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Source: Marion M – Steel City Woodstock (2023) – Steps 4 and 5 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: marion-m-steel-city-woodstock-2023-steps-4-and-5-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:59:37
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Thank you. I'm going to do that. Yay! I'm Marion and I'm an alcoholic. I was just wondering if I could just have 30 seconds of silence and we can flip Peter's 30 seconds over to my talk. What do you think of that? So I'm Marion and I'm an alcoholic. Obviously I think that way. And it's unusual with my husband when we're together and we're at a conference. It's unusual for me to follow him. Usually I feel like I open for him, like I'm opening for Elvis.
So I'm a little intimidated. It's like following the Rolling Stones or something. I just pray God speaks through me. I'm just so excited to be here and thank you so much for having me. I'm just so grateful. My sobriety date is November 11, 1989. I have a home group. I have a sponsor. I love and adore and still want to be like her after sponsoring me since 2005. And I hope you have a sponsor like that.
I had this home group for 20 years in Bellingham, Washington, the Northwest Group. And every time I opened my mouth to share, they would throw a Kleenex box at me. And it's still that way. I can't believe still after 33 years that I get to be sober, that I get to be a part of this thing that saved my life, that's taught me everything I know about life, how to basically tie my shoes. I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous how to be a friend, how to be a mother, how to be a wife, how to be a grandmother.
All those things has made me okay in my skin, this wonderful, incredible relationship with God and with you. And Peter, thank you so much for what you brought last night. I can't remember your name. I'm so sorry. But a beautiful way to open the meeting last night. And I've been fed. I've been fed. And that's what we do. Peter talks about this. We're pitching and catching. As much as I'm up here today and I'm pitching out, man, you're feeding me.
Just looking at your eyeballs. Just so you know this, if you look down or you fall asleep, I will notice. You know, oh, my God, she's bored, he's bored. There could be 500 people in the room and go, oh, man, that was awesome. But the one in the back corner that was snoring, you know, that's the one I'm going to see. Because I'm selfish and self-centered in my natural state of alcoholism. I have 100 forms of fear.
And I would write that in my inventory at the end of the night, you know. And so I'm just super, super grateful to be here. And just what a beautiful, I've never been to Pittsburgh. Cool, I'm in Steel City. So that's awesome. Go Steelers. Actually, my Seahawk friends that are listening, I'm born and raised in Bellingham, Washington, just north of Seattle. So I'm kind of a 12, we call it. But that's an outside thing.
So I'm grateful to be here and I'm grateful to be sober. And I'm grateful to live a life that I try to every day to align that will, my will, with his will. My beautiful friend Heidi and I were just talking about that. You know, we can pray for God's will all we want, but praying that God will align my will with his will. See, I can't pull this off. I can't pull off a day sober without God. I can't pull off a day without fear.
I can't pull off a day without resentment. I can't pull that off.
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And if you're new to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, the longer you're here, the less you know. The less I know. And so that trust and reliance must come from God. You know, the only way I can pull this off is this relationship with God. And I want to give you a little bit of background about myself before I go into four and five, because some of you may have heard me. I'm not that big of a deal.
But some of you may not have heard me and maybe some of you have. But, you know, we have this thing, the most powerful thing we do. You know, I remember coming to speak at a conference one time. And the woman asked me, she goes, well, yeah, we want you to come and talk. And I said, well, what topic? You know, step three, four, 11, what step am I talking about? And she goes, oh, we just want you to tell your story.
And I said, oh, just my story? Just my story? None of us have just a story. Our stories are what made all this possible in the first place. Our story is what started this whole thing. When Bill went to Dr. Silke and said, you know, he has this big white light experience, and he goes around and he's just trying to evangelize and tell all these people about it. And he goes to Dr. Silkworth, and Dr. Silkworth just tells him, tell him how you drank.
Tell him what it was like for you. And that's what we've done over and over and over and over again. That shared brokenness, that shared, my husband says this, that, you know, we're the only people we know of that can tell the worst stories about each other and say, here's my number, give me a call. You know? I had a couple girls, I'll keep that anonymous, that came, I'm going to keep it anonymous, but they came up the last night and they said, yeah, we were in jail together.
And I'm like, yeah. You know? It's like, that's so awesome. That's the deal. You know, I'd be in my home group at Northwest Group, and somebody got fired from this miserable job they hated, and there's a round of applause. You know? This is what we do because we know, I don't know, we're just in it together. So I didn't move to Florida until about 11 years ago, and my husband had come for one night, says this is God, comes for one night to Bellingham, Washington.
He'd never been to the state of Washington. I was the speaker coordinator for my home group, and I was miserable, and I was very in untreated alcoholism, coming out of a very abusive marriage and becoming a little bit spiritual prideful and all these things. And my sister and I were out on a bike ride that morning, and it was for the Cancer Society, and I was crying on her shoulder, how come I can't meet someone?
