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Source: Ellen C – 12 Steps to Serenity – Part 1 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: ellen-c-12-steps-to-serenity-part-1-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:49:12
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Yeah, the one day I'm wearing a slip, the one day. My name is Ellen C. and I'm an enthusiastic, boundlessly grateful Al-Anon. Good morning, good morning, good morning. I feel like I'm really in a room of kindred spirits this morning and some of my best friends in all the world have showed up today it seems like. I am not a stranger but you, we find each other no matter where we go. I mean Colorado, I found people from Colorado here and I'm grateful to be with you.
Thank you Jackie and thank you committee and you've taken 15 minutes of my time so don't be surprised if we go over. There are people in this room who can tell you I can't tell you my married names in 45 minutes. Telling you the steps is going to be a whole other thing. And thank you precious Pat, she's just been wonderful. You know, you don't have to, Al-Anons are so easy to please, that's why we're here.
You know, we're way too easy to please but I'm so grateful just to have somebody who says they'll be there, be there. It's pretty much all I ever wanted and I got it with Pat and I'm thrilled and on top of that she's fun so I'm loving being here. I'm not going to ask, I was and then I realized it was all for me that I was asking so I'm not going to ask you because you know who you are. And I also recognize this is, people in Bellevue, Nebraska are not like talking to people in other parts of the country.
There is a, there's an enthusiasm, there's a depth. People who stand up here and read all the steps, all the traditions, all the concepts, slap for the opening, you don't hear that everywhere. It doesn't happen everywhere, trust me. But it fills my heart when you do that. I love participation is the key to harmony, it's pretty much the only one I understand but I love that. The double headed management always makes me giggle, anyway.
I feel like I'm, I may be, this, anyway, who cares, anyway. I still know that there are people in this room who are less than a year in the program. I know that there are people in this room who have done the steps all the way through, all the way through 12. They didn't stop at 5, they didn't stop at 7, they went all the way through the steps and maybe they've done them a couple of times. But I also know there are people in here who have done the steps kind of.
And there are people in here who haven't done the steps yet. And there may be people in the room who wonder why do we have to do them? Why do I have to do them? I'm not the alcoholic. My life is not that bad. Why do I have to do the steps? Well, that preamble to the steps that they read is my absolute favorite preamble to the steps. Note the power of the very words that was written by somebody who has worked the steps because they know the power in the steps.
Al-Anon is different from AA in a lot of ways, very similar in ways that matter and very different in some other ways. One of them is the deal in AA is if you don't do the steps, if you don't work the program, if you don't stay here, you'll die. You'll die or go crazy. That's not what happens to us. We slip back into unconsciousness. That's the least of what happens to us is we slip back into unconsciousness.
We slip back into a life that's not that bad. We slip back into a life where we can get by. That's what happens to us on this end of the spectrum. On this end of the spectrum, there's people like me because I know for a fact that Al-Anon saved my life. I know for a fact that if I don't stay here and do these simple but not easy steps, if I don't take the action prescribed for me on a daily basis, what happens to me out there in the world unprepared, unprotected, I don't just slip into sleep, I will fall off the edge of the planet.
I will die. That's what happened to me out there before. Now Al-Anon covers all of that in between. That's a lot of space. That's a lot of different reasons to be working the steps. I sponsor some wonderful people who say, you know, Al-Anon is just, it's been great fun. I've loved it. I love the fellowship. It's interesting. I've learned some things in Al-Anon, but I'll be okay if I don't do Al-Anon.
I'll be okay. You know, it wasn't that bad. I'm a little skeptical when I hear that, because that's, you know, like famous last words. It wasn't that bad. You want to know what that bad would have looked like. And I sponsor them. And I used to try to drag them out. I used to try to jump down their throats and drag them out of there, you know, it is that bad.
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You've got to recognize it's that bad.
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You've got to do this or else. And then I realized, you know what, they don't have to. A couple of years ago, I was talking someplace up north, and it was Labor Day weekend, and I was flying back on Sunday, and there's nobody at the airport, even in Minneapolis, on Sunday of Labor Day week, and there's just nobody there. I show up to catch my plane, and I go to give, and I show them my ticket, and they say, I don't know how you got this ticket.
That plane doesn't fly today. Wow, I have news for you. I said, and I said, because I've learned it in Al-Anon, it'll be interesting to see how you work this out, because I'm going home today. And they said, they said, well, you know, there's another airline. Oh, good. They'll have a flight. We'll get you on that flight. Great. So they booked me in a flight that's 30 minutes later than my flight, but it's in a different concourse than the one I would have been in.
