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Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – OAR 1987 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-oar-1987-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:13:45
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I am glad to be here. I have never been to an all-Al-Anon conference, and I have never heard so much giggling, laughter, and hugging, and loving going on, and I just love it, and I'm glad to be here. My name's Meg Pearl. They call me Merk, and I am a grateful Al-Anon. I always love to see what you're going to get to get you at the airport. It's always such an exciting thing, because you never have any idea. Now, the message that I received from my husband, that he received from Betty, I know it was nothing what she said, because I know him. And he said, two women are going to pick you up, and that was it.
And it was pretty easy. You know, I was not on a wide-body jetliner when I got there. There were only me and another lady on the plane, you know. And so, but now here's these two little women in there, and they're just talking back and forth, saying, wonder if it's her, wonder if it's her, wonder if it's her. I knew them right off. Now, I'll tell you all who they are. I mean, you know, it was Dottie the bean and Ronnie the interpreter. Now, right off the bat, we were in great shape. They lost my luggage. Then I had to do a little bit of serene management.
I had to stop Dottie from attacking the poor boy at the ticket counter, so lest my luggage go to Egypt. She kept saying, I don't like his attitude. And I said, I don't give a damn about his attitude. I want my luggage. And then we got in the car. Now, Ronnie sat in the back, and later I found out why. It's a thrill to ride in the front seat. I understand, Dottie, when you're entering the Internet with 100. Next year, she's going to be the police car.
About halfway here, Ronnie said, well, see, we made it this far. And I said, there was a question? And then I began to wonder what all was wrong with the driver. Perhaps she was epileptic, and we were to be awaiting a seizure or a spell of some kind. Now, we were being sucked off the road by everything else. We must have been doing 20 at this point. It took longer to get from the airport here than it did from Hill Rock to the airport.
And it was nice to know that they hired a handicap here. At home, we had some little quaint expressions that maybe you all are not familiar with, but at home we would say we took off like a herd of turtles. I was trying to explain to her that we had had a big rain, and I said we'd had a toad strangler, and she said, what, and almost wrecked the car. And then I turned around, and Ronnie had been taking notes of all this mess, for God knows what purpose.
And then I was finally saved. We arrived. Wasn't that a beautiful drive? And the colors of the trees and everything. Y'all are getting it a lot earlier than we are. We expect to see the same kind of thing at home in about three or four weeks. And if we don't, I'm going to know who kept it. But we finally arrived to Sanity, and Betty hugged me and welcomed me to Atwood, and I was never so glad to get anywhere in my life. I'd been saved. She and Miriam met me, and the room is just absolutely lovely. The view is like a picture postcard. It's as pretty as any I've seen.
In fact, I woke Martha up at two o'clock in the morning, and I said, go outside and look off the balcony. And just hung up. I didn't want her to miss it. The moon was so big and full, and the moonbeam was shining on the lake out here, and it was making a beautiful silver little shimmery pathway, and it was gorgeous.
[00:05:00]
And I was out there praising my fanny, and I didn't want to go alone. It was good. Good. Now, I want you to know I really enjoyed Martha last night. I had met Martha before, and I knew y'all were in for a treat, and it was so good to the panel this morning. They were excellent. And Fleamy, I enjoyed you. You remind me so much of my sponsor. She's got that quiet, peaceful, serenity smile that you're sitting there saying, God, ain't she crazy?
Now, I want you to know y'all have heard your spiritual message, and now we're going to get ready for a withdrawal, because I'm a low-bottom, Eleanor. I'm not one of those little sweet ones that's going to get up there and suffer for you. I did all the suffering I want to before I got here, and I wanted to have some fun, and did you know, for me, if recovery had not been fun, I would not have stayed. I would not have stayed, because you see, I'm an addict, and I'm addicted to excitement, and if I don't have some, I'll create some.
Now, I know y'all are going to not believe this, but I was a spoiled child. My father loved me, and he was a sweet Army man of 37 years, and he was retired before I was born, because I was the change-of-life baby. And I don't know how many out there are change-of-life babies, but God love you, but you should never have been born to a woman that old. Martha stood here last night and described the sweet little old man I thought. Martha must have been born out there in the Twinkle Zone or something.
Because, you see, I had the warden, and this woman was put on this earth to make this life miserable. I knew it from as far back as I can remember, because any time I wanted to do anything, go anywhere, say anything, have anything, she said, no. No. And then Daddy would come in there, and he'd say, yeah, honey, you can do that. God, I loved him. And he stood between me and the warden, and he made my life wonderful, so he let me have my way.
And the tragedy to this was my perception of that, and I perceived that my daddy loved me, and because she wouldn't, she didn't. And so I never felt any love from my mama. Now, I learned a lot of things with my daddy, because I became his son, and we went hunting together and fishing together, and we had lots of fun. And then there was that day, that terrible day, that Mother decided to go with us.
And we went fishing, and I was sitting there on the end of that little boat, and I'm catching me a little old fish about this long, and my mama looked at it, and she measured it, and she said, it's not large enough to be a keeper, and she ripped it off my hook and threw it back in. And I went into a crying coma right there in the boat. That broke my heart. And Daddy said, honey, that's all right, you come back here in the back of the boat with me, and we'll get her.
And that sounded good to me. So I went back there, and every time Mama would catch a fish, she'd swing it around, Daddy would take it off, he'd rebait her hook, she'd swing it back around, he'd give me the fish, and I'd throw it over. Not just one, but every fish they ever caught the whole day. And I thought that was wonderful. And you know what I learned that day? Anytime anybody hurts you, you have the right to do it back to them as many times as you can, and it's okay.
Now Daddy was playing a joke on Mama, but you see, with my immaturity and my child emotions, this is how I perceived, and I was to function like this for years and years until I got into Al-Anon. I'm a believer in slow, premeditated revenge. I have infinite patience. I can wait no matter how long it takes to get you. Every dog has her day. This was going to be a great tool I was going to use when the drinking hit.
Now, I was an overachiever in school, and I was a good student. I had a good memory, and I abused that memory later on to remember every horrible thing that ever happened in my life. But during this period of time, I could make straight A's with little effort at all, and I was just doing real well, and then a major event happened that was to change my life from that point forward, and that was that my father died.
[00:10:20]
And when my father died, that left me with her, and we had no relationship, and we declared war on one another, and whoever died, the other one. And we both set out to make each other's life as miserable as possible, and I did as well as I could to make her life one living hell, and mine was too. You know, I've learned today that you can't be hateful to somebody else and expect good things back, and what goes around comes around, but you see, I didn't know that then. And I've always been stupid about a lot of things. I can read anything in a book, but I don't apply it very well. Something that loses something from the page to my brain, I've been able to put it into use.
