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Source: DICOBE-00555 – Doyle B – SPRINGTIME IN THE OZARKS – 1978-04-15.mp3 File: dicobe-00555-doyle-b-springtime-in-the-ozarks-1978-04-15.mp3 Duration: 00:55:39
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Mary Jo Al-Anon, AA, Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, AA, A.A., Alateen, Narcotics Anonymous, Alateen, Contentment, Happiness, Drinking or Not, It Will Show You How to Find Solutions That Lead to Serenity. So much depends on our own attitudes and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and our lives. The family situation is bound to improve as we apply the Al-Anon ideas.
Without such spiritual help, living with an alcoholic is too much for most of us. Our thinking becomes distorted and we become irritable and unreasonable without even knowing it. The Al-Anon program is based on the twelve suggested steps of Alcoholics Anonymous which we try, little by little, one day at a time, to apply to our lives along with the twelve steps and the Serenity Prayer. The loving interchange of help among the members and the daily reading of our Al-Anon literature thus makes us ready to receive the priceless gift of Serenity.
And now it's my privilege to serve this convention by introducing Doyle. I have attended Al-Anon meetings with Doyle and I'm always impressed with my Al-Anon friends. I am particularly in awe of gentlemen who have the strength to say, yes, this is the problem that causes our disease and I will put the problem in its proper perspective and I will get my thinking straightened out so that alcoholism does not dominate my thought and my life.
Without further ado, I'm sure you will appreciate, as I do, Doyle B. I used to lift weights. First of all, I would like to say that I don't really know why I'm here. I look out over this group and I see a lot of people that have been in Al-Anon a lot longer than I have. I see a lot of people that are responsible for the degree of serenity, happiness that I have today. I can see people with 15, 16 years of membership in Al-Anon and a great deal more serenity than I have.
So I really don't understand why I'm here, but I really don't have to. If the things that have happened to me and have happened to us can be of any assistance, any encouragement, or can help acquire knowledge concerning the disease of alcoholism, then this morning will have been a success. I would first of all like to introduce the person that brought me to Al-Anon and therefore is primarily responsible for my new lease on life and a new kind of life.
At this time, I'd like for Virginia, my wife, to stand, please. I'd like to say that the ideas and the opinions that the things that I say here this morning
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are strictly mine.
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Sometimes we say that we shouldn't relate in a speech personal experiences. We ought to talk about other people's experiences, but personally, I've never had one except as a personal experience, so I guess we'll have to do that this morning. I would not like to, by my presence here, have anyone assume that I consider myself a typical Al-Anon because I really don't. I don't think I've ever seen a typical Al-Anon.
They're all different. But as our closing says, I would like for you to take the things that you like and if some of the things I say are not you or wouldn't work for you or you don't consider a part of you, then leave that because there may be much that applied to me that might not apply to you. I would like to thank the committee for inviting me here. I realize that we all have a responsibility to assist each other, and I can assure you that I'd rather be down there where you are than right here, but I appreciate the opportunity and I hope that our morning will be profitable.
First of all, I would like to say that I appreciate the AA program a great deal, and I appreciate the AAs, and I do make a distinction between the two. I feel like that the AA program is inspired. I think it's inspired as God's Word is inspired. I think it's a part, an extension of God's Word, and by that I mean the Bible. Now, this may turn some off, it may turn some on. I don't know, but that's the way that I look at it.
And the reason for this is the fact that to me, and I have been taught mathematically, that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. And I believe personally in God's Word and the fact that it is inspired. But when I read the 12 steps, I can't read one of those without thinking of other passages in God's Word that stated the same thing. So if this program is equal to that which is written, then they must of necessity both be inspired.
The first step states that we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. As an example, in Jeremiah, the 10th chapter in verse 23, the prophet of old said that it is not in man that walketh to direct his own steps. And the very next verse says, Lord, correct me. So you can see that, again, we are following an inspired program when we say that we're powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable.