So here I am, 30 minutes later, in a different concourse, and I'm going home. And I had a banana in my purse, and I decided to eat the banana, and for some reason or other that day, I didn't want to eat the banana in front of people. I'm sure there's a deep, significant reason for that, but I'll just let you think about it. Anyway, so I went in the bathroom to eat my banana, and I'm eating the banana in the bathroom, and I go to wash my hands, and I go to dry my hands, and oh, my God, the towel holder is skewed.
Well, I've got to fix it, of course, so I'm fixing the towel holder, trying to find the screw on the back and get it straight. And then somebody walks into the bathroom on the wrong concourse, 30 minutes after my flight should have left, on a day nobody's at the airport, this person walks in, and I see the back of her head reflected in the towel holder, and I knew the back of her head. We'd spent 15 years in Al-Anon together.
We'd come in within six months of each other. We had cried. We came in within weeks of each other. We cried the first six months together. We just cried. People just pointed and stared at us, you know. We'd say our names, and then we'd go, and I saw the back of her head, and I'm like, and she saw the back of my head, and she said, Ellen, and I said, Ruby, oh, you know how we are, in the bathroom, and she looked fabulous.
She looked fabulous, and she said, and I'd been in Al-Anon like 20 some years, 20 years probably at that point, and she said, you heard I dropped out of Al-Anon. I said, you know, I heard you had just in the last couple of years. She said, yeah, John died. She's on that other end of the spectrum, you know. She was living with a crazy guy, and once he died, life really wasn't that bad anymore, you know.
It was just trying to live with John and his alcoholism that was making her crazy, and she looked fabulous. She's on the other end of the spectrum for me. The Johns in my life have come and gone and come and gone and come and gone, you know, and it didn't get better. It got worse, because I was left with me, and that's the problem, all right. Here's the issue. I have alcoholism. My solution to alcoholism is if drinking had worked, I'd be an alcoholic.
I tried it. It didn't work. I couldn't pass the physical. I couldn't make alcoholic. I really did try, but I can't, but I have the ism. Here's another thing. I can talk to you about the big book, and I don't have to act like I'm talking about something else. A lot of places, I have to act like I just made it up, and they think I'm so wise, you know. Well, actually, no. Anyway, it says in the book that drinking is but a symptom, and the fact of the matter is I have the ism.
We have a tradition that says the only requirement for membership is that there be a problem of alcoholism in a relative or friend. It doesn't say you have to have an alcoholic. It doesn't say you have to see someone drinking. It doesn't say that there has to be, you have to have a history of active drinking in your life to qualify for Al-Anon. That's not it. It's alcoholism. It's the I self me. It's the, you know, I sponsor myself, all those isms, you know, and I tell people all the time, if you want to know whether or not Al-Anon's for you, just come.
Just come. And if it works for you, you know what, there's an alcoholic back there someplace. You don't need to know who they are or where they are. All you need to know is alcoholics, there's an alcoholic back there someplace. So I have alcoholism, and I think it's the reason why AA's 12 steps work so well for me. We have another tradition that says that what we're supposed to do is work the 12 steps of AA ourselves.
And we all know where the directions are, right, in the big book, yeah, yeah. Al-Anon's written some fabulous things, but it's all second hand. They've got, we have wonderful things. I tell people if you want to know about alcoholism, read the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's not a better description of alcoholism any place on the planet.
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If you want to know how it affects the family, read How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics, because nobody can tell that story but us. Nobody can. That's our story. Alcoholism, Al-Anonism is the neurotic compulsion to control somebody else's neurotic compulsion. I heard, I had a sponsee one time who said we're like the movies. She said we're Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dr. Frankenstein.
She said the problem is the AA is Dr. Jekyll who turns into the horrible Mr. Hyde. And we're Dr. Frankenstein trying to create a monster, trying to bring something to life that's just dead. The whole point of the steps is to enable the sufferer, if that isn't us, I don't know who is, the sufferer, to become happily and usefully whole. What a concept, what a concept. I lived at step zero for most of my life and I thought I made it up until I read it in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Step zero says you can go to the bitter end blotting out the consciousness of my intolerable situation as best I can. Or which means I can stay in denial and continue to play helpless victim. They're doing it to me. It's all about what they're doing to me. And I'll tell you something, victims don't recover. And as long as I'm, whatever I'm a victim of, I am stuck in that. Focusing on things outside of me, blaming, and guilt is blame turned inward.
