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Source: DICOBE-00615 – Marilyn M – 29TH LOUISIANA STATE CONV – 1982-04-17.mp3 File: dicobe-00615-marilyn-m-29th-louisiana-state-conv-1982-04-17.mp3 Duration: 00:42:18
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Recorded at the 29th Lake Charles, Louisiana, Group Convention, April 16th through April 18th, 1982 and produced in accordance with the 11th tradition and the 12th step by Ed Harding, Lakeview Tape Library, 6819 General Hague Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70124. I visited with Marilyn and George last night and George gave me two tips on a chairperson. He says, one, you do not write out a speech. Two, you go to the bathroom. I think I've done both. I can't remember at this point what I've done or which order I did them in.
But he helped me out last night by talking to me. This is my first time to chair a large meeting and I have butterflies in my stomach and they're coming up a little bit and also it would be our speaker's first time to chair. And I think she has a few butterflies. So our butterflies are going to get together. So I think they're the two of us. But I have to tell this. This wasn't what I was going to tell. Later this afternoon I looked over and I looked at our speaker and she's sitting in the floor playing cards. So I hope some of our A's and L's did not hurt her too much. I hope they let her win.
I'm not going to tell you much about myself because this is Marilyn's afternoon. I will tell you that I was in my fifties before I came into this beautiful program and it has made a definite change in my life. They have always said life begins at forty but my life began in my fifties for me. I have truly enjoyed my husband's sobriety and I can say that with all honesty I have enjoyed it. I have also found the beautiful serenity that I saw in all my Al-Anon friends. I now have that serenity and that peace that I saw in all their faces. So I want to tell all you young ones out there that the best is yet to come.
I'm sure all of you heard Tom last night tell what an Al-Anoid is. He said they're alcoholics and there's Al-Anons and there's an Al-Anoid. Is Tom in the group today? Okay, that's fine. He said that an Al-Anoid is an Al-Anon that is a pain in the ass. Well I have something to tell him. We Al-Anons thought you alcoholics were a pain in the ass also. And we had a few more other choice words to call you. Marilyn said and we did so. I had a lovely talk with Marilyn and George last night and we shared a lot of things. They also have lived in different states and we have lived in different states.
And they're from Cordell, Oklahoma and we have two children that were born in Oklahoma so right there we had something in common. We have two little Okies, 23 and 25. There was a joke but I don't know if I can tell it. I'm going to try and tell it. George told me this last night. He said an Al-Anon woman and her AA spouse were walking down the street and there in the street or on the sidewalk lay this man and he was drunk. And the Al-Anon wife turned around to her AA husband and said there by the grace of God goes you but not for me. I got that wrong. George you'll have to tell that tomorrow.
Well anyhow forget it. I'm sorry I knew I'd get it mixed up. Well in other words, okay it's my first time. I'll let George tell it tomorrow. I knew I should have left that out somewhere. I'm now going to turn the meeting over to our lovely speaker Marilyn M. from Cordell, Oklahoma.
[00:05:18]
Thank you Bobby. My name is Marilyn and I'm a very grateful member of Al-Anon. Hi everybody. One of my dear friends in my group and by the way I attend the Cordell Al-Anon group which is the best group in the world and if you don't think yours is go home and do something about it. I also attend Clinton Al-Anon. I'll explain this to you. Clinton is 16 miles north of Cordell and we visit back and forth. They meet Tuesday nights and we meet Thursday nights and we strengthen the groups this way. I feel as much at home in Clinton as I do in Cordell but I live in Cordell and attempt to make Cordell as much as possible.
I make Clinton more now though than I do Cordell. I have a job and it requires my presence on Thursdays until about 10 o'clock at night. I'll tell you about that later. So I've not been very faithful at my own group. I want to also thank the committee and every one of you lovely people that we've met here since we've been here. We appreciate being invited to come. This is my first time to speak to a group this size and my mouth is so dry but we're going to make it.
Gene was talking to me before the meeting and he wanted to know how long I was going to talk. He said I hate to ask you this but how long are you going to talk and I said I have no idea. I've never done this before and he said you haven't. He told me about the first time he talked and his sponsor said you don't say a word, your higher power says for you. So I hope my higher power and I'm sure he is right here on my shoulder with me.
Before I start I would like to introduce the alcoholic in my life. His name is George and he's on the back there. And if the creek doesn't rise and it doesn't rain too much tonight you'll get to hear him tomorrow morning. In Al-Anon we share what it was like before, what happened to us and what it's like now. I am here today principally because I love an alcoholic. I am also here today because by God's grace I have learned to love an Al-Anon.
