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Source: Jennifer H – From Plano, Texas – Date Unknown.mp3 File: jennifer-h-from-plano-texas-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:05:08
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Oh my god, there's all these drinks up here. I think I did that. Oh well. Can I take some? I've never heard anybody complain about that. I know, I know. It's recovery, sister. Hi y'all, my name's Jennifer Huddleston Kelly and I am an alcoholic. I've been kept sober since December 5th of 92 and that's my miracle and the Legacy Group in Plano, Texas is my home group and it's an honor and a privilege to get to be here.
I love any place that has seasons. I am just, it's kind of magical, not gonna lie. I got married in October and my dream was to have fall color and what we got was a nice sunny day with maybe two brown leaves but I wound up with a husband so done. Ultimately that was the goal and I've managed to keep him. I talked to him on the phone in between meetings and I said, oh I told this story about when Jay wandered off and he went, oh. I was like, you don't know any of these women, it's really okay. You kind of came out like a champ.
So then he suggested what stories I should tell this talk, which is precious because he's not NIA. He's a fan, not a player. Yet. Because you just never know. If my picking holds, we may have some surprises later. I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to talk about. There was a period of time when I could tell you, I knew exactly what my talk was going to look like. I knew exactly which stories I was going to tell. I knew exactly which stories, you know, and I know that you guys have heard people talk where it's the same story that you heard in 1992 as you hear in 2009 as you hear.
There's a lot of comfort in that, not going to lie. It's a nice place to be when you have a very predictable story that you can tell. Until it's not. And a little bit about, you know, as I said, I went to jail right before I turned ten years sober and I discovered that I had become a phony and alcoholic synonymous. It's not the first time that it happened, it's not the last. I hope I have passed through the last, but I don't know.
But I know that I was holding up the picture I thought everybody wanted to see and it was killing me. And that my ego was way out of whack. That I was believing my own press and if people would pay for a plane ticket to send me somewhere, obviously I had something important to say. And not necessarily. I learned that. But I am back in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm back in the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm thinking y'all are smart enough to figure out that if I'm saying back, it means I left for a minute.
I got busy with the blessings. I got distracted. And for a long time I had a story that I told you about why that happened. And it truly was the story I believed to be true. But I didn't sit still. I didn't think about it. I was actually going to speak at a thing. God uses this for me. I think it's probably a big part of why I'm still sober is that I get asked to talk on something and then I have to sit still and think about it.
Which I don't always do unless you ask me to. And I was on a plane heading somewhere to talk on something and some missing pieces fell into place. And I am telling you, I was not dishonest about that. This information had been put away. It had been locked up. I don't know if any of y'all got some of them steel boxes inside. But I have these responses that happen when I become afraid or threatened or whatever. It probably goes back to little girl stuff. I don't know. I'm not going to therapize on it.
All I know is that I have some little metal boxes where I can put things and they disappear for a while. Unfortunately they pop right back out.
[00:05:01]
When I met my husband I was super active in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was a part of the service structure. I was sponsoring a lot of people. I had a fellowship about me. Most of the people that were my friends during that time were half my age, which was delightful. And it was guys and girls. I used to say I had a lot of pretty, pretty boys. I called France. I was sort of the den mother. It was a lot of fun. They didn't want me. I didn't want them. We just had a lot of fun. I was single and I was sober and I was kind of the thing in between them and their moms.
We were all trying to figure out how to do life sober because I've been a late bloomer in a lot of ways in AA. I was having the best time I'd had in sobriety in a really long time. I had friends and we were having parties. I lived in this house with some newcomers. Delightful. It was one of the first times ever. It's the only time in my sobriety where AA would deliver. My doorbell would ring and it would be like I have a problem. I'm like this is fantastic. Come to the garage. I don't even have to come looking for you. People would just show up and I would get better.
Everything was really rocking and rolling. It was such an exciting time in my life. My husband and I reconnected. We had met in high school. Then he popped back up right before we turned 40. He was still a good guy. I was finally ready for a good guy. Who knew? We did it completely different. I fell in love and I was courted. I never thought that would happen. Also during that time, I was sponsored just a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less.
Nothing was falling apart. It didn't seem like that. Actually, everybody said, Jennifer, you're a little more settled. I'm like he's an anchor. It's delicious. He's a really predictable, regimented guy. There was some structure in my life where there hadn't been before. I was loved. I was doing some God work in other things, other places. I wasn't disconnected from that. I had reached out to my sponsor about a situation that came up with a man who was in the service structure. The man was a friend of hers. Actually, I sent her an email, which was something that she allowed me to do because I'm a little more forthcoming in writing than sometimes I am speaking.