So feeling guilty is just the same as blaming somebody else. I saw a shirt the other day I really think we ought to get. It said I didn't say it was your fault, I just said I was going to blame you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is, I'm blaming you. That's what I did. But the other choice is to accept spiritual help. That's step two. And it, you know, accepting, I ask for help a lot. I don't know about you, but I ask for help a lot.
Please help me. The trick is I don't accept it. God will send me something. God will send a solution. God will send an answer. God will send the next step in that direction. And I go, I'm pretty sure that's not it. No, that's really not what I was hoping for, so I won't be going that way. I'll wait for something better, you know, something closer to what I want. And that means I have to acknowledge there's a problem I can't solve and be willing to ask for and accept spiritual help.
It isn't my problems that have gotten me in trouble. It's my solutions. It's the solutions for what I perceive to be problems in my life. The steps have offered me written directions for the process. Written directions. And I'm sure there are people on this planet who can live without written directions. I am not one of them. I am so grateful when I got here I was showed the steps and I was told this is it.
This is every one of them we did. We did them all. I don't like any of the rest of that. Okay. The only reason I did the steps the first time was to prove they wouldn't work. That's it. I was pretty sure that God made all these fabulous people for whom the steps would work perfectly and one little piece of poop and that was me and it would not work for me and I was going to work them and prove it to you so that I could stand up and say, see, you know, terminally unique, terminally unique.
But I'll tell you something else. The steps don't care why you practice them. They don't care. They don't care. Your motives are really not important here. All that's important is the action, is that you take the action. Step one says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable. Exactly like the AA's first step. I didn't come here looking for recovery. I came here looking for relief.
I didn't come here surrendered. I came here looking for one more thing that might work. I came here looking for the power to change his life so my life would be okay. And the problem was he was powerless over alcohol and our lives were unmanageable. That as I saw it was the problem. The problem at step one is then and always is that lack of power is my dilemma, although I think if an Al-Anon had written the big book we would have said lack of control.
That was our dilemma. And I'm not sure that it isn't the same thing. I'm not sure that's just not semantics. The way I manifest powerlessness in my life is it starts out as concern and then it goes to worry. And then it goes to worry, and then it goes to obsession.
[00:15:03]
And obsession is all out warfare on powerlessness. The more powerless I feel, the more apt I am to get obsessed. You don't see think, think, think on Al-Anon walls. That is not, we talk about it being a slogan, but we don't parade it much out there because we don't know, we don't know much about think, think, think. You know, you let us think about something more than about twice, it's in charge, you know, it's taken over, that's it, I am now this, you know.
It's that, somebody was asking me about it today, it's that starfish thing. My sponsor used to talk about it, she said, you know, you get a thought and all of a sudden, it's like a starfish, it's right here, all over you, and everything you see, you see filtered through this, whatever this is, and you can't breathe very well because it's sucking up all the air around you, and by the end of the day, you have a tight little headache because this thing has been, and you know, that's what the steps are about, it's starfish removal.
It's how to get that, get that stuff off your head, but that's obsess, that's what I do. And I thought that if you worried enough, it would change it. Although there was a guy in our meeting the other day said, you know, I can prove worrying works because 98 percent of what I worried about never happened. Oh, we are so powerful. I wasn't just powerless over alcohol, but that's what got me here. And the truth is, one more time, alcohol is but a symptom.
What's kept me here is the unmanageability of my own life. What's kept me here is the unmanageability of my head, the unmanageability of my fear, the unmanageability of my thoughts. That's what's kept me here. As the sense of powerlessness deepens, widens, darkens, erases, my solutions contain more and more control, nagging, manipulation, and guilt. The scarier I get, that's what I do. My mind goes out of control and the fear controls me.
Not them or it, but the fear controls me. And when I'm afraid, I make up stories and I live in them. And I have things that I'm going to say and I have things you're supposed to say. But I can't tell you what they are because if I tell you, then it just makes it not count. You're supposed to know what it is you're supposed to say and then don't act surprised when my feelings are hurt because you didn't do it.
I expect you to participate. I expect you to participate in the way I want you to. I had a sponsy call me just this week and she was in tears about something that had happened and she was saying, but that's not why I went there. I went there to hear blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, that would be called your expectations. Oh, shoot. One more time, suckered in by what I expected.
