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Source: Nikki C – 12 Step Serenity Weekend 2023 Step Eleven – Date Unknown.mp3 File: nikki-c-12-step-serenity-weekend-2023-step-eleven-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:18:08
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Good morning, family. Excuse me while I get the nervousness out of the way. I almost failed public speaking in college, so to see me behind this podium today, it brings me anxiety. But I did make conscious contact with God this morning. I know he's going to show up for me, he's going to show up for you, and let's just do that serenity prayer one more time. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen. So I am Nikki C., and I am definitely a grateful member, a recovered member of Al-Anon. As John said, yes, I am a double winner. Part of that requires me to give an amends this morning to Louise and John and the committee because I was one of those that registered the day of the conference. So we know this is progress, not perfection, sloth and procrastination is a glaring character defect of mine, and I am going to work on that.
So thank you for adjusting my attitude. You know, I'm still realizing how much my actions affect other people. And I don't always think of that ripple effect. But as I was in meditation this morning, God brought it to my attention that it was probably a really good idea because it did affect so many people that I should probably come up here and make that amends. And I'm okay with that today. You guys taught me that it's okay to apologize when I make mistakes.
Changing the behavior, I'm going to do better next year, Louise, I promise, wherever you are. Step 11, seeking through prayer and meditation to improve my conscience contact with God as I understand him and praying only for the knowledge of his will for me and to carry that out, the power to carry that out. This is my favorite step. Pamela and I were kind of chuckling last night, I'm like, I don't know what I've done to DeeDee to make her have me show up at 845 in the morning on a Sunday.
But it is an honor and a privilege to do anything for this group, for this fellowship. It has definitely changed my life. I was going through the steps prior to step 11, trying to understand the powers that be that are at work in my life. First and foremost, understanding there is a God and I'm not him. And that has been a big one for me to realize because throughout my whole life I've been trying to adjust people and situations and everybody's attitudes and emotional state.
It sounds crazy when I say it, but subconsciously I did those things. Coming in through our sister fellowship, I went through a lot of terrible things of being an alcoholic. One of them was I lost custody of my kids. And that for me was my bottom. I remember they tell me I had to learn how to be unselfish. Being the selfish alcoholic that I was, I was really trying to pray and ask God what that was supposed to look like.
There was a situation where I was supposed to take my daughter and my friend's daughter to the lake for some family activities. I just remember the people in the room saying, just keep praying, keep coming back, turn it over to God. So I'm like, okay, I'm supposed to be unselfish, but I don't really know how to do that. Everything about my world, I'm my favorite thing to think about. But I'm going to try some things different because my way was not working, obviously.
So I'm praying and I'm asking God. I woke up that morning very late, told you procrastination slot, that was not my strong suit. I woke up late. I was running behind. I get in the shower, we're going to the lake to swim, so I'm thinking I probably should shave my legs. Now I am ADHD to the core, and somewhere in the midst of planning our day and getting everything together because I had plans, I forgot to shave one of my legs.
You give an alcoholic one good thing to obsess about and we're off to the races. So I'm obsessing about this unshaved leg because I don't realize it until after the fact. Now it seems so minuscule and it seems so small, but it was really the mental obsession was there.
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It was there.
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And so I take it to God. I'm like, God, please, would it be selfish if I were to stop by the dollar store on the way to and pick up a pack of razors because this is driving me crazy? And I got no answer, right? There was nothing that happened and I'm like, okay, now I got to make a decision. And I'm like, okay, just breathe. It's going to be okay. Nobody is really going to notice but me. This is an internal conflict of, I'm at war with myself and that has been my biggest battle is the internal war that I have with me.
So we get the car packed up and we're en route and I'm still, I'm waiting for God, nothing, right? I'm like, okay, I can do this. So we get to the lake. We get down to, you have to actually hike to this area. It's a little remote area in Kentucky at a state park. There's a lot of overgrown grass. There's glass that is broken. There's killer geese that like to attack you and sabotage you on the way out.