It's easier for me to say I love George than it is to say I love Marilyn. I don't know if anybody else can identify with me but I think you probably can. I don't see any heads nodding but I was talking with someone this morning, a very beautiful Al-Anon. By the way, I have a little saying that one of my friends at home always says, there are no strangers here, only friends you haven't met. And that is really the truth.
Ever since we were met at the airport we've just been talking Al-Anon and AA and it's just been beautiful and I feel like I've known you all my life and for that I'm grateful. I'm grateful for a lot of things. I am not grateful that I am married to an alcoholic. I am not grateful that alcohol came into our lives. I am grateful that by God's grace the AA and Al-Anon program have come into our lives.
But I think there's a difference there. When I first came into the program, which by the way I did not come willingly, I came kicking, biting, clawing, screaming, making every excuse under the sun not to come. I finally came out of self-defense. This was back in Texas. A word got back to me that my husband had taken a young woman who was much younger than I am and doesn't have any gray hair, took this woman to the meeting, a member of our church who is an AA, and they thought she was me.
And I thought, I better go straighten that out. Can't have that stuff. The first group I was in was a young group. This group had a lot of love, but I didn't have any love in me at that time. This group tried so hard to help me and all I could think was, he sicked them on me. How dare he do that? God, I was sick. These four women came to see me one day and all I could think was, why did they bother? Why did he sick them on me? I was really angry.
Matter of fact, I was so angry in those days, I approached everything and everybody with an attitude of anger.
[00:10:06]
I'm about like this alligator on this thing. Boy, he's mean, isn't he? And ferocious. That's the way I was because, you see, the world wasn't moving to suit Maryland. Things just weren't right. Oh, how sick I was. I had a beautiful husband, a good marriage, two children at the time, two young children. I had a good job, my health. I had everything I wanted and needed if I would only be grateful for it and thank God for it.
Instead, I was living in a fantasy world. I have a problem with fantasies. When I was young, a young girl growing up, all the guys that I had an interest in or that I liked were going to be ministers and I wanted to marry a minister. So I did. When I was a senior in nurse's school, another friend and I were walking down the street to go to work and Bob, the chaplain, said, Have you all met George? He didn't say y'all. They don't say that up north. I'm from Philadelphia.
If you can't tell, I do not have a southern accent. And I said, No. We said, No, we haven't met George. And he said, Well, you've got to meet him. He's my new assistant. George had taken a year off from seminary and was the assistant to the chaplain where I was a student nurse. He's from California and I'm from Philadelphia. And we met in Philadelphia. It was about two weeks after this that an occasion presented itself.
I was walking through the hospital and I had just come from visiting a family. One of my first patients was dying and I was looking very sad. And I bumped into George and he said, Would you like to come talk about it? And I said, Yes, I would. So we went into his office and we ended up talking about children and getting married or what you're looking for in a man and a woman and a husband and wife and all this.
And we ended up walking each other. He walked me around the hospital block. That was our first date. We did all our courting on the PTC, which is the subways and the buses in Philadelphia, because neither of us had a nickel in our pockets. He went back to seminary to finish his last year there. And I was a graduate. I was living at the graduate nurse's residence. He came over to see me on Halloween.
And right in the middle of 39th and Chestnut Street, if anybody's ever been to Philadelphia, that's a big intersection. Why, he popped the question. This was after we'd had a couple of stingers. Do you remember that, dear? He's checking his head. That should have been a clue, but in those days it wasn't. Alcohol was not a problem in our home in our early years. I don't want to tell his story. Alcohol did not become a problem in our home until about 1973.
Luckily, his addiction, physical addiction to alcohol, was relatively brief. And he knew where the help was because he had helped sponsor an Al-Anon group. He was a terrific Al-Anon. Gosh, they hated it when he had to go down the hall because he was really a good Al-Anon. But he knew where the help was, and he sought the help. It was just me that didn't know where the help was. I would like to pause at this time.
I have some feelings about alcoholism. I know that we don't dwell on the disease. We say it is a family disease. It affects the family. He is the afflicted, and I am the affected, and our children are the affected. We are not dealing with a sunny school picnic. Alcoholism is ugly. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful, as the book says. It is also mean. It tears up families. It puts young men and women in jail.