Step two came to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. Again, the way of man is not in himself, but we have to find it some other way. The third step made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to God, over to the care of God, as we understood him. In Galatians 3, in verse 20, the apostle Paul said, It is no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me.
So you can see that we could go on through, and especially the Sermon on the Mount. If you want to read another version of the Twelve Steps, just read it, and all those principles are there. So this is the reason that I say that I appreciate and I am thankful for the AA program, and as an extension of this, the Al-Anon program that has been responsible for my happiness and for my life from a point where I was very unhappy and from a point where I felt like there really was no life or no future.
I suppose this morning that, as usual, we ought to say how it was, what happened, and how it is now. I hope to be able to do this with a certain degree of continuity and with a certain degree of brevity, because I learned a long time ago that the mind cannot absorb more than the seat can endure, and also the fact that a message doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal.
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So I'll try to remember what you asked me here before. My contact with alcoholism did not begin with Virginia, but it began when I was a very small child. My father was an alcoholic and is still an alcoholic, has not yet found his sobriety to any great degree. He has made efforts, and my prayers are for him, but he has not been able to do this. My mom is a little bit different than this. I don't know whether any of you have ever heard of teetotalers or not, but in South Texas there are a lot of them, and she is one of them.
She has, as of yet today, very little understanding of the disease of alcoholism. I knew my father was an alcoholic because my mother told me daily that he was an alcoholic. All the things that we traditionally sometimes think that go along with it in the worst way, especially if we have no understanding of it. My parents were divorced when I was 18 months old, and I heard most of my life that my father was no good, that he was shiftless and worthless, but I loved him.
He would come to see me sometime, and he would leave with tears in his eyes, and mother would have fire in her eyes. The misunderstanding that goes along with alcoholism was not new to me, but this is something that I felt like was never to be a part of my life. But as God's will sees fit, it was. When Virginia and I first met, I drank and she drank, but by the grace of God, I could have been the alcoholic in our family, and I think still there's a possibility that I might be one of these days.
So it's something that you accept and that I accept today as a matter which is beyond my power and out of my hands. I suppose that I first became conscious of the problem that alcoholism was having in our lives when we moved from Houston, Texas, to a place in southwest Missouri on Big Sugar Creek that, as John C. puts it sometimes, was centrally located. It was centrally located from everything. Anywhere direction you left from our house, you got closer to civilization.
But you see, this is a part of our problem due to the fact that when we were in Houston, I felt like that if we were out somewhere a long ways from alcohol or a long ways from some of the things that were associated with it, that we could raise a family and we wouldn't have any problems out in good, clean air, and I could farm and raise cattle, which I liked to do and felt like I could be a success at, or we could go to town and party on the weekends maybe, but not all the time, because I began to realize that it was a problem with me.
I had not yet realized it was a problem with Virginia. When we moved to the country, the isolation was very bad, I think, for Virginia, and it gave her a lot of time to devote to alcoholism. I was busy with the farm, I was busy with teaching school, I was busy with being a minister on the weekend for a small congregation, and I was busy doing a lot of things, and sometimes I was busy drinking on the weekend, too, with Virginia.
So I began to realize that it was a problem and became conscious of the problem when I began to be afraid. And I suppose this is the first emotion that really upset me and really waved the red flags that I knew something was wrong, and that is when I began to be anxious, I began to be afraid. I realized what had happened to my mother and father, I could see probably the same thing happening to us. We wanted a family.
We wanted a family, and I was really afraid that we couldn't control the situation.
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And, you know, I'm not that type of person. Up until this time, I felt like that anything I wanted to do, I could do. And previous to this, anything I tried to do, I had done, with God's help. And I just felt like that, you know, there was just nothing that the good Lord and I couldn't do if I helped Him a lot. So, but this was something I couldn't control. This was something that eluded me every time I tried to control it in any way.