I sent her this email about this situation that had arisen and this man was lying about me and really kind of coming after me in a way that I found frightening. I asked her what I should do. Because this man was her friend, I now know that what I was telling her did not reconcile with her understanding of the person I was talking about. It doesn't mean I was lying. It just means it wasn't the person she knew.
She thought that she could just straighten this out and she invited him into the conversation by forwarding the email and saying, what's the story? Now, this is not about what she did. It's really not. I know in my heart of hearts today that there was no malice in this and every alcoholic in this room is human. I'm going to tell you, I got many stories where I stepped over a line publicly and made an idiot out of myself and harmed other people in the process. Please, I'm not judging her.
Here's the part that's important. I had a 16 year relationship with this woman and I said nothing. I didn't ask a question. I didn't say that hurt my feelings or I don't understand or can we please talk about this or I am disturbed. I put it in a box, I locked that bad boy up and I did not talk about it, think about it, inventory it, nothing, for years. What happened was just little by slow, so subtly that I didn't notice it, I was calling her less.
It wasn't a big deal. Nothing was blowing up. I'm not flipping off people on the highway or cussing out newcomers or anything bad.
[00:10:06]
It didn't really register. During that time, I tend to sponsor women who have problems other than alcoholism as well. Who knew? Apparently I'm the crazy whisperer. I say that with a lot of love. Because of some problems other than alcoholism, sometimes when people are unbalanced, they'll get really, really angry. It's a symptom of a different disorder. I did not put this together until the third or fourth time it happened.
What began to happen was that these women would have some problems with their balance and they'd get really, really angry at me. Some of them took it to the internet and some of them took it to the group contents and some of them just ran around AA being really, really mad at me. Being a sponsor started getting really scary. Now the person that I normally would call to and talk to who had some perspective about what was going on, I wasn't talking to.
So being a sponsor started getting a little twitchy because if I'm going to try this hard to help people and then they're going to talk about how I'm ruining their lives, what's the point? I'm not even good at AA. I don't say that out loud. That's just that thing I put away. A little by slow, just so suddenly that I don't even notice it, I'm showing up a little later at the meeting. I already know what they're going to read at the start.
I mean, they keep coming and I'm out the door because I don't want anybody snagging me saying, will you be my sponsor? Because no, I do not want to be your sponsor. I don't need some other lunatic yelling at me. Literally, I had a grand sponsor who ran to my car, I just want to meet you. I already have a sponsor. Which is really embarrassing. A little by slow, a little by slow. The next thing you know, I'm not going to meetings. I've got sponsees-ish.
It's really hard to hold anybody's feet to the fire if you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got these minions, most of who have picked me because they think I'm a designer sponsor, which is so dumb. Because I still have to write a four-step. But here's the thing, they're going to meetings and they're getting sponsees and they keep calling me up and saying, Hey sponse, I just got a new sponsee, her name's Rainbow.
The names have been changed to protect the innocent. Rainbow's on step one, what do I do for step one? I don't know what to do for step one. And I'm like, well, do what I did with you. What was that? I want you to read the doctor's opinion with her. I want you to explain the phenomenon of craving. And let's figure out if she's an alcoholic or not. What page is that on? It's the letter pages. Read the letter pages with her.
Okay, the phenomenon of craving? Okay, stay right there and sit by your email and clickety-click. I turn into Kermit the Frog. I type some stuff up for her. Tell her which pages to read. Tell her what to have the chick write. Here we go. Come on. Week passes. Hey sponse, Rainbow's on step two. What should I do with step two? I said, read the book. When you come to a step, you take it. What page is that on?
You know the part about choose your own consumption of God? That one. What, what, where? Stay put. Hey sponse, it's a prayer. It's a prayer. It's on this side of the page. I don't remember the page after how it works. It's right after How It Works, right there! Come on! I've painted it on.
[00:15:08]
So Rainbow hit step four, and my blood pressure is up here, because now when I see the name, I'm like, Are you kidding me? Why is Rainbow not calling me? Because clearly I am sponsoring Rainbow. And I am angry, and I am arrogant, and I am disconnected. And here's what I say. You know what we're going to do? I've been thinking about this. We're going to do a step study. And she says, Oh, yeah, yippee, let's do that. Yeah, that's fun. Yay!
And I'm like, no, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Settle down now. Let me work out the logistics, and then I'll call you back, and we'll see about starting a step study. Because I have been speaking at these things, and I mean, I still speak. I'm not going to meetings, but I'm certainly coming to talk. That is really embarrassing to say out loud. My ears are red right now. And I would give a funny little Friday night talk, but the problem is, these things don't end on Friday.
And then on Saturday, at some point, there's going to be somebody up at the podium, and he's going to say, Me and the fellas I sponsor, we go like two times a year, and we read the Ford, the Preface, the Doctor, the Opinion. Let me tell you what happens to these fellas. Their lives change. And I'm like, Oh! And I want Scooter to wrap it up and sit down. And I do not want to listen to this, because he is all up in my hula hoop.
