The Bondage of Self and the Unfettered Grace of Higher Power – Matthew M.

Hello, everybody. It's a pleasure to be invited into your living rooms like this tonight. And Joshua, thank you for hunting me down in that kind introduction. I have to say, when I looked at the flyer to figure out how to call into this meeting, I was very enlivened or happy to see that it's called the Grace Group, because I tend to speak quite a bit about grace when I get to talk in Alcoholics Anonymous about what happened to me here. my sobriety dates may 16th 1993 and my home group is the hermosa beach monday night men's stag and i think just to hurry through what it was like i didn't see is anybody uh here put in the chat if anybody here isn't within their first year of sobriery can you just put in the chart whether you are or not i'll just give that while you're doing that i'll say that um i want to talk about grace tonight it's something i usually talk about but since your group has called that. May 16th, 1993 is not the day I worked the first step. The day I worked the First Step, I know it for sure. It was May 8th, 1983. And the reason I want to tell this story specifically is because sometimes you don't know what's making the grace of God set the wheels in motion to change everything about your whole life. And I'm just going to tell you about that day and the next day. May 8, my brother called me. My brother was sober 12 years in AA at the time. And he was the next one up for me, six or seven years older than me. And I have two brother and a sister older than that. I'm the youngest in an Irish Catholic family. Okay. I don't see anybody in their first year of sobriety putting it in the chat. So I'll assume we have more time than that." Anyhow, my brother called me and he said, tomorrow's Mother's Day. And I just want to make sure that you're going to be able to make it because I know you're having car trouble. And the truth was I was living in an apartment by the beach that I hadn't been paying rent on for a while. I was only not evicted because someone else was paying part of the rent who didn't, was subletting it from a different country. I'd been fired from countless jobs that I thought were too lame for me to even do in the first place and I got fired from them. And I had been fired From the best job I ever had the job I worked all my life for I was a lead guitar player and a successful recording band. And at this time in May of 1993. I'm sitting in my apartment and I haven't answered the door for months and months and I'm drinking myself into a stupor every day. And my brother calls and said, tomorrow's Mother's Day. And I want to make sure you're not going to miss it because it might be mom's last Mother's Day. My mother was dying of cancer. She lived a couple of miles away with my father and I love my mother. I love my father. I was never one of those guys who had an angsty relationship with his parents. And my brother was being polite, no one knew why I didn't come over and visit, no one new what was happening with me. But he, he just wanted to make sure I'd show up. And I was already mad when I hung up the phone, because I thought, why would he think I wouldn't show up? And hey, Victor, thank you for that. I would think, why wouldn't I? Why would he think that? And I guess the reason why was because I would periodically call my mother and tell her I'm going to come visit her. And I never did. And I live two miles away. And i know what happened those days. I really wanted to go see my mother. I know that I did. And I'm sure that I meant it when I said I was coming to visit her and then I'm Sure that what happened is I got nervous about going to see her and I didn't know if she knew that there was a girl across town who was pregnant with my child. I've been fired from another job. I was wanted by the police It was wanted by people that were scarier than the police. I owed tens of thousands of dollars to people and the IRS. I didn't know who knew what because I lied all the time. But my brother said, you know, I want to make sure you're going to make it. And I hung up the phone a little bit already in resentment that my brother would think I would possibly miss my mother's last Mother's Day on earth. And when I hung Up the phone, I decided right then I'm going to do some laundry. I'm gonna write a beautiful card for my mother. I have a degree in English and a degree in religious studies so I knew I could write a nice card I'm going to get some flowers I'm just going to blow her mind with love I'm gonna give her so much attention if this is her last Mother's Day I'm gunna make it her best Mother's day and I sat down and I drank a little bit of gin and he honked his horn and it was 17 hours later I hadn't left my house my clothes were dirty I'd been wearing the same clothes for 3 days I didn't have a card. I didn' t have anything. And I'm telling you this story because the story is about grace. And what happened was that my brother picked me up. He looked at me, and he was very surprised when he saw me. I didn'T know when he looked at mE that I weighed 108 pounds that day. I weigh 168 pounds today, and I'm not any taller than I was that day, but I didn''t know how much I weighed. I didn ''t know how bad I looked. I didn.''t know How bad I smelled. and I got in the car and I went down and I ruined my mother's Mother's Day. I completely ruined it and I don't know how I did it or what