about it, right? And a lot of the time, again, you know, some of those things because I've experienced situations where, you know, maybe the guilt and the shame and the remorse that I still feel from a situation with someone. And maybe they don't even know the circumstances of what happened per se. for me there's again that selfish desire to take some form of action to relieve myself of the way that i feel but to do that at the expense of another person is just not right right so for me a lot of it it's it's going back to the fact that those wounds that are that are inflicted upon my soul through my behaviors oftentimes there's no healing from from those because i I mean, as far as I'm concerned, a lot of those wounds are just deep beyond measure. I don't know where they end, right? So without God's help, I can't heal from those. But what I do know is that more often than not, going out and making an amends won't necessarily relieve that guilt, that shame, that remorse, those wounds that I have internally. But there's always this compulsion to like, maybe I missed something. Maybe I need to make amends again, right. Maybe I need to go and tell them how sorry I am again. That needs to be sorted out with God, right? Which that was a confusing concept for me as well because I wanted to take action to make this go away. I didn't want to go within myself to actually experience some of that healing that was necessary that could only be sorted out between God and I, right. I have a great example of that actually. Sure. And it's an amends that I don't like to talk about. So that's even better. Perfect. had so my early sobriety I fell in love with this girl and we were young and she's how I met Jason and got introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous and her and I were together and she got pregnant and she miscarried and we had an ugly breakup ugly breakup and it's ugly and uh and it was an ugly relationship i mean it was beautiful in a lot of ways because we were young but it was it was horrible in a lot of other ways and that i just was so out of control with who i was i just tore her down emotionally and um and so when i got to immense she's you know she was on the resentment inventory and she was definitely on the amends list. And, and so I had to try and, you know, make this amends. And there was a situation with her in her life. And the path she led is that she got married, and she had this baby. And actually, I think it was prior to her having a baby. And she had an extremely abusive husband that it was like she would reach out and call me but it was like if I don't answer, don't call back kind of a thing because if he knows you and I are talking, he's going to lose it on me. So I respected that and she would call me every now and then and we would talk and I got with my sponsor and we really looked at this and I said I need to try and make this amends and I approached her on it and she said yeah let's do it and we picked a place and a time and the whole deal and uh and for the first time in my life even more so than inventory i had my little card i got quiet i called my sponsor i read the card i read it and i was like oh my god i looked at all the stuff right she had gotten pregnant and ruined my life and i blamed her for that you know she didn't ruin my life but i blamed her for that and i It was cruel to her around that. And then when she miscarried, I was inconsiderate about what she might be going through in that whole experience. And so, I'm driving to this Denny's. Like a lot of my story centers around Denny'S. I need to like, they need to sponsor my talk or something. So I go to this denny's to meet her and I'm driving there. And as I'm driving, I'm literally every mile, every minute I'm weighted down and I'm actually physically feeling what it must have been like to be in a relationship with me. Never had that experience before or since. I felt, I felt it in my soul, what I'd done to her. And I showed up at that Denny's and I sat there for 45 minutes and she never showed up. And I went to the pay phone, four cell phones, called my sponsor and he wasn't home but I talked to his fiancee and I said you know here's what happened and she said Chad you've made the approach. You've made The Willingness. The big book says you're done. Okay we're done." I never heard from her again for a year and almost a year to the day her sister called me and said she wants to talk with you and i called her and the first thing she said was i'm ready to hear what you have to say we met i did the amends i laid it all out i gave her the what did i leave out And she tried to, yeah, but I did. And I was like, hey, you know, that may or may not be the case. But the truth is, is that this is how I behaved. And it wasn't okay. And she said to me in that moment at that amends, she said, I hope my husband finds what you have found. That's incredible. Right? That's incredibly. But here's the gift. I started to just hang around because see, like what happens is, is that we do this amends and then we go, Oh, that felt good. And then we walk away. Right. And we don't see him again. And so I would like check in with her periodically. And dann we kind of lost touch with each other for a while. And denn when my friend Jason killed himself, she's actually the one that tracked me down and told me the news that he had died. And when she called me, got a hold of me she said you know she was in tears and she's like I had heard that you had died as well and I was devastated so I've been scouring trying to figure out a way to find you one to tell you that Jason's died and two because I I was scared I was worried for you and so we started hanging out you know we would just go have dinner or we would just you know be together and she started to tell me things that didn't come up in the amends you know i asked her one day i said you know what was it i don't remember sitting down with your parents and telling them that you were pregnant at 15 16 you know whatever it was and she said uh she said that's because you weren't there you made me do that by myself i said what what did your mom what did your mom say she said she called me a slut and a whore and told me to get out i put i let her go through that on her own and it but what was the miracle in that is that i was able to sit there in that moment the amends had long been done and i was able to go right then i'm sorry i hope you know i'm sorry for that and if there's anything i can do to make