I can remember when I was active in AA. I know what he's talking about. I know what happens in those step studies when we're sitting down knee-to-knee reading a book. And I know it's something I'm not doing and that I desperately need to be doing, so I go home and think about it. And until they call me to speak at another thing, and I give my funny little Friday night talk. And then later in the weekend, some woman's going to say, Every Tuesday night, me and the ladies I sponsor, we study the literature of Al Cox Anonymous.
And as we read the literature, we are rocketed into the four-step blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, Nancy, the ice cream's melting. Come on, let's wrap her up there. You are over your time. But I know this is what I need to be doing. There is no doubt in my mind it's what I'm supposed to be doing. But I go home and think about it, and I think about it for two years. I think about it for two years.
And in those two years, there were multiple times when I was sitting in front of a bar crying in my car. I didn't go in, because there's not a solution for me in a bar. But I drove to it, because I was in so much pain and so much fear and feeling so lonely in AA. So homegirl calls me out. Instead of sitting pat like I told her to while I worked out the logistics, she told three other women that I sponsor that I was starting a step study.
So my pride and my ego got involved, and I had to do it. Now, I did not invite them to my home. I was not going to dust for this. We met at the Starbucks at the corner of Spring Creek and Coit, which is about three minutes from my house, because I'm all about the altruism. We started out reading the 12 and 12. In my brain, I nicknamed this step study light, because I was not going to put a lot into this, because I knew what was going to happen.
They'd show up one week, maybe two. Then they'd start flaking, like, can I soccer practice? I got cramps. There's no way. And within a few weeks, I'm going to be sitting by myself at that Starbucks, and I'm going to be done. I'm just going to be done. And I'm not saying I'm going to drink. See, I'm too arrogant to think I'll drink. It's not I'm too arrogant to drink. It's just I'm too arrogant to think I'll drink.
But let's just get this over with. And so I wrote up some questions about the first step in the 12 and 12. And, y'all, it was low and over the plate. This was one step above, like, an AA word search, you know? Altruistic. I didn't ask them to bring anything to the party.
[00:20:00]
As a matter of fact, the whole backside of the page was, let's look up some definitions, because my long-term sponsor was an English teacher, and she used to make me look up words. And so I showed up on Monday night at 730, and I don't remember how many women were there. Probably somewhere between nine and ten. That's usually where we start. But there were brand-new 12 and 12s on the table, and there were highlighters.
And I began to start to talk on my theories about the first step of Alcoholics Anonymous. And one of these little precious darlings said, aren't we going to pray? Well, of course we are. And we held hands and prayed in front of the Starbucks. And they took it seriously, and my life began to change. Those women took it seriously, and my life began to change. I wasn't honest. I wasn't humble. My motives were not pure.
But I showed up, and they showed up, and God showed up. And my life got different. And what I didn't realize was we were probably doing 12-step work every week, because there were people who were just fascinated by whatever was going on. I don't know what kind of Bible study that is, but they get into some real stuff. And there's this little Asian man who just studied us. At first he would pace, and then when things got good, he'd just sit down at the table next to us.
And what's weird is they didn't seem to care. These women did not seem to care. Once we started connecting soul to soul, the ones who were terrified by that, they bailed. They were the ones whose kids had soccer practice and, oh, it's just such a busy time. Usually right around 4, it's sort of become predictable. There's always a pretty dramatic thinning of the herd. But when we got done with the 12 and 12, they didn't want to stop, and so we went through the big book together.
And I told them, if we're going to go through the big book together, when we come to a step, we'll do it. And while we did not fifth step together, we did within the group, we do share a tenth step now. And I'm watching these lives change. We usually start with 10 to 12. We usually end with five. But the five women who stay are irreversibly changed. The transformative power of Alcoholics Anonymous is limitless.
Because we've got people with days, and we've got people with, okay, I've got 27, so yeah, 27 years, with decades. And all of us have changed. We have walked through big, life-changing stuff. It sounds like sometimes when we tell the stories, it sounds like the step study brings on disaster. Because we've gone through miscarriages and houses burning down and all kinds of negative-sounding things, except that God's just been right in the middle of it.
One lady's dad died just suddenly, heart attack. And she is quick to say that if I was not in the middle of the step study, if I did not have these women that I share soul to soul with, I would have drank. I drank when my mother died. But when my father died, I knew I had to stay sober because we were meeting on Monday night. And so I'm back in the literature, and I'm back doing the stuff. And I have a new relationship with God.
