Joe McC. from Tulsa, OK at the 19th Traditional Winter Holiday in Joplin, MO

That's humility, John.

My wife says I'm about as humble as Hitler.

I went to the restroom a while ago and this lady tapped me on the shoulder, said you this morning, Speaker. And I said, yes ma'am. And she said, you ever get nervous at these things? And I said, well, no, not really. She told really said what are you doing in the ladies restroom?

I,

that's old boy, went in the bar there and he said bartenders would pour me 10 drinks as quick as you can, 10 double s. And he poured, poured them up and the guy started drinking them down. And the bartender said I've never seen anybody drink like that. He said, watch the hurry. He said I want to get my drinks in before the trouble starts. He said, well, what kind of trouble are you expecting? He said I don't have any money.

I

yeah, I'm really glad to be here this morning. I think the committee for inviting us has been a very special, special weekend for me. I don't know about you, but it has been for me because it brought back a lot of old memories. And last night we had a little session up in Georges room and Charlie and Joe and Nelson and Dan and Hank and Tony and David and it was brought back a bunch of old men. Were we still just to do a lot of that years ago?

A lot. And

we can't. I know that Charlie and Joe's done a great deal for Alcoholics Anonymous over the years and I'm not going to give them the credit because they have done, but said we have helped them too. We and I call this Anonymous and this message that we had, they stumbled onto and and we were the Guinea pigs in those early days

of sitting around the rooms and talking and listening about the Big Book of Alcohol. It's anonymous in It

sparked A

and a movement in a back to the big book. And it's very, very important. And I think that we give them credit for it. But God worked in our lives. God worked in their lives and he worked in our lives. And we today are charged with carrying on this message from the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous because it almost got lost. It almost got lost

in the early 70s a, a got away from the big book about Carlos Anonymous and got into touchy feeling meetings and

that kind of thing. And thank God they brought us back to the basics of alcohol synonymous. And I appreciate them for that.

You know, and

on page 27 of this book, there's a story about a guy named Roland, Roland Hazard. And Roland S family sent him to Europe

and put him in the care of the physician, psychiatrist, Doctor Jung. And he prescribed Point for more than a year.

And after a year, he started for home and he got drunk on the way after being there for a year.

So he went back to this doctor and he asked him why he couldn't stay sober. And he said you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic. I've never seen anyone say sober that has a mind that exists in you. He said, was there any hope for me? He said, I don't believe so. You're going to have to hire a bodyguard or be locked up.

And he said or you can accept spiritual help. And Doctor Young was into believing his spiritual help and he said he didn't know that much about that. And he said to the doctor, is there no exception? Why can't I stay sober? And the doctor said, yes, there is exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times.

He said here and there, once in a while Alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me, these occurrences are phenomenon. He didn't understand it, but he knew they existed. And I, Roland, we know that Roland came back to the US and joined the Oxford Group and practiced the six tenants of the Oxford Group

and he stayed sober. And ultimately he carried that same message to Abby and Abby brought it to Bill. But you see, alcohol synonymous started right there because prior to that he said here and there, once in a while, this once in a great while, Alcoholics had what are called vital spiritual experiences. To me, these are phenomenon today in a a we can look at each other because of this big book and say that here and now,

every time an alcoholic will apply these things to their life, they too can stay sober.

And they call it, I'll call it synonymous. But there was no alcoholic synonymous in those days.

And we've all been involved in that message of carrying this message to Alcoholics.

At least I have been, and I know most of you have been too.

And I'm going to go back now and say to my to you that my name is Joe and I'm an alcoholic. And it's fruited by God's grace. And the Fellowship of Alcohol is Anonymous and a program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I found in a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm sober this morning. And for that, I'm very, very thankful.

And on page 18 of this book, it tells my whole story, if you will, in this book

later on, it said that when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straightened out mentally and physically, the spiritual malady. And spiritual not only means my relationship with God, but my relationship with me. Doctor Junior told Roland that these ideas, emotions and attitudes which were the guiding force of lives of these people are suddenly cast to one side. And I go back into my life with this story and it tells my home story. It says an illness of this sort. We've come to believe it. An illness

involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer, always sorry for him. No one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness. For with it goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life. And it goes all whose lives touched the sufferers. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends, employers, warp lives of blameless children, sadwives and parents. Anyone can increase the list.