it better please let me know she brought out these booties that she had made for our baby. I had no idea she did that. And what I can tell you is, is that I've watched her over the years and I don't see or talk to her much at all anymore. I usually text her on her birthday and that's about it. But I've watching the healing happen in her life, not because of me, but because of my willingness to be able to say, hey, this is wrong. I was wrong. And you didn't deserve that. And when we can do that in the loving spirit, we can watch people heal. But we also heal ourselves, right? I can also learn from that experience and I can Also be given my own level of freedom, even though it's not about that It's not about my freedom. I got mine, you know? I used to have a friend that would say, you know, only an alcoholic can borrow money interest-free for decades, you now, and then pay it back in an amends. And we don't add interest, right? What do you think? That's great. I was just thinking about that. You know, when we're walking through the process and we're going out and starting to make those amends, right? What I was advised to do is always make contact ahead of time to give the person the option not to see you, right. If they don't want to see me, they have the right to not do so. And that's okay. And I've had people that did not want to be seen by me. They did not see me or that I've been stood up. you know the similar to what you were talking about um but to always give them the option whether or not they want to actually do that and i mean reaching out to make an amends at a baseline makes the other person very uncomfortable is what i've found right like what do you what do you mean what doyou want to talk about why can't we just talk about it right now why do we need to set up an appointment so i don't like to make people squirm either and just say listen i i i I owe you an amends for past behaviors and I really think it would be beneficial if we could have that conversation in person if at all possible, you know. That just left me completely. Okay. Anyway, I'll have to find that later maybe if it comes back. But anyway, but the process of walking through that and sitting down and clearly stating where I was wrong, because stating that I'm wrong and saying that I am sorry are obviously different, I think. I was very wrong in the way that I treated you and the way that I acted so on and so forth or this is the money that I owe you period right I mean financial amends in a way are the most terrifying but they're the most straightforward right you owe money you pay it back period that's what I was always told if you owe many you pay back right and I used to believe that when making amends, I would make a firm promise to the person that I will not, and I will not do this to you again in the future, right? I can't promise that, right. What I realize today is that I absolutely cannot promise that Iwill not repeat the behavior that I'm amending removed from God. If I remove myself from God, I can almost promise thatI will repeat the behavior that I'm amending right now you know and that's the conversation that comes up with the people that are closest with me right because every year that I walk through this process my wife is usually on my eighth step list right and uh you know amends are are are and obviously cleaning up the past as you are cleaning up situations as you go along but that formal amends is still really important you know certainly for me in in that relationship and in others that are close to me, right? To really just put it on the table and let them know like this is where I see that I've been really wrong in our relationship or in my behavior or the way that I'm treated you. And now it's, I'm very, very honest that in God willing, I will not repeat this behavior. God willing I won't. But I can't promise that I never will again, right. Because I can count the number of times that it was like, how many times are we going to talk about this? Right? How many times Are you going to say I'm sorry? Well, I guess thousands. You know, a lot of the times I don't know. I mean, because honestly, the guy that you're talking to right here right now is not the guy That's walking around in life making messes on any given day, Right? To be completely honest, to live with alcoholism and to be combating out active alcoholism through the exercises within the program on a daily basis. More often than not, I feel like there are two different versions of me living in this same body, right? There's the part of me that wants to destroy and create chaos, and there's the part of be that wants pursue God. And I don't know at any given time which one's gonna kind of pop to the forefront in a way. I don' believe that I have any kind of actual psychological disorder or split personality or anything like that. I think it's really the Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde thing that is talked about in the book, right? On any given day, you may get that version of me or you may Get That. And that's not an excuse. However, to realize my limited ability to change my course of action removed from God is just so vital and important for me to be able to do because I can't promise forever. I can say I'll never do it again. and I can't, but God willing, I will not repeat the behavior, right? And making amends is... So okay, so that's where I was going with that earlier thought. So when I first got sober, I made an eight step list my first trip through the step work which was kind of, again, I don't really necessarily know what it was. I didn't really have much guidance. I know that I had a list of names, period. I didn' make any of those amends. I think I made like two, honestly. And then the next sponsor I had kind of gave me a little more direction. I made a few more. I never actually went after my amends as if my life depended on it is the way that I look back on it. And I paid for it dearly, right? I had hooked up with my now sponsor and I had, you know, this was years down the road at that point. I still had outstanding amends from my first trip through the steps. And this was Years Later. and uh we walked through them and he said oh my god you you have outstanding amends okay get those done right because that's you know how he had always approached it like you you tackle your amends right um and i conveniently just pushed that aside i guess so for the next year i just sat on those again so the eighth step came up again the next