Mary Pearl J. at AlAnon Womens Retreat Part 5 of 5

Did what happened or is it my reaction to what's happening

and I can stop and Tunde around right then if I choose to, I can go on and have a miserable day. That's my choice. And that made me feel mad when people would tell me that when I said that you don't understand this happened. I mean, would you dance if this happened? And they said no, but I wouldn't find it this day. They have a question either

said there's something in between that you know, it's not better behavior and.

83 cares ledges were promptly

Because you've got to promptly get rid of them.

You know, it takes a lot of fun out of movies.

You can't, you can't throw your little garbage bag. You know, you, you can't do that. You have to say each thing as it comes. It's called building with life on life terms. I never thought about doing that. You know, you've got to think about it. Most of those things that and build them up and make them worse than they were and then feel more pain. And my God, you know, I used to love to suffer and you do me wrong today. And 15 years from today, I could tell you how terrible you were and how much you'd hurt me.

Did it to me once, but I did it to me from then on because I didn't promptly get rid of my resentment. You know, sometimes what I do wrong that day is resist something and it doesn't hurt you. It means I always see myself for having done that to me one more time. Because, you know, when I take in those negative feelings, I'm doing it to me. And I no longer can go on and rationalize and justify what I did. You know, you said I'd say, well, you deserve that.

Yeah, I gave it to you, but you had it coming.

Look what you did to me.

And instead I find that, you know, you don't deserve so much out of my negative. And what I give out, I get back. There's the spiritual principle. And whenever you're disturbed, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with you. Yeah, I hated that statement. I hated it in the 12 and 12 weeks. If it's a spiritual axiom, you know, that's the truth. That happens again and again and again. And I'm. I'm looking at that. And I said, how can that look? And it's because my reaction is not good.

My reaction is not good to what's happening around me because it disturbs me and it will disturb me. It means that I am not accepting reality. You know, like I said, you don't have to like it to accept it. And it's when I fight the reality of the situation, I don't like it and I fight that reality that it hurts me because the reality, you know, reality is the truth. And truth doesn't change.

This is the truth. But right this minute and write this now, this is all we have.

So

it says another thing about the 10th step. It says here's where you begin to have some type of emotional balance. I never had emotional anything, much less balance. I don't think I ever had a balance. You know, I was either all the way over here or all the way over here. My pendulum would swing, Boy, would it swing. And it took a long time for us to get it started in the middle. It still goes, but it's more in the middle now. And I don't have to go way out here. You know, it's just funny. This is a wonderful weekend.

Now, how do you feel after you get home?

How you doing home? I used to go home from retreats and conferences. And what did I do? And I would be on such a high, I would just, you know, putting your, you know, float at home. And I would get home and everything was wonderful. And then so there I was going back to the real world. I wasn't in my real protected environment anymore. And after two or three days, I would go right down to the bottom of the floor, the absolute pits. I'd been to the Everest and now I'm in the pit. And I couldn't understand why. And doing the inventory, I found out why

all these wonderful things you hear all this wonderful sharing that you do

sounds good, makes you feel good. But if you don't put it to work, go down to the pit because once you know and you don't ask upon that knowledge, you will go down. So that's just the one I did that time and time again. I would go down until I figured it out from doing the inventory. But that's what I was doing. I was listening to it, but I wasn't practicing it. And it's real easy to get into that because we do get sort of laid back at one of these. But you got to go back now and we got to work.

OK, promptly.

There you go again. Say that dishonesty, boy, that was the one that hurt me so much. To have to be right in the middle of a sentence and say I'm a liar.

You know, people will look at you weird

now program people won't. But that whole world out there will. You know, you'll be standing there and somebody will say, well, did you do so and so? And you say, Oh yes, I did. I did not do that.

I just lied to you.

My sister didn't take it real well, you know, because I did it quite frequently. And she'd say, you lie to me a lot, don't you? And I said, as a matter of fact, I did.

I don't have to do that nearly so much with her anymore. Because you see, I had a tendency to tell her what I thought she wanted to hear in certain instances because I was trying to protect her.

