The 19th Great Plains Roundup in Omaha, NE

Good morning, everyone. I'm a very happy member of a worldwide fellowship called Al Anon, and my name is Tina. Hi, Tina. And it is a joy to come back to this wonderful state of Nebraska, particularly home for me 2 different times here in this lovely city called Omaha. When I, got the news from my husband the first time that we were moving here, he said we're being transferred to Omaha.

And I said, who? It wasn't even a where. It was a who. And the second time that we were transferred, actually, my husband was transferred and I got to come along. I wasn't getting my way.

And I have discovered in this lovely program of ours that, well, if I didn't get my way yesterday, it's a resentment, and if I'm not gonna get my way tomorrow, it's a fear. And if I'm not getting my way right now, it's an anger, and I was angry. And and we moved back here, and, it was in October. And I do not do well in cold weather. It's not one of my favorite.

Well, anything below 70 is not my favorite temperature, so I have many layers on this morning, and I it's wonderful. It's 50 degrees here in Omaha in November, which is just phenomenal. Thank you, Lord, for that. We moved back. It was in October.

They canceled Halloween because the snow was so deep. Remember that? First, the ice, and then it just snowed and snowed. And I did I don't look good and white. And I'm it just snowed and would not stop.

And my beloved had work to do and I I didn't have a job and we rented an apartment so I didn't have a house to redo which was mainly my work, in those years when we were married. I find the worst house in the best neighborhood and fix it up. And by the time he got transferred, we'd sell the house. And so I had this apartment and we also had this little dog freckles. God love our little Cocker Spaniel Freckles.

And, of course, you know, they eat and drink, which means they have to do other things. So I got to trudge the road of happy destiny with the dog often because she was old. And, the snow just kept coming and coming, which only made me more and more angry because I wasn't even getting my way even more and more and more. And we had this lovely little apartment and you had to walk down these stairs and there was a little creek that ran alongside this apartment complex. And they had down below and below these stairs were I'll get to my story.

Just hang on. There was this, tennis court, and the dog was just this happy dog. I mean, she was just snoring. You know? It's like she didn't care.

She had a coat on for god's sake. And so I'm trudging with this dog, and I I really did look like the Michelin tire girl. I had these snow boots from Kmart and a parka and you couldn't see anything but about this much. And I'm crying and I'm saying, my god. I wanna live in bed.

I don't wanna live in all. Why am I here? And I noticed a piece of trash. It was right on the edge of the tennis court, Just a little piece of trash, and my brain says, pick it up. And I said, screw it.

I don't care if there's trash on the ground. Let the snow take care of it. Snowing and snowing. And a couple hours later, the dog looks up like, I gotta go out again. So I get the dog and we trunch down the stairs and I go by the creek and go by the tennis court and the trash is still there.

And I said, Still trashy Omaha. You could stay there as far as I'm getting more and more angry. And I go in and I have lunch and I'm just so I'm not having a pity party all by myself. All I needed was hats and balloons and eat lunch. And, of course, 2 hours later, the dog has to go again and we trudge down.

And I'm trudging by the tennis court and trash is still there. And the same part of my brain says pick it up. And I said, I don't like to pick it up. I said, pick it up. I said, I want to pick it up.

Just pick it up. Pick it up. So I pick it up. Now there was no way humanly in god's weather at the time because the snow was just coming down for that still to be exposed although the wind does not stop here. It was wet so, I mean, it would have packed on top of this.

I don't understand it, but I picked up that piece of trash as if to say, well, show you, God. You're gonna make me miserable here. And it was torn piece, but it was a card that had the serenity prayer on it. And, since that time, the serenity prayer has meant even more to me. Now I have not found it necessary on a continuous basis to, manage someone else attempt to manage someone else's life at the expense of my own life since January 6 of 1982.

And for that, I know you and I are both very grateful. And I will tell you that I was most of you know my story, so I may kind of wander off from time to time, but who cares? It's just us chickens. I was, and I really wanna stop one minute and thank you for your beautiful, beautiful talk last night, Donna. It was just wonderful.

I too am a from a coal mining family. I'm a coal miner's daughter from Southern Illinois, and, that high sulfuric coal and many, many generations before me, Good blue collar family. Italian descent on my father's side, and my mom and dad married when they were pretty young and got divorced when I was extremely young. I was about 6 or 7. I can't remember which.