And so I was going to do things over and over and over again the rest of my life, getting the same rotten results, thinking this time it's going to be different. And I know none of y'all have ever done that. Well, when I was in school, I felt different than the rest of the kids because, you see, I know exactly how Gene felt this morning. You know, I have a birth defect. I'm too short. According to the charts and the doctor, I should have been nine foot six to carry this weight.
And other kids thought I was fat, you see, and they made observations about my birth defect that made me feel a little different. And I didn't have an abundance of young men beating down my door, believe it or not. But I became the leader of a group of girls. Now, the reason I became a leader is I'm a natural born leader. Can't you tell it? See, I don't know how to follow. I ain't a leader. I don't know.
Now, you know, at the hospital, when babies are born, sometimes the doctor says it's a boy and sometimes they say it's a girl. Well, I believe that when I was born, he said it's a fixer. Because when I saw things that looked like they weren't the way I wanted them, I proceeded to fix them so they'd be right. Because, see, I always know better. I have this intuitive ability to know how to handle situations that would have been bad for anybody. I seem to have been born that way. Okay. So, these girls I was leading, they began to get married on me, and it was real hard to lead married couples.
So, you have to get amongst them, you know. So, I fell in heat and I got married and I joined them. Now, I knew it wasn't going to work. Because, see, I married a Yankee. And anybody that doesn't eat cornbread, dark green and grits, I'm not going to make it in my house, because food was a big deal for me. And we had a lot of different things about us, and there was nothing in common other than the fact that he said he loved me and, God, I wanted to be loved. And he said he needed me and I wanted to be needed. And so we got married and we were happily ever after. And that's the end of my story, and I thank you. Good night.
But it didn't work that way, did it? It didn't work that way. Well, he took me away from home, because, see, I'd been living to get away from home and away from that war I was in at home. And he took me far, far away from home. He took me to Newfoundland. Now, I didn't ask to go that far. But, see, he was in the military, and we put in for all these places like France and Germany and England, and they sent us to Newfoundland.
Now, I don't understand that, and that's my higher powers doing, but it was a horrible place. It was the last outpost of humanity, for God's sake. We had snow nine months of the year. We had 290 inches of snow the first year I was there. Now, I bet you that even challenges some of the things y'all have. And I'm from Arkansas. We don't have more than three or four inches of snow in any given year, and I don't know anything about snow, but I know everything there is to know about everything. And I got bored, because, see, the first thing they told me when I got off the plane was, you can't work here. I didn't say I wanted to.
But don't you hate it when they tell you you can't? There's just something within that just upsets my nervous system, no end. And so you begin to think about that.
[00:15:02]
Well, I began to read and do a lot of plotting and planning. And I was reading this book, and it was talking about Christmas time. And it was about Christmas time. And down in Arkansas, we don't have trees with needles much. We have trees with leaves. So at Christmas time, we have to go down and buy a tree that y'all send us, you know. And y'all put a dear price on those trees, I'll tell you. Y'all live in the rest of the year.
What I paid for my tree last year. But I was in the land of Christmas trees. And see, I lived in an apartment, and there was about 18 or 20 steps cut in the ice. And at the top of that was a road. And on the other side of that road was a big mountain. And I decided that I'd take the two boys that lived next door to me, who just happened to be my landlady's sons, and I'd take them, and I would take their toboggan, and we'd go up the hill, and we'd cut us a tree, and bring it down and decorate it with the little popcorn chains and all like that.
And it was going to be so wonderful. Just like in the books. Well, see, I can't ever leave an initial plan alone. My mind was working all the time. So when we got up there and we cut down the tree, something happened to the tree when you cut it down. It fell over. It didn't look as good as it did a while ago. And God knows you've got to have a perfect tree, so you cut down another tree, and another tree, and another tree.
Until finally I got enough trees to take back to everybody in the apartment complex who had not asked me to bring them a tree. Now, we had a piece of rope, and we tied these trees on the toboggan to bring them back. And that's when my mind began to go. And I said, well, we got a piece of rope left over. Why don't we ride back on top of the trees? And with this piece of rope left, I think I'll tie me on the front so I won't fall off.
Now, see, it's obvious to you I don't know anything about a toboggan. But it wasn't obvious to me. Now, I was going to gain some information real fast, but there wasn't a darn thing I could do with it. And the first is, coming down the hill, you gain lots of speed. And as we were coming down, I mean, they got thrown off. But not me, see, I was tied on. Now, there's no steering mechanism on a toboggan.
There's no brakes on a toboggan. So here I come across, I'm coming broadside across that road, and cars are going back and forth. I shot between the cars. I went down the steps, I, and flew to the bottom of my house. Now, that splintered the toboggan, and me, and the trees. I had needles driven into my flesh. And my lady came running out of the house. She looked down, all things sticking out of my head, and she said, What are you after doing, you crazy, yanky bitch?
And I said, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. And I looked up at her, and I said, Don't you call me no damn yanky. Well, that's a typical day in my life. That's a typical day in my life. And every time I'd get bored, I'd create me some excitement. And I created so much excitement, I wrecked my marriage in the process. So we decided we would come back home.
Well, I decided we'd come back home, and I bribed a guy with a case of booze, and we got back to Little Rock. Now, my husband didn't want to go to Little Rock. They had nothing to do with it. I wanted to go to Little Rock. So we got there, and we tried to make a go of our marriage for a few weeks, and then we separated. And the reason I say we separated instead of go out of divorce was I was not ready to be self-supporting through my own voluntary contribution.
I wanted that happy little allotment check coming in every month without any responsibility, and he bought that deal. He's crazier than I thought. And so we separated. Now, where's alcohol? Isn't it funny? No alcohol has been mentioned. I had become a social drinker when I was overseas, and I enjoyed having a drink every evening when I came in from work. By the way, see, I did get to work. I worked for the Red Cross.
And I had a good time up there in a lot of aspects as far as I had a lot of good times when alcohol was involved. I didn't see anything wrong with alcohol. Now, I knew what alcohol could do to people because I come from a family that alcoholism was a big deal. You see, my mother's father died in the state hospital from the effects of alcoholism. My grandmother died from cirrhosis of the liver from drinking and from alcoholism.
My uncle was shot in bed with another man's wife. That was an alcohol-related incident.
[00:20:05]
I always liked him the best. Well, you see, with an addiction to excitement, you're going to be just sort of predisposed to find you one. Because God knows you never know what's going to happen next. It's exciting. It's exciting. But now, alcoholism as I knew it was my mother's family. And when they would drink, they would get mean, and they would fight with one another, and they would hurt one another.