In other words, alcoholism is a family illness.

It affects everyone of us, and if you live with one of us very long, you'll be affected by it too.

We saw that with Dan and Lily, how their family was affected by this illness of alcoholism, and certainly by most of your families and certainly by my family. Because I look back in that and I see that my dad was an alcoholic. I know the day he had an obsession to drink and my mother had an obsession to see that he didn't drink. And they fought and fussed about that. And I grew up in that, and it began to affect me emotionally.

I've been fighting the cold for weeks. Excuse me?

So yeah, his drinking got to be real bad, and my dad was an alcoholic and he was a nice man also. We went out to California, came back to West Tulsa about 3 miles before Charlie was raised up. Beautiful area.

We spelt poor with three O's.

Charlie and I talked about this a lot. I said, you know we never we never support. We had eleven attempt, but we had the money. We lived one, I guarantee you. But my dad was a nice man and he called he hauled ice back and forth to people's houses on Friday, Saturday he would he would get off work and go down by the bootlegger and pick up a pint of whiskey and come home and have a drink and he needed a drink. I guarantee he needed a drink. And my mother saw that dollar going for a pint of whiskey that

could have fed her kids, and she was afraid of that. And she was scared and so was he. And they fought and fussed about that. And we know that alcoholism is a progressive illness. It progresses as time goes by. And my dad drinking got worse and my mother's raising hell with him got worse. And his time went by. He began to pull a knife out once in a while, or a gun, and threatened my mother with it. And loud talk and dishes being thrown at each other. And I grew up in this

and I was affected by it emotionally. My dad used to send me down to the bootlegger to pick up a pint of whiskey and bring it back and I I would leave and I'd be gone for an hour or two. I didn't want to bring that booth back home because I knew what was going to happen when I got back. And sure enough, it did. Only worse because he'd get me a weapon for being gone too long.

And that's the way that was. And my dad from time to time would tell us kids that he was going to take my mother out and kill her. And they they'd be gone all weekend and I'd be home and I'd be wondering if he's going to do that this time. And, and I grew up and I began to get emotionally involved in this stuff and emotionally deformed, if you will. When my dad's ranking got to be so bad, my mother finally had to have him committed to the Eastern State Hospital, Bonita, the local nut house over there.

And he was to say they actually got well to think about that.

My dad was there and we didn't have any alcoholic wards in those days at all, but they put him in a criminally insane border. And that's what they did with Alcoholics in those days. 194950 and 51. And he was there for three years and seven months and 13 days. And that's what they did with Alcoholics in those days. Now my most formidable years,

891011 years old and I began to get a lot of ideas, emotions and attitudes which would become the guiding force of my life.

Because of these experiences, my brother and I used to hitchhike up there from time to time and take him a couple of dollars and a carton of cigarettes.

And I was to go into the criminally insane ward, and I saw things in there that you're not supposed to see really bad things. Dan knows what I'm talking about bad things. And I got a lot of ideas, emotions and attitudes along the way. On my way home, my brother and I'd be hitchhiking home

and an idea came to me one day. I said, if God, you know, you got to blame it on somebody right when you're 7 or 8 years old. I said, if God is going to do this to me and us and to hell with him, I'll not be asking God for anything anymore forever. I'm through with him. And another thought came to me one day was this. If it hurts like this to love people, I'm going to quit loving people too. It hurts too bad. So I begin to push people out of my life

and another thought came to me was this,

if anything good is going to happen in my life, it's going to happen because I alone without any help from anybody made it that way. So I didn't need God, nothing or nobody. And those became the guiding forces of my life. Now, the way those things manifested in in my life, by the way, those are not very good coping skills, if you will. They get you in trouble, they get you arrested, they get you put in jail, they get you put in prison, they get you divorced.