I'm not good enough with math to care. And yet with that, one of the neat things is we lived in a small enough community. Within 5 miles. My mom moved to her hometown. My father lived 5 miles from that.

Both my parents are only children, but the next generation before that were many aunts and uncles, and they loved us, my sister and I. There I have one sibling, So there was always that feeling of security even though there was separation, and for that, I'm extremely, extremely grateful. I had much more influence on my mother's side of the family because I did not spend much time with my father's side of the family. And I usually tell this and I will again that there was my great grandmother who was a very devout spiritual woman. There was my grandmother who was a very angry woman but had a sense of adventure that everyone would love.

And then there was my mother who, god love her heart, just lived in this small little box called fear and still does live there. And those 3 women primarily influenced my life, and they influenced me in wonderful diverse ways. My great grandmother, being the Christian woman that she was, taught me and gave me a wonderful gift. We spent because of the divorce and everything, we spent many, many weekends with my grandmother on my mother's side or my great grandmother. And with that, my grandmother, we she'd wake up on Sunday morning.

She'd make us fussy cakes. I don't know if you know what those are, but we have fussy cakes in the morning. And then we would, she'd say, well, which church you wanna go to today? And she taught me that God did not mean building. God meant here.

God meant giving rather than getting. That that theme of this conference is wonderful. And she got mad at a few of them when in different churches when they bicker about things, so she just would go to different ones. So it was great because I got a a very diverse experience as far as religion. Then there was my grandmother who was angry ever since her father burned to death.

He loaned out some kerosene to a man. He was of Indian descent, and he was known as the Indian in town who had problems with fire water. And, they paid him back in gasoline and mishandled it, exploded, and he burned to death. My grandma tried to put him out, and he lived for, I think, about a week and then finally died and she never got over that. And she basically went through life angry and and she hated God and she lived with that woman who said that God was everything and so, boy, there was a, diversity there.

And then there was my mom who, god love her, she was product of an alcoholic, drug addict, gambling father who kidnapped her, and they had their own little story and she's not here to tell it so I'm not gonna linger. And each one of those women brought into my life wonderful thing. I'll give you an example, that is still one of my favorites. My great grandmother taught me about sex. It's a beautiful thing God has created intended for pleasure, but you have to wait for the right man and you have to be properly married and then God will reveal the truth to you.

My mother well, I'll start with my great grand great grandmother and then my grandmother. My grandmother told me that it was the greatest thing in the whole wide world that if you found a man that could really please you, your rockets would go off in your head and your eyes would blow back in your head and, god, you've never find anything better than that. And she would also teach me things that we needed to know what to do and, god, my mother would have just died if she would have heard any of those conversations. And my mother, bless her heart, always said that sex was filthy and dirty. Save it for the one you love.

I liked my grandmother's idea the best. And so with that, I like I said, my sister and I grew up and we did have we had a lot of lot of different things going on. My grandmother needed a lot of center of attention and she demanded it. Anger will do that to a person. You know, if you have a tube of toothpaste, you squeeze it, toothpaste comes out.

You have an angry person, you squeeze them, anger comes out. You know? Love's inside, love will come out. It's just kind of the way it goes. Seems like a law of nature.

My mother remarried. She married a wonderful, exciting, adventurous alcoholic, so different from my father, and, there's a lot of that story that I'm just gonna leave alone. I can tell you there were craziness, insanity, violence, all those fun things, and that wasn't working out, but his mother had money and got all you know, the mother-in-law to be looked at my mom and says, I'm so glad you're here, which means that if you have an alcoholic son, is you're gonna get him for a while rather than me. And so that lasted for a while, but, boy, I tell you, it was nuts. And as nuts as he was, my mother was more nuts.

I mean, she was just she couldn't control him so she decided to work on my sister and I. And we went through things like what we call the ballet of the flashing knives which meant that my mother would threaten us with flashing the knife around. I'm gonna kill myself if you kids don't behave and we were good kids. So I, you know, and she put it underneath her glass and the buttons would fly across the room and it was just very theatrical. I think it's one of the reasons I love theater still to this day because we we lived it in our house so so much.

