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Source: Brenda J – Sunlight of the Spirit (2021) – Speaker Talk – Date Unknown.mp3 File: brenda-j-sunlight-of-the-spirit-2021-speaker-talk-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:54:10
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God, I offer myself to you to build with me, to do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I am I, better do your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I will help, of your power, of your love, of your way of life. May I do your will, always. My name is Brenda. I'm a recovering lesbian, Hispanic, Catholic, drug addict, full-figured woman.
Sit down. You will only encourage me. It's not that kind of conference. Do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged. I'd like to share that up front because I understand we probably reached the end of some of your attention spans. I'd like to thank the committee for inviting me. They might regret doing that, but I'd like to thank them nonetheless. For all the women who have stood behind a microphone this weekend and spoken their truth and entrusted to us the charge of going forward, the charge of telling our truth. That happened also over coffee, over tears, over the objections of our egos. That voice, the perpetual voice in my head that says, I am right and you are wrong-er-est.
My ego will make up words. I teach kids and I had a- I love when I share that and there's not like a gasp. But sometimes I teach kids, gasp. And I had a particularly athletic group one year. So the first week of school I took them out to the big old school yard and I put them on the start line and I showed them where the end line was. I said, the person that wins this race is the one that comes in second. Go!
Well I had a little boy who came with his own wings in my class that year. He had a few labels. We label kids we don't know how to teach so we can make it about them. Well he ran past everybody and he crossed the line first and he turns around and goes, losers!
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And nobody corrected him. They went up and they patted him on the back. He rubbed it in all year. And they let him. I suffered from the kind of alcoholism that separated me from the woman God meant me to be. Alcoholism that left me feeling deficient. Hiding the fact that I didn't think I was enough. Anybody who requested anything of me that I was incapable of, I just dismissed them and made them think it was their fault for wanting me to be something I couldn't be.
I'm looking out upon you this morning and realize we have some empty chairs. Folks that were here Friday and Saturday. I'm really glad we weeded those people out. There was a lady that just left. She didn't learn nothing from yesterday. You can't get up and leave in the middle of my chair. Several of you really stout AA members are out by now wondering if she's ever going to get to recovery. I hate speakers. I hate speaker meetings. People still invite me to those. I'm like, no.
They're hard. Speaker meetings are hard. Especially when they start out with, I was born in a little town in Iowa. Because we learn nothing else this weekend except that all the light comes from Iowa. From the places we least expect it. So they start out with, I was born in Iowa, and I'm like doing math, like how old are they? Like how long till they get to AA? I understand that the only part of my story you care about is the part that sounds like yours. I'm okay with that.
I've been sober a long time. I got sober in 1990. My sobriety date is July the 3rd of 1990, and I share that with you because I wanted you to know that not everybody knows the day they were going to die. I was going to die on the 4th of July, and I know that because I found you on the 3rd. And I have lots of folks, I've been to lots of meetings where people share about that, and I think it's important to identify.
But I also think it's important for you to know what it takes to stay 31 years. You already know what it was like. You already know what happened. Let's talk about what it is like today. I am not afraid to stand in front of you today and tell you how good it gets. That all I thought was at the end of a bottle has come to me as a result of the steps. By the way, y'all know something? I guess one person knows something. Part of what's hard about being a speaker is that in essence what I'm doing is I'm laying out my life in front of you.
I want to lay down the journey I've taken, the things I've learned, the mistakes I've made for your inspection. And you might very well look at that and find it wanting. You might very well look at that and go, that's all you got after 31 years?
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You might look at that and decide. I was out in California one time and I was sharing my story from the podium and this guy stood up in the back. He said, why are you talking about God since you gay? You know at the end when people come up and hug you and they call that a thank you line? That hasn't always been my experience. The guy that stood up and said, you know, you have no right to talk about God and you being gay and everything. I said, sir, they asked me to share my experience, strength and hope.
One day they may ask you. Until then, sit the f*** down. There's a woman that came up to me at the Florida State Convention when I introduced myself the way I do. And she says to me, she says, why can't you just be an alcoholic? In my head I thought, can you see me? How is all this just going to be alcoholic? And I said to her, she had like 53 years sober, I think she said. And I said to her, I hate when people ask me questions they already know the answers to. But I'm going to indulge you.
I stand behind every podium I come to and tell people who I really am because what I'm trying to tell you is that there is room in Alcoholics Anonymous for all of us. I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous in good standing. It is my job, my calling, my relationship with God to come into this fellowship and make all of you who are feeling very comfortable, very self-righteous, very I know the books, step away kind of people.