When I did the third-step prayer and handed out the ducks that day, I called a woman that I had known I wanted to be my sponsor for a couple of years. And I left the most incoherent message on her voicemail. This is Jennifer. I don't know anything, but I just did the third-step prayer, and I know I need you to be my sponsor. Oh, God, this is Jennifer. Kelly. Oh, God, it's from Texas. I'm going to call you back, okay?
I left this completely bizarre message. Which is awesome because in my brain I was like, what I'm going to say is, Hi, Cindy, this is Jennifer. I was just thinking about you, and maybe we could talk a little bit later. And instead it was like, My life began to change again. And so my experiences continue to change because I am back in the transformative power of the 12 steps. And I am getting more honest and more willing this inventory than I was last,
[00:25:01]
and the inventory before that, and the one before that. I'm just going to tell you a teeny bit of my drunkologue because it doesn't matter. I mean, I usually talk 50 minutes on my drunkologue because I love it. It's just fun because I lived. Spoiler alert, the stories are worse if you die. Those are real sad. Mine is just this goofy little story where I grew up in a family where people loved me, and I had dinner on the table where they took me to church every Sunday where there was not a thing that I needed that I did not have, including a spiritual life.
I just really don't have a whole lot of excuse for being an alcoholic except alcohol does something different in me than it does in my sister. My sister is that one that orders the frozen margarita and watches the dang thing melt. So stupid. She immediately wants a nap, like alone. I don't even understand any of that. And so, you know, an alcohol just sent me on this path that I never predicted would be even possible for somebody like me because I knew what my life was going to look like.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was going to go to college. I was going to graduate. I was either going to become a schoolteacher or a minister. My first vote was minister. Schoolteacher was second. And then I was going to get married, and then I was going to have babies, and I was going to go to the First Methodist Church. I mean, it was so easy to tell exactly how all of this was going to turn out.
I knew exactly what all of it was. I took a drink, and all of that went straight out the window. I mean, so fast. Like, that just seemed like the lamest plan ever. I need adventures, and suddenly I remember that when I was a little kid, my hero out of kids' books was Peter Rabbit. It was not Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, them suck-up rabbits. I wanted to go out and do some stuff. Alcohol gave me the courage to do some stuff.
It wasn't good stuff, but it was stuff. I ran the streets, and I drank, and I stole, and I lied, and I took whatever it was you put in front of me that you said would change how I felt. It happened really quickly. I say this, and people always laugh when I say it, but it's what I believe. I wasn't promiscuous. I just slept with a lot of people. Because in my mind, promiscuous has something to do with lust or wanting to.
And this was a little more transactional. And I can tell you that now, at the time, I was horrified by that thought, because I was a girl who grew up wanting to be a minister. You don't trade yourself for four beers or ten pounds of potatoes, you know, whatever. That's the best story ever. And that's not how I thought about it. I mean, you know, but here's the truth. I can't get honest about my drinking until I'm sober.
And when I'm sober, what I see is that when I was 19 years old, one of my dearest friends got drunk one night, passed out on his back, and never woke up. He asphyxiated on his own vomit. And it wasn't until I was sober, working the steps with a sponsor, that I realized from the day of his funeral until I got sober and Alcoholics Anonymous, I did not drink at home and I did not drink alone. That's not true.
I did not drink alone at home. If I was drinking, there was somebody else there and we finished it all in one sitting, because having leftovers led to violence. But that I could not drink alone because I knew I was that kind of drunk. I was going to need somebody to roll me over. And that meant that I would turn my well in my life over to the care of anybody who would have it. By the end of the night, if I wasn't done drinking, I had to go home with somebody.
And if you go home with somebody, we all know what's expected. And I didn't like that. For early in my drinking, I would change my motives after I had taken the action. I would change my motives after I'd taken the action, like, well, I must love him, I slept with him.
[00:30:00]
That kind of makes you look a little, mm-mm-mm-mm. Makes him a teeny bit twitchy. Like, what was your name? Why are you still here? And then by day, I'm a preschool teacher. You know, I chose a career with a hangover. I flunked out of college, like, in record time, which was surprising to me, apparently, because I had taken a test that said I'd be good at school. They were wrong. They assumed some things, like, that I would go to class and not fall in love with a guy named Humongous.
Oops. So I flunk out of school. I wind up making my big geographic. I moved one zip code away because I'm not really brave. I just drive over a lake. New world, you know, different zip code. Glad I got that behind me. I just put on a different costume and drank in a different town, and gradually things got worse. It's just, you know, while I was teaching preschool, I began to add other chemicals to the mix.
I don't identify as an alcoholic and anything. I identify myself as an alcoholic who did other stuff in an effort to control and enjoy my drinking. And the reason that I'm fairly comfortable saying that is when a DEA agent showed up at my house because I had fallen in with some marketing gurus. Just because I'm thrifty, okay, was a money-saving proposal. When they're your friends, they'll hand you samples.