year, and he's like, you didn't do any of these? And I remember he was like, do you have any idea how much you've crippled yourself spiritually by not taking care of cleaning up the past? If there's even one remaining that you're not willing to do, you will not gain the full benefits of the freedom and of that connectivity to God. You will remain blocked, right? And And I was like, I had a million excuses as to why the 80% of what I was doing right mattered more than that and blah, blah, and at the end of the day though, I knew without a doubt that he was right. And I honestly really afraid to take care of what was on that list. But in that moment, I realized just how important it was because I didn't want to live in a place of paralysis in the program. If there's action that I can take, because there's not always action that i can take right but if there's action that i can take to draw myself that much closer uh to an intimate relationship with god why would i not take that right well i could come up with a thousand excuses but in any event he basically lit a fire under me and i went out and i made all of those amends over the course of maybe a couple of weeks following that conversation that i had been sitting on for years at that point and a lot of them were not even close to to what I thought they would be. Granted, I felt like I was gonna throw up before every single conversation that I had to have, as I would imagine is the case for most of us, right? Who likes to knock... I remember going to a... It was the parents of a girl that I grew up with that I basically just created so much chaos in their home because of the bad influence that I add on their daughter and whatever it takes two to tango, but this just felt right. And so I went back to talk to them. And I'll never forget this because I walked up to the door and I knocked on it. And all of a sudden, like everything went white because I was so nervous, right? What if they actually opened the door? This was pre-making appointments. This was me just kind of going rogue where I thought it was appropriate. And I just walk up to this house where I haven't seen them in years. and uh it ended up being a fantastic conversation and they were just so the amends isn't always for us what that does for the person on the other end a lot of the time even if if nothing else it restores some level of faith in the human race and in the ability to do the right thing you know like wow you're why would you even come here to say that right or if you stole that money 20 years ago why wouldn't you just like whatever right why are you coming back to repay it now well it's vital right I may die or drink if I don't and more often than not there's some sort of connection because in some way shape or form I feel like everyone's affected by alcoholism and more often than not there some sort connectivity that comes up to wow you give me hope for my my son you know or my brother or that kind of thing and there have been some pretty pretty cool things that have come up from that but the amends I guess my whole point to that is the amends process at a pace that I think is appropriate is wrong you know because I would rather just push that aside forever right because it's it's not the easiest thing to go out and do right but similar to inventory if I leave the most important thing out of my inventory we know where that will land us right and if I if I'm not taking care of even one amends that's still hanging there not because they can't make the contact but because of a lack of willingness I will pay for that also right and it's not about what other people think honestly it wasn't about going back and being able to give the good report to my sponsor it was that I I knew without a doubt that I was out of integrity within myself. I knew it, I knew. So really that's what it comes back to I think always because you could ask 10 different people what they think about your actions and they'll give you 10 different answers, right? But I'm the one that needs to go to sleep tonight in this head. So as long as I am okay with where I'm at and what I'm doing, I'm probably gonna be just fine, right. But if I'm looking for someone else sign off on my behavior right like if I'm doing something I know isn't right and I find just the right person to say oh they deserve that absolutely right you'll find that you know again Alcoholics Anonymous is not a hotbed of mental health right we can find whatever answer it is we're shopping for but that's what I just value so much about you know active sponsorship and having someone that gives me an objective viewpoint it's not his opinion it's It's not, you know, what he thinks is the right thing to do. It's objectively, how do we flip over the stones and make sure that you can live in your own skin? Because it doesn't matter what I think, right? It doesn't mater what I thin for the men that I work with. They're the ones that have to live in their own skin, right. So that is my barometer today more so than when I first came in. It was really how I looked and my appearance. I cared more about that and you thinking that I was doing the work than if I was actually doing the work right trying to uh to just extract that validation from people rather than having that go inward and really the only validation that truly matters in my life today is the validation of God right and that's just my truth so um yeah that's good you got some time we do I can tell some more stuff absolutely I'm good right now yeah so I I did my my cards and I put them in a cute little box and they they I would do some and then I wouldn't do some and you know then I go I report back to my sponsor and I'd say you know I couldn't get a hold of the you know whatever and then he would like hand me the phone dial it up and it's ringing you know and I would you know did some amends like that businesses and stuff at times when it was appropriate I I had to make amends to the lady at the treatment center that I hung up on and told to go take her AA meetings and shove them. How do you do that? I couldn't track that woman down. How do You make that a man? Well, one, I changed my behavior, and two, I took a meeting into that treatment center for years and tried to give back. I tried to make what I damaged better somehow. If I couldn't find the person, I would go and try and make it better some other way. I had an employer that I was prepared to pay money to because I bailed on a shift and it was years earlier and