But my mom also, she taught me many wonderful remember when I remember when we were, you know, middle teenage years, we were always fighting with one another and she said she couldn't stand anymore because she was gonna lose her mind and so she got us boxing gloves, which I still think was a wonderful idea. Kind of took the steam out of it, but we just punched the others like heck out of one another for a while. So I mean, my mom had a lot of wonderful things but she didn't have a lot of tools to bring to it. I mean, she came from an alcoholic family. She came from a mother who was very, very angry.

They got married when she was 16 and just just, you know, went after the world. And then she had this grand great grandmother, my great grandmother, her grandmother that just locked her to pieces. So there was this I call it the box. We lived in this box. Everybody had their own box inside the box but you weren't outside you couldn't get outside the big box.

And getting outside the big box was just not heard of. 1, my grandmother's brother, my uncle, got outside the box and he was still loved but he was outside of the box. So you never trusted anything that uncle Bob said because he didn't ever understand because he was out of the box. Well, I'll tell you what. My box was getting pretty small by this time because my sister had got married.

She's gone. The alcoholic is left for the umpteenth time but the final time and guess who's left in the box with her mother? And I'll just tell you the box was getting pretty slow so I went out and found a young innocent boy and convinced him that I had that he what he wanted and he should go to any lengths to get it. And we got married and, oh, gosh. I got outside the box.

And you think when you get outside the box that you're gonna be fine, But you really take the box with you because you don't have the principles of which this program has given me to get how to deal with the box. So now you've got their box and your box which is in their box but you're outside of the box and now you've got another box and you've added somebody else to the box. So now you've got all these boxes and you don't know what to do. And you're trying to teach him the principles for which you have which are not tools for living. I despise people in Al Anon that says I'm a survivor.

Hell, I don't wanna survive. I wanna live. You survivor. Hell, I don't wanna survive. I wanna live.

You know, there's more to this. Thank God that we've got a book that says from survival to recovery. And, you know, recovery is a wonderful thing. I'll I'll tell you a short little story on this one too. I want to I in the book, it talks about the first one hundred who had recovered, the recovered alcoholic.

And I have people in meetings that have a real problem with the recovered part of the re the the program. But they have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. We have that. It's a gift. It's a promise.

Do these 12 simple things. Practice these 12 simple things in your family. You're you're gonna be promised this. But even if they don't get it in the family, if you practice these 12 simple little things, you can recover from a hopeless state of mind and body. It was not too many years ago, I got a burn on my arm from a pot of boiling water, and it was real bad.

It was a bad situation with a family member who was going in the hospital. I wasn't paying close attention. I was making a meal for the family. I pulled it off and the steam wrapped around. You know if you get a bad enough burn, you don't know that it's a burn.

Well, I went to a meeting that night because it's pretty high tension stuff going on in the family and, God works. ER nurse is sitting next to me. She said, where'd you get that burn? I said, I got it tonight. She said, come on.

You're going with me. She took me to the emergency room and I had a third degree burn. Didn't know it. And, I mean, they had to scrape it and clean it and they said you're gonna have a you're gonna have a horrible scar and this is not gonna you're not gonna recover from this and, you know, the aloe vera and the poly whatever hoo propane or whatever. I don't know.

They put all this stuff on me and told me if you will apply this stuff daily, it will get better. Well, I can tell you that I did everything that they have. I do not have a scar. I am a recovering burn victim. So I have I have recovered from my burns.

So I am a recovered burn victim, but I'm not burn proof. And to me, that's what it means in the big book. That's what it's talking about. We have recovered from this craziness that we lived in, but we're not bulletproof from life. You talked about that beautifully last night that the we do continue to live.

So I married this young man and it's not going real well. So I'm thinking divorce and everything and I'll just tell you that whole sex thing that my mother had told me about, you know, well, on that one. And I did not understand my grandmother's theory at all with this young man, but, that was alright. And I guess my grandmother was right that it was just a sacred that was alright. And I guess my grandmother was right that it was just a sacred thing and all this stuff.

But then, one night, happened to go to a party. It's long gone with what I had with that person and I walked into this bar and there he stood all his glory. Rockets were going off in my head. I hadn't even touched you yet. I thought, oh my god, Dremel, you're right.

This is it. We were left with potential. It was just an incredible situation. There was no doubt in my mind that this was God's intervention. Later on, my first sponsor said that the horns on his head fit the holes in my head, which was a pretty good definition at the time, and we went off on an absolute romance that I can just tell you was nuts.

