August 25, 2025 • 27 mins
Carin S. Step 3, Step Series at the Tuesday Night Step Group, Twelve Step House, Fort Lauderdale, FL. 7/29/2025
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm an alcoholic. Congratulations to all the celebrants.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's a big deal. It's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Don't let anybody tell you that time doesn't matter. Time matters.
I'm not a proponent of whoever woke up first today
has the most sobriety.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
You know, for time matters.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You know, if you've got seven days here, the person
with three days thinks you're a rock star.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Do you understand, so you just give it away? Okay.
So we're going to talk about the third step tonight
and the time we have left.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We're going to blow through this because dicey, dicey, and
next week we come in for the fourth.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Stem to get spicy spicy. So here we are. I
am Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is September the eighth,
nineteen eighty eight, and I did get sober in New
York City at First Things First.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And I still go to that meeting on Zoom once
a week to do service at my HomeGroup. So I
want to talk a little.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Bit about where it came from. We all understand. I
think most of you have been here for the past
couple weeks. We all understand the acceptance of the first
step that I realized that I was powerless over alcohol
when I was drinking it, and my life was unmanageable
when I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
And again, either one of those things are not true
for you. There's the door.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
All you have to do is put down your alcohol
and you have a great life. You may never have
to come back here. And step two got a little
scary because it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Introduced something that might be able to help me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I kind of think of it because I'm a romantic.
I kind of think of it as being introduced to
what will be my most important relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
They don't tell you what it is. They just tell
you that you're going to meet somebody in AA. Is
not the goal of AA is to meet somebody in AA.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So and you meet somebody in the second step. But
here's the problem. For an alcoholic like me, it's really difficult.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The first three steps, this acceptance that I cannot drink,
and I cannot not drink and I'm screwed. So you're
telling me that there's a thing out there that I
have to believe in something and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
It doesn't matter what it is. It could be almost anything.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And if you're around long enough, you'll hear about all
the other things that people believe in. You know, whether
you make it the rooms of AA, or you make
it God, or you make it a doorknob. And by
the way, there are no old timers out here who
believe in the doorknob. The doorknob goes away somewhere in
your first year of sobriety when you realize that you
cannot depend.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
On the doorknob. So you know, what happens is that
we get caught up in this and.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's extremely painful for the simple reason that I am unwilling.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I this alcoholic. I am unwilling to do.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Something that I don't think is gonna do anything for me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
But I don't believe in.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I am not willing to take the actions for something
that I don't believe in. And if you're an alcoholic
like me, that's really hard because that comes down to you.
The condensed version.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Of that is, I don't trust you. I don't trust anybody.
You know, in the old days, you used to have
these speakers come up together at the end of the meeting.
Was horrible. Actually, they'd say, nobody loves you today, I
love you. It's like so obnoxious. Nobody ever got.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Up here and said, you know, if nobody told you
they trust you today, I trust you.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We don't trust as alcoholics, you know. So all of
a sudden we find ourselves on the third step.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And we've done like a little bit of a bait
and switch, like it Telli in the second step, it
doesn't matter what you believe it, And all of a
sudden they're calling it God in the third step, Like
what happened with that?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You know, I don't know where that came through.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
But I had to learn to believe in something, you know,
whatever that was going to be, because that was the thing,
and this is what I was told. The most important
thing was not what I believed in, was that I
learned how to believe in something that it was going
to do enough things for me and allow me to
take enough actions so that I did not have to
(03:46):
have a drink to stand my life.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Was it going to make me a better person, was
going to make me nicer, kinder, any richer or anything
like that. It was just going to allow me to
live my life without having to have a drink to
stand it. And for an alcoholic of my type, that's
a tall order, a tall order, because when.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The going got rough, I got going. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So you don't have to know what it is. That's
what I want to tell you. You don't have to
know what you believe in. You don't have to know anything.
But I will tell you this that our success rate
in alcoholics anonymous is tiny.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Tiny. It's like, I don't know, six percent, something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Tiny, because people in this room die because they refuse
to believe in something.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
That they feel that they don't want to believe in.
You got to show it to me, and it never happens.
It never happens.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And if you're an alcoholic like me, whatever I believed
and changed, it became fluid the longer I was sober.
So when we get to the third step, it talks
about this decision.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, we made a decision.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
And if you're like me, you would hang around these
rooms long enough and hearing people talk about the third
step long enough, and they talk about, you know, how
many frogs are on the log.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I don't care how any frogs or in the log,
And then how many made a decision to jump off,
and how many or left I don't really care.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You know, here's here's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I kind of think of making a decision like going vacation.
I like vacation. And if I make an announcement of
the decision I'm going on vacation, I got to pack
my bags, I got to buy a plane ticket, I
got to get a hotel.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I'm got to do all these things that I can
go on vacation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Otherwise I'm not going anywhere, and you're not taking my
VAK away from me.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, That's how I looked at it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
So if you want to do the third step with that, BS,
and like I made a decision, I don't have to
do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I will see you back here when you pick up.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Your next white chip, because that's the decision you've actually made.
You've made the decision not to take the third step.
But I'll just see you back here because you know
I'll be here. So I was young in sobriety, maybe
two years, and I didn't understand this step because I
wasn't going to give anything up. That's the truth. I'm
not giving you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
My will, I'm not giving you my life. I didn't
understand these things.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And I have a god I don't have a god
that nudges me. I have a God that hits me
over the head of the brick.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I'm hard headed, I'm stubborn. I don't believe I need
to be shown. So I'm in my house. We have
a two story house, and my son, who I think was.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I don't know, he was a little little and I
was doing good in business. I've made a lot of money,
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So I decided to go out and buy something that
you know you would buy if you've made a lot
of money.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Like something is so stupid that nobody would would buy this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So I went to Bloomingdale's and I bought a pair
of cashmere socks, because doesn't everybody need a pair of
cashmere socks. So I'm ringing on these socks and I
put them on, and I feel like a you know,
like a million dollars.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I'm at the top of the stairs, which have to
carpet on it. You're getting the picture, And that was
pretty much the last thing that I remember. My foot
went out from under me. I grabbed the banister. I
heard that. I heard it.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I saw my shoulder break inside dislocate, and I go
down the steps on my rear end and I.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Stop at the bottom of the steps. But I have
no idea what I'm going to do now.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I mean, I am broken in every sense of the word.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Call my son, and I said, please please pick up
the phone.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Call nine one one. Mommy's in a bad way. He goes,
what's the matter. I said, mommy's her Call nine one one.