It breaks up households. It does lots of things to lots of people. At best, we're living in an erotic situation. An alcoholic home is not a normal, quote, situation. Even in our case, what had happened to us, we were each living our own lives, he with his bottle, me with my job, and the small children. We did not communicate at all. At this time, we'd been married, what, about 12 years? What's 59? 73 from 59.
About 12 years. We had not ever had a major crisis in our lives. As a matter of fact, we will soon be married 22 years, and I've just really had one major crisis since alcohol came into our home. But we had gotten to the point where I was so wrapped up in my thing, and he was so wrapped up in his, that we just did not communicate at all. As a matter of fact, George wrote a book about his experiences in alcoholism.
book about his experiences in alcoholism.
[00:15:01]
And the publisher wrote back and said, would you please clarify your wife's role in this situation because she is either incredibly stupid or incredibly naive, not to know what's going on. Well, I chose the latter. I don't like to think I was incredibly stupid. But what he would do, he would start drinking while I was at work. I wouldn't get off till five. He'd get off at four. He'd leave work at four and come home and start pouring a couple of drinks.
And by the time I left work and got the kids and came home and started supper and all that jazz, well, he was pretty well on his way. And I just chose to ignore him. I think in retrospect, I was in denial. I don't think any of us wants to stand up here and say our husband's alcoholic or our mother or father's alcoholic. In my case, my father apparently was a periodic drinker. My mother says that before they were married that she used to go to the bar and get him out of the bar.
And I remember a couple of times when I was a small child him being brought home. But my mother's a manager and she claims that she sobered him up and kept him sober. My father's deceased. I do not feel that he ever led a contented life. But I can't share my pilgrimage now when I'm with my mother for another reason. Her first child from another marriage was killed by a drunk driver. And it's a little difficult for me, I feel at this point, to share with her.
When I'm around her, I use all the tools of the program that I have at my disposal. We have a good relationship. My father was almost physically abusive. He was verbally abusive, I felt, to me. But I also feel that they did the best job they could at the time, just like I have to feel that we did the best job we could at the time. George and I both have some scars when the alcoholism was active in our home.
We have one incident, and we recall we felt we got abusive with our son. And I feel that I had a part in that, that I contributed to that. But I have to think that that's yesterday. And by God's grace, he saw fit to bring us into this beautiful program and showed us a better way to live. Today, thank God, George is sober, and I am achieving some emotional sobriety in Al-Anon. Of course, our children are bigger now.
I don't think I could be physically abusive to either of them. My 14-year-old tower is over me. But yesterday is a closed book. I can't do anything about yesterday, except hopefully to have learned from it, to make today better, and to build on tomorrow. When I first went to Al-Anon, the group I was in, as I said, was a young group. There was a lot of love there. I couldn't see it. I was unlovable.
I was mean. I was angry. And I was so damn superior. I was so much smarter than they were. I wasn't skinnier than they were, but I was so much smarter than they were. As a matter of fact, I came home and told George, they're all crazy. And also, I didn't really care to hear about all the drunks that had lived in this town for 50 million years. As I said, it was a young group. They didn't know that we don't do that in Al-Anon.
They've learned since then, I'm sure. Anyway, I was exposed to this wonderful little book. This book has an interesting history, by the way. This book was given to George by Jim. Jim and George founded the first Al-Anon group in our town. And when George graduated to AA, he presented me with the book. And I wouldn't trade this book for the world. It's thoroughly underlined in spots, and it's always amusing when we're reading on a certain subject why to see whose book is underlined on that subject.
And invariably, mine always is on a few things, and they're always still the things that are bothering me. I did not go very often when we lived in Texas. But the day came, we moved to Oklahoma. And I started the same jazz again. We moved to Oklahoma, and he'd say, tonight's the meeting night. And I'd say, well, I don't have a babysitter. Well, that persisted for a couple of weeks. So one night, I decided, well, what have I got to lose?
I've got a babysitter. And I went with him. What I lost was some of my bitterness and hostility, and what I gained was a whole roomful of new friends. I can't tell you what was said at that meeting that night.
[00:20:02]
All I know is it touched my heart like nothing has ever touched it before or since. And if you could see our meeting room, I affectionately call it the dungeon. And I've told this a number of times, so I'm not telling tales out of school. But the love, this room is really cruddy. I mean, it is bad. We meet down in the basin of the Methodist Church in Clinton, and it's really grungy. Now, at least we have a janitor, and it's a little better now.