I did. I just remember the looks on their faces. I remember being taken away early and some friends of mine are on this call tonight and you've heard this story 10 million times but I did ask my sister who is my best friend 20 years later on my 20th AA birthday, I asked her what happened on Mother's day And she said, we will never discuss that. You were vile to our mother. And you know, I'm sorry to be emotional about this. And I want to say, I love Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a passion for it that has never faltered. I've never drifted away. I stay close. I work with others. It gives me new gifts every day. It continually saves my life. But it says in the book, we won't regret the past nor wish to close the door on it. And I do not. I do Not Regret the Past Nor Do I Want to Wish to Close the Door on It because I know that my life and my example might help Joanna or Victor today who are new. But I can tell you, I still feel it when I talk about it. And I didn't want to hurt that woman. I loved her. I respected her above almost everyone else I knew. But I was so ashamed of myself. And I think one of the things that makes us realize that we're getting the grace of the power greater than ourselves is that the journey out of the bondage of self I was so deeply in the bondage yourself and my own fear and resentment and anger and shame that I made a scene at Mother's Day and I ruined it for everybody and my brother had flown in and my sister had flown in my other brother drove me there my dad was there worried about his wife dying and I destroyed it their youngest boy and I was always a wonder to them I graduated top of my class I toured with the band I did everything I could always do well but I suffered from the slow progression of alcoholism it didn't hurt me right away it didn'T hurt me for years and then when it hurt me it was so devastatingly uh awful or when I had gotten to the end of it that I didn't even know I lived in squalor. You know, there's my friend Beth says, if alcohol took everything we loved in one day, everyone would run to Alcoholics Anonymous and do the steps and get sober. But alcohol is more clever than that. It takes a little bite and you adjust down and it takes another bite andyou adjust down. And one day you're living in squaler. And on that day of May 8th, May 9th, 1993, where I was about to work the first step and I had no idea that I was And I didn't know that grace was coming rushing at me like a tidal wave. I was living in squalor and I didn' t even know it. I couldn' t let anybody in that apartment. It was filthy. There were pictures, I was making collages at night. There were empty bottles on the floor. There were guitars laying around what was left of my guitars. And my brother took me out of there and drove me home and we got in a huge fight. And when I got to my apartment, I decided I wasn't going to lose the fight. And this is where I think grace is so astonishing. And I know what makes grace come to me now. I know exactly it's all over the book and I've sponsored people and worked the steps for years. So I know the secret to grace, but I didn't know it then. And when my brother got home, I picked up the phone and called him up and kept fighting with him. And he didn't get to say a word. I just chewed him out for all the years of what it was like to be his little brother because before he was sober, he was an alcoholic and it was very painful to be his little brother. And I screamed and yelled at him and when I got done yelling at him and I wish I knew what I'd said. You know, I love thinking about this because my brother's sober, my brother is visiting my mother, my brother sponsors other people, he's loyal to his wife, he has a healthy family, he keeps a job but I felt I had the moral higher ground and I've sponsored enough people that I've heard that insanity coming over the phone. You know, somehow I'm right. Somehow I'm the one who's right today and he's not going to win. He's not going to be my older brother talking down to me. And you know, this is where the grace happened. I stopped talking for a minute and it was quiet. And he said very quietly, Matthew, I think you have a problem with alcoholism. And that was not the grace. The grace is what came out of my mouth that I didn't expect. I said, without my own permission, I said of course I do. I was surprised I said that. I've been told by many people I had alcohol problem and I didn t believe them because my brother had an alcohol problem. He lived in his car. My grandfather had an alcoholic problem. I have toured all over the world. I don't have an alcohol problem. And my brother, who I didn't was sort of afraid of, said, I think you have alcoholism. And I said, Of course I do. And I think that's the grace of God. What if it isn't the grace of God, what it is, is the thing that sets in motion the grace of God? And it's called a surrender. And Victor and Joanna, who put on the chat that you guys are newer. It's the second word of our first step is admitted. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and I've always cherished that word. I have a degree in literature, and I know that Bill agonized over each word of these steps because it's a surrender word. I admitted that I was powerless over alcoholic. It was obvious that my life was unmanageable, and I surrendered just a little bit. And I can tell you today what that moment felt like. It wasn't like an aha God moment, the clouds parted, I felt better. I knew everything was going to be all right. I didn't, none of that happened, but I can Tell you what the air smelled like in that moment. I can tells you how the phone felt in my hand. I Can tell you what floor looked like in my vision because everything was very present. And think what happened to me by admitting something by surrendering just a little bit. I entered the present moment for a nanosecond. I hadn't been there in years. I live in fear and regret. That's where I live. I live in anticipation of the future that scares me, and I live in the past. And right there, I was right in the moment when I said, of course I do. Something happened, and my brother said, don't go anywhere, which was hilarious because he i wasn't going and i hadn't gone anywhere in months except next door to the liquor store he said don't go anywhere and the reason he said that victor and joanna is because there's something that's very very valuable in this program it's all over this book but we tend to not talk about it very much it's called willingness and willingness and humility are surrender words and willingness can be a very short window of time particularly when you're new. I'm going to go see a guy who's detoxing tonight. He worked the first step with me three days ago. He's detoxING again tonight. Willingness is a very short window. And my brother knew that he flew to my house. He lived 20 minutes away, was there in 10 minutes. He walked into my disgusting apartment and he said, let's go down to the beach. I live right across the street from the beach, I never saw the ocean ever. And we walked down the beach and I had some cigarettes in my hand and I was terrified. I thought my brother's going to punch me in the face because I ruined Mother's Day because I'm a loser, because I am a scumbag, because I m a thief. I wanted him to punch me in my face but I was terrified he was going to punch me in the face. I had some evidence that might be how he was going to handle this because I grew up with him as my older brother. He was a really good member of Alcoholics Anonymous. What he did instead is sat across from me on this lifeguard stand. Somebody sent me a photograph of that lifeguard stand, sitting over there. And I was lighting cigarettes with my hands shaking. He just stared at me for the longest time. It was quiet. And then he just started talking to me about how he felt when my mom and my dad threw him out of our house when he was 18. And I remember I was 11 years old. I was so afraid that day. Why would we do this to someone of our own? You know, why would we be afraid? Why would we do it? We do this. And he was a terror. He stole all my paper route money. He ruined my guitars. He sold my surfboard, but we were throwing them out. And my brother told me how he felt that day. And I was 11 when that happened. And I was very curious about how he thought that day and then he told me how he'd felt when his son and little boy and his wife threw him out of their house and I was 14 and I remember because he called me my cool brother who played the drums and look like Paul McCartney called me up and said, I don't know what to do. Because he had no one else. And then he told me how he felt when he lived in his car. And that was probably the lowest time in my life for someone that I love so dearly to be homeless like that. And I used to go looking for him. When I was 17, I would borrow my dad's car. I would say, I need to take my equipment to school, to the music room to play with the band. Can I borrow the car? I'll bring it back. And i'd drive down super early in the morning, drop my guitar and amp off. And then I'd go looking for my brother's car and I'd look for him. Then I'd bring the car back and then I walked to school. And right in the middle of all this, my brother is telling me how he felt. He's telling me what he was feeling. He was telling me who he felt I'm so interested. I'm leaning in and I'm realizing he's talking about how I feel sitting on that lifeguard stand. And I would have bet a half an hour ago that no one earth knew how I felt. Remember that? Remember that, how you felt before you met us? Remember that Victor and Joanna you thought no one knew? One thing I want to tell you that will be very valuable to you moving forward in your recovery, on those moments where you think that these guys in AA don't understand your particular unique problem, I can guarantee you we completely understand your particular unique problem you're just in the bondage of self you think you're so different that you can't be helped and that's not true because we are not the ones who are going to help you grace is going to help you and the only way i was able to get that grace was to surrender just a little bit and say of course I do and that set so many wheels in motion so I'm going to hurry this story up because I want to talk about recovery my brother took me up and said I'm not I said I'll go to AA and he said no you won't you're going to a hospital and I said don't think I could do that I'm very busy and I meant it I've been sitting on the couch for six months but this hospital thing seems so extreme all of a sudden you know who cares that people are trying to kill me, man. I don't want to go somewhere. I go, how long? He's 30 days. I'm like, I cannot leave all this for 30 days, you know? I've said this for years, but what was I