The Password Was Shut Up and Don’t Drink – Geraldine D.

Thank you very much. Why aren't some of you up here instead of me? I'm so nervous, I'm about to have a coronary. If you think it gets any better, it doesn't. My name is Jerry... And I've been sober something over 15,000 days. Getting sober April 23rd, 1947. You know something, I'm not any more sober than you are The last person in that door is the most important person in the room. I wish for them what has been given so freely to me. You know, there are three talks you give. That one you make before that you almost have a coronary over. The one you made that's not too hot. And that one on the way home, oh, honey, that's a real bitch. Of course, I get kidded a lot about my initials, which are G-O-D. And the kids say, who do you think you are, God? And I say, no, I just own the company. and they say, what company? And just then a big truck comes in, guaranteed overnight delivery. There are a lot of laughs over this, and for this I'm grateful because there was nothing to laugh about in my life. I was a naughty little child Ugly Awkward And unwanted I had a brother Who was handsome Successful And doted upon Guess what? We both became alcoholics I had a very hard time for a long time, so I had to be successful, didn't I? And unfortunately, I was extremely successful in everything I touched because I was willing to work hard. And I wanted to excel. And you all can do the same thing one day at a time. Work a little harder, a little longer, a little better, and a little faster, and you'll get where you think you want to go. And when I got there, it wasn't where I wanted to be. It wasn't a thing like I thought it was going to be I had had an alcoholic mother but in those days the town dowager was not accused of drinking. She had gallbladder attacks, and the doctor came over and gave her the new drug for her vomiting. She was vomiting from drinking in the closet. But what he said is, Berna's having a gallblatter attack, and he gave her the new drugs on the market that was going to be like vitamins to cure everything, heroin. one. And in truth, Verna would be up and at them at the church, and the Middle West didn't burn down because of her, but she got drunker and drunker. I had a father who drank only twice in his life for a week at a time, but for a hard-shelled Baptist in a Bible belt in those days to get drunk was unheard of. And so he was relegated to the bottom of the heap as far as his family were concerned. He was a wonderful man, and I adored him. My mother, God rest her soul, never got sober. And for this, I pray that God will be as good to her as I would have liked to be in. I went on up the ladder, and I didn't drink when I was 18, but I wanted to be popular because there was nothing right about me. I was one of those people whose faces didn't come together when they were born in the right direction. And I got one ear up here and one ear down here. And I've got a crooked nose that runs across my face, and I've got a big mouth and big teeth. And then I've got a foot that when I'm dancing, you go along like this and all of a sudden it shoots out to the side and forgets to come back. And, you know, it doesn't make you very popular. And I love to dance. I still do. And I'm still just as poor at it as I ever was, but I don't care. That's the only difference. Life went on. I came out of college in 27, in the Depression when my father went broke and took three jobs and worked like a dog and played just as hard as I worked. And I began to have a good time and I began being successful and I became successful and I begun to go up in the professional field and the higher I went, the drunker I got. But you see, I wasn't an alcoholic. You understand that. I did not become an alcoholic until I came to AA. And I have 23 psychiatry reports from 23 different psychiatrists that will prove that I am not an alcoholic I got drunk all over the United States traveling with this medical team, and they would send me to a psychiatrist for my nerves. You see, I was very nervous, and you better believe the next morning I was nervous. And the psychiatrist would listen to my sad tale of woe, and he would diagnose me as ultra-nervous. And he would give me a little something for my nerves. Now, phenobarbital and all that jazz was just coming on the market then, and I went around with a pocketful in my pocket because, you see, it doesn't smell. Now, of course, I wasn't a drinker. You understand that. I just had a gallon in my room in case somebody came in. But it was always gone in the morning. But so I wouldn't smell, I'd take the pills and didn't shake and went on, worked like a dog because I was afraid somebody would find out how drunk I was. And I proceeded to go to extremes to cover up my activities. And time went on, and I had finally ended up with 22 psychiatric reports of overwork. And the last one, at one of your large and prestigious clinics up in here in the North Country, I saw the psychiatrist every day for three months, Saturdays and Sundays included. I didn't have to pay for it, by the way. and he came up with a beautiful report I was outrageously overworked and underpaid and I was the best paid woman in the United States what they didn't tell me was that they were going to put me on a year's leave of absence with full pay which included a house and a maid and a car and a chauffeur