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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 822 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: norma-a-better-than-gold-austin-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:46:16
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Well, y'all, I'm going to go ahead and start. My name is Norma, and I'm a real alcoholic. And I come here representing Step Sisters, which is a Cocaine Anonymous meeting, which I enjoy because I think that when we recover, just like we got sick together, we can get well together without the distraction of outside influences. And I think that Step Sisters have been going to it for a few years now, and there's a lot of really good women there who believe in recovery, believe in being solution-based, believe in using the program as outlined in the Big Book. And I'll tell you, I had people that believed in me long before I believed in myself. And what kept me coming back was the acceptance, the unconditional love, and, you know, the people who are willing to go to any length for me. And it is a two-way street, you know. We all have our part to play. But, you know, I love that group, and I love the women in it, and I've made a lot of good friends there.
And it's a place that I look forward to every single Friday night, no matter how tired I am. I'm going to be a member of Cocaine Anonymous, and I don't want anyone to tell you anything different than all you have to do is have a desire. That's it. Don't let anybody tell you anything different. If you want a new life, if you want to stop using and abusing people, places, things, and drugs, and if things didn't quite turn out the way you hoped they would 20 or 30 years ago, then we have a seat for you. So just suit up and show up, and don't give up. Because I'm not giving up on you. And, you know, the reason I come here week after week, month after month, year after year, is because I'm hoping to save someone's life. And I'm not exaggerating. You know, every month that I come here, there's 30 different women sitting. Where are they all? Why aren't they all at Step Sisters or some other fellowship? And I know them, because I've been coming here at least five years, and I've been visiting treatment centers in Austin, Texas, for probably 25 years.
I have 22 and a half years of clean and sober time. I've been married for 17 years to Blind Dave, who is the light in the darkness. And I have been in Austin most of that time, except for a little journey to Richmond, Virginia, where I actually found recovery. And, you know, my life has been awesome since I found the right path for my spiritual feet. It hasn't been without its moments of pain. In fact, there's been plenty of that. Because life doesn't stop happening just because we stop drinking, just because we put down the needle.
What's different for me today is what I do when I hit that brick wall. And I'm not dead. I'm not dead in any sense of the word. And my moments of joy are exquisite. My experiences with God, I have no words for them, except that that becomes better and better every year. And the places that God is taking me in my personal journey, both spiritually and materially, are awesome. Now, this last year, I spoke at the Aggieland Convention. It was in a nice, beautiful hotel. They treated me like a princess. You know, I had this entourage
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of people making sure I wasn't thirsty or hungry. You know, all of the neat things that, you know, you see happening to celebrities. And I spoke to a group of about a hundred people or so, all from various cities. And it was a beautiful experience because God was there. God was speaking through me to a number of people who needed to hear whatever it was that God had for them to hear. And I felt the touch of God on me because it wasn't about me. It wasn't ever about me. And yeah, all those things were nice. But it was about what God wanted to do that day in my heart and in the hearts of those that were there.
Well, since then, I've been invited to speak in Shreveport, Louisiana, at a regional CA convention. That's not just a few cities. That's several states. That'll be in about a month. And you know, I thank God because I don't know what's going to happen there, but I know it's going to be meant to be. And then someone who heard me at Aggieland called and said, hey, we're having a huge celebration in Lufkin, Texas. Where's Lufkin? And I said, thank you. I would love to show up. You know, this isn't about me being a CA celebrity.
This is about the transformation that God has brought me from when I was spending my nights at the bar, getting so drunk I could barely make it home. And believe me, I was drinking alone. There may have been a lot of people around me, but I was very much alone. And I didn't want to be alive. I had failed at every relationship I'd ever tried. I could work, but there were a lot of Mondays that I missed and a few Fridays I didn't show up.