So he leaves and he comes back with a plate
of Oreo cookies and he goes, here, mommy, have these.
They'll make you feel better.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I said, call nine one one. So he calls nine
one one. I said, tell them, mommy's dying. I think
he was five. I have to tell you.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So it's not a thing to say to a five
year old. So actly know, he calls nine one one,
and I hear him in the kitchen. Know my mommy's dying.
You have to go, and so he brings me the phone.
I'd tell the paramedics where you're going, you know. Maybe
ten minutes later they come and they take one look
at me, and they said, you got problems.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Lateish. My shoulder was down here by my waist. I
knew that it was broken.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I heard it break when I was on my way down.
And they don't take you out in a stretcher.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
When you're dislocated.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
They take you out in a special chair like this
mesh chair, so that anyway, they put me in the
chair and I don't know how this happened by my
shoulder relocated itself broken, but it did it all by
itself back in my socket. And they brought me to
the hospital and my child, my son, was in the
ambulance with me, and they did the like that for
him so he wouldn't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And we get to the hospital and they bring me.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Into the back and you know, they have those curtains
that are full privacy.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They're not really private, but they give you the illusion
that is private.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And so they pulled the cult and like they pulled
the curtain like that, and my son is on the
outside and the nurses with him, and the doctor is
looking at me and he's shaking his head and he
pulls out my bra strap and he said, I'm so sorry,
we're gonna have to cut it off.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And that's what my son heard. We're gonna have to
cut it off.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And he starts screaming on the outside of this curtain
and they let him in, and I'm saying, no, no, Alie,
it's not about that.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
This is gonna be fine. We're going to let the
doctor take care of us. And all of a sudden it.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Was like, oh, my head exploded. Nobody said that you're
going to have a life event that is going to
show you.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
The third step.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Because I kept thinking I was giving something up, I
didn't understand that what was happening is that I was
going to give my broken shoulder up to the care
of the doctor, and the doctor was going to tell
me what to do to get better, and I was
going to come back week after week until I got better.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
At no point was I giving up my arm.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
At no point was I walking out of that hospital
not intact. And I could not wait to go back
to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and tell everybody that
I finally understood what the third step was. That I
didn't have anything to worry about, and if I can
impart anything, there's nothing to worry about in the third step.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
As a matter of fact, it's freeing. It's free and
you can relax and say, literally, I have no idea
what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The most freeing thing you can say in alcoholics anonymous
as an at it as an alcoholicist.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And you know what, the longer you're sober, you know,
the easier that gets to do.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You know, and then people.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Look at you, they go, you have thirty six years,
you still don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That is correct, That is absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So two years later, December, in December nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I wrote God a letter.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, I wrote to a God that I didn't
yet believing, but I knew he'd been taking care of me.
You had that subtle shift, and I had made that
decision that I was going to allow him to do
that because my shoulder healed and I got better and
I wasn't wearing this thing that I contraptioned that they
made me wear for months and months.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I got better.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I allowed this doctor to take care of me, and
I wrote a letter to God. You know, my husband
was terminal at the time, and I asked him to
fix something that couldn't be fixed. So I want to
take a moment to tell you what happened to my prayer.
You know, I have never ever prayed for anything I
didn't get.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's very important for me to remember that.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
You know, if I pray that I need the big house,
I get the big house. I forget to pray for
the mortgage money, but I get the big house.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I have never not gotten what I have prayed for.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And that's very important because I've had strong sponsors, and
for maybe thirty two years, thirty two years on the nose,
I have only had one prayer in my life.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I pray to God for clarity to see things.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
As they really are, and for the courage to do
something about it if something needs to be done about it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's a strong prayer. Let me tell you that prayer
will never let you down because, as we know, this
is a disease of perception.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I never see things as they really are. I don't
see people as they really are. I see them as
I want them to be. I see them, I see
them and by the way, I see them bad too.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Even if they're not bad, I see them as I
see them. Then I have to go home and I
have to pray.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know, for a long time I have felt that
God is in my corner, so I'm never without a.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Place to pray. Even though God lives within me.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
God is in my corner, and I take the ceiling
for the wall, and I get a corner and I
look right there and I pray. And unless you're living
in a yurt, you can do that. Wherever you are,
it doesn't matter. And so I look in the corner
and I, you know, and I literally said, I.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Need you to fix him. I need you to make
him better.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I've had enough of this and we're falling apart as
a family, So you need to do this. I ask
God to fix something that couldn't be fixed because I
had a habit of testing God, not trusting God.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
That's super important for alcoholics of my type.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That I tested God repeatedly and almost never trusted God.
So it brings me to our Third Step prayer, which
I just loved to death. Thank God, Albert, my sponsor,
made me say the Third Step prayer every day for
the first three years in my sobriety. You know, So
there are some meetings that they're there in the meeting,
you know, with the Third Step prayer, and I know it, and.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I know it, but more importantly, I know what it means.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And it's a lot like some of these steps where
we say it and we think we know it.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And we're not. We have no idea what this looks like.