I'm just blah, blah, blah, and I'm miserable. And I made this commitment to go to this potluck, and there was this speaker that was coming to town, and I went to this thing anyway, and I was full of sorrow, and I walked in with my half a case of Diet Coke. That was my commitment. And here sits my husband. See, that's the thing with God, you know? It was inches and seconds. I had a country band, and I was playing at it.
I had a gig that night, and I wasn't even going to see the speaker, but I sucked it up and went to this stupid potluck. Inches and seconds, I come home from a stupid potluck with the love of my life, and, man, I get to walk shoulder to shoulder with, on this journey, and on this journey together. How good is this God? How good is this God that we get to have a relationship with that, you know, the realm of the spirit, what?
Broad and roomy, all-inclusive and never exclusive. You know, that's the stuff we get to do. So I'm born and raised in this little town, just a little sidebar there, but, you know, born and raised in this little town, Bellingham, Washington. We were in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most hippies per capita in the 70s. We were called the Birkenstocks and Socks. And, you know, I was one of six kids, three boys and three girls.
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We were the dysfunctional Brady Bunch. I was the middle girl. I was Jan, because we'd look at that show. I was Jan, and I wanted to be Marsha, you know. And it was kind of the story. It was the story of my life, and that's the setup. The setup is wanting to be anybody else. And I was sitting there thinking about this earlier, that I know for sure, for sure, for sure, that I am at least a third-generation alcoholic.
My grandfather on my mother's side was thrown off a boat in Alaska. You know, my mom and dad had brutal alcoholic fights downstairs. And in those six natural siblings of ours, and there was an adopted boy that came that my brother brought home from school, but in my natural siblings, every single one of us are alcoholic, every single one of us. But I can also say this. I have 33 years sober. My little sister has 34.
I have a little brother that had 32, but he lost his daughter last year that he ended up picking up a little bit of a substance. But he's back on track, and a big sister who's 31. So four out of six of us have over 120 years. You know, I mean, that's crazy, you know, and that's a long way from where we came from growing up. And, you know, I picked up that first drink in a high school dance, and it was really romantic.
It was a bottle of MD-2020. I ripped off at the grocery store that I put in my coat pocket, and I went into the stall at the high school dance, and the first drink went down, and I threw it up, and the second one went down. And it was a panacea for my ills. So like that girl I'm talking about, the girl, Marion, who's Jan and wants to be Marsha. I want to be anybody else growing up. We're the messy house.
We're the dirty house. We're the violent house. We're the place that people don't come. I compared myself to other girls that had Barbies and bows and bikes and picket fences, and I just wanted to be anybody else. And, you know, our big book describes this, that deep down inside every man, woman, and child is a fundamental idea of God, and I know it, and I believe it. Because I remember working at this restaurant one time, and I'm like 18 years old, and my big sister let me move out and live with her because I had a stereo, and that was the only reason she let me move in.
And I was working at this restaurant, and there was these twins, Karen and Kathy, and they worked at the restaurant with me, and they were God girls. And they were God girls, and I looked at them. I sang solos with them when I was 6 years old. I was singing a song that was about God, and I didn't even know it. Turn around and look at me. And I'm at this restaurant, and I'm waiting at these tables, and this little old lady comes in, and she sits in my section every single day.
She drinks a cup of coffee, and she leaves me a quarter on the table. And I'm trying to pay my rent, and I'm like, good Lord, you know, who is this woman? And I remember going back behind the counter one day, and I said, God, does she always have to sit in my section? And it's Kathy Jones. I shouldn't have said the Jones part. God bless her. She's beautiful because she was an example in my life. She was an example in my life.
Because in that moment, what she said to me was she says, isn't it wonderful? She has somewhere to go. She's so lonely. And I felt that. See, Kathy felt that. Kathy said that. But I felt that. There was a God inside of me that I didn't even know. You know, but I'm busy running and gunning and doing the drinking, and I'm the girl with the kegs in high school. I'm dropping out. I'm totally a mess. But it was good in a way, too.
You know, those first days of it, it's the 70s, man. And so it's like record albums, concert tickets that were only $10, you know. And, you know, and I was self-supporting through my own contributions. And, you know, really that's how it was in my poor family. Self-supporting through my own contributions, concert tickets, you know, the things that go with all of that, you know. And so I meet this other drunk.
I meet a violent man. And it was love at first sight. But really what it was was it was a replication of my father. because I was always trying to get my dad to calm down.
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I was always trying to break up the fight, so my brothers and sisters would make that, help make that happen, you know, send me downstairs to break up the fight. So, so we get busy having kids. I get pregnant. My dad's working in Alaska. He never liked the guy in the first place. I have three kids in a row, and I'm the alcoholic housewife. And I'm busy giving those kids everything I never had. Everything I never had. They had a swimming pool.