he said, you know, your 40 bucks or whatever you think you're going to give me is like absolutely not the point. I got no way to take that money don't want the money so I had to find a different way to get that money out of my pocket you know and put it back out there because it wasn't mine and when I did my cards we went my sponsor and I met I don't know why it's important but my sponsor at my first sponsor and i when we got through inventory another another guy he met with like I met with him on a Wednesday and he met this guy will on Thursday and so when he got to men's he said you know I need it'd be really cool if you guys just kind of came together because I'm reading you the thing on Wednesday and the thing I'm exact same pages on Thursday it's redundant watch you guys come together and so will and I started from 9 through 12 and the end of the book together and finished out the steps together and went through a men's together will was sadly tragically killed a few months ago you kind of got some different ideas about the world and God took action on those things and it's kind of gunned down in a in a thing and um sober but um you know on a different path and i just i just wanted to spend um kind of bumping up against my mind as i've been sitting here that guy was hugely impactful in my early sobriety because we were able to like really do some work together and go through these amends cards and go through this come back and report back on how that amends went or didn't go or whatever and but my sponsor i had a couple of men's my sponsor just said honestly i got no idea how we're going to do those i had no idea you remain willing let's put them in the back of the stack and when God shows you the opportunity, it'll come. It'll come, it will happen. And I was like, oh, okay, great, I'm off the hook. And one of them was the guy who was in the coma for two months when I was early in sobriety. Like how do you make amends for that? How do you sit down from someone and say like, hey, I get that you're in a wheelchair because of my actions, but I'm sorry. I'm in AA now. It just doesn't feel like it was adequate but I remained willing and I put that card in the back of a stack and as I kind of journeyed through life, years went by and I sponsored a bunch of guys and I got a new sponsor and he had me write some inventory. I wrote some inventory and I did a fifth step and I was right at that moment where I don't know if you ever have this experience where you look back on your life and you go, you know, if like A, B, and C didn't line up in that order, D would have never happened. You know what I mean? Like something was like moving the blocks into place And so I wrote this inventory. I got really humbled with my sponsor. And, I mean, he wasn't mean to me, but I just became, I was humbled. I was humble in a way in AA that I hadn't been in a long time in that timeframe. And I had really started to kind of listen to my own press in AA, if you will, and really like to hear myself talk more than you like to hearing me talk, really. I mean it was just like I just really enjoyed myself. And kind of had this, like, I'm kind of this, I got this little grand poobah thing going on. And I'm sponsoring all these dudes. And, you know, look how great I am. So I got really humbled in this inventory. And I used to have this home group on Saturday nights. It was a big group. We'd have a business meeting after the regular meeting. So we'd get out of there at, like 1030, you know, on a business meaning night. on a saturday night it was horrible we all fought for you know we were spiritual for the hour of meeting and talked about how god has run our lives and then we'd argue about which way the chairs should face for an hour and a half after the meeting you know or like whatever and so we had this really gnarly business meeting and i was super humbled and i um we went out to eat afterwards and i Was with this girl that i dated was dating or living with or whatever you call it And we walked to the, opened up the door of this restaurant that we never went to. Never went to it. But our normal place was closed because it was late. I opened the door and Rick's mom comes walking through the door. And my mind said, get in, sit down, and shut up. And my mouth said, Jackie, it's Chad. And she looked up at me and she burst into tears. She grabbed a hold of me and said, how are you? I have been worried sick about you all these years. I thought what happened with you and Ricky killed you. How are you and all I could do is hold her and say, I'll do anything. I'll do anything That was my amends to her That's all I could get out I'll go. I'll do anything Tell me what you need me to do, I will do it I'm so sorry She said, come see Rick Come see him So I got their number and I called him and we talked for a little bit and I knew I had to make amends with him Somehow I gotta sit down with this guy and so in my sponsorship lineage we we take you out to eat that's how we used to do it or we take you out to coffee something I take you somewhere and so I said hey let's go have dinner we'd like to talk and and we kind of I kind of let him pick the restaurant and he picked Hooters so I took him to Hootors which is like a horrible place to try and make an amount but I picked him up and he was still in a wheelchair and the speech is really not very good and doesn't have like really good fine motor skills. And so I got him in the car and we drove down to Hooters and we're sitting at Hootters and that the HootERS girls are just not leaving us alone, right? I'm just like, I just, the whole time I was there, I was just like God, please let the Hooter's girls leave us alone so I can make this amends. And they weren't leaving us alone. And so we get in the car, and we start to drive, or we get into a car, we get ready to drive. And I sat with him right then. And he just said, Look, man, I gotta find a way to be able to make this right. I don't know how to do that. I'm sorry. I am sober, and I'm in AA. And, and trying to live a different life he said the most amazing thing to me because i'll tell you right now i would not say this to anyone regardless of what they did to me he said what's happened has happened it's in the past and we'll start over from here and um and the freedom that i got from that moment was incredible and i hope that he got some freedom from it as well because he knew that I knew that what I had done was wrong, and I had wronged him. If I could change