I couldn't get my hands on it. If it had been something that I could reach out and grasp and wrestle with, I felt confident that eventually, find a way to overcome it. When you're raising cattle, you have weather, you have pasture, you have fences, you have predators. You have a lot of things that can be problems, but you learn to deal with these. Well, I couldn't deal with alcoholism. When you work with people, from the minister's standpoint and from a schoolteacher's standpoint, you work with the kids and you manipulate and you find solutions and you see growth.
And these were things that I'd been used to handling. When it came to alcohol, it was powerful and baffling. I couldn't handle this. And just like if you've ever been in physical combat and you find that you found somebody superior and you can't handle them, it scares you, for the first time in my life, I knew fear. I knew fear down in my guts. I knew fear that I wanted to vomit. I knew fear that was paralyzing.
I couldn't control it. It left me useless. It left me equal to zero. But there seemed to be nothing that I could do. Along with this, then, after I was concerned with fear, was guilt. I just knew that probably if I hadn't been drinking when I met Virginia, that she wouldn't be drinking. I didn't have any idea that this wasn't the case. I also felt like that since she was my wife, that I was responsible for her, and that if I was a husband worth his salt, that I could do something about this.
And I felt guilty in the fact that I had not been able to. Not that I hadn't tried, but that I had failed and was not able to. Because I was supposed to take care of her, and I wasn't. I felt like that she would die. I was sure of the fact that she would die. Physical deterioration and other things, to me, indicated that maybe three months, maybe not. And I didn't really know whether or not that I could survive living with the guilt that I had failed.
And especially being able to look at our little daughter, who was then about a year and a half old, and say, you know, I just couldn't do it. She just left. It would have been hard. I didn't know how to explain that. And so I was guilty from the standpoint that I had failed to meet responsibility. Along with the guilt and the fear, or as an outgrowth of this, I suppose came frustration. I was a frustrated person.
Frustrated from the standpoint that I didn't know how to deal with my fear. I didn't know how to deal with the guilt. I didn't know how to deal with myself. I tried a lot of things. I began to fuss, and I'd see the evidence of isolated drinking, and I'd say, you know, let's don't do that. And I'd say this in the morning. When I'd get up, I'd say it at night, and I'd go to bed, and I'd think it all day long, you know, just don't.
Now, ladies, you don't have a corner on the market of nagging, let me tell you. Men can nag. Given sometimes a very slight cause, they can do this. It was against my conscience and against my grain as a man to beg, but I begged. And I was, you know, I felt guilty about begging. Nobody wants to get down on their knees or crawl and ask and plead, but I tried that. And, you know, that really frustrated me when that didn't work, because I really didn't know anything else I could do.
And I, of course, associated this with, you know, if you love me enough or if you love us enough or if you're a good moral person or if you've got any willpower.
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All of these things, you know, I felt like had to do with the problem of alcohol in our family. Then I tried ignoring it. You know, maybe if you ignore it, it'll go away. Stick your head in the sand or just say, oh, well, that's all right, and leave it at that. But this didn't work. And, you know, I had turned to the church to some degree. And I had prayed a lot about it, but the church wasn't the answer.
And, you know, I always felt if a person loved God enough, he could just do about anything. But, again, I didn't understand alcoholism. And I had no idea. I had no knowledge about it other than my past experience, which was very limited and very one-sided. Then I got the bright idea one day that I would just, I had the solution. I would just drown her in alcohol. You know, you've heard about people taking a bath in milk and other things.
And I said, well, I'll drown her with alcohol. She'll get enough of this, and that'll be over with. Because I remembered when my mom used to cook cherry pies, and she'd set them out on the windowsill to cool. And I had a good finger. And I went by one day, and I just got a taste of that and went on around the corner. And next thing I knew, Mother was saying, Lord Edward! So I came back, and she said, now you eat all that pie.
And you eat it now. And if you don't have enough, I'll cook you another one. And you're going to eat enough pie until you leave these pies alone. Well, I got sick on cherry pie. And I didn't want any more for a long time. And I just knew this would work. Virginia listened to the idea, and she thought that was a good idea. At this time, it was in July. And I didn't teach school during the summertime, as most of you know.
