The Dilemma of Lack of Power Edwards House Big Book Workshop Retreat – With Nate F. and Chad A. – Part 2 of 7

Good morning everyone. How about if we start with a little three minute meditation? For those of you that weren't here last night, just kind of getting ourselves grounded and centered back in the room and you'll hear three bells and then the time and then three more bells. Thank you. . you you you you Thank you. hi everybody my name is Chad I'm alcoholic Chad thank you for that um is there any questions to kind of kick off anything we talked about last night that anyone has a question about or a thought yeah we got a mic coming to you look at that oh I don't oh I do oh good morning can you hear me yeah margaret alcoholic good morning um so i spent a lot of time last night trying to turn it completely 100 over to god and i'm really struggling with that any suggestions would be greatly appreciated thank you we're going to talk about that for sure i still struggle oh yeah um full disclosure nate and i um had probably one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my entire life last night we had double bacon cheeseburgers with fries and a banana milkshake that i had a banana milk shake with real bananas you don't even get that anymore and uh so we're charged up and ready to go i hope your wife doesn't hear this the guilt of shame and remorse i feel right now is notable yeah but yeah so um i ended last night with the idea of like what is it that keeps me from going all in and that's what mickey asked me what's keeping you from going All In and i knew in an instant and what that was for me was i was terrified that I was going to end up in a one-bedroom apartment seeing my kids every other weekend. And not that that's like the worst thing that could happen to a guy, but that's what I was afraid of because I believed in a God that took things from me. And so the answer to that simply is that if you believe in a god like that, why would you believe en a God like that? Why would you trust a god like that why would you hand it all over to a god like that so here I stood at you know 20 some years sober looking at the proposition that I need a new god and I don't think I need a new God I think I needs some new ideas about what God is and what God isn't and um and so that started our journey with step work is we started looking at this from a different perspective. The second step, you know, Nate read last night, I believe you read it or did I make it up? The lack of power. Did you read lack of powers? Just the bedevilants. Oh, I did make it out. So on page 45, it says that lack of power. You know what I love about Bill's writing and say what you want to say about Bill. But what I live about Bill is writing is that he spends 50-some pages describing the first step to just beat it into our heads over and over and over and again. And then he summarizes that entire front half of the book in like one sentence and we agnostic, you know? But he goes on to say, lack of power that's our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously but where and how are we to find this power my second sponsor is a guy by the name of Alvin and Alvin asked me that question and I stood dumbfounded and I started to tell him well my problem is my resentments my problem is might fears my problem the girl at home my problem is whatever, the job. My problem is alcoholism. And he very gently explained to me that I don't know how to read and that actually the next sentence answers the question. That's exactly what this book is about. The main objective is to enable you to find a problem which will solve your problem. Right? So does anybody know where and how we find the power? I actually have the answer right here. Page 55, I heard somebody whisper it over here. The answer is on page 55. You don't get to turn to 55 yet because we're not there yet. But I was glad to know that there was an answer. There is a way. There is away for me to connect. When I was in early sobriety, I didn't believe in God. And I knew there was a God, but I didn' t believe in God and I had a friend who is this great kid now and he was tragically killed young and I remember thinking to myself, if God could take him and he believed in God, like what chance do I have? And so for a long time I would pray, his name was Dan, and I would say, hey, could you put a word in for me with the big guy because I didn't believe that even God wanted to hear for me and like nate talked about last night if i think that horribly about myself what sort of decisions and ideas am i going to start to continue to foster and grow so when faced with this idea of going all in and struggling with the idea i really believe the second step is and i'm probably going to say this about every step but the the second step is really a step that i come back to a lot because i have agnostic tendencies i act as if i will tell you in my mouth that i believe in god but my actions are not that i trust god at all at all and uh an example of that for me a recent example i really believe in trying to convey to you a recent experience rather than something that happened to me 20 years ago i try and incorporate a little bit of all of that but the idea is is that if i'm not having a current experience with the stats then what am i what am i talking about you know um so a current experiences i was in colorado and um i had interviewed for this job I absolutely hated the job I had I just dreaded going to work there I was miserable and um I was 10 stepping like out in the parking lot in my car you know throughout the day calling my sponsor 10 stepping 10 stepping I'm resentful we'll talk more about that and so I was getting ready to leave town to go on this go to Colorado for a conference and then go I was going traveling with my family for eight days with three kids in a car it was amazing and and thank goodness for iPads movie DVD players in the car we wouldn't have survived and right before I left I this guy had reached out to me and said hey you know my boss wants to hot that wants to interview you and blah, blah, and I said, okay, whatever, you know, I don't have time to deal with that. And he kept kind of pestering me. So I went in and interviewed this guy the night before I left. And I told him, you know how I am traveling with my family doing some stuff. So they come at me while I'm on the road. They're like, we want to hire you. Here's what we're offering you for salary. And it was a significant difference in what I was making upward. Right? And this is your bonus structure. and that was significantly higher. And I'm like, you know, I just don't have time to deal with this. I'm in a car with my kids and I'm not going to be able I just do not know if now is the right time for me. And he says, he comes back and he goes, okay, you're playing hard to get. I get that. And here's a signing bonus. and uh and it and i don't know if you guys have a number but i have a number and that number is what he offered me and that member is the number of the amount of money i need in my bank account to really be okay which mickey says is enough money to just not trust god right so