Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 5 – Date Unknown

Audio

Transcript

Source: Mary T. (Pearl) – Traditions in Healthy Relationships – Part 5 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: mary-t-pearl-traditions-in-healthy-relationships-part-5-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:19:11

============================================================

I said, we'll not let him do this to us, this is our day to go grocery shopping and looking about and having fun, this is our day, and we are going to have our day. I said, I'm going to show you how to get in. So I showed her how to turn sideways and get in. She fell in, the car rocks back and forth, and I got her turned around and just barely got the door shut, and then I go and fall in my side, shut the door, and every time I'd change gears, she'd get a spiritual experience.

We were wall to wall in that little car. Well, getting in is hard, getting out is worse. I did my normal thing, crawled out of the car, had my feet hung in the steering wheel, got out of the car, went around to the other side, and I said, come on, let's go, and she said, I can't. I said, what do you mean you can't? She said, I can't, I can't, I can't get out. And I said, why? She said, I'm stuck. I said, what do you mean?

She said, it's like vacuum or something, I'm just stuck, I'm stuck. So I've got one foot up on the car door and the other one over here, and I'm jerking. And when she came loose, she came loose real quick, and we're both laying out there, and we're rolling over on top of one another out in the parking lot. And there's a guy watching us, he's going, Lord have mercy, call the fire department. And I'm looking at him, and I think, I'm going to get to whip his ass for ever getting in the grocery store.

We went in and bought groceries. Now, I don't know what we thought we were going to do with groceries. There's no trunk in this thing, you know. It's the size of a glove compartment. I mean, it's just nothing. And so we took our groceries, and we got back out there, and we're standing there looking at the car. You know, we're sort of dumbfounded, like it didn't grow into a limo while we were gone. It needed miracle grow.

And so we began to take the stuff out and put it around behind the seat and down in the floorboard and whatever. And we got through the process. We got back in the car, and I drove it off, and we went a couple of blocks and broke the axle. Now, J.D. comes home from work that night, and he says, Where's my little darling? I said, It's in a ditch over on School Street. That's where it is. Where we pushed it.

And I told him, he says, My God, it has a 500-pound weight allowance. And I said, Who knew, and who cared? If you'd wanted that car, you should have taken it. I told you to leave me at the truck. So it's raining. It's just misty, drizzling rain. And we go over to get the truck. And all of a sudden, you know, there's nothing I hate worse than somebody trying to tell me what I already knew how to do.

It's like that anchor stuff with Mama, you know. And J.D. begins to try to tell me how to tow a car. And you know what he said? And don't floorboard it. Yes, I have a tendency to drive fast. But anybody with any kind of common sense would know you don't floorboard it, you know. And so it was cold, drizzling, and the GMC, the automatic choke was on because it was cold out. And I thought, Well, there'll be enough power just if I take my foot off the accelerator.

And sure enough, there was. He had this little piece of chain. He had hooked it on that little old car. And I mean, it came out and just ricocheted him across the street and broke that chain just quick as anything. And he came stomping up to the car. And he says, I told you. Not to floorboard it. And he begins to talk to me unlike a human being. I just sat there. So he went back there. And now the chain is shorter than it was.

And he hooks it back on to the truck. And he comes up there. And he's just hysterical, you know. That's all right. My thing is if you're going to carry the name, you might as well play the game. You know. I'm going to give him a reference point. So what I did is I floorboarded the car. And I floorboarded. Now, when you floorboard it from zero to nothing, I mean, whoa. You know, it took him. He went zip, zip, zip.

You know, and it almost turned him over. And it broke the chain again. But I mean, he had been on quite a ride out there in the middle of the street. And he came up there and he was just. And I said, now that's what happens when you floorboard it. Do you see the difference? So now he hooks the chain on again. It's four foot long now. He says, if you stop real quick, I'm going to be up under the truck.

You do understand that. And so what I understand is I can't please this man. So I just don't stop. I just take him home. Yes, there was a red light. Yes, there was a stop sign. I just didn't stop. Because I'm not going to do it properly. And then when I got to the end of the road. I slowed down real slowly, you know, and pulled in. And J.D. was just absolutely hysterical. Absolutely hysterical. And he says to me, I'll never have you told me again in the echoing corridor this time.

It'll never happen again. Never. And I thought, yes, you will. And when you do, you just better watch out. Because you see, I'm a very patient person when it comes to revenge. Three years later. I'm not going to do it again. He's out at his mother's down that long driveway. And his fuel pump's gone out.

[00:04:59]

And he calls and says, would you come and get me?

[00:05:01]

Well, now I have that big 12-passenger station wagon and that 450-horsepower engine sitting there, you know. And I said, yes, I'll be glad to come get you. And I hung up the phone and I said, he's mine! Oh, he's mine! Oh, he's mine! He's mine! He's mine! He's mine! He's mine! He's mine! He's mine! And so I drove out there. And it's hard to, you know, get it all back together again so you look calm.

And I get him out there and he hooks on. He's still got that little four-foot piece of chain. You know, he was always going to get another one, but he just never did, you know. So when I look in my rearview mirror, I can't even see the front end of his car. I see the windshield in his face. It's enough. So I pull him out of his mother's yard ever calm and serenely anyway. I turn on the highway and 80 miles an hour.

Now you feel a bit of a drag. And you look in the rearview and you see smoke from his little tires where he's trying to stop. But you ain't stopping the big mama. She's on her way. And his eyes are as big as beer cans. And I'm going, ha ha ha ha ha! Like that, you know. And all of a sudden I'm coming up. There's three cars. Brown the cars, you know. J.D. is pale. Just absolutely pale, you know. We made 15 miles in 13 minutes.

Towing the car. Got into my driveway. I called my father-in-law. I said, we're home. He says, where's J.D.? I said, crying in the front yard like a baby. He told me he'd never been so terrified in his whole life. And I said, good. Later I get in the program. She's laughing and she says, do you realize you could have killed yourself and all those people on the road? What would you do today if you saw somebody doing something like that?

That's why I'd call and have them arrested immediately. You know, I'd just call. And I said, but when you are crazy with revenge, all of the end justifies the means. You know, you don't go forward with what if that chain had broken and he had flipped out into one of those cars as he was going around. What if something like that happened? You see, God takes care of fools and drunks, you know. I found that even though J.D. and I had been together for a number of years, at that time we had been together nine years, that I didn't know a thing about J.D.

Because J.D. drunk was one person. J.D. sober was another person. And J.D. and I were sitting there talking one night and I was folding clothes and he turned to me and he said, I hate the way you fold my clothes. What? He said, I hate the way you fold my underwear. Now, I come from a military family. My first husband was in the military. I still do to this day. All my clothes out there are rolled because you can pack a lot more in a very small place.

You know exactly, you can open up my drawers and my clothes and there's little panties that are all lined up in their little rows, all standing like attention. And then you do the little bras, you roll everything up. You can roll T-shirts, you can roll anything. And he says, I just don't like it. And I said, when did you start not liking it? And he said, for forever. I have been folding it that way nine years and you just now mention it?

What took you so long? I can't imagine liking something nine minutes and not saying something about it. Can you? And he said, I didn't want to have the conversation we're having. You see, he hated controversy and he was afraid it would make me mad. And all it did was it amazed me because I was folding it for him. If he didn't want it that way, he just wanted to fold half and half. Okay. So here's her now folded half and half.

Mine are still rolled. It's not a big deal. But it was a big deal for him because he did not want to go through what he would have to go through if he made me mad. He was so afraid of my anger. And I also found when I was going to get some ice cream one night and I said, I'm going out for ice cream. The only thing he said, I'd like some praline pecan. And I said, yeah. You always eat vanilla. No, you buy vanilla because it's what you like.