thinking, you know? Who's not going to pay my bills, man? I'm the person not paying my bills right now. Like, who's going to not do all the responsibilities I don'T do while I'm gone? But, you know, remember anybody else too busy for rehab? Anyone? I bet you too. There you go. Thanks, Jim so I'm scared again I just had this moment of connection and I'm gonna surrender again I'll go to AA and he's like no no the bar is much higher you're going to a hospital and he drops me off and he drives away and he when he's leaving he says don't die and I was so afraid when he said that because I thought he knew that on some particularly self-centered evenings I put a gun in my mouth because i didn't want to be a dad with this girl across town i was 31 she was 18 and i hate to tell you this but i thought she was selfish and self-centered i really believe that and he left and i decided i needed to get really really ready for rehab so i sold my last guitar and drank an awful lot for as much as I possibly could. And on May 16th, May 15th, my brother called and said, we'll pick you up tomorrow. And I really want to hurry this along. But remember the grace. Remember the grace I surrendered and said of course I do. I surrendered and said I go to Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't quite surrender and say I go to the hospital but it was an understood thing that I was going to go to this hospital and I was afraid. and Victor and Joanna, we know how afraid you are. Even if this is your 25th time, you've come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't think that fear ever goes away. That fear of letting go of your medicine, of letting go OF your modus operandi, basically a whole bunch of character defects we've strung together to help get us through life. I know how scary that is when you don't want to let that go. And that's how I felt from May 9th till May 15th, my brother called, I felt terror. And then he said, I'm going to pick you up tomorrow. He actually picked me up and took me to my folks house. But he said I'll pick you tomorrow. We're gonna go. And I stayed up all night drinking. The phone rang in the morning, I picked it up. I thought it was him. And it was a woman who said your daughter was born. And to be I'm ashamed to tell of this, I had totally forgotten about them. But I jumped in my car and I raced to the wrong hospital. I rased to the hospital where I was born because as was said earlier before this meeting started, selfishness, self-centeredness, Ross mentioned that, that is the root of my problems. And I am so self- centered that I believe all babies must come from Little Company of Mary Hospital because that's where I were born. And they weren't there. And I didn't know I was setting the wheels of grace in motion again. Cause I decided as I walked out in the parking lot, I'm going to go shoot myself. I think I could do it now. I do not want to go to a hospital and stop drinking. I don't. And I cannot be a father like this. I can't even find them. I'm at the wrong hospital. I, I don'T know if I can express to you. I was wearing scrubs from the or we used to wear to the beach sometimes i had a torn t-shirt on i had flip-flops on i'd fallen asleep on a big gulp from 7-eleven so i had coca-cola all over my back and i went to the wrong hospital i don't think i could have felt any lower i don'T THINK I COULD HAVE FELT ANY WORSE ABOUT MYSELF BUT I WAS ABOUT TO FIND OUT I WAS WRONG AND I DECIDED TO GO HOME AND SHOOT MYSelf WHEN I PUT MY HEAD ON THE STEERING WHEEL OF THE CAR AS I WAS SOBBING AND I TURNED the ignition of my car and my head bounced off the steering wheel because the car backfired and the name of the hospital came into my head. That's grace. And that I know for a fact is grace because I practiced the 11 steps very religiously. I meditate 20 minutes, two times a day for the last 15 years. And I can tell you that thoughts come into your head. You do not invite them. And I did not want to think of the Hospital. I wanted to say this time you'll have the courage to shoot yourself. That's all I was concentrating on, and the name of the hospital came into my mind, and that Joanna and Victor is the same grace that's going to get you sober, the same grace that saved my life for another 20 minutes. Sometimes that's all you get, just enough grace for 20 more minutes, and I went to the right hospital, and i ran up the stairs to find these two people that i, you know, i knew one of them, i hadn't met the other one, and i run into the room and there's anna the 18 year old girl the mother and she sits up and she looks terrible and right when i see her i remember that the last time i saw her i threw her down a flight of stairs because when i drink i become an animal and when she sat up and she looked at me she was happy to see me and the last thing i saw on her face three weeks before that was terror and she's happy to see me and I'm all messed up already man I smell bad I look bad I'm in this room with this woman that I realized I almost killed her she comes running towards me she's so happy I'm so confused she reaches into this box and pulls out Phoebe Rose and hands me my daughter Phoebe rose and they were revolting because they were so beautiful and i was so ugly and you know what when i look back on that story and think about that day victor and joanna i can tell you this the reason i couldn't experience that beauty is because i was so tightly