he hands he he's like and here's the deal it's you'll get it your first paycheck and and you can walk away the next day like there's no payback it's your money so I start thinking I could take like a two three week vacation from my current job get that like I'm starting to scheme a little bit, and this was only like three years ago, and I'm telling my wife, and my wife's like, don't take that job, and i'm like, i don't know, part of the reason is, is i just had this weird feeling, i just, there was just something about the guy, so i go to colorado, i'm telling him, i don' t know, i d' n't think now is the right time, and I go to Colorado, and Mickey says, you know, let's go for a walk. And we go for a walk, and he's like, what's going on? And I start telling him, you Know, they're offering me all this money. They're doing this thing, and it's a great company, and there's this great stuff, and da-da-da da-do-da. And he says to me, when are you going to start trusting God? and when are you going to start realizing what your purpose is in life like the Mickey they're offering me the money like my number my number they're going to give it to me this is a chance you know and he says again when are we going to start trusting God you realize what your purpose is. And sometimes when he talks, I just think, man, there's just no way I can do that. And so now here I'm faced with my wife's telling me don't take the job. My sponsor's tellingme don't takethejob. But I'm still trying to figure out a way to take thejob. Because it would be good for my family. You know? So, okay. Okay, I'm not going to take the job. We walk out of this little area and we're walking back to the conference and this man comes along and he's pushing a woman in a wheelchair. And I knew the gal in the wheelchair. My sponk Mickey knew her. The two of them start talking. and I don't normally do this but the guy pushing her in a wheelchair had a name tag on I looked at his name tag and he's from the same state that I'm from and I said hey you know I was born there in the midwest he says well actually originally I'm from Akron Ohio my sponsor is Jerry he talks about you often and I immediately talked with him and then Mickey and this gal quit talking and we started to walk away and I just started to tear up. Jerry was a guy that I did a retreat like this, he was three days sober and Jerry calls me every April to thank me for being his Ebi Thatcher and carrying a message to him and here I am with this guy's sponsee right after I have this conversation with my sponsor about whether or not I'm going to trust God that's my purpose I have to be hit over the head with it and in that moment I was convinced I couldn't take the job and convinced that there is something at work bigger than me. And, and that was a current experience with that. And I had to turn the money down and I had walk away. And six months later, I got a call from a gal that used to work with me. She said hey we're, we're hiring potentially maybe in like six months and it was the same company at a different branch and I walked in there and I met those people and I had this weird feeling and I said you know I just don't know they offered me a job no signing bonus right the pay was okay same company from six months earlier different group and I went ahead and I took that I went in and took the job and I wasn't really convinced it was the right thing to do but something was just telling me yeah this is a place to go and I was there about three weeks and my boss called me into her office one day and I said oh here it comes all right here it come I walked in I sat down and I just said it's like what's going on you know she's everything okay she laughs we don't do that here we don browbeat people we don micromanage we don do all the things that have been done to me in other companies and I had this sense that I I had landed at home right but had I not now there's a whole nother story that I won't talk about about the guy that originally tried to hire me he no longer works there he was removed from there so like my intuition was correct but if you were to tell me I'm going to go away from the money and follow the intuition I'm gonna end up at the same place in a better place still without the money, right? But I have a belief and a sense and a purpose that I gained from all of that because I was willing and open to take direction and follow direction. So we come to believe in a power greater than ourselves. It does not mean we believe in it. It does nicht glauben, dass wir es vertrauen haben. we're going to get into the third step in a little bit I was going to let Nate talk about second step a little but how do you want to do it do you second step and then do third step or do it together yeah let's break it up I think that's all I have to say about the second step and for anyone that wasn't here last night I'm Nate, I'm an alcoholic and very happy to be here with you all again this morning and you know to echo some of what chad says my actions would suggest that i do not believe in god on most days that's that's just the truth and i'm not here to offer anything but because that is the truth does it make me a subpar member of alcoholics anonymous Does it make me someone that doesn't want to pursue and has a desire to know and trust and love God? No. I'm a human that's hardwired with selfishness and self-centeredness to the core. If a threat presents itself, my immediate response is to rely on myself to make it go away. That's the response I have. That's never been removed from me. So it's all about the progress, right? We say progress, not perfection. Boy, if perfection were the benchmark, I would have been exited from the program a long time ago. And I also just want to be very clear because sometimes I think we can hear other people talking about these concepts at times and internalize them and make judgments about our own experience with such things that set us apart, right? I'm not having the experience that that person's talking about. I don't feel like I'm all in. I don' t trust God 100 percent, right? That's okay, right, and I think honestly the hammer that we pick up to turn on ourselves is the heaviest one that's out there, right. This stuff is hard. It's hard, right and a lot of the time it's just important to be reminded that it's about the effort, right and the effort is not a loophole for bad behavior, right Because I will say also that, you know, progress not perfection, that phrase that you hear a lot in AA, that's not an excuse for bad behavior either, right? If I'm using it as such, well, I'll pay for that somewhere down the line, I can promise you. So yeah, I think to the question that kind of came up or the comment that came up before we started, yeah, yeah, I have a really hard time and it comes up inevitably with all the men that I work with, that I have conversations with. It's like what does trusting God look like? What does it look like tell me how to do it right? And the best way that I know how to trust God today is to work the program. To work the problem today, to do my best to be submissive and to be available for what he has for me, right? To