it, I would have. And so when we went back to his house that night, we're driving, and the important thing about amends for me is to really put it on the person that I'm making amends to really be considerate of them in that process. And so we're driving back, and we get to this house, and he says to me, I forgot to have you stop. I wanted to buy some smokes and a Dr. Pepper. And I was like not interested in going back to the store and getting a Dr., Pepper and some smokes. But I said, I'll run and do it. So I run to the door. i come back and i'm kind of like you know what i need like this is too much for me it's too intense for me to deal with and um and i get back in his mom's cars there and i am like great now i am going to have to like do this whole thing you know and i go in smokes and dr pepper and all that she grabs a hold of me and she says you have no idea what this is doing for him no idea the impact you're having on her family threw me out of the hospital multiple occasions when i would go to see him they would come in and call me a murderer and tried to have me locked up and would throw me outof the hospital and scream and yell obscenities at me and so in this moment in her house, she's holding me and she's saying to me, I'm so sorry for the way my family treated you. I'm so sorry. And so I was given a gift and I would have missed that. Had I not been willing and not been humbled and not really been seeking, I would've missed all of that. I wouldve missed the amends that I received because I was too caught up in my own desires to get home and get to bed or whatever it was I was energized around being done with. And I'd love to be able to tell you that Rick and I are still in contact today, but over time he just quit returning calls. And I've just learned that it's just not my job to force myself down your throat. He knows how to get a hold of me. We have many, many people that we have mutual friends with that he can get a hold of me if he so chooses to do so. And my door is open for that. Which is sad to me, but I understand. I understand how painful it can be to be reminded of that constantly for both of us. But I'm willing. And that was an amends that I never, ever, ever thought I would have the opportunity to do. nor did I ever really think I'd be willing to do it and the gift in that for me is that if my life is no longer mine and my life is here to serve you whoever you are right you guys my family my work whatever then I got like the dark crannies of my past can help heal others and be useful the first time I ever told that story in a meeting there was a truck driver that was coming through town and happened to stop at our home group and after the meeting he came up to me and he thanked me for telling that story about making that amends because he had killed a guy driving a truck completely accidental and the guilt and the remorse he carried with him every day and he didn't know how to get free from it and hearing that somebody else had a similar experience and was able to live with it and get some freedom around it gave him some hope I couldn't map that out I couldn' write that, I couldn''t plan that that this guy is just going to wander into my group the night that I happen to have the courage to talk about this story that was current at the time and and it's not something I like talking about now you know But as I do, and as the years go by, I continue to start to unravel the guilt, the remorse, the fear, the shame, and the terror that used to terrorize me. Absolutely terrorize. Of what I had done. i think i think that's all i have to say on that right at this moment right i guess we never know the timing of these things either right um i think of one instance where and i don't know if anyone else has similar experience but when i when i initially got sober. It felt like I was meeting a lot of my family members for the first time on earth. Like, I didn't know them. I had been numb for so long. And I had always told them that I loved them and things like that. But when I got sober, it was like I was getting to know them for the first time. And it was a really strange dynamic. And my grandfather, who I looked up to in a million ways, but And as I drifted off into the disease of alcoholism at a fairly young age, I basically just stopped going to see him. And I just didn't want to be around. I was inconvenienced with being asked to go. I just did not have time for that kind of thing. you know and uh all the while though i just i missed that because there was this connection this this level of safety that i could reflect back on from when i was when i was young of what i felt in his presence and in my grandmother's presence she had passed at the time but what had happened was is he came up on my list you know it wasn't so much about um i directly inflicted harm on you and this is how But it was, the amends was more about my unwillingness to participate in a relationship. My absence, you know? I completely removed that. I had stripped that away from that as an option, right? And he really missed seeing me and missed having me around, right. And it was for whatever reason I went and I made this amends. And he was not that old at the time. but he was uh he was in assisted living or something like that and basically I went and had this conversation with him meanwhile back to what I was saying before I felt in a way like I didn't even know him right I was really actually there was a level of of excitement that I would have the opportunity to get to know him all over again in this new you know the new pair of glasses kind of thing where everything has just changed and wow Um, so I went in there and I told him, you know, and he would ask me very simple things. I went and I visited him to make the amends and I, he would just say, why were we, why were we never close? You know, why did you just stop coming around? And I told them to the best of my ability at the time what had happened to me and, you know, what that, what the disease of alcoholism looked like and what my life looked like. And, you know, we ended up talking for a couple of hours at that time. And really, this is not one that's like, ooh, this isn't a fireworks and men's story. But for me it was one on an emotional level it meant so much that it was – it was my very, very fondest memories of this particular piece of the step work because we sat there and had a conversation and made more of a connection and had more of an intimacy between us through the