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Source: Bill L – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: bill-l-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:44:17
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My name is Donna T.. I'm emceeing your program today. I'm a member of the Al-Anon group, Kenosha. I'm also the delegate, an honor that I'm very grateful for. My husband is the AA delegate. We're sort of a his-and-hers delegate from southern Wisconsin. I have a couple of announcements to make. I better make them here so I don't forget them. Bob just gave me this long list of things to read here, something about parking.
West Allis Police will allow parking in all two- and three-hour zones, but will ticket cars parked in metered zones. However, the metered zones are only one-half block north of Greenfield, so parking in the vicinity of the clubhouse is okay. This stands for Sunday also. I was also given an announcement. Come to our birthday party. We are ten years old. Sunday, October 24th at 2 p.m., Central School, Zion, Illinois, 27th Street and Bethel Boulevard. Speakers Walter K. of Chicago and Alice H. of Milwaukee.
As we were driving up here, Fran, I'm sure you all know Fran T., said, are you a little nervous about being emcee? And I said, yes, a little bit. He said, I don't know why. He said, a good emcee is supposed to get up, introduce the speakers, and sit down. I think he was trying to tell me something. I didn't think I would ever be nervous again getting up in front of people, because when I went to New York in April, one of the things we had to do, and I didn't know this until about ten minutes before I had to do it, was get up and speak for about five minutes in front of Lois and Bill. And believe me, that is the supreme test. If you can get up and speak in front of them and not die, you've got it made.
Our first speaker tonight will be Bill L. Bill and Marie come to us from New Jersey. We are very privileged to have them. They are very well recommended. I haven't heard Marie, but I heard Bill in New York. He is a past Al-Anon delegate from New Jersey, and he now has the position of Public Relations Chairman on the Al-Anon Board of Directors. He is a terrific person. He has that quality of making you feel most welcome.
When I went up to headquarters, naturally I was a little bit apprehensive and a little bit shaking, and the first person to greet me was Bill, with his infectious smile. Come right in, welcome. You know, like I was the only one coming to the conference. And so I'm sure he will have a wonderful message for you. So now, let us welcome him in the same way. Bill L. from New Jersey. Good afternoon, AA and Al-Anon friends. I'm Bill L. from New Jersey, and I'm delighted to be here. It's just a wonderful thing to have the opportunity to come out here and be a part of your 14th AA convention.
May you have many more of them. May you continue to help the many thousands of people in this area that need help. You know, I had the privilege of going to an Al-Anon luncheon today. Some of you know what I'm going to say. And there were about 87 lovely ladies and two men, Tex and myself. So the luncheon was very nice, and all of a sudden, with no warning, the fashion show started. And this very nice lady came out and told the other ladies how to sit, and how to stand, and how to walk, and all of these things.
And I also learned that if you got sort of a little bulge down here, you don't wear a pen here. A rhinestone, that's it. So there. You see, I was listening. It's just wonderful to have this program. Before any of us had this program, whether we were AAs, or Al-Anon people, or Alateens, we merely existed, in my opinion.
[00:05:21]
We weren't living. We were all mixed up. Because this alcoholism is a family disease. It affects every member of the family. No one escapes. No one who is closely contacted, in close contact with an alcoholic, escapes. Now the things I would like to go into today is show you how we, non-alcoholics, can be affected by alcoholism. And to show you how, through working this wonderful program, we can come back, with or without the help and cooperation of our alcoholic.
Naturally, it's much easier if our alcoholic sobers up an AA. But we can do it, even if that doesn't happen. There are so many things that happen to us. One of the things that happen to us is that we all live in a world of fear. Living with this alcoholic problem, we live in a world of fear. We are afraid of what is going to happen to us, what is going to happen to our alcoholic, and what is going to happen to our children.
For instance, if the alcoholic is the husband, and if he still has a job, he goes off to work in the morning, some mornings anyway, and as he leaves the house, his wife watches him, and she is thinking, I wonder if he is going to make the job. And if he gets there, I wonder if he is going to stay. And what time is he getting home for supper tonight? Is he coming home at all? And how will he be when he gets in?
These are fears that she lives with all day long, every day. If the husband is the non-alcoholic, he goes off to work in the morning, and he wonders what's happening back home. What's happening back on the ranch? Does she start drinking in the morning? About eleven o'clock maybe she calls up some girlfriends, and they all go out for cocktails. What about the kids? Maybe they have a baby? Maybe they have four or five children in school? Did the children get to school that morning? Did they have their lunch? If it's winter time, were they dressed properly for the weather?