I expected him to participate. And what happens in the disease of alcoholism is I reach a place where I say, who am I? Who am I? Who am I? I heard a speaker one time say that alcoholism erased her face and it erased me a piece at a time, it erased me till I got to the who am I? What am I doing here? And what am I doing here again? Why do I keep doing this again and again? I listened in meetings, I read the literature, I shared one on one and after a while, I began to accept the truth of step one for me.
After a while, a piece at a time, it also helped me to continue focusing on the problem and working on it as we all know that is not a solution, that is more problem. It's me applying this fabulous brain to the problem, that's not a solution. What I had to get to, I had to become convinced to the fatal nature of my disease and I am today convinced to the fatal nature of my disease. And if I can't get anything else across to you today, what I'd like to get across to you is the purpose of these steps.
We don't know, tell us the purpose of step 12 but they don't mind you looking ahead, that's why they give us all 12 of them at the same time. And the purpose of this, of the 12 steps is to have a spiritual awakening, come to. The only book mentioned in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I read it, you should get a badge if you read it, it is, it took me a year, that is a painful, and I'll tell you now if you want to read it, just skip to the conclusions chapter, it will pretty much tell you all you need to know about the whole thing, lordy.
But what he, what built, what impressed Bill Wilson and one of the reasons that our steps are written the way they're written is the conclusion that William James reached
[00:20:04]
and that was that the most important thing that's ever happened on this planet has been the appearance of enlightened people, awake people, spiritually conscious people. There have been very few and somehow you and me have stumbled into an organization that guarantees us that, that we can be spiritually awake, that we can be spiritually conscious, that we can add to this planet's desperate need, not just ourselves, not just our families, not just Al-Anon, but we can add to the planet's desperate need for this awakening.
There is, you know, when I go to conferences and I look at, I just love, I love to go when I know people, but I also love to go when I don't know people because I love to watch us with each other. There is a light in the eyes, there is an expression on the face, there's an energy in the step, there is an expansiveness in the arms when we see each other. You don't see any place, I don't see it at the airport.
I work at a fabulous little preschool where we hug kids all day long, but you don't see that, you don't see the adults doing that. The light is coming on here. I just knew, I told Shelly I'm in a preaching mood this morning, I'm really sorry about that, but there you go. I want you to become convinced to the fatal nature of your disease, even if it won't kill you physically, it will kill you spiritually, it will kill you emotionally, it will lock you down and shut you up, and not only can you not get to be all of the fabulous person that God would have you be, but you're going to be a spot on the planet.
That's all, that's all it's, you know, you just, you know, get a veil of tears, you're just going to get through this the best you can, and that, there's so much more, so much more, a whole life, a whole world, a whole difference you can make if you do this, if you do this with your heart in it. I became convinced to the spiritual nature of my disease, and I had to get to helplessness, which is different from powerlessness, I had to get to helplessness.
It happened for me the year of cancer that I got to helplessness, and what I realized that year, and that was three years into Al-Anon, before I ended up with, you know, terminal cancer, with girls and boys, it was 25 years ago, so she lived, do not worry, it's okay. And she has fabulous boobs, anyway. It took that for me, it took the year of cancer for me to get to the place where I was convinced, where I realized that not only could I not do anything about him, and I couldn't do anything about them, I couldn't do anything about me, I couldn't change how I felt, I couldn't change what was going on, I couldn't change what was going on in my head, I was absolutely helpless, I was helpless.
And I know today that I could never have reached that place if I didn't already know about step two, because that is a deep, dark hole there isn't any coming out of. And if I already hadn't had the assurance of step two, I wouldn't have felt safe enough to step off the edge of the planet there, I know it. I want to give you some idea today, my sponsor that I worked the steps with for 20 some odd years before, she took her light in the other room, as Scott would say.
She passed in 2001, but she came into Al-Anon in 1954, there wasn't any Al-Anon. She actually had to go into AA, because there wasn't any Al-Anon. And she went to, you know, because AA is so generous and so good to us, and they took her in their meetings, and AA women sponsored her, and she used the only literature available, which was the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and eventually the AA 12 and 12, and she was a sixth panel delegate, I believe, for Al-Anon, and she was in New York the year that the ODAT was written.