And I hauled hay commercially. I had an old 55 International truck. It was held together with bailing wire primarily and prayer. And I decided I'd take off a day from hauling hay, and I'd go up there, and we'd buy a case of these quarts. And she'd just have it. So we went up to the liquor store. And when I came out carrying that, she had a big grin on her face. And I said to myself, yes, it's going to work, because that's the same grin I had on my face when Mother gave me that cherry pie.
Well, I took it home, and we set it down in the basement. And I took the full bottle up, and I said, now here, here it is. And whenever you want any more, you don't have to go anywhere to get it. It's right down there. You just go get it. Well, about the end of July, I came in one day, and it was hot, very hot. And I was very tired, and I was so tired I couldn't sleep. So I said, I know what I'll do.
I'll run down there and have me a little snort, and that'll relax me, and I can go to sleep. So I went down in the basement, and I picked up one of those bottles, and it was empty. And I put it back down, and it was empty. I picked up another one, and it was empty. And I said, my God, has she been sharing this with somebody? And there wasn't any. And I began again to be worried, to be afraid, to be frustrated, and probably for the first time, very angry.
And this is the time that I began to be worried about myself, because anger is something that's difficult for me to control. My grandfather always told me, if you don't have any temper, you're not worth the dime. But if you don't control your temper, you're not worth it either. And I considered him a knowledgeable man. And I felt uncontrolled anger. I tried everything I knew to try, and it hadn't worked.
And I was angry not just at Virginia, but I was angry at me. And this is really when I began to get worried.
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And from anger went to despair. I had no hope. I had no reason to hope, because there wasn't any hope. At this time, it began to affect my job at school. I wasn't as good a teacher as I had been. I couldn't keep the benefit of the kids in mind first when I was there eight hours a day. I couldn't think. There were times when a student would tap me on the shoulder and say, Mr. B.. And I'd say, yes.
And he said, I've asked you a question. And I didn't remember what he'd asked. Because I was thinking about what's going on at home. Miles from nowhere, the nearest neighbor, quarter of a mile, and I had a terrible fear of the house burning and nobody being there. No fireplugs. That little well wouldn't do a whole lot. And I knew that there's a good chance that there wouldn't be anybody, an adult there that could handle the situation, because the drinking had progressed to the extent that some of the time there wasn't any supervision.
And I couldn't get this out of my mind. I was also driving a school bus. And I suppose the day that I was in the depths of despair was when I realized one day that with 66 kids trailing along behind me there, I couldn't remember the last five miles. I couldn't remember. And it scared me. It scared me because I realized then that I was taking advantage of people who were depending upon me. And I was again not meeting my responsibility.
And guilt again set in. So I had decided to quit, to quit teaching, and certainly to quit driving that school bus and go down the pike or whatever was necessary. And I was going to quit that weekend. And about two days later, Virginia called A.A. And she did it on her own. I didn't have any idea anybody could help. My father had been in A.A. for years. But he hadn't found his sobriety. And she told me when I came home that she had called A.A.
and that our little girl had primarily helped her make up her mind because she grabbed her mother by the cheeks and she said, Mother, I love you. She was afraid. And Virginia realized she was afraid, I'm sure. And two very lovely ladies came out the next day. One of them is dead now. The other is here. I don't know how to say thank you sometimes, but they saved our lives. They told Virginia that there was hope.
They told her that there was a way of life that could help. They didn't talk to me a lot because I wasn't there. And it was probably a good thing I wasn't because I wasn't at that time probably in any condition to learn or to listen. But she said, I'm going to a meeting tonight. And I said, well, my goodness, it's snowing outside. And that's a long ways. Monette's a long ways. She said, I'm going. I said, all right.