in the grip of the bondage of self all i could see was how they reflected on me and the, what they look like. Anna looks so happy and Phoebe looks so pure. And I felt so disgusting that I couldn't be in the room with them. AndI knew I could go home and shoot myself. And I said one thing, I said to Anna, everything's going to be all right. And what I was meaning was I'm going tobe gone in a half an hour and you won't have to worry about this problem anymore. and I raced home and I ran up the stairs to my house and my brother's standing on my front porch with a duffel bag in his hands grace it's everywhere it's everywhere all the time and the only reason I don't see it all the time is because I am in the bondage of self and today Jeannie read How It Works and I wrote down while she was reading the 12 steps because i was hearing him in a new way the 12 steps are a treasure map that lead away from the bondage of self and into the treasure of unfettered grace think about it i'm powerless over alcohol and life's unmanageable there's a little release from the bond of yourself i'm not to be all and end all secondly i come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me insanity. There's a certain amount of organic feeling about that. I come to believe, you know, if you're an AA and someone's trying to beat you over the head with we agnostics to get you to believe, please excuse yourself and say, the step says we came to believe. Allow me the privilege of coming to believe on my own. And I didn't do that right away. I'll tell you about the second step. I went off to the hospital. All I remember from the hospital is I gained 47 pounds. I don't remember anything else. I was there for 30 days and I ate regularly. And when I got out, my brother picked me up and took me home and he sent me into my apartment and said, please go to a meeting tonight. And I said, of course, I'm going to go to A.A. meeting tonight. I'm not going to a meeting. I've just been in a hospital for 30 years. So Victor and Joanna, I keep calling you out on purpose you know I know sometimes it seems like AA people are crazy rule number one is they are this is not mensa it's AA rule number two is they're crazy in a way that you don't have to understand yet because they're deeply in the bondage of self right and my brother says go to a meeting I lie say I'm gonna go to a meet I run into my apartment and there's somebody hands me a beer and they're smoking pot in there. And there's girls snorting cocaine off my glass table and I live alone and I've been gone for 30 days and all those lower companions I've Been Gathering Around Me to Just Stay Loaded Another Day Moved In and I Turned Around and I Ran Away from My Own Apartment and Let Me Tell You How That Happened. I Bet You Guys Can Figure Out What Happened grace. And you know what it looked like that day is I ran into the apartment, I got a beer in my hand. Actually, it wasn't a beer, it was a Coors. So there was no danger there. But I ran into the department. And I look around and into my head comes this thought, Matthew, you've got one thing, man. You don't have character, self respect, prospects, hope, you don't have any chance that you're ever going to get out of debt, you probably can't get hired anywhere you got three people left on the planet that love you but you've got 30 days and that meant something I had something one thing on earth that was mine and it didn't take a quick look around that apartment to realize almost everything else that was mindless gone and I had run off with the happy people I had gone into the party where the girls with bikinis were snorting cocaine that's how I drank myself out of the music business so I turned around and I went away from my apartment and that is grace because again that thought jumped into my head that isn't what I normally thought when confronted with a party of this caliber it just happened because I had surrendered you know I surrendered I woke up 30 days in a row at a hospital I didn't leave and when I got in my car to go home with my brother all I could think about is how I wanted to see my daughter. I want to see my mom. I wanna get a job. I wanna stop being a loser and I walked right back in and all I could think of is, am I gonna throw away the one thing I got? I'm these people again and I think that's the grace of what I call God is the timeless plentitude of being because it's everywhere all the time and believe me, I've tried. I've looked. In recovery I have been all over the world. I have gone to India and worked with the dying. Because what I heard is the grace of God will always protect me. And what I herd is I'm selfish and self-centered. And what heard is that if I can smash my ego on a daily basis, I have a shot at bliss. And I can tell you some of the happiest times of my life have been helping people. Even people who are so dirt poor that they're living in Mother Teresa's hospice care in India. And all I get to do is hold them while they die. But it was a long way from that apartment where all I could think about was me to go into India four years ago. And I want to talk to you about that. I said something about this, the second step became to believe, right? Well, I ran to a pay phone and I called AA from my apartment and I said, I need to go, you know, I'm in trouble. I got all these problems. I've got tax problems and I have this baby and my mom's got cancer. And, and I just left