But I like praline pecan. It never occurred to me he didn't like vanilla because he never said he didn't like vanilla. And it wasn't that he didn't like vanilla, but he liked praline pecan better. But he figured it was easier than the hassle. That's pitiful. That's pitiful when you think about it. And I realize there's a lot of things that are not right and wrong. They're just differences. And it's okay to have differences.

Can God's voice be heard over yours? God's going to have to have a loud voice. I can tell you that. I have been known to call J.D. in from the back when he was cutting some wood with a chainsaw.

[00:10:01]

With him with a 65% hearing loss. I can really belt it out there. But like I say, it's in my head. Can God's voice be heard over that screaming in my head? It's not until I calm down that I can hear God's voice. As a child, I lived in that daily controversy with my mother, and there was lots of violence, physical and verbal. And you know, the physical things may leave physical scars, but those were not the things that hurt the worst.

The things that hurt the worst were the verbal things. You know, it's like I'm 14 years old and Mama looks at me and she says, you know, you're the biggest disappointment of my life. Mama said that to me one time. I heard it for years. And years and years. I would say it back in my mind to me. She would say, to think I prayed to be pregnant and then had you. You know? Now, she would be angry and frustrated when she would say those words.

But I would take those words because, see, those were my horrors. Those were the things I didn't want, and that's what I clung to, and that I could say I was never going to have it with Mama. It just wasn't going to happen. I learned there's a big difference when you have an incident. In my life, when I have an incident, I don't know what to do with an incident, but if you make it into a problem, then you can handle it.

And all you have to do is label it a problem in your mind. That's all you have to do. You know, my TV went out right before Christmas one year. I called the TV repairman. He said it was DOA. And I said, geez, that's all I need is a problem like that with a big expense right before Christmas. And he says, is that a problem? I said, well, maybe not for you. I'll fix it. And he said, it's gone. It'll cost you more to fix it, and it's worth.

And he said, but you know, when I think of a problem, I think of something life-threatening. And I said, really? Are you in a 12-step program? He said, no. I said, I hate that. I don't mind hearing it from one of us, but I really hate it from the outsiders. But I got to thinking about that. And it's like, it's not a problem until I make it a problem when I put that label on it in my mind. So if I say this, or this too shall pass, or, you know, it's not a big deal.

If I can do those things, then I can get through that without having to get into these things. Because when I get scared, that's when the anger gets that more prevalent. When I get scared, I go into defense mode. And a lot of us, and a lot of our situations at home are from poor communication. Poor communication. And I'll say to him, what did you hear me say? How did you hear me say that? You know, run that back.

And that's when he says something, I'll say, what did you mean by that? Because this is how it sounded. And more often than not, it is not the way we heard it or saw it. And I know times, there's some times that J.D. will come home from work and it's like, everything is wrong. And he'll say, no matter what you do, it's wrong. It's sort of like the joke about the alcoholic that was sober and he told his wife he wanted two eggs for breakfast.

One fried egg, sunny side up, and the other one hard fried. And she came back in, no, one poached, excuse me, one poached and one fried, sunny side up. And she brought him in, he looked at him and he was so unhappy. And she said, what's the matter? He said, you fried the wrong egg. And isn't that the way we are sometimes? No matter what it is, it wouldn't be right. And if I am in a good spiritual place, I can see after the second or third or fourth thing that he said that's so negative that it's not about any of those things.

He'll say, oh, you always do this or you never do that and that's something we really shouldn't ever do is always and ever. But when I start hearing those little key things, if I can step back and say, there's something that's bothering him and he's not dealing with it so he's just angry and I'm here. It's not about who I am, it's where I am. I'm just standing in the wrong spot. And so if I don't react to that and then later sometimes I will say, would you like to talk about what's really bothering you?

And usually it's something to do with something that happened at work or some fear or some other thing, but it had nothing to do with all of those things. You know, absolutely nothing. Remember, praying about the situation doesn't always change the situation, but it changes your attitude about the situation. So prayer will always work. And you've got to learn forgiveness. Forgiveness is one of the biggest tools that we have.

You've got to be willing to forgive. And sometimes I have to pray for the willingness to be willing. You know. Pray for the willingness to be willing, you know, and you're always going to have this

[00:15:02]

as opportunities for growth, you know. It wasn't if I couldn't forgive Mama for being the way she was, I would never have been able to reconcile with my mother. If I hadn't been able to forgive myself for the way I had reacted to my mother, I couldn't reconcile with my mother. You know, whenever you get ready to go and make an amends to someone, always forgive yourself first because if you don't, then all of your feelings about how the amends went and how you feel are going to be based on their reaction.

And there's some people that we have hurt, there's nothing we're going to ever be able to do to make it up to them, you know. I had a case where a lady that I had harmed, I went to her and she said, I never want to see you again as long as I live. Okay, there's nothing that's ever going to make that right between us for that. But I knew that what I did to her was wrong. I admitted I was wrong. And there was nothing going to make that right.

The fact that I was her friend before this happened made it all the worse. When you're betrayed and betrayed by a friend, that's a double whammy, you know. And I could understand why she would feel the way she felt. And I knew that I couldn't go on and be worrying about how she felt and her anger toward me because I can't go back and change those things. I can't undo what I did other than not to do that again to another living soul.

That's the living amends. You know, it's like I blackmailed my brother-in-law for years. And my brother-in-law tried to molest me when I was 14 years old, right after my daddy died. And I was at a very vulnerable spot. And I went home and I told my mother what he had done. And what I did was I came on him and I said, if you touch me, if you touch me, I am going to tell my mama and she will kill you.

And he knew she would. And so he says, well, we don't have to mention this ever again to anybody. But I went home and I was real upset. And my mother asked me what was the matter. And I told her. And she said, we must never tell Dorothy, it would break her heart. But I don't want you to ever be around him by yourself. So she put all the responsibility on me. And I saw then that my sister's feelings were more important than my own.

That's what that whole message taught me. But you see, with Mary Pearl, me, Mary Pearl, what I would do is I would get even. And then when I came back from Newfoundland and I was grown and I saw the situation my sister was living in, and he was an untreated Al-Anon. And he was very mean and cruel to her. Not physically, but verbally. He was very cruel to her. And Dorothy was Catholic and therefore getting out of the situation wasn't an object.

You have to live there. You can only be married to the one person and that's the way that goes. And I just, you know, no, you can get a divorce, trust me, you know. Dorothy wasn't me. We're totally different in personality. And so I told him that year, I said, Dorothy, why aren't you wearing your engagement ring? And she said, well, the band wore through. And I asked him to get it fixed for me and he never did.

So our marriage means nothing to him. And I kept thinking about that. And so being the fixer, I went to him and I told him that I thought that he needed to get that wedding band fixed for her for Christmas. And in fact, that diamond in that wedding, in that little engagement ring, rather, was so small, it looked like a gnat's ass. And, you know, bigger is better. More is always good, isn't it? And so I told him, I said, I thought that she needed to have more diamonds.

And he told me he didn't think so. And I said, well, I remember something. And I believe that if Dorothy knew that, then you wouldn't be living here anymore. What do you think? And he said, why don't you take the ring and get it fixed and I'll pay for it. So I took the ring over and I had that made as a little small side stone. I got a nice big one and some others, you know, and it was a very nice ring.

And I remember that Christmas when she opened that box and she saw the ring. She just cried. She was so happy. And I felt very justified in what I had done. And so from then on till he died, I blackmailed that man to be good to my sister, you know. And so then he died. He was, like I say, he died as a result of a car wreck. And, but I was in the program by then. I had been in the program about a year, but I wasn't ready to make an amends.

And so later I made a graveside amends. And I knew there was nothing I could do to change what I did with him. But I said I will never blackmail anyone else, you know. That's not the way to do it. I could see it was wrong, but I still enjoyed the look I saw on my sister's face. But, you know, the comment my sister made to me the night that he died, I'm free. I'm free. I would never have been free otherwise, you know.