And of course I didn't know that,

but that's the way I lived. I was, I was threatened. If you threatened me, I lashed out at you. And that's the way I live my life.

And the way these things manifested primarily was that I want what I want when I want it. Because you don't have a God in your life. You got to live by what? By your instincts. And I want to satisfy my basic instincts for power, money, sex, and those things. And I live my life. And those were the only reasons for my life was trying to satisfy those basic instincts with life.

So and I wanted what I wanted when I wanted it. And from time to time I wouldn't get what I wanted when I wanted it. Quite often, as a matter of fact. And I would be a little restless and irritable and discontented and generally disappointed because I didn't get what I wanted. And from time to time after that, from time to time, I would get what I wanted and was just what I thought it was going to be.

The only problem with that is that that they only last a little while

and you know what, Then I would become disappointed in what I had arrived at and achieved and I would be a little restless and irritable and discontented, contented. And I'd be generally angry because is this, is this all there is? You know, if you arrive at certain goals and they say, is this all there is? So you end up frustrated again. When as time went by, I began to, my uncle was a bootlegger and he used to hire me over there when I was 11 years old, 10 and 11 years old to pitch pints

boy Moat Knight. And I started drinking a little of that white lightning and boy, I liked it. It changed the way that I thought and the way that I felt right away. And I like that I really did made me feel good. And as time went by, I began to get in a little trouble and I drank a little more and drank a little more and had a mammoth car wreck when I was 17 years old, damn near kill myself and run off from the Highway Patrol. And they arrested me. And

always, long story, but I was never supposed to walk, walk again. But

fortunately I got over that and got into some more trouble. And George and I went into service about then when I got out of that. And I met my friend George Gibbs here, who was to become a part of my life. And years later, and we were in the Army together and we we drank a lot. If you fought the Army like we did, you'd be speaking Spanish today.

We whipped up on this Mexican golden Juarez pretty good.

I got out of I got out of the army and I decided I was going to get married and who I will start dating this guy. And she had two kids and she decided we going to get married after a while and after we started, after we got married and before then we were drinking a lot together. We got married and she decided to be a good idea that we didn't drink and she decided that and I kind of thought that was a good idea

and so I quit drink. I didn't drink any for there for a year or so. But after a while I, I, you know, I kind of got a little restless and irritable, discontented and generally

mad about my marriage and stuff and disappointed. And I wanted to make some more money because you see, I don't have God in my life. So I have to satisfy these instincts. And I remember these two guys that I used to run with at work and we'd go down by the bar after work and have a with three of us would split a pint and we would talk about business and ways to make money and chattering in millions and, you know, talking in thousands. We didn't have a damn money, but we talked a lot about it. And I like that, you know,

figured out trying to figure out a way. And I'd come home and my wife would be very upset, be mad for me being out at 6:30 or 7:00 in the evening. And then I'd, of course, I couldn't quit doing it. So the next day I do it again and I get home at 738 o'clock and she become mad. And she began. I come home some night, she'd have my stuff all laying out in the damn yard. You all know what I mean by stuff, don't you?

Dirty T-shirts, dirty shorts. They never throw out anything that's clean. I don't know why they don't.

And she'd do that and then some time to time she'd file divorce on me and make off with the money and put a restraining order on me. And she did that four times by the way and make me mad every time. And finally the last time I was sitting at the bar one night and I've been gone about 3 months and I got to thinking. Now you all know, either drink or think, but don't get the two of them mixed up.

But I was drinking and I got to thinking. Well, Rose hadn't seen me in about 3 months and I bet she's lonely.

I mean, wouldn't you be if you hadn't seen me about three months?

So I went over to the house and I knocked on the door and she peeked out. Well, what what I did, I just broke in

and got into my house and there said an old boy and my recliner. Big old boy

and he's watching my TV with my wife and my and my house and I'm making payments on all that and what are you going to do? Well, I did. I jumped on that old boy. He liked to beat me to death in my own living room floor,

put me outside and told me not to ever come back.