be honest, to work my 10 steps, right? To be willing to do something for someone else possibly or something to that effect. So I've never found a magic formula of if I sit down, I can transfer to complete an utter submission. It usually happens because I'm like the rat in the maze that bangs my head against so many walls, I just give up and lay down, right. And for me to metaphorically give up and lay down is the absolute best thing that can happen to me at times. Because God cannot grab a hold of the steering wheel if I have a death grip on it, right? And God is not my co-pilot. I belong hogtied in the trunk is where I belong, right. If I have any say over the direction of the vehicle that's moving that is God's direction for my life, I can promise you it will be in a selfish direction. it's how I roll pun intended so it's a concept that a lot of I feel like I'm always coming back to as Chad mentioned I'm always coming back to because what we have here right we have on page 47 what would be referred to as the second step question right and that's when when the first one that I was ever proposed with it it says we had to ask ourselves but one short question Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a power greater than myself? That, to me, feels like a fairly broad door to walk through. All I really need to do is admit that I'm not God, to be able to get on board and to beable to dive into this program and tobe able to start to do the work. I didn't have a belief in God when I first came into Alcoholics Anonymous I had been raised with a God I had turned my back on that God 100% and I was God as far as I was concerned and that sounds totally insane to a normal person but if you were to watch the way that I lived my life I was my God I was all I needed I was all I needed to provide security and happiness for myself, yet I had none of those things. But I was afraid to let go because again, to that analogy, a lot of the time the way that I see myself acting when I'm trying to exert my will, right? There's a line in here that says most of us lived on self-propulsion. Does that resonate with anyone in the room, right it usually will because i am one that if i can just try hard enough right i should be able to make this happen i should being able to get there i should be able to push myself hard enough to make this happen so what ends up happening is that my human powers are not sufficient to do whatever it is i'm trying to do and then i judge myself for falling short of something only god can provide the power to accomplish. That's a pretty unfair rating system, I would say. But I think a lot of us have a similar way of viewing ourselves. And if I'm out of line in saying that, I apologize. But I don't think I am, right? Most like-minded alcoholics that I've run into, the way that we feel about ourselves is pretty copy and paste most of the time, right. We don't usually have the highest viewpoint of ourselves, and that's a real thing that I've battled with along the way also is that I didn't feel worthy of God's love either. Especially when I first came in, I felt below, below, above that. um so to be able to open the door we don't have to necessarily be able to say okay that is god this is god that's what i believe i'm all in it doesn't need to be that way right but it also says in here that if we fail to enlarge our spiritual life we are sure to drink right so it doesn'T end here and i and i always i mean the book is is as clear as day and it says that this is not the end all be all grow continue to grow continue to explore continue to change continue to pursue whatever it is that you feel called to pursue right because we're not selling any particular version of god here that's the that's i think why alcoholics anonymous has been so successful for as long as it has we're not pigeonholing this. We're saying, open the door to the realization that you are not God. And if you are, how well is that working out for you? Not very well in my experience, right? I am a horrible manager of my life. And really what the second step is for me is I'm in pursuit of new management, right. I've identified that my management team sucks. It's me. Just failing in every way shape or form we're we're hemorrhaging metaphorically right as a spiritual business here within myself and I need new management because I'm not capable of doing it right and it's not because I can't exert the effort to try it's that I'm not capable it's then I'm trying to do a job that is way way way beyond my reach right so in a way to be able to realize it's tough because I've been adequate right it's not because I'm not willing to try. It's because it's impossible, right? Only God can truly and effectively manage my life in a way that will bear any kind of fruit. And something that Mickey says often is that you can always judge a tree by the fruit it bears, right, and if the fruit is bad, probably a bad tree, right. I plant a lot of bad trees left to my own devices, and I'm wondering why the fruit is rotten. Live and learn, and it's progress, again, not perfection, but at the same time, at least for me as I continued to walk this road, I started to feel like, okay, this version of God that I had doesn't feel like it's providing the power that I crave. And this is me verbalizing this in hindsight. I didn't know that as I was kind of hitting that place, But it just felt like, I just don't feel like I can actually lean into it. Again, I'll use that example that I mentioned last night. I felt like I was bringing fists to a gunfight in this battle between myself and my alcoholism. The battle between light and dark, good and evil. However you want to look at that, but that is a very real thing. And that lives within me on any given day. So, I've always felt, not willingly, but necessarily challenged to go deeper within myself and to really continue to pursue that relationship with God. Because honestly, submission is the best shot that I have today. As crazy as that sounds, to be in a state of submission is better than taking abundant action for me. Because if I'm in a state of submission, God can then direct me accordingly. Otherwise, I'm just responding to emotion. I'm reacting. I'm interacting. I'm acting. If I feel afraid, I try to fix it. I try the mitigate the fear. I try make it go away. I make it worse. 