my apartment. And the guy goes, yeah, yeah, where are you? I said, well, I'm standing on this corner. He looked up. It's a big intersection of Redondo Beach. He said, that's so weird, man. There's a meeting. It starts in 20 minutes right across the street from where you're standing. It is always there. I honestly just want Joanna and Victor to know my answer to him telling me there was a meeting across the streets. I said to him, what do you think I should do? Because I thought, you know, I got unique problems. I just explained this to you. I need a car with a therapist and some water, something like that would be nice. But he wants me to walk the tough mile across that street to go to that meeting. And I did. And I didn't get anything out of it. It was scary. I didn'T know you. And you were all happy. AndI was terrified. Andl left that meeting and through a series of events, I ended up at my parents' house, the last place on earth I wanted to be. And again, just for the sake of the newer people, maybe in your year or first two years, when that guy was driving me to my parents' house, a friend of my brother's was at that meeting and he knew I couldn't go home when I told him about my home. All I could think of was this is going to be a disaster. My mother and father had been married for 45 years. They're madly in love with each other. I can't show up on their porch tonight. I have an illegitimate child across town. I'm fresh out of rehab. I owe everybody money. I am wanted by the police. I will humiliate them. I had kept my alcoholism off their shores pretty well. I traveled and been away. I'll humiliate them. It's going to be terrible for them. Then I thought about myself. It will be terrible for me. I played at CBGB last year. I don't move into my old bedroom at my parents' house. I'm 31 years old, I have two degrees, I'm a smart guy. How can I possibly move back into my parents house? It's terrible. And if you're in your first year, that's called perception. And If you're In your first Year, I want to tell you, your perception is very little to do with reality. And what happened was, I got pushed up on my parents porch, and this guy drove away. And I knocked on the door and I wanted to run. I wanted to run but there was nowhere to go. They live in Torrance, California. There's nowhere else but other parents' house. And I looked down on the porch and there was a guitar pick with my name on it sitting on that porch and I hadn't been to that house in seven months. I don't know why that guitar pick was there but it mesmerized me because my parents were fastidious housekeepers that shouldn't be there. It's everywhere. I stood in that porchand looked at that guitar pick and it kind of made my mind all screwed up like how did that get there long enough for my mother and father who come to the door together because they're from the midwest and my mother's strapped to oxygen they opened the door and they were glad to see me my perception was completely wrong they were married to each other for a long time they were madly in love with each other my mother was dying but what they were laying awake at night thinking about was their youngest boy. And was he going to be okay? And I showed up on their porch and I said, will you help me? And Victor and Joanna and anybody else who didn't put your name in the chat, will you helped me as a sentence that comes out of willingness and humility. I say that sentence 10 times a week. It's the way I keep my spiritual grace coming to me. I do not have the answers. And when I said will you held me they were so happy. And they brought me in and put me in my old parents kit, my old room as a kid. I've raised four children to adulthood and Alcoholics Anonymous and sobriety. And I can tell you my favorite sentence coming out of any one of their mouths is will you help me? It's the most beautiful thing. And my perception was so bad that I thought this was a mistake. I thought This was horrible. And it was perfect. Because the present moment always is. And I'm not being airy-fairy of new age. Check it out. My circumstances do not dictate my happiness. I have a spiritual life now. I live by the grace of God through constant surrender. And i'm going to explain that. I'm going to get deeper into this. I woke up in that morning, I woke up that morning in my parents' house. I don't want to lie to you. I wasn't overjoyed. hated the fact that I was at my parents house. I needed to get away. So I went out and I had a meeting directory that Jim had given me when he threw me out of his car. And I said, Hey, there's a meeting at 7am. Dad, can I borrow the car? He said, if you're going to a meeting, don't even ask me, just get in the car. So, I drove to the meeting because I needed to getaway from them. And then I got to the meeting and I forgot how uncomfortable you people made me. I'd only been to one meeting the night before and you were all happy and hugging each other and drinking that crappy coffee that we make at AA meetings. And everyone's, you know, laughing and I'm sitting there feeling like I'm 10 feet tall and bright green. I feel like everybody's staring at me. And as soon as that hour's over, I race home. I got to get away from you people and I go to the other uncomfortable place. I did that three times a day for months. I'd get just enough of being with my parents and then I'd run to an AA meeting. Then I'd gets just enough being with you and I'd