Oh, it made me mad. After all I'd done to, I mean, after all I'd done for her, and she treat me like that.

When I start thinking real good right here, I'll start really thinking good. And I said to myself, Joe, you going to drink, right? Yeah. Well, now you need to find a woman that does drink because these women that don't drink are mean and ugly. They throw your stuff out in the yard and divorce you.

So I started looking around the bars high and low for me. Someone a woman that drinks and I was sitting in the bar with the Zebra lounge. Beautiful place

and I was sitting at the bar kind of like, you know, my head over

Phyllis walks in and I've been watching Phyllis for a long time and around the bar she get there early and after work and stay there till late. And we'd all go out to the club and I didn't really know Phyllis. But I remember this particular night we the bartender said pillows, what are you drinking? And she said I'll have some of what he's drinking. She was attracted to that. Can you imagine that?

Now, what happened was that I come out of that divorce and it was nasty and it hurt. It was terrible, resentful. And I had a list of things this long that my next one was not going to be able, not going to do to me. And I didn't know it at the time, but Phyllis had a list of things that was this long and she wouldn't go let me do to her because she'd come out of a nasty divorce, too. And we get in there, our relationship, so to speak,

and we're trying to enforce our list on each other. No way to deal with those emotions. No way.

And it has had to be bad. But for some reason or other, I don't know why, but we got married. I know when we were first introduced, Phyllis looked at me, said, well, Joe, you look like my third husband. I said, my God, how many of you had? And she said two.

I like that, you know.

Well, we had nothing, nothing but trouble.

And we couldn't drink together. We couldn't go anyplace together. We couldn't stay at home together. We couldn't go any do nothing together because of our list and our emotions that we had. So we kind of made a deal. We made a pact, so to speak, unwritten, unspoken. But Phillips would go that way drinking and I would go that way drinking, and we wouldn't bother each other. And that was our deal.

Well, I had a little mobile home up on the Grand Lake, I mean Keystone,

and had a little mope. That said, I didn't think she knew about

when one night in the middle of the night there's a knock on the door and I peeked out. What it was she she just broke ends what she did?

He embarrassed me in front of my girlfriend.

Her daughter was with us and really, I mean, I was not having a good time.

The next morning I got up all my stuff laid out in the yard like it's supposed to be.

She stole my car, had to call my boss to come out there and get me 25 miles out there and bring me to work. Terrible time. And so then I said, well, the heck with her after all I've done to her, after all I've done for her and her treat me like this.

And I said I'm going to drink as often as I want to drink, as long as I want to drink when I want to drink day or night. And I don't give a damn who knows it. And that's exactly what I did. And I drank a bunch. And I used to buy whiskey by Canadian Club by the case and I drank it, a lot of it.

Well, that mobile home that I had out there got full of mice, rats at what? They were big ones, not that long.

What do they did? And I'd be laying there at nights and look up and one jump right out of the ceiling, right onto the bed. And I just kicked the far out of him and he'd go. And then that person, another jumped down and this is true. And I and I would go to to the feed store and I bought them big old rat traps about that long and feed and poison to kill those right. I never could get rid of them.

I sold that place quick. I'd bought it for $10,000 and sold it for five just to get rid of it. I couldn't stand it out there. Oh, by the way, when you see drunks and I don't see them much anymore like this, but if they tell you they're seeing things, they're seeing things. Believe me, they are.

You may not see them, but they're seeing them and they're scary.

So I moved back to Tulsa and to a nice little one bedroom apartment and

got all my stuff squared away and I began to drink and drink and drink and drink. And a typical, typical day of my drinking was like on Friday I would be after work, I would start drinking and then drink most of the night till early in the morning. And then Saturday morning I'd wake up, come to and I'd be laying there on the couch and I had a nice bedroom back there. But you know what? I'd never go back there

other than to walk through into the bathroom. Didn't have any sheets on it, there's no the lamps, didn't have any bulbs in it. I was just too busy.