100% of the time. I've never once had any luck with actually eliminating fear from my life removed from God. It just doesn't happen. So, and then this is where, you know, once I hooked up with my now sponsor, you know he presented the second kind of viewpoint I guess of the second step. And that's on page 53 which this question I would submit has a little more hair on it than the first one and it really kind of made me uncomfortable the first time. Right in the middle of the page on page 53, it said when we became alcoholics crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What is our choice to be? So what is my choice to do? Do I want to be all in with God? Well, yes, of course I do. But I could never do that. Inevitably, that's the response that I had. That's the respond that everyone has had that I've ever had that conversation with. But we're not talking about your ability to promise forever here. And I think that's an important distinction there. We're not saying I can promise that I'm going to be all in with God forever. Because again, I don't have the power to change myself. I don' t have the powe r to stay on task. I don't have the power to say I'm going to trust God every minute for the rest of my life because I'll blow it up. I can't, just can't do it. So what we're more talking about is in my heart of hearts and my soul and my gut, do I aspire to live that life completely relying upon God? If I did have thepower to make that change within myself, would I choose to be all in with God? And in that moment, usually the answer is yes, of course. That would mean my life would actually probably be what it's supposed to be rather than me just setting up obstacles all over the place. So another exercise that kind of went with that is he said, well, look back over the course of even the last 12 months. Can you say over that time frame, has God been everything for you and in your life? Or has he been nothing? And I'm like, well, I would say like a 70-30 split maybe. I live and love the gray area as an alcoholic. I live in technicality to get the job done, if you know what I mean. And he's like, no, no. no, no. I'm saying one way or the other, everything or nothing. And it felt dirty and disloyal to let the words roll off my tongue that God has been nothing. God has been nothing if I have to be honest. The way that I act as Chad said does not convey that I trust God. It just doesn't. So it's like, where do we go with that? But it was so important and what was explained to me is that if you try to build a house without a square edge at the foundation, without a flat surface, that house is going to topple, right? For me, that square edge in my life is the truth regardless of how ugly it is to look at, regardless of how much I don't like how it makes me feel, right? I need to be able to face that. Because if I can't face that, I'm not gonna be able to move forward. I'm just not. And I'll never forget one of the first times that I was actually exercising the 10 step with my sponsor. I was just talking about this problem that I having with my wife and how ashamed I was and how I just, I don' want to be this guy. I don wanna be this guys. I have no aspirations to be the person that I'm watching myself be right now. And he said, well, right now you are that guy. He's like, well that's harsh, right? Can't I aspire and that's good enough? But he was really just reminding me without that square edge of truth, right, without me owning the fact that I am in fact not being the man that I aspire to be right now i don't open the door for god's help right i just say i'm going to be better tomorrow and i never am so um inevitably every you know anyone i've ever initially had that conversation with their immediate response is well god's been everything god's done everything well that's answer we have nothing more to talk about right because you know if god is everything for anyone i don't know what to do with that because that's not my experience right that's just not my experienced uh and every year that i've since gone back to visit that if i have to go one way or the other i have say god has been nothing right because i've never had a year where i or whatever amount of time where i can say without fail god has done everything in my life every day i haven't wavered i haven t tried to manufacture or create security on my own I've just leaned into God and everything that's happened that's just never been my experience and to be in that place is okay that's one of the greatest things that I believe at this point in time, to not be perfect is in fact okay and honestly the struggles are what really allowed me to connect with others in a way more so than knowledge or success stories right like this is hard and I've struggled like that too and we can walk through this together so yeah this is a bear and a lot of the time more often than not what I think you know because you get down the line and you think I need to do something or I needto take action or Ineedtomakeanamends or if I'm manufacturing that thought process that narrative on my own chances are I'm a little off the path, right? And more often than not, if I actually pause and take a look at that, I have a second-step disconnect. I havea second- step problem. It's not that I need to do, do, do, do. It's that I need to go back and lean into God, right? Where am I unwilling to be all in? Because I have the same experience where I was convinced for some, you know, again, it's never been my experience that God has screwed me over, right? In fact, it's quite the opposite. In the moments that I get beaten down to the point where I am submitted, well, you know, I beat myself down, mind you. God's not beating me down. He's just kind of standing by and saying, whenever you're done, I'm happy to pick up and get going kind of a thing. And it's not until I'm fully surrendered that God can actually step in and say, okay, this is what we need to do. This is what your life needs to look like. And without fail, that never comes easy to me. I still struggle with that, and I still need to walk through those hard lessons at times. And I also agree with Chad that current stories are far better than what it looked like for me day one or whatever. It's easy to have a tendency to have your favorite stories of how this connects to X, Y, and Z, but the vulnerability of presenting real-time information of what's going on in my life i just find to be so helpful you know when when it's the other way if someone's talking to me real deal this is what's going on there's a trust that happens there that's unlike anyone that's ever tried to teach me something you know um so rewind and this is this is actually probably the first time i've shared this in front of a group um so uh my wife and i were pregnant with our first child, and this was just this last year. And we were really, really concerned because we both need to work what we were going to do about child care, right? Like this is just going to be really hard. We don't know what we're going to have to do. We're going to do, we don't have people to rely on. You just don't really have that. So we were both really scared about what that was going to look like. And so my mother actually was diagnosed with a form of cancer, but it was a form of cancer that she actually can live a long time with. It's very slow moving, it's managed for the most part, so she was able to retire early because of this though. So we're like, God's setting us up, right? God has to be setting us off. My mother's got an open schedule now, right?" Um, and, uh, you know, granted she lives, you know, two hours away from us. So it's not down the street kind of a thing. But, um, and honestly, she was extremely excited to like be involved in that role too. So we're like, this is great. And as things progressed on, we realized that, and this took a number of months, it wasn't like an instant realization. We realized that if we put that kind of an expectation