And I was just so sure that I was less than everybody else, that I had to work harder than anybody else just to make me feel good that day. And I had no connection to reality. Everyone thought I was great at what I did. It was when I looked in the mirror how I felt about me. There was no self-respect. There was no self-esteem. There was no dignity. There certainly was no integrity. And you know, my husband got a card on one of his AA birthdays and it said, if you haven't found it, nothing else matters. And if you have found it, nothing else matters. And that's where God has put me. The big book calls it a position of neutrality, where you're neither caught up with your own pride or your own fear. Because those were my enemies. Not alcohol and drugs. My pride and my fear. And all of the little character defects that surround it. And you know, I hadn't found it yet. I was operating on norma power. You know, and I had the power. I had the norma power, you know. What did I have the power to do? Well, let's see. I had the power to lie. And I never told the big lies. I just omitted a lot and led people to believe this and that and the other. You know, and it was like a little white lie. But it wasn't the truth. And I manipulated situations to get what I wanted out of whatever situation was going on at the time. I didn't realize I was doing it, but I was. I always thought I was an honest person until I did a four step. And I looked at the truth of who I was, what I was doing, why I was feeling so threatened all the time by everyone and everything. And I was. I was depressed. Anyone who is an alcoholic or an addict and has not recovered is going to be
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depressed. Because life is depressing when you have put in your all. You have done your best and your best is not good enough. Look at us now. Who imagined we would be sitting here five or ten or fifteen years ago? This is not our dream. This is our nightmare. You know, I had the power of the panty. You know, women can get what they want through the power of the panty. That's a nice way to put it. But you know, if I needed someone to pay the rent and he had the money and I had the candy, then that's what I would do. And you know, the other word for that is prostitution. Because I compromised my own values. I did not want to do these things. But when you're desperate and you've got to feed your kids, sometimes that's what happens. And who did I lie to the most? Myself. There's a cartoon, an old Pogo cartoon that says, we have met the enemy and he is us. I am my own worst enemy if I am lying to myself. And you know, I had the power to utilize my hate, my silence, my resentment.
You know, if I was climbing the career ladder, I would try to make myself look good by making you look bad. You know, we have all kinds of power. But the problem is, none of that works. It talks about that in the big book, in that part around page sixty to the actor running the show. It talks about someone who is always trying to arrange things and have everything go their way. But their arrangements don't seem to stay put. If only people would do as I wish, hey, the world would be grand. But what happens instead is we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. My ex-husband retaliated for twenty-five years.
He still hates me. And I really haven't done anything except hurt him by leaving. And you know, he has made my life miserable in every way he could ever since then. And you know, when you get to that point in your life where you wonder, what next? And suicide starts looking good. That's usually when God intervenes. That's what happened for me. I took a bottle of pills and I laid down to die. And I really wanted to. Failed relationships. Felt like I wasn't good enough at work. I couldn't look in the mirror and feel anything happening there. I was depressed all the time. And smoking pot and drinking and doing whatever I could to escape the reality of my life. Nothing was turning out the way I wanted it to. By now I was two thousand miles away from my family. I called my sister to tell her I was going to die that day. And that was a terrible thing to do because she couldn't do anything about it. She was in Austin, Texas and I was in Richmond, Virginia. And obviously I didn't want to die. Someone came over, found me, gave me the throw-up medicine. And for six months I pretended to be alive. You know, I went through the motions. I ate, I drank, I showed up at work, I slept. You know, that's not living. There's more to life than our physical existence. There's got to be more. We are spiritual people living in a physical world. And if all of our focus has been on the material, physical things in life, we've missed out. And there are those of us who've had a taste of the spiritual world but can't quite get connected. We know it's there, but how do you get there? And the big book talks about this. It says, lack of power, that was our dilemma. We're powerless people, but we're not choiceless. When I stumbled accidentally into this program, one lucky day for me, and
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it was in a low-bottom drunk club in Richmond, Virginia, and there were all these older men there and their wives, and they looked at this 28-year-old woman who was obviously lost, and they did everything they could to bring me in, and they did. They gave me hope. I listened to their stories. They were horrifying. These men had blackouts. They'd wake up, they didn't know who they'd killed or not. And, you know, I thought, wow, if you have the nerve to stand up and tell what you were like that away. I didn't know what to think, except that I could see that they were different now. And they weren't, you know, a bunch of evangelists. You know, they had God in their lives, but it wasn't connected to any particular religion. And that was okay by me, because I hadn't had any good experiences in that arena. I have since, and I don't have any judgment here or there on the organized religion route, but I'm saying at that time, if somebody had taken me to a Baptist church, I would have turned my back. It wasn't for me. But I could see that something different was happening here, and they told me, throw out your old ideas of who God is. That was the best advice I ever got. I needed to have a new idea. I needed to try something different. And I spent a year at that club, and I sobered up, and I went through the steps, and then I moved back home to Austin. And things kind of fell apart, because I didn't have a home group.