ran to my parents. and the way I came to believe, I didn't even know. One day I woke up and thought, man, it's going to be fun. It's Sunday. I can help dad make breakfast for mom, take a little load off of dad. I had watched them sitting at breakfast, loving each other at the end of their lives. I watched my mother try to make my dad self-sufficient. I could see them and they were so beautiful and all that has changed is I've been released this much from the bondage of self through the surrender of getting in the God dang car and going to a meeting and going back and helping with dinner, doing a dish every once in a while, being honest. To them, I was like this weird creature. Matthew's telling the truth now. What's happened on the planet earth? And I came to believe. That's why I always let people, you know, it happens. You know, my friend Scott Redman used to say about, hey, don't worry about the God thing. do the 12 steps and you will probably be contacted. That's what happened to me, you know? And I just started doing this thing, man. I went and I really got into it. One of the things that held me up a little bit, I was paying the money back. I was washing coffee cups. I borrowed my dad's car and would take people to meetings. And a couple of things that happened that I feel I always need to share, particularly if I just feel like it's a deal I made with God. I, I, I was about 60, 90 days sober and I was walking to a meeting with my sponsor and I said, hey, you know, I love Phoebe so much. I didn't know what it would be like to be a dad. I didn'T know I could love somebody this much. And my sponsor just walked right by me, walked into the meeting, didn'T say a word. And I sat in the meeting with him and I watched him because I'm selfish and self-centered and people need to constantly reaffirm me. And we got up and we're walking out and I don't think you understand because you don't have any kids. And he said, Hey man, just stop it. I said, what? He said, how much child support do you pay? I said well I live with my mom and my dad and I work at a loading dock from midnight to four in the morning and I drive a truck during the day and I go to all these meetings. I don't have any money. And he goes, well, I know what your circumstances are. I asked you how much job support you pay. And I said well,I don't pay any. And you said, then you're kind of full of it, aren't you? you must know by now this is a program of action it is not a program of talk don't tell me you love your daughter show me you love your daughtery you'll never have to mention it again we had a very quiet drive home from that meeting I like to say I was planning his death and he was living freely in the present moment he was not bothered by that conversation one bit and I paced around my old bedroom at my parents' house where it's very hard to hold on to righteous indignation. And I realized I should probably pay child support. And i called Anna up and i told her how much i made and she said no no no it's not an amount it's a percentage of your income and this is the percentage i want and it was very fair and i paid that money and i played that money every two weeks every two weeks because i couldn't get a bank account so when i cashed my check i went straight to that house walked right by that teenage girl's parents who I was so afraid of paid the money and then I got to play with Phoebe and after a while I wasn't dirty anymore and I walked in that house with my head held high I paid the money and said I would like to go out in the backyard with Phoebe please and we'd go roll around and laugh our asses off you know Phoebe was like eight months nine months when she was about a year old i was bouncing around my knees and her head was whacking my head she has giant irish head she's 100% irish just like me she's whacking me with her head she'd laugh and i'm grabbing her we're laughing and i said i held her still i said phoebe i'm gonna take you to your first day of kindergarten i'm your dad i'm going to take you do your first day at first grade i'm to buy you a car when i think that's so funny i said didn't have a car but whatever i had 16 years to figure that out and i'm gonna do i'm going to you know pay for college and i and i can't pay enough i can't get first and last months together to get out of my parents house but i was so in love with being her dad and a year before that the day i met her it was very clear that i should shoot myself in the head that day because i was so deeply in the bondage of self and i had not surrendered and I had not allowed the grace of God to come into me and change me, but it had changed me so completely. And so permanently that I did take her to her first day of kindergarten and first grade and second grade, every fricking grade by high school. She's like, dad, wait outside. You know, you're weird. And I got her a car when she was 16, she wrecked it two weeks later, I have not bought her a car since. And I paid for college and I paid for nursing school. And my daughter Phoebe is a nurse in Portland and she's saving lives right now. There's a pandemic going on and my daughter is a brave girl on the front lines of that. Grace. Unbelievable grace. And i want to interrupt this program for a special news bulletin from actual Alcoholics Anonymous. I've realized as I've been saying all this that it sounds a lot like my own opinions. These are not my opinions, these are my