on her and set her up in a position to really essentially be obligated to us that's going to really have a have a negative impact on our relationship right and things seem to just kind of be getting hard to navigate within the dynamics of our relationship anyway we're like what's up god i felt i thought this was the path this wasthe gift right so we we have that as an option and it comes down to the fact that my wife and i both my wife's in the program she's been sober a stretch as well uh which is good and bad right uh it's either fire and fire or it's beautiful um but you know they're uh yeah i've played more than that i'll take it offline with anyone that wants to go down that road but uh overall it's really really well and it works really, really well because we both continuously put God first, you know, as a segue from this story. God needs to come first for each of us to have any shot at not killing each other together, you know? And we both believe that our program needs to comes first in order for us to have a shot because otherwise we're both just leaning into each other hoping that the other one will provide godlike power and it's nuts, right? The other one fails and then we get mad about it. And so, you know, so on down the road. But so we come, we sat down, we had a conversation. We're like, we just can't do this. We can't, we can't do this with, it just feels wrong. It feels wrong, we can't engage in this relationship, we can't have this expectation of my mother. We'll figure it out, right? We'll figure it out, we'll trust God, whatever this is going to look like, it'll work out, right? And honestly, my mother wasn't that upset, right, so chances are it was probably the best thing. It just, it would have been really, really, hard, so we're like, well, we'll just, we'll figure it out. We'll just figure it, and then a little more time went by, and you know, it was my wife's intention to go back to work as soon as she had to, and both of us are just like oh that just feels so bad i don't want you to have to do that and uh should be able to stay home stay home with the baby and you know i mean talk about talk about a god inspired purpose and role i mean to to bring another soul into the world and have the opportunity to love that soul and to bring that soul for us bring that sole ultimately to god is how we view that you know because that that's without fail the only real security that both of both of us believe exists in this world. God is the only security that will never fail. Anyway, sidetrack again. But so we eventually said, you know what? Screw it. We'll figure it out. You're going to stay home. Just quit your job. You are going to stay home and I am looking at the budget. I'm sweating bullets the numbers don't work not even close it's like a landslide that this is just so I'm like yeah I'll trust God you know like and everybody's like well you know and most of the time the response is like God's not going to pay the bills right but will he right how much money is enough money as Chad said just enough not to trust God right God has shown up in my life in so many different ways that would have otherwise felt completely unrealistic and impossible right and this is one of those examples and i'm not saying that it always needs to work out this way because it's worked out the other way for me too and that's okay also right because regardless i mean what's the worst that's going to happen i don't know i i envision like death by torture is what's going gonna happen somehow i get there i don' t know where i get there but I'm going to die and I'm gonna suffer a long time before I do at the end of this road of not having money it's like what that doesn't even make sense but anyway so we make that decision we agree we're both we're gonna trust God and it felt right it felt regardless I just thought we're gonna be okay we're not even look at that budget and we're just gonna trust that they'll all connect the way that they need to and we'll scale it back a little bit or we're just gonna do it and we were both on board with that and so then our our dog became very very sick we racked up a veterinarian bill that is ungodly she died tragically throughout the course of that process I'm like okay here we go right you're gonna quit your job and we've got this mountain of that veterinary debt over here this is not looking like we're making the right decision kind of a thing two weeks later um two weeks later my wife's father was found dead so uh obviously not the circumstances you want to have unfolding two weeks before the due date of your first child so that happened and we're like this sucks this this doesn't feel very like god's got our back kind of time but that never actually fully pushed us off the rails we just continue to stay close to God and continue to lean in and have, honestly, have some vulnerable experiences together that we had never quite experienced before. In hindsight, the grief that we were able to walk through together for the very first, really the first time around both of those circumstances brought us together in a way that I would have never picked. I would've never picked to suffer to grow closer to my wife, but that's what happened. You know, God will make the very best use of everything is my belief. So two weeks later, so it's like two weeks, two weeks. Death, death, birth, right? Like two weeks spreads in between both and our baby arrives and we're still like, you know, we're doing this. We're going to stay at your going to say home. We're gonna figure it out and we'll just trust that God will provide what we need. And so come to find out, my father-in-law was arguably one of the most unorganized people on earth in a way. I mean, we basically said we need to make sure we get the funeral taken care of and let's just make sure that's all good and we're moving on. We didn't think there was going to be any kind of like a state to sort through or any, you know, the stuff that comes. I mean dying is very, very complicated and it's very expensive come to found out also. So there we are, more bills. right more bills and uh more bills and no more income so uh still the plan is not feeling like we made the right choice so come to find out uh and again this was just like he had a life insurance policy he had a life insurance policy that uh we didn't know about but we got a check in the mail basically what it did and again you can't make this stuff up what it did is it closed the gap of the money my wife would have need to make in her job to pay our bills our cars that all that stuff paid all that off close the gap almost to ten dollars of what she would have needed to made to stay home we were able to set up an education fund for our daughter that we would have otherwise never been afforded the opportunity to do and that was about it i mean this wasn't like life-changing money that we could quit our jobs and go to bali kind of a thing but it was exactly enough to afford my my wife and our family the opportunity for her to be home with our daughter without worrying about that financial stress all the time the gap was closed we were able to pay off all these