And so she helped with that, and her ODAT book, which my sister pigeon has, no resentment here, is endorsed to her by Alice, the lady who pretty much single-handedly wrote the ODAT, you know. But what Marcy did, all Marcy could do with us was what she had, and that was she brought us up on the big book, and the AA 12 and 12. And so the direction for steps, for how you work the steps that I give to the people I sponsor that Marcy gave to me, or comes right out of the big book and out of the AA 12 and 12, and I've added Al-Anon, I've added some stuff out of how Al-Anon works, and I encourage the people that I sponsor to read, to look up those pages in the Courage to Change
[00:25:04]
and the ODAT on the steps, because we do have some wonderful things. I just think that you, I want them to have the whole picture, though, the whole picture. I brought the list of the readings, because I'm not going to read them out to you, because then you go crazy trying to write all that down. So I brought a list, and Jackie has it, and if you want a copy, you'll just have to tell Jackie, and she'll just have to fix it for you.
It's out of my hands. What she told us to do at step one was to write the five worst things we did when someone we loved was drinking, or when we tried to control somebody we loved. And to write how we felt about it when we did it, and how we felt about it now. And then she asked us to write ten things in my life today that are unmanageable. One sentence is enough. You don't have to write a book, just one little sentence.
I'm afraid of not having enough money. I'm afraid of men. I'm afraid of relationships. I can't manage my relationship with my parents, whatever that is. And then you read the stuff, you do that, and this was a step study that Marcy, you could do on your own, or you could do it as a group. But Marcy had a rule if you did it as a group, and that was that if you didn't do the work, you couldn't share it the next meeting.
Everybody had to do, if you didn't do the work, we're happy to have you. Come on, but you can't share. We only want to talk, and it's doing it this time. It doesn't count if you did it before. It's this time. We're in this together. And she was very loving when she said it. Me, I'm kind of snappy about it. You're supposed to share any awakenings you have and share that with your sponsor. Now, if anything I tell you today goes against what your sponsor says or goes against what doesn't match with the books, don't pay any attention to me.
Your sponsor rules. Sponsors rule, okay. Couldn't have done step one if I hadn't known about step two. Step two says, came to believe that a power greater than myself, greater than ourselves, can restore me to sanity. I've been listening to some wonderful CDs by Sandy Beach. They cost a fortune, so you probably can't have them. Anyway, I don't know where my daughter got them. I didn't ask. Anyway, and I, you know, I know this is a fact.
There's one problem and that's that I think I'm separate from God. There's one problem and that's that I think I'm alone in this and I got to figure it out. And there's one solution and that is the truth, which is I'm not separate from God. I'm not. I'm a part of God. God's a part of me. And that step two says, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. This is the solution.
Step one is the problem. Step two is the solution. Step one has zero possibilities. That's where I have to get to in step one is zero possibilities. Step two is endless possibilities because now it's not up to me. It's up to God. It's up to God. Do I believe or am I willing to believe there's a power greater than me? I've always believed in a power other than me, but not always greater than me. Whatever I focus on today is my God.
Focus is another nice word for obsess. Can those powers restore me to sanity, you know? Can he restore me to sanity? If my daughter's clean room, can that restore me to sanity, you know? Will the stock market straighten it up, restore me to sanity, you know? No, probably not. I use them when I'm afraid and self-centered fear motivates me in those instances. So my sponsor says, what I want you to do is write down ten obsessions you have today or have had in the past.
And she would say, those are your gods. In my diseasiness, I'm looking for power. You know, I heard a speaker one time say, you know, not everyone on this planet is looking for power. But we have a book that says, that's my problem, I don't have any power. That's what we're looking for is power. I might call it validation, I might call it love, I might call it guilt, but I'm using it as power and God either has all of it or none of it.