All of these things worry him. What will he come home to at night? This worries him too. So you see, he cannot concentrate on his job. At least I couldn't. Now Marie didn't start drinking in the morning, but she had other little tricks. For instance, did any of you ever come home and find an Indian in your house? Well, I did. You know, you get so confused by this alcoholism. Back in 1950 and 49, I didn't know anything about AA or anything. I didn't know what was wrong with my wife. I knew something was wrong with her.
And I used to think, now what am I going to do about the situation? And all day long this went around in my mind. And I'd come riding into the yard thinking, now what am I going to do? Am I going to leave, or am I going to throw her out, or what's going to happen? The state of confusion all the time. Well, anyway, this night I came driving in the driveway thinking these same thoughts, and I opened the door and I heard a noise. It sounded like a wail of a banshee or something. And I heard drums beating. Well, I never knew what I was coming home to.
I walked in the back door in the kitchen, and I didn't see anybody, but the noise was coming loud and clear now. And then I walked into the living room, and there he was, an Indian. And he had fringe, and he had moccasins, and he had beads in him, and he had a tom-tom, and all the designs, you know, that they have for the different insignia for the tribes.
[00:10:11]
And he was dancing and singing. And guess where my wife was? She was relaxed in a chair with a scotch on the rocks, you know, just watching him, just completely enthralled with the whole situation. Now, what do you do with a situation like that? And then, of course, there's the children. These children live in fear, too. You know, they're afraid to bring their friends home because if the mother's the alcoholic, they never know what mom's going to be like by four o'clock in the afternoon after school.
And if she's going to greet him, or chase him out, or be passed out, or something like that. And, of course, if the father's the alcoholic, why, how is he going to come home? If they're in watching TV, he may fall in over the door, he may put on a scene. All of these things. They're afraid of this. They're embarrassed. They're ashamed. And this has a terrific effect upon these young people. So, you see, we all live in fear. And then there's frustration. And it can be very frustrating living with this problem.
Now, here again, suppose the, well, let's put it this way. Everybody likes to live as normal as possible. We all think that we're, that word normal is a bad one. But we all like to live like our neighbors do, and have friends in, and have our parents in, and go places, and do things, and have more or less of a little plan on things. And when we make dates, we like to keep them. But this doesn't work out too well with a practicing alcoholic. So, we've had many disappointments. Now, for instance, we'll take another illustration. We'll take the illustration of an active alcoholic husband, and his wife, who has been badgered for the last three months by her parents, because they want to come and visit them, and spend the evening there, and have dinner there.
And the wife is afraid to have him over, because she is afraid of what shape her husband will come home in. Well, finally, on this certain morning, her husband seems to be in an excellent mood. He's actually contrite, because he's been so nasty for the last week that he wants to make it up a little bit. So, she says to him, dear, can I have my parents over tonight? My mother has been calling me every day on the phone for three months, and she keeps asking, are we mad at her, and what has happened, and why can't we get together, and can't it be like old times?
And he says, why certainly, honey. Have her in. Have them over tonight for dinner. What time would you like me home? So, she says, seven o'clock. Oh, he says, I'll be home at 6.30. Don't worry about a thing. Yeah. So, anyway, it comes, she calls her parents up, and she makes a lovely dinner. Oh, just a real scrumptious meal. And it comes 6.30, and the parents arrive. Comes seven o'clock, and it doesn't arrive. And 7.30, it still isn't here. Yeah. Now, she's making all kinds of excuses as to why he's not home.
And she's running out of excuses. She doesn't know what to say anymore. But she doesn't want them to know that he has a problem. Well, now, at quarter to eight, they finally sit down to eat. Several things could happen. One, he could come in five minutes after they start supper. Now, for some reason or other, most alcoholics never go quietly off to their room. They join the party. Well, you know, sometimes this causes problems because they've lost their balance, and they might knock over the table or the chair or something like that along the way.
And then, if they do happen to look up from the table after they sit down and see their mother-in-law and father-in-law there, they say, what, you here again? This is frustration. Now, it could be another way, too. It could be the other way. Now, it could be another way, too. It could be that the alcoholic does not come in.
[00:15:02]
So this, uh, mother and wife is trying her best to get through the meal as quickly as possible. And her wheels are really turning in her head now. She's thinking, now, if I can get Mom and Dad out of here before he comes home, they'll never be the wiser. So she, she's not enjoying her meal. She's all tense. She knows what's happening. She knows the roof is ready to cave in at any minute. So she makes all kinds of excuses up again about having to go to the school with the kids the following morning, or, uh, she's got a dreadful headache and she's got to help Johnny with his homework yet tonight.