I've come all this way to make you feel uncomfortable. And all of those of you here this morning who feel like you can't come back, that there is something so deficient and so broken inside you that you cannot be welcomed here on the edges of the fellowship. I came all this way, I would have walked all this way to tell you not only is there room for you, it is in the chair next to mine. I'd like to thank the committee. They say we can start our day over whenever we want.
I'm one of nine. I'm one of nine in my family. You ain't got to worry. The devil think he going to be in my way this morning? Sometimes that dude presents as allergies, I'm like back up. You can't silence the voice of God. You can't silence the voice of goodness and of grace. I'm one of nine kids. My mom had, there were seven girls, two boys. We never got to the bottom of anything. I have 27 nephews and nieces, 40 some odd great nephews and nieces. I like to call them father.
I love you. It's me and you, baby. We're the only one know what fodder is. All these
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young kids are like, they got their phones right here to the side because they don't think I can see them and they're like, what is fodder? I took a drink of alcohol when I was 12 and then I took it up as a career right after that. I sobered up when I was 24, barely legal in the state of Texas. All you need to know about the way I drank is that I had enough. Enough to turn me into somebody besides my mother and father's daughter. Alcohol took me far enough from God that I could not hear her voice, his voice, its voice. I started drinking when I was 12 and so I show up at AA at 24. The first thing I noticed when I went into the meetings is that there was nobody in charge.
So I went home and told my mom, I said, Mom, I went to my first AA meeting and there's nobody like in charge. I said, I think they're going to ask me. My mom had been listening to my crap for 24 years. She said, I think so too, go back. Not everybody in my family was happy I was sober. They were the ones I drank with and if there was a problem with the way I was drinking, my older sister said to me one day, I got my year chip and I was so happy and I took it over to where we were gathered and I said, look, I got a one-year chip in AA. I said, I've been sober a whole year. She looks at me, she goes, and they hadn't made you president or anything. I said, the wheels turn slow there. I realized that I'd left those relationships a long time ago and so I went to each one of my brothers and sisters and I introduced myself to them again. I said, hi, my name is Brenda. I took a drink that broke me. I took a drink that made me leave you. And if you would be so kind, I would welcome another opportunity to get to know you.
And so I started about that business. My amends to my brothers and sisters was made by ways that I fostered the relationship with their kids. I started to show up for their stuff. For all I'd missed. I've been to more violin recitals than should be required of any sober person. Especially when you're early in sobriety and they're all about like, look, look, they're like, you got to tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. So here I am listening to all these little recitals and I'm like, that was so interesting.
My nephew got his driver's license. He turned 18 and I went to the DMV with him and when he drove back, I had little pom-poms and I could see the guy say to Roy, he's like, do you know her? And he's like, no. Like in slow motion. I have a nephew who participated in the Special Olympics and had to go to the Special Olympics and I'd run along the side with bells and signs that said, I'm Eric's aunt and all that. And people were like, and she's sober. Wow.
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So I was the first person in my family that got to go to college. I graduated with a degree in education and the morning of graduation, I went on a job interview. There were 84 people in my graduating class. Three of us got jobs. I went on that interview the morning of graduation and the principal I was interviewing with said, I see that there's like a 10 year gap here in your resume. And he's like, well, tell me about that time. I looked at that man. I said, look, I was busy.
I didn't ask you about any gaps in your life. Let's concentrate on what is there. So I got the job. I wound up, I teach sixth graders. And the reason I teach sixth graders, I'm like 18 years into this. The reason I teach sixth graders is because I asked that principal, who are the kids nobody wants? He said, that'd be the sixth graders. I said, I'll take them. I went back to my class for one last final whatever and there was a gentleman in the group and he said, you know, they only gave you that job because you're a woman and you're Hispanic. I said, it's about time that shit paid off.
Well, I was 12 when I started drinking. So I started teaching class. I have no idea. I'm like, what y'all want to learn today? They're like, let's learn about airplanes. I said, fabulous. Everybody open a book. Let's see what we can find out. And the first year I was teaching, my kids scored perfect hundreds in standardized testing that we give them in the state of Texas. Perfect hundred in reading, perfect hundred in math. And in Texas, that's how we decide who goes to heaven.
They offered to let me teach a class to about 800 teachers. I said, fabulous, yes. Now, the district had been sending all these things that we're supposed to be using to teach the kids, but I didn't know what they were, so we stacked them in the closet until we had more information. The kids are like, miss, we got another packet. I said, okay, put it with the other ones. So I go teach this class and a woman, I'm like, what do y'all want to know, on account I didn't know what to tell them?