And so to me, that's what an alcoholic was. Someone got out, got to drinking, came home, beat his wife up, what have you, and that was alcoholism. So you see, it was easy for me to identify it when the boy next door got it. He would go out drinking, come home, beat his wife up. He's one of them. Very simple. Now, it wasn't so simple after all because, see, this little old girl was pregnant. And that just really burnt me up to see him do her that way.
And the night she was to go into labor, she came over to my house. He'd come in drunk, beat her up. And her eye was turning blue, and her nose was bleeding. And she asked me if I'd take her to the hospital. And I went over to his house, and he was laying on that bed with that little smirk. You know how they get that smirk when they pass out? And I looked at him, and I said, you know, somebody ought to whip that sucker.
And that's where I had my first spiritual awakening. I'm somebody. So I tied him up in his dead sheet. I took a slant out of his bed, and I beat the fool out of him. Now, little did I know this was going to be a preview to coming attraction, that I was going to become violent when put around alcoholic behavior that crossed the line of what I considered acceptable. Little did I know what was transpiring.
Now, the men lived on the other side. Have you ever noticed how we seem to be carriers or something? Because they're always around us. There's a lot of them, you know. Well, this poor old soul lived on the other side of me. We'd go to the doctor. The doctor told him he had a drinking problem. He was going to die, so he never drank anymore. But he might as well have, because, I mean, he was just, oh, that man was so dry.
He was so miserable. And he did die a couple of years later. But during this period of time, you see, I've always been a night person. I like the night. I just, this is my time. God, I love it. And so I would go to bed around 7 in the morning, and Freeman would get out with 8 o'clock in the morning and run a tiller in his garden. That's so unreasonable. Why couldn't he garden in the afternoon? So I went out there to explain to him that I was trying to sleep over here, and he told me to shut my mouth and get my fat ass back in the house.
Well, see, he didn't know about mama and them fish. So I went down, and I found my daddy's fog-digging headlight, and I got me a battery and put it on my belt, and I mowed my grass at 1130 at night. Well, the sheriff came to see me. Have you ever noticed how the law enforcement people are narrow-minded? They really are. So I went into plan B. Any good Ellen on Canada has to have contingency plans. So plan B was Freeman had six beagles.
Now, if you've ever had one beagle dog, you know how they beep, beep, beep, beep? Well, six of them is a chorus, I mean, to do. So I'd wait till 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, and I would take a broom handle, run up and down his dog yard fence, run back in my porch. He'd come out. Those dogs would be screaming and hollering. He'd come out in his underwear, and he'd hose them down, scream at them, kiss at them, and then he'd go back in the house.
I'd wait 30 minutes, and we'd do it one more time. Well, the sheriff came to see me. And there were several little things, but the bottom line was every time, the sheriff came to see me. So I got to deciding that, you know, I was getting too familiar with the sheriff and that perhaps I'd better leave Freeman alone and go to find some excitement elsewhere. And it was about that time that we decided we'd have a neighborhood softball team.
Now, that just sounded fun. So I knew that I was going to have to get in shape, so I lost 100 pounds of weight, and I got me some stretch pants and, yeah, some hot pants and stretch boots, and I was going to, you know, lead the team. And I just loved it. I just thought it was wonderful, and it was a mixed team, and we had people all different ages. And what we'd do after a game, we'd go back over to somebody's house, and we'd have a few drinks, and we'd discuss our strategy, and we just had a lot of fun.
Well, it was my turn to have everybody over at my house. It was around Mother's Day, and one of the players was a young man who was 18 years of age, which was not legal age to drink in Arkansas. And he had bought his mother a China tea set for her Mother's Day present, and he got drunk at my house. Well, I did not want him to drive home and get picked up by the sheriff and for the sheriff to find out where he'd gotten the booze, so I decided I'd drive him home.
[00:25:06]
Now, you've got to picture this. Now, here it is in the wee hours of the morning. I'm driving a drunk 18-year-old kid home, going in his house. He turns the light on in his bedroom. I'm standing there holding this little China tea set, and there's a man laying on the bed with nothing on but his underwear. And he looks up and said, Hot damn, little brother, you brought us a broad home. And I said, Not tonight, fella.
Well, that's the man I'm married to today. Now, for the life of me, that did not seem bizarre at the time, because, see, bizarre was everyday for me. I loved it. It was exciting, and that's how we met. Well, we didn't start dating immediately. It was several months later before we actually got together, but that was our first meeting, and I always tell that because I think it's significant to realize how crazy I was before I got into active alcoholism.
Because, you know, I think, as Al and I have many times, we are very quick to tell you that I wouldn't be this way if he hadn't have done this or they hadn't have done that. You know, we get into that little blaming deal. And, you know, with blaming, if it's somebody else's fault, there's no hope for us because we're powerless. But if it's my fault, then there's hope for me because I can change that.
And that's what one of my babies told me the other day, and I think he's doing real well in the program. I may keep him on. But he put it just as plain and simple as anything I ever heard. So, anyway, J.D. and I started dating, and the big promoter of our relationship was his mother. She was so thrilled for me. You see, he'd been living at home with her. Now, J.D. was a practicing alcoholic, and I didn't know that because, you see, I knew everything there was to know about alcoholism because of Grandma and Grandpa and all my aunts and uncles.
But he didn't drink like they drank. He didn't do like they did. So he wasn't an alcoholic. And so we began to have a little meg around named Denial at our house. Now, when it really got to bother me was a couple of years after we got married. Now, there were some strange things that happened in the interim. Like, for instance, Christmas came around, and we had friends over, and I said, Would y'all like a drink?
And they said, Yeah. And I went to the bar, and we'd been robbed. We had a fully stocked bar the month before, and it was totally empty, and he came and helped me look for it. And then he went out for a cup of coffee one night and was gone for three days. And when he got back, he came in with this little grin like he'd been gone ten minutes. And the tragedy to that was, in thirty minutes, he'd convinced me he had.
That fast talking for slow thinking will get you every time. Because, you see, we believe what we want to believe. We see what we want to see, and we hear what we want to hear. And the truth has nothing to do with it. Nothing. Well, J.D. has cravings other than alcohol. And one of those cravings… I love the look on her face. We haven't got to that one yet. He had a craving for things, and he decided that he needed a metal storage building better than life itself.
He had to have one. So, our relationship has changed now, because, you see, I've gone to work, and the more I work, the less he works. You know, if I'd taken another job, he wouldn't have had to work at all. But things are beginning to change, and our relationship is changing. We're no longer husband and wife. We're mother and child. And this was really confusing to me, because, you see, it was to be the match made in heaven.