and I had some salary. They wrote it. They didn't have nerve enough to face me. Maybe you wonder why the young people call me not Rambo, but Grambo because it started way back then. And they were afraid to tell me and they wrote it and I was incensed by them daring to tell ??? what to do and I told them what to with their job and they did it. They gave me a handsome bonus, about what would be a third of a million dollars now. And I went through it in six months and I don't know where I was. Now along the way here I'd had a problem that they considered. I had a brother who was a moral leper. He drank too much. I called everybody, and finally I got an idea. He was acting like a juvenile delinquent, so I called a child psychiatrist on the eastern seaboard. The only one there was. And I said, Jim, what do I do with my moral leper brother? He drinks all the time. He said, Jerry, I don't know. Now, wait a minute. He said, I was at a medical meeting in New York the other night and there was a guy there by the name of Bill Wilson and he's doing something peculiar with men who drink too much. Not women. Men who drink Too Much. He gave me his card, I'll call him up. And 48 years ago, he called Bill in New York, and Bill and two other guys went out to New Jersey, to Maplewood, to see my brother. And I'm glad to report to you that he stayed sober until his death a few years ago. Now, I was exposed to AA. Do you think I'd call it AA? No. Bill and Lois were living in a flat in Brooklyn that was pretty hot, and Oscar lived out in the hills, so every weekend Bill and Lois used to come out and spend the weekend at the house. I'm grateful to have had their friendship for all these years, Bill until he died and Lois still. And they would come out and spend the weekend. I would occasionally be in town, and when I did, they took me to meetings whether I wanted to go or not. As a guest, you understand that I didn't have the problem. Finally, one day I said to Bill, how do you work that thing? And I'm waving my hands around. You know, that thing. I wouldn't say AA. Bill looked at me and stood there a few minutes. He was awfully thin in those days. And he said, well, Jerry, don't drink. Don't take those pills. Go to meetings. And he hesitated and said, and shut up. How dare he? But you know, that was to be a password. Shut up for me. Bill and I spent some time together in Mr. Towns Emporium. He listened to Dr. Silkworth and what he had to say. When And Dr. Silkworth came in to see me after I was there the sixth time. I expected somebody to talk to me about my psychiatric problems, because I had them. I really was in bad shape. Dr. Silkworth started to talk to me about alcohol, and I threw him out of the room. Of course, I said when I came to AA that I wasn't arrogant. I want you to know that. Dr. silkworth wouldn't come back when I asked him to, and i didn't get well, but thank God Bill did, and thank God my brother did. And they were so tolerant of me. And I was getting in the hospital all over the country by that time because mixing up the pills and the booze, you know, all you get is one-on-one doesn't make two. They got together and make six, eight, or ten. And if I was flying at 10,000 feet and landing in the hospital. Out in Frisco, I was unconscious for ten days. Came to and they told me I almost died. And I laughed in their face and said, you can't kill the Irish. And was drunk three hours after I left to the hospital. But I said, I wasn't insane. You know this insanity of this disease. Insane is not whole, not normal. If that's whole and normal, I'll eat it. Time went on, came the time, and you know there is always a time for each and every one of us. Why God let me live was so good to me, I don't know, but I sure am grateful. because, you see, I didn't believe in God. Not me. I was all-powerful. By the way, if you guys in the back there get tired of listening before I get tired to talking, you either raise your hand or leave the room because I just ramble on. But they say there's a level below which God won't let us go. And one morning, and I don't know how I got back to Chicago, I left my clothes all over the United States. I never spent money. Put them in one of these lockers, you know, on the train station or in the airlines and forget, lose the key, never went back to get them. Hope somebody enjoyed them. But one morning I wakened. Now, I'd been in all these psychiatric hospitals but with nurses around the clock. But this morning I awakened in a bed, a string hanging down from the ceiling with a bulb on the end of it. I looked over to the right because I always checked to my right to be sure I was alone. And I was most of the time because I looked terrible. And there were bars on the window. Well, there are bars in my house. And I looked to the left and you know that people they talk about in the door? It was there. Sloppy architect, no doorknobs. And you know, I am an intellectual. You understand this. And I knew right where I was, I was in a nut house. And that's right where I was. Now, I had called my brother a moral leper for over six and a half years. But that morning I said out loud, If I ever get out of here, I'm going to ask my brother if he will help me. I left off the moral leper. And the miracle started to happen because 20 minutes later, he stepped off the elevator in that nuthouse in Chicago. They let me out to