But there were cobwebs on the wall, and you could see where the rain had run down under the windows. It's really bad. But the love and the warmth I found there that night, I can never tell you what a difference it has made in my life. That's when I started to realize that I needed to come to Al-Anon and wanted to come to Al-Anon. There's a difference. When I wanted to come is when I started making progress.
I haven't made much progress. I have a long ways to go yet. It's kind of a, with me, it's like an uphill battle. You know, I go along a little bit. I'm like Tom. I'm a manic depressive. And I go a little ways, and then I slip back a little ways. And then I make a little headway, and then I slip back a little way. But that's all right. I'm still in there pitching. I have learned in Al-Anon to love myself.
And this is hard to do. This is really hard. But I can't love you until I do learn to love myself. I am the only one that I have to live with the rest of my life. God willing, I'll have several more years to live with George. But I've got the rest of my life to live with me. Our children are on loan to us. We have two beautiful children. Well, George says they're not children anymore. That's my term.
One is 16 and a half, a rising senior. She's going on 25. The other one is 14. He'll be in the ninth grade next year. They are sheer joy for us. We were married a good many years before we were blessed with them. And her higher power sent them to us at a very stressful time in our lives. We were in a bad situation. Not marriage-wise, luckily, but the church we were in just wasn't a fit. They didn't like us, and we didn't like them.
And we tried. And after a good many years, we were blessed with Ann Louise, and she was the greatest thing that ever came into our lives until Andrew came. They are dear to us. We are so lucky. I have learned, thank goodness, thank God for this program. It's wonderful helping you raise those teenagers. I think anyone that didn't have it when they were raising teenagers, boy, they had it tough. I have learned through this program acceptance.
I have learned how to accept myself, how to accept my spouse and my children. I have learned, or am learning, that I can't get in their heads and turn the screws. I have a master's degree in management. I think most Al-Anon's do, and I'm being facetious. I think most Al-Anon's do. We want to get in their heads and turn the screws. We want them to perform like we want them to. We think we can change them.
We can manage them. We can clear the, you know, change the situation. We can't. The first step tells us we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. I can admit that my life has become unmanageable. My life is unmanageable, let's face it, unless I rely on my higher power. I have gotten to the point, Bobby and I were talking about this before we started here, that I spend, I am involved in too many things, but I love everything I'm doing.
I'm treasurer for three organizations. I work with the band Boosters, and I do this and do that, but I love everything that I'm doing. I would not want to give up a thing. I have a crazy job. I'm a registered nurse. I work at a 30-bed hospital, and I do the following. I'm surgery supervisor, I'm central supply supervisor, I'm OB supervisor. I run the emergency room. I work 3 to 11, I work 11 to 7. I'm social service director.
I do a few things. It's a very different experience. I can't say it's my very favorite job that I've ever had in all the world, but it's where I am, and this has always been a problem with me until recently. I've always wanted to be somewhere else. I've wanted to be someone else. My ultimate fantasy, I'm going to be blonde and skinny when I get to heaven, and I'll
[00:25:01]
see you all there. I yearn to be somewhere else too much of the time, and I need to learn, and I am trying to learn one day at a time what is, is. The Lord has a reason for us to be where we are. We got to, we live in Cordell, Oklahoma. It's a town of 3,500, it's 100 miles west of Oklahoma City, out in the rolling wheat country. It's beautiful right now, the wheat's coming up, it's so pretty and green.
The hills are rolling and all the oil wells are sprouting up. Right now, it's a very affluent area, a very prosperous area. Our people are wonderful to us. We've been there now seven years. We got there, not by our choosing, again, but by the Lord's leading us. We were in Weatherford. George, we had gone to Weatherford from West Texas, Weatherford, Oklahoma. George was going to be campus pastor at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.
The job was not represented well to us, and we were very naive and could not see through this, and the job lasted six months. Furthermore, on top of it, George didn't like the job. It was a difficult spot to be in. In the meantime, he was preaching down in Cordell and Colony. Colony is a village of about 700 people, 22 miles east of Cordell. He was preaching down there every Sunday. I hadn't thought about this, dear, but they were maybe a little, well, not devious, that's not the word, but when he'd go down there on Sunday, they'd take us out to dinner, and they always would drive us by the manse.
This is the term that Presbyterians use for the parsonage, and of course, the parsonage was sitting empty because they didn't have a minister. They were looking for a minister. I suspect not too hard. Anyway, they'd drive us around, and I'd see this beautiful home, and we were living in a home that was not very spiffy at the time. I think now maybe there was something to that, dear, they were wanting us to come awfully bad.