She said, how do you help the kids master Objective 4.B when it talks about multidimensional shapes and the ways that we experience those in our daily lives? In my head, I said, ma'am, I have no idea what the hell you just said. But out of my mouth came, well, let me tell you a little bit about that. I said, I went and I did my work. I did all my work. I dealt with all my fear. I dealt with all my abandonment issues. I dealt with all my anger, my frustration, my brokenness, my separateness. I went and I did all that work so that when those kids showed up with theirs, it did not scare me.
And I said, this might not be for some of you. I get up every morning and I can't wait to get to work. I can't wait to get there. And I said to them, if you don't feel that way about this job, don't be where the future comes to you every day. Go find something that makes you feel like that every day and go do that. They never let me teach another class in that district ever again. I done gave all those permission people to move on.
I had a little girl, I had a little boy in my class, his name was Thomas, and one day he fell out. He fell out of his desk and the kids reported him. They're like, Miss, Thomas, he fell out. I was busy reading something. I said, well, kick him a little bit. Well, it turns out he'd had some sort of seizure and we called his mom and whatever, and they all went. And here he come, here come at the end of the day.
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And he said, my mom would like to talk to you. I'm not kidding y'all, I'm like, does he remember being kicked? I said, what is that little boy doing here? And she said, he want me to bring him back. He said that if anything happened to him that you'd know what to do. He didn't want to miss nothing. I have a rubber chicken on the fan in my room and it just fly around, fly around. And the kids, they don't know whether that would be an appropriate question to ask.
So they're like, Miss, why is there, now this is great because we're trying to teach kids how to communicate in full sentences. So they're like, why is there a rubber chicken swinging from the ceiling fan in the room? I said, baby, that's not a rubber chicken, that's one of the kids from last year. So anyway, I came to AA. Y'all got to keep up, this ain't one of those stories that go in nice order and in the end it all come together and y'all like, oh, this ain't one of those.
I'm just going to give you what God gave me and we're going to work it out later. Anything that sounds like you might be able to use it or put it in your bag, put it in your spiritual bag. We may not recognize it today, but we're going to need it in three years. Because when I got here, I got a thousand piece puzzle. God threw that on the table and said, have at it. And I started to put things together and I'm like, this is a crappy puzzle, none of these pieces match each other.
So I go to AA and I'm reporting God on the puzzle thing. I'm like, look, like I'm trying to surrender, but I got a puzzle, a thousand pieces. I look over to the lady sitting to my right that I don't like. And I realized that the orange that's on my puzzle matches something she's trying to put together over there in hers. So I turned around and I said, ma'am, this piece might belong to you. And she reached right over, put that right there in that field, right in where she was building.
Then I look over to the other side and that dude that eats his socks. I'm not judging, I'm just reporting people, come on. I had a piece that looked like something he was trying to make over there and I gave it to him. So it didn't take me long to figure out I did get a thousand piece puzzle, none of the pieces are mine. I have to stay here with you long enough to know you and see what you're building and offer what I have.
In an exchange, I come to moments like these when God is so good to me. I said, Brenda, I'm going to give you a hundred pieces this week. And when you go to Cleveland, I'm going to give you 500 more. So I spend my time with you. And things that had been out of focus, the things inside me that felt as if they were never going to be restored or complete, now have an additional 500 pieces. I believe that on the last day I'm here, it will be the last day I collect that last piece. I don't want to die now. I drank because I didn't care if I died or not, but I don't want to die now.
So sometimes I take a handful of those pieces, I just throw them like that. I just throw them like that. Because I don't want to finish. And by the way, those are called defects. And in essence, the steps are about me going back over there and saying, yeah, I threw that. Hold up. I look at my sponsor and I'm like, you don't have to watch me, I'm going to get it.
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My sponsor thinks that he, like he's a supervisor or something. I have jumped off of every cliff I have come to because the steps have helped me find my parachute. So when I'm afraid of something, I run right toward it and jump. And the parachute opens all the time, every time, just on time, in God's time. By the way, people have opinions about how I share. They say, Brenda, read some out the book.
And then somebody else will say, don't read the book, they can read the book on their own. And then somebody say, be funny, be light about it. I'm like, all right, all right, don't be funny, this is a serious disease, we're going to die. And then people are right down offended when they say to me, I don't like you, I don't like how you share, you sound like a preacher, I didn't come today to hear a preacher.