And don't bother to help with the dishes, Mom. Uh, it'll be all right. The kids will help me. And she, uh, she ushers them out, or gets them almost out anyway. She gets their coats on, hats. She gets them right to the front door. And she's starting to breathe a sigh of relief now because she thinks, I've got it made. And then she opens the front door and there it is. There's more frustration. And of course, if the husband is the non-alcoholic, uh, it works about the same.
You want to have people in, you want to go places, you make dates. If the husband is a businessman and, uh, has to entertain customers, this can be really something. So, uh, you go out in couples, a foursome. And of course, if your wife is an active alcoholic, why, uh, as you're having your cocktails with your dinner and, uh, dancing afterward, why, uh, you know what happens. And it's bad for business.
So there's tremendous frustration. And you can't understand why this woman is doing this to you. You say, why do you do this to me? You know this is my boss or you know this is one of my best, uh, uh, clients. Why? Without this program, we don't recognize the fact that our alcoholic is sick. We think they do these things deliberately to hurt us because they don't love us for one reason or another. And we become very bitter.
We think, why did this have to happen to me? Why me, God? What did I do as a kid or in the process of growing up that I deserve this for a wife or this for a husband? We can't seem to understand it. Uh, we even, uh, some of us can lose faith in our higher power. I prayed and I prayed and I prayed that Marie get well and she didn't get well and I figured he's not listening. Why bother? So I even stopped going to church.
Then we can get to hate our alcoholic too for what they're doing. For what they're doing to us. For what they're doing to themselves. We notice the change in these people. Alcohol destroys the body as well as the mind and soul. And a person may be very young in years, but after drinking hard for a while, they, they sure show it. And we say, now look at that lady that I, that woman that I married, that lovely girl.
She looks terrible. Why does she do this to herself? And we get, we get hate, hate in us for it. It really, it really builds up. And then we, resentments, oh boy, resentments never stay singular, do they? You get one and pretty soon it's like a snowball, a snowball rolling down a hill. You got a hundred of them or a thousand of them and they clog your whole head up. You can't see anything straight.
You're beat by resentments, which leads right into self-pity. Poor me. We spend hours sitting around feeling sorry for us. Why, why? We don't do anything constructive, it's all negative. Just waste our time. For instance, I want to tell you something that happened to us just this summer. Now Marie's been sober over 15 years and she's done a honey of a job in AA. And Marie and Johnny and I were sitting around in the kitchen.
And I knew, I knew the answer before I asked the question, but I asked it anyway. I said, Johnny, who affected you most when your mother drank? And he says, you did, Dad. Now we've learned this in our program that in many cases, I would say in most cases, I think the non-alcoholic affects the children far more than the alcoholic does. They take out their frustrations, their resentments, their hatred, their intolerance, everything on the children.
[00:20:01]
And I said, well, what particularly bothered you, John? Well, he said, Dad, he says, it was putting me to bed at 6.30 when the sun was still out and all my friends were out in the yard playing. And I did it too. And I'm a boy, I'm a boy that grew up thinking, if only I can have a son so I can take him hiking and hunting and all of these outdoor sports that I love. But I became so sick and so wrapped up in my wife and her drinking, I became, I got in orbit around my alcoholic.
What's she going to do? When's she going to do it? Is she going to do it? So forth. I had no time for my children. So when she was going to go out, I would just hustle them right into bed, put them right in, and God help them if they made a sound. What a way. I could have enjoyed those children when they were small like that. Even with her out drinking, I could have had a good time playing tag in the yard with them and doing things.
I do it today. But I was incapable of enjoying my children. He said he'd hear the kids, you know, up the street, all playing and laughing and singing, carrying on. And he had to lay there and be quiet. And he said, I couldn't go to sleep there, it was too early. Self-righteousness is another thing we're afflicted with. We try to condone the things that we don't like about ourselves and blame it on our alcoholics.
The wife can say, well, I used to be an excellent housekeeper, but there's three inches of dust on the mantel now, and he doesn't know it, so why bother? He doesn't even see the mantel. So why should I clean it? I used to do the dishes and have the beds made by nine o'clock, but why bother? He doesn't even get home for a day or two sometimes. I used to make nice dinners at night for the kids, but now we have franks and beans or something like that.