And I instantly got married, instantly had a child, and I'm on my way down, because I had married the disease, another addict. I just didn't recognize it at the time. This was a man who medicated himself every day, with pot, with beer. He was a functioning alcoholic. But I didn't see that. And I really kind of stopped doing anything, except going to meetings. And that wasn't enough. There's more to our program than the fellowship. And I hadn't discovered that yet. And so the day came, with him offering me pot every night, saying it's a medicinal herb, and I needed to cool out, that I started back down. I kept going to meetings, though, because I had this lie in my head that said, well, you know, alright, I'm an alcoholic, I can see that. I'm still an AA, because I'm an alcoholic, but it's okay for me to smoke pot. And that lie nearly killed me. You see, we're the type of people that were either 100% hopeless, and doomed to destruction, or we're 100% recovered.
There is no middle of the road. Not for us. It's one or the other. Because again, it is not drugs that is the problem. It is what is driving me to drink that is the problem. What was driving me was self-centered fear in every area of my life. And the day came when I realized that, you know, here I was, smoking pot. I've got a little bitty baby I have no idea how to take care of. I've got this husband who is drinking, using, abusive, emotionally cruel. Things are not working out the way I had hoped they would. You know, I had in mind the white picket fence, the wonderful marriage, you know, a great, happy life, friends, family, approval. No. That wasn't going on. And what was worse is I could see that it was going on with some people, you know. Maybe not the white picket fence deal. It just depends on the person. But there were people who had it. And nothing else mattered. The big book talks about it in one of the chapters. About it being it
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being something better than gold. And it says this, and it's talking about a spiritual life here. It's in the family afterward. And it says, like a gaunt prospector. That's someone who is by now starving. And I was. I was starving spiritually. And dying physically. Like a gaunt prospector, belt drawn in over the last ounce of food, our pick struck gold. Page 928. Joy at our release from a lifetime of frustration knew no bounds. That's what recovery gives us. Release from a lifetime of frustration. Imagine every crummy year of your life. And God has given you a new one. That is a hundred times better than what you had. Father feels he has struck something better than gold. For a time he may try to hug the new treasure to himself. He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless load. That's God's love and power. Limitless. That will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life. You know, mining, that kind of indicates a little work. And insists on giving away the entire product. Something better than gold. When you've got it, nothing else matters. I want to tell you what my experience is around this something better than gold has been. When I picked up my baby boy and left, the reason I left is because I could see that my husband at that time was going in one direction and I was going in another direction. He had broken trust with me. And I realized that I lied to myself again.