And the only time in my life I was skinny. Just sunken. But I had a waist, by God, for about four months. But that DEA agent showed up at my house, and I was clean in 24 hours. I decided not to need stiff metal chairs in a circle or a sponsor or a notebook in columns. None of it. Clean. But drinking has caused me way more problems than that stuff ever did, and I'm not even close to being done with that.
There are jobs and no jobs, men and no men, utilities and no utilities. I didn't get some of the things other people got while drinking because I forget. When I pick up a drink, I have a primary purpose, and it's to get drunk, and I'm willing to do almost anything after that. But first we've got to get drunk. And anything that comes between me and the next drink is disposable. It's just got to go. Whether that's my morals, my values, my family, my opportunities, that's okay.
I'll make more. It's no big deal. Only it is. I'm throwing away things that I can't get back. I'm throwing away opportunities that won't come again, and I don't recognize any of it. I don't recognize it as alcoholism. I know that I drink too much too often, but that's about as far as I think about it. Because I don't want to catch what you have because I can't imagine life without it. To me, it is the only thing that holds me together.
You see, you don't know what it's like when I'm not drinking. Actually, you do. But they don't. They don't. All they look at is the consequences. They're so negative. They don't understand our cunning plans. They don't recognize that, you know, we've got this. We're so judgy. And gradually things get worse. Different men, different places, different jobs, different attempts. And I just knew if I could find him and have a little red-headed baby, if I could just move into a place where they would take care of us, if we could just get enough money, if we could just, if these outside conditions would be different, I would.
And I don't know where I got that idea because I drank with the kind of women who put their babies in car seats on top of pool tables so they could drink. Babies don't fix it. A man is not a plan. I don't want a spoiler alert. I thought that was rude when I heard it, too. I think you've met the right man. But anyway, on November 19th of 1992, I got a felony DWI. I was coming back from my home bar. I had moved in with my parents after I'd called off another wedding.
Did I make that sound like I made decisions?
[00:35:01]
No. I say I've been engaged seven times but never married, but I'm an alcoholic woman. So that may or may not be entirely true because we got a sliding scale of relationships, and if some dude in a blackout said, you know, we should get married, I'd turn on it and start practicing calligraphy. It's not like I make him go to Jared or anything. I'm the kind of person where a guy says, I'm gay, and I'm saying, that's not a deal breaker.
I don't really like sex that much anyway. I wish I was kidding about that. I'm a gal with a plan. Anyway, I'm back home, and I get pulled over on a felony DWI. It's not the most trouble I've ever been in. It's not the most afraid I've ever been. There's not much that's different about that day than any other except I'm just running out. That night I told the truth, like, accidentally. I've been a liar a lot longer than I've been a drunk, and no one was more surprised than me when they asked me how much I'd had to drink, and I said $67 worth, and I was like, whoa, that is not a couple.
And I had a moment of clarity sitting in a jail cell. I always recommend it's a pretty good place to have one. It costs about the same as treatment, less to unlearn. Kidding. Sort of. Anyway, so my moment of clarity, that moment of grace, was simply that I saw myself for what I was, where I was, honestly. Up until then I'd been collecting DWIs, but I had decided I had a driving problem. So I changed where I lived to be closer to the bar and thought we had solved the problem.
I'm not going to look at the drinking part. I don't think you get it. Drinking is the only thing that gets me through the day. But that night I recognized, first off, I get DWIs because I drink, and I drink because I don't know how to get through the day without drinking. And if they let me out of here, I will drink again, whether it's a good idea, a bad idea, whether I want to or not, I'm going to drink.
Drinking is as natural as breathing air for me, and I don't know how to live without it, and it's killing me. And the other thing that I thought sitting in that jail cell was, nothing good can come into my life and stay if I can't get different, and that's not going to come from me. I can't even make it 24 hours without a drink. It's not that I can't get good things. People like me. They give me opportunities.
They give me breaks. They tell me exactly what I have to do for my life to get better, and I blow it in the last move. Like, you know, one yard, I've got to make it one yard, and I can get a promotion and I can get a raise. Just one yard, and I don't show up for the play. And I can't tell you why. And I read the big book, and it talks about that specifically, that the house of cards gets built up, and I'm the one who knocks it down, and I can't tell you why.
I want a better life. I want better relationships. I want a better education. I want to be full and happy and healthy and whole, and yet I thump down the house of cards every single time. So I said a prayer, and I made a decision to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I meant it until I got out of jail. And I got out of jail, and I got afraid. I was waiting on the want-to, and the want-to doesn't show up in a very timely fashion.
I drove around an AA group for several days. Orbiters, you all like to orbit? Man, I'm a big orbiter. I'm still driving around the Al-Anon room. I made it to the parking lot.