talk to him. And he looked down at me and he said, Honey, you've made a pretty lousy mess out of your life. Do you want to do something about it? Well, I wanted to do some thing, but I didn't want to go with that bunch of holy rollers that he was going with. They were praying all the time, saying the Lord's Prayer, the Serenity Prayer, saying, Please God, of, but you know we're all basically liars. So I crossed the fingers and said, yes, I do want to do something. What I really wanted to do was get out of that nut house. And he said, well, and this is important for you family people. Honey, I love you too much to be objective. I can't help you. And my heart went right down to my feet. There's my last hope. It seemed like an eternity before he spoke again. I know it wasn't. But he said, I'll get someone. And we flew back to Chicago, and I'm used to being on flat land out there, and we had to land in Allentown, New Jersey, up in the hills, coming down in the limousine up and down those hills. I'm 48 hours without anything. I am dying. And then he is a professor at Rutgers, and he has to teach some business courses in Newark. He leaves me in a hotel lobby with no money, no pills, no booze. Well, I'm dying, and I I've got to do something, don't I? So I went in the ladies' room, going to fix up a little bit and see if I can go in the bar and one of the men will buy me a drink. Never had to do that in my life. Always had plenty of money. Didn't have any money, didn't have anything. Didn't know if I'd have any booze, didn's have any pills, didn' have anything and I went and took one look at myself in the mirror and my friend, I gave it up. That was the most horrible sight I've ever seen in my life. Straight hair, we didn't have permanents in those days. Straight hair. No makeup. And no prize made up to the hilt. By the way, I learned in AA that pretty is as pretty does. But I hadn't learned it then, but some way or other, one minute at a time, I got through that. And I went to live with my brother, and they started taking me to AA meetings. They didn't say, dear, would you like to go to a meeting? Come on, we're going to a meeting. I don't feel like it. Who asked you if you felt like it? You drank every day, didn't you? And then that shut-up business started. Shut up. Shut up, little sawed-off sergeant from Fort Monmouth was the chairman at the South Orange Group. He'd fit right under my arm, and I'm not very tall. And he kept saying, shut up. Shut up. And I said, I thought you could do AA any way you wanted to. And he looked down his nose at me. Here he is, this little squirt. Look him down his face and he said, you don't have a way. He was right. My way got me drunk. A little bit at a time, I thought, I'll show these dummies. I'll learn the twelve steps. I'll memorize all this garbage. I'll share with them what being smart really is. And so I did learn all the steps. I wish I could repeat them now as well as I could then. But you know, something happened along the way because come eight months of sobriety, I knew the steps. I'd been going to meetings. I'd joined the group. I was supposedly doing everything that I should. I'd gotten another sponsor by that name. Her name was also Helen, because the first one that came to see me went home crying to her husband and said, this is the first person I've ever been asked to see. Why did they send me to see somebody hopeless? And this is another Helen, and she kept me going to meetings. and I had been going but I had decided that I knew it all now. I knew what the trouble was and I knew how to manage it and I was going to go back to Chicago and join my friends and drink like a lady. I never wanted to be anything but a lady I wasn't going to tell anybody because they'd object they wouldn't understand And so I was working again by that time, and I bought myself an airplane ticket. And I got everything packed when nobody was looking. And I'm all ready to leave. Now along the way, they had given me an AA book, which I threw out the window into a mud puddle. and then they came back on the night table. It was a very peculiar big book. It had legs and I threw it in the dirty laundry just as it was going out to the laundry. Guess who brought it back? The laundry man. It was on the light. On the night, that night. And I thought it was the worst book anybody had ever written. Any idiot could write a book better than that, but this idiot has never been able to. But it was there. And this night before I was going to run away, I went to the South Orange meeting and came home and sat down on the side of the bed and a lot of wonderful things have happened to me on the sid of the bedroom. and there was that book and I opened it and the first miracle of AA came to me because I opened the book and it fell open to the page on how it works I think it was 57 in the old book and I started to read rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path I wasn't following any path except to destruction and I read on down the paragraph and you know those words honest in that paragraph that I obnoxious word and I got down to the steps And I did something that I had never been told to do, which I think was divine guidance. Now you understand I did not believe in God. And one of the old-timers said, oh well, what about good orderly direction? And that didn't sound bad. So good order direction was God for