short-term debts you know so i guess god can pay the bills is is the message right and that's again that's not always been my experience, but that is a very recent one where when we received that news, I mean, I was just, I was so humbled and blown back in my chair that this is the reality of our life right now. And just so grateful, right? Because this is not always easy and to walk this road is hard at times, but through all of that effort and willingness and suffering at times, wow, God really does have our backs a hundred percent god has my back right god has her back god has our daughters back um and for me that was uh that was just a it was a few months ago you know it was a few month ago and uh do i still worry about the budget yeah of course i do why not right because that's how i'm hardwired right um but honestly all things considered like we're fine we're fined we would have never we would've never been fine had those circumstances has not played out exactly the way that they did. But again, if you asked me, do you want to walk through this line of hell right here? I would have said no. No, thank you. I don't know what's best for me, right? God does always. So to be in a position where I'm actually willing to just say, what do you need from me today, God? What do you needs from me? Because a lot of the time I'm tempted to say, this is what I need from you, right. Provide me the power to get this done. provide me the power to manufacture my own version of what I think I need to be safe right that can step yeah yeah I was I was gonna say I when I when I made the decision to leave the company I hated and go to work for the company on that now I had this period where they had to do these background checks and do all the stuff. And there was this verbal offer, they couldn't give me the written offer for a few days, it took like a week for them to get an actual what we'd agreed upon paper. And I go into my current job and my boss calls me into our office and we're talking and other guy manager comes in and they're telling me, you know, we're going to shift things around and we'll move you to this guy's team and if there's anyone in my 15 year career that I would never work for it was him and uh and I'm sitting there going like you got to be kidding me like I ain't working for that guy and I was like yeah I think that's a horrible idea and he's like well you know we've already made the decision thanks for your input but here's what we're gonna do and then thursday morning rolls around i gotta call mickey i started telling mickey you know this is what they're doing and man isn't god good i'm i'm getting out of there and he says well hold on a minute have you given him notice that you're leaving well no i haven't so well um aren't you being dishonest I'm not being dishonest I don't have a written offer no but you're leaving right well yeah I'm leaving well then you're being dishonished they're going to rearrange this whole office around this new plan and you're going to walk out the door you need to go give notice today but Mickey I don' t have the paper is there anything that's going to come back on your background check I mean, you've been doing this a long time. No, there's nothing to come back on. Okay, well, are you going to trust God or not? Are you goingto trust God or not?" Am I going to trust or not and trust him it worked out fine. I think the point of all this is that I continue to battle, I guess to go back to the opening question, I continue to battle with going all in. And I don't know that there's a way that I can go really truly all in. I have so many things to tell you about that are really crazy, but my wife and I had two kids and we had a miscarriage before our oldest daughter. and when my wife was probably six months pregnant, I'm just going to tell you that if I was in charge of carrying a child in my body for any amount of time, there would not be any children. pregnancy for my wife is about the most miserable thing on the planet with my son she was nauseous every waking moment with my daughter she threw up multiple times a day um her co-workers would joke that she'd just be in the middle of talking in a meeting and And she'd just turn over and throw up in the garbage can. And then like, like it was, it was horrible. So six months pregnant with my daughter, my oldest daughter. And I come home and she says to me, you are getting fixed because I am never doing this again. And I said, hold on a minute. Like we, like, hold On a minute, like there's no threat right now of another pregnancy. you're still pregnant. Let's like pump the brakes on this and wait. And when my daughter was six months old, my wife came to me and she said, there's somebody missing in our family. We need to have another child. And I was like, you have lost your mind. You have lost Your mind. And for about two years, she kept saying that to me. And, um, I would bring it up to Mickey every now and again, and then I kind of quit talking about it. And see, this is what's important for me about active sponsorship, is if I don't, if I'm not talking about something, it's not because it's resolved, right? It's because I don'T want to talk about it, whether subconsciously or consciously that's the truth. I DON'T talk about IT because I DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT, BECAUSE I KNOW YOU'RE GOING TO STAND ME UP. HE'S GOING To STAND Me Up For The Truth. What'S The Truth? So he brought it up. He says, you know, I haven't heard you talk about the third kid. Because I would jokingly say we're negotiating a third. And he goes, I've never heard you talk about it. What's going on? And I said, well, you know. He's like, have you been praying about it? Oh, I've been praying. I've prayed about it, you know. So what's the answer? I said you know I haven' t really gotten one. He said you don't want the answer. You don't want the answer. The answer will come if you want the answers. And I suspect you probably haven't been praying about it. And they said, well, you know, Mickey, the money. Do you know what they charge for child care nowadays? And this and that and this whole, right? All this stuff and the money and how am I going to manage this and it's going to tear my marriage apart because that's what children do. They tear your life apart. And And he said this thing to me that has stayed with me ever since, and that is, why don't you just say yes to God? Why don't You just say Yes to God and let it be what it is? So I did. I went to my wife and I said, okay, I think I'm open to this idea of a third. And the best part of it is that she got pregnant and about two weeks went by and she came to me crying and she's like, I don't know what I've done. Because pregnancy for her is miserable. Right? And so fast forward a few months, she's about six months pregnant. She calls me and I'm at Northwest Fellowship of the Spirit at a conference. I'm barbecuing hamburgers, living my dream. I love that, man. I could just stand there, cook burgers all day. And I got this little au jus sauce I soak them in. I mean, they're incredible. And I'm just there being of service. I'm cooking burgers. I'm