They had clean towels. They had clothes. They had, you know, they had a sandbox and a tree house, and on the outside, everything was cool. And in my alcoholic family, I was looking out at all my brothers and sisters because their stuff was really on the outside, like I got a brother living under a bridge. I got a big sister who smokes the green stuff like Bob Marley. I got, you know, all that stuff going on, but I was looking at their outsides, and my insides were dying.
And November 11th, 1989, I came to, and it was the day after my 30th birthday. I got drunk twice that same day. And this is the thing I always like to say, what happens between the last day we drink and what happens between that and the next day when we're sober, when we're getting this gift of desperation. Here and there, once in a while, ideas, attitudes, and emotions are suddenly cast aside for another set, right?
That thing that none of us can explain. Can you tell me? I got drunk twice the day before, and I certainly wasn't planning on not doing that the next day. You know, so I end up in this home group, and I end up going to treatment, and I end up a couple times where the disease was in my head. It was in my mind. Three days in detox in this treatment center, and I'm ready to leave. I was like, okay, thank you very much.
I'm going to go home and be a mother to my kids again. You know, thanks so much. I had overreacted. And what happened was two of you came into the room. There was Nurse Becky, who didn't come and talked about my medical condition, and there was Steve, the therapist, who didn't come talk to me about the inner workings of the mind that came to me like you guys. They were two drunks who sat at the end of the bed, man, and they shouted the good news.
And I understood Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time, and it was the god of my understanding in my life. And all of a sudden, I've got two AAs that come. Now, see, I ended up in the treatment center a year and a half before that. I had a four-year-old, a five-year-old, and a six-year-old, and I get pregnant with my fourth child. And I'm an alcoholic housewife, and I'm going to have this other baby.
I'm 27 years old. And on October 19, 1986, my son Brian was born. And three months and three days later, I went back to work at this grocery store, and my little sister was babysitting him, and she went into the bedroom to get him, and she came running out, and he was purple. And my son had died of a crib death. And it was so dark, and it was so ugly, and I'm 27, and I'm a mother full of grief. And I've got three other little kids to take care of, and I have no idea how to do it.
And later that same year, in August, my mom died. And, you know, my mom died. And I went to see this therapist, and I'm just losing my mind, and I'm going crazy. And she tells me this thing, this ominous warning that I always say is that she said, when you lose a child, Mary, and you lose your future, and when you lose a parent, you lose your past. And, honey, you're just having trouble living in today.
Also, that little brother that lived under the bridge gave me another ominous warning, and that was, you know, I was busy looking out here at my brothers and sisters and their alcoholism. And for the first time ever, on November 11, 1989, see, I had this perm, and I hadn't picked it out, and it was colored, there was this Clairol color back in the day,
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you ladies might remember, it was called Champagne Blonde, and I love the name of that, it was about the champagne. And on November 11, 1989, I walked downstairs to my bright pink bathroom, and I looked in the mirror, and I saw something I'd never seen before. That's what we call the gift of desperation. I was at the jumping off the place. I couldn't see my life with a drink, and I could not see my life without it.
What was my choice to be? There's a story in the back of the big book, it's called Our Southern Friend, and it's about the voice of God, and he describes the voice of God as being a thought with a voice. You know the one in your gut that just tells you she looks lonely, that girl back in the back of the room, in the corner, I need to go talk to her. The one that even says stuff like, return your grocery cart.
You know, help the beautiful little old lady across the street. That's the voice of God. Deep inside every man, woman, and child, the fundamental idea of God. And that voice told me that morning when I looked in the mirror to go to treatment. My next-door neighbor had gone to treatment six months before that. He stuck white stuff up his nose, and he was clean. And for some reason, that thought came to me, and I proceeded, and I was in the treatment center for 30 days, one and done.
Thank you, God. God separated me. The detox thing happens. God comes in a mighty way in my life. So I begin to work, and I guess I had such a, you know, I've done it fourth and fifth step a million, not a million times, I'm not that cool. I'm not a Peter. You know, I've done a bunch of them. And I always like to talk about it because some of that stuff also comes with honor and respect for the people who were there for me in the beginning.
Because somehow, somewhere, in that first, fourth, and fifth, guys, it worked. And it stuck, you know. And so I begin to have this spiritual awakening in this little 30 days, you know. And I had to, in order to go to my first outside meeting, I had to write my first step. And I had to write my second step. And I took my third step. And in this little hospital where I was at, we'd walk across the street.
It's November. That's my birthday month. You do? Yeah. And I started to awaken. You know, I go to this park, and we go to Cornwall Park in Bellingham, and we would swing on these big swings. And I'm 30 years old, and I'm alive! And I can feel it! And the leaves are orange and red, and the trees are green in the fresh air. And I'm looking at the other people, and I'm going, Oh, my God, do you see this? Do you see this?