And that's a terrible way. I would hate to think that when somebody I'd lived with for 26 years died, my first feeling instead of grief would be I am free and I feel good. I don't have to do this deal anymore. That's a sad way to have to live.

[00:20:01]

Okay. So you've got to be willing to forgive. And you've got to have courtesy in the middle of that argument because it takes the wind out of the person who's raging sale. And J.D., if he can be calm and collected when I'm angry and what have you, instead of joining in that with me, I can get past mine. I can see he's calm. I cool down. You know, I try to get down too. And I tell him, you know, I'm sorry.

Sometimes that's a big deal for me. Tradition 11, each partner best conveys his or her beliefs and philosophy by attraction rather than promotion. Anonymity is a valuable asset to the marriage or relationship. Accepting others as they are, trying to live and to be the best you can one day at a time is applying the gold and silver rules. Now, the golden rule is do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

But the silver rule is don't do for others what they can do for themselves. Don't do those things. So this is where you live your program instead of trying to teach it or preach it. This is where you walk the walk. It's easy to talk the talk. You know, I came in. I looked at the 12 steps and I said, good God, there's only 12. How long could it take? And so you memorize the steps. You know, I can memorize the steps in a week.

You know, it's not a big deal. I memorized the steps in serenity prayer. You know, I'm an Al-Nahyan now. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to save souls. It's a lot more than that, you know. There's a, you can talk it long before you can do it. You know. You know the words, but it takes the actions. And you don't realize sometimes how you're walking the walk or just talking the talk until somebody else observes you, you know.

Went to a meeting and Jennifer, my lifelong friend, we played together and we was kids. She joined Al-Nahyan and it was back in the 70s when we had the oil crisis. Sort of like when we back, when we used to think it was high. And they say, you know, all the service stations close up at 6 o'clock, you know, until they get so much they don't want to do it and then they can open it up, charge $2 more and go for it, you know, how it goes.

Anyway, we had started a carpool going to meetings in other areas because now like in our little area we only had one meeting a week. But over in North Little Rock, further on the other side of North Little Rock, there was another meeting and in Little Rock there was one or two and then in Jacksonville there was another. And so we had a, every night you go to a meeting somewhere and we all take turns driving and using the gas and what have you.

It was her turn to drive. She called me and she says, there's a forecast of sleet tonight. And I imagine sleet and ice on the roads down here are just like they are up in Arkansas. Nobody knows what to do and the best thing to do is just stay in your house, cover your head. Well, remember, I lived in Newfoundland for five years. Driving on ice and snow is not a big deal. And anyway, I told her, I said, well, don't worry about it, come on.

I said, we're going to go because I prayed about it. God's going to take care of us, don't worry. And so she got off the phone and went, whoopie doo. So she came on over and she told me as we was driving, it was me and her and her little girl, she said, you know, we don't have any insurance on the car. That went during the drinking. You know, we can't afford this. We got to have food and food was more important than insurance on the car.

So that just went. I said, that's okay. So we're going over to what was called 120 and a half group over on 12th Street in Little Rock, not a good area. But we went over there and we went to the online meeting. And sure enough, during the meeting, this leak came and there was about a quarter inch of ice on the road. And so we're leaving there and we're going back over to get on the interstate to get on the 630.

And it's pretty slick and she's a little nervous. And I said, don't worry, just take it easy. Just go slow. You can do it. You can do this. And we're going, as we got top of this overpass, she looks and the lights are going every which way in front of her because there's a big, massive end to end, you know, how those car wrecks happen, just going on right in front of your eyes, you know. And so she does what anybody normally does.

She slammed on the brakes. So now we're spiraling, you know. And I'm saying, Jennifer, turn in the direction of your slide. And she's panicked. She can't hear. And I said it again, Jennifer, turn in the direction of your slide, just like that. No panic, no nothing. And she couldn't do it. And I got the wheel and I grabbed it just as we were getting ready to go off the overpass. Our wheels were already up.

And the car stopped and we could sit back down. And we just sat there and there's cars crashing all behind us, cars crashed all in front of us. And we're just sitting there and I said, thank you, God. And Jennifer turned to me and she said, I want your God. I said, what? She said, I want your God. She said, when you said God would take care of us, she said, I said, whoopee.

[00:25:01]

But she said, if I ever needed to see proof, here it is. The police came and he said, who did you hit or who hit you? And I said, nobody. He said, what are you doing here? I said, we're waiting for traffic to clear. Well, you couldn't go anywhere with all that mess in front of you or behind you. And they took, and we were, her car was on the picture of the front page of the paper the next morning. We were the only car in a 27-car pileup that was not touched, the only car.

People will see the good things that you do and people also see the not so good things you do. We were driving along one day, my sister was driving, a guy pulled out in front of her and she went, and I said, what's that? And she says, well, isn't that what you do? So, see, people are watching you, you know. You know, one thing I learned about, oh, well, a few years ago, like I say, I told you last night, when I get out of whack, my driving is the first thing that goes.

And we were having that real hot summer of 2000. God, it was hot. And like I say, that was the worst year I'd had in years in the program. It started off, like I say, with Dorothy getting sick and then my health issues and then the nursing home and then I lost voodoo. And then one of the girls I sponsored had a hysterectomy, went on Primarin, threw a blood clot to her lungs, she died out in the parking lot in the emergency room.

She was getting married in two weeks. Yeah, it was real hard, real hard. And then my other dog died, JD's job went south, it was bought by a company down here in Texas. It was a family-owned company and it was bought by a big corporation. And of course, some of our vacation time was taken away and our pay changed and I had to go back to work. So everything's wonderful, you know, just wonderful. And it was just a hard, hard time.

And all these things are happening and I just don't, I'm praying every day and I'm saying, God, I trust you, God, I trust you, God, I trust, I really don't, but I'm trying. Because, you know, it's like there was so much, I couldn't get out of grieving one thing until the next thing and the next thing and the next thing was coming, you know. And it was just awful. But that summer, I got so angry. I began, that's part of grief, is anger.

The first thing is I can't believe it's happening and the second is this really pisses me off. And so I got hung up in the anger on that grief and people's driving really began to get on my last nerves. Well, when you're having a heat wave, heat makes tempers worse. And so I knew that I was going to get hurt if I didn't do something about mine. Because it's like when my mouth, you know, sometimes used to when I would mouth off, you know, people would scream and yell, now they shoot you.

You know, I mean, it's a totally different world we live in now. And especially in Arkansas, you know, we can carry guns. You know, you all do that down here too? Yeah, wonderful, isn't it? Makes meetings exciting. Anyway, that's the reason I have a straight trooper to protect me. I have a girl that I sponsor who's a trooper. Anyway, I decided I was going to do something that would take my mind off of that anger.

And so I had a broken hairdryer, so I cut the cord off of it. Now, you know what a hairdryer, it's about like this, like this. And so whenever people do things that irritate me, I pick up and I go beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, I would radar them, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, and sometimes they'd pull off the road. You know, now, I've got to tell you, I have a big 1992 Chevrolet Caprice Classic, was what's the police, it looks like the big police cruisers and it's white.

It looks like an unmarked car, had a little hat, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. It was wonderful. I got me a water pistol, shoot them off the road and I'd get to laughing. I'd get to laughing about it, you know, it was hysterical. Sometimes when you get somebody that was really doing something weird when they'd see you beep, they'd get slower and slower and slower.

What it was, I was controlling them from back there, isn't that wonderful? But it was something that I used to diffuse the anger within me, you know. I know I have a real distorted sense of humor sometimes, but sometimes that will work for me too. I don't try to promote the program or manage another person's program. I was real bad about that at first, you know, I went out, I was recruiting. I was in charge of diagnosis and referrals.