He was a raging alcoholic. He was in the last stages of his alcoholism. Now you would think growing up with it when I was a kid that some people on the normal side of the street and there are I want you to know there are normal people in this world. I go to church and this lovely down in Florida, I mean, we're nearly dead and newly wed, There is there are a lot of older people but there's a lot of younger ones too and there are normal people in this world. I'm just fascinated by them.

But you would have thought that that would have got in my mind. Okay. Try not to re repeat what that was, but it wasn't. It was what I believe is we recreate what we know. That's what I knew.

Why would no one recreate it? They were fun times. Quite frankly, I still thought the alcoholic was really quite a lot more fun than my mother. You know? Those alanoids.

You know, she's doing all that control issues, you know, you have to do this, you have to do that, all that kind of stuff. Well, it didn't matter to me. I saw him, he saw me, and, God, we just had to have one another. And we played the craziest, stupidest, most insane games you can ever imagine. We played red light, green light on the first night, which meant he's fully drunk.

I'm half stonkered. We're driving down Main Street in Kansas City and the red lights are the green lights. If you got a green one, you just kept on going. You got a red one, well, just keep on going too and you just kept counting them. This is not normal behavior.

This is not something you write home to your mother about. When I did tell my mom, I have found him. I had forgot how many of them I had told her I had found. She had been she reminded me, oh, yes. This one's probably just like the heroin addicted disc jockey that you told me about that you were sure you could help him also.

So when it just wasn't a real good introduction. But, anyway and there's more to the story, but I am speaking from the podium, and I will not repeat some of the things that my mother did say at that time. It's out of love, I'm sure. Well, there's there's craziness going on and it's it's just I did not notice that drinking was getting in the way but my beloved did. And he called me one day and said can we meet?

And, we both lived in Kansas City at the time and, God, I love that city to this day. I met him at our special rendezvous place. It's where all the gays met. We thought we'd be safe. Well, we just didn't want the world to know we were dating.

It was well, never mind. Anyway, and he he looked at me very seriously and said, Tina, I'm an alcoholic and I have to go to AA. I've got to find out some way to to help me with my drinking. It's destroying our relationship. Throat on my head.

I honest to God swear to you, I thought how is the auto club going to help him with this? I did not know what AA was. Unlike you, I did not have that spiritual divine intervention that said Alcoholics Anonymous. All I could think of was AAA. And I shook my head because I wanted to be so green and he says, and there's meetings that I'm gonna start going to and and he did.

And I learned to hate AA. We went from having romantic, fun, wonderful evenings to talking about the big book. When I would want to complain about my family, he'd say, oh, honey, you just got to let go and let God. I'll let go and let God you. Well, then I heard there were women at AA meetings.

Well, this is my turf here. So I found out there were open AA meetings and that I could go. And so a friend of his, dear Daryl, said I will pick you up and he had, you know, those little drunk cars. He had a drunk Vega and it was like Fred Flintstone. It had holes in the floorboards, you know, And the muffler was shot.

And so he pulled up next to my car and says because I can't hear him and I'm so and I'm thinking, I'm not getting in that car. I said, so I'll follow you. And so I followed him to a seedy place at Kansas City. It was downtown somewhere, and it was in a they held a meeting in a bar and, just never made any sense. I I'm wrong.

I've got I've got a That was the 2nd meeting that I went to. The first meeting that I went to was at the young matron's hall. That's right. And Daryl and his wife and Bill and I went to that meeting. God, how could I forgotten that?

It was like this. They had these chairs just like y'all were sitting in. They had this little stage and they had the curtains drawn and everything. They had the little podium, right, like this one is and everything. And I was sitting there shaking as hard as a leaf and I thought they were gonna pull the drinks and we were gonna see the alcoholics back here.

I didn't know if you were gonna judge them, you know, like, very alcoholic. The German judge gives you a 10. And what I heard was I heard love and reality unlike I'd ever heard in my life. And I wept and I shook and I cried, and I didn't know what had happened to me. And then the that that was on a Friday.

On a Sunday, Daryl took me to that seedy little meeting, and there was a little bitty man named me. He's in the big meeting in the sky now, Homer. Little tiny guy. Looked like a bookie. Probably was a bookie.