We don't know what it means at all.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So what it talks about here that I offer myself
to THEE to build with me and do with me
as thou wilt.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I guess that's god will, God's will.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But clearly I mean, I gotta tell you, I have
no idea what God's will is. I have a hint,
I have an understanding.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I think sitting in this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Room tonight sober is God's will. I think doing service
is God's will. But he's never popped up out of
a bush and told me so. I just keep coming,
and I hope that this is what He's.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Gonna have me do. Then it says, relieve me of
the bondage of self that I made, better do thy will? Well,
I get that, I mean, I understand.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I got some problems with bondage of self, you know
it self self self, problems with authority, big problems with authority.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
You know. I want things the way I want things.
I don't see you for who you really are.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I see you for who I want you to be,
and then I manipulate the situation to suit me.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So all of these things that's my bondage of self.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But then it tells me there's like, oh my God,
take away my mind have difficulties that victory over. There
may be a witness to those I would help of
my power, they love and their way of life.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So what difficulties are going to be taken away? Well,
I can make a list except for one problem.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The only difficulty that is being taken away is one
they already told me that I have. That I have
the difficulty of the bondage of self. That's my difficulty.
So that is what the third step is going to
take away, is the bondage of self and nothing more.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But when the bondage of self is removed, all of
a sudden, you turn around.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You can see, you can literally see what's going on
when you're not so self obsessed. You know, And by
this time in my sobriety, I have posse. And I
have to tell you that by the time you do
the third step, get a posse, because things get a
bit hairy when you're in the third step, because you're
walking around talking to yourself. You know, people don't know
(14:54):
you're talking to God, you know what, you're talking to yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So get a posse, even if they're not listening to you.
So you can talk to.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Another human being and tell them what's going on, and
they will say things to you like how.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Do you know that? How do I get that? How
did you figure that out? Show me what to do?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I talk to God all the time.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
But the problem is is that if I'm not going
to trust God, who am I going to trust you?
That's a real question you. I've been to human help,
human health failed me. I don't have little problems. I
have big problems.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You think I'm going to trust you? What are you
going to do?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So? If I can't trust you, I'm only left with
one entity to trust, and that's God. And the sooner
you make that decision, the lighter your load is going
to get. You know, the steps are designed, by the way,
whether you like it or not, the steps are designed
to bring God into our lives, whether you.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Want it to or not. You can fight until the
twelfth step. I really don't care. It's in there. It's
in there. And as soon do you turn around and
say you're the guy I trust, then you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Can begin to lean And if you're like look like me,
I have leaned heart, I have a big God, a
strong God. I had a sponsor that said, make a
list of what you want God to be. Make a
list of the human attributes that you.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Want God to have.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I wanted non judgmental, I wanted big, strong shoulders, I
wanted lots of things. In my God is every one
of those things. Every one of those things. My God
possesses this.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
So that's.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Critical, critical because my God can't be your God and
your God can't be mine.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I don't understand your God and you'll never understand mine.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
But it's what's it's who I talk to you, and
I talked to God from the moment I wake up
in the morning until the all through the day, until
I go to sleep at night, because I have you know,
So I want to say this, If you're having problems
with God, you's your sponsor. But I can tell you
right now your sponsor's not God. You're going to figure
that out very quickly. And the answer is not to
get a new sponsor, because I tried that and they
(17:12):
weren't God either. You know, you just keep trying it,
but it's not enough. A great sponsor, but a sponsor
is not enough. And I know that that that that
that is not a piecy thing to say in the
rooms of alcoholics Anonymous. But your sponsor is not enough,
and especially if you have a sponsor that has a
different idea of what to do with God.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You know, we've talked a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Having the intellectual type of God and the you know,
the spiritual type of God, and I don't know what
I have it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
He lives so far deep in me.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'm a believer that there's a that there's a piece
of velvet on your heart that, for some reason, in
all the things that I did in twenty five years
of drinking and drugging, that one little piece of velvet
never got soiled. I don't know why never did. That's
where my God is. That's what he protects. That piece
(18:02):
of velbent will never be soiled as long as I
have God inside of me.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So I want to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
A little bit about what happens to us when we
take this third step.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Not decide and figure out what we're deciding, but.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
We do it, and we say I am willing to
do this step even though I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
That is the purest form of the third step. I
am willing to do this, even though I know that
it's not going to work, I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And then, by the way, when it works, then you
tell everybody it works like it was your idea.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And so.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
What happens is that we get this beginnings of this
spiritual awareness.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And this is very important.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So when we get this beginnings of a spiritual awareness,
we make a big mistake. Everybody makes it. I made it,
everybody makes it. We start to tell people about it.
We say, oh, I felt like this and this happened
to me, and I got this spiritual feeling, and I
want to tell you that I've learned how to do that.
And that's not the way when you feel something, when
(19:03):
it happens to you, and I promise you you do
this long enough in the third step, it's going to
happen to you. You're gonna wake up one day, you're
going to do something and you're gonna have did that happen?
And the most evident way that this is going to
show itself to you is when you get up there
and you had eighty eight days and the next thing
you know, you got forty five.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I can't tell you how that happened.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So when you have these spiritual awarenesses that I got
a few more days in there.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Do nothing, do nothing.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Don't tell anybody, Keep it inside with you and God.
Nurture it, own it, personalize it. It's the most personal thing.
Don't dilute it. Don't dilute it out there by trying
to tell people what happened to you, you know, unless, and.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
We'll get into this much later on, you have a massive.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Spiritual experience that people do need to hear about. When
you have these small waves of spirituality, these small waves
of how could that have happened to me?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Don't talk about it, not even to your sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
It becomes an intensely personal beginning of a relationship with God.
And by the time you get to the eleventh step,
that relationship is blowing up into something incredibly beautiful. But
it's personal and it's private. It's really private, you know how,
Like when you meet somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
It's probably a terrible analogy.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I'm really not the person that you want to talk
to about relationships.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I can tell you that, but you know, you.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Imagine when you meet somebody and you have that like
first two hours un eye you're tugging each other and
you wind up telling them some of your deepest, darkest secrets.