I would go out and find all the people that needed AA and I was handing out the 20 questions pamphlet and really all you need is one question on that. Have you ever thought about that? Why they have 20 questions for them to determine if they might have a problem with alcohol? The question is this. Alcohol. And the question is this, when you drink, how many drinks do you drink? And if

[00:30:00]

they say only two, send them straight to AA. If they say I drink six or eight, you have an Al-Anon. You do not have an alcoholic. They never admit to having more than two. I decided I would not do marriage counseling. J.D., it was real funny, I sponsored a girl and he sponsored her husband and in just one short year, we had them divorced. You know, we learned what does not work by doing it, you know. I tried to get Mother and Dorothy into the meetings, did not work, you know. But my sister would occasionally, when she would be with us, she would go out and do things with us, like occasionally she would go to a speaker meeting where they would have a potluck or something with me. And she would tell Jennifer, because she had known Jennifer long before, since we were kids together, she would say, I do not know what that program has done, but I sure like the way she is.

She says it has done so much for her. J.D.'s mother, his daddy was drunk, I mean J.D. was drunk when his daddy died, I will get it straight in a minute. And his mother, he was in the program about a year and a half when his mother passed away. And his mother told him the last conversation they had, she says, you know Jimmy, I do not understand that AA thing, but it sure seems good for you and Mary, and I do not worry about you all anymore. You are the only of our kids that I do not worry about. And is not that a nice thing to have, is the last words to hear from your mom, never knowing that was going to be the last words.

She had headaches, and they put her in the hospital to determine why she was having the headaches. And he wanted to go see her, they put her in on Sunday night, and he went to see her Monday, and I said, I am going to wait until like Tuesday or Wednesday and take her some flowers. And I said, they are going to be running tests all day today. He says, I think I want to go see her. I said, go see her, I do not have to go. And so he went over there on his way to work. And so he stopped and had that conversation, and at 6 o'clock that night his mother had a stroke. And they found her, and she had several more strokes, and on Thursday morning she was dead, you know. She never knew, you know. And it was amazing to me, you know, we went to, just a normal situation in a sick family, we go to the funeral home, and two of his brothers get in a fist fight over who the preacher is going to be. Isn't that normal alcoholism, you know? I just love it. And when it was over I said to J.D., I said, do you want to go over to your oldest brother's house or do you want to do? And he said, I want to go home where my real family is. And so I went home, and when we came in the door the phone was ringing, and there was a man on the phone that was wanting to know what time the meeting was that night, that they had not been out to our group before, but he wanted to know. And I told him what time, and he said, well, how are you all doing? And I said, well, we just got back from the funeral home, J.D.'s mother just passed away. And he said, I'll be right there. He had lost his mother the year before. He knew exactly, God put that right person who had been there who had done that. And he called people, and before we knew it, our house was full of people.

The power of love from Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon. And when we went to the funeral, there's the family members like they're supposed to be and some of the neighbors like we'll be. And there was a whole, there must have been 50 or 60 people sitting there that didn't know his mother from Adam. They were there from Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon to support us. You know, that's love. That's an unconditional, and that is carrying that program with you.

We care about one another. One of the guys in our group, his daughter in her 20s died of cervical cancer. When she was 21, she got ovarian cancer, and then she went two or three years, and then she had cervical cancer. And it was way up in the northwest part of Arkansas, four hour drive. We had 20 from our group that made the trip. You know, because we're there for one another. We love one another. I can't fix anyone but myself, and I need lots of God's help to do that. And the people closest to us can't help us because they lack any objectivity where we're concerned. You know, I said, why can't I help my kids? And why can't I help this? Because you don't have any credibility, that's why. A complete stranger can do more with them than you can because they don't have bad history. You carry the bad history, you see. But every time I make a mistake, I have an opportunity to gain some wisdom there. I learn but works by what doesn't work. You know, and I sat in the meetings for a long time, and I bet I'd said the serenity prayer a thousand times at least. And one night, all of a sudden, it fell into my heart. And what we're doing is we're asking God, to give us some serenity, with some acceptance, and some courage, and some wisdom. So those

[00:35:01]

are God-given things. They're not things that I'm going to be able to generate. Because wisdom is the ability to use knowledge wisely. I always had the knowledge, I just didn't know how to put it together to make it work for me. Because it wasn't stupid, see, I was too smart. I was so analytical, you know, I'm going to figure it all out. And I realized that God does it in ways you wouldn't even dream, you know. When my sister was in the hospital, she had had heart surgery, and it was getting time for our annual yard party, and we always furnished the meat for the yard party. And I said, oh, God, I've been coming over here every day for a month to the hospital, and I'm running a little low on cash, and I don't know how we're going to be able to do that for the yard party. I'm going to have to think about that. And I'd sure appreciate any help you could give me. Next morning, I go to the post office, pouring down rain. I get out of my car. There in the puddle is a dollar bill. I pick it up and throw it in the car. I go on in, mail my stuff, come back out. Later in the day, I remember that dollar bill. And I pick up that dollar bill, and I unfold it, and it's a hundred dollar bill. And I went to Sam's and got all the supplies.

It was $107. I had $7. I said, God, you are so good. I would never have thought of licking in mud puddles for money. You know, it's just so good. It's just so good, you know. God is there. You know, he's right there. Being able to do good and not having to be recognized is anonymity at its best. And if you get found out, it doesn't count. Some of the things that I've learned to do is by having a positive attitude. I love to get on the airplane, no matter how rotten it is, no matter how bad the flight, and I love to smile at people just to see if I can get them to smile back. Some will, some won't.

I remember once in a while, not too long ago, this really attractive young man, probably 40, he got on the plane, and he says, you know, you have some of the best, one of the best smiles. And I said, thank you. You're gorgeous. Well, see, when you're old, you can do that and get away with it, you know. I hadn't tried patting him on the butt yet. That may be to come. Allowing somebody else to screw up and being generous about it and not having to point it out to them. You know, one of the kindest things you can do sometimes when somebody makes a mistake is keep your mouth shut. Keep your mouth shut. Staying out of your business. That's another thing that I can do. And not complaining all the time when things aren't the way I want them to be. You know, sometimes, you know, we'd love for the world to revolve around our wants, wouldn't we? Sending someone a card or a note anonymously, praying for others. When I walk or if I'm on the plane and I'm tired, sometimes I go to sleep praying for other people, asking God to bless this person, that person, what have you. I have a worldwide prayer chain on the Internet. And any time anybody has a need of a request for prayer, and they send one, well, then it goes out to all these people.

And we also like to hear the updates. There's a lot of miracles that come across that prayer list, you know. And any given day when I'm feeling sorry for me and I look at the requests for prayer, I see how small my problems are, how very small they are. Not repeating gossip. It's better yet if you don't have to listen to it. You know, it takes one kind of courage to not repeat something you've heard. It takes another kind to walk away and not listen, you know. But that's good. Living with a light touch, you know. Boy, J.D.'s good at that.

Like I say, he's always doing funny things with the Monica thing. Then one night I came in from work and I was tired and I was fixing supper, and he came running through the house without a stitch on, and he's locking the pet door real quick. And I said, what are you doing? He said, there's an armadillo in the backyard. I said, there is? And he said, yeah. He said, I don't want the dogs to get out there with the armadillo. And so I look through the door, the back door there, and I don't have on my glasses, and I'm looking, and I said, I'll be damned, there is an armadillo out there in the backyard. And I said, well, I'll go get a broom and scare him away. I said, don't you go out there. And he said, I wouldn't. I was just trying to get it done. So I went tearing out there with the broom, and as I got close to the armadillo, he wasn't moving. I was trying to shoo him, and he wasn't moving. And J.D. had made an armadillo. And it looks real. It's out of metal, but it looks real. And what I noticed it wasn't real was, see, its eyes were crossed. And he had even dug the ground up down by his feet to make it look like he was digging. I mean, he's good. He's good. And I went back in the house, and I said, you are nuts. I ought to hit you with this broom. He says, I got her. I got her. One time I got up in the morning and looked out at the snow, and my tulips were blooming in the snow. It was just absolutely I'm going, that was so pretty. That is just, I didn't plant any tulips there. What is that?