And I really believe that my life had been just, whoa, rocketed. And I started to begin to have these experiences with God and treatment. And, you know, there's all these, they used to call it in the day, I don't know if they still do it, I hope they do, but it was happening over and over again. It's like, oh, she said the right thing. Hmm. You know, he said the right thing. Hmm. And another one was like, after I finished my third step, I got to go to an outside meeting. Okay, cool.
And they were going to give me a temporary sponsor. And the only other person I knew possibly at all in the world that was sober was this woman named Dawn. And she shows up to be my temporary sponsor. I'm like, she's picking me up for a meeting on a Friday night. And I go to this Friday night meeting, and, you know, the floors are like this, and the radiator's clanking, and the smoke billow rooms, the old days of the smoking rooms, and, you know, all that stuff.
And my head started working again, just like it did in that detox. And what it did that day was, oh, my God, Marianne, seriously, this is where you end up on a Friday night? You're at dry dock surrounded by this? This is where? Wow. You're really living life big. And this thing starts working again.
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And this little Native American woman was sitting on the church bench against the wall. And she tells my story. Right there, our story. And it was exactly what I needed in that moment. I don't know that I wouldn't have ran. I don't know sufficient substitute, the thing that's going to be my defense against this, right? So I get out of treatment, and I get my home group at the Northwest Group of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And the person to meet me there is C.B. McLaren. He's gone to the big meeting in the sky. He had the alcoholic flat top and the big warty nose and suspenders and a flannel shirt. And he reaches out his hand, and he says, Welcome, Marianne. He knew my name. And he was the president of Alcoholics Anonymous, in my eyes. It's like, C.B. knows me. I made a commitment cleaning ashtrays. Went to a business meeting.
I was cleaning those old metal ashtrays, right? And I became a part of. I washed those ashtrays, and I became a part of. And I had a position, and I was welcome. And no matter how crazy my head was, I was there. It's a foreign vibe. It's a setup. So I would go to this noon meeting. Go to it every day. Because all I had was this temporary sponsor. And there's this woman. She comes up to me after a noon meeting.
Hi, Marianne. What are you doing this weekend? And she's like, I'm going to smoke a lot of cigarettes. That is for sure. It was like, Kathy, I'm going to take the kids here, and I've got to go grocery shopping. I've got to do this, I've got to do that, and I've got to do this, and I've got to do that. And she looks at me, and she says, Maybe one of these days you'll slow down long enough to let God be in charge.
Yeah. And in my heart, in my gut, in that voice, inside me, Now, Kathy was about this tall. And she was a little blonde, and she was a devout Catholic. And her and her husband, Art, they had camp outs and picnics. They were those good old-timer AAs. Oh, my God, Art Downs was a huge, huge Pittsburgh Steeler fan. Oh, my God, that just came to me. Wow. Okay. I never know what's going to end up in my brain doing this, you guys.
He was. Check it out. So anyway, Kathy is taking me through the steps, and she gets me, you know, we brush up on one, two, and three. And she takes me into that, launching into that rigorous course of action that our book talks about. And I start writing my fourth step. And Kathy was diagnosed with cancer. And she was, like, helping me through it and pushing me through it and getting me through it.
And at the same time, she's losing her hair. She's dying, and she's dying quickly. And it would be like, I would make calls to her, and I would hate making calls to her because she's dying of cancer. She's got three little kids. She's dying of cancer. And Kathy's like, she would call me and go, don't you deny me my sobriety, young lady. You better call me. And what I learned in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous through that whole experience, because remember when I told you that my son died and I told you that my mom died, I got to walk through Kathy's death clean and sober.
Now, mind you, I'm a year and a half sober. And I've just lost my sponsor. I had this other one that was kind of assigned to me, and she was, like, six foot eight, and she was really intimidating. And I just, you know, I had sat on that four-step, and I had sat on that four-step. I had this little gold Volkswagen 1974 Super Beetle. It was gold, and it had brown corduroy seats. It was one of my favorite cars I ever had. And I would stuff that four-step underneath my, you know, this is I'm here to share my experience. Some people do it in three months or two months, but this is my first time through.
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to write, Kathy told me, you know, write down everything that you've ever done. Every secret you've ever had, everything you've ever done, every resentment you've ever had, every fear you've ever had, you know, all that stuff. And Kathy passes away and I'm sitting on it. So what ended up happening to me is the 1-2-3 dance, the 1-2-3 dance we used to call it. And at that time I was working at this place called the Olive Garden in Bellingham and this girl was getting married and she asked me to be in her wedding.
And so I go to this wedding reception but before that I'd been not a lot of meetings, I've got grief and loss in my heart, I'm like not moving forward on my four step and I'm sitting on it and I'm sitting on it and I'm sitting on it. And what happened the night of that wedding was we're sitting at the wedding reception and I'm literally sitting there and there was this moment I had in my hand a glass of champagne right here, right here.