That's too busy to get that stuff. And the truth of the matter is I sleeping on the couch where the TV and the radio was and the lamp with a light bulb because it was noise there. I was in bad company when I was by myself, by the way. And so I drank. And the Saturday morning I wake up and I'd have me three or four drinks, two or three cigarettes, and I'd go back to sleep in the evening. After lunch, I'd have two or three cigarettes and four or five drinks and I'd go. That's passing out, by the way. But I went back to sleep myself

and late that evening I get up. This Saturday, particular Saturday evening, had me three or four drinks and four or five cigarettes. And by now I'm popping those white crosses like they're popcorn. And I took off drinking, going to my places that I drank, and it seemed like I couldn't stay anywhere very long

and I was busy. And I ended up with a place called the Misty Dawn over in West Tulsa. Beautiful place. I almost smell it now.

Now the Misty Dawn was a place where these there were some guys that I grew up with and we had some troubles many years ago and they were out to get me. They owned that bar and I knew they owned that bar. A couple of weeks prior to this particular night, I was over there and some of my friends had to get their guns out and pull it on these people to Get Me Out of there for these guys hurt me this night. I'm back over there now. I don't know what kind of insanity that is, but that's some kind of insanity.

And I've been drinking hard that day. Really hard

and I was sitting on the bar still about midnight and I had a real sick feeling in my stomach. It was really sick. It wasn't a throwing up sick, it was just a sick, sick feeling. Felt like the whole inside was just going to drop out of me. A sick feeling. And I didn't know what I didn't know what that wasn't. I found out later and I got off that bar stool and I went out and laid down in my car for a little while and then I drove back to my

place that I was staying. I got on the couch and I began to

relive my life as I had done 1000 times. When Bill says his mind raced uncontrollably, I know what that means because that's why my mind did. And I lay down there and I would relive my life, relive all those incidences that had happened to me. People would hurt me and and I would feel the pain again and then I'd have to have some more drinks and I relive this. I relived it over and over 1000 times. I have relived those experiences. And finally about

Sunday morning,

I did two things that Sunday morning that I hadn't done and many, many, many, many, many years. Things I didn't do up till then. And one of them was that I wanted to get my life straightened out. I always wanted to get my life straightened out. I wanted to get back with Phyllis and repair the damage that we've done in our marriage and to GAIL. I really wanted to do that. And I didn't know how not to do that. I didn't know how I was going to do it. And I did something that I hadn't done. I got on the side of that couch and I said, God, if you'll help me

to find a way to stay sober,

I'll do what I can from this day forward for you. I made a deal, and I'm not sure you can make a deal like that, really, but I did. And after a couple hours, it began to look like that God wasn't going to help me.

And I remember my friend George, who had been in AA, he told me three or four years prior to this. And I called George. I said, George, are you still a member of that A and a? See, I didn't know what it was. And he said, yes, he was. And I said, would you help me?

See, I ask God for help, and I asked another human being for help. Two things that I don't do. And George came over to my house and he basically stayed with me for the next three days, wiping the sweat off of my brow and this slobber off my lips and whatever, just taking care of me, talking to me and being with me.

And I'll never forget that as long as I live. You see, that's the best of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't even know then that that was the best. It is the best.

I wish I could find me a drunk to work with like that. I need a drunk like that today. I surely do

so he had George stayed with me and then he took me my very first aid meeting November 3rd 1973 and I haven't had a drink since that Sunday morning, thank God.

Now this is something happened very, very important happened to me in my very first meeting.

I sat down. I looked around the rooms at you folks

thought came to me. Now what's a nice guy like me doing in a place like this with people like you?

Man, I don't even drink with people like this and here I am trying to stay sober.

Something very important to happen

Sunday morning. I was as humble and hopeless and powerless as I had ever been in my life.

Asking for help. I get my help. Come to AA. On Tuesday night, that old ego of mine began to come back. Just three days not drinking.

And I said I don't need this. I made a mistake.

Thank God I got over that because I kept remembering CC that morning, that Sunday morning on that floor, asking God for help. And that experience has helped me many, many, many times over these years. I've been asked to do a lot of things in Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't want to do hardly any of them. But I kept remembering that Sunday morning. God, if you'll help me find a way to stay sober, I'll do what I can from this day forward.