And he'd gone out there and put plastic tulips in the ground. Just always doing something.

[00:40:09]

You know, there's another thing. I need to be honest with what's going along with me. When I'm not in a good place, if you hear my tapes, I'll tell you, I'm not in a good place. You know, I believe that we need to tell the truth when we're in the program. And the program tells me that I am not bulletproof. That just because, see, I had this idea for a long time that if I was working the steps properly, bad things wouldn't happen to me.

And that's not true. We have steps and things to get you through those bad times, and you never have to do it alone, but it does not make you bulletproof for having life on life's terms. And sometimes life's terms suck. It's just that simple. But most often, life's pretty good. Life's pretty good. You know? And doing good things just for the sake of doing things, not for recognition or reward. You know, it just makes me feel good to do something. When I do something good for somebody else, it makes me feel good. Well, where's that page?

Okay. Tradition 11, or 12, excuse me, I can't even read now. I'm tired. Selflessness is the spiritual foundation of our way of life as marriage partners or friends, ever reminding us to place principle above personalities. And the principle is unselfishness. Our greatest gift we have is to be of service to one another. You know, did you ever wonder what's your purpose in life? Why am I here? What was my purpose in life? And that is to be of help to my fellow man. That's what my purpose is. So we each have a purpose. We don't have to wonder anymore, you know? And there's no room for pride or selfishness, arrogance, managing, controlling in our new way of life. We must learn to place principles above personalities in all of our relationships. And you've got to, like, say that forgiveness is one of the best principles there is. I have a neighbor who lived across the street from me. He's passed on now. And he got a Christmas present that was, to me, that was delivered to his house because it was addressed improperly. I'm 409, he's 408. Now, you would think that your next-door neighbor across the street would bring your package to you. He sent it back to the post office twice. Wonder why? See, I got into the wondering why. And I got real angry about that. I've never done anything to him, and his daddy lives next door to me over here, and we take care of his daddy and help him with his daddy. Why would Sonny do such a thing? And I thought, just wait. Every dog has her day. See, here goes back that old, that old thinking. One day, what goes around comes around. And sure enough, it did.

Later on that summer, a check came to our house that was addressed to him. And I said, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, Sonny. And I sit there and I go, nope, you've got to take it over there right now, right now. You cannot wait five minutes. You must take it right now. If you wait five minutes, you'll be an asshole. Take it now. If you don't take it now, you'll owe an amends. Don't want to make an amends. So, okay. So I ran that across over there, and I knocked on the door, and I handed it, said, this came in here, and left, and came back across the street, and I, ha, I did the right thing. Why don't I feel better? Oh, well, I did the right thing. I told my sponsor. My sponsor said, good job. Okay, I feel good.

Later that winter, we had a tremendous rainstorm. And water, I mean, we got like eight inches of rain in a few hours. Well, there's no drainage system that can take that. So we had water up in the yards and everything, and it actually drowned out the pilot light on the central heating unit. Now, John Henry and Sonny both had worked for the Arkansas-Louisiana Gas Company. And so J.D. was at work, and all of a sudden I realized the house is getting colder, and colder, and colder, and wonder why. And that's when I determined the pilot light was out. And so, you know, to get to a central heating unit, you got to take off a bunch of stuff. There's a lot of little screws and nuts and bolts and stuff to take off that panel to do anything with. And like I say, water out there was still ankle deep in the yard. And so I called Sonny, and I asked him, did he know of someone that I could call that would be able to come and fix the gas thing? Because I knew Sonny, you know, he won't even take a package across the street. And he said, well, I'll come over and fix that for you. I said, really? And he came over with a pair of hip boots on, and he got out there, and he worked in that cold, and he lit that furnace for me, and he wouldn't let him pay him anything for doing it. And he says, you've just always been a good neighbor.

Now, I'll never know what happened about that package. But I know that if I hadn't have done the right thing, I wouldn't have had a lit furnace, I'm telling you. Because I believe that good acts bring on good acts, you know, just as bad acts bring on bad acts, you know. And then later, when Dorothy was in the hospital, And then later when Dorothy was in the hospital, I saw, I turned down my street and there's the fire department and the rescue unit and I'm going, oh my god, don't let it be J.D. because it's right in my front of my house and Sonny had dropped dead in my front yard.

[00:45:07]

You know, it was Sonny. And you know, I hated to see, you know, because we had become good neighbors. We were not friends, good friends, but we had become good neighbors being good to one another. At one time I had to forgive the post office. Don't organizations sometimes just drive you crazy? I love it now when I get the little thing inside the little envelope that says, sorry, we chewed your mail to shit. You know, I just love that.

You know, here's a stamp. Wonder who that was from? All you get is a corner of the aisle. How did you know to get it at 409 Healy, you know? But anyway, I had sent a bunch of flyers out for Arkansas Woman to Woman and about 70 of them got chewed up in the equipment. And they sent me a little notice and said, you know, about 70 and I said, well, okay, what's 70? And I said, well, in order for me to do another mailing, that would be more postage. Would you reimburse me for that 70 or so that you admit you chewed up? No, we won't. And I said, why not? And she says, well, actually, the burden of proof is on you to prove you put so many in.

Don't go there, lady. You know, and so I got to thinking later, you know, if I caught a dead fish and put it in the post office box, you know, how she'd had the burden of proof would be on her, wouldn't it? You know, I mean, you know, that's how my mind would work, you know, and I said, no, I better not do that. I better not do that. And it was because of forgiveness that I was able to be okay when Mama died, you know. And, you know, when Mama died, it was a wonderful thing because she had had several strokes after she went in that nursing home and she became a human rotisserie where they just turn you every hour on the hour, you know.

And in January of 1991, Mama got pneumonia and so they took her to the Baptist Medical Center from the nursing home and the staff there at the Baptist Medical Center wanted to know what nursing home she had been in and I said, why? And they said, your mother is the kind of patient that usually has got tremendous problems with sores and stuff and blemishes. Your mother has had such excellent care, there's not one bed sore on her body. And for someone who has to be turned every hour on the hour, that's an amazing thing.

And I told them where she had been staying and everything and then she went back, she got okay and she went back to the nursing home. Well, the year before in the summer when we were having our annual yard party, which is a fundraiser, we, the guys were bitching about the fact, y'all go to woman to woman all the time. Where's our place to go? Y'all come back all rejuvenated and everything and where's our place? We're jealous. And so I said, well, if y'all are willing to go to lesser length, you could come. You know, they didn't think it was funny, I did. You know, I've got a sick sense of humor.

But anyway, we decided, why couldn't we have a co-ed thing? And so we do now, the end of January of every year, we have the Rose City Getaway. And it's a co-ed just like a woman to woman conference and the guys stay together in the dorms and the girls stay together. There's no cohabitation of people. You know, even if you're married, men stay with men, women stay with women. And we focus on recovery and we have workshops and speakers and so we started doing that. And so the first one we were going to have started on the 1st of February of 1991. This was our launching effort, you know. And that night, that Friday night after we had all gathered together about 10.30, I got a telephone call from the nursing home and my mother had passed away. And I said, isn't God good? Because who's there at the getaway? My whole home group, you know.

I'm surrounded with people who love me. And I called my sister and talked to her and I said, do you want me to come home? Do you want me to come and be? She said, no, I'm fine. And I said, well, then I'm going to stay this weekend because I need this. And she said, we'll make arrangements when you get back. And I said, the only thing I want is, I said, I want Mama to have a nice pretty pink nightgown to sleep in forever. I said, I don't want to see her dressed up or whatever, I said, because it wasn't Mama. I said, I wanted to see Mama at rest. Now, Mama had been sick and during that period of time, after you are in that condition for a long period of time, you don't really look human anymore. You look really bad.