I believe today that the sanity offered us in step two may be nothing short of paradise. I think sanity is sort of a baseline. But the reason I don't get paradise is because I say, yeah, but not today, God, not this way, God, this isn't. Not today, God, not this way, God, this isn't right, it needs to be different, God, God, you know, it's like a thing I read one time about when you see a beautiful sunset, you don't say to God, you know, it needs a touch more purple over there on the ride, and I think if you just let the sun go a little slower, you know, we don't do that, we look at that and we go, that's why people say I find God better outside, we don't try to adjust what's outside, you know, what we see out there, the awesomeness of that is sort
[00:30:24]
of hard to argue with, but we'll argue with the rest of it, I came to Al-Anon because I was safe here for an hour, for an hour at a time I knew what was going to happen, for an hour at a time nobody was going to get me, for an hour at a time people cared about me, for an hour at a time nobody tried to change me, I came to in Al-Anon, I was sitting in a meeting and I'd been in a while, a year, year and a half probably, and I was on this side and the speaker was over on that side and I realized when the speaker was talking that I was sitting in a plexiglass box, and I built this box around me so that nobody could touch me, you couldn't touch me and I couldn't touch you, and when it came my turn to share, I shared about the box and somebody said, oh, you're safe now, you can come out of the box, I said, no, I'm just now safe enough to know there's a box, I'm going to have to sit in the box a while longer, you know, there's a little kid at the school where I work, the first year I was there we took some pretty freaky kids the first year, loved them, I loved every one of them, it's a fine, and there was one little guy, his name was Charlie and he had a terrible time in classroom and it would get too much for him and the reason he was at our school was because he used to bolt, he bolted all the time out of the classroom and they couldn't find him because it just got to be too much, so we made a plan, when it gets too much for you, tell us where a safe place is that you're going to go, so when you need to bolt we'll know where to go to find you and you always go to the safe place, that's going to be our agreement, great, so the safe place he picked was in the knee hole under my desk, and I'd hear a classroom door open and slam, whoosh, this thing would come flying by me and slam himself, you know, whoosh, under the knee hole of my desk and then he'd go, this window closed, and I, you know, I knew just how he felt because that's how I lived my life was with this window closed, this window closed, it's too much, it's too painful, I can't go there, that's not sanity, I came to belong here, I came to belong here, I came to belong here, and it's the reason the steps say we, it's the reason, because I worked, you know, that's how, people want to know how do I belong, I've never belonged any place else, work the steps, get in a group, get a sponsor, work the steps, it's like magic, you belong, and you belong any place you go in Al-Anon when you do that, and it's the sense you have, I came to be, Ellen came to be here, I didn't have any belief system of my own when I got here, I didn't have any opinions of my own, I pretty much had yours or the opposite depending on what I wanted you to do, today I have a lot, I have opinions, I know who I am today, I know what I like today, and I don't have to force it down your throat today, but Ellen came to be here, this was a safe place for me to be me, and I came to believe, I came to believe in the power of the group, I came to believe in the process of the steps, I came to believe, you know, in our closing it says let the understanding, love, and peace of the program grow in you one day at a time, let it happen, let it happen, show up, open the window, do the simple steps that are in front of you, and the understanding, love, and peace of the program will grow in you one day at a time, don't get up yet, belief is all that's required in step 2, not faith, not trust, we are an untrusting bunch of folks, I don't trust, I don't trust people, I don't have any reason to trust people, but I don't know that I ever did trust them very well, what my sponsor used to say was Ellen, you're supposed to love the people and trust God, not the other way around, you love the people and you trust God, what I came to understand in Al-Anon is that the person I don't trust most of all is me, I don't trust me, I don't trust me to be there for me, I don't trust me to show up, I don't trust me to do the things that are necessary to take care of myself, in my dis-easiness I've given all that away, and as if by magic when I started being able to trust you a little, when I got a God of my understanding that I could trust a little and I started trusting myself a little, it is much, much easier today to trust, sanity is self-defined, I really wanted you to tell me what sanity was so I'd know whether or not I had it, but that's the way I wanted my whole life to be, I just wanted you to give me the answers and then I'd know whether or not I was doing it right, and Al-Anon says, oh, that's good, keep coming back, but can you tell me, no, we can't, you're going to have to define it for yourself, you're going to have to decide what sanity looks like and feels like.
When I got here they told me I was putting up with unacceptable behavior, it just hurt my feelings worse than I can tell you, I cried and cried and cried, because it was perfectly acceptable to me, I'd been putting up with it for a long time, and I had no idea how that could be not acceptable, it was one more proof that I'm the little piece of poop and you're all fine.
[00:35:19]
So I'm glad, it was the alcoholics actually that told me that the behavior was unacceptable and I needed to kick him out, kick him out, kick him out, kick him out, the Al-Anon's never told me to kick him out, the Al-Anon's always said you just keep coming, don't do anything for a year, just hang in there and let's see how you feel about it in a year. Okay, sanity when I got here was waiting until 2 o'clock, 2.15 in the morning with dinner cooked and it might have been the third or fourth dinner for the night because I'd burned up or thrown out the dried up, the other ones that I'd cooked, waiting for a guy who was so drunk when he came home that he didn't remember the first step into our house was up, and that was sanity.