God knows he told me he needed me, and I needed to be needed. And did you know need is better than love? They'll keep you longer. Just think about that a minute. And so I got him that storage building like a good mama. I bought it, and it was $88 for an 8-by-10 building, which was, you know, a long time ago. Well, it stayed in the box that they delivered it in until the box rotted off. But he had to have it.
And so finally, when I threatened to have it towed off to the dump, And so finally, when I threatened to have it towed off to the dump, he came out there and fortified himself and began to put it together. Now, the first thing he did was he found that little piece of paper that said directions, wadded it up, and threw it away. So you don't tell him how to do anything either. But the foreman was on the job.
And she found the little piece of paper, and she began to make the observation that it was all wrong, and he said, what's the matter?
[00:30:04]
And I said, you're putting the roof on the floor, dummy. Didn't seem to bother him too much. And then I got to looking, and he was using a little old screwdriver, about two or three inches long, to put it together. And that really perturbed me, and I said, where's all those tools I bought you? And he said, I don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know? And he said, they just get away from me.
Well, now that is not an acceptable response. So I flew into a rage and began to tell him about the fortune I had been spending on all these tools, and where was our stuff? And how could he do this, and how could he? And I just went into a complete fit, got in the car, oh, I'll fix it. And I drove across two cities to the largest seer store in Arkansas, and by the time I got there, having custody of him all the way there, and him still in the backyard, I arrived like Attila the Hun come to conquer.
And I walked into the hardware department, and the little man who was my victim, he came walking over, and he said, may I help you? And I said, I need a screwdriver! Do we have somebody who hasn't been CPR'd? We just lost one down here. She jumped a foot and a half. And I said, I want a screwdriver. And he said, well, what kind did you want? And I said, I don't know! And he said, well, lady, there's a whole wall full of screwdrivers.
He said, give me one every time. So I left Sears with $138 worth of screwdrivers to put an $88 building together. His drinking cost me lots of money. It was long before human matters began to go. Things began to really affect me. You know, we played hide and seek. He'd hide and I'd seek him. Now, in the beginning, in the beginning, I went with him, and I drank with him, and I had a good time, and we danced, and we had lots of fun.
And isn't it funny how we sell them a bad bill of goods? Because after a while, they're still doing the same thing, but we don't want to anymore. And we're the ones that change, not them. And they're looking at us, and we're saying, we don't want to do this anymore, and you shouldn't do it anymore. And they don't understand, and I can understand them not understanding today. But it wasn't fun for me anymore, so I quit going with him.
Well, there seemed to be a problem. He didn't like to go by himself. That was another addiction of his. So I would go looking, you know, and I'd see his car parked at one of these places, and I'd go in, and sure enough, there he'd be, over yonder at the back with her. And I was just forced to do it. I had to walk, I had to walk across that old bar, stinky bar, turn that table upside down, slam her flat, pour a drink in his face, and the bouncer would throw me out.
And I'm just there trying to save my home. Now, every once in a while, I'd make the mistake of fighting the bouncer. Now, I don't know about up here, but down home, honey, they hire gorillas. But gorillas have feelings, and they pursue that with great vigor in them and with things called assault charges. And J.D. stayed in the bar, and I went to jail. Now, J.D.'s never been barred from a bar, but I've been barred from three Henna Pawn Shops.
Whole sober. But you know, I wasn't really sober. I was drunk on emotion. I was drunk on fear. I was drunk on anger. I was drunk on frustration. All of those things, sitting at home wondering where's he at, who's he with, what are they doing? Drive you crazy? Absolutely drive you crazy. And I know that you know what I'm talking about. Well, I've got this big good job. I really did. I had a really, really good job.
And it was an occasion that I was in charge of all the public relations and advertising for the largest insurance company in Arkansas. And we were having a big blowout at the country club. And it was a command performance, and you had to take them with you. And I was so afraid that he was going to embarrass me.
[00:35:03]
I was just horrified. Now, my hair was real long. I had my hair back in those days all this gray. That's his fault. Mother Nature had nothing to do with that. But anyway, I had this long hair, and I had it all put up on top of my head, sort of like Elizabeth Taylor with all those little cascades. And I went out and bought this blue velvet material, and I had my mama to make me a dress, because, you know, she was a good dressmaker.
And use them to the better end, you know. And I decided I wanted to get all just really, really pretty for this occasion. So after with my fancy do and my fancy dress, I ran over to Merle Norman and had them to do my face. And this was where it got a little hairy because, you see, they convinced me that I needed some false eyelashes. Now, I don't know how many people out here wear false eyelashes, but they don't weigh nothing on your finger.
But on your eyelid, they weigh at least six pounds an eye. And you look like you've been on drugs for about two days. And you bare your eyes a lot, and you almost frog yourself to death. And I had all this on, and I thought, God, I look gorgeous, you know. What I could see. Well, off we went to the country club, and I'm telling him, now, don't you dare embarrass me. Well, we got to the country club, and I'm sitting there at the table, and all of a sudden, I look across the room, and there's a woman with a dress on just like mine.
Well, now, see there, ladies, you know what that's like. And I sit there, and I said, now, how could that be? Now, Mama made my dress, and I designed it. How in the hell could that be? And I sit there, and I made observations about that woman all night long. I said, well, I'll tell you, mine looks a lot better on me than it does on her. And everybody at my table would just grin and laugh and say, sure does.
And they went on and went on, and finally, the curiosity overwhelmed me, and I had to find out where she got the dress. So I walked over to meet her, and as I did, she came over to meet me. Because, you see, I'd been looking in a mirrored wall all night long. I didn't want him to embarrass me. See, all he did was put a pink on the brush outside. And they might have missed that if I hadn't have said, how could you stand there and pink on the brush?
So, you know, there I was, trying to be something I wasn't, and I got caught in the act. But, you know, see, God was sending me messages all along, and I just couldn't hear him. I just couldn't hear him. And then, he came the day of the famous ultimatum, in which I said, you must quit drinking. And he said, well, I can't. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. I can't drink. And then, he came the day of the ultimatum, in which I said, you must quit drinking, or you can't live here anymore.
And I've thrown him out many times and got his clothes back in before daylight. But this time, I mean it. You know, it gets to a point where, you know, you have to throw in the towel, and you just can't make it. And he said, I don't know why I do what I do. I don't mean to do what I do. And I must be sick. And I said, that's it, you're sick. We'll take you to the doctor. So we went to the family doctor.
And he said, you know, I've been drinking on a regular basis. I've got all sorts of problems. And you'd say, is there any problem at home? No! God forbid there should be any problem in my home. Because you know how we lie. And we hate liars. God, we hate liars. And the doctor told him, he said, if you've got a drinking problem, you need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And he was very offended. And he said, I'm not an alcoholic.