You know, instead of now let's let's take another look at honesty. Let's be honest, but let's not be brutal. And I had problem with that because when I became honest, I became brutally honest. You would say to me, how do you like my hair? It looks like shit.

You look like you put your hand in a light socket. Did you do it in a blender this morning?

I was being honest.

I found that there, you know, there's another little thing called tax and I, I knew a pack, but I didn't know much about.

I was told it was a virtue and I, I don't know that it is, but

but it was something that I even have difficulty with today because I have a tendency to say before I think, and I'll tell you something I found out about me in step 10. There's all kinds of different lines that you can get into and some of them are fun. And by that I mean I can. It's like there's another person that lives inside of me and I hear myself saying things and doing things the same time you do. It's like it pussy, the mental process altogether. Now, I don't know if you have this phenomenon, but it's weird. I'll give you an example. I was working out with a girlfriend

at the mall in a PR booth not too long ago, and my husband had said to me when he found out I was going to the mall like that, he said, you know, I'd like you to pick me up some Steeler for our fountains. And I said OK. So during the break while we were being relieved for lunch, this girl Jennifer, when I sponsor, we decided we'd go down to see her for old Sears. Here we go in. I seem to be addicted to Sears Roebuck and I don't know why I've had so many rotten expenses there.

That's right,

that,

you know, this time it's going to be different.

And it was different because I went in there and we're walking along. We got back to the site department. This young man came over and he said, may I help you? And I said, yes, I'm a serious personal shopper and I'm here to see how well you do in your department. Now,

if you were to have someone come in and ask for sealer for their birdbath, which were one of our products, would you have to recommend? And he said just a minute. And he began to listen to his little book. And then he came up and he said he would be this. And I said, good, I'll take a gallon.

And you looked at me and I said, I said you passed your test. If you'll give me your name and employee number, I'll be glad to make out my report. And so he gave me his name and employee number and I wrote it down. And we're walking out with the gallon of Sailor. And Jennifer turns to me. She said I didn't know you worked for Sears

and I said I don't.

And she said,

why didn't you warn me you were going to do that? And I said I heard it the same time you did.

And she said you're kidding. And I said absolutely not. I said once I heard it get started, I had to see it to the end to see what was going to happen.

I said it was an adventure

and she said that. Wasn't it dishonest?

And I said

yes, if you must know, yes. I said it was not totally honest,

just a little bit dishonest. I said it was a lie, Jennifer, and she said, well, how are you going to make an amends for that?

And I said, I'm going to ride the stairs and tell him what a nice young man they had in the paint department who is extremely helpful.

And he was Cody. I said, that's how I'm making amends for playing that joke on him. I said I might do something good for him, you know? And she said, well, I was just wondering. I said, well, I said that's what I planned on doing is I was walking off. And I said it's funny. I said, because in my mind you say I played a joke on someone and it wasn't a lie. But see, Jennifer caught me. Jennifer caught me. God had her right there to tell me. But now I'm serious to tell you I never know when one of those attacks is coming on

and I'm always as surprised to hear what my mind does is you are

it's amazing. And and I don't know what kind of defense against that. But you see with the promptly and the know that it is a lie. I can go back and I can make amends if an amends is due. I don't feel that I hurt the boy any. But I did write the letter and I got a thank you letter from Sears, you know, for telling me about their employee. But like I say, that's that's some of the things that you noticed now. I used to have emotional hangovers. You ever had emotional hangover?

You know, you can get so mad and have such a fit that you're just sick for two days screaming and hollering, and you just just wear yourself to a nub.

I had a neighbor that I witnessed, you know, and I thought, you know, he needs this program bad. He went out to his lawn mower and he started to crank the lawn mower. And he'd crank and he'd crank and he'd crank and nothing would happen.

And I begin to feel sorry for him because it was hot and he was an old fella. And he would crank and he would crank. And then I saw him go off to his shed and he came back with a ball team hammer

and he threatened his lawnmower.