And the lady that used to do Mama's hair came and did Mama's hair. And my mother looked 50 years younger. She looked better than I had ever seen her in my lifetime. I couldn't believe how beautiful she was laying there from how she had looked that day I had seen her before. I just couldn't believe it. And I told Arthie, I said, this is fantastic. This is absolutely fantastic. Mama looks good.

[00:50:02]

Now, the funeral director was a woman that came in that night. And we were having visitation. And she says, now, people normally want to know if they look normal. And I'm thinking, no, they look dead. I'm sorry. They don't look normal. They look dead. I hope I never look dead when I'm alive. And I think, that's such a dumb statement. What is the matter with you? And then she says, and then they'll look to see if their chest is moving. I'm thinking, you're embalming. Your chest will move? This is scary.

And I told Arthie later, I said, that woman is nuts. And she said, well, I just don't think she's been doing this a long time. So anyway, after visitation, Arthie and I are sitting there and we're thinking about things. And I said, Arthie, I have the test. It's not the woman's test. Are they, you know, do they look natural and are they breathing? I went over and I tapped Mama on the arm and I said, Mama, say shit. That was her only byword. When she'd get real angry and she'd go, shit, you know, real quick, you know, because it really wasn't if she didn't hear it right, you know, just real quick.

And I said, Dorothy, Mama's dead. And we both got to laughing because if she'd have been alive, she would have said it. And because for a long time in the nursing home, when she couldn't speak or do much of anything, I'd go up to her and I'd say, Mama, can you still see? And she'd go, like that, you know. So, I mean, she was still there. And so we got to laughing. The lady came in there, thought we had gone hysterical. And we just couldn't quit laughing. And I said, but you know, the reason that we could do that is everything was okay. We couldn't have done that and been okay if things weren't okay.

Humility, allowing people to help me. You know, my thing is I'm the helper and it's real hard to be the helpee. But, you know, it started, like I say, with Mama's illness and allowing people. When Dorothy was in the hospital with her heart condition, it was real funny, I went up there to see her one day and she says there was the strangest man in here earlier. And what would happen is a bunch of people in the group would take turns going up there and staying with Dorothy so I didn't have to be there all the time. And there was a guy who was a newcomer and everybody was signing up so he signed up and he went and he didn't even know who she was or what he was doing there. He was hysterical.

And then, let me tell you, when Dorothy went down in 99, five years later, that was the really hard one. And there were people there, but I needed people for me, not just for Dorothy, because Dorothy was in a nursing home and she had people who were helping her, but I needed people that could be there for me emotionally to help me. And I remember one night, I always felt like I had to be the strong one. You know, I have to be the strong one in our family. And I was standing there in front of the kitchen sink looking out the window and I just went to pieces. And I just literally just went down in the floor, just in a little heap in the floor and I was just sobbing and sobbing and it's like life is never going to be the same. And it's right, it wasn't. You just don't know how your life, your total life can change in a heartbeat. It can happen.

And J.D. got down in the floor with me and he held me in his arms and he rocked me back and forth. And I said, J.D., where's God in this? Where's God in this? I can't see God in this. And he said, God is here. And I said, are you sure? He said, my God is and he's going to work until yours kicks in, until you can see it. And he was there and see, he was the strong one. I never knew that. I never knew J.D. had that kindness. But see, he never had to do it because I always was so strong. And this time it gave him the opportunity to be the nurturer and the caregiver with me.

And I can't tell you, J.D. and I are so much closer today because of the deal with Dorothy than we were ever before that. It has done something to do that. Never discount your message because of the messenger. So many times we don't like who says something to us and so we don't listen to what they're saying. There was a guy from New York that came to our area. He had a terrible, terrible accent. You know, we don't have an accent. And he had this New York accent. We talk like that, you know.

And he would say, I'm from up in Albany, you know, up in the jungle, up in the jungle. You know, and I think, oh God, just shut up. And every time he would share, he shared the same thing. He was always up in the jungle, in the jungle. And he was always telling us how much better the program was in New York, the program's so much better in New York than it is down here. And so one night I had just, you know, I had just had it and I said, Ed, if it's so much better back in New York, why don't the hell you go back?

Love and tolerance is our code. And he was coming over the table at me. These other two guys just sat him back down. You know, and I was telling my sponsor and she said, well, that wasn't very kind. She says, you were in an open meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. You didn't have any right to attack an alcoholic in his own damn meeting or any time.

[00:55:02]

So I'm just saying, well, I'm going to block him out. So we go back to the meeting and a few weeks later and I'm in a bad place. And Ed says, and I heard, God doesn't put more on you than you can stand, but you will every time. I really needed to hear that, but not from him. And I sit there and I got up and after the meeting I went up and I made amends to him for my tacky comments before and I told him, I said, what you said tonight really helped me.

And, you know, Ed and I became good friends. And I'm really grateful because, see, Ed was one of those that was going to have to go back out and die of alcoholism. But he helped me. So, you know, the people that are in the program today may not always be there for you. Some of them may have to go back out and do it. And then we get those that come back, the retreads. And don't do them the disservice of treating them like they know everything.

They're newcomers when they come back. And treat them like you would any newcomer. You see, they may have forgotten something that you think they know. And they need to hear it again and again and again. That's why we're here. You know, people say, well, you go to the meeting and you hear the same people say the same thing. Well, honey, I'm sorry. My story does not change. Only my current where I am today.

My past does not change. When I'm talking about the past, it's going to be the past. It's going to be that way. I can't help that. And, you know, the thing about it is I need to hear it because I need to know so it will remind me. Because sometimes if you're not careful in your arrogance sometimes or your program pride, you forget where you come from. Never forget where you came from. And if you go back out there and you get your thank yourself healed and then you have to come back in, that's hard enough.

But don't do them the disservice. That's just like the first alcoholic woman that I ever sponsored in Illinois, I thought she knew the program. Because, after all, she'd been sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. She does know the Alcoholics Anonymous program. She does not know how to work it from the Illinois standpoint. And I was treating her as if she did. Like I was giving her a refresher course or, you know, or whatever.

And that's not doing them right. A newcomer is a newcomer. Treat them like a newcomer and mainly just love them. Mainly just love them. Okay. Sponsorship. Oh, man, I love sponsorship. I love sponsorship. I'm a woman who could never have children. And I've got lots of children of the spirit. And I couldn't love them anymore, you know. In fact, sometimes they're easier to love, you know, when they're little bitty kids.

I don't do well with little children. You know, give me one about 16 or 17 on up, you know. But them little kids, you know, they just terrify me to death. And my boss has a 12-year-old that I have to be around from time to time. And she thinks she's 30. And she's too smart for her own good. And I see a lot of how Mary Pearl used to be in her. And I look at her and I think you've got a long road to hoe here, honey.

You know. And it's, you know, there's the one of the main differences I see is that even though when I was a kid, mama would say things to me. There was one thing that you knew and that was you respect your elders. And you never, ever smart mouth an adult. They don't do that anymore. You notice that? You know, they just don't do that anymore. Anyway, you know, the sponsorship has brought new insights and excitement into my life.

When you see somebody you're working with get it. When it drops down out of here into here. And you see the dead eyes begin to have life again. That does so much for my spirit. It absolutely rejuvenates my spirit each and every time. Watching the miracle of recovery take place one more time. It's like seeing a baby born. I work for an adoption attorney. And so I get to see lots of babies. Lots of babies, you know.

Don't want them. But, you know, the best looking babies. See, I learned so much about babies and birthing is just more than. I used to be like Miss Prissy. I don't know nothing about birthing babies. But, I've been around it a long time now. And the babies that are the prettiest are the caesarean sections. Because they haven't had to go through the trauma of being squeezed out. You know, I mean. You know.