I thought, I kept thinking this time it'll be different, this time it'll be different, he'll see, he'll see, and I punished people with my suffering, there was a gal in my group when I first got here and she talked about playing the now he'll see game, now he'll see, I'm going to show him how bad this is, now he'll see. And she was the one who ended up locked up in the nut ward, you know, he was the one coming to see her and leaving, now he'll see.
Insanity is believing a lie, insane behavior is acting on it. Today's sanity is knowing who's responsible for the outcome, knowing that my best dreams, my best choices limit me and that's a hard thing for me to give up is my idea of my best ideas. You know, I've come to believe in this God of my understanding who, you know, I know what's right, you know what's right, you know what's right, you know, we know what ought to happen, that's right, and we get locked into that what's right thing.
God knows what's best and the deal is if I leave it up to God, if I do what I think is the next best thing for me to do, God can turn every one of my right slash wrong decisions into what's best for everybody involved. My absolute favorite, this is this, I love doing this, she says, what do you want to be restored to? Write down what you would like to be, the qualities, loving, tender, kind, safe, trustworthy friend, sharp, she always wanted to be sharp, graceful, fun, good sense of humor, flexible, is make a list of what you want to be restored to.
Now that's hard for us to do because we tend to write down knots, not judgmental, not argumentative, we don't, but you can't be a knot, you can't be a knot, you've got to come up with what it is that you want to be. And then what she would have me do is number those things, number that list just like we do with the just for today thing, you know, and then like today on my little list is number 4 and so today my word for just because I can't be all those things every day, but today the word was honest.
That was what I wanted to be restored to and it came out number 4 and so today when I come to situations and I decide how do you want to, what's going to be your decision here, the filter I try to remember to put that through is what would an honest person do in this place and it gives me another perspective, it gives me a way to do it a little differently. So, okay, so just a little bit, it's going to be a little more, okay, I'm talking as fast as I can go.
All right, so now step 3, God forbid I should get us so that the CDs don't look right. I mean I just can't, it's totally against everything I believe in. Step 3 says made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. In the AA 12 and 12 step 6 is what they say separates the sheep, no the men from the boys. I always think sheeps and dogs, I know that's not right, it's men and boys.
Okay, Al-Anon at step 3, Al-Anon is, step 3 is where we fall off. Al-Anon is accused of doing the Al-Anon wall so we do 1, 2, 12, 1, 2, 12, 1, 2, 12, I know what the problem is, I've heard the answer, let me tell you about it. All those other steps, just filler, just filler because what happens is we get to step 3 and we tell folks if you do step 3 your life is going to change.
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And we're a room full of folks who are not friends with change, you know, unless it's change we wanted. If it's something we wanted that's different. We're the folks that go change, oh no, no, wait, a little miscommunication. Did you think I wanted my life to change, oh no, no, no, no, my life's not that bad, I just want you to change his life, you know, then I'll be okay. And what we tell them is if you do step 3 your life's going to change, it's going to change, it's a guarantee, your life will change.
I was talking to my sponsor about whatever he'd done that day, I don't remember because it was very long ago and every man I've been involved with does bad things all the time, you know, so I have to do a lot of reporting. But I was reporting that day about what he'd done and I'm sure I was in tears because I was often in tears back in the early days, now I just get mad. And I was telling her about what he did and she said, wow, she said, so who do you choose, do you choose God or Cecil?
Well, I've been in Al-Anon a while and I don't think this was just the verbiage. See, I don't think we're here by mistake, I don't think people stumble into Al-Anon by mistake, I think we're looking, I think we have a need, I think we have a yearning, I think we have a want. And we think, we're looking for conscious contact is what we're looking for, but we think it's got to be with this other human over here, if I can make conscious contact, if I can keep conscious contact with that human then I'm going to be okay.
A little misguided, but, you know, got the right idea, just wrong solution, one more time, that's all. But the answer I gave her, she said, who do you choose, God or Cecil? I said, well, God, of course. And it was like two weeks later before I realized what I'd done. I had chosen God. I had made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God instead of this drunk I was living with, this crazy drunk that I loved better than my own brain.
But I'd made the decision to turn my will and my life over to God. This is the choice for freedom. The third step prayer says, relieve me of the bondage of self. And that's the choice for freedom. It's finally, you know, I finally know what it is I want to be when I grow up. I want to be free. I want the freedom that's offered me in that step, in that prayer. The freedom to be who it is God would have me be.