He said if you don't start, this is what you're going to get.

And he did and it didn't And he did. He beat it until the house and the wheels fell off

and he left it laying. And then later on in the afternoon I saw him come back with a new lawnmower and he rolled it over to the old lawn mower. And I don't know what he said, but in my mind,

tell us, say that you want to look like this. Don't start some morning.

And I began to feel a little more compassion for his wife.

Okay,

the purpose of this trip is to acquire the habit of an accurate self appraisal to look at yourself honestly and see what you're doing. And you know, many times God puts other people in my past for me to take a look at me. That's the truth. And it's scary. You know, I, when I was in Hawaii last, you know, the year before last when I was down in the Waipio Valley on the Big Island of Hawaii. And it's a real remote area and there are no cars, no telephones, no nothing. You're just down there

and there was an accident that happened. We were forwarding a river and we went under in a vehicle that was supposed to get across the river. And so there we were stranded in the middle of the river and there were about six of us that were in this 4 wheel drive vehicle that were supposed to get across the river. And this one guy that I nicknamed Mary Pearl, who began to have a screaming fit and he was saying, I know they signed it down here. I'm going to lose this holiday in my vacation. I can't believe this. I just can't believe

and I want to say the latest Mozelle,

but I didn't say it. You know I went over.

Of course, I will have to admit that the beautiful Hawaiian God didn't carry him to the shore.

You know, I became weak and defenseless and couldn't swim right on the spot. I didn't say anything, I just looked at,

but I'll sit over there and I waited under the the beautiful palm trees with the ocean laughing at my finger didn't seem too bad a place to be stranded. Of course I wouldn't spend the rest of my life there. But you know, it wasn't that bad. And it wasn't all day, all day ordeal because the first rescue vehicle grounded out too.

It was one of those it got to be funny. It really got to be funny. But this gentleman was so upset and he made himself physically sick with the fit that he threw. And I thought, you know, he's going to be. And if the the irony of this was, I saw him two or three islands later a week or so, and he was still talking about this tragic day that he had.

And I thought, you know, it's funny. It was only in your attitude and what you do in a situation like that. But I knew where he was coming from because I used to be just like that. And I was so grateful that I don't have to be like that anymore. I think it's so neat when God puts people like that in our past, you know, have you ever had anyone in your group that you couldn't stand? There's always seems to be one of them in the group, you know, somebody that's always unhappy about everything you do and bitching and dropping and carrying out and you get rid of that one. They finally

quit, and you're like, we've outlived them. And then you get a new one. And I wondered about that over the years. And, you know, I learned in that inventory that those people are good for me because they teach me how not to be. I bet I taught a lot of people how not to be for a long time.

OK, I think that's all I'm going to say on the fact that self-discipline was not something I enjoyed. It wasn't anything that I look forward to and that my sponsor kept telling me the the hardest thing that I was ever going to have to do was keep my mouth shut because I felt like I had an obligation to respond to everything that happened in this world. You know, people, you have to fix it for them. You just have to fix it. I saw on the plane going back from Oregon, we had a stop in Salt Lake

last time, and there was a man that got off the plane in Salt Lake City and left his coat. I knew he had to. The stewardess had taken it from him and I didn't see her give it back. And then later she was running around in Dallas with this coke thing. Whose coat is this, you know, And I didn't have to fix that or say anything about it. Now that makes things tacky. But that man was not my responsibility and that girl hurt. Her duty was not my responsibility either. And I don't know for a fact that was his coat, but I did see him get on with one and I didn't see him get off with one. But I don't see everything.

But before I would have been in there trying to fix that and following that man down the jetway saying sorry, sorry, you forgot your car. You know

your ten step can be kept like a journal. It'll show you what God can do for you that you can't do one day at a time.

It will show you some of the little miracles that are happening in your life that you might miss otherwise. Sometimes reading back, you'll begin to see where the miracle started. Well, on the 11th step thought the Prairie meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. That simplified my prayer life tremendously. Did you ever try to say, well now God, I want you to, I want you to help Jane. I want you to give Jane good health. Her health is not well. And Betty, I want you to take care of Betty.