And something stopped me. I don't know, you know, it's in a different part of the steps where it says, you know, we recoil from it like a hot flame, okay. That there's a day where the only defense we're going to have against that drink is a power greater than ourselves. And the strange mental blank spot, I can tell you today that I have no idea how that got in my hand. If I said yes, if it was just, I don't know.
But it was there and it was in my hand. And I'm going to tell you it went down on the table and I was out of there. I was out and the reality of it was this that, you know, I commenced to work and finish that step, right. Something came in between me and that drink and if you have never been in that spot, I'm telling you it is terror. It is terror that comes off, that came off in me that day. And I commenced to finish and write that fourth step.
Now, for some reason, I was really, really, really afraid to share this fifth step with this six foot eight woman. She scared me, you know. And by that time, my little brother's in the program, my little sister's in the program, and that little brother that lived under the bridge and did stuff like he did, he tells me one day he goes, well, why don't you do it? And this is just my experience. Our book talks about going to a priest, minister, a rabbi.
It says to go to a close-mouthed friend, a family member, you know. And I say this because I say it with honor, too, is that there was this minister who happened to be a hero in my life. And he was a hero in my life. He had married my husband and me. When my son had died, he, see, I wasn't a God girl at that time. He walked me through that whole thing. You know, we are God's hands and feet. We don't have to be like pushing God on anybody, none of that stuff.
He was there. The day that my son died, he was at the hospital. How did you get here? Walked me through that. Walked us through the funeral. When my mom died, he was there with my mom. And this man happened to be, and he's gone to the big, well, not meeting in the sky, whatever an old pastor does. He had this, I know what they do. He had a 70s perm and a, you know. And he'd wear these bright orange suits.
He was just, he just showed God's love to anybody. And when he passed away, man, there were thousands of people there. And his family had no idea the profound effect he had on people. And there was a treatment center out in Blaine, Washington. I took my husband out there. And it was this old house that was owned by Randy Bachman. And they turned it into a treatment center. And Pastor Ron would go out there and listen to Fifth Steps all the time.
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So it wasn't just like I'm going to let him listen to my Fifth Step. He had been listening to Fifth Steps. So he kind of knew us. And my little brother says, well, yeah, why don't you just have Pastor Ron listen to it? And I'm just like, OK, that's a great idea. I'll do that. So I call him. And I make the appointment. And he says, well, I'll be over at your house at 9 o'clock, such and such morning.
And like a good alcoholic, that morning, I freak out. Like seriously, like you're going to tell this stuff to him? You've got to be kidding me. And back in the day, folks, there wasn't programmed people's phone number in your phone. We would write phone numbers on coasters, on matchbooks, on napkins, and on my dresser in my bedroom was all these phone numbers. And I started going through all these phone numbers because I certainly didn't want to share it with the big woman that I was scared of.
And but I start calling every alcoholic I can find. And nobody answers the phone. Thanks, guys. No, but it was OK. It was OK because he shows up at my door. And I'm going to tell you, I was humiliated. I was, see, this is the thing about our four step, guys, is that in this broken place, in order for this shadow side of our soul, this place of the darkness of our lives, the only way we can go in there is with this God.
The only way I could go in there was with this God. And God met me in that place. He's not, God's not interested in me of getting some moral high ground by like, OK, now that we clean her up and she's all cleaned up, she can be, you know, get the bows and the Barbies and the, you know, whatever. It's not like that. It's just like God wants to remove all this stuff that's blocking me from him. And I sat in that living room and I sobbed through those pages.
And I'll remember it as clear as a bell as long as I live. And I looked up from those pages, when I was done, are you finished? And I looked at my hero next to my dad and my husband and the heroes I have in my life today. He looked up from those page, I looked up from those pages. And he looked at me and he said, were you afraid I wasn't going to love you anymore? And I was like, yeah. And he said, I love you more.
You know? And that's the deal. These dark, deep places of our past, guys, I had to move through and do that work. Why? Because what does our big book say about that? If I want this immunity from alcohol, if I'm going to be willing to go to any length, any length. And, you know, yours might be your sponsor. And that was just the first time through. Guys, I've had so much more revealed every time. You know, not like the million times my husband does it.
But, you know, every time I go through that work again, there's something more that's revealed in that. I wanted to go here. Pardon my nose. So perhaps there's a better way we think for we're now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God than our finite selves. We're in the world to play the role he assigns just the extent we do that he would have us and humbly rely on him.
Does he enable us to match? I love this. Match calamity with serenity. And I'm going to tell you that day, that day that this happened. You know, I had my quiet hour and my little girl was on the back porch. And I saw her like I'd never seen her before. And what you read at the beginning, those fifth step promises. See, I had an appointment with this woman after I was done, after my quiet hour. And we were going to go have lunch.