So she drove in the car and didn't say a whole lot. I don't know whether he didn't have time or what, but he didn't say a whole lot. And I didn't either. I listened. And I said, well, my gracious life, how can a group of ladies sitting around beating their gums help me any? I wasn't in any condition to be helped. But, you know, they told me, they said, keep coming back. Keep coming back. And Virginia was going up there anyway, so I kept going back.
So, I kept going back, and I really didn't feel like, at first, that there would be any
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help from me, but Al-Anon has basically taught me some things that have saved my life, the life of my family, and I suppose it's the secret of what I have learned in Al-Anon is that very fact, I have learned. Again I say the program is inspired because in Philippians, the 4th chapter, we have the recipe for contentment that God has given us, and it states, the Apostle Paul states that he says, I have learned, he didn't say it was granted to him miraculously, he said, I have learned in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content.
I was looking for contentment, I was looking for serenity, and I was willing to go to any length to get it. I knew that, and I wanted it. I saw these ladies laughing and smiling, and this man, he wasn't frowning in any way, you know, and he seemed to be relatively happy, and I knew that his wife was an alcoholic, and so I said, if these people have it, I want it. But I didn't know how to get it. But they said, if you'll keep coming back, you'll learn.
So to me, my fear was replaced by knowledge, and this was the first beginning of my return. And you know, when I read of the prodigal son, it says that when he was there feeding the swine, he came to himself. He came to himself. Knowledge seemed to dawn on him, and he used his mind, and he said, their servants in my father's house are a lot better off than I am. And when I look at the theme that we have for the convention this year, came to believe, I can see very easily that first of all I came, and then I came to, I came to myself, and later on I came to believe.
But it didn't happen all at once. Knowledge was the first step. I had to learn. First of all, I had to learn that alcoholism was a disease, that religion, love of God, love of family, morality, willpower, had nothing at all to do with it. It was a disease. And I was taught by these ladies the first month or so, which didn't really sink in a whole lot, but I was taught that it was a family disease, that if I thought my wife was a drunk, I would look at myself.
I was crazy, and I was. When I look back over some of the things that I did, you know, they really weren't the things that a rational thinking person would do. So I learned that it was a disease, that there was help for that disease, and that there was help for me, but that I couldn't help Virginia. But I could help me, and that if I helped myself, then I would be busy enough that I wouldn't have time to think about her.
And you know, when I began to look at it, these people had kept her sober for a month, and I hadn't been able to keep her sober that long in nine years. So they said, Leave her to the experts, and you take care of yourself. Now, I don't know whether you know what an expert is or not, but my grandfather had a definition for it, and he said, The X stands for nothing, and a spurt is a drip under pressure.
So I left her to the experts, and I began to try to come to myself, and eventually I came to believe in the Al-Anon program, and the fear, as I said, was replaced with knowledge. John C. one time said that fear knocked on the door, faith answered, and there was nothing there. I think this is basic to the Al-Anon program. You have the faith to follow it. Someone says, Well, as our speaker stated earlier, do you believe that something that you don't believe in can help you?
Well, I've heard this stated before in, Fake it till you make it. And sometimes you have to. And I tried to live this that was given to me, and tried to incorporate it into my life, and eventually acceptance replaced the guilt.
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I accepted the fact, as the Serenity Prayer stated, that there were some things I couldn't change, and that I needed courage to change the things that I could, and that God would give me the wisdom to know the difference. So acceptance can replace the guilt that you have. I realized for the first time that it was not something that I had not done or I had done that caused alcoholism in our family. I had realized for the first time that I was not guilty because I couldn't sober my dad up, that I was not guilty because I couldn't sober my wife up.
I learned that these things had nothing to do with Doyle, but I'd always thought that they had. I realized and accepted the fact that I could change myself if I had the courage through the Al-Anon program to do it. And as the AA states, rarely have we seen a person fail. I think the same thing goes for the Al-Anon program. Rarely have we seen a person fail who would follow the program of the Twelve Steps because it's inspired.