Homer had that ability of loving people into the fellowship. That first group was so wonderful. God, they just loved me so much. And every once in a while because I'm I'm a member of the AA fellowship. You know?

I didn't know that I could say that as a title but there was an open meeting and they would say, you know, speaker would introduce a topic and then they would start and raise your hand. Hi. I'm Reggie. I'm an alcoholic. And he would say his little deal.

And I'm sitting there thinking, oh my god. I don't have a title. I don't know what I am. I'm not an alcoholic. And somebody would say an Al Anon and I think, what's that?

I don't know what that is. And so after the meeting, you know, I'd shake my way through it because, you know, I didn't know that you were supposed I wouldn't pick it up on the hand raising thing. And Homer would, every once in a while, he looked he looked like he was sleeping, but he'd call on somebody and they would share. And they had such profound things. I remember remember Pete?

Pete h. Hi. My name's Pete h. My brother graduated from Penn State, and I graduated from the State Penn and we'd all and of course, you know, I'm just I I I what am I going to say? And every once in a while Homer would call on me and I'd say, hi I'm Tina.

And then I'd say something very loudly profound. At least at the time I thought it was. And every week, they would tell me about Al Anon. They give me a little piece of literature. One woman said if you want to go to a meeting, I'll I'll I know of a lady that goes to this Wednesday night meeting.

So I'll tell you the truth, I went to Al Anon for a title so that I could keep going to open AA meetings and introduce myself. Little did I know when I went to that first meeting that Al Anon would go they had a first step meeting, took me in the back room, and I came apart at the scenes. They talked about alcoholism. They made me understand for the first time about the concept of the disease. For the first time, I could look back at just a glance at what my childhood was really like, and it opened the door in that realizing that we recreate what we know to help me to start to know something different So that when we do learn something new that we can create that in our lives, which is called recovery versus recreating the insanity of the disease itself.

There was a young man last night here in the front row that said, we would have a home. And, of course, he was in a a. And since he's not here this morning, I don't think or even if he is, I'd like to open this up to him. I have a personal theory. Now this is not conference approved.

Take what you like and leave the rest on this one. I think those are people who probably can use Al Anon because there's not a one of you in AA that aren't affected by another alcoholic. Hell, I've been to your meetings. I beat Al Anon. And I don't mean that in a bad sense.

I really don't. But there are times it happens in Al Anon. It happens in AA. I I'm Virginia, and I have been in Al Anon for 30 years. Never needed the steps.

Still don't need it now. Oh, that's appealing. The sinless, blue haired, little woman sitting in the back peeing never wanted to have a good time in her life and never will again. That is not recovery. We have the joy of living, and it started for me in January.

And it falls on the church year on epiphany. And for me, it was my epiphany, and it has been for almost 20 years now. My husband worked for a company that bopped us around different places and I didn't know what God had intended for me, but I guarantee you this, don't shortchange yourself. Trust the process. I didn't have a sponsor.

I went on a hunt. He had one. I didn't like him. He was a confirmed bachelor. I want to get married.

He sat in the crown glory chair in that first meeting that we went to. We had all the little chairs that were uncomfortable, and then they had these soft chairs of which Aaron fed him 1. He was gone. I called him the sponsor monster because whatever he said, he did. And what other note that he said was no change for the 1st 2 years.

Well, I went into competition. You're not gonna win on this baby. Now I'm in recovery, which means that at that point, I'm one in the seat and I'm trying my best. But I'm still aggravated at how much AA is taking up in this life. Not about me.

You know, you work steps over a weekend for god's sake. Don't you think I'm well enough for me to be the center of attention of your life? So I noticed that he's working the steps, and he's just finished his 5th step. And he's basically walking on water and telling me how glorious this is. And so I thought, well, I've got to catch up.

So I went on this hunt to find a sponsor, and I asked this woman, will you be my sponsor? She said, I'd love to. I did not get her phone number. She never came back to the meetings. So I waited a couple of weeks.

I asked another woman. Excuse me. Would you be my sponsor? Done here. Didn't get her phone number.

She never came back to the meeting. This went on for 2 or 3 or 4 different people. And so I found 1. I wanted her. They said get somebody who has what you wanted.

I liked Peggy. She was married and happy. That's all I wanted. Over the meeting on Wednesday, I'm gonna ask her to be my sponsor. She had a heart attack.