She's having trouble in her marriage. I want you straight her husband out so she won't be so unhappy. And God, I want you to give this one money. And then I want you and I begin to give God all of his marching orders. You know, and this step said, that's not what we're supposed to do. We play only for the knowledge of his will for us. All I need to know is God's will for me and the power to carry it out. That's all I need to know when it comes to praying for you. And people say, would you pray for me? I'll say yes. But now this is what I'm going to play. God, your will in their life.

That's it. God bless that person, Your will in their life. Do for them what they need. I have no idea what each and every person in this room needs. And if I were to tell you what I think I need, it's usually not what I need. It's what I want because I have learned more from the tragedies that have come in my life and I have the good things.

Unfortunately. Now when I tell you something about the power of prayer, don't discount ever the power of prayer. JD. After we were in the program a little while, JD got cancer

and I was terrified. I was so terrified. And I felt like it's not fair. We're just getting back together, We're getting a relationship going, and now he's going to be snatched out of my life. It's not fair. And I got mad at God. Now when I get mad at you, you know my supreme punishment. I won't talk to you. I'll deprive you of my presence.

I'll hurt you boy.

That's the real self-centered individual,

and that's the way I would do God. I wouldn't talk to him because I was mad at him. I said, you know, God, I know you're in charge of all these things, and then here you let this happen

and I'm mad. I'm not gonna talk to you.

And so I didn't talk to him. But, oh, I was so miserable and I was so fearful, and I was trying to put up this big, brave front when I was around JD. Big C, no big problem. You can lick the big seat. My God. Look, alcoholism, you know, Big C is nothing. And inside I was dying. Dying. And when JD would go to work, I would sit and cry for hours. And then I would put ice cubes and cucumbers on my eyes before he come home so he wouldn't know that I'd been crying the whole time he'd been

and he'd walk in and I'd be happy triple and I would be dying on the inside. I didn't want to talk about it to anybody. Because you see, if you talk about it, it becomes more real. I was still in the shock and the denial of it. I didn't want it to be and and I therefore I wasn't going to talk about it. And so one night, one of the girls I sponsored called me and she said, what's the matter with you?

Because I was, you know, I was really into the good sobbing. And

and you know, the thing of it is I wasn't crying for him. I was crying for me because I was so hurt by it and I was so frightened by it. It wasn't what I wanted. It wasn't that he was gonna suffer, wasn't that he might die, but it was what was gonna happen to me. My God, the self centeredness in that, you know. But Linda called that night and she said, Merc, what's the matter with you? And I said, I don't wanna talk about it, Linda.

And she says, well, is there anything? I said, did you hear what I said? I don't want to talk about it. And I hung up.

Now Linda loves me

and she called everybody in the group and she said something's wrong with Mark Bed wrong. Let's all pray for her.

Now I don't know what they create or how they pray, and that's not important to me.

But what's important was somewhere that night between 11/12, 1:00 in the morning, and as I sit in there crying,

it was like peace washed right over me.

All the fear went away

and I knew it was going to be OK. Now. I didn't know if that meant JD was going to live, JD was going to die. What was going to happen? I had no idea. But it was an inner knowing that everything was going to be OK. It was going to be OK.

They did that for me. They loved me.

Prayer of prayer of your root for you is immeasurable. And when you get to a place that you can't pray for yourself, for God's sake as someone to play for you and they can pray for you till you're able to do it for yourself.

And JD went into surgery and they removed that and he's fine today. And that's been 11 years ago,

you know?

But that was his miracle. My miracle was I wasn't afraid. I knew it was gonna be OK

and it was what they did for me. You see, they did for me with God what I couldn't do for myself.

You notice it tells us in the book that God will do for us. That's one of our promises, what we can't do for ourselves. A lot of times your group will do for you what you can't do for yourself. Think about how they love you before you can love yourself. How they can accept you before you can accept you.