But the journey is worth it because when you get to the end, it's a very picturesque, very beautiful part of the lake. And it's shallow so I knew the kids would be safe to swim there. I could keep an eye on them. And so here I go like the mother hen and the kids are behind me and I've got my mom behind them and I walked out into the lake where there's this big flat rock and you can't see it from the journey down but when you get to the end and I pushed the weeds back in the middle of that big flat rock was a pink Bic Razor.
Yes, yes that happened for me and it forever changed my life. Because for the first time in my life I heard God speak to me and he told me my smallest need he would meet. And that was profound to me. If I just take the time to take those little things, the big things, to God in prayer, he will work them out for me. I was asking him this morning how I should present this step. I'm like God I don't really know you know because there's so much in the black and white books and there's so much information and he gave me my experiences.
He started flooding my memories with those things that he has done for me that I have taken to him in prayer and meditation and that Bic Razor was the very first and foremost that I remember. Now mind you he's probably been doing it all along but that was my first conscience contact with him on a personal level and it forever changed me. There's nothing that I don't take to God in prayer. That's my talking to God, right?
The meditation part of it is the hard part. It's actually the sitting still and listening, watching, being consciously aware and drowning out all the external stuff so that I can hear him come and speak to me and it's an ever usually still voice but sometimes you know I'm in turmoil and I come to a meeting and he speaks through you people. He speaks through the literature. Just last week I came to Al-Anon, oh I think I was trying to think this morning Dede.
This is terrible of me, I know, 2013 I think initially, maybe even before, I don't know. But I came here a broken individual because I had gotten sober but I had also gave birth to potentially two alcoholics. So my kids were just running amok and I remember losing sight of where God was because as a parent sometimes you feel like you have to fix everything. That you're responsible for these children and their well-being and by rights we are but there are just some things, you know, that we can't control and alcoholism is one of them.
I can't control my own alcoholism and I definitely can't cure or control anybody else's. Anytime I get in the arena with alcoholism I'm going to lose. But I remember being so full of fear and overwhelmed and the pain and it caused me a couple of relapses. I allowed it to cause me a couple of relapses because I didn't really want to drink but I didn't know what to do with all the brokenness and all the fear and all these emotions that I was feeling on the inside.
I remember coming to this meeting and I don't know, it seems like weeks I came to these meetings and I just cried. Thank you for being there, for your service work, for opening up the door, for your love, for your pats on the back and I came here asking what do I do and they're just like oh honey whatever you do just do it with love.
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I needed solutions, I needed answers but I just kept coming back because that's what you kept telling me to do, you know, to give time, time and what I found in Al-Anon is this is a much longer process than it was putting down the booze. That was the easy part. These layers of this onion that God seems to keep unfolding in my life, it makes me very uncomfortable. You know, I'm a human being, I like the pleasure part, I like to be comfortable in my life and God reminds me, comfortable breeds complacency and so yeah, seeking through prayer and meditation to prove my conscious contact with God.
I don't really understand God but what I do know is that he's ever present in my life and I do know that he wants my fellowship and he wants me to bring those cares and those worries to him no matter how small, no matter how big and he always brings me that razor back to my mind. If I cared about your unshaven leg, how much more do I care that your heart is broken because your child is out here burning his life to the ground and you are completely powerless to do anything about it?
How many things he tells me that he's brought me through this process and I was doing probably far much more worse things than my child is doing. Sometimes he lets me see, you know, because he doesn't send me emails or memos or text messages about what he's doing in my life. I already gave him permission to do it in step three, right? I just have to trust, I have to seek him and turn things over. So just yesterday I had these plans, you know, I wake up every morning with these plans and designs and I'm like, okay God, here's what I'm doing today.