me. But I didn't really believe in anything that was greater than I was. and I get down to the steps and I start to read them in the first person I admit that I am powerless over alcohol and that my life is unmanageable that was startling why I did it I don't know It's written in the third person because the group who got together and decided this is the way they would explain this wonderful group of guidelines, this roadway to happiness. Not just sobriety. Any idiot can get sober. It takes something very special to stay sober and enjoy it and grow in life. and I read down those steps in the first person and I closed the book and laid down and went to sleep. Now, I had come off of 20 years of medication and 19 years of pills. In the early days when we were running bootleg booze I wanted to be popular but I didn't drink because I had the phenobarbital, which was, they would have called me a hyperkinetic kid now. They called me an honored little brat, and I think that's probably the right term. But I carried booze across the Canadian border in hot water bottles strapped between my legs to be popular. two quarts of Canadian whiskey when we were drinking rock gut, my friends I was popular and you know I had never been popular but coming off of 20 years of pills and 19 years of booze because when I had the first drink of straight alcohol mixed with a little water, a little juniper berry, put it in hard cider and drink it and you'll fly right over the moon on top of a handful of phenobarbital. Let me tell you that if you think you kids fly on some of these new things, try that. So, I knew what being nervous was, and I hadn't been sleeping. Hadn't been sleepin' very fitfully. Because, you know, we like that zonked-out sleep. It doesn't come after you stop drinkin'. But the sleep you get is more restful. But I didn't know, I forgot all of the intellectual garbage went down the drain with the booze. And that night I laid down and went to sleep. And I slept soundly. And I wakened in the morning. As I sat on the side of the bed, I realized I'd had a glorious night's sleep. And something else had happened. The desire to return to Chicago and drink like a lady had left me. That, to me, was a spiritual awakening. that desire to drink and drug has never returned in the 41 years plus that I've been sober this was a gift from my higher power and I started going to AA then for me I started learning I started listening I started acting I can be the smartest kid in the graveyard in the early days they used to say kiss a lot, keep it simple, stupid but I prefer now to say keep it simple spiritually keep your guidelines for yourself, down to a place where you can really live with them. And the first guideline is don't drink, don't take those pills, go to meetings, and shut up. That has been given. I've been a very fortunate woman because so many miracles have happened to me along the way. But the greatest miracle of all was that I was accepted by AA people. There weren't very many women. I was number four in New Jersey and New York. But I had to go to work, and I went to work for the Medical Society and started what is now called, I think out here, Homemaker Home Health Aid. And I started in the third branch of the National Council. And that was a wonderful thing happened to me because Marty Mann was just as tough an alcoholic as ever came across the pipe. She and Bill were going to start this together, and the AA people objected to Bill using his last name, so Marty went on and did the education, and Bill went on to do the work. But when I'd say, I can't to Marty, she'd say... You don't say can't in AA. You do the very best you can. That's all God calls upon you to do. and maybe your best is better than somebody you're watching that you think is perfect. She kept saying, keep it simple, keep it simple. And this has been hard. I've had a hard time with words all the time I've been an AA. I've wanted to rewrite the book, of course. You understand that. Everybody does. But I got all mixed up between spirituality and organized religion. Now, it took a young man who was an abbot to straighten me out. I'm a heathen, incidentally, in case you don't know. My father was an Archael Baptist. My mother was a Methodist. My brother's a Presbyterian. I married a Roman Catholic. And that's to show you that you don' t get sober overnight because I'd been sober two years, and I married a 50-year-old Roman Catholic bachelor in AA who came complete with aged mother as a package. And I don't recommend it. And all of you folks that marry in AA, if you think your old man's going to think like you do or vice versa, I've got news for you. Men and women do not think alike. They are different. Thanks be to God for the little difference, you know. Who would want him if there wasn't a difference? Not me. Somebody said, were you ever married more than once? I ran away with a 57-year-old man when I was 17. My mother found it out six months later and chased him out of town and all the marriage. Nice man, too. Then I married a guy by the name of Young Love And he had a marvelous son who taught me strictness Because when his father and I got a divorce He went into court and asked to be allowed to stay with me And was And I couldn't understand it I said, Dick, Pop is so generous and I'm so strict. Why did you want to live with me? He said, Mom, you love me enough to make