Man, that's grim. Anyway, seeing them born. But it's the same thing though. There's a lot of agony and labor in working with people and seeing them hurt. And seeing them experience those pains that they have until they get it, you know. It's sort of like that process for me. Years ago I went up to Canada and I was speaking to a couple of people and they were all like, I love you, I love you, I love you.

I love you, I love you, I love you. And they were like,

[01:00:00]

They're like, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you. I don't know what else to say. I don't know what else to say. And I said, okay, and so I met this gentleman, and we went out one night for dinner together, and laughed, and we just cut up, and we just had more fun. And we had a lot in common. He's a music teacher, and you see, I took music all those years, so we had a lot of similar interests, and what have you.

And I got home, and a few weeks after I was home from this conference, I got a letter. And he said, I want what you have, and I'm willing to do anything you ask me to do. Will you sponsor me? Well, I hadn't sponsored a new man in years, because there's lots of men in Al-Anon. You know, in the beginning days in our group, we didn't have any men in the Al-Anon group, you know. So it's changed over the years, and I had this one I sponsored in my home group, and he said, I want what you have.

And he was in an adult children group, and I had a problem with that. And I told him I wished he'd grow up. And I said, there's a difference between being childlike and childish, trust me. And I said, it's not all about singing they did me wrong songs here. And so it was real, because after I sponsored him three or four years, he too decided that he wanted to be in a regular Al-Anon group. But watching him and his process of recovery, because he had such sick relationships with his mother and his father.

And just every week, he'd call me on Monday night at 9 o'clock, and he would say, this is what's going on. What do I, what steps do I need to take here? And by working the steps, he would sit down, he would use the step study guide that I use with people I sponsor, and he would videotape himself giving me those responses so that I could see his face. And he said he wanted me to be able to do that. And he sent them to me, and I'd sit down, and I'd respond to him when he would call on Monday night.

And we began to plan of action on how to rebuild his relationship with his mom and dad. And I said, the first thing is you have got to let the sick dependency your mother has on you go away. And I said, when you were a little boy, your mama said to you, you're the man of the house. And he became her confidant. I'm talking about 8, 9 years old. He became her sex therapist later on. I mean, it was sick, sick stuff.

So, I said, when you have these concerts, he always agonizes because his mother and father are not divorced, but separated for like 25 years or something. And he said, they can't be at the concert at the same time, so there's many days of the concert, so therefore, he has to say, this one comes on this one, this one. And I said, you're not going to direct traffic anymore. You're resigning as traffic director.

Let the chips fall where they may. That is their problem. You love them both. You get out of the middle. And he said, oh, my God. And I said, that's right. I said, God will take care of you. So, he called me one night. He was in the bathroom at the concert hall. They're both here. And she saw him and looked at me and said, how could you? And I said, how did that make you feel? He said, responsible.

I said, for what? What did you do? I said, you were there to do a concert. You do your concert. And you let mama deal with her feelings. And so, that was a big hurdle. And then the next thing I told him was, I said, his daddy made the comment, you never come to see me on Christmas. And I said, why don't you do Christmas with her when you're Christmas with him the next year? And he says, I don't know if she could.

And I said, well, that's the right thing to do. And so, he was able finally. And, of course, she didn't like any of these changes. She didn't like me. You know. And I said, that's okay. I don't care if she likes me or not. We're trying to help you. And you're going to become the kind of person that she's always wanted you to be that you couldn't be. You're going to do that. You and God are going to do that.

And so, then, one year, his dad and he went on a vacation together. And they had never done that. And they went off into the Yukon wilderness. He loves outdoor stuff. And he called me back after being gone those two weeks in the wilderness. And he said, oh, my dad drove me absolutely crazy. And I said, I know. You have never been with him for that long a period of time, just you and two other people and your dad.

I said, I understand that. And I said, okay, tell me everything that went wrong. That's what you're doing. So, finish it up. Tell me everything that annoyed him, whatever. I said, next week when you call, I want to hear the positive parts of that vacation. You pray about that. And I want to hear the positive parts. And when he called me the next week, lo and behold, all those negatives had become positive.

He had bitched about the fact his dad had this damn video camera and was taking pictures of everything all the time, just irritating him, narrating and doing all this stuff all the time. And instead, now he had listened to his videos. He had seen them. He has a recorded thing of everything that took place on that vacation.

[01:05:00]

He can relive that as many times as he wants to. My daddy is an expert on the flora and fauna of that part. I didn't know that. And I began to see that through his eyes as he went through. And I said, you know, that is just beautiful. Write your daddy a letter and tell him that. And mail it without expectations. But call me before you send it. And so he called and he read it to me. I said, that's a beautiful letter, in which he thanked him for all of that.

And so I said, now you met it without expectations. So the next week he called and he said, I didn't hear from him. I said, I hear an expectation. So two or three weeks later he called me, not on his normal night. And he said, my dad got the letter. He had dropped it in the car seat and it had gotten hung down and he didn't get it. And he had just found it. And he had called him crying and said it was the most beautiful letter he had ever received.

He would treasure it until the day he died. And I said, see, isn't it nice what things can do when we work together? And I'm really glad that happened because his daddy was going to return to drinking. But to see all of this through his eyes and his relationship with his mother. His mother has been very, very ill for the last couple of years. And he stepped up to the plate. He went with her to every doctor's appointment.

He did everything. And he found ways to help her that were the proper ways for a son to help his mother. And his mother loves him and she invites me to dinner at her house and tells me how much she loves me. Those are miracles that wouldn't have happened not doing this deal. Giving, caring, sharing, doing a fifth step, giving time. Those are all gifts of the unselfishness, you know. Gratitude. Gratitude is honesty in action.

Looking at my life honestly and concentrating on my blessings instead of the negatives. Yes, we can get in the negatives in a heartbeat. But we have to learn to look through, as Chuck used to say, a new pair of glasses, you know. Look for the cup half full, not the cup half empty. Look for the good in your life. There's always more going on that's good in your life that's going on bad in your life.

If you will try to find it. And sometimes it's really hard. It's like the little boy rooting through the room of manure screaming, I know there's a pony in here somewhere, you know. Sometimes it's hard, but it's doing good, you know. And taking God with me all the time, keeping my close conscious contact with God, applying steps and principles to my life. It started in my group. I could do it in my group.

And then later I could take it in with my friends. And then I could take it to my job and work with it. And the last place I took my recovery was to my home. Because there was all the damaged area. And, you know, it's easier to start a new relationship than it is to mend a broken relationship. But the broken one, when mended, is much better than anything you've ever had. You know, if you can get past that.

And I've made a lot of progress over the years, but I'm not well yet. I don't guess I'll ever totally be well. You know, it's like when my Uncle Ernie died. Now, that's my mother's brother, and he and his sister lived next door to one another. And they were archenemies of one another, both of them practicing alcoholics. And they would do things like she bought a car, and he didn't have a driver's license anymore.

The court had removed his. And so he said, if you'll give me a ride whenever I need it, you can use my carport because you don't have one and protect your new car. And so they agreed on that. Well, we know that's not going to work, don't we? You know, because they were going to have to drink. And so one day, you know, he came over, and he wanted her to take him right now to where he wanted to go. And it wasn't convenient to her, so he evicted her from the carport, and she refused to leave.

So he shot her car, took her shotgun to her car, new car. That perturbed her. And so when he was gone one day, she went through his house, rifled through his house, and took a bunch of his important papers and hid them. And so he came back and finds this one. He knows she's done it. And so he calls the prosecuting attorney, and they write her a letter, and the papers return. And when the papers returned, he set a shop fire to burn a room off of her house.