course of those two hours than I think we had in all the years of my entire life before, right? And what he said was basically, you know, it's okay. It's okay that we didn't have the chance to get to know each other and to be together as much as I would have liked to, but we can start now, right. and he died two weeks later right and in a way that was sad right because I thought I had this whole optimistic future of this relationship ahead of me and and he obviously he died a couple of weeks later so that's not the point right the point is is that thank God I took the action when I did to make that amends right I would have never had the opportunity to get to know him in the way that i did in that short amount of time but the quality outweighed any quantity that could have ever been stacked up to it right um so i guess that's it right why why would we sit on amends is there's and that's not a threat that you may bend up in a similar situation but it's a reality right we never know what what's going to happen tomorrow um so you know to be able to have that opportunity to heal and even though I didn't get an abundant amount of time to really, you know, have that opportunity to get to know him. I'm totally at peace with what happened there and that's a gift, right? That's a gift for sure. So yeah. I think the other piece of that is for me with my kids, I make amends to my kids not all the time because I don't harm them all the time but you know I sit down with them and it's like hey dad doesn't want to yell you know and and I yelled and I'm sorry sorry that I I uh I hurt you in that way you know teaching them that that process you know my my three-year-old is in this thing of like just smacking the shit out of her brother and sister she just walks up to him and just like out of nowhere just slaps them it's like whoa but it's like we're already instilling in her like this idea of like you do something wrong and we need to go make amends for and it doesn't mean I'm sorry you know for her it is because that's all she can be capable of right now but the older two it's not like well not only is it I'm sorry like what can I do to make this right what can i do to you know I broke your toy what canI do to I can't obviously fix it but what cani do to make it better you know and putting something back i just love that idea of just making the world a little bit better of a place you know um my uh where my mom and my stepdad and i lived where all the trauma happened like completely not realizing it at the time that i did this but me and my first sponsor started a meeting behind that house at a church like literally i drove by the back of that house every day for the better part of 20 years and that meeting grew and there's there used to be like 250 people at that meeting on a Saturday night. And so when I was, when it dawned on me, I was able to look at like, I don't think I owed him an amends. But I feel like I was able to put back something better than we left it as a family. I put I helped build something in a neighborhood that hopefully maybe benefited the neighborhood benefited the area where there was so much trauma in my life. And I didn't do that. I didn' t like, oh, this is behind that house. Let's put the meeting there. It was like the only meeting in this area we could find or the only church in the area that was open that night that would give us the opportunity. I'm kind of running out of steam on amends. What do you think? Yes. Can you guys talk to us a little bit about promises? the promise the ninth step promises yeah absolutely what i would say about the ninth set promises is that um for me i wanted them before i was at the ninth stop and it was explained to me that it says if you they read the promises and meetings where i'm at some meetings do but you know it starts out like we were amazed before we were halfway through Halfway through what? Halfway Through Amends. That's the part of the book that it's talking about. And we're going to know this new freedom and this new happiness. We're not going to wish to shut the door on the past, which is why we're here, right? We're up here opening the door to the past and the present to be able to say this is what's happened. And this is what has happened in my life as a result of alcoholism and as a results of recovery and having a relationship with God. The thing that is always, and I'll talk about this a little bit more maybe tomorrow, is the thing that's always got me jazzed is the 10-step promises. We'll talk abut that tomorrow. Do you have anything to share on the 9-step promise? Good. I will say actually just in again another kind of a conjunction of what I was talking about earlier in regard to the fourth step and how we can look at ourselves and God in that process at a certain point I was encouraged to put myself on my eighth step list and God was not exactly responsive to such a thing. It felt like a cop-out. It felt like it was being selfish. It felt like I was groveling or whatever. I had some narrative attached to that, but the consideration that was presented to me is if you treated anybody else on planet Earth the way you treat yourself, do you think you'd owe them an amends? And I'm not talking sitting down in front of a mirror and saying, Nate, I think I've wrong you right because that's not it i mean i'm not talking about you know the execution of an amends to myself but for me each and every year it's it's really beneficial as an exercise and as a desperate a desperate call for god's healing and help to help me to be to be a better man right to not just destroy myself from the inside out with the way that i talk to myself and think about myself and treat myself, to at least be aware of the ways in which I'm harming myself, right? And to really just, that's one of those things where, you know, we like to use the phrase living amends at times, but that's really more what it is for me in those instances. And again, with God, I don't think God is sitting around waiting for my amends kind of a thing. But I'd also be willing to bet that if one of my children was destroying themselves the way I do at times it would probably make me pretty sad, right. And again, that's just a belief that has helped me to try to address some of those wounds that are more internal than anything else. I can't go out and take action per se to make an amends to myself. I'll do that where I need to with the people that are on there. But to be aware of the fact that I treat myself