I could see that he was the way he was before I married him. But I wanted that white picket fence illusion. I wanted the American dream. And I lied to myself. I said, you know what, my love will change him. Well, my love didn't change him. And I had fully compromised myself again. And the consequences of my past were running around the living room crying mama. That's a sad thing to happen to someone. Because now not only have I hurt him and he's hurt me, but now we have another human being in the picture who is totally innocent. You know, the children are the worst victims of this disease. Because they're choiceless. You know, we're powerless, but they're totally choiceless. They have no choice in any situation. I teach out in Del Valle and I see it every day. Many of the kids I teach, they're little seven and eight year olds in second grade. They have moms and dads in jail. Grandma's raising him. Or there may be no other parent in the picture. One of them, daddy's around, we don't know where mama is. Had another one that he came up to me the first day of school and he said, well my mother's been missing for about three months now. We don't know where she is. What do you say to that? You know? Then they talk about the drive-by shootings like, like they're talking about eating breakfast. It's a normal life to them. Many of the kids I have are in foster care. Mama can't take care of them. Someone else is their mama now. Those are the worst kids, if they've been there a long time. Because of violence on the parent's part, usually. Not situations like y'all's. I see this happen. If you have, if CPS has your kids, you'll get them back if you do what they ask you to do. I've had many a sponsee come around crying because their kids are in foster care through CPS because of the addiction situation. But all CPS wants is a healthy, happy mom. And if you recover, and if you do whatever it is they ask you to do, you'll
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get your kids back. They don't want to keep your kids. And they don't want the kids to be unhappy. They want a healthy, well-balanced, sane parent in the home. That's all they want. If you fight them, if you have an attitude, you make your own bed. You know what I mean? I had to rise above it. My son went to foster care. He was 16, though. And I won't go into all that, but I was pretty angry at how I was being treated, mostly. And at their view of what they thought the situation was, which was different than the reality. But you know, how are you going to prove all that?
You're word against some teenager, you know? And they finally did understand, but it took a while. But in the meantime, I had to say, what's best? I'm going to pray for these people that I have resentments against. I'm going to rise above this. And I'm going to do what I think will help my son most. Because it says in the big book that we have ceased fighting anything or anyone. But as I saw all of this stuff happening with my husband, and realizing that I was just fooling myself again, I picked up the baby and I left. And what really drove me the most was knowing that other people had this thing. There were people in recovery who were so full of joy, so full of the spirit of God, so together, no matter what was going on in their life. And many of them had things going on, but they were making it okay. They were happy, healthy people. And I thought, I want to be like that. And I made a decision that day that I didn't care what it took. I was going to be one of those people. And you know, fear will keep you sober for a while. I can remember spending the night in a car.
I didn't have a place to sleep that night. I really can't remember much of the details. I know that I was outside my sister's house. I know I didn't want to go in because her husband was a time bomb. You never knew when he was going to lose it and hurt somebody. And I remember thinking that night I wanted to die. I was so unhappy. But I had a baby. And I didn't want him to have the mother that committed suicide and to be stuck with the father that I didn't think was up to the job either.
So for my kid, I stayed alive that night. And for many years afterwards, I wrote a song about that too. But you know, I let a lot of things keep me sober. But one of the most important things was the hope that I had that I could be like some of those shining stars I saw. They were few and far between. You know, if I look at who's here today and I come back in a year, I will be able to count on one hand who makes it. And that's a fact. And I see that happen month after month after month.
There's a lot of people who need this program. Only a handful want it bad enough to do what it takes. And that's something between you and God. That's something between you and your pain level. And something between you and your belief level. But when I picked up the baby and left, again, I had nowhere to go. So I slept on this couch and that couch. You know, this friend and that friend. This relative and that relative.
And it was sad. It was really sad. I didn't have a job. I had a car. I had a paycheck. And I had a bunch of stuff in the car. And I had a baby. That was my life at that point. You know, and a whole lot of pain. It hurt me to give up that American dream. I didn't want to leave. But it was obvious that it was not what I thought it was. It had become a nightmare. And he was getting violent, too, and I wasn't
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going to raise my kid in a violent home. That was it. When he started throwing chairs, raising his voice, hurting me, I left. I regret that to this day, because he hasn't changed, and I have. And one night I was sitting at one of the clubs, Golden Street, I believe it was. They were having a dance, and I sat on that front porch, and that was when I did my third step. It wasn't official. I didn't read it out of the book. I didn't think of it as a third step. But this was the turning point in my life. I'm sitting there with a baby I haven't been able to take care of, no job, no home, no future, you know. And I thought, now what? And that's when I just said, you know what? Either God is, or God isn't. Either he's going to take care of my baby, or he's not God. Either these people are liars and fools, and I'm an idiot, or this thing is real, and I just haven't figured out how to get connected yet. And I looked at my options. I can go backward and drink, or I can go forward and put all my eggs in the God basket. And that's what I did that day, that evening, on the porch. I just said, God, I'm going to go with you. I'm going to believe that you have the power. I certainly didn't have any power at that point. See what Norma's will had done with her life. And I said, I'm going to stay sober today, and I'm going to do whatever I can think of as the next right thing. And I'm going to believe that you're going to take care of me and mine. That was my third step. Within a few minutes, someone came up to me and said, hey, I hear you need a place to live. Well, I don't remember telling anyone there that. Go figure. I said, yeah, but I really don't have a lot of money.