And guys, the physical, the difference in my life that day at lunch that day was literally felt like a physical separation of who I was and who I was to become.
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And I feel like I never have been that woman again. And, you know, the pastor even looked at me. If you knew somebody that was like that, what would you do if you saw her? What do we do? We grab each other's hand and we help pull each other right out, right? So, let's see where else I want to go here. So, once we've taken this step, and she already read it, but I have to read it again. Once we've taken this step, withholding nothing, we're delighted.
We can look the world in the eye. And my old timers used to say stuff like, you're no better than anybody in this room and you're no less than anybody in this room. You know, and that stuff that I've carried with me in Alcoholics Anonymous, my whole sobriety. You see, I was always less than you. I was always underneath your shoe or I was always that. And that's a struggle my husband has listened to me over and over again.
I become the dirty little girl on Lincoln Street. Like, why does this get to happen to me, you know? But see what that is, guys, is that's still reverse pride because then I'm still thinking about me. Oh, I'm not enough. Well, who am I to decide that? I remember being in a meeting of that Northwest group of Alcoholics Anonymous feeling like, oh, my God, I really know something and, oh, so-and-so's going to share and so-and-so's going to share.
And you know how you do that? You're like, you go to home group and you know what people are going to say before they say it. And I asked God, I sat there and I was like, I'm just nitpicking through all of it. And God says, why don't you? I said, God, help me to see them through your eyes. Game changer. I love the way he wears his hat backwards. She's always crocheting. Jack always talks about, there was this old guy, Jack.
Jack would always say, when you got your health, you've got everything. You know, that was 33 years ago. Didn't apply when I was 30. At 63, it sure applies. We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. You know, the longer I'm sober, and I was talking to my friend about this, the longer I'm sober, the more I know that I don't have alcoholism. I have alcoholism. I have a little bit of a mental disorder.
And sometimes I can take myself super duper serious, like, oh, after all, you love God, and after all, you're 33 years sober, and after all, you know, like, being wrong, I'm standing in my hallway at home, and I had done something, and I was like, I was wrong, I was wrong, and Peter looks at me and goes, so what? You know? And it's like, oh, yeah. All right. But just learning and growing and accepting and knowing that this is a lifelong process and a lifelong inventory that we're going to always be a part of, right?
I'm not going to overcome this thing. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. I know the restaurant I was at with this sponsor when I walked in, and I'm having a spiritual experience. I'm like, oh, my God. I have no secrets. I have no skeletons in my closet.
There is nothing that I have not shared with someone. Hello. Isn't that what this is all about? The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared often comes strongly. Peter Talked About That Today, You Know, Sex Sprees, Money Sprees, Gambling Sprees, All This Stuff, This Is About The Drink.
[00:45:03]
And For Me To Think At 33 Years That, That, You Know, That Boy That's Whistling In The Dark Is Done With Me, Excuse Me? Excuse Me? We Feel We're On The Broad Highway, Walking Hand In Hand With The Spirit Of The Universe. The Broad Highway, Not The Narrow Highway, You Know? And I Love That, I Love That So Much, So I Just Wanted To Share That Piece About My First Time Through. And I Can Tell You This, So, And This Is A Tough Part To Share, But I'm Going To Share It With You.
In 2004 I Was, 2004 I Was At The End Of A Really Horrendous Marriage That Was Very Drug And Alcohol Induced Husband. And I Was Very Involved In A Church And I Was A Worship Leader And I Became Very Spiritually Prideful. And I Would Come To AA Meetings, See What Happens Is We Come In At The Bottom And We Go Out At The Top. Okay? Although The Top Was Not Good Either, Right? So My Husband Is Like In Front Of Other People's Eyes Is, Looks The Part At Church And Behind Closed Doors It's Terror.
You Know? And I Would Go To AA Meetings And I'm Not Proud Of This, I Would Go To AA Meetings If They Just Get The Lord. You Know? And At The Same Time My Whole World Is Falling Apart. My Whole World Is Falling Apart And I'm Full Of All Those Bedevilments Peter Is Talking About Earlier. And What Ended Up Happening Is, So The Marriage Dissolves, Restraining Orders, All That Stuff. And Who Picked Me Up In That Time Was My Alcoholic Women.
I Left That Day And I Called My Friend Margie And What Are You Doing Mary? And I Said I'm Coming Over To Your House. They Would Have Tea Parties Once A Month. There Was No Tea, It Was Coffee, Cigarettes And God Knows What, Right? And I Said I'm Coming Over, I'm Coming Over. I Left, I Left And She Yells To The Other Women, She Finally Left The SOB. Because My AA's Knew. And That Doesn't Mean The Church Was Bad, I Was Just Sick.