You think about that, and then of course you break up,
and you're screwed with God.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
You never break up. You never break up.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
You're together forever. So don't tell anybody. And by the way,
that's hard to do. It's really hard to do, because
you want to think that you got it. My god,
I've been working so hard. I did everything you said,
and all of a sudden, I'm feeling this.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I got it. I got to tell you about it.
Don't tell anybody about it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It will grow to be so strong in you that
you don't need to tell anybody about it.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
They'll see it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Do you ever see somebody come in the room. There's
something different about them. Can't tell you what it is,
but there's something different about their eyes. Maybe you turn
around and they didn't get a different haircut, and they
didn't lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's inside.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It's inside, and they can't put their finger on it,
and you can't put your finger on it.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But they look different. And guess what, they got more days?
They got more days.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And then someone you absolutely thought, I mean, you know,
if you're like me, you're judging everybody in here anyway.
You know, that person that takes their their white ship,
I'm thinking they'll be back in a week, you know.
But when that person that takes their white chip comes
in there and they get a.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Year, how did that happen? That's a day at a
time talking to your God. That's a day in a
time at a.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Time saying I am willing to continue to take these
steps that I have to. We don't believe it, but
I'm going to do him anyway. I'm going to do
him anyway because that's what you're telling me to do.
And I'm not going to share this out there.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
This is my private relationship with God. I can't afford
to dilute it. I can't afford to dilute it.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I want to just tell you one more thing about
my faith in God, which has become really important to me.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Actually, you know I've told you before.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That that Clancy was an early mentor. I also had
another phenomenal friend that Sandy Beach, was an old friend
of mine as well. And Sandy and I.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Met when I was not in early sobriety, but he met.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
We met at the same time when my spouse and
his daughters died and they and one of his daughters
died violently and my spouse died ridiculously violently. And we
got together one night after a meeting and we had
coffee and we never we never parted. You know, I
got to see him all the time and talk to
him all the time. And if you knew sand at all,
he had this habit of, you know, going around the
room and handing out his business cards like he wasn't
(23:03):
being asked to speak enough.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You know, we just hand out his business cards. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
One day, you know, we were talking about God, because that's
what we talked about, and he said, the one thing
that I've learned, and if you can take this in
your life and never let it go, is that no
matter what happens in my life, it does not change
my opinion of God. It does not change my opinion
of God, because if it did, it's not God.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's a person.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
It's a person that's disappointed me, that hasn't come through
from me.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
So I have to watch that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
So the other thing that I want to say about
the third step is that, other than don't worry about it,
because it doesn't matter how you do this. It doesn't
matter how you find this God.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It really doesn't.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
What matters is when, because nobody finds God unless they
absolutely positively have to to stay alive. If I can
figure out a substitute, that's God, I'm going for it.
But I couldn't figure out anything other than God, who
was going to keep me? Well, that's how much baggage
(24:14):
I carried into this room. So it's not when we
find God, and it's not how we find God at
the end, it's what we do once he's there. Because
with a great God comes great love. And all alcoholics
are seeking love.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
We all want it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We don't know how to get it, and we certainly
don't know how to keep it, and we certainly are
very good at screwing it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Up along the way. But those are all human attributes.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
But when you apply them to the God in your life,
you're looking for unconditional love. Who is it You're looking
for unconditional love. That's where it is. That's where it is,
and that's a promise. That's where it is.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So the last thing I want to say, maybe like
two little things.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Last thing that I want to say is that you
know AA is filled with slogans, and you know I
hate them all because.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I think they're all bs, you know, I mean, I
just I think they're all.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
From the old timers who didn't have anything else to say.
And now I'm an old timer's so I can say
whatever I want. But there's this slogan that they say,
you know, the maintenance steps are ten, eleven and twelve.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Wait till you get to ten, eleven and twelve. That
is the biggest lie.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You will hear in alcoholics anonymous. The maintenance steps are one,
two and three, over and over and over again. I
have to come back to that unflattering position in my
sobriety of going back to steps one, two and three
to try to figure.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Out what is going on. How am I supposed to
deal with this, what is wrong with me? What needs
to be removed?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Step twelve is not going to tell me what needs
to be removed.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So I sit in steps one, two and three for
more than.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Three decades because that's what keeps me sober.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And I've done clearly all the steps.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
So I just want to close with this that, you know,
it's a little scary because once we get this power
greater than ourselves, whether it's your big ass doorknob or
I had a friend in California. She's got fifty years
this year, and when when her sponsor told her to
get a higher power, there was a moving truck across.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
The street that said beacons. And so she used beacons
for about thirty years.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
But now she's fifty years sober, she decided to switch
to God.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
You know, so it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Matter, you know, whatever, whatever that is, now I got it.
What do I do with God once I have this?
I am not prepared. I don't know how.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
To do this. What do I do? Well?
Speaker 2 (26:43):
You know, there's the comma at the end of the
third step which brings us into the fourth step, which says,
is that the only reason.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I don't care how you do the fourth step. We
want to talk about that next week. It's not how
you do the fourth step, it's why you do the
fourth step. And there's only reason. One reason why we
do the fourth step is to clean up and make
room for God.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
And that's where God will resign because God is not
going to live in some crap hole inside of me
that's filled with jealousy and resentments and maneuvering and vengeance.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
What God wants to live in there?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And you know, we all got that in there, so
all the fourth step will.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Do for us. All it's going to do is to
empty out to make room for God. And we'll talk
about the fourth step next week. It's a great day
to be sober. Thank you for having me.
I'm Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I'm an alcoholic. Congratulations to all the celebrants.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
It's a big deal. It's a big deal.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Don't let anybody tell you that time doesn't matter. Time matters.