[00:40:01]
And then I saw them butterflies and said, I'll just call my sponsor. Anyway, so I was driving around that group, and one night I accidentally showed up there on time. Ho-ho! I did not plan that. I started to get out of the car to go to the meeting, and that's when my Alkalogic kicked in, and I said, wait a minute, I don't have an AA book. I can't be rolling up in there without an AA book. So I left the group.
Where do the AA books live, you all? And I went on a quest to find an AA book. The first place I went was the Barnes & Noble. They have them there. They are very expensive. I don't really remember how much they cost. It was 1992. It was probably like $5.99. And I don't know who they thought they were talking to. I'm not Melania rolling up in here. $6 for an AA book. Are you kidding me? So then I got to go to the half-price books, and they got them at the half-price books too, only the problem with those books is there's willy-nilly highlighting in them, like random.
But just like the first 27 pages, you know? These are clearly treatment big books. And in my arrogance, now I can hear the arrogance of, I can't have some rando influencing my opinions about Alcoholics Anonymous with a willy-nilly highlighting. So three half-price books later, I'm rolling out with my clean copy of the book Alcoholics Anonymous that I paid $3 for, and then I set out to read it by myself.
Because I didn't want to walk up in here dumb. You know, I got to read the book so that if there are any questions, I can answer them. God, our egos are breathtaking. And it's while I'm reading the big book by myself that I get drunk again. Because I can't find any good news in there at all. Absolute abstinence, another definition of AA. No sirree. And that's when I remember I know a guy who's got eight DWIs and he's still drinking.
What am I thinking about AA for? I've only got three. So I go to talk to my legal advisor, Jimmy, the worst drunk I know. Where do I meet with him? At the bar. That's where he is. That's where I want to be. So I go to a bar. I'm not going to drink. I've made a decision not to drink. I know it's a bad idea to drink. I sit across from the worst drunk I know. The conversation does not go well. Because Jimmy hears about the trouble that I'm in and starts explaining to me that this might be an opportunity for me to change my life.
He says he can afford to be the kind of drunk he is, but I can't afford to be the kind of drunk I am. Rude! And yet there's this little voice inside of me that just keeps saying, who would know better than Jimmy? The other thing that happened that night and it's probably more important than what Jimmy said is that at some point there were drinks in front of me and at some point I drank them and I didn't realize that it even happened until the glasses were empty.
I did not make a decision to drink. I had made a conscious decision not to. I don't even know how the drinks got there. I don't know if I ordered them, if somebody else ordered them, or if they didn't belong to me. But I know that I drank. And I drank against my will, having decided I would not drink. And it terrified me. And it terrifies me today. The hair on my arms is standing straight out and it always is when I tell this part of the story.
Because I have skated on grace so many times. I have bought many drinks that I have not had to take in Alcoholics Anonymous, but that's not because of my character. Seconds and inches, that's why. And that's when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, when I drank when I didn't want to. I walked into a late meeting of AA and they turned out the lights and they lit the candles and I knew I was in a cult and it didn't matter.
Because I had nowhere else to go. I was resigned. I was broken and I was beaten and I knew I was in trouble. And yet, really and truly, I came into AA to regroup. It sounds like I'm surrendered, but that's not my thinking. rendered but that's not my thinking my thinking is I just got to get it together for a little while I just got to get it together until sentencing if I
[00:45:01]
can get it together and make it look good for sentencing then maybe I don't have to quit for good and for all that's what I drug into AA somebody on was asking recently if they I thought sincerity was important I mean eventually but that I don't know anybody maybe I don't know I don't think I know anybody who wandered in here I'd like a new way of life please no and I just wept I just cried through so many meetings thinking it's all over God recycles custody that's my prayer it's all over that I don't ever have to go back to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization that I never have to trade my body for something that's killing me that I never have to look in the mirror and hate who I see that I never have to live in the same kind of guilt and shame that I lived in then where I could not face my creator that second step mortified me I was horrified it wasn't because I didn't believe it's because I did and I knew I had been loved and I knew I had been given gifts and I believed they were supposed to be used for something but I had squandered them and God was disappointed and what a chicken shit God that was if you are walking around with that kind of God get rid of him you do not need a God with an impotence problem if you've got a God that cannot forgive you get rid of him it took me 14 years to finally surrender to a God that loves me no matter what and not even I can screw that up nothing I can do will ever make him love me any less and nothing I can ever do will make him love me anymore and I worked with other women and I took these steps and I got a sponsor and I was active in AA and I did it over and over and over again and I still didn't believe that there was a God that loved me no matter what but I believe there was one that loved you and I stayed here so that I could carry that message to you and that's the way God kept me here was so that I could carry that message to you and tell you how beautiful you are and tell you how much he loves you and tell you how long he's been pursuing you and what had happened was I made some friends in AA I don't know if