And I said, that's right, he's not. And I meant it, because see, he still wasn't like Grandpa and Grandma. He wasn't like that at all. So we went home, but J.D. told him what he wanted was, he and a bunch of friends that were taking this little pill called Antabuse, and he just knew, don't you love it, all his friends were on the pill. And he said, I know that if I just had a little help, and what I heard was, if he took that pill, he couldn't drink.
Now that's not the truth, but that's what I heard, because that's what I wanted to hear. So I went home with my little bottle of Antabuse, because see, I didn't trust him to take it. He lied about everything. Now, by this time, I've got high blood pressure and epileptic dog, and J.D.'s on the pill. Well, in the morning, getting going to work, I can't guarantee you who got what, but everybody got a pill.
And now, the worst period of my life is coming, because J.D.'s not drinking. And that's worse, because you see, all these years, if you not drink, I'll be okay. Well, he wasn't drinking, and I wasn't okay. And my disease really began to show up, but I couldn't accept the fact that there was something wrong with me. I was still into denial, and it was still his disease, and I was still into denial,
[00:40:00]
and he was still into denial, and I was still into denial. And it was still his fault. Now, I will say that living with someone who's stark raving sober is not exactly a joy ride. You know, we had little daily confrontations. I call them that now. They were cuss fights, what they were. But I'd say something like, honey, what would you like for dinner? And he'd say, anything. And I'd say, well, how about fried chicken?
He'd say, no, I don't want fried chicken. And I'd say, well, what do you want? And he'd say, anything. And I'd say, how about spaghetti? And he'd say, I hate spaghetti. And I said, well, what do you want? And he'd say, anything. And then finally I'd get anything cooked, and he'd look at it, and he said, I'm not eating that. And I said, well, you've got a choice. You can eat it or wear it. And many times he chose to wear it.
So this sobriety wasn't what I thought it was going to be. So I kept looking at him, though, and it's his fault. And then I figured out what we needed here. I needed to be a widow. You see, if he'd just die, I'd be okay. I would be in good standing. I wouldn't have the stigma of being forced again, for God's sake. It had dignity to it. But he was taking a long time to die. And I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on this.
Now, like I said, I worked for an insurance company, and every time I got mad at him over the years, I'd get more insurance, and he was worth a lot more debt. He was worth more than a million dollars And I began to think, now, you know, there's not a court in the world that finds you guilty. If they knew I was having to live, now think about it, if we'd got you before you got here, you'd have let me off.
You really would. But, you see, I read in the paper where a woman had it on, and they put her away. And I said, well, now that leaves out some of my best methods, because, see, my favorite was taking an ice pick, stabbing him in the neck, and watching him drip. I dreamed about it at night. It was wonderful. And then I thought about biking over him with the car tires. God, that was good. You could just feel him ooze.
Now, I didn't recognize this was mental and emotional illness on my part. It seemed logical and sane. There was nothing wrong with it. And then, like we say, when they put the woman away, I knew I'd have to do something different. And that's when I came up with the perfect crime. If a drunk were to pass out and drown in the tub, who would know? I still think it'd work. So make a note. So I just followed that away in the back of my head.
But if you're like me, if you think on something long enough, you're liable to act upon it. And I didn't know that about me. And we went on, and a year to the week that J.D. went on interviews, J.D. got drunk. And when he came in the driveway, it was ice and snow at home, and he quipped off our cast-iron hitch-and-post horse, he banged into the side of the tree, he hit the house, and then he opened the truck door and poured out.
It was bad weather, and then when I saw him pour out, I'd seen that too many times. And I looked out my living room window, and it wasn't I was new to violence and what have you, because, you see, violence had entered our home a long time before he would come in from drinking. And I would say, have you been drinking? The most brilliant question that we asked. And he would say, only two. If I ever heard anybody say they have six, I'd know they're not an alcoholic.
Or none. And then I'd say, you're a liar, and he'd say, so what, and I'd have to put him out of my misery. Well, it wasn't like that today, because, you see, when I looked out that window after thinking about that murder for about a year, I said, I'll kill that S.O.B. if it's the last thing I ever do. And when he opened that front door, I hit him with all I was worth, and he fell, and he hit the coffin.
I hated his guts, and I wanted him dead. I didn't want to live like that anymore. But then a voice came on the inside of my head, and it said, look what you're doing. You can't do this. And I picked him up by the hair of the head, and I said, the hell I can't. And I picked him up by the hair of the head and I said, the hell I can't, and I put him back down again. Now I don't know about you, but when you're talking and answering voices in your head, there's something wrong.
[00:45:03]
And I'm watching him laying there in the bottom of the tub, and all of a sudden the voice came back and it said, you're taking the life, you're committing murder of someone you once loved. And that, dear friends, liked to have scared me to death. Because I realized in that moment of clarity that I had become an animal to fight a disease. That I was taking a life, a human life, and trying to justify that kind of behavior.
And I jerked him out of that tub, and thank God for having worked for the Red Cross. And I was able to resuscitate him. And I drug him into our bedroom and I dried him off and I put him in bed and I got the hair dryer down and dried his hair. And I didn't want him to catch a cold. We're crazy people, you know. And then I shut the door on that room and I left and I didn't go back for three days. Now, in the room, now I could hear him scream and I could hear him holler and I could hear him beg for help.
And I wouldn't go in that room because, you see, I still wanted to kill him. And I was afraid of me and what I would do if I went in there. And J.D. liked to die in that room. He liked to hemorrhage to death. See, I didn't know anything about alcoholism. And J.D. had drank too much in a short period of time. His body had lost the ability to pass out and he had gone into alcohol poisoning. And it is only by the grace of God that he lived over that.
Through no help of mine. Well, I went on to work as if nothing had happened. You know how we put our big front up. And, you see, I used my two best friends, justification and rationalization, and I said, if he hadn't have done that, I wouldn't have had to done this. And you can justify murder that simple. It's all it takes. Well, I came home one day and J.D. was sitting there shaking at our bar. He looked like he could thread a sewing machine, knit a moving.
And he said, I must be an alcoholic. Well, you call alcoholics anonymous for me. And I looked at him and I said, what could a group of drunks do for you that I haven't done? I was very, very resentful of that statement. And he said, I don't know, but I know I'm going to die if I don't get some help. And he said, if that's what it takes for me to say I'm an alcoholic, I'll be an alcoholic. But I've got to live.
So I called A.A. for him. He was shaking so hard he couldn't even dial the phone correctly. And there was a meeting six blocks away from our home in one hour's time. Now, you want to know the irony of that? The local A.A. group meet in a building built in the 1930s by a man who died in the state hospital from the disease of alcoholism who was my grandfather. And my husband found a way to live in that very same building.