Anyway, they fell in love with us, and we with them. We went down there thinking, well, we'd be there about a year and a half, and then we'd start looking and move on. We've been there seven years, and we have no plans to look at all right now to move. They're wonderful to us. We feel a part of the community. We have good, strong AA in Al-Anon, which has made, of course, a big difference in our lives.
I have also learned in this program to make amends to people, and I'd like to share a story with you. I don't know if I can do this without crying or not. In 1974, our family went back to visit my folks. My folks live outside of Philadelphia. We're not real, real close with my folks, and we were having some difficulties when we were there. Anyway, they came to a head on Christmas Day. As families will do, we had a problem.
We had some words, and George and I and our children left that house, left my mother and father's house the next day. My father would not say goodbye, and my mother and I cried. We left that house, and we finally got back home. We moved the second day of January. I was sick. Oh, it was bad. I picked up a bug on the way back on the trip, and it was just a bad, bad time. We did not communicate with my folks for a couple of weeks.
I talked with my sponsor, read the books. We decided that I would write and make my amends, which I did. Still didn't hear much from my folks. Everything was really very frosty. On the first of March was my mother and father's wedding anniversary. I debated with myself all day long. I had not spoken to my mother and father since I left. I had written them a letter. I had explained my side of the situation to the best of my ability, felt good about it, felt like I had made my amends.
I called my, and I always called my mother and father on their wedding anniversary. I called them in fear and trembling. We had the most loving conversation on the phone. A week later to the day, I got a phone call that my father had had a heart attack and died. I'll tell you, that will make a believer out of you. Make your amends. Make them promptly. It hurts sometimes. We were talking this morning, Veda and I were talking this morning about, I'm one of these people that can say,
[00:30:01]
it. I think everything will be okay if I say I'm sorry. What I need to do, saying I'm sorry is just the beginning. I need to amend, make amends, change the way I'm living, change the way I react to situations. Just saying I'm sorry isn't going to get it. I've also learned in this program that I am God's child, and let me tell you, God didn't make no junk, and I'm not junk. I am a good person, and that's hard for me to say.
I can say you're good, but it's hard for me to say that I'm good, but I believe it. I believe it. I believe, like Tom said last night, when I am meeting you, when I look in your eyes, and when I say hello to you and smile to you, that you and I and God are together, that the circle is complete. I don't meet God out worshiping a tree or out in a golf course or by the brook or something. I meet God walking down the streets of Cordell, America, walking in the halls here.
I meet God in another human being. I touch God. I see God in your eyes. And you know what? It doesn't matter when you look back at me if you don't feel the same thing, because I feel it, and that's all that matters. That's hard to do. It's hard to love unconditionally. I think it's one of the hardest things we do or the hardest things we learn in this program, and I am trying to learn it. I haven't learned it yet.
I'm always looking for the payoff. You always think there's got to be a payoff somewhere. It's hard to love unconditionally. I've also been learning in the program a little emotional maturity. I knew about one day at a time. I knew about think. I knew about live and let live. Live and let live is my favorite slogan. I knew those things before I came into the program, but I never used them. I never used them like I try to use them now.
There again, it's not a level up thing. It's kind of up one day and backslide the next and maybe two steps up the next day, but I'm learning it. I'm learning to be responsible for what I say. I'm not responsible for what you say or what you do, which is another very, very freeing thing when we come into Al-Anon. It really is a tremendous relief, I feel, to know that I didn't cause him to be an alcoholic.
I didn't cause it, and I'm not going to cure it, and I can't control it. He's got to do that with the help of his higher power and his program in AA. What I can do is work on me and change me. I am the only person I can change. Oh, this has been so hard. I used to think with our kids, I used to think, boy, I had them under my thumb until they were 18 years old, but there's no way I can't do it, and I'm trying to learn to let go.
Our daughter will be a senior next year, and she has aspirations to go to school somewhere besides Southwestern, which is in Weatherford, which is 35 miles away. I can cope with that, but I don't know about any further than that. I think, oh, have I, listen to this, have I taught her enough? Does she know how to protect herself from all those mean people in the world? You know, she's, oh, we're sick, aren't we?
I am learning surrender in Al-Anon. I have a great deal of difficulty with the third step. I have difficulty turning my life and my will over to God. I say I'll do it, but I always want to take it back, and I'll say, and everything will be fine for about five days, and then I just have to help him out, you know, I just have to reach over there and grab a little bit of it back, and that's when I get into trouble.