Just fun place. You know, just fun things they do to one another. And I always told my mom, I said, they are so exciting to watch from afar. You know, the excitement there. And so then my uncle, my aunt, turned him in because he had had tuberculosis before, and she thought that he wasn't taking care of himself properly, which he wasn't. But when she turned him in and they put him back in the sanatorium, what was the first thing they removed?

His alcohol. He went into DTs and died. And so I always felt sorry for him because she tortured him. And I didn't like her very much. And so we're out at the cemetery, and we're waiting for the family to arrive. My mother and the other sister were coming together.

[01:10:02]

And so Dorothy and I are walking around. And one of her husbands, she'd been married like five or six times, and one of her husbands I really liked, and she had gotten this huge monument with the family name, his name born, died, her name born, blank. And so every time she'd go to the cemetery, she'd see her own tombstone. It bugged her because she'd get out there drinking. And so she had them take it off, and they had a little three-by-five card on a little sticky-up thing.

And for years, and when we were walking around the cemetery that day, I went, Dorothy, look, it's back. And she said, what? I said, the tombstone is back. And she said, I'll be darned. And I said, and her date is blank. Do you have a felt-tip pen? I filled it in. Now, the funeral came and went and took care of Uncle Ernie. And then we hear this, ah! Over on the other side of the cemetery. I'm so bad.

I'm so bad, you know. I told Dorothy, and she said, what are you going to do? I said, nothing right now. I said, I'm going to have to pray about this. I mean, I'm just really going to have to pray about this. Because I said, when I wrote it in, I said, Ernie, this is for you. I said, he's getting there from the grave. It's sort of like Carrie, you know, getting there from the grave. J.D. and I will be married 35 years this November on the 7th.

And, you know, that just is amazing to me, that we could have ever done that, you know. We had seven years of the drunkenness. And now the rest of it has been, but not all of it has been recovery. But we've been in a process, you know. Try to live by the slogans as best I can. I try to live in this day. And I want to tell you one thing Dorothy has really taught me. It's how to live in the moment. Not just one day at a time, but in this moment at a time.

Dorothy can go about 15 minutes, and then she does a rerun, you know, her whole life. She can sit there and listen to CNN, watch it on TV all day long. The news, it's new every time it comes on. It never changes because it's always new to her, you know. But, you know, it's like do the most that you can this day because this could be your last day here. You never know. So live in today. Another thing is how important is it?

Sometimes I put so much value on insignificant things. How important is it really? And so for me how important is, well, let's leave a lasting effect on my life 15 years from today. If not, it's not real important for today. I have to have something that I can run it past. And pain seems to be the touchstone for growth for most of us. And it has to be my motivation to change. I wish I could tell you that I always change when I see the light, but it's usually when I feel the heat.

You know, I've got to be miserable before I'm willing to do that change. And if anything I know letting go is always the thing to do. It is the least painful thing you ever do, letting go. Holding on is the most horrible, painful thing you do. It's like water skin. When you fall, if you don't let go of the rope, you do your dolphin impersonation, you know. You drink the lake. And that's the same thing with holding on to stuff in the program, you know.

You'll drown yourself on it trying to hang on to it. It's when you let it go that you can have a life again. And there's some really good sentences that I've learned in this life. And one of them is, I may be wrong, but this is how I see it. I'm going to give you a row on the front end. I may be wrong, but this is how I see it. Perhaps you're right. You could be right. I don't think you are, but I'm going to do this because this will end the argument.

This will end it. You know, give that other person the right to be right. There's one thing to give them the right to be wrong, but it's a whole other thing when you give them the right to be right. You could be right. You could be. And I try to keep my life more simple. And that was one of the things that I learned when Mama died, was the confusion and the clutter and everything she lived in, I decided I'm going to simplify my life.

And I went home and I did a complete throwout of the things in my house that were not necessary. And what I did instead of just throwing them away, I passed them on. You know, things that I have loved and enjoyed for years, I want you to have and I want you to enjoy. And I want to pass those things on to people. And that saves me a lot of grief in the long run. It's much easier to keep your house clean when there's not so much garbage there.

Trust me. Absolutely. Trudge. You know, in the big book it talks about trudge in the road of happy destiny. Trudge in the Road of Happy Destiny, Trudge always sounded to me like you were walking through mud and you know it would go tch-tch-tch-tch when you're sticking your feet up. When Bill wrote the book back in 1935, the word trudge, I went and got an old, old dictionary,

[01:15:03]

I have an old dictionary at my house, and a lot of the words in the Big Book, you know they use a lot of different words in the Big Book, and I looked these things up and trudge meant moving forward with a purpose. Doesn't sound at all like tch-tch-tch-tch, you know, because I thought trudge was a bad word. It sounds like a lot of work and effort to me. And instead it just means moving forward with a purpose, you know. And that's what the program is about, moving forward with a purpose, you know. And when you practice the spiritual principles you become of maximum service to your higher power and to your fellow man.

And you practice these things. And we're truly a worldwide fellowship now. If you don't believe it, the internet is out there and we are everywhere. I mean, it starts in your own group. And as a result of practicing these things in my life, I enjoy my life as I never have before. I enjoy going and being with JD. I love to go on vacations with JD. I like to do things. I like meeting people from all over the world and to compare, you know, it's just like I have a girl that I work with in Africa. And she lives in Kenya. And when I hear her, well, I do hear her occasionally when she calls. But when she writes, I can hear her words when she writes. She's so descriptive. She's like a really good author. She paints the picture that you can see with her writing. And when she talks to me about getting up and going out into the jungle and seeing the animals and doing all the things they do and seeing the sunrise and sunsets over Kilimanjaro and stuff like this, things that I'll never be able to do, you know, I'm living that through her eyes, you know. That's a wonderful thing.

And then one day in the mail, I get some rocks. And they're from the Tsavo National Park. They're in Kenya. So I have rocks from Kenya. And she said, I want you to know that we watched the hippos walla in the water. And when they left, we went down and I got you one of these rocks. And I want you to know that was where it came from. And I'm going, God, is that fabulous or what, you know? I got a girl, a sponsor, lives in Paris. And she's there.

She can see all of the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and all that stuff all the time. And she can, you know, you can just travel through the eyes and hearts of other people. Then I have a lady who's very sick in Australia. And she's an older lady. She's been in the program 26 years. And she had never taken the first step. She'd been going to meetings, but she had never taken a step. They're not strong on sponsorship where she's from in the area that she's from. And so she, her main thing is, should I go or should I stay?

Should I go or should I stay? And I said, how long have you been married to him? 45 years. Well, I really think you've got a lot invested there, Hazel. So I think you might ought to take a look at that. And we're going to work on you. And we're not going to worry about go or stay. You just stay and we'll work on you. And when she called me the other night, we've been talking to one another now for a couple of years, two or three years.

And she says, you know, he's not such a bad bloke after all, especially when he's not drinking. And she says he drinks a lot. But you know, the other night she said he was over there at the pub and he wanted something. And he called me and he says, let's go to tea. And she said, I can't tell you how many years it's been since he says, let's go to tea. And I said, what'd you do? She says, well, I was thinking about going to me and I said, I hope you told him you'd go to tea. And she said, I did. I said, you can go to meeting in the morning. Don't miss those golden moments. You know, don't be so regimented that you miss the golden moments. And I went up to Canada one time and the gentleman I sponsor up there, he told me, he said, I want you to go see something. He says, we have a wonderful stage production here of Phantom of the Opera. And so we went up there and I saw that and I just sat there and I cried and I cried. I said, that is the most wonderful, wonderful. I love the music. I had loved the music without ever having seen the play. And we went though to the production. And so then every year I want to, he said, what do you want to do? I want to go see the Phantom. And so each year we got closer. We started out in the balcony and then we were down on the main floor and then we were in the orchestra and you're in the box. And you know, the next step was I'm singing on the stage. You know, I mean, that's.