But we didn't know that was going to happen. And I took him over there, but I didn't want to be around a room full of drunks. And then they humiliated me. They thought I was the drunk and he was the Al-Anon. I was so mad that I went home and I didn't go back over to the old place. I had been in that building when I was a kid. I went to scout meetings. But there was two Al-Anons in that group. That group had only been in existence three months.
And they sent literature home by my husband every time he went to his meeting. And I wouldn't read that mess, but I didn't throw it away. Why don't we do what we do? And there came a night when J.D. didn't come home from the meeting. And I didn't know that people stayed late and talked to one another. I didn't know they stayed up all night like we do. And so I just knew that he and that guy… Now, his sponsor looked worse than Grandpa did when we laid him away.
I was not impressed with alcoholics and Al-Anons. And so I knew that the both of them went out drunk somewhere. And in that literature, I found out that J.D. And in that literature was a card, just a plain white calling card, and it said, If you ever want to talk, call Earlene, in a number. And so I called Earlene that night, and it was around midnight. And I woke her up and I told her that they were out drunk, and I knew it.
And she told me, no, chances are they were talking, and I knew they was talking about me. And she said, no, they're probably talking about alcoholism and how it affects him. She said, why don't you come on and go to Al-Anon? I said, well, honey, there's nothing wrong with me. And she said, I didn't call you. And when I went, they informed me that my best thinking got me there. But I started going to Al-Anon because, see, another terrible, terrible thing happened.
I've always been motivated by crisis. And this crisis was J.D. got sober and J.D. lost his job. Now, he worked one or two, sometimes three days a week, drunk on the job, and got sober, and they fired him. And I said, that ain't a tacky thing for God to do. Because, you see, I had no God in my understanding.
[00:50:02]
The God that I had been raised with as a child, when my father died when I was 12 years old, God could take him, God killed him as far as I was concerned, and I turned my back on that, and I walked away from any type of relationship with a higher power. And so when I started going to those meetings, and they told me that I was going to have to develop a higher power, I just rebelled. I just wouldn't.
And I looked at another lady that became my sponsor, and I let her be my higher power for a long time. And that's okay. Because, you see, I let the God in her talk to me. And I would listen. And I couldn't have done it another way. Well, the way I… Now, I've shown you a little bit what I used to be like. Now, I'm going to tell you now what happened. And we may be here to midnight. But what happened was, I had to come to believe, because, you see, that was the turning point in my life.
The first step just admits what my problem is, but the second step is my solution, and that's coming to believe. And I'm going to tell you how I came to believe. Because, like I say, I believed in my sponsor. When my car was giving me trouble, and I think God gives me lessons, and if I just pay attention to the lesson, it's sort of funny now looking back over it, I can see it so much clearer. My carburetor had trash in it.
And it wouldn't run right. And it had a lack of power. And whenever that trash would clog those little jets, it'd turn itself off. And so they told me at the service station I needed my carburetor cleaned out and rebuilt so that it could get the power. And I told them I couldn't afford that because J.D. had lost his job, and he'd been off work for several months, and I didn't know when we was going to get it done.
I just couldn't. So he said, well, you take care of it. So he said, well, you take this little bottle of gasoline, you take the breather off, and you pour it down the carburetor. It'll backfire. And when it does, it may dislodge enough of that trash where you can go on, and that's what I do. And then it got to where I was having to put that gasoline in every time I turn around. Now, that's called frustration.
And I don't deal well with frustration. And so after he was having to do it two or three times a day, and then it got to be every time you turn around, it got old. And I was so frustrated. But, you know, you go to the meetings, and you go to the meetings, and you hear the stuff. And then one day, you actually listen to what they're saying. You know? And I had heard, let go and let God, let go and let God.
So I figured, okay, I'm going to give him a test and see if he's there. And I said, God, this is Mary Pearl Thompson. I live at 409 Healy Street. Gave him my whole address and zip code. Now, y'all may think that's silly, but, you see, I needed to know for sure if God knew who he was talking to. And I thought, and I said, my car, all I ask is just to get me home. It don't want to run right. It's been stopping and doing all this stuff on me, and I need help.
Now, they tell me there's action to take, so I'll pour the gas in one last time, and then it's your baby, and I'm not going to mess with it no more. So I went up there, and I put the gas in, and I started it, and it choked, and it sputtered, and it died. And I said, God, it ain't going to get there that way. I said, now, you're going to have to straighten it out for it to get me there. It just ain't going to get there that way.
And so I turned it on, and I want you to know it started up, and it ran like a little jewel, and I drove straight home. Now, that's not a big deal, is it? But I can tell you something. When I drove in that driveway, I got out of that car, and for the first time in my life, I got on my knees by my car, and I thanked the power I didn't really know or understand for doing what I asked him to do. And that's why I came to believe that God knew who I was and where I lived and that he might care about what happened to me.
I got just that little smidgen of belief that maybe, maybe this deal might work for me. And you know, there's people that said, that's just a coincidence. I said, you can call it anything you want to, but my sponsor said, honey, a coincidence is just where God prefers to remain anonymous. She says, that's those little miracles. Now, I'm going to tell you, those little miracles, they happen when you need them.
And you don't know that. And you think that, you know, God may be slow, but he's never late. So here it was, we was going along, and we lacked $130, having enough to make it that week. And I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew I had to have $130 or we was going under, and there wasn't any way for it to begin because I wasn't getting paid. It wasn't my payday. So I had said, well, God, you know what the situation is here.
And so I went on and went to work. And I was sitting in my office, and Thursday afternoon they called me, and they said, we need to see you around in personnel. And I thought, well, maybe somebody needs evaluating or what have you. And I went around, and I said, what is it? And she said, you know, the auditors were in, and we made a mistake on your pay last year, and we shorted you $140. So God gave me what we needed, and he also threw in some extra too.
So I found out then that, see, my God wants not only what my needs are,
[00:55:03]
but he wants me to be happy in some of my wants too. And I began to believe a little more. And then J.D. and I were talking about we'd really like to go to that conference, and everybody tells us about going to the conference, and we wanted to go, but you can't afford to go when you can't even afford to live. And my sponsor said, well, why don't you pray about it? And this was to start something for me and J.D. too that we had no idea.
And we got on the floor by our bed, and we held hands together, and we prayed together for the first time on something. And we said, God, if it be your will, we'd love to go to that conference. And the next day when I got to the office, I used the watch line, and I called down to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where they were going to hold the conference, and I made reservations not knowing how in the world we were going to get there.
And that was the 21st of June. And 30 minutes later, J.D. called me, and he had a job. Now, J.D. decided before the conference came that he needed a new suit, and I looked at him like he was crazy because, see, I had such a lifestyle because I made such good money for such a long time that I couldn't feature having a suit less than $500 or $600. You know, I mean, I was just, you know, such a snob. And so, I mean, I had to put it.