I'm not a proponent of whoever woke up first today
has the most sobriety.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
You know, for time matters.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
You know, if you've got seven days here, the person
with three days thinks you're a rock star.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Do you understand, so you just give it away? Okay.
So we're going to talk about the third step tonight
and the time we have left.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
We're going to blow through this because dicey, dicey, and
next week we come in for the fourth.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Stem to get spicy spicy. So here we are. I
am Karen.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is September the eighth,
nineteen eighty eight, and I did get sober in New
York City at First Things First.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And I still go to that meeting on Zoom once
a week to do service at my HomeGroup. So I
want to talk a little.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Bit about where it came from. We all understand. I
think most of you have been here for the past
couple weeks. We all understand the acceptance of the first
step that I realized that I was powerless over alcohol
when I was drinking it, and my life was unmanageable
when I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
And again, either one of those things are not true
for you. There's the door.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
All you have to do is put down your alcohol
and you have a great life. You may never have
to come back here. And step two got a little
scary because it.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
Introduced something that might be able to help me.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
I kind of think of it because I'm a romantic.
I kind of think of it as being introduced to
what will be my most important relationship.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
They don't tell you what it is. They just tell
you that you're going to meet somebody in AA. Is
not the goal of AA is to meet somebody in AA.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
So and you meet somebody in the second step. But
here's the problem. For an alcoholic like me, it's really difficult.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
The first three steps, this acceptance that I cannot drink,
and I cannot not drink and I'm screwed. So you're
telling me that there's a thing out there that I
have to believe in something and.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
It doesn't matter what it is. It could be almost anything.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
And if you're around long enough, you'll hear about all
the other things that people believe in. You know, whether
you make it the rooms of AA, or you make
it God, or you make it a doorknob. And by
the way, there are no old timers out here who
believe in the doorknob. The doorknob goes away somewhere in
your first year of sobriety when you realize that you
cannot depend.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
On the doorknob. So you know, what happens is that
we get caught up in this and.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
It's extremely painful for the simple reason that I am unwilling.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
I this alcoholic. I am unwilling to do.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Something that I don't think is gonna do anything for me.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
But I don't believe in.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I am not willing to take the actions for something
that I don't believe in. And if you're an alcoholic
like me, that's really hard because that comes down to you.
The condensed version.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Of that is, I don't trust you. I don't trust anybody.
You know, in the old days, you used to have
these speakers come up together at the end of the meeting.
Was horrible. Actually, they'd say, nobody loves you today, I
love you. It's like so obnoxious. Nobody ever got.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Up here and said, you know, if nobody told you
they trust you today, I trust you.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
We don't trust as alcoholics, you know. So all of
a sudden we find ourselves on the third step.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
And we've done like a little bit of a bait
and switch, like it Telli in the second step, it
doesn't matter what you believe it, And all of a
sudden they're calling it God in the third step, Like
what happened with that?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
You know, I don't know where that came through.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
But I had to learn to believe in something, you know,
whatever that was going to be, because that was the thing,
and this is what I was told. The most important
thing was not what I believed in, was that I
learned how to believe in something that it was going
to do enough things for me and allow me to
take enough actions so that I did not have to
(03:46):
have a drink to stand my life.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Was it going to make me a better person, was
going to make me nicer, kinder, any richer or anything
like that. It was just going to allow me to
live my life without having to have a drink to
stand it. And for an alcoholic of my type, that's
a tall order, a tall order, because when.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
The going got rough, I got going. That's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
So you don't have to know what it is. That's
what I want to tell you. You don't have to
know what you believe in. You don't have to know anything.
But I will tell you this that our success rate
in alcoholics anonymous is tiny.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Tiny. It's like, I don't know, six percent, something like that.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Tiny, because people in this room die because they refuse
to believe in something.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
That they feel that they don't want to believe in.
You got to show it to me, and it never happens.
It never happens.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And if you're an alcoholic like me, whatever I believed
and changed, it became fluid the longer I was sober.
So when we get to the third step, it talks
about this decision.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
You know, we made a decision.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
And if you're like me, you would hang around these
rooms long enough and hearing people talk about the third
step long enough, and they talk about, you know, how
many frogs are on the log.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I don't care how any frogs or in the log,
And then how many made a decision to jump off,
and how many or left I don't really care.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
You know, here's here's the bottom line.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I kind of think of making a decision like going vacation.
I like vacation. And if I make an announcement of
the decision I'm going on vacation, I got to pack
my bags, I got to buy a plane ticket, I
got to get a hotel.
Speaker 1 (05:18):
I'm got to do all these things that I can
go on vacation.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Otherwise I'm not going anywhere, and you're not taking my
VAK away from me.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know, That's how I looked at it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
So if you want to do the third step with that, BS,
and like I made a decision, I don't have to
do anything.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I will see you back here when you pick up.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Your next white chip, because that's the decision you've actually made.
You've made the decision not to take the third step.
But I'll just see you back here because you know
I'll be here. So I was young in sobriety, maybe
two years, and I didn't understand this step because I
wasn't going to give anything up. That's the truth. I'm
not giving you.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
My will, I'm not giving you my life. I didn't
understand these things.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
And I have a god I don't have a god
that nudges me. I have a God that hits me
over the head of the brick.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
I'm hard headed, I'm stubborn. I don't believe I need
to be shown. So I'm in my house. We have
a two story house, and my son, who I think was.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
I don't know, he was a little little and I
was doing good in business. I've made a lot of money,
a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
So I decided to go out and buy something that
you know you would buy if you've made a lot
of money.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Like something is so stupid that nobody would would buy this.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So I went to Bloomingdale's and I bought a pair
of cashmere socks, because doesn't everybody need a pair of
cashmere socks. So I'm ringing on these socks and I
put them on, and I feel like a you know,
like a million dollars.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I'm at the top of the stairs, which have to
carpet on it. You're getting the picture, And that was
pretty much the last thing that I remember. My foot
went out from under me. I grabbed the banister. I
heard that. I heard it.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
I saw my shoulder break inside dislocate, and I go
down the steps on my rear end and I.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Stop at the bottom of the steps. But I have
no idea what I'm going to do now.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I mean, I am broken in every sense of the word.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Call my son, and I said, please please pick up
the phone.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Call nine one one. Mommy's in a bad way. He goes,
what's the matter. I said, mommy's her Call nine one one.