having just the sunny out, which happens four days a year in Seattle. And we're out in the Puget Sound, out on the water. I mean it's just incredible. I'm Having This Great Time. She calls and she says, I don't want you to panic. which she don't tell me because i'm gonna panic and i start panicking and um she's like there's a problem with the baby and um they're they're sending me into the hospital and i'm a ferry ride and like i'm like a 45 minute drive a half hour ferry ride and another you know 20 minutes to where she's gonna be and i'M FREAKING OUT AND SHE'S GOT um our oldest daughter my son's in school and i grab a guy sponsor and he got on the phone with his wife she ran to the hospital grabbed my daughter and um i got in the car and started driving to the ferry docks and you never know like there's a schedule but you really never know when they come and i get to the fairy dock and this is the point of this is that I pull up to the ferry, and I pay the money, and the lady says to me, how's it going? And I always answer that question the same. Doing good. How's it with you? There's some variation of that. And I said to her, the baby and the whole deal. And she looks at me, and she says, you need to trust God. Everything's going to be okay. And here's what I'm going to do for you. See those guys up there? I want you to drive up there. I'm going to radio down to them, and we're going to make sure you're the first one on the ferry, and we'RE going to do everything we possibly can do to get you to your family. And I pulled up in the front of that ferry line, and I got on the phone with Mickey, and I just bawled. I need help. I'm scared. Trust God. Trust God." So the baby had this little heart thing her heart baby's heartbeats are crazy fast and then it would just like boom it would go to nothing not nothing but it would grow way low and then it would slowly get back up to where it was supposed to be and then I would drop so what they explained is that there was some heart cell in the in her heart that It was off rhythm, which is an incredible thing. And what happens is the body's built to adjust to that. So there's something not on track so the heart slows itself back down to get everybody back in rhythm again and then go up. What's interesting to me about that is when I was in pretty early sobriety, this guy told this story about his son coming home from science class and they had taken a heart cell that beat at its own rhythm and then they took another one that was beating at a different rhythm and they stuck them together and in a matter of time they linked up they joined, they synced and I was reminded of that he used to say that's why we hold hands in AA at the end of the Lord's Prayer so our hearts can sink. And so here's this problem. And the doctor said, you know, this will either go away or it's a really big deal. Which is great. Like that's exactly what I want to hear. There's like no gray area. Like this is going to be, we're going to have to go in and get her out and do emergency heart surgery or it'll just go away. What's the time frame for that? Well, we don't really know. So my wife was literally in the hospital three, four times a week getting checked and all this stuff. After about two weeks, it just went away. And I'm going to tell you, my older two children look identical to my wife. And the new baby, she's me. Thank God. She's beautiful. she's me minus the beard right she's got blonde my my uh my son and my daughter i both have brown hair and brown eyes my oldest daughter has the deepest brown eyes you've ever seen they're beautiful and um the babies she had blue eyes but now they're starting to turn a little hazel on me so we still call them blue, and she's got just white blonde hair. I mean, just incredible. She's just a doll. And she's alive and well and has never had a heart problem or anything. It's been incredible. When we look at the third step, which is kind of where we're headed and where we are at, is so I've come to believe in this power or I'm willing to believe, I'm unwilling to open the door. For me I had to be willing to be willing to open the door to this power greater than ourself. So now what? So now I'm going to make a decision and I've made a lot of decisions I've gone to the gym just about every day over the last I don't know how many years never made it to the gym tomorrow's the day right i was actually looking there's one down the road no but right like i make a lot of decisions and so i'm faced with this decision of the third step i'm going to make a decision to turn my will in my life what is that what is my will and what is my life? And it was explained to me that it's my thinking and my acting. I'm going to turn that over. What does that look like? What is that like, what's the mechanics behind that? Later in the book it talks about we're abandoning ourselves to God as we understand God. Abandon myself to God. To God as I understand God if I was going to abandon Nate, I would leave him and not return. That's what abandon to God means. So I'm going to abandon and not return. The problem is we're alcoholic and we return a lot. So my first sponsor loud said to me, you're going to make this decision, we're going to turn our will and our life over to God. It's the most important decision you've ever made in your life. really put the pressure on me. Like, if you don't make it right, this is all going to fail kind of thing. And then he said, but then again, it is just a decision. What is that? But which is it? And the point is, is that, and I'm sure you guys have all heard the three frogs on the log. You know, one makes a decision to jump in. How many are left? Three. Just made a decision You didn't do anything, right? So the action of turning my will and my life over to God, you know, there's a prayer and there's this formal thing you do, but the action is how do I live my life? Am I actively pursuing to turn my will on my life. I have two, well, if I'm pushed into a wall, I would say I have, I was going to say one, but now I'm like up to four or five just sitting here. Areas of my life that I'm really going to hold kind of tight. My kids is one. Money is one, right? I don't think that God's going to take care of my kids and he's not going to give me enough money. And I don'T think God's going to work in my marriage. I've got to kind of manage that part of my life a little bit, you know? And I'll talk to you about my wife at some point. She's nuts. And in some good ways in some you know she's fun she's really fun but um strike that from the record right yeah can we can we uh can we edit that piece right there no edit they told me they have no editability um yeah hopefully i'll get to share some stuff with her because our our marriage has taken a a really interesting twist and turn and where we've come from and where we're headed what we've been through so I got to make this decision and if you've made the decision before I believe we don't remake the decision we just reaffirm it and my dear friend Darlene who I hope I get to share about her with you that she would want me to share her with you. You used to say to me, when you made your