How dare she? Didn't she know I needed her as a sponsor? She's not at the meeting. So I just went up to Maria. Oh, Marie, you've been married a week that I've been in.

Marie, would you be my sponsor? Well, sure. I'd love to. I said, will you listen to my good stuff? Well, sure.

Why not? What day would you like to be on? I said, how's Friday? Now it's Wednesday. I've not worked 1 to 4, but I am going to catch up.

Friday will be fine. So I went to Greenhouse, they put my filter in the whole inventory. We never came back. Never saw again. I didn't care.

Didn't matter. I would cut up. I would fix them. Do you have the cards? I'm ready to play.

But by this time, my beloved, we come up with the idea of let's go to a conference. What's a conference? Well, they're gonna have AA and Al Anon speakers and everything. There's gonna be a dance. I did not wanna go.

I mean, it was like brain surgery, cold enema, AA conference. That was the that was my perfect list. And I was a good dancer. And my golly, I wasn't gonna trust any of you for well, those those were my dances. So I said, sure, honey.

So we went to this conference and I heard a woman speak and she was my first Al Anon speaker that I ever heard, and I went up to her afterwards. She just touched something. You know how that happens? And I said, honey, would you be my sponsor? She said, well, I live in a different state.

Well, I'll tell you what. I learned she lived in a different state after that too. She says, you know, where are you in the steps? I said, well, I just finished step 5. Oh, I didn't know you were that far along in the steps.

So sure. That'll be fine. So we started corresponding after the conference and everything and she wrote to me, you don't know that from a her on the ground about these steps. We're starting at 1. And I thought, what in the name of God have I got myself into?

She got my address. She's gonna come get me if I don't do what she's asking. So I just mean, I just but there was a lot of that. I wanted what she had. She was telling from the podium that night, babe, I would have told a dead dog, and she didn't seem to be bothered from it.

She had a freedom about it that just seemed to kind of go and flow. And so, I'm living with a gal at the time. She is severely depressed badly. She her former husband that she finally divorced finally came and told her that he had to marry the woman that he didn't have an affair with for 10 years because, well, she had had a kid 10 years ago, but she's just giving birth to twins and he thought maybe he should go help her. We're a really very very sound home that I was living in.

And, the other girl was married. She was dating a ganglion addict at the time, which was adding to the spice of our life in that home also. And by this time, Bill and I are toying with the idea of marriage. But do you know that big m word? It's right up there with the big c word which most people think of in normal world as cancer, but ours is commitment.

Oh, this word. What do you do with that? It's a cauldron pop commitment and alcoholism. It's not a blow to most of you, you'd rather drink. And I'm I'm I'm okay.

Fine. Fine. I'll work these steps and everything and and this woman really was very demanding and thank God she was. She said, honey, you cannot successfully want a seed in Al Anon, not work these principles, and not take all the boxes that you've been collecting for all these years into this marriage. Do you want a chance for it to work or not?

And I did because I had a light of recovery. There was the flame had been lit. My pilot light right there, you know, right behind your navel had been struck so I listened to her and she helped me to work through steps 1 through 5 and then we worked on step 6. And by that time, the gambling act and the other roommate had left. And my roommate who was severely depressed was having a terrible time.

And, of course, even though you've worked through the steps, the husband to be has got some excess boxes that he's bringing into the relationship as well. And, it's a week before our wedding and we have made a commitment, And it's the morning of the week before marriage and my beloved calls up and says I can't do this. I said you can't do what? He says I can't get married. Now he had been transferred at the time.

I said, I have shipped you my furniture. Isn't that the right thing to say? He says, well, I can't help that. I can't do this. I said well, what are we gonna do about this?

He said I don't know And I hung up the phone and I told my roommate. She says, oh, team, everything's gonna work out. I said, don't tell me what's gonna work out in my life. Look at your own life. Of course, I felt like I mean, hell.

I just was much worse can get. So I got in the car and I said to her, Donna, I'm sorry. She says, trust me. Your life's gonna work out just fine. So I got in the car and I drove down the road and I said, go back.

Now the little boy that told me to pick up the the the snow thing was not the little voice that was speaking the loudest that day. The loudest voice because I didn't have enough recovery was still the old voices that came from the old boxes. Go back. You owe her this. But to her, I was sorry.