And I think that The Secret Word and Alcoholics Anonymous is yes,

yes.

You know, I was a come into Alcoholics Anonymous. I was hopeless, helpless, worthless drunk. And I felt terrible.

And after a while they asked me to be an alternate GSR.

A year later I was a GSR.

I was an SOB when I got here and a year later I said yes, R

man, I'm doing great.

But I started going to meetings, going to meetings and I'll never forget the but George been with me. And on Wednesday night I said, where is the meeting? See, I'm going to go to meeting. He told me where it was and I lived about a mile and a half from there and I said I'll make it. He said I've got to work. I've been, you know, he had. So I started for the meeting. Milan. I've been all over Tulsa all my life and couldn't get the 29th and Peoria from 51st and Lewis

had stopped him calling three times asking where I was going.

I didn't think was anything wrong with that.

After I got sober, while I looked back and I said, man, I had some brain damage

I did from drinking. So I made it to the meeting and I remember I got that night. I felt so good to be there. I was dreading the meeting to be over because I had to go home and be with me and I didn't like that. Sometimes I get out of meetings and go to the bar. That was one place I knew was comfortable. It was better than that couch I'd been laying on. And that was some of the things I did early in my sobriety. And after a while, you know, my little eagle gets back up and George says to me,

Joe, you're having a real trouble with this guy out there, aren't you? And I said I'm having a hard time, very hard time.

And he said, well, why don't you do

what this book suggests?

He said, won't you just lay aside all that stuff that you think you knew and you brought in here? And he said, why don't you do what he did? He said, go home tonight and take you out a pencil and piece of paper and write down what you would like God to be beginning that you can't make God. But what would, if you could, what would you want it to be? And I went home and I wrote down some things that I wanted God to be and I showed them to George. And he said, that's good. You can start right there.

See, I didn't know you could do that in my area.

You go to hell for doing that, you see. But he gave me permission and I needed that permission to do that.

And that kind of got me over that idea. And so I began to play and begin to build up on that idea. And by this time, now I went to a little conference. Phyllis and I've been kind of seeing each other. And we went to Shreveport in November. I got over the third this just before Thanksgiving and George and bunch of us took us down to Shreveport

and there was a lady talking that her name was Miriam Mary and M, and she talked that night. And I looked over at Phyllis and Phyllis was crying,

I mean real tears. And I've been trying to make Phyllis cry for a long time and she was crying. She was identifying with that, ladies, what she was doing.

And I knew Phyllis was. Now. If I was, I knew damn well she was.

And later on she was to get sober. But she identified with that Lady and I knew that something was here. Didn't know what it was, but I knew something was here if it would make her identify with that Lady. A little bit later, I went to a compass down in Apache, OK, and I met a lady there and another guy, Franklin Williams was to become my sponsor. George has always been my spiritual sponsor. Even today, we're still that close, but

frankly, become a sponsor later on

and a metal lady there. Her name was Alabama Caruthers, and I loved Alabama, man, everybody loves Alabama. She was just full of life and she couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next. She was excited about AA and excited about life and she was just just a wonderful lady. I liked her and I couldn't imagine what she'd been like at 25,

that she was 60, somebody then, but she was full of it. Anyhow, she's had a couple of things that night that really struck me. She said she had a soul sickness and boy could identify with that. That's what I was feeling when I was sitting on that bar. It was a soul sickness, sick way down within my soul. And I understood that, what she meant by that. And she said another thing. She said I have Peace of Mind tonight

and I said my God I was. It's all I've ever wanted was Peace of Mind.

Ever since I was a young child and all that crap that I went through, I've never had any Peace of Mind. And that's all I've ever wanted was Peace of Mind. And after the meeting that night, we were sitting at a hotel. George was laying over in her lap, asleep about 3:00 in the morning. And I said, Alabama, you said you had a soul sickness. She said yes. And she explained that to me, how that was, how that worked. And I could identify with that. I began to open up to Alabama

and I said you said another thing tonight, she said. You had Peace of Mind.