It's made for human beings. It's made for human beings by the Being that created human beings. So how could it be wrong? If you want to put it this way, it's the service manual for the human life. So with acceptance, the guilt was removed to some degree. And as a result of this, that is, the removal of the guilt, I had time to grow because if I was fighting the guilt and fighting the fear, I didn't have time to grow.
But with the fear gone, with the guilt replaced by knowledge and by acceptance, I was able to grow a little bit. I had a problem accepting the AA program for a while, and I'll never forget this change in my life either of the day. As I said, I hauled hay in the summertime. When you've got old beat-up equipment held together by prayers and baling wire, you have problems. And I had a problem. The motor in my old truck went out.
So I had to find a new one or a used one. And I went to Joplin, had two flats on the way up there, so you can imagine what state my tires were in. The old truck was just barely able to roll. I couldn't find a motor. I couldn't find one even that I could afford, not even find one at all. I didn't know how things were at home. I was mad that morning because I had to leave without breakfast, and anybody knows a working husband ought to get breakfast.
But my wife had been to AA meeting the night before and was tired and sleepy, and she didn't cook breakfast, and I had to leave. So I was eat up with resentment to some degree. And you know, they sometimes say if you've gone to the end of your rope, and I thought at this time, it wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I really thought, well, this is the end of my rope. I don't know whether to just give up or what to do.
I had been to an AA meeting about two weeks before in Joplin, and these ladies had given me their telephone numbers and said, if you ever need somebody to talk to, call us. Well, this was new to me. I hadn't been used to ladies giving me their telephone numbers. And I hadn't sure I'd been used to them saying, if you need us, call us. I didn't understand that. So I knew that something was wrong with me and that I didn't want to go back home, and I didn't want to quit, but I felt like I should.
So I called this lady and I said, I need somebody to talk to. Now I'm not trying to date you, but I want somebody to talk to. And she said, well, where are you? And I told her where I was, and she said, well, my husband and another group of AAs are fixing to go over to Miami to a meeting, and you come over here, and if you want to, you can stay here with me or you can go with them. Well, that didn't sound right either.
But I went. And let me tell you, this lady could cook chocolate cake. And she set a big chocolate cake there in front of me with some ice cream, and as soon as I got something in my stomach, I felt a lot better. And she said, well, do you want to stay with me or do you want to go with these fellows? They're fixing to leave. And I said, well, I believe I'll go with them. So I went over to Miami, and I met a very wonderful group of Al-Anons over there, and I see some of those here today.
And they'll never know how much they helped me. And when I got back, well, this lady said, now I want to talk to you a little bit. And I said, well, that's fine. And she said, do you think maybe you might be having some problems accepting the AA program? And I said, no, ma'am, I don't think so. She said, well, what's the problem? And I said, well, you know, I don't mind her going to these meetings and all, but there's other things too.
And she said, well, maybe you're jealous of AA. You know, maybe this is all she can do at this time, is go to her meetings and remain
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sober. And I said, well, maybe. But what about me? And she said, you take care of yourself. And that was a new one on me too. But after considering it, I felt like, well, maybe I was jealous of AA, and maybe I should accept it and accept whatever was needed for Virginia to work her program and for me to work my own. I realized then that I was powerless for the first time, and to some degree I was happy of this, that I no longer was responsible, because hithertofore I had felt much like a person in the suicide seat of a car and somebody else sitting over here driving it, and I was responsible, but I couldn't turn the steering wheel.
That was off limits. And I realized for the first time that I was powerless over another person, and I was powerless over her life. I was really powerless over my own, but that if I would come to myself and would believe in the higher power and let go and let God, that he'd take care of me and he'd take care of Virginia and he'd take care of our little girl, because he'd been taking care of people for centuries and he knew how to do it.
So with acceptance, the guilt left me. Now occasionally, if I don't accept it, it comes back, but if I'll accept the program, the guilt leaves. The frustration that I had was replaced with gratitude. I had prayed for God for a long time. If Virginia would just sober up, I wouldn't ask for anything else, nothing. Just be sober. Well, she hadn't been sober a month, so I was asking for everything. But I didn't know it.