That's when I get into trouble. But I have a lot of difficulty doing that, and I really like the page in ODOT where it talks about the difference between submission and surrender, and I have it marked here. It's page 135, if anybody's got their ODOT with them. It goes into detail about the difference between submission and surrender. When you submit, you think, yes, on the surface, everything's cool, but there'll come a day when I'll get my way after all.
[00:35:04]
Surrender, when we surrender, we turn it over. We let God be God. We let Him do what we can't. Now, the first three steps, I came, I came to, and I came to believe, means a lot to me and helps me a lot when I remember to do it. I've also learned gratitude in this program, and I saw a stopper in the forum not too long ago that said, when you're grateful, you can't be hateful, or I'd probably paraphrase that, but when you're grateful, you can't be hateful.
When I'm being grateful, when I'm feeling grateful, I can't be hateful. There's no room in my heart for hate when I'm feeling grateful, and it's funny what you can be grateful about. I don't know if Al's in here or not. I think his name is Al, the man that's running the coffee in the hospitality room. That dear, sweet man called me a young lady twice yesterday, and I was so grateful. I even let him give me a kiss on the cheek today.
I said, all this gray hair, and you can still call me a young lady. I loved it. That's kind of silly, but I think you get the idea. No matter where we are or what we're doing, we can always be grateful for something. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes we have to make up something to be grateful about, but it works. That old saying, fake it till you can make it. I have also learned in this program and am learning every day to rely on my higher power.
He's there if I'll just use him. I know whenever I get in a twit or something and things aren't going the way I want them to and everything's gloom and doom time, one of my friends and Al and I will say, and what step are you working on? That'll get you. Let me tell you. That'll get you. She doesn't do it hostily. She doesn't say, she's not mean, but I get the message. I get the message. Just like one time I was having a little go around with a serenity prayer.
I thought that there were some changes I could make in my life, but I felt they were all destructive changes. I was pondering about this. I thought, you know, it says give me the courage to change the things I can, but I got to thinking, well, these changes are destructive. It would not help my situation. It would not make me feel better when one of my sponsors said, ah, but you forgot the wisdom to know the difference, the wisdom to know the difference.
We need that wisdom from our higher power. Our higher power is a constant source. He never goes away. We move from him. He does not move from us. I choose to call my higher power God. God and I have had several talks along the way. I have had several spiritual awakenings in my life. I had one at a church camp several years ago, at which time I felt called to be a nurse. I have not always enjoyed my job, what I do.
George can tell you I don't always go to work willing, do I? But if I can just be honest with myself a little bit and just be grateful for what I've got, for my education, for the abilities that I have, I don't always do things as well maybe as another person, but I have skills that other people don't have. I have skills that are needed. I have skills that I enjoy using. I have skills that I feel God has given me to help others and to help myself in this life.
Some of the sickest patients I've ever seen and ever taken care of have been alcoholics. If you've not ever seen an alcoholic in the DTs, you haven't lived. If you haven't ever seen an alcoholic die in the DTs, I'm glad that you've not had that experience. This disease we're dealing with will kill if not arrested, but this disease that we are affected with will kill us too if we do not arrest its progress, if we do not try to find some serenity and some peace and some inner fortitude that is available to us in the Al-Anon program.
The best way, I think, to do the program, to get the program, or whatever the words are, is to read the book, to go to meetings, and I know Lord knows I didn't want to go
[00:40:07]
to those meetings, but now I can hardly wait. Now I need to go. I want to go. As I said, there's a difference between being forced to go or going for your husband or going for whoever you're trying to get sober. There's a lot of difference when you start going for yourself. Now, the men in the room, we have one man in our group, in Clinton. He's been with us several years, and he doesn't always have a lot to say, but he's a pretty good guy.
We have another one man in my Cordell group who I hope one of these days will have a spiritual awakening and will decide he needs the program and wants the program for himself. But that's up between him and his higher power. I can't do anything about that except to encourage him and everyone to keep coming back. I have never been, when I have been honest with myself, I have never yet been to a meeting that I didn't get something out of it.
Something didn't help me. You don't always know when you have touched someone else. You may never know. It may get back to you a little bit later, and then again, it may never get back to you. But you being there will help someone else. And after all, they were there when we needed them. I'd like to close with a little poem that someone gave me. You little know how much you've helped when folks were kind of blue to cheer and brighten all their way by things you'd say and do.
And now may all the kind seeds that you have often sown in others' lives from day to day come back to bless your own. God bless you and thank you. Thank you, Marilyn. That was a beautiful talk.