How did you get Peace of Mind? And she said, Joe, tell me what's going on in your mind. Tell me what you're thinking at night. And I began to talk to her about some of the things that had happened in my marriages and my life and the

disappointment that I had and the anger that I had and stuff. And she said, Joe, you're just full of resentments.

And I said, well, what is a resentment? And she said a resentment of old angers and old hurts that are felt and re felt over and over and over again. And all that anger you intend to use on those other people, you, you putting it, blaming it, putting it on yourself, making yourself sick and blaming it on them. Now I like never got that understanding. She had to explain that to me many, many times.

And I finally understood what she was saying.

She said, I said, is there any solution for that? What can I do? Because that's why I drink, to shut off my mind. And I said, is there any solution for that? She said, yes, Sir, this happens to be now you have to know Alabama. But she had a purse that was about that big, about that tall big one. And she began to fumble around inside that purse trying to find something. You know how they are.

Well, she finally come out with at least one of these big books

like to never have found it.

And she come out of that big book and she said, Joe, on page 552 of this book is a story of a lady who had had lots of resentments and she found a particular prayer. She said if you'll do what she did, it'll probably help you. It helped her. She said it would probably help me. So she had me to turn over here to page 552 and I'll read it in the

in interest of brevity. And here's the prayer he said ineffective. You have a resentment you want to be free of. If you will pray for the person, the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free even when you don't really want it for them. And your prayers are only words and you don't mean it. Go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you find you come to meet it and want it for them. And you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness,

resentment and hatred, you now feel compassion to understanding and love.

I went home after the meeting, got in bed that night. My old mind started racing, reliving that stuff again. And I said, I think I'll pray for those people. So I begin to pray for them. And as I begin to pray, my lists got longer, had more and more people on that list. The next morning I get up and I started praying for those people. During the day, as I could remember, I would pray for those people. Sometimes I'd be driving down the street

in my car, praying out loud and I know people who saw me praying. They wondered what I was doing or what I guess,

but I continued to pray. I began to continue to pray. And I don't know it was 2 weeks, 3 weeks or 10 days or what it was. But I do know this. And one morning, one of those beautiful spring mornings, I got stuck in the in the traffic like at 31st and Lewis there in toss a beautiful place just the length of this traffic light. And I looked over at that beautiful house and the tulips were all in full broom red and yellow. The grass was green and the birds were singing.

Those squirrels were jumping around a beautiful spring morning, and I thought to myself,

my God, it's beautiful this morning. It is so pretty and the colors are so vivid. And I thought, well, how long has it been since I'd seen those things? Do you know what I could not remember? I could not remember. I don't know if I'd ever seen those things up until that moment when this book talks about being cut off in the sunlight of the Spirit. I know what that means. I think up until then I just looked and seen things in black and white. There was no color,

and that's the morning that I knew that this program would work for me.

I knew that I knew that I knew because I had took some action and I had got some

relief. It's a miracle really, what happened. God worked in my life that morning again,

and from that day to this, my life hasn't been the same.

I got ready to do the third step prayer. I was ready to take these steps

for the first time officially, and I set about to do that

and I got ready to do the third step prayer. And there used to be some guys that come over to my house to visit from a little church not too far away and we'll talk to me about being reborn,

talk to me about being saved is what they want to talk to me about. And I'd run them off. I said, man, do you guys have any idea this Monday Night Football? Where you going over? Get out of here. I'm drinking and having a good time. That's what I did with folks like that. But this particular Sunday morning, I'm ready. And I went over to that church

on Sunday morning and sure enough, they're asking people to do the third step prayer. That's all they're really asking us to do. And I went over that Sunday morning, got there about two or three minutes before 11. Well, I want to get there too early. I might hear something would help me, you see.

And I got there about two or three minutes before 11 and they asked people to come down there and do the third step prayer. And I went down there as honestly and as sincerely as I know how to do anything. And I said to

to God, as I got off myself to you to build with me and to do with me as you will relieve me of the bondage of self,