I Was So Sick. And Those Women Carried Me. They Carried Me. But See What Happened For Me Was For A Year, I Had Justifiable Anger. I Had Restraining Orders, I Had People That, You Know, Everybody At Work Was On My Bandwagon. Everybody At My AA Meetings On My Bandwagon. I Got Justifiable Anger, Justifiable Anger, Justifiable Anger, Justifiable Anger. I Was Going To A Meeting One Day, Northwest Group Still Had The Church Benches Against The Wall.
And I Sat Down, I Fell Down On That Bench And I Said, Oh My God, I Gotta Start Praying For Him Or I'm Gonna Die. I'm Gonna Die. Resentment Our Number One Offender, Justifiable Anger, The Dubious Luxury Of Normal People, Right? And Two Of The Prayers, And I'm Gonna Kind Of Try To Wrap It Up And Close With This. Because I Know That, You Know, When We Go Through Our Resentment Inventory, And Yes, We Get Over To The Fourth Column.
And We See Where We're Selfish, Dishonest, Afraid, And One More Thing, Self-Seeking, You Know? I Know We Get Over There. And It's Important, And That's The Turn, Right? You Know, To See Where Others Are Wrong Is Not What This Is About. And It's Still About Alcoholics Anonymous That I Love About The Big Book Of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm Not The Problem, I Can't Get The Solution. You Know, What You Do With Your Life, What He Does With His Life, What Anybody Does With Their Life Is Not My Business.
It's What It's Affecting In Me. Is It My Pride? Is It My Self-Esteem? Is It My Security? Is It, You Know, Any Of Those Seven Areas Of Self? What Is It Affecting In Me? You Know, And All Those Things Were Activated. But Somehow I Thought That I Got This Anger And It's Going To Be Okay, But I'm Realizing I'm Dying Behind It. And Another Time Through The Work At That Time. And There's Two Prayers That, I Mean, If You're Sitting In This Today, Then You Are, And Then You're Not.
[00:50:07]
And, But This Is What It Says. In That Place, And I Won't Tell You The Stories Because I Really Try To Just Keep That Very Simple And Share That In A General Way. Okay? But The Two Prayers That Were Brought To Me Were These Two Prayers And I'm Going To Tell You They Work. The First One Was This. The Sick Man's Prayer On The Bottom Of 66. This Was Our Course. We Realize That The People Who Wronged Us Were Perhaps Spiritually Sick.
Bad Man, Mean Man, Aggressive Man, Angry Man. Oh My God. Spiritually Sick? Okay. Though We Didn't Like Their Symptoms And The Way They Disturbed Us, They, Like Ourselves, Were Sick Too. Oh, What Do You Mean I'm Sick? I'm Harboring This Freaking Resentment That's Killing Me. It's Blocking The Sunlight Of The Spirit And I Gotta Get Right. I'm Sick Too. They, Like Ourselves, Were Sick Too. We Ask God To Help Us Show Them The Same Tolerance, Pity, And Patience That We Would Cheerfully Grant A Sick Friend.
When A Person Offended, We Say To Ourselves, This Is A Sick Man. How Can I Be Helpful To Him? God Save Me From Being Angry. That's The Best Part Of All Of It. That Little Piece Is The Quickest Prayer That We Can Say Any Single Time. God Save Me From Being Angry. Thy Will Be Done. I Love This. We Avoid Retaliation Or Argument. We Wouldn't Treat Sick People That Way. It's Like If Somebody Is Laying In The Hospital And They're In ICU And They've Got Tubes Running In And Out Inside Of Themselves.
And You Walk In And Say, Hey, Do You Want To Go Run A Marathon With Me? When Someone Is Spiritually Sick And Just Being Able To Accept That, They're Just Not There. If We Do, We Destroy Our Chance Of Being Helpful. And I Love This. This Is The Caveat I Love. We Cannot Be Helpful To All People. It Is Not My Job To Help Him. What Is My Job Is To Pray. But At Least God Will Show Us How To Take A Kindly And Tolerant View Of Each And Every One.
A Kind And Tolerant View Of Each And Every One. And I'm Telling You, If You've Had A Deep-Seated Resentment, This Stuff Is Like The Big Book Gives Us The Tools To Pray. Because I'm Going To Tell You, I Don't Know Who Can Do This. Maybe You Can. But When It Comes To Forgiveness For Me, I Don't Have The Power To Forgive Anyone. Ever. I Believe For Myself Anyway That I Can Take The Action And I Can Pray.
But I Don't Have The Power. I Can Choose To Forgive. I Can Make That Choice. And I Can Make The Prayers. But Forgiveness Has Only Come For Me As A Result Of Prayer. And Then There Is This Other Prayer. And This Is On Page 552 In Freedom From Bondage. A Great, Great Chapter. And It Says This. He Said In Effect, If You Have A Resentment, You Want To Be Free Of. If You Will Pray For The Person Or The Thing That You Resent, You Will Be Free.