extremely poorly quite often, even eyes wide open, stone cold sober at times. right just a point of consideration I guess more than anything about four years ago my was telling Nate about this my wife and I this morning my wife and I got this dog we had a dog I had a dog for many years they to put her down it was devastating she was like her and I were thick as thieves and I have never cried so much in my life horrible experience and just making that decision to do it I mean it's just awful and so my wife and I had this other little dog there was really more her dog I didn't really like the dog we had that dog and then we're like driving to a dog breeders like place in the middle of a Saturday afternoon with her two kids at the time and she was pregnant I think it I'm like literally going what are we doing like we are not just going to look at puppies that's ridiculous so we go and we look at puppies and then it's like we're bringing this puppy home and she supposed to be about 40 pounds and she ended up being like 80 pounds and we had a newborn and i was not participating in the puppy just not like basically i kind of have this attitude this is like two three years ago i just had this attitude of like you wanted the dog dog. She's not what I wanted. It's kind of your dog. Right? So, horrible. Horrible. And she's pregnant and we have this baby. And it's just a disaster. And so, her sister takes the dog, her stepsister. And the dog's never been happier. The funny thing is, is it took my kids two days to realize the dog was gone. I'm not kidding, like literally we were sitting at dinner two days after we took the dog, like she took the dog in the middle of the day out to the sister's house and this is an 80 pound dog, it was not a little dog. It is like literally the third biggest thing in my house, living thing in the house compared to you know my wife and I and nobody even realized the dog was gone for two days and i think my daughter finally said like where's the dog it was like what do you mean where's your dog the dog hasn't been here for a while like so anyway so what it's telling me is uh so we decided to get another dog and my wife was like i'm not getting another dog because the last dog we had you ditched me and I did everything for the dog and I'm not doing that again and I don't trust that you're going to be involved so we get this little blind puppy Ray Charles Ray is I took him to the vet and I told the vet I said I think he can see and the vet goes this dog can't see anything like he's doing the t's like no this dog is blind like no he can i'm telling you if i brought him in this room and left him in here long enough he could navigate this entire room without running into any of these chairs he is absolutely amazing and it reminds me of like aren't i kind of this blind guy wandering around bumping into stuff fumbling through my life and don't i need god to kind of put the collar on me and kind of tug me over this way and guide me this way help me navigate this now the narrative of my home is is that my wife says to me she just said it to me today She goes, did you tell Nate that you love Ray Charles more than me and the kids? I am in love with this dog. I'm in love With him. And I'm like, my immense to my wife is, is that I'm showing up. I take him to training. I take Him out. We got this other dumb little puppy that she wanted. And I've taken that thing out at 3 in the morning to go potty and all that. You know, I love the dogs. I love them. But I'm able to, like, show up. I'm making my living amends by showing up and being a part of and taking a lead role in caring for the dogs so it doesn't all fall on her. And I'm selfish and self-centered. I want to kick back and relax. I want her to handle it. She manages the kids' doctor's appointments. What's a vet visit every now and again? She doesn't even know where our vet is. doesn't even know never been there never met him that's how it should be right i need to show up and be a participant in my life and and make amends for some you know being completely like hands off like it's not my problem it's yours that's not a marriage right it's on that's a roommate situation no you take care of your dishes i'll take care mine type of thing right i remember i had a girlfriend once who she got mad at me because i didn't do the dishes and they were my dishes it was my house she was living in my house and i threw the dishes away i like lost and i'm like you know what these are my dishes i'll do you know you want the dishes cleaned up and i took the whole sink full of dishes and threw them in the garbage i'm insane yeah yeah yeah i don't know why that came to me No, I get it. I get it. I mean, I like to think that, you know, reacting in the similar fashion that if I get a hangnail, I amputate from the elbow down, right? That's how I handle things. And I only have one AA joke and I'm going to throw it out there because it's on my mind right now, similar to what you said, right. Normal person walks out their front door first thing in the morning, sees the car with a flat tire, right. They call AAA, work it out. Alcoholic walks out the door first thing in the morning sees a flat tire on their car call the suicide prevention hotline right and not to make jest of that but really do i ever have a proportionate reaction to anything usually not right i'm usually very very quick to throw away the dishes yeah oh that was great does anyone have any any questions i know we're kind of getting to the end of the day here, and you're probably all fading out a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So while you're grabbing the right one, I just had this flashback of, I don't know if anybody remembers the Phil Donahue show, but he would run around with that microphone. that sort of reminded me him like right wait wait wait you don't mind sitting up ahead just because the feedback from the speaker there i apologize we don't want to squeak no problem so in like a minute and a half can you um talk about like the actual like making of amends did you discuss like selfishness dishonesty fear the inconsiderateness that you talked about like how did the ninth step relate to the fourth step for you guys yeah but uh i would just say in my in my experience they're usually tried and if it were specific to a particular piece of the inventory that i had written previously certainly mention it in that fashion but what was important to me was really to keep it to the harm that I inflicted upon