me behave. That has been my philosophy with alcoholics all along. I love you enough to tell you the truth. I hope you love me enough because I need you. I need you today as badly as I did the first day I was sober and maybe worse on some days. Because as time goes on, God gives us tougher things to make the hurdles. And you know, they say, oh well, you're good and sober at two years. Oh yeah? When I marry that Irishman at two year's, I'm sober? Dr. Ruth Fox told me it takes two years to get your brains out of hock and three more to get them unscrambled and then you begin to grow I loved that Irishman the day I met him the day he died he was a good member of AA a strong member of EA and I have to tell this as part of my story because it's very hard for people to understand why they can't take something for their nerves Tom was never a pill taker never even as much as took an aspirin but he had been sober over 20 years and he had a bad back and a friend gave him some muscle relaxant and said don't tell Jerry she's a nut on those things and he didn't and it helped his back and he had a cigarette call and this guy gave him some, quote, new cough medicine. And incidentally, new medicines become old medicines. Alcohol was new one time for the caveman when it dropped down on the rocks and fermented. Now it's old medicine. Tom didn't tell me about the cough medicine and three days later, after 20 years of wonderful sobriety. He was in the bar. Seventeen months later, after being in 14 hospitals, he bled to death of an esophageal hemorrhage. I will never stop talking about the things that make us drunk again. Never. When Tom died, it was another time in my life when I said, I can't. And my AA friend said, you will. And God stepped in and took another friend of mine that I'd loaned money to start a rehab. She dropped dead. Guess who had to start it? I never wanted to work in the alcohol field. And God doesn't call up in the morning and say, you cute little thing, you can do it as you want to today. He says, get off your can and do it the way I tell you to do. Now! So the journey of a million miles begins with the first step. Take it, whatever it is in whatever area of your life. Don't come up to me and tell me you're depressed. All depression is is unresolved discontent and you're too lazy to get off your butt and do something about it. Of course, my psychiatric friends could kill me in cold blood. And it doesn't bother me a bit. Not one bit. Because, you see, I know what I believe. And I have earned the right to believe it. In the treatment center, I have a lot of young people, you know. And I want you to know that what you hear about me is true. They don't call me Rambo, they call me Grambo. Grambo is on a strafing mission. I'm out to tell you this is the way you do it. One day at a time, whether you like it or not. I didn't say did the Lord call you up this morning and say you cute little thing do it the way you want to do he gave you a kick in the butt if you weren't going the right direction and he gave me a lot of kicks losing Tom was one of them but you know I had AA AA is my life AA is my backbone AA is what I live by. Why do I stay in AA? Because I'm comfortable here. You are my people. You know where I come from. It doesn't make any difference what language I talk in. It doesn'T make much difference what I say. it makes a whole lot of difference what I do oh yeah I know the way and I can show you the way but it isn't worth the powder and shot to blow it to hell unless I go the way and hold out my hand and say come along I'll show you where the rough spots are In AA, I have found spirituality. In AA I've found that I'm just an average person who's lucky enough to be alcoholic. And I have friends all over the world, just like you, who all I have to do is pick up the telephone, regardless of where it is, and you will help. You will extend the hand of friendship wherever I am. I didn't like the word alcohol ick because ick is dirty now if it had been Gelenic's disease after the great Dr. Geleny it would have been lovely if we went for Gelenics therapy it wouldn't have done for me what Alcoholics Anonymous did Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a road map to follow very simple any idiot can follow even this idiot and I don't have to drink anymore to do the things I want to do I didn't like the word addiction you know I recommend that if you're having trouble with words in AA that you use the dictionary, Mr. Webster's short stories are really very good. An addiction is nothing in the world except pain plus a learned relief. And it doesn't say whether it's physical, emotional, or spiritual, and I had all of them. And I learned the relief by the simple steps in AA, and don't drink, don't drug, go to meetings, shut up, listen. And I hear from you, this has been the most wonderful conference for me. I have just never seen so many enthusiastic, wonderful people of all ages together. And I know the committee isn't going to like this, but I'm not running a popularity contest. they've done a beautiful job and I'm so pleased to be numbered among the people they thought would help you because if it doesn't help you it sure has helped me it isn't one person, me has been helped I have to go on doing all the things that AA wanted me to I have to continue to take a fourth and fifth step. I take a written fourth step once