And he said, we can't afford anything like that. But I had gotten this little flyer in the mail that said, four-piece suit, $49.95, and I laughed. I said, it couldn't be much. But we were desperate because, you see, he didn't know you could go to a conference and be casual. We had no idea. And we didn't know what questions to ask people, so he thought he'd have to have a suit. So we had been saving our money, and saving our money, we knew exactly what our room was going to cost.
We knew we'd eat cheese and crackers in the room because we couldn't afford to eat in the hotel. I'm sure some of you all know what that's all about, scraping and saving to be able to just go and to be a part of something. And so I sent off for that suit because nothing ventured, nothing gained, and we prayed about it. Now, when the suit came, we still liked that $35 that we didn't know how we was going to make it.
But we believed that if it was supposed to be, it would come. Now, Jamie was trying on that suit, and I'm here to tell you that was a beautiful suit. He was wearing two pairs of pants, a reversible vest, and a jacket. It was gorgeous. And he was reaching down, and he said, there's an inspection slip or something wadded up in his pocket. And he reached in there and pulled out a 20, a 10, and a 5. Now, you know, I would never have thought to tell God to do it that way.
And up to that point, I had been limiting God. You know, have you ever put God in a box and expect it a certain way and not give God the full attitude to do it as he sees fit? See, he was just showing me that he could do it in a way that would be so bizarre. And J.D. and I sit there, and we held one another, and we cried. We just couldn't believe it. Now, we went to that conference, and I want you to know that we didn't eat cheese and crackers in the room because there were people that invited us that whole conference to come and eat lunch with us, come and have a meal with us.
And they had a big banquet, and the banquet tickets were very expensive. And we were sitting in our room thinking about it would be nice to go to the banquet, and we would watch it on closed-circuit TV when the speaker… And all of a sudden, we heard a little rustling movement at the door, and somebody put two banquet tickets under our door, and we have no idea who. We got to do everything and be a part of…
And thank God we've been able to return that favor to others over the years. That has been one of the neatest things, is to be able to do what others did for us. God has been very good to us. Well, things went on, and we were getting a little better. A little better here and a little better there. And I found that I got to work in the steps like… I don't know if any of y'all ever did the Al-Anon waltz.
One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Well, when you waltz, you go around in circles. I want you to remember that. And my sponsor suggested I might take an inventory. Oh, it was terrifying, because you see, I didn't want anybody to know, because if you knew what I knew about this one, you wouldn't love me no more. And I was afraid. But you don't grow. And if you don't grow, you'll go.
And that scared me, because I wanted to stay. Because I found people who loved me, and see, I hadn't felt love since my daddy died. And I had found that kind of love, because, see, it was called acceptance. Y'all accepted me just like I was, and you invited me to grow. So I took that fourth step, and then my life really began to change. Things really began to change for me, because that was when we got into action.
And I think a lot of times, if we're not careful, we confuse activity with action. And we're busy, busy, busy, but we're not doing anything. And we're busy, busy, busy, but we're not doing anything, and that's what I did until after I took a fourth step, and then I had to take a fifth step. I think that with newcomers, they ought to let, you know, do like on the quiz show, just take off the top one, and say, okay, when you get one done, then we'll show you two, and then take off.
[01:00:05]
Because, see, I kept looking at five, and that kept me slowed down on four for a long time. Scary! You're gonna have to tell somebody else, and you know what I did, and the world went on? I was suffering from terminal uniqueness, and this little saint that I did my inventory with told me, you hadn't done nothing I hadn't done or thought about, and I just wanted to hit her. And then I just wanted to hold her, because she told me it was okay.
And when we got through, she told me, she said, now Mary Pearl, she said, you can put this garbage in the past where it belongs, and she said, you got a clean sheet of paper to write on now. Now go forth and live. Ask God to forgive you, and she prayed with me. She prayed with me when we started, she prayed with me when we ended. When I left there, I was stepping high over the weeds. I felt like I was one with my creator, just like the book promises.
I could feel the nearness of God. I felt different when I left that house that day, and I've never had to feel dirty. I've never had to feel that shame. I have never had to feel those things anymore, unless I decide to choose to do that, because I didn't have to do it, because I'd been forgiven, and I accepted that. Now, she said, you got to move on, though. And things weren't happening while all this was going on.
We hit another big turning point. J.D. got cancer, and it like just scared me to death. Now, I don't know about you, but if you've got a bad habit, it seems like it always turns up when something bad happens. And my habit was blaming God, why'd you let this happen? And so I went right back to that, and I got mad at God all over again. And I wouldn't tell anybody about it, because you see, if you don't talk about it, maybe it really won't happen.
It's scary, and I didn't want to share that with anybody. And so one of the girls I sponsored called me that night, and she said, Murp, what's the matter? Because she could tell I was crying, and I said, I'll end, I can't talk about it. And she got off the phone, and she called everybody in our group. And she said, let's pray for Murp, something's wrong. And between 11 and midnight that night, a peace came over me that passed as all understanding.
And I didn't know if J.D. was going to live or J.D. was going to die, but I knew it was going to be all right, whatever happened. And the fear left me that night, never to return. That fear of that cancer. And J.D. had the surgery, and he's been fine, and that's been over nine years ago. God is a powerful God. God is very big. Very big. Okay, in the seventh, eighth, and ninth steps, when I became willing to have my character defects removed, and allow God to work in my life, and became willing to clean up the mess that I had made in my life, one of those things that I needed to do was mend that relationship with the warden, you know.
You know, you know. That was hard. That was a hard deal, because I'd hated her all those years. But I just had this feeling inside of me that if she were to die and it wasn't right between us, I didn't think I'd ever get over that. Because I began by talking to people who had been raised in alcoholism, and I knew their life was not a bed of roses, and I knew that's where hers was. She had been raised in that alcoholic home.
And God sent, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, and God sent a girl from Missouri down to Arkansas for a year to help me with this. And Betty had had problems with her mother, and she said, Mark, the first thing I see about you is that you do not accept your own limitations. And because you don't, you don't accept your mother's limitations either. And I didn't want to hear that. Have you ever wanted to hear what you needed to hear?
Makes you mad, don't it? And I said, oh, Betty, that's not… She said, no, you don't accept your limitations where your mother's concerned any more than you can accept hers where you're concerned. And she said, why don't you let go and let God be your mama as well as your father? And I said, but Betty, that's giving up a dream. I said, that's a dream I've had all my life, about this wonderful relationship that I wanted to have with a mother and never had.