them and not necessarily try to explain how sick I was and how I, you know, I didn't want to lean on that per se because I don't care if I have alcoholism or not. I hurt you and you're another human being. So I didn' t necessarily feel the need to kind of get into the details of what was going on with me or what I was going through or how sickI am or I was so scared and that's why I did it. You know, it was more just Let's get to the point kind of a thing. This is exactly the way that I see that I hurt you. And a lot of the time there was, you know, a lot OF the time making an amends does involve saying I was so incredibly selfish in our relationship, right? I cared about nothing but my own wants and needs, right, to that effect. Or I was just so dishonest all the time and I know you know that, right. I lied to you on a multitude of occasions Or even if I wasn't, you know, because again, I think a lot of us come from a place where I'll lie about what I had for lunch, even though I don't need to. Right? So a lot OF that came up for me too, where, you know, people would just be trying to deal with one of us from the other side. I could only imagine. I would never want to do that. Right? I mean, it must just be like, is this person having some sort of exorcism right in front of my very eyes? Like, what is going on with this person when we're just spinning like tornadoes through the lives of others, right? Anything to add, Chad? Yeah, no. I would say I just stick to the harm that I cause and not get too specific into I guess the characteristic of the behavior is selfish or if I was dishonest, I lied. I lied to you about X but I wouldn't get too deep into those weeds. With my wife, I'm able to be a little bit more transparent about that stuff and let her know hey i was i'm being selfish here i was being selfish um that sort of thing rather than like i mean she knows anyway really she'll usually tell me when i'm being selfish which goes over really great let me tell you i would piggyback on that too just to say that you know in a in a marriage in a committed relationship in any kind of intimate relationship, there is absolutely no such thing as too much vulnerability. That's my experience. There is no such things as putting it on the table. Because if I come to the table and put my sword down usually the conversation that follows is one that really brings us both closer to what we aspire to be and how we want God in the center of this so to speak. But that vulnerability is often not an easy thing to get to, right? Because if I put my sword down and yours is still up you could really do some damage, right I've had instances again living in a home with another alcoholic where I'll try to force an amends too soon because I want relief has anyone ever tried to do that where you don't want to ruin the rest of your night so you want to make the amends and move the agenda forward, right? But there's none of that pause. There's no actually like getting to causes and conditions and bringing back the truth. And I've gone back and said, listen, I see that I was wrong. I hurt you on, you know, whatever. I'm sorry. And she's let me know just how shallow that is on a multitude of occasions, right, because she's not done being mad at me yet. And I've also realized that that's okay, right. That's okay because what I'll do is I'll come in and create a disaster and get you mad and then get even more mad at you for not forgiving me fast enough because you're ruining the rest of my day, right? I thought just I did that. Are you going to really ruin the rest OF the weekend by being mad at me for something that I did? Yeah, yeah, I suppose that you are. So anyway, the expectations can be pretty wild, but again, we didn't get here because we were all well, right, so. i think that's about all we have time for oh another question yes hi i'm justine an alcoholic um aside from your wives i'm sure um does anyone has anyone ever said f you i don't want to hear it like when you tried to make a one-off amends to someone maybe that you really genuinely hurt and they were like i hate you i dont care and if so how do you handle that i haven't really have you i've never i've never had a straight up screw you i hope you die type response i have absolutely said had i have no desire to talk with you i don't want to meet with you and to me that kind of feels the same in a way right um the selfishness in me says i want the satisfaction of being able to check that off my list right and the reality is is that that forces me into a place where i have no choice but to work that out with god right because i can't chase the people down that won't see me and sneak in a men's letter in their front door or whatever the case may be right they don't want to see me i have no business pursuing that you know and if they do want to get together just to tell me to f off okay hey i did my part i showed up right and uh we're moving we're moving on right uh and we ask god to help heal those wounds i think yeah i had a guy that i worked with that um we worked together and he was kind of the boss and i was his worker and we had a the owner of our company and um i opened a we used to clean pools and spas and i opened a bleeder valve on a pump system not like really i shouldn't even have been touching it and and I left it open, and we emptied this guy's hot tub into his basement. When the pump turned on after we left four or five hours later, we came in the next morning, and our boss was just like sideways. And I was like, I don't know what happened. I didn't touch nothing. And this guy took the – like he got just reamed. And so years later, I'm going to make amends, and I had to get his number from the boss. So I had do this, get a hold of the boss, And he was like, I'm not meeting with you. I want to know what this is about. So I told him and then he ended up calling the guy and then I tried to call the guy and the guy still wants nothing to do with me. But I was able to make amends to the boss and he called the guy and said, look, Chad just made amends to me and I know the truth of what happened and I forgive you. So hopefully he got some freedom from carrying that around all these years. Maybe he didn't I don't know, but he will not talk to me. Which, I mean, that's his right. You know, that is what he needs to do, I guess, or has to do. So I think we are getting the dinner's happening signal. Okay. Oh. Oh, that was right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we are good.