So he leaves and he comes back with a plate
of Oreo cookies and he goes, here, mommy, have these.
They'll make you feel better.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I said, call nine one one. So he calls nine
one one. I said, tell them, mommy's dying. I think
he was five. I have to tell you.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So it's not a thing to say to a five
year old. So actly know, he calls nine one one,
and I hear him in the kitchen. Know my mommy's dying.
You have to go, and so he brings me the phone.
I'd tell the paramedics where you're going, you know. Maybe
ten minutes later they come and they take one look
at me, and they said, you got problems.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Lateish. My shoulder was down here by my waist. I
knew that it was broken.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I heard it break when I was on my way down.
And they don't take you out in a stretcher.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
When you're dislocated.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
They take you out in a special chair like this
mesh chair, so that anyway, they put me in the
chair and I don't know how this happened by my
shoulder relocated itself broken, but it did it all by
itself back in my socket. And they brought me to
the hospital and my child, my son, was in the
ambulance with me, and they did the like that for
him so he wouldn't be afraid.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And we get to the hospital and they bring me.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
Into the back and you know, they have those curtains
that are full privacy.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They're not really private, but they give you the illusion
that is private.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
And so they pulled the cult and like they pulled
the curtain like that, and my son is on the
outside and the nurses with him, and the doctor is
looking at me and he's shaking his head and he
pulls out my bra strap and he said, I'm so sorry,
we're gonna have to cut it off.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And that's what my son heard. We're gonna have to
cut it off.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
And he starts screaming on the outside of this curtain
and they let him in, and I'm saying, no, no, Alie,
it's not about that.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
This is gonna be fine. We're going to let the
doctor take care of us. And all of a sudden it.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
Was like, oh, my head exploded. Nobody said that you're
going to have a life event that is going to
show you.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
The third step.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Because I kept thinking I was giving something up, I
didn't understand that what was happening is that I was
going to give my broken shoulder up to the care
of the doctor, and the doctor was going to tell
me what to do to get better, and I was
going to come back week after week until I got better.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
At no point was I giving up my arm.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
At no point was I walking out of that hospital
not intact. And I could not wait to go back
to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and tell everybody that
I finally understood what the third step was. That I
didn't have anything to worry about, and if I can
impart anything, there's nothing to worry about in the third step.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
As a matter of fact, it's freeing. It's free and
you can relax and say, literally, I have no idea
what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
The most freeing thing you can say in alcoholics anonymous
as an at it as an alcoholicist.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
And you know what, the longer you're sober, you know,
the easier that gets to do.
Speaker 1 (10:04):
You know, and then people.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Look at you, they go, you have thirty six years,
you still don't know what to do.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
That is correct, That is absolutely correct.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
So two years later, December, in December nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
I wrote God a letter.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
You know, I wrote to a God that I didn't
yet believing, but I knew he'd been taking care of me.
You had that subtle shift, and I had made that
decision that I was going to allow him to do
that because my shoulder healed and I got better and
I wasn't wearing this thing that I contraptioned that they
made me wear for months and months.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I got better.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
I allowed this doctor to take care of me, and
I wrote a letter to God. You know, my husband
was terminal at the time, and I asked him to
fix something that couldn't be fixed. So I want to
take a moment to tell you what happened to my prayer.
You know, I have never ever prayed for anything I
didn't get.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
It's very important for me to remember that.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
You know, if I pray that I need the big house,
I get the big house. I forget to pray for
the mortgage money, but I get the big house.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
I have never not gotten what I have prayed for.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
And that's very important because I've had strong sponsors, and
for maybe thirty two years, thirty two years on the nose,
I have only had one prayer in my life.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I pray to God for clarity to see things.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
As they really are, and for the courage to do
something about it if something needs to be done about it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's a strong prayer. Let me tell you that prayer
will never let you down because, as we know, this
is a disease of perception.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I never see things as they really are. I don't
see people as they really are. I see them as
I want them to be. I see them, I see
them and by the way, I see them bad too.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Even if they're not bad, I see them as I
see them. Then I have to go home and I
have to pray.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
You know, for a long time I have felt that
God is in my corner, so I'm never without a.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Place to pray. Even though God lives within me.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
God is in my corner, and I take the ceiling
for the wall, and I get a corner and I
look right there and I pray. And unless you're living
in a yurt, you can do that. Wherever you are,
it doesn't matter. And so I look in the corner
and I, you know, and I literally said, I.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Need you to fix him. I need you to make
him better.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I've had enough of this and we're falling apart as
a family, So you need to do this. I ask
God to fix something that couldn't be fixed because I
had a habit of testing God, not trusting God.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
That's super important for alcoholics of my type.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
That I tested God repeatedly and almost never trusted God.
So it brings me to our Third Step prayer, which
I just loved to death. Thank God, Albert, my sponsor,
made me say the Third Step prayer every day for
the first three years in my sobriety. You know, So
there are some meetings that they're there in the meeting,
you know, with the Third Step prayer, and I know it, and.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
I know it, but more importantly, I know what it means.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
And it's a lot like some of these steps where
we say it and we think we know it.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
And we're not. We have no idea what this looks like.