He just comes home for dinner anyway. And the husband, he can forget to put the storm sash up or not bother to take the screens down all winter long because she doesn't even know if there's a window there. And the lawnmower may sit out for three years and be so rusty you can't push it, but who cares? If she didn't drink so much, I'd be interested in my home. If she didn't drink so much, I'd do the things I was supposed to do around cleaning the cellar and…
You know, incidentally, I'm getting a little ahead of my story, but it's even hard to do that when she don't drink. I don't really feature that too much. And there's another thing that afflicts a good many of us who live with an active alcoholic problem. And that's escape. We try to escape from something we can't seem to control. Something that we're batting our head against the wall trying to control these people and we can't control them.
We can't stand the situation. We can't live with it. We're out of our minds with worry and upset. So we try to escape. And some of us try to escape by daydreaming. I heard a girl not so long ago over in Ridgewood say that she had seven children and her husband was drinking. And she says, I didn't know what to do. He didn't work. He just sat down in the cellar and played with his choo-choo trains. And she said, I couldn't stand it.
And she said, I couldn't stand it. He didn't work. He just sat down in the cellar and played with his choo-choo trains. And she said, I couldn't stand it. So she said she used to picture herself off in the South Pacific as a nurse. And she would be the most wonderful nurse in the world. And they couldn't operate without her. And she said she could go right through the whole day and not think of him at all.
She was in another world. She was just like in a trance. She said the only thing that was wrong was when the kids would ask for a bottle of milk or something, well then they'd be trouble. I used to, sometimes at work, I would lose myself from my problems by thinking of myself off in the mountains somewhere, hiking or doing the things I'd like to do. And, you know, you never get tired when you're in that trance.
As long as you can work physically and you don't have any problem to control, you can work all day long real hard and you're not a bit tired at the end of the day. And then you come out of the trance and, oh no, reality. But I'm trying to give you a picture here of some of the ways that we are affected
[00:25:01]
and some of the things that we try to do to combat it. And as you can see, everything that I've said is the wrong way to go about it. We're beat. We're beat people. Beat people. And if we're lucky then, somehow or other we find out about Al-Anon. And we come to the Al-Anon program, whether our husband is sober or our wife is sober or whether they're still drinking. And we find out that alcoholism is a disease.
This is a new concept for most of us. Holy smokes, he's not doing it out of meanness, it's a disease. And then we find out that we're powerless over alcohol. This is tougher. Because no matter how many times we fail, we still think that we have some magic formula that we're going to sober up the alcoholic. And, oh, it's tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll think of the thing that'll make him stop drinking or her stop drinking.
This is hard. And first we learn it at the program, at the meeting. We sit there and we say, well, I recognize that I'm powerless over alcohol and I must accept this. And we accept it at the meeting. But do we accept it at home? It takes a while for most of us. We have to really practice this program, really use the tools that are given to us here. And work on us. Acceptance. And then when we can do this, when we can accept that we're powerless over alcohol, that takes our attention off that alcoholic, doesn't it?
And then we can turn our attention to ourselves. What's wrong with us? We've lived, we've been martyrs for years and lived with this problem, we say. And the reason we say that is because we've built a tremendous wall around ourselves to protect us from being hurt. So we don't feel anything. Not much of anything, I guess. But the Al-Anon pick is a sharp pick, if you make use of it. And it picks through that wall.
And we find that we do have character defects. Yes. It's quite a blow, too. And we become objective with ourselves. What makes me tick? Why do I act the way I do? Why do I act the way I do? Not only towards my alcoholic, but towards other people, because this affects us all the way down the list. It affects us at work, at church, whether it's the Elks Club or whatever it is, we're affected. Our associations are affected.
Our personality is different. So in being objective, we need the 12 steps. We need to look at ourselves and to take our inventory. And at first, of course, we don't find too much. But then later on we find quite a bit. And we don't go about this figuring we're going to cure ourselves in one day or one week or that when we get one thing under control we can forget it. Because we can't. We can never forget these character defects.
Some of them we acquired while living with our alcoholic. Some of them we acquired before we ever knew our alcoholic. We can't blame everything that's bad with us on our alcoholic. What's wrong with us? But nevertheless, we have to sort them out and work on them. And that's another reason that it's a program for the rest of our lives, in my opinion. I want to bring this in here now. Because we can't afford to graduate any more than our AA friends can.