you've got a friend like this actually I haven't talked to this lady in a long time she may be drunk but um no she really may but uh but at the time she was one of my dearest friends and and she reads these books and she's one of those people who is just relentless when something changes her life she's not going to shut the heck up until you do whatever it is she did if she's found a nail salon she likes please please I'll pay for you you've got to go to this you know she's that kind of friend and they're exhausting and so she read this book and I'm not going to tell you what the book is because book doesn't matter it's not conference approved it doesn't matter at that point in my life God could have used a phone book but it was this book that she read and it will change your life and you will love it forever it's so imagine and you it's just amazing it's going to change everything about you just oh you're not gonna believe what this book is going to do and I'm like I don't want to read the book I don't want to read the book I can already tell it's a Jesus book I don't want to read another Jesus book my sister was a missionary she'd been trying to heal me with Jesus books for a long time and like I could never get like more than a chapter into those things I would read the titles and go and this was clearly a Jesus book and it was a cheesy Jesus book and it was a Jesus book and um and but she's just not gonna shut up she's not gonna shut up about the book you have to read the book you've got to read the book the book will change your life you've got to read that I have bought you the book I will call you tomorrow to see if you have started the book and and I start to read the book and it is horrible it is horrible I hate everything about horrible I have a friend from Florida and that's how we talk anyway so and so I'm reading this
[00:50:03]
awful book awful it's awful it's this terrible book that starts with a tragedy and then it okay it gets a teeny bit better because it talks about these different personalities of God and and it tells about it in a different way I was sort of palatable but but still like not my gig you know I'm not loving it whatever but every day my friend calls how are you loving it it's an amazing isn't it amazing what about this part did you read have you gotten I'm reading the book don't make me love it okay just stop and so I'm almost done with the book and I've survived it like that's really it I've just I've survived the stupid book and Abby's gonna leave me alone now and and right near the book one of the manifestations of God is named Sophia and and I have this niece named Sophia I'm sitting in the backyard of my house and reading about this scene in the book where the guys talking to Sophia and and and Sophia is God's judgment and I'm thinking about my Sophia and I have three young nieces well now they're once off to college they're in high school now but when Fifi was little like little little for some inexplicable reason she adored me like she wanted to breathe my air and think think my thoughts and if you ask her anything she would say whatever who wants that's what I want I want what who wants I want what who wants and I was thinking about Sophia when she was little and how much she just and I was like why was she like that like I wasn't nicer to her than I was to her sisters as a matter of fact I was probably a little harder because she was so glompy you know like gum on my shoe and I don't really know what to do with that kind of affection she has recovered from it now she rolls her eyes a lot and says things like what are you wearing but but what I realize is that I was unconditionally and inexplicably loved by that Sophia and then in the book Sophia is God's judgment and these two ideas mush together and God's judgment is that I am unconditionally and inexplicably loved and there's not a dang thing I can do about it and I'm standing in my backyard and it's kind of like that scene in Forrest Gump where Captain Dan I mean you'd think this was going to be this beautiful surrender oh I'm yours no I'm a good idea this will not end well for you and here's the thing nothing in my life changed and everything in my life changed I could no longer walk through the world seeing things the way that I had seen them before I began to see how everything works for my benefit I began to see that when one door closes another door opens I stopped missing the party worrying about who's not in the party and started seeing who was showing up at the party I stopped worrying about the nine girls who quit the step study and started paying attention to the five weirdos who stayed nothing in my life changed but everything in my life changed and when God began to love me unconditionally when a man showed up and looked at me like I was Angelina Jolie I looked back I didn't because I have discernment I asked you to check him out too cuz I've been wrong before and what sealed the deal was they said one of my friends said he's precious and I said how do you know he doesn't talk and he said because he looks at you like we look at you I asked another of my friends what do you think and she said I
[00:55:00]
don't know if he is different but I know that you are different with him so I married him and it hasn't been a perfect marriage but I'm learning about love and I'm learning how to be a partner and I'm learning how to keep my mouth shut and get out of God's way I'm learning that the story is not over I used to hate it when people would tell their story and then they'd end with and I have a husband and that's a gift from God I don't know cuz I you know cuz I'm sitting there single going well God hates me fantastic that's not what I'm saying at all what I'm saying is I am able to learn about love because you taught me and I may go home and he made me in bed with a sponsy that would be very ambitious big daddy would have to be a lot slicker than I think he is but but it happens it happens all I'm saying is if that happens I know who I am what I am and who's I am I don't have to drink over it happy joyous and free night may not be on the menu for a little bit that's okay God will provide what I need because I am sticking