Well, First Of All, When I Went Into These Prayers, And This Was With My New Sponsor. When I Went Into This Prayer, I Said, She Goes, Are You Willing To Pray For Him? I'm Like, No. No, I'm Not. Well, Marian, You're Going To Have To Pray For Willingness. So It First Came With, I Pray For Willingness To Pray. Because I'm Not. So I Prayed For The Willingness And The Willingness Came. If You Will Pray For The Person Or The Thing You Resent, You Will Be Free.
If You Will Ask In Prayer For Everything You Want For Yourself To Be Given To Them, You Will Be Free. And Then I'm In The Middle Of Doing These Prayers. I'm Finally Willing And Now I'm Praying. But Now I'm Praying Everything I Want For Me To Happen For Them. And Then I Was Like, Oh, Great. He's Going To Have This Amazing Life. Because I've Been Praying For Him, You Know. And Polly Says, You're Really That Powerful, Aren't You, Marian?
I'm Like, Oh, Yeah. You Will Be Free. Ask For Their Health, Their Prosperity, Their Happiness, And You Will Be Free. Even When You Don't Really Want It For Them. Yay, Another Caveat, Right?
[00:55:00]
Even When You Don't Really Ask For Their Health, Prosperity, And You Will Be Free. Even When You Don't Really Want It For Them. Okay, I Didn't Want It. And Your Prayers Are Only Words And You Don't Mean It. Go Ahead And Do It Anyway. Do It Every Day For Two Weeks And You Will Find You Have Come To Mean It And Want It For Them. And You Will Realize That Where You Used To Feel Bitterness, Resentment, And Hatred, You Will Now Feel Compassionate, Understanding, And Love.
Now I Can Tell You, I Prayed And I Prayed So I Would Be Free. I'm Sorry, I'm Selfish. I Need To Be Free. I Need To Be Sober. I Need To Be Free. I Need To Be Connected To God. I Need To Be Connected To My Fellows, My Children, My Husband, You Know, Whatever. And I Practiced And I Practiced And I Practiced And I Prayed. And One Day I'm Going Down Interstate 5 In Bellingham, Washington. And I'm Going To Pick Up That Prayer And I'm Going To Do This Prayer Again.
And All Of A Sudden It Was Gone. It Was Just Gone. And It Has Stayed That Way For Almost 20 Years. This Was 18 Years Ago. Okay. I Was Set Free From That Bondage Of That Resentment. Okay. That's The Power Of Prayer And That's The Power Of This Stuff That We Get To Do In Alcoholics Anonymous. There's Prayers To Back That Up. And So That Was My Experience With That. And You Know Much Like Peter Talks About This All The Time, There's Sometimes There's Things That In Our Fourth Steps And Fifth Steps That Might Look Like Some Little Deal.
I Was Working With A Girl Who Had One Woman On Her List. And She Was A Gay Woman. And This Woman Was In Every Category. She Was In The Harms Category. She Was In The Fears Category. She Was In The Resentment Category. She Was In The Sex Conduct. It Was Like All The Way Across. It Says Like The Evil And Corroding Thread That Shoots Through The Fabric Of Our Existence. Okay. Let's See. If You Have A Resentment And You Want To Be Free Of It, Pray For That Person And Thing You Represent Every Day.
There's One More Place I Want To Go And I Want To Probably End It. So Even In Our Sex Inventory Too, Guys, That Goes For All Our Relationships. Any Relationship I Have With A Friend. Is It Selfish? Is It Dishonest? That Isn't Just For Sex. It's For Human Relationships, Right? So I'm Going To End With This. Suppose We Fall Short Of The Chosen Ideal And Stumble. Does This Mean We're Going To Get Drunk?
Some People Tell Us So. But This Is Only A Half Truth. It Depends On Us And Our Motives. If We Are Sorry For What We've Done And We Have The Honest Desire To Let God Take Us To Better Things. We Believe We Will Be Forgiven And We'll Have Learned Our Lesson. If We're Not Sorry And Our Conduct Continues To Harm Others, We're Quite Sure To Drink. We're Not Theorizing. These Are The Facts Out Of Our Experience.
It Says This On Page 71. We Hope You're Convinced Now That God Can Remove Whatever Self-Will Has Blocked You Off From Him. If You Have Already Made A Decision In An Inventory Of Your Gross Or Handicaps, You Have Made A Good Beginning. That Being So, You Swallowed And Digested Some Big Chunks Of Truth About Yourself. And That's What This Whole Process Is About. It Really Is A Thing Of Radical Repentance And Radical Humility.
And I Need That In My Life Today. I Need This God Of My Understanding. So You Guys Are Going To Learn About 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, And 12. And I'm So Grateful To Be Of Service Today. And I Hope You Got Something From That. God Bless You All. Thank You.