I'm like, I sounded like an asshole before, so let's take the preacher. Baby, can you add it out, asshole? They don't make parachutes to open on land. But I go to AA, and I see a bunch of people with a whole bunch of time wearing their parachutes still got the price tag on it. Now, they never opened their parachute, but they have an opinion about the fact that I opened mine. And I just want you to know, look, you may not have to do the things I've had to do.
You may not have to go to the places I've had to go and experience the things I've had to experience. But in case you do, I am here to tell you this morning that there is a way back, sometimes it is the same distance to another shore as it was to the shore I just came from. So the objective is to move out of the darkness and into the light, out of the problem and into the solution, out of the hate into the love, out of the thank you so much this morning, out of who I used to be to who God would have me be. Here are the steps we have taken which are suggested as a program of recovery. So I sit in meetings that early, early, early and go, but that won't work for me. You don't know the ways I'm broken. You don't know the things I did.
And I tell people all the time, be my friend. Be my friend, practice. And then when real people show up, you can go be friends with them. No. Come on, practice. Practice. Call me. Call me and say, my name's Cynthia and could you read a page with me? I'm like, fabulous Cynthia, I've been waiting for you to call. I have no idea who she is. And I open the book and we read a page. And she hands me my puzzle piece and I hand her mine and off we go. Now I'm going to tell you something. I'm going to tell you a little secret.
I'm just going to tell you right up front so you're not surprised when it happens. The people you don't like at AA, they have most of your pieces. And you know why it worked out that way? Because God always messing with us. Because I have to want to be whole more than I want to be right. I have to want to be healed more than I have to want you to not matter. I have to want God more than I want you to love me. And what happens is that since the people
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I don't like have most of my pieces, I have to actually get close enough to them to ask for them. And when I can get close enough to somebody to ask for the piece of my truth they have, I look over at them and realize that what I had found objectionable in them has been that splinter in my soul as well. Oftentimes, oftentimes I don't know how to help me. But I do know that if two of us bring something to God.
I heard a guy say one time that God has keep has keep him sober. And his newcomer said, how you know that it was God that did that? He's like, he's the only one I asked. The only way to work the steps wrong is to leave them undone. Other than that, everything goes. I had a little boy I was sponsoring. He brought his fifth step in Hebrew. I said, why you do that? He said, in case anybody found it, nobody can read it.
I said, baby, I've known you for three years. You are not that interesting. God doesn't care. God doesn't care. Some of you have kids. And you look down at your phone and it's them. And you like answer, answer. But if it's a new phone, you hang up. But eventually you answer and you go, hello. And it's your kid. And it's the sound of that voice that brings you home to you, to love. Fabulous. And before you hang up the phone, unless they're calling from jail, you probably say, I love you.
God feels the same way. In the morning, I wake up late. Late. And I say, God, he said, yes? I said, God, he said, yes. I said, well, I have this idea. He said, no. He said, go to a meeting. I'm tired of telling you. I did so many things that pissed God off. I thought that I had lost my opportunity. I didn't mean to be that separated. When it came to God, I didn't mean to lie. I just was afraid that if I told him the truth, I was afraid that he was going to see me.
And I was afraid that he was going to be disappointed. Because he gave me this life. And when he gave it to me, it was beautiful and whole and precious. And then I messed it up. Somehow all the color left it. And it was chipped. And then some profound And it was chipped. And in some profound ways, it was broken. But there was no other way once I found you. There was no other way. I looked. And what I had to do, what I had to do was pick up those pieces of myself that I lost in the darkness.
I had to pick up those pieces that had been broken. And as best I could, I had to give them over. With my head down. And I told God that I was embarrassed about the fact that I didn't know how to take care of the life he'd given me.
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I had never seen anybody do it. I didn't break him because I didn't love him. I broke it because I didn't know how to keep it whole. But I gave him all the pieces I found. And I said to God, it's all right. If you don't want to give me another one, I completely understand. Could you just help me please not to drink? Because I don't want to die anymore. And you don't have to give me another life because I know what I did the first one.
And God said, could you please stop talking? God looked at me and said, he took all those, he took all those things I gave him. And he said, I said, you're squeezing me. I said to God, do you need my help? He said, he said, you know what? He said, I'm going to be fine. He's like, if you'd be so kind just to give me a minute. He said, I said, what do you want me to do? He's like, go to A. When my mom died, I was living in Tampa at the time.