We don't know what it means at all.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
So what it talks about here that I offer myself
to THEE to build with me and do with me
as thou wilt.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
I guess that's god will, God's will.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But clearly I mean, I gotta tell you, I have
no idea what God's will is. I have a hint,
I have an understanding.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
I think sitting in this.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Room tonight sober is God's will. I think doing service
is God's will. But he's never popped up out of
a bush and told me so. I just keep coming,
and I hope that this is what He's.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Gonna have me do. Then it says, relieve me of
the bondage of self that I made, better do thy will? Well,
I get that, I mean, I understand.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I got some problems with bondage of self, you know
it self self self, problems with authority, big problems with authority.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
You know. I want things the way I want things.
I don't see you for who you really are.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I see you for who I want you to be,
and then I manipulate the situation to suit me.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
So all of these things that's my bondage of self.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But then it tells me there's like, oh my God,
take away my mind have difficulties that victory over. There
may be a witness to those I would help of
my power, they love and their way of life.
Speaker 1 (14:07):
So what difficulties are going to be taken away? Well,
I can make a list except for one problem.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
The only difficulty that is being taken away is one
they already told me that I have. That I have
the difficulty of the bondage of self. That's my difficulty.
So that is what the third step is going to
take away, is the bondage of self and nothing more.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But when the bondage of self is removed, all of
a sudden, you turn around.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You can see, you can literally see what's going on
when you're not so self obsessed. You know, And by
this time in my sobriety, I have posse. And I
have to tell you that by the time you do
the third step, get a posse, because things get a
bit hairy when you're in the third step, because you're
walking around talking to yourself. You know, people don't know
(14:54):
you're talking to God, you know what, you're talking to yourself.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
So get a posse, even if they're not listening to you.
So you can talk to.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Another human being and tell them what's going on, and
they will say things to you like how.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Do you know that? How do I get that? How
did you figure that out? Show me what to do?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
You know?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I talk to God all the time.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
But the problem is is that if I'm not going
to trust God, who am I going to trust you?
That's a real question you. I've been to human help,
human health failed me. I don't have little problems. I
have big problems.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
You think I'm going to trust you? What are you
going to do?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So? If I can't trust you, I'm only left with
one entity to trust, and that's God. And the sooner
you make that decision, the lighter your load is going
to get. You know, the steps are designed, by the way,
whether you like it or not, the steps are designed
to bring God into our lives, whether you.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Want it to or not. You can fight until the
twelfth step. I really don't care. It's in there. It's
in there. And as soon do you turn around and
say you're the guy I trust, then you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Can begin to lean And if you're like look like me,
I have leaned heart, I have a big God, a
strong God. I had a sponsor that said, make a
list of what you want God to be. Make a
list of the human attributes that you.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Want God to have.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
I wanted non judgmental, I wanted big, strong shoulders, I
wanted lots of things. In my God is every one
of those things. Every one of those things. My God
possesses this.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
So that's.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Critical, critical because my God can't be your God and
your God can't be mine.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
I don't understand your God and you'll never understand mine.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
But it's what's it's who I talk to you, and
I talked to God from the moment I wake up
in the morning until the all through the day, until
I go to sleep at night, because I have you know,
So I want to say this, If you're having problems
with God, you's your sponsor. But I can tell you
right now your sponsor's not God. You're going to figure
that out very quickly. And the answer is not to
get a new sponsor, because I tried that and they
(17:12):
weren't God either. You know, you just keep trying it,
but it's not enough. A great sponsor, but a sponsor
is not enough. And I know that that that that
that is not a piecy thing to say in the
rooms of alcoholics Anonymous. But your sponsor is not enough,
and especially if you have a sponsor that has a
different idea of what to do with God.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
You know, we've talked a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Having the intellectual type of God and the you know,
the spiritual type of God, and I don't know what
I have it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
He lives so far deep in me.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
I'm a believer that there's a that there's a piece
of velvet on your heart that, for some reason, in
all the things that I did in twenty five years
of drinking and drugging, that one little piece of velvet
never got soiled. I don't know why never did. That's
where my God is. That's what he protects. That piece
(18:02):
of velbent will never be soiled as long as I
have God inside of me.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
So I want to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
A little bit about what happens to us when we
take this third step.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Not decide and figure out what we're deciding, but.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
We do it, and we say I am willing to
do this step even though I don't believe it.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
That is the purest form of the third step. I
am willing to do this, even though I know that
it's not going to work, I'm going to do it anyway.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And then, by the way, when it works, then you
tell everybody it works like it was your idea.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
And so.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
What happens is that we get this beginnings of this
spiritual awareness.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
And this is very important.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
So when we get this beginnings of a spiritual awareness,
we make a big mistake. Everybody makes it. I made it,
everybody makes it. We start to tell people about it.
We say, oh, I felt like this and this happened
to me, and I got this spiritual feeling, and I
want to tell you that I've learned how to do that.
And that's not the way when you feel something, when
(19:03):
it happens to you, and I promise you you do
this long enough in the third step, it's going to
happen to you. You're gonna wake up one day, you're
going to do something and you're gonna have did that happen?
And the most evident way that this is going to
show itself to you is when you get up there
and you had eighty eight days and the next thing
you know, you got forty five.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
I can't tell you how that happened.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
So when you have these spiritual awarenesses that I got
a few more days in there.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Do nothing, do nothing.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
Don't tell anybody, Keep it inside with you and God.
Nurture it, own it, personalize it. It's the most personal thing.
Don't dilute it. Don't dilute it out there by trying
to tell people what happened to you, you know, unless, and.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
We'll get into this much later on, you have a massive.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Spiritual experience that people do need to hear about. When
you have these small waves of spirituality, these small waves
of how could that have happened to me?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Don't talk about it, not even to your sponsor.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
It becomes an intensely personal beginning of a relationship with God.
And by the time you get to the eleventh step,
that relationship is blowing up into something incredibly beautiful. But
it's personal and it's private. It's really private, you know how,
Like when you meet somebody.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
It's probably a terrible analogy.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I'm really not the person that you want to talk
to about relationships.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
I can tell you that, but you know, you.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Imagine when you meet somebody and you have that like
first two hours un eye you're tugging each other and
you wind up telling them some of your deepest, darkest secrets.