I really didn't. I was asking for her to be a completely different person. I was asking her to be different to me. I was asking her to change. I was asking for everything. And I realized one day that my gratitude was lacking. I prayed then, to some degree, due to the gratitude that I had in my heart, that I might be able to detach with love and that I would leave things up to God in such a way that he could take care of them.
I also learned that the things that I was grateful for, I appreciated. And you stop and think about it for a moment. The things you're grateful for, don't you really appreciate? Isn't this the proof of our gratitude? We say many times that we're grateful alms, but do we appreciate those things for which we are grateful? We say that we're grateful for the AA program and the effect that it can have on our lives.
Do we appreciate it? Is this appreciation manifested in our lives, in our attitudes, in our relationships to other people? You know, if you're grateful for your wife, you appreciate your wife. If you're grateful for your children, you appreciate your children. If you're grateful for the country that you live in, you appreciate that country. Appreciation is the proof of gratitude. And to say that we are grateful, but yet do not appreciate, we need to look at ourselves and see if maybe we're really being honest.
So with the gratitude and the appreciation that came with it, I found that there was no need for frustration because things worked out. When I lifted up to God and was grateful unto God, things worked out for me. But if I just said I was grateful but did not appreciate, things didn't work very well. With the frustration removed, the anger left, because there was no need for anger if I was not frustrated.
We become angry when we are frustrated and cannot accomplish our ends and things don't work out like we think they should or like we want them to. When the frustration left, the anger left and was replaced by contentment. I don't know what your definition of contentment is, but as I said earlier, my definition of contentment is contained in Philippians 4. The Apostle Paul began with this discussion when he said, we came into this world with nothing, and he said, it is certain that we will not take anything with us when we leave.
Therefore, having food, clothing, and shelter, let us therewith be content.
[00:45:04]
We may want other things, but these are the things that Paul says we can expect for contentment. Anything above that is just something we want, it's not necessary for our contentment. But he also said, I have learned that in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content. Now, that really confused me for a while. How in the world could a man be content in whatever state he was in? The old boy was beaten, he was stoned, left for dead, drug outside of the walls of cities, he was beaten with rods, he was beaten with stripes, he was spit on, he was ostracized by his own people.
But he said, I have learned to be content, and that was hard for me to understand. But I read between these two passages, one in the 7th and one in about the 18th verse, and I read in between these and he explained why and how he could be content. The manner in which he said that he would be content was, first of all, with thanksgiving. You've heard all this phrase before, count your blessings. This is what he says, with thanksgiving, with prayer, and with supplication, let your requests be made known unto God.
First of all, before any person can pray, he said we need to be thankful for what we already have, grateful, appreciative, thankful for what we've already got. Secondly, with prayer. Knowing that God is our higher power, as I like to see him and call him. You may call him something else. Some people have called him the Great Spirit, others have called him the Holy Spirit. Whatever you want to call him is fine with me.
But wherever it is that you pray or that you ask assistance for the higher power, this is something that a human being has to have. To communicate with that higher power through prayer, conversation, talking to him. And then with supplication. I had a hard time remembering what that word supplication meant until I read the account of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. When he prayed three times to God, he said, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
When he prayed, he supplicated to the extent that sweat, as it were great drops of blood, dropped off of his brow. He was earnest. But he said, nevertheless, thy will, not mine, be done. So we can thank God, we can pray to him, and we can ask, but with the reservation that if it be his will, because he knows what we need. Our lives are unmanageable. We may ask for something we don't want, or we don't need, or that might be very bad for us.
And he may give it, he may not, but he has that choice. Then after we have done this, then let your request be made known to God. Ask him, because he's the giver. He's the one that's going to grant it if it will be granted. And then leave it alone. This is asking in faith. This is asking in acceptance. This is asking with contentment. Lord, I know that you'll give it to me if I need it. And leave it.