You know,

I usually don't know. I couldn't tell you exactly what God's will is for me, but I know what God's will is, not

my experience. I know the things that I do that are not God's will. It's pretty easy. You know those there's sets of guidelines of, of good conduct and behavior that you know.

But when I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I get up in the morning and I turn my will in my life over to God, I do what's right in front of me to do,

knowing that God will put these things in my path as I need them. As the course of my day goes on, God will tell me. Have you ever had a decision that you couldn't decide what you wanted to do? A major decision

I want share with you, one that I had with a girl that I sponsored.

This girl's husband was practicing and he was a teacher and she was a teacher in the same school district, and he drove the school bus.

Now here's the lives of 50 or 60 children every morning being put in jeopardy because he's taking his pills and he's drinking his booze.

And there he is.

And she said, you know, if I report him, he'll most certainly lose his job. We may lose our home. And if he finds out, we'll, we'll, our marriage will go down the tooth.

And she said, but I cannot live knowing that maybe a child is going to be hurt. She said if a child gets hurt, I'll never forgive myself. And she says, what should I do? And I told her, I don't know, but we'll pray about it because, you know, I don't know. Like I say, what you ought to do. That's the reason I have to be very careful in sponsoring people 'cause you know, you think you'd know, but you don't know. And so we begin to pray. And one day she came to me and she said, you know, I still don't know.

And I said, well, why don't you try this? Why don't you tell God what you're going to do,

like a plan of action, and tell God you're going to do it and that if you're not supposed to do it, to stop you?

And she said, all right, So she called me one morning. She said, this is the morning I'm going to go in. I'll talk to God and I'm going to go in and I'm going to turn him in because I can't live like this anymore. I can't live in this fear that some child's going to be harmed because he's thinking he's getting progressively worse every morning.

And so she went to school that morning and the principal wasn't there right that minute when she got there. And she left word with the secretary that she wanted to talk with him later on that morning.

And after a while, the secretary called her and she said, the principal wants to talk with you. And he told her. He said, you know, we found it necessary to fire your husband this morning. He arrived in the bus drunk,

you say? She didn't have to do that. She had just to be willing,

just to be willing. And then God did for her what she couldn't do for herself the way it would not be.

And I thought that was a neat miracle. That was a neat miracle for her.

I love the 11th step because it is

the miracle step to me. I learned so much about life. I learned so much about me and you through meditation. Now when I came in the program, I was big on meditation books. I'd never thought about meditation except doing yoga. And you know, then something really what I considered weird and far out Today I don't consider anything weird and far out. If it works for you. I really don't. But that you know, every morning I'd get up and I'd read my Odette, the 24 hour book. Each day a new beginning. God calling the Upper and the daily word the guideposts.

Now, I'm here to tell you it's hard to meditate on 25 things,

but you say I never did a little bit of anything, but two dogs font me and you got to meditate. Well, you know, by the time you get all that red, that's going to take you about 30-40 minutes. Well, you know, you don't have too much time. And I couldn't get it. I couldn't hold a single thought in my head. 10 seconds

and people say shut your mind, just let everything go.

Is there anybody can do that? Can you totally turn your mind off the high fault?

I can't. After all these years, I can't make my mind go completely, totally blank. I have to put something in there. And so I found it when I meditate, if I take one spiritual truth

and just put that in there

and try to relax and not force anything, and sometimes I have to keep going. You know, in the beginning I would do it like maybe 1015 seconds, maybe a minute, and then gotta go to the grocery store. We come through and I would say no. And I would go back and I had to discipline myself and keep going back as many times as necessary until now I can meditate for quite a period of time without breaking that train of thought. But it's an acquired discipline. You just have to learn and stay with it and keep going back to it.