close to him and performing his work well today today I show up for an appointment with God I close my eyes I get really still I breathe and I sit in a chair and wait to see if God's gonna show up sometimes I'm aware that he does and sometimes I'm not as aware my very best days I believe are the days when I can't get still and I can't get my breath to slow down and I can't get the monkey mind to stop and I sit in the chair anyway because I've kept my appointment and on some days some beautiful days I asked God for my assignment and his assignment is to show up to put on a dress and maybe some ridiculous red lipstick and tell the truth and share my soul so that one woman and I don't know which one and I don't particularly care may be able to hear that there is a God that loves you no matter what he is relentlessly pursuing you he wants nothing but better things for you than you know how to want for yourself he wants to share his life with you I'll tell you my last little story and then I'm gonna sit down I there used to be this conference that I went to in Oklahoma I just went to go and it was in this Canyon and every year that I went I would get some weird animal story it was just my you know because I collect weird stories and so one of my very first years I saw this beautiful complete spider web not really into spiders but the web was gorgeous and the web was about how the strength and alcoholics anonymous is where our stories collide and where they cross and that's that's how we catch newcomers is with these stories that we share with each other and another year I was sitting up trying to talk to God about what we needed to work on that year I'm just saying those years two three and four they're a doozy and there was this little bird that wouldn't shut up while I was meditating it wouldn't shut up and it wouldn't shut up and it wouldn't shut up and I'm trying to talk to God about stuff we need to focus on because I'm gonna need a baby soon eggs are dying pal I don't know if you're recognizing we got a focus here and the bird wouldn't shut up and the bird wouldn't shut up I literally in the middle of my god time getting rocks throwing them at the bird that will not shut up y'all are a little quicker than I am to catch that message we'll do just some several things I had decided that I didn't need to go back to that conference for a while I wasn't getting what I needed there and and I was going to make a change at the group I was going to and there were just I wanted to pursue some other things so the very last year I went I was hoping to have the mother of all animal stories and so I'm I mean I am on the lookout the whole way I don't care what the speaker said there's got to be a squirrel, a wombat, a snipe, I don't care.
[01:00:00]
I'm looking everywhere and I can find nothing, like nothing. It's like they cleared every wild, and this thing is in a canyon, there's trees and mosquitoes the size of buzzards, there's got to be something out here and I can't find one dumb animal, not a butterfly, nothing, which I recognize is not an animal, but anyway, so it's three o'clock in the morning and it's at one of those church camps and we got some snorers, I am now the snorer, but at the time I was a little younger, a little smaller, I was not a snorer that I knew of, and I can't sleep so I'm out on the little city outing place and I'm just, I'm mad at God that he's not giving me my dang animal story, like I ask you for one thing, because you know I go so easy on God, and all I wanted was just one cool story before I left this conference, and I'm sitting out there and I can't see them, but I can hear them, and it's the crickets, really, crickets huh, I get crickets, what does that have to do with AA, huh, we got crickets in AA, my whole group we got quite a few, they sit in the corners, they're like black, I'll just pass, in between meetings you hear them over there talking to each other, chirp, chirp, chirp, look at those people, they're just happy for no damn reason, no I don't have a sponsor, no I don't want a sponsor, so I got kind of tickled thinking about the crickets, how I love to invade their space and just plop down right in the middle of them, how y'all doing, I'm the one saying you got a sponsor yet, you know, you'll drink if you don't get a sponsor, oh they love that, and then I start noticing there was a big light out there, and the moths, like the moths know there's a light, they don't know what the heck to do with it, those are your two to five-year-olds, they're just, let's do things, and the Alzheimer's don't get stuff done, we send the moths out, you know, like here are some flyers, go tell people about the company, you know, come, come, you've got to come, and they're just smashing into the light, it's adorable, and give them some pamphlets and a tambourine and set them loose, man, they are so fun to sponsor, I had a little group of very young moths, and they would call me up at like two in the morning and go, Jennifer, we got one, I'm like, what did you get, a heroin addict, I'm like, what are we doing with her, I don't know, what does she need, I'm not sure, we just put her in the car, whoa, yo, we're going to need to do a little triage before you start putting them in the car, these are grown women with problems, not kittens, and we're going to take her to my house and feed her toast, okay, call me in the morning, anyway, so I get tickled, like I'm thinking, okay, we got the crickets and we got the moths, and there's a certain balance there, and finally I see them, there aren't nearly as many, they're few and far between, the fireflies, they have their own light, they bring their own light, they're not crashing into the power, they've cleaned out a channel, and on any given day they show up to show us what we need to see, to let us hear what we need to hear, to light the way from one step to the next, so that we can be transformed by the restorative power of the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
If you're new, or you feel like you're new, hop back in that book, sit knee to knee, when you come to a step, take it, and then pass it on. I'm glad to be here, it's a good day to be sober.