Mary Pearl T. from North Little Rock, AR speaking the Alaskan Inside Passage Cruise

Alright. Traditions as a guide to healthy relationships. I'm gonna give you just a very, very brief introduction as to how and why all this came about. In our group one night, there were about a dozen couples, another dozen couples. There were about a dozen of us that asked, an attorney, would she give us a group rate on a divorce?

And that were and that wasn't necessarily joking. And, because we were all people who had been in the program an amount of time with not newcomers, and, we were all supposedly married to sober alcoholics. Now somehow in my mind and then now the rest of us, we had the idea that if they got sober and went to AA and we got halfway sane and went to Al Anon, that we ought to be able to make it as couples. It just seemed like that ought to work. Everybody doing their own thing, but that was the problem.

Everybody was doing their own thing to the exclusion of having a relationship. And so therefore, that's when we decided well maybe, you know, if traditions could keep groups of sticky people working together in a, you know, halfway decent manner, if we could apply that at home. How do you apply it at home? There wasn't anything in our literature. You know?

And so we began to study and pray about that. And one, one summer, I sat down and, like I say, we we had all this input from different ones talking or whatever. And so we compiled what we call the the 12 traditions. And as you'll know, as we go along, we have reworded them. And then over the years now this was way back.

And over the years, I think this was like 88, December of 88. And, so over the years, we have developed this. We offered it to World Service who said, no. Thank you. Are we surprised?

And, it was helpful. Anyway, it wasn't whiny. It was helpful. Outside issue. Outside issue.

Anyway anyway. So, I thought, okay. Well, then I'll just I'll just write the book. And so that's what you have here and I had it copyrighted since they didn't want it. So as you'll see, you have a book.

And if you have a partner and, they're on the cruise, you can take 2 books or whatever. There's a book for everybody. And, so first of all, what is a relationship? What is a relationship? You hear, It's real funny.

People come in the program and they want to get well, but they wanna have a relationship first. Well, sick calls to sick. You know, we wonder about that. But it's the joining or connection of 2 or more individuals in some manner. Some manner.

And, you know, people say, well, I'm not in a relationship. I don't know anybody that's not in a relationship of some kind. Don't you have one with God? Don't you have one with a mother, a father, a brother, a sister, the next door neighbor? People that you go around that you're you're you're a human being.

You know? I develop relationships on an airplane. You know? You know, sometimes the person next to you, you begin to talk to one another, and that is a type of relationship. That's where you're relating to one another.

That kind of thing. So it doesn't make any difference if you're married, single, looking, trolling, whatever. If you will follow some of the the guidelines, it might help you. So with that, tradition 1. Our common welfare comes first.

A healthy relationship depends upon unity. Now in order to have unity in a relationship, I have to have unity within myself. It has to start with me. If I'm not okay on the inside, I don't have anything to bring to the relationship. In fact, I will be just the opposite.

I will be looking for the relationship to fix something that's wrong inside of me. You know, you've gotta be okay. You can't transmit that that you do not have. So I have to do that in order to be okay within myself. That's where you have to be able to practice the 12 steps.

I think everybody when they come in and immediately they want the relationship, they miss their focus. When you first get here, focus on yourself. Focus on getting yourself right with God and clearing up the wreckage of your past, finding out who you are and what you are about. Then work on a relationship. And see, that's what had scared me.

I saw people who had been in recovery 25, 30 years, both of them, and they're getting divorces. And I'm going, my God. You mean I went through all this crap, but now that he's not drinking, he's gonna go off with somebody else? You really wanna kill him then. You know, you really wanna kill him then.

It's not funny. It's not funny. You know, but we saw we saw things like this happening, and that's when, you know, it was like, hey. Can't we work this stuff together? We got sick together.

Let's get well together. You know? And also, we found that, there were a lot of people in both fellowships that didn't understand each other. And so this was also another way for the 2 fellowships to work together very well because that's a relationship. So the way to have, unity within myself is to develop the relationship with my higher power, to develop an ongoing God consciousness.

You know, being aware that God is the most important relationship I'm gonna have because it's the only one I'm never gonna leave or lose. You know? I mean, let's face it. I may turn away, but God is always there. Now, I can't transmit God in my life and working for me if I don't have it on the inside of me, if I'm not in contact with God.

And so I have learned to practice the presence of God, and this is being God centered instead of self centered. And occasionally, it happens. You know? It happens the more that I use prayer and meditation in my life. The more that I take time for God, like any relationship, if you don't spend time with that person, it's a little difficult to develop a relationship.