Don't try to force it. Don't try to make it. But as the twelve steps say, be willing. Be willing. And this is about all that we can do, is be willing, and when the opportunities come, take them. Or when we see God working in our lives, take them. You know, Alain, the first thing that I realized when I became content was that I had a choice. I had a choice of what I could do with my life. I always thought that the alcoholic determined what I did and didn't do.
This is not the case. I have a choice. Based upon God's care and God's love for me, I have a choice, as do all Alainons and as do all people on earth. We do what we choose to do. I used to not think this, because when a button was pushed, I reacted. I didn't act, I reacted. All my life was a reaction to different situations around me. But I learned through Alainon that I had a choice. Now I didn't do this at first.
It took me a long time. But I learned that when things happened, I would look back and say, this is what happened. This is what I did. What could I have done? What alternatives did I have? I would list these alternatives, and I prayed, and I said, maybe someday I'll be able to do this. This is what's happening.
[00:50:01]
What choices do I have to do? And then pick one of these. Then I have a choice. I'd always had the choice, but I'd never exercised it. In Alainon, I learned how to exercise that choice. God had given me a choice. He made man a creature of choice. But I'd never known how to exercise that choice, and I'd been a minister for nine years. But I didn't know I had a choice, or how to get that choice. But now I do.
When things happen, I can say, this is what's happening. What should I do, or what are my alternatives? So I don't have anybody to blame anymore, nobody. Just me, just the Lord and his care of me, as I let him. He can care for me only to the degree that I let him. And the more I let him, the better off I'm going to be, the more I try, the worse off I'm going to be. Let go and let God, as they say. And you know, these slogans seem trite to me right at first, but they mean more and more every day.
I'm not saying that Al-Anon is the answer to everything. But I am saying that in Al-Anon there is hope. And when hope was replaced in my life by despair, or rather, hope displaced the despair or replaced the despair, then I understood what some of these people were saying with their bright smiling faces and their shining eyes and their love for one another. They said, keep coming back. And I began to see a glimmer of hope that things could change, because I knew that through the program, AA and the higher power was going to take care of Virginia.
Al-Anon and the higher power was going to take care of me. And that God, in his care of us and his concern for our little girl, Carissa, she is going to be all right. And I had never known that before. I had always thought and prayed and hoped that everything would be all right. But I know now everything is going to be all right. This is something that the Apostle Paul could say, I know in whom I have believed, I know in whom I have come to believe.
I had to first come, then I had to come to, came to myself, and now I have come to believe through the Al-Anon program and through God's love and God's concern for me. And I know that everything is going to be all right. And you can too. Thank you. Thank you, Doyle, that was beautiful. I have been asked to announce there's going to be a ten-minute intermission, and then we'll break, return for the A.A. speaker, Roberta B. from Oklahoma City.
Pardon me? I'm sorry, well, okay, I'm a little bit shorter than he is. I even bought platform shoes so you could see me, and you can't do it. There will be a ten-minute break following the closing, and then Roberta B. from Oklahoma City will speak. Could you hear that? Okay. Then in closing, I would like to say the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them. Take what you liked and leave the rest.
The things you heard were spoken in confidence and should be treated as confidential. Keep them within the walls of this room and the confines of your mind. A few special words to those of you who haven't been with us long. Whatever your problems, there are those among us who have had them too. If you try to keep an open mind, you will find help. You will come to realize that there is no situation too difficult to be bettered and no unhappiness too great to be lessened.
We aren't perfect. The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have in our hearts for you. After a while, you'll discover that though you may not like all of us, you'll love us in a very special way, the same way that we already love you. Talk to each other, reason things out with someone else, but let there be no gossip or criticism of one another. Instead, let the understanding, love, and peace of this program grow in you one day at a time.
[00:55:01]
Will all who care to now join me in the Lord's Prayer? Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever.
Amen.