I don't have any money right now. She said, well, I've got one room and a trailer in South Austin, 50 bucks a month. Can you manage that? Hey, I said, yeah, I think I can do that. And you know, there were about eight people living in that little hot trailer in South Austin, about 10 miles from I-35 and Ben White. Some of them were drinking. But you know, once you've made up your mind, it doesn't matter what other people are doing. And I had made up my mind. And I went forward. And that summer, I worked odd jobs. I worked as a mechanic, gopher. And I just cleaned houses. I took my kid with me everywhere. I did whatever I could that summer to make ends meet. And in the fall, I got a good job. And I got a little apartment, one bedroom. Me and my son moved in before the lights had even turned on yet because it was my personal private space. And it was precious to me. But I will never forget God coming through for me within 30 seconds of a prayer. That's better than gold because if somebody had handed me the money, I would not have known the reality of God in my life at that moment. And then as time passed and my willingness level was really high, I refused the thought of drinking or drugging. I listened to what people said in the meetings. I had a sponsor. I did my step work. If I felt squirrely, I would go and I would pick up the phone. And if I had to pick up the phone five times in one night, that's what I did. I was going to have this thing. And it didn't matter what it took for me. Then I did the little AA girl meets AA boy on the campus thing. I went through a whole slew of guys, which was, you know, that's what we do. You know, relationships. There's nothing wrong with wanting love. It's how I went about it that was wrong, which was
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jump into bed, make whoopee, and now move in. You know, before you even know who this person is. And believe me, I hooked up with some criminals because I was that stupid. When you, love is blind, when you are that needy that you will take anything and anyone because you don't think you're worth anymore. But the other side of this is I never waited to find out who I was sleeping with, which was the enemy most of the time. And then there's this thing called water seeks its own level. You know, I'm sick. I'm codependent. I'm still not all the way spiritually sound. Who do I hook up with? People just like me. You know, that's just human nature. Because someone who is more spiritually evolved would not touch me with a 10 foot pole. They would say, oh, there's a sick girl. Let's pray for her or whatever. It's the truth. You know, to this day I can look around and see who's sick and who I want to stay away from because see, the symptoms of somebody else's disease will creep into my life and I don't need it. Now that doesn't include y'all. I'm helping you.
You know, and I can be honest with you and I can set boundaries with you, but I can also be there for you. You know, I'm not talking about y'all. I'm talking about relationships with men or with other people that you might come across, you know, because they're all out there. They're everywhere, you know. We have to do that. Some are more wicked than others and some are more manipulative than others and fool people. But, you know, I hooked up with all these guys that had just as many problems as I did, just as little recovery as I did and, you know, it wasn't them. It wasn't me. It was just how things were at that time. And the day came when I had had enough. I had had enough pain. I had had enough misery and I didn't want to drag my little boy through it. By now he's like, you know, five years old and it affects kids, you know, to have these multiple monogamous relationships.