But I found that it was much easier for me if I read one meditation in the morning. Now, that doesn't mean I don't read out a big book or some of our literature. But when I get ready to meditate or whatever, I'll read maybe when my sister material and I'll sit there and I'll read that and I may or may not meditate on what I read that morning. Now I'll tell you that one morning I was sitting there, I had a big aquarium. They got 75 gallon aquarium

and I was watching my fish just swim around. It's very restful and people to watch fish swim,

except in my think I had vicious fish,

you know, sometimes I try to sit there and meditate and watch one eat another one, you know,

that's until I learned that there's some fish you don't put with other fish, you know. But I thought they were pretty and they'd all look so good together. But you know, something that just looked good don't always go together.

But I was sitting there looking at that fish tank one morning, and I had been worried for days about our financial situation. It seemed to be getting progressively worse.

And I didn't know what I was supposed to do about it. And I had thought about this situation and then all of a sudden one day I got this telephone call and a guy offered me a job. And I hadn't, I wasn't even looking for a job, but this guy said that we have a resume that we have of yours from way back when. And he said, I just wanted to know, would you be interested in this position now? He told me it was a, it was a, you know, over $2000 a month was a nice job in Arkansas. And

he said that would not like to know if you'd be interested.

And I said, well, you'll have to let me check with my spiritual advisor.

And he said, well, how long will that take? And I said, well, give me about a week and I'll call you next Tuesday, or you can call me and I'll let you know if I'm interested. Well, you know, you people who are wanting jobs don't do that, You know. Well, I didn't know that I wanted a job. I didn't know. It just appeared to me that it looked like I was going to have to go back to work because I had quit work after Jackie had been sober a year. And that was a miracle. And I didn't know what to do about this situation

now. I didn't say anything to JD because I didn't want him to sway my decision one way or another.

Now that may be right or wrong, but that's how I did it. And I would pray and I would ask God, what would you have me do? And I didn't get an answer.

And this was where I had decided on the technique like I told a little girl that day, because you see what I said to God was God the morning that the Tuesday morning came around and I didn't know any more than I did the previous week. And I said, I'm going to take that job offer and go really look into it and probably take it unless you can give me a reason why I don't need to do that. Stop me.

We got up that morning. I was fixing JD his breakfast and I'm sitting down and he said, you know something?

And I said Juan, he said, I'm so grateful you don't work anymore. Do you realize how much our marriage has grown by us having time to be together because JD work night and I work days

and I said yeah, yes, he said. I am so grateful that God has given us the means that you do not have to work.

I said OK

when JD went on off to work, the man called later and I told him. I said I'm going to have to say no for today because I said I don't believe that's what my God would have me doing right now.

And he said, that's the strangest reply I've ever heard.

And I said, well, I'm probably one of the strangest people you'd ever meet.

And within a couple of weeks, a major financial disaster happens and I thought I missed it.

Listen, I blew my opportunity,

but something inside said just wait, where's your faith? We were talking about faith the other night at the meeting. Where's your faith? And I said, God, I felt like I did what you had me to do. Now I'm going to hold you to your part of it.

I did. I, you know, I think that by me wanting to do God's will, that pleases God, whether I get it or not,

the fact that I'm trying to do it. And I think your reward effort.

And so a couple of weeks went by and JD got a promotion,

a couple more weeks went by and he got across the board cost of living increase. And with those two things together, they took care of the financial situation.

You see, I didn't have to jump in there and fix it because see, that's what I was planning on doing, was doing what I've always done. And that would be, I'll fix it. And God said wait. And I did. And that was a hard period to go through to wait.

Now I want to tell you about another miracle. JD needed a truck.

He wanted a small truck that would be economical, one that we could afford. And I said, JD, we can't afford a car payment of truck payment. We can't afford a payment. And he said, well, if the oil truck was the old drunk truck and the way you kept the doors on it shut was you took those little bungee cords and you put them in the ashtray and put them in the windows, and that gets you from flying out as you went around the corner.

But we wouldn't get him anything decent while he was drinking. And then because he's been off work for so long, before he did get a job, we were very much having to take every penny we had him. There was no money for that

and we prayed and we asked God to direct us to the vehicle we were supposed to have.