third step, did you mean it? Did you mean? Or was it just words? Was it just lip service to God? Or did you MEAN I want to live on a new path? I'm willing. I need you. and that's a really good question so when we're faced with these times in our lives where we can look at and go am I am I willing and I had the same money thing I got three kids child care is like a I mean it's a racket it's not I mean they're taking care of your kids you know my wife and I have this experience we went and bought my son a bicycle helmet and they have the $10 helmet and then they have like $80 and we were like looking at it we're like I really want to buy the ten dollar helmet you know this is my kids brain that we're talking about like like you kind of get what you pay for you know like legally you got the ten dollar helmet it does the deal it satisfies the requirements but this 81 night $80 one over here might actually protect his little noodle you know so we went with the $80 want you know first kid he gets the nicer helmet right the girls are like running around and like the $10 styrofoam but you know they're not as, they're girls. They're not as crazy on their bikes with him as he was. But my point is that you kind of like, how much am I going to invest in this? Am I going to really, really put it all in his hands? And there's one reason why I don't. That's because I'm afraid he's going to screw my life up. Because that's what God's known for do you have anything you want to add about third step or do you want to just jump in we got about two minutes do we end at quarter of her at ten who's in charge we get the official decision oh wow so we really do need to speed things along then okay yes so quick and dirty I think the if anyone would care to to place themselves in the book I would suggest reading the bottom of page 60 through the top of page 63 and see if any of that resonates with the way that that you find yourself living at times, right? It's the example of the actor who wishes to arrange the whole show to his exact satisfaction, right. One excerpt in there that I'm just gonna share real quick is, and this is completely in regard to consideration going into the third step, right, do I or do I not without a doubt need God to have any shot at this life? So our troubles we think are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must or it kills us. God makes that possible and there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without his aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore but we could not live up to them, even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help. So ultimately what we're saying here is that I have just as much of a shot at removing my selfishness as I did my drinking, right i have no shot no shot can't do it right um so this third step decision is is just that right it's a it'sa decision a decision to cut right to change direction to turn in a different direction the direction of god um and one little interesting piece that follows the actual third step language in the thirds in the on page 63 that i skipped over for a number of years it says we thought well before taking this step, making sure we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to him. And I don't know about anyone else's interpretation of the word utterly is. I don' t find a whole lot of wiggle room in that. Right? I got a great idea. Yeah. Why don't we um break and then we'll we'll do just a few minutes in the fourth step on the wrap up the third step and then they can think about the third step between now and then and then we can cut is that that that sounds like what i'm laying down yeah absolutely what we what we had what we had kind of envisioned was giving everyone the opportunity to kind of take you know obviously this is this is a condensed version of what you would normally do kind of a thing but to give everyone the opportunity to just kind of walk through the exercise of thinking through that right think think a little bit about am i willing to take that step am i will to change direction today right now uh and what we would like to do when we get back together before we dive into the fourth step let's take a third step together as a group which i think is is always there's something to be said for that there's power in that so that sound agreeable to everyone yeah let's do that then uh before we end do we have a second or two for questions if there's anything that came up or anybody have anything don't be shy and you can always talk to us the great news is is that we're also not experts and will likely not have all the answers it's more just based on experience in fact my qualification qualification to be here this weekend is that I suck at managing my life so it's actually good news but yeah all right so don't be shy with those questions though for sure absolutely great oh okay we got two ladies first hi i'm justine alcoholic hey justine so i just want to preface this with i was listening but i still do have um i'm ultimately having a problem just with the concept of what you're referring to when you say all in with god Like, what does that look like for you guys? Because I don't understand necessarily what the all-in part means. And I have been listening, but I just don't know if I'm not all-In or if I am. Or I don' t know. I don''t know if that question even makes sense. Sure. I think that's an excellent question and a perfect example of we don' have to necessarily be in a position to interpret it's not so much about that it's more about what do I feel right and what I guess one of the most notable examples that I could give of what it I don't know what it feels like necessarily to be all-in I do know what feels like to not be all in right and if there's something that's coming up in my life that I am just fighting tooth and nail to make it work, right? And I'm unwilling to consider. Just recently, I was on a phone with my sponsor doing a 10-step. And has anyone ever heard the term justified resentment? So I had one of those. That in fact does not exist if you want to be well. That's what's always been explained to me. So I hade taken a position that this person was wrong And I was angry, and I was there. And he said, what did he say? He said something to the effect of, would you be willing to look at this differently? And I said, no, I'm angry, right? And he literally said, well, I guess we have nothing left to talk about. Because if you've made your bed and you want to stay there, you're welcome to do so, right. So I guess that's kind of what it looks like for me on a daily basis. is when I'm coming up against things that I feel like I can't possibly let God take control of this. Because I need to keep my bookmark in the resentment, right? I needと keep my Bookmark in tе management of this situation. And if that's the position I've taken, that for me suggests that I am not all in with God, if that makes sense. Great. Yeah. We have another question over here, I think. Oh, come on! Oh, I don't know. I actually don't know what it was made out of. Are you a helmet inspector? Are you an helmet inspector? Okay. Right. Yeah, that's good. Anybody else?