You think about that, and then of course you break up,
and you're screwed with God.
Speaker 1 (20:50):
You never break up. You never break up.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
You're together forever. So don't tell anybody. And by the way,
that's hard to do. It's really hard to do, because
you want to think that you got it. My god,
I've been working so hard. I did everything you said,
and all of a sudden, I'm feeling this.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
I got it. I got to tell you about it.
Don't tell anybody about it.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It will grow to be so strong in you that
you don't need to tell anybody about it.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
They'll see it.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Do you ever see somebody come in the room. There's
something different about them. Can't tell you what it is,
but there's something different about their eyes. Maybe you turn
around and they didn't get a different haircut, and they
didn't lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
It's inside.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
It's inside, and they can't put their finger on it,
and you can't put your finger on it.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
But they look different. And guess what, they got more days?
They got more days.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
And then someone you absolutely thought, I mean, you know,
if you're like me, you're judging everybody in here anyway.
You know, that person that takes their their white ship,
I'm thinking they'll be back in a week, you know.
But when that person that takes their white chip comes
in there and they get a.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Year, how did that happen? That's a day at a
time talking to your God. That's a day in a
time at a.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Time saying I am willing to continue to take these
steps that I have to. We don't believe it, but
I'm going to do him anyway. I'm going to do
him anyway because that's what you're telling me to do.
And I'm not going to share this out there.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
This is my private relationship with God. I can't afford
to dilute it. I can't afford to dilute it.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
I want to just tell you one more thing about
my faith in God, which has become really important to me.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Actually, you know I've told you before.
Speaker 2 (22:26):
That that Clancy was an early mentor. I also had
another phenomenal friend that Sandy Beach, was an old friend
of mine as well. And Sandy and I.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Met when I was not in early sobriety, but he met.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
We met at the same time when my spouse and
his daughters died and they and one of his daughters
died violently and my spouse died ridiculously violently. And we
got together one night after a meeting and we had
coffee and we never we never parted. You know, I
got to see him all the time and talk to
him all the time. And if you knew sand at all,
he had this habit of, you know, going around the
room and handing out his business cards like he wasn't
(23:03):
being asked to speak enough.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
You know, we just hand out his business cards. Anyway.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
One day, you know, we were talking about God, because that's
what we talked about, and he said, the one thing
that I've learned, and if you can take this in
your life and never let it go, is that no
matter what happens in my life, it does not change
my opinion of God. It does not change my opinion
of God, because if it did, it's not God.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
It's a person.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
It's a person that's disappointed me, that hasn't come through
from me.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
So I have to watch that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
So the other thing that I want to say about
the third step is that, other than don't worry about it,
because it doesn't matter how you do this. It doesn't
matter how you find this God.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
It really doesn't.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
What matters is when, because nobody finds God unless they
absolutely positively have to to stay alive. If I can
figure out a substitute, that's God, I'm going for it.
But I couldn't figure out anything other than God, who
was going to keep me? Well, that's how much baggage
(24:14):
I carried into this room. So it's not when we
find God, and it's not how we find God at
the end, it's what we do once he's there. Because
with a great God comes great love. And all alcoholics
are seeking love.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
We all want it.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
We don't know how to get it, and we certainly
don't know how to keep it, and we certainly are
very good at screwing it.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Up along the way. But those are all human attributes.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
But when you apply them to the God in your life,
you're looking for unconditional love. Who is it You're looking
for unconditional love. That's where it is. That's where it is,
and that's a promise. That's where it is.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
So the last thing I want to say, maybe like
two little things.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Last thing that I want to say is that you
know AA is filled with slogans, and you know I
hate them all because.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I think they're all bs, you know, I mean, I
just I think they're all.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
From the old timers who didn't have anything else to say.
And now I'm an old timer's so I can say
whatever I want. But there's this slogan that they say,
you know, the maintenance steps are ten, eleven and twelve.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
Wait till you get to ten, eleven and twelve. That
is the biggest lie.
Speaker 2 (25:25):
You will hear in alcoholics anonymous. The maintenance steps are one,
two and three, over and over and over again. I
have to come back to that unflattering position in my
sobriety of going back to steps one, two and three
to try to figure.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Out what is going on. How am I supposed to
deal with this, what is wrong with me? What needs
to be removed?
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Step twelve is not going to tell me what needs
to be removed.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
So I sit in steps one, two and three for
more than.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Three decades because that's what keeps me sober.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And I've done clearly all the steps.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
So I just want to close with this that, you know,
it's a little scary because once we get this power
greater than ourselves, whether it's your big ass doorknob or
I had a friend in California. She's got fifty years
this year, and when when her sponsor told her to
get a higher power, there was a moving truck across.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
The street that said beacons. And so she used beacons
for about thirty years.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
But now she's fifty years sober, she decided to switch
to God.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
You know, so it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Matter, you know, whatever, whatever that is, now I got it.
What do I do with God once I have this?
I am not prepared. I don't know how.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
To do this. What do I do? Well?
Speaker 2 (26:43):
You know, there's the comma at the end of the
third step which brings us into the fourth step, which says,
is that the only reason.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
I don't care how you do the fourth step. We
want to talk about that next week. It's not how
you do the fourth step, it's why you do the
fourth step. And there's only reason. One reason why we
do the fourth step is to clean up and make
room for God.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
And that's where God will resign because God is not
going to live in some crap hole inside of me
that's filled with jealousy and resentments and maneuvering and vengeance.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
What God wants to live in there?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
And you know, we all got that in there, so
all the fourth step will.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Do for us. All it's going to do is to
empty out to make room for God. And we'll talk
about the fourth step next week. It's a great day
to be sober. Thank you for having me.
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