And she said, Mark, that's all it is. It's a dream, honey. She said, give up the fantasy so you can work on reality. And it like to broke my heart going home that night in that car. I was fighting it with every fiber of my being, and I was crying. It was killing me to give up the idea that I was ever going to have a relationship with my mother, a healthy one. Just give it up and give it to God. And I asked God if he would love me and give me the kind of love that I always wanted for my mama, because obviously she didn't have it to give me, or she wouldn't.
I didn't know which. And then after that, after a time, you know, healing takes place in stages for me. And then Betty said one day, she said, have you ever thought to let God, ask God to let you see your mother like he sees her?
[01:05:02]
No. Never in my mind. And she said, well, you know, I bet you she looks different to God than she does to you. I said, Mama always looks mean and ornery and formidable to me. And so then I waited. I wouldn't do it right away, but one day I give up and I said, OK. And on the way over to my mother's, I said, God, if it be your will, let me see Mama today as you see her. And when I drove in the driveway, there was this little old woman standing there raking leaves in the backyard.
She looked so frightened. She looked alone. She looked like she needed loving real bad, like some of us do when we first come in the program. You know, that soul sickness. And I looked at my mama and my heart hurt. I had compassion for my mama. And I walked over to my mama and I put my arms around her, stepped up and said, we don't touch in our family. We don't do any of that. But you see, I needed to do that for me.
And then more time went on. And then one day I realized that the deal with Daddy and I was not a healthy deal. And that those rules and regulations that Mama heaped on me all the time that made my life miserable just happened to be some of the principles that I was trying to live today in this program. And I didn't know how to tell her. See, I was beginning to see her in a different light once I became willing.
And then one day I was going to the bank and when I left the bank, the voice came in my head and it said, go see your mama today. And I don't know about y'all, but when I obey the voice, my days go a lot better. And some days I'm just in a better frame of mind to do that than others. Some days I say, hang on, do it. But I didn't do that that day. I went by my mother's and we got to talking about something that happened when Daddy died.
And she said, do you remember it this way? And I said, no, I remember it that way. And usually those are frightened words Mama would say. You calling me a liar and we'd just get into it bad. But she didn't say that this time. She said, you know, memories are how we choose to remember them. They're not necessarily the truth. And you were 12 years old and I was 54 years old. She said, there ain't no telling where the truth may lie there in the middle.
And I thought, God, that was profound for a mother. And she said, you know, I always wondered why you were such an ornery kid, especially after your daddy died. And I said, well, because I wish that God had killed you instead of Daddy. I couldn't understand why God would take the only person who loved me because you didn't. And she said, what do you mean I didn't love you? And I said, Mama, you never ever once told me you loved me.
You never put your arms around me. You never held me. You only told me when I did bad. You never gave me a good stroke. You never said you did well. I never got a positive stroke from my mother that I could remember. And she said, but I gave you a roof over your head. I gave you food to eat and I gave you clothes to wear. It was more than I had. You see, my mother left home when she was 13 because her father tried to rape her in a drunken stupor.
She had lived out of garbage cans and under the railroad trestles. She had been on her own. And it hit me all of a sudden. My God, my God, I have been asking for my mother all these years something that she had not the comprehension of. When a person gives their best, that's all there is. And I had put that unreasonable demand on my mother all those years to give me something she didn't have. You know, we learned love.
And she didn't have any teachers. And for the first time in my life, I could be compassionate with her and look at her and understand and forgive her for not doing all those things. And I said, Mama, could you forgive me for what I have done to you all these years? And the things that I have done that have hurt you, could you forgive? And she said, I'll try. And that's pretty good for someone who doesn't have a program.
And then I wasn't prepared for what she did next. She said, would you forgive me for not being the kind of mother you needed? But, you know, I believe she was the kind of mother I needed. I just wasn't able to accept it because it wasn't the way, it wasn't packaged like I thought it ought to be. And she put her arms around me and she held me and she said, baby, I love you. I've always loved you. And that healed the relationship with my mother and me.
And that doesn't mean that we get along perfectly every day. But I have never found it necessary to go back and pick up that hate or that anger, that seething, sick, soul anger that I had for my mother. And my mother's 85 today and she's in very poor health. And I'm able to do things for her because I want to. And I get freedom and enjoyment out of doing things for her that I didn't before.
[01:10:02]
I always dreaded being around her. And my mother can hold me. And I want you to know this past Mother's Day, my mother reached up and she kissed me and she said, you're so very special. And I love you so much. I would never have had that without your help and without my higher power. Now, I could never have children. And that was one of the things that bothered me for a long time. But in this program, I have lots of children, lots of babies.
And we were talking about childhood dreams. And I was telling them, I said, you know, when I was a kid, I went to the livestock show parade and we had an all black high school in Little Rock. And they had girl majorettes. We didn't have any at the school that I went to back in those days. And those girls could strut. I'm not kidding you. And they had those boots with them tassels. And I just knew if I had a pair of them boots, I could walk like that.
But I never got them. I always asked for them. Every New Christmas I asked for them. From the time I was like five, six, seven, eight, nine, never got them. And I asked Mama about that one day. I said, Mama, what was with the boots? Why couldn't I have the majorette boots? She said, well, you're such a tomboy, you'd never kept them clean. And I thought, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard in my life.
But see, that's my mother. And I understand how she thinks. And that's okay. And we were talking about that one night. And I never gave no more thought to it. A year or so after that, it was around Christmas. And one of the girls I sponsored called. She said, I'm having bad problems. Can I come by before the meeting? And I said, come on. And when she walked in the house, about 25 of the girls I sponsored came tearing in with her.
And I'm here to tell you, I have my drummajorette boots. Not only that, I've got the drummajorette hat with the big, red croon and the baton. The big baton. And I want you to know that we marched and I led to the meeting. And I want you to know, a child could never have appreciated those boots like a 40-year-old woman did. That, to me, was one of the most touching things because they loved me enough to make my dreams come true.
They loved me so much. The growth steps are 10, 11, and 12. And I try to practice these as best I can, one day at a time. And I have found that the relationship that I have with that God I didn't understand when I was going down the highway in that car, I know how very special I am to that God today. And I know that I'm one of God's kids. And God is my king. And I am his princess. Because I'm a child of the king.
And as such, he has promised me special gifts. And I am one of God's kids, happy, joyous, and free because of what you gave me. I am so very grateful. My life is but a weaving between my God and me. I do not choose the colors, but he'll work it steadily. Off times and sorrows, sometimes finished pride, I forget he sees the top while I the underside. Not till the moon is silent and the shuttles cease to fly will God unroll that canvas and explain the reasons why.
But the dark threads are as needful in a skillful weaver's hand as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern God has planned. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for having me.