And so, you know, without anyone really telling me to do this, I just said again, well God, if you're God, then you have the power to make this happen in my life because I've tried to make it happen and it isn't happening. So this was another one of those let go and let God. And from that moment on I got up and I looked for God's will for me that day, not a partner. And my mother didn't help. She kept trying to hook me up with all these men and I had to say, no, no, no, thank you, no, I'll babysit, no, thank you, that's cool, mom, I'm just, you know, and temptation was there. And there were times these nice young men in AA would ask me out and I had to be honest and up front and say, you know what, I really like you. I think we could be friends and I would like to get to know you. But if you want to take me to dinner tonight, honey, dinner's all you're going to get, you know, because that's just where I am. I'm not looking for an intimate relationship. And you know what I found? I found intimacy with God instead. I found dignity for myself instead. God took me on a journey where I began to have some integrity. I began to dress different because I wasn't flashing these I'm available signs anymore. I began to hold myself, I began to think of myself differently. And lo and behold, it wasn't long that after that I met my present husband, Blind Dave. Have y'all seen him? He's a cool dude. Blind Dave, he's a blind man, totally blind, but he has an incredible spiritual insight. He's one of the most gentle compassionate and wise men I have ever met in my life. There are only two or three that I would put up there with him. And all of them have very spiritual lives, relationships with God. But, you know, I did make a list. I did let God know, just in case, that if
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he was thinking about a relationship for me somewhere down the road, you know, this is who I wanted. I wanted a man who could be a good father to my child because I had had plenty of guys come along that wanted me but they didn't want the whole baggage, you know. I wanted someone who could pull their weight financially because, you know, I had these guys that were living with me and not contributing. And they were bums, you know, let's just look at it real. And then I was wanting someone who loved music because I love music and that was important to me. And I wanted someone who loved God first. And, you know, that was my husband, to a T. And, you know, I was a little bit of a crybaby. I was a little bit of a crybaby. But again, God showed me something better than gold because all the money in the world cannot buy a husband, cannot buy love, cannot make your teenager come back, can't take away your cancer or your leukemia or any of that. Only God has the power to remove the obsession of addiction, of codependency, the pain of raising kids and watching them go their way, having to wait for years for them to return, seeing someone you love addicted to drugs. That position of neutrality I'm talking about, somewhere that's not in fear and it's not in pride. It's not you living in that place where you're constantly wondering how it's going to turn out and what can you do. And it's not in that place of I'm going to make it happen by God or else. It means that you're allowing God to take the lead.
This is a place of an abandonment. You know, when all you have left to hold on to is faith, that's that place. And to be able to truly say nothing else matters except my relationship with God because that's where the power is. It is a place of blind faith because, see, we want everything to work out the way we want it to. And we have this vision in our head of how we think it should be, ought to be, could be. Can you let go of that for what God has planned for you instead? Can you let go of the children and think of what God has planned for them, which may or may not include you? And I'm not talking to anyone personally about the CPS thing because I do believe it's God's will for children to be with their mothers, you know, and God's will for you to be here getting well. But there are other situations that we want things to be different and it may take some years. That would include our relationships with our family. You know what? It may take them two years to see you as a person again who is normal, healthy, and happy. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to pat you on the back when you get 30 days. You don't go to the mechanic for a loaf of bread. They don't have it. It's a way of putting it. Go to your recovery friends for that pat on the back. We'll break our arms patting you on the back. We'll be so proud. Don't go to your family. They don't understand the disease. They don't understand how difficult it is. They don't understand what's behind it all. And you know, I've had many, many experiences in my life, too many to tell in 45 minutes. But I want you to say that God will meet you more than halfway, wherever you are. That your hardest thing is going to be to believe that He can and will. Because you're going to want to look at circumstances. Don't look at that. You're going to wonder, well, how can God do this?
Well, here's what I can think of and I don't see any of that happening. Don't look at that. You cannot look at what's going on in this world. You just have to believe that God knows how to pull the strings in the other world. Because there are two worlds here. There's the reality of God, and there's what
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we see on the surface. And you've got to make the connection with the other world. It's a road less traveled. That's why so many people don't make it. They can't believe. When they can't believe, they start taking it into their own hands. They start trying to self-manage. They start trying to manipulate the situation, and they get ahead of God. You cannot get ahead of God in your life. You've got to stay in today and believe that God knows your heart's desires. He knows your weaknesses. He knows how to use your special talents. And He knows how to connect you with whatever it is you need today to make it just for this 24 hours. Make your life a 24-hour adventure every day. And put money down on God, because you'll win every time. And now I'm going to sing a song, if you don't mind.