And I went, she died on December 2nd. I went home back to West Texas to do the funeral and stuff. In January, I had to take my physical with the doctor. And I was still, I was still crying. Jesus said, you're welcome. He said, thank you, Jesus, from over there. He said, Holly. So I was still crying at my physical in January and the doctor said, what's the matter? And I said, my mom died. I said, my mom died. So we went through the test results and stuff and, and he pulls his chair over next to me and takes off his glasses. He said, now he said for that, for that broken heart, he said, take that to AA, they'll know what to do with it.
He says to me, do I need to write you a prescription for that? I said, no, I'll, I'll go. And I went back to my home group and I put my head down on the table and wept. Day after day, I cried. Day after day after day, then one day I had my head down on the table and somebody came
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over in front of me and under my arms slid, How It Works. It took half the meeting for me to read it. Somebody probably had a group conscience about that. Years later, years later I'd walk by people and they're like, I wanted to share that day but I didn't get to because you were crying through How It Works. I'd look at them and go, well clearly you've let it go. I spoke on sponsorship once in my home group and I was talking about the fact that I'm kind of lost without some guide, right? It's like going to Paris and saying, no, no maps, I'm good. This guy follows me home in his truck. I didn't take him all the way home. I'd been sober for a minute so I pulled over into a gas station. I thought I'm going to kick his ass right here. So I get out of my car, he gets out of his truck and he says, I don't need a sponsor. I'm doing just fine and you can't stand behind the podium and tell people what they need. I am sober. I said, baby, if you're so right, how come you so mad? Look at all the people that pissed off at your home group. If they're so right, how come they so mad? Sometimes the best prayer I can say is God help me not be one of the people at my home group. Sometimes I say to people, look, right now you're a shadow of God's love. I'm going to need you to work that out until you can be God's love because the shadow ain't going to work for me. I've worked all the steps over and over and over again because they said here's what we suggest. If you want what we have, start on any step.
Do the best you can. Tell whatever truth you can, Brenda. Oh, thank God I have five minutes. It's all here. It's all here. It's all yours. I tell everybody, look, all the money belongs to God. I belong to God, so all the money belongs to me. It's not in my account, but all the planes belong to God. I belong to God. All the planes belong to me. All the forgiveness belongs to God. I belong to God, so all of the forgiveness belongs to me. Tell one more story, pick up one more ashtray, read one more page, hope for one more day, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. It is not rhetorical.
It is not maybe. I want to be here long enough to get everything between the ifs. It says if we are painstaking, and it ends with if we work for it. This talk was kind of substandard. The one I gave yesterday when y'all weren't there, oh my God. I mean that one was so good. Don't let anybody tell you what's in the book. Get your own. Don't let anybody sit in front
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of you and say, well, you're not the right kind of AA or the royal we. That's not how we do AA, because if you look in chapter, verse, and chapter, and if you don't know what the word is, then you don't know God. But lucky for you, I'm here. I'm going to tell you. I'm like, shut the hell up. Those people in AA doing that, shut the hell up. We cannot use a gift, a tool that God has given us to beat the hell out of each other with. I don't get to vote for everybody. I get one vote, and I vote we don't do that.
All those fools saying, you got to study the book. Look, all I'm saying is, as my friend Sandy Beach used to say to me, sometimes he's still mad I call him my friend. He's no longer here to complain to me about that. When somebody says to me, Brenda, you got to read the steps. You got to know what they mean. You got to know and memorize them and highlight them and sit in the thing with your book and have your highlighter ready. And I'm like, look, all you're telling me is you know how to read a map. The books are the map. They are not the treasure. A relationship with God is the treasure. So anyway, somewhere in the book it says. I'm going to paraphrase. So don't bring your book. Don't bring it to the thank you, I hate you line. Don't bring your book. I'm going to hit you with it if you bring it. But somewhere in the book, very poorly paraphrased, it says, truly wonderful is the fact that we need not be specially distinguished from our fellows to be useful and profoundly happy. Service gladly rendered obligations squarely met. Trouble solved with God's help. The feeling that we are home. That we no longer need to be square pegs trying to fit in the round holes but that everyone belongs in God's scheme of things. These are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance could ever substitute. A true ambition is not what we thought it was.
True ambition is a desire to live usefully and to walk humbly under the grace of God. And if you don't remember anything else, I implore upon you to remember that above all else we should remember that we do not know enough to know a good day from a bad day, a mistake from a miracle. Do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged. Do not be discouraged. That's it. Vamonos.