How do you develop trust? You have to you have to have some evidence. You know? I don't just you know, used to. I was sort of a I'll trust anybody until they do me wrong person, and I had that enough.

And then I went the other way to I'm so cynical. I trust nobody. You proved yourself many, many, many times, and you have one slip, and it's all over. You know? I mean, I went from one to the other.

But to come back, you can see, God never fails me. Sometimes, you know, it's like I think God God has a character defect. My higher power has a character defect. It's procrastination. God does not do things when I want him to.

You know, usually what he does is always better than what I thought he should have done in the long run, But the timetable is really screwed up, you know, to me. You know, there's the God time and then there's my time. And my time is I want it and I want to know about 48 hours in advance, you know, and on a minimum. And sometimes when it's major stuff, I wanna know about 2 or 3 years in advance. Then I know that no matter what happens when I get there, this is gonna happen.

Now the truth of the matter is that is the truth. When I get there, God is gonna be there and take care of whatever happens. But I forget that when I'm over here looking out yonder. So it's like living in the now, practicing the presence and living right here where your body is right now. Let's not be in Juno tomorrow right now.

Let's be right here. Be present. You know, bring your mind. Bring your body, you know, right here. Now the next thing that I find that helps tremendously with unity is acceptance.

Accepting things as they are, not the way you want them to be, and accepting people as they are. Much harder. Much, much harder. Because I don't know about y'all, but I get a I get a little obsessive compulsive in my mind, and things irritate me. And they never irritate me a little bit because I think about them.

Now if I didn't think about them, I'm sure I could let it pass. But I think all the time. My mind, you know, and my sponsor always says that mine's a dangerous neighborhood. Don't go in alone. You know, because your mind will do strange things.

Now I decided a few years ago this is one of my favorite stories. I decided a few years ago that I wanted a garden, a really pretty flower bed in the front of my house. JD had this massive thing in the backyard, so I said, I'll take this. So I have about 15 foot wide flower bed that goes about, what, 40, 50 feet. And I, in my non perfectionist nature, I went to the quarry, and I got these, river washed rocks from New Mexico.

And they're white, and they're all rounded, you know, and I got and it took me an entire day out there in the quarry getting exactly the number I needed because I had this little template that I had made of a free form. And I put them all down on my little pattern. The guy at the quarry just knew I was nuts. You know, it's a 100 degrees, and I'm out there sorting rocks at the quarry. You know?

But I wanted 1 I didn't want 1 rock too many or one rock too few. And I got them all put there, you know, lined them up around my flower bed. I said, that's gorgeous. That's gorgeous. Now across the back under the windows, I planted elephant ears.

Across the front right behind those beautiful rocks, I planted hostas. One solid, one variegated. One solid, one variegated. You know, all the way across the front. Now between the elephant ears and the hostas, I decided color color here.

We've done green. We've got white. We need color now. Seventeen flats of Impatients. That's a lot of little flowers.

You just dig dig dig dig dig, you know, for days. Okay. You get them. Now, at home, I don't know. We have the commercials, you know, for Miracle Gro.

The guy gets up there and he said, oh, £50 to Meyer here using Miracle Gro. And I said, Miracle Gro is what I need. You know? So now the instruction says, Miracle Gro once a month. Well, once a month is good.

Once a week should be better. So now I have 4 foot tall in patients. People driving by going, my God, did you ever see a patios like that? I mean, I got hostesses that are just here. I mean, we're talking major flowers out here.

And I'm going I'm being very, very humble and going, yes. They're mine. I did that. I did that. And so, one day I come home from the meeting and, there's a hole in my flower bed.

I'm talking about a massive hole in the middle of my impatience. Now do you realize what a tragedy this is? You see, if there's a hole in the impatience, that means they're broken off. They're very tender little plants and they're broken off even with the ground. Even if you plant more they're never gonna be the same height.

It's ruined. It's ruined. What did this? I'll kill it. Well, as it turned out it was one of my less favorite animals in the whole world, a cat.

I don't like cats. I was attacked by a cat when I was a child. I have never liked cats and it is a dreaded cat. It is a giant calico cat. Now not being around cats that much I don't realize exactly what's going on here.

And, the fact is I with my nice tall plants, I have created the jungle for them to lurk and to eat my birds that I have the bird feeders out for. I provided them the natural habitat for stalking and pouncing, you know? But I don't realize that, you know, because I don't know anything about the nature of the cat other than they love to irritate me. You ever notice dogs will stay away from people who don't like them. Cats, on the other hand, will rub all over you.