a year, and I go to a trusted friend to empty it all out and take a look at that garbage. Take a look at the good things as well. And I have used the twelve steps not one at a time it's a way of life if you live in a two story house you don't go up just once or down just once do you you go up and down maybe once a day maybe ten times it's all there but you take every one of the steps it's simply a simplified package that helps you learn how to walk in a comfortable manner. We're not running a popularity contest, but we sure are providing a way of life to people, and I want to keep helping where I can. You know, lots of us have a tendency to skip meetings. You know it wasn't raining when Noah built the ark. And you better go to meetings and your storehouse better be filled or you won't float when the flood comes. You're drowned instead. I urge you, I see many of you doing here, to take notes at meetings. You say, well, I feel self-conscious. Okay, so you feel self?conscious. I think we're an inferior feeling bunch of people. I never got up to make a talk in my life when I was sure of myself. And I've talked for a living for 62 years. Not just today, eh? But I'm still nervous. Why? Why? Because I want to be, quote, perfect by my standards. And I'd better look at my standards, I'd rather look at what God wants me to be. I say some peculiar things every once in a while and I think, where did that come from? And you know something? that belief in God I have is very strong and I can't draw you a picture of my God I simply can tell you what he does for me he gives me strength he gives me courage he gives me love when love is understanding whether I approve or not he gives me everything I need he gave me a chance to come out here and not many kids my age I've passed 81 be 82 my next birthday But I'm not afraid of tomorrow, because now I have a simple faith given to me by AA. My sponsors are all dead, save the one who came to see me and never came back, because she went home and told her husband, why did they send me to see somebody hopeless? But she's sober. She's younger than I am. I talk to her on the telephone. But each of you are my sponsors. I listen to what you have to say. You tell me more than you think you do. So I'm not afraid anymore. I'm no longer afraid of you. I'm now afraid of today. And I'm also not afraid of another day. If it comes, I just don't drink. I go to meetings. I help where I can. I do what I can, and I keep my prayers simple. My faith is simple. I don't ask for things from God. I say thank you at night. thank you for this day for the people you've let me be with for the words you put in my mouth for the word you've allowed me to hear and to the young lady if she's in the room who's been talking to the hearing impaired that's a wonderful thing you know we don't know how fortunate we are Going home from Oklahoma, I was delayed in Chicago three hours when it should have been an hour and a half. And I was bitching about my tired legs, my heavy briefcase, my stupid secretary. And I looked across the aisle and there sat a young man, looked to be about 21, 22 years old, beautifully groomed. And I thought, brother, he's got the world with a tail. And I looked down, and there was a seeing-eye dog at his feet. All of a sudden my legs weren't tired, my briefcase wasn't heavy, and I went to him and asked if he wanted something to eat. He had already eaten. But I remembered, Lord forgive me when I whine. And you know, we are so fortunate to be able to have somebody that understands what we say. I'm so fortunate. I'm fortunate to have you because you're my friends. You understand me. there's so many things that I wanted to say and I can't remember but one of them so I guess the Lord didn't want me to say them anyway but I just don't want to go to sleep on the 12 steps because I know I'll fall down if I do and I'd like to close today with a little poem. And incidentally, people sometimes ask me when I have cards, can I see your cards? And I say, yeah, but it isn't what I said. I do little things that make me less nervous and one of them is carry cards. Because when I was a child, my mother tried to make a pianist out of me. And I didn't want to be a pianmist, so I lost the music. before the concert. The maestro made me play anyway, and I got halfway through it and couldn't finish three times. Got up and left the stage and I can't even play chopsticks after ten years of music. So I carry my music with me just in case of fire. And so today, as you go on your way home, just know that you're an important part of my life. You're an importante part of the lives of many. You may not think you have anything to contribute, but God doesn't make junk, you know. He makes people and has something for them to do. So we say, isn't it strange that princes and kings and clowns that caper in sawdust rings and common people like you and me are builders of our destiny. To each is given a bag of tools, a building block, a set of rules. There they are, right up there on the wall. and each must make your life as flown a stumbling block or a stepping stone. Each morning I get up and say, Thank you God for a good night's sleep. Show me the way. And he does. And each night I ask God to take my hand. It's better that way. I know because if I take his instead of his taking mine I may get afraid and let go God bless you Thanks for listening