Because all of the things we learn in this program, if we graduate, gradually they recede to the back of our mind. And we don't use them anymore. We need the repetition of the meetings. We need to go there and get the inspiration. We need to work with new people. We need to be active. Because only in giving do we receive. We learn consideration for others in this program. Consideration… for our children.
The children I was talking about before that I didn't have time for. After AA, I… After AA, I found time. After Al-Anon, I found even more time.
[00:30:01]
I was one of these guys that went to an AA meeting, you know, and I was very pleased that Marie was sober. I admired the way she was developing in the program. And I would sit there and listen to the AA speakers, and I liked them. And one would come out with something that I thought was especially good, and I would nudge my wife and say, I hate that. That's the kind of a guy I was. Now, I didn't practice this for me.
I could have used a lot of these things, most of them. But I didn't need anything at that time, see. I didn't need anything, I thought. So I had to find Al-Anon. But we learned it's consideration for others, and we start spending time with our children, and we start taking them places, and we start trying to make a family out of this. Home. No longer a house, but a home. And go places together. Be it the meetings, or be it for a picnic or something like that.
Vacations and stuff. It's wonderful. It's something new. It's really living. Compassion, we learn compassion. Compassion for those people that are coming in next week, next month, next year, five years from now. What about them? Are we going to be around to help them? Are we going to help to keep the groups active? Add more groups to it? Or are we going to grab what we need and retire? And as I mentioned before, we can't afford to retire.
Because we'll lose it. Gratitude. Gratitude for what we have received from this program. Count your blessings. Look back on things as they were years ago. And look at them today. We have a lot of things to be thankful for. We may not have a new Cadillac, we may not have a $50,000 house, but we have a lot of things to be thankful for. I have so many things to be thankful for. I have three lovely children, and I have a wonderful sober wife.
And I'm much better now than I was four or five years ago. Much clearer in my thinking. These are worthwhile things. These are things that are tangible. You know, there's another point I want to bring in now. For some of us Al-Anon people, it's very difficult to give back to our alcoholic the responsibilities that belong to the alcoholic. Now, when our alcoholic is drinking, they don't want to be bothered with paying the bills, even if there is any money.
And they don't want to be bothered with this, and they don't want to be bothered with that, so the non-alcoholic takes over one thing after another. And they complain, oh boy, about it. But the alcoholic sobers up and wants to take some of these things back, and do they let him? No. Some people do, but a great many don't. Now, for instance, my big bugaboo was the shopping. As Marie grew sicker, I took over the shopping.
All of the food shopping, and a lot of the clothes shopping, and the whole works. So Marie sobered up for seven years, and I'm still doing the shopping. Not because she doesn't want to do the shopping, but because I won't let her. She's not capable of shopping, in my mind, see? How silly. See, I had a system worked out, and I would go in and I'd get the potatoes, and the meat, and the vegetables, and I had a way of believing this way.
No frills, just the solid basics. She had to cook them, but I brought home the solid basics. And that was it. Now I don't go near a store. Marie does the shopping. She does a beautiful job of it, much better than I ever did. We eat much better, too. These things we learn in Al-Anon. These things and many more. Now my time is nearly up. I want to spend about three minutes and make an illustration that shows how this program will work, if we will let it.
And I'm going to take a family that knows nothing about Al-Anon or AA,
[00:35:01]
a husband that is active, a wife who is confused, and three children. And this is, we'll say, a Thursday morning. And this husband has been very active in the past week, and he wants to get on the good side of his wife. So on this morning when he's leaving for work, he says, Honey, I'm going to take you and the kids to the movies tonight. And she brightens up, you know, this is a surprise. And she says, Wonderful.
She can hardly believe it. And he says, Now you have a nice dinner ready when I come home from work, and have the kids all ready. We'll have supper and we'll get right out to the early show. And I'll be home at six o'clock. So with that he leaves, and she again prepares a lovely dinner. And maybe she even sings a little bit if she's not gone too far down the line. You know, one of the roughest things, not to get off the story, but I don't want to forget this.
One of the roughest things that happens to the non-alcoholic is the fact that they constantly, between the bad period, they're constantly building up hope that it's all over, that things are going to be better now. And then, boom, every time he lets them down. So every time they sink a little bit lower, the non-alcoholic. So anyway, she goes through the day, and she's got this lovely meal of mashed potatoes and roast beef and strawberry shortcake and all of those things.
And she has the kids all ready, and they're sitting in watching TV so they don't get dirty. And comes a quarter to six and the phone rings. You know who that is. And she walks to the phone in a good mood. You know, I don't know, you know how. We learned how they walk this afternoon. Well, she's in a good mood. So, lifts up the receiver and he says, Hello, honey. I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it home on time.