Because in your family, it was I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. So that you would give me that solution, then I would be forgiven and the whole world would be fine because you were God and I was nothing.

But there was a still little small voice that said, you have told her you were wrong. Go to work. I have a plaque in my house that says truth speaks quietly, and I listened to that quiet little voice. And I went to work, and I got a present from a girlfriend for our wedding, and I went where God and I meet a lot, I went to the bathroom, and I just sat out on the stool and I said, what am I gonna do? What am I supposed to do?

I said, go to work. So I did and I kept getting phone calls. My roommate had not showed up. I looked at my boss. I said, I think she's taken her life.

Later on that evening, I went home and sure enough, she had. And Donna had found her peace. When the policeman came, I had, of course, lost it. I mean, that was a dear friend of mine that I'd lived with for a number of years. And God sent me a gift to the policeman because I said, I should have gone back.

And he said, honey, she'd made up her mind. She'd have taken you with her. And I believe that to be true. And that little voice that I learned to live with, at that point when I found her that day, was the power that is greater than me, that has given to me what no other human power has ever given me, and no other human power has ever taken away. And for that I am eternally grateful.

It's a week later, my sponsor said I told my boss what was going on. I said I may have to come back and become a teller when we had a panel, and he says, don't worry, baby. You always have a job. And I showed up at the wedding. I didn't know, didn't tell any of my family whether what was going on, and I didn't know if he was going to.

He showed up as if nothing had happened. Not good to wanna kill him on your wedding day. Hi, honey. Ready to get married? Now I'm not listening to him.

I am so angry. Do you know what hell I have been through this past week? And it was like, I hear you. Aren't you happy? So I don't know what the minister asked me.

I promise God only knows what, but we went through it and unbeknownst to me, he had these roses. He had 3 roses. He had he gave it to me. He says, now give this to my mom, and I'm gonna give one to your mom. And I thought, what the hell has he been doing?

Reading Bride's Magazine while I'm dying for this past week? I'm not Welcome to the family, Betty. He takes one over and gives one to my mother, kisses her on the cheek. Oh, Bonnie, I'm so glad to marry you. And then he takes the third one, gives it to his daughter.

And in the silence of the church, think of a small word to 4 letter word. Starts with f, ends with k. You know the word. I'm gonna say fire truck Instead, big thing, the ends with k. It's just a little longer.

In the quietness of the church, my grandmother, the angry woman, who's still angry, adventures him but still angry says, where's my fire truck in those? Hey, mister Goodwin with my grandma. She's been a great member. And my mother said, mom, be quiet, mister. I don't care.

That little phone's over. You got a here's my I don't want you a buttress of roses. I'll call you buttress of roses. And I looked at Bill and said, welcome to the family. Gosh.

God love her. I have many grandma stories, but we're we're shortening up on time here. So I will just tell you that, I was a little, I I was I was bent is it was. You can't go through a suicide of a dear friend like that and not knowing if you're gonna get married or not get married, and thank God for the fellowship and and thank God for working the steps in a strong sponsor who said, honey, he's scared. He's had a failed marriage before.

He doesn't want to hurt you. That's what it is. He doesn't want to hurt you with the past. He wants to start anew, and that was what was going on. What I didn't know was the woman that I'd asked to sponsor me lived in a little town in, Arkansas, and my husband got transferred to that very town.

So I got to go along with the ride and have a home group and a sponsor that was waiting for me at a time that was really tragic, and it started my adventure of real recovery. It got into service work. It got into really working the steps and really understanding. And you know what I've come to conclude? We think we well, maybe you don't, but I've heard a lot of people that I sponsor in particular, and I did at least.

I thought I'd had this. I thought I was a character defect. I thought it would be I have these multitudes of thousands of things that were just bad wrong with me. And I really only have 1. And it manifests itself in the most unbelievable ways.

I mean, a multitude of different ways. And it comes out as fear and anger and all those, you know, just things that we that we do find in inventory. But the one thing is this, reliance on self versus reliance on God. That obedience to the unenforceable. It's a choice.

When we were living here, I, was telling my brother Mike a story this morning. I went to a Bible study here in town and, there were 300 women of us and we're all, like, you know, and the, lady who was coming in to be the lecturer in that morning said, excuse me, ladies. She had a huge box and she says I have a present, would you really like it? And total silence, this is a miracle, 300 women. She stood there.