And JD said I put in order. I told him I wanted a plain vanilla truck with just a transmission and a heater. He said I don't want anything but the bare minimum. He said I'm not being choosy. He said I just want something that I that I can use. And we would go and we would look at all these lots and there wasn't a truck that that description. They had the 5 speed, it had a stereo, it had air conditioning, had this that and the payments were UN astronomical.

Now JD was going to go on the night shift the following Monday. This was Friday morning

and we're sitting there and we know more know what's going to happen Monday than nothing. Because I was still working during that time and with my hours I couldn't come home, give him my car to go to work because he had to go before I got home. So there you are.

And that night daddy had gone to his meeting and I got a telephone call and the lady said could you use, I understand you're having a hard time and JD needs a vehicle. And I said yes. And she said well, with $2000 help.

And I said there's no way we can pay back $2000 loan because I mean, you know, it'd be by the time you added the loan with the car payment, there'd be no, she said, I don't remember saying the word loan.

She said, would you take this $2000

as a love gift?

You know, the program tells me I have to learn to receive. You know, I'm big on giving, but you got to receive. Boy, that was hard.

So now we have the $2000 in cash. That night we got up. The next morning we went past the place we've been going and over on the side of the lot by full lonesome stuff with this little white truck. Plain vanilla.

And we asked the salesman about this truck. He said you don't want that truck. He said it's just a strip down model. It doesn't have anything but a transmission and a heater in it, for God's sake,

he said. We ordered it for Coca-Cola Company. They wanted one and it didn't come in in time and they got tired of waiting and got him a Toyota

and this was a death. And he said, you know, it's just over there. And he said it's got a heavy duty screens and all this kind of stuff. And he said I don't know that you'd be interested in that one. And Daddy said, well, Kim would just drive it. And so we got in the truck. We looked at each other and went,

we drove around the block, we were crying, we knew it was our truck, that God had sent our truck. And we got back to the salesman and we asked him how much and he said well-being in South Denton was a thing and we're trying to get it off while he said $3600.

So we tied the $2000 down our payments for $70.00 a month for a year. You know we can afford that, you know, and we had a brand new truck and I want you to know he drove that truck for almost six years before he ever had to put a penny in it. And then he bought tires. Can you believe that? The original tire that came on a truck with last six years

on God's truck it would and that's the you know, you know, it was real funny. I told him I said the only thing wrong about that truck and I said we didn't tell God was it's awfully rough riding. It's a short wheelbase and it just and so we named the truck and he has it has its own little license plate. It's called Teddy.

Now you might wonder why we call it Teddy. Well, it's named after Teddy Roosevelt. See, it's a rough riding son of a bitch.

God has a sense of humor.

OK I think that when I pray to go back to my fish tank I was about got lost on my fish tank. I noticed that when I fed my fish

that I became God of the fish tank. I was the one that put the food on the waters

and you put just enough. If you've ever had any fish, you know, you put just enough for that day. Any more than that world, it's out of the water and the fish will die. And I begin to watch that food trickle down through that time. And as that food trickle down, there's some that eat it on the top, there's some that eat it through the middle, and there's some that get it off the bottom. But there's always enough. And everybody gets his piece.

And I realized that day that no matter where I was, God was going to take care of my food, my necessities. And I never had to go back into that panic bit about finances and what was going to happen anymore.

Because if I realized in my inventory in my 10th step, the only time I have financial worries is when I go out and run amok. You know, I go charge happy. You know, I have, you know, charge. You know, JD says that my charge cards, I can flip them like OCD papers because they weren't so thin from you

and I, I can be abusive with credit. And so I know that when I get into buying exactly who's done it, I know

and I know what the steps to take to correct that.

I give God those credit cards. He does not use them here like I did.

OK,

I became God conscious.

I begin to ask God to let me see people as he sees them. This opened a whole new world for me, looking at other people like God sees them. I did this first with my mother and my mother when I first started working on the relationship with her. When I would see her in my mind I always thought of her as being a mean witch. She was formidable. I'm not kidding. My mother's about this tall, but she has eyes.