The boss gave me a lot of extra work. Well, she knows he's on his way. And this has happened to her maybe a hundred times. She's mad. Boy, oh boy, not again. He promised me and he said he'd faithfully be home. And she tells him just what she thinks, in no uncertain terms, and slams the receiver down. Now, when she walks back out to the kitchen, she's got a different gait. She's like a field marshal.
And when she calls those kids in for supper, she sounds like one. Come on out and get your supper. In the meantime, she grabs the pots and she's scooping out the mashed potatoes and slapping it down on the plates, you know. No dinner for herself because she's had her dinner. She's full. She doesn't want any more. And she throws the meat on and the string beans or whatever it is. And as they troop into the room, they all know something's wrong and they're pretty sure of what's wrong.
And they sit down and she says, don't make a sound and don't trip over the chair and don't do this and hurry up and eat and get your spinach eaten or your string beans and all of these things. In the meantime, she paces the floor all during the meal, smoking one cigarette after another. And when dinner is pretty near over, she says, now I want you to wash the dishes and you to dry them and you to put the garbage out.
And is your homework done? And if not, let's get right to it. Don't talk about a movie now. And after that, maybe 7.30, quarter to 8, to bed. Don't bother to take a bath. Wash your face. Clean your teeth. Your pajamas and in. And she carts them up to bed. And when she goes out of the room, she's still like a field marshal. She closes the door very securely to impress upon him the fact that she doesn't want him to make any noise or give her any trouble.
And halfway down the stairs, she thinks I'll give him an added reminder and she shouts back up, if you make a sound, I'll break your necks. And the first thing she does, she gets to the foot of the stairs, she walks and opens the front door and looks out, see if it's coming. But he's not coming. It's only 8 o'clock. And then she walks into the kitchen and gets a glass of water and lights a cigarette and comes back in the living room and lights another cigarette and puts the TV on.
Now she's probably got about five lit all around the house in different ashtrays. And then she walks to the window and she looks out. But it still isn't coming. Well, this goes on by the hour. And she can't read and she can't enjoy TV. She can't do anything. She's just pacing back and forth. All wound up. And God help it if the kids have to get up
[00:40:00]
and go to the bathroom. Somewhere about 10 o'clock, she goes out and walks around the house to see if it's in the flower bed. Because sometimes this happens. Everything is not in vain because all this while she has been preparing a speech. And this will be delivered whether it falls in, crawls in, or walks in, or flies in. And you know, if she notices him passed out on the couch, she'll stop. But then in the morning when he wakes up, she starts right in from the same paragraph.
And of course she doesn't sleep the rest of the night. Now what has this accomplished? It's worse than nothing. It's done a tremendous amount of damage. Maybe this same situation has occurred for a hundred different evenings in the past few years. Think of the damage to those children. Think of the damage to herself. And all of this could have been avoided if she had the program and worked it. Because if she had the program and worked it, she would answer that phone and she would recognize that this man is sick and that there's nothing that she can do about it.
And she would go back out to the kitchen and she would set the table for four. And they'd have the strawberry shortcake and everything nicely. Everyone would enjoy that meal. And after dinner, they'd either go to the movies or go for a walk. They'd do something as a family. It would be a family evening. And when she got ready to put the children to bed, she'd take them up nicely and put them in. And they would feel loved and they would feel secure.
And then she would either read a little bit, go to bed, whatever she happened to want to do, but she'd do it. And when he came home, he would come home. That was that. It's a lot different. This program is a way of living for all of us. And the better we practice this program, the better we can live. Now that's not to say we'll have problems in life. Because we're all going to have problems and we're going to have to cope with them.
But, as an illustration, going down the river of life, picture it as a river. We're in a rowboat. And God is in the back of that rowboat steering. And we're up in the center rowing. And in this river, like in all rivers, there are obstacles. There are stumps, rocks, trees, sandbars. As long as God's there steering and we're doing the work, we can cope with those obstacles. But every once in a while we may get in a hurry and we may think that we can do it better and faster.
So we drop the oars and we push God out of the back of the boat. And before you know it, we're on a rock or a sandbar. And then we have to say, you steer God, I'll row. Now I want to thank you so much for having me here. It's been an honor and a privilege. May God bless you all. Thank you. Now I'm sure you will all agree with me when I say how fortunate we are to have Bill as our public relations man in Illinois.
Aren't you amazed, India?