Here's what's on the agenda. But if it's not your will, by all means, change it. And so yesterday I was trying to get here earlier so I'm commuting back and forth. I wanted to participate in some of the other steps and it's like, no, that's not what happened. I've been sick most of the week and I tried to get here yesterday and, you know, family crisis happens, you know, family members calling out for help and to be of service to me is what God's will is.
It's not always saving everybody but sometimes it does require me to be present in the lives of my dysfunctional family, God love them. So anyway, I got rerouted, got here late, but I had a chance to talk to my daughter. Now my qualifier hasn't spoke to me probably since November and I heard Pam last year Friday night, you know, about how her relationship with her daughter has gotten closer. Well mine, the more I get deeper into this program, mine's heading the opposite direction.
My family's not used to me setting boundaries. They hate the word no. Oh, they despise it. And if you don't get on board with their plans and designs, well, these are some of the consequences I chose. I said no and I knew that it was going to be some repercussions and this is it. He's not speaking to me and that's okay. I have never felt more at peace with my child not speaking to me as I do today.
Thank you, Al-Anon, for giving me those tools. Step 11, for God telling me it's going to be okay. I'm going to be okay no matter what he does. You know, for years I put my well-being, somebody shared it from the podium maybe last night, put my well-being, my financial well-being, my social status, my ego, everything was in the hands of 15 and 16 year olds. I remember my sponsor making me write that inventory and I looked at that in paper and it's in my handwriting and I'm like, oh my goodness, I did that.
I gave them all the power. I guess in simplicity form, God's will for me is trust God, clean house, help others. That's really about the simplest I can put it. The book tells me if I perform his work well, he'll take care of all my needs. He'll take care of me. I came from being raised in an organized religion. I remember sitting there on that church pew thinking, you know, I believed in God. I've always believed there is a God and I believed in his miraculous powers and the ability to do things.
I just never felt worthy to receive it. I knew he would do it for all you guys, but I was just never going to be good enough. It's taken me years in recovery to unravel that mess to the point where it's like, you know what, today I tell people God loves me, don't be mean to me.
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Bad things will come of you. And I don't have to do a thing. And he's proven it to me over and over and over again. You know, and I like how the Big Book talks about we cease fighting everything and everyone. That includes my qualifiers. I had to quit begging and pleading and controlling and laying these AA literature strategically in the house, you know. The acceptance pamphlet by the toilet. Big Book on the nightstand, you know.
Trying to shove a program of recovery down his throat. I did that for a while. And it's like the more I pushed, the more he pulled. He went the opposite direction. What I know today, the reason he's not talking to me is I suggested, I sent him a loving text message. Bub, I love you, why don't you go into treatment? It's just a suggestion. He calls me and he's irate. Why do you think I need to go to treatment?
Well, let me see, I picked your sister's car up at the trap house with the motor seized up in it and a flat tire. You were nowhere to be found. Your girlfriend is a train wreck from the things that you're doing to her. You're robbing from friends and family members and friends of friends. I just thought maybe it was a good idea. I thought maybe, maybe drugs and alcohol might be at the root of this, but maybe I'm wrong.
So yeah, he went off on me and we ended up just not speaking. It's been since Thanksgiving. So yesterday I saw his sister and she's like, just so you know, because she's the bus driver. They're going to roll on each other, just so you know. He's in treatment, but he don't want you to know. Thank you God, right? I pray that it sticks for him and I would ask that you all just please keep Cody in your prayers as he's going another round through this.
It's hard to watch as a parent. I know God's got this and if my worst fear happens, if something happens and my child passes, I know that we'll get through it together. I've watched multitudes of you bury family members behind this disease of alcoholism. Some of you have done it with such grace and the strength that you exhibit to me is truly an example that I'm going to be okay no matter what. I don't know, I could stand here and talk all day about this step.
I love it. It's been 18 minutes. I don't even know how long I have. Well in that case, because I'm the troublemaker of the bunch, let me just keep on going. Thank you guys for listening.