experience, so much more valuable. But the big book says, or the 12 and 12 says on step five, all of AA's 12 steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires. They all deflate our egos. What do you think we need to do to allow them to get out of the bondage of self you need to deflate your ego and you know how you do it 12 steps it also says on page 74 of the seventh step one of my favorite sentences where humility had formerly stood for a force feeding on humble pie it now mean begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity that's like a poem then it says below that our eyes began to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego puncturing you know what painful ego punchering looks like in aa when your sponsor says you're full of crap show me a love your daughter don't tell me he didn't talk down to me he called me an idiot he pulled my covers on my lie and then finally it says it is a step this in step 11. It is a step in the development of that kind of humility that makes it possible for us to receive God's help. It's right there, I didn't make it up, it's right here, and I'll just have just a few minutes, and i want to say a few things about recovery, you know? I've got to really be involved in this, I've seen a lot of amazing things, I'v met beautiful people, Ive seen terrible things. I've had a sponsee kill himself. I help people that don't get it. I watched my brother go out after 20 years and not get sober again. And I've seen all that. But I can tell you, there's this path. There's this way to live. There is this thing that's unfolded in front of me. Right? And it keeps happening. And to me, life is just a series of invitations to grow. And that's not, if you're an alcoholic or not, that appears to be to me what life is. A series of invitations to grow. My wife puts it differently. She says, if we ever get our ducks in a row, let's staple their feet to the ground because we've never achieved that. There's always a duck wandering off somewhere and when you have four children like we do, you get a lot of good things and you get heartache but I want to tell you through the grace of God, through trying to be surrendered, through trying to be humble enough to talk on this meeting. I called in sick to work today. I feel like crap, but I knew that Joshua didn't have anybody else to speak tonight. So I wasn't going to miss this. I'm going to go right to bed after I go see this guy who's detoxing. I keep doing these things and I keep getting rewarded. I said earlier to Joanne and Victor that my circumstances do not dictate my happiness. Now, if you looked at my life, If you came over today, you go, man, this is a beautiful house. You live in Matthew. Where'd you get all these amazing guitars? Your wife is really pretty. Look at those two cars in the driveway. Those are the gifts of sobriety, right? No, they're not. Those are The Gifts of Not Drinking. The Gifs of Recovery are I have a sense of serenity and face of calamity. i know how to handle things that used to baffle me i've lost interest in selfish things i've had a spiritual awakening and all that means is i got to find out who i really was when i wasn't in the bondage of self now i married the woman of my dreams and anna and phoebe came to the births of both of our children and phobee showed up when we adopted our fourth daughter up in Seattle seven years ago, eight years ago. We've had a wonderful, wonderful, beautiful, long unfolding of recovery. Remember I talked about the long decline of alcoholism, the long unfolding. It's equally slow. But good things and bad things have happened. My mother died in my arms. My brother drank again. And my wife, when we were married for just five years, massive stroke she's paralyzed and it's a privilege to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous so that when I was invited to grow I had tools to meet the invitation You know, my circumstances do not dictate my happiness. My interior life does. And my interior life is based on regular practice of meditation, making sure I realize I'm not in charge. Step three, being clear with somebody. Step five and six and 10. I don't want my character defects. I held onto them in my youth, but I'm quite sick and tired of them now. So really I'm more in the posture of willingness. But the number one thing that keeps me present and in love with my fantastic wife is helping others, being of service. You know, God never brings two people together to help just one of them. If you're on this thing and you're an AA and there's somebody bugging you to go to coffee with them and you don't want to goto coffee with him because they annoy you, go to copy with them. God wants you to goto coffee and find out something about you. you know i'm so lovely so passionate about this and i feel like i've kind of wandered off the reservation the last part of this talk i'll just tell you this the way my day looked today i woke up and called in sick to work i got my wife coffee i answered a bunch of letters from people that have been asking me for things they need that had nothing to do with work i took my wife to lunch i came back and said i need to go talk to these guys in uh mississippi i said tennessee sorry joshua and she said what are you going to talk about baby and i said i'm going to talk about grace and she's taking a nap in the other room and i'm the luckiest guy on the planet thanks for letting me share