When I say the third step prayer, it sounds like this. I offer myself to thee. To do with me, to build with me, to make with me as you will. And I think of that phrase, if God's going to build with me, I'm not going to know what's going on. I may be a brick. I may be part of the foundation. I may be the landscaping. I don't know. I don't need to know what it's going to look like. I don't need to know how it's going to turn out.
Build with me, do with me, make with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, self-seeking, self-centeredness, self-pity. That I may better do thy will. Take away my seeming difficulties. Because I don't know about you, but everything I thought was the worst thing that ever happened to me has often turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Seeming difficulties. That transcendence over them may bear witness to those I would help of your power and your way of life, which is your inestimable love.
Because I do believe that's God's power, is the love we offer each other here. I was at an open AA meeting one night, fairly early on in the program. There was an AA woman talking. She was talking about step three and she talked about doing the back of the step first. And I realized that's the way I did all the steps. I looked at the back of the step to see if I could do it the way it came out and then I'd ease up on the front part of the step.
And this step says the care of God as we understood him. And I realized when she was talking that I did it just like she did it. I thought it said when we understood him. When I figured out what God was going to do, I'd do all the rest. And then I realized that's the way I did every relationship in my life. If I want to have a marriage, you tell me the part you'll do and I'll do all the rest to make it a marriage.
If I want to be at a job, you tell me the part that you'll do and I'll do all the rest to make it my job. That's the way I do every relationship. You know, my sponsor told me that you only know how to have one relationship. You have the same relationship with your dog that you do with God that you do with your best friend. The intensity is different depending on my emotional dependence. But I only know how to, because I'm the same in all of those.
I come with the same heart. I come with the same mind. because I'm the same in all of those. I come with the same needs, the same motivations, the same fears in every relationship. And that's what I, and I realize that this says
[00:45:01]
as I understand Him. So however much I can understand God, which gets to be less and less, you think after a while you'd get a better grip on it, but it really seems to be, God gets to be a bigger mystery all the time for me. I thought I could define God with a pronoun, I figured out that doesn't work. Today, step three marks the spot between relief, which can only be temporary, and recovery, which requires change.
The commitment I make here requires that I identify old ideas, prejudices, shoulds, patterns, else how am I going to know what's from my fear and what's from God. The set-aside prayer says, God help me set aside everything I think I know. And you can do this about anything, but every time I start the steps, I do the set-aside prayer again. God help me set aside everything I think I know about you, about freedom, about the steps, about awakening, that I might have a new experience and learn the truth.
And one more time I'm having to throw out all the old ideas, one more time. My sponsor gave me permission at this step to write down how I used to understand God and how I understand God today. And then I got to write down how I would like my understanding of God to be. She said things to me like, let's just say God could do anything. Okay, just anything. What would you have God do? And she let me write that down.
And her magic number was 32. She said if you practice something for 32 days, it went from being an idea to part of you. You incorporated that into yourself. So I had to get up every morning for 32 days and practice my new God. Read over what I wrote down about this God I wanted to have. Today what I know is that those best ideas limit God even. But you know what? It's a step. It's another awakening.
It's another opening when I'm willing to do that. And she told me I could write the prayer any way I wanted to write the prayer. And that's what I've done. And she told us if you're doing it, when you're doing this, you do the reading, and you do the prayer with somebody, hopefully with your sponsor. You get down on your knees and you say the prayer together. You know, the skies don't open up usually and lightning and thunder don't come down, but taking the action, just doing it, just doing it.
What I know today is that God honors the slightest step in his direction. Whatever I'm willing to do, my sponsor used to say, God wants us to tithe, Ellen. God says you do 10% and I'll do 90%. What a deal is that? So all I've got to do is make a slight turn in God's direction. That's all. And God is, you know, the arms are opened wider, the smile is broader, the welcome is warmer. And it's not that it hadn't been there all the time.
It's just that I'm a little more awake, I'm a little more aware. This step can have little or no effect unless followed at once by action. My sponsor told me that decisions are not made, decisions are discovered. This step talks about making a decision. And she says, you know, decisions are not resolutions. Resolutions are, I'm not going to scream at the children anymore, okay, starting tomorrow. And starting January 1st, I'm not eating sugar, I'm not going to do that anymore.
And those are resolutions, those are not decisions. Decisions are when you look up and you realize you're living your life different. When you look up and you realize that something has changed and you can't remember the day it happened, but somewhere in there you made a decision. And what seals that is taking the action. So, I think that was pretty good. Thank you. Applause