You know, I mean, it's like you hate me. Okay. So I began to ask all these people, program people, how do you get rid of a cat? Now you'd be surprised there are many, many home remedies for getting rid of cats. The first was mothballs.

Now they said if you put mothballs they don't like the smell of mothballs. So there you are. And so I go and I get 4 or 5 boxes of mothballs And now you can smell our house from 2 blocks away. But the cat loves it. So we go into plan b, you know, and they said cracked red pepper.

Oh, they get on their paws. They'll hate it. I have a Mexican cat. This cat keeps coming back. You cannot kill this cat.

You can't get rid of this cat. And so I just go on and on that whole summer fighting with the cat. And then finally, one of the guys I sponsored had this pellet gun, and so he said, here, you can borrow this. And I said, good. So I pumped up the, you know, like, 3 on my pellet gun.

I'd come out the front door. By now, the cat and I are looking for one another. I'll come out and I'll spy her and she'll spy me, you know, we're like this. And so I shoot her and I hit her on the butt and she goes, but she comes back. We have an alley cat.

She's doing the same thing, expecting something different. So I pump it up to 6. She comes out. I got her. I shoot her and she goes like that and she comes back again.

So the 3rd time I pumped it up to 10. I get my gun ready and I'm out and I'm looking and there she is. And I shot and I missed her. But I didn't miss the next door neighbor's house. Now I have knocked a hole in the siding of the next door neighbor's house.

So I decided maybe I shouldn't do that, so I put the gun down. Now the next the next spring, we went through this whole process again. Because you see, I haven't accepted the nature of the cat. I haven't accepted. I don't understand.

My sponsor's laughing hysterically when I tell her these things. She said, you're gonna get it one of these days. She loves to torture me. And so, finally, I decided I have a 38. I'm gonna kill it.

I'm sick and tired of messing with a cat. I'm the cat will not bother me again. I'm telling you now. I'm gonna blow it a little happy butt away. So I was talking to a friend of mine, and he said, well, he shot a dog one time.

And he said, that scream I'll never forget. And this guy loves dogs. He raises dogs, but this was a stray dog that kept bothering him. And I said, what did you he said, oh, he said, I'll never and so I'm go oh, god. I don't wanna listen to a cat screaming to eternity.

So I said, I guess I'm gonna have to accept the cat. What a concept. And so I sit there and I went, oh, this is going to kill me, but I'm going to do it. You see my sponsor is a sick woman. She tells me to accept stuff to the point you wouldn't change it even if you could.

That that's a goal. You know, we very seldom get there. But you act as if until it becomes so I go outside the door. The cat's there like this, you know, and I'm like that. And I said, welcome to my yard, FC.

Well, I've named the cat over a couple of years, you know. I said, you can be my yard cat, You know, eat the squirrels, eat the birds. What do I care? You know, make yourself at home. This is your yard.

I went back in the house. JD's dying laughing. I'm about to gag, you know. Next morning, I get up doing my breeding prayer, meditation. I'm standing looking out the front window.

One of my happy squirrels is gnawing a limb off of my bonsai tree. My Japanese bonsai tree. He's eating a limb off my tree. I'm going, I can't believe it. I went carrying out the front door, screaming down the steps, where the hell is my cat?

My cat should be eating this squirrel. Where is my cat? And there's a guy driving past and he's going and I'm thinking, what's it to you? And now I look down. I'm out there in my underwear.

I was a little carried away, you know. I've never seen the cat again until a couple of months ago. Now it's been years and I haven't seen the cat. I was up here in British Columbia in a little teeny town called Seashell, staying in this motel, and on the desk was this giant calico cat. And I said, MC, you went to BC.

And the cat looks at cat, didn't recognize me because I'm sure if you had you don't like this. But the the principle there is to accept the nature of things just as they are. And when I did, it went away. There's something that happens when you accept the person or a situation exactly as it is. Then the war inside you goes away, and you're more able to deal with things.

You're more able to to get on with life, you know. And then I quit wanting something to be different. I become content when I quit. You know? When I try to fix something, it becomes an octopus on my face, and I can't get it off because I've gotta get it done.

And it it doesn't work. I have to be willing. I have to be willing to be wrong. I don't know about y'all, but this was real hard for me for a long time. I couldn't make mistakes without feeling I was bad and that I was less than.

You know, when you have low self esteem, it's really hard to make mistakes because every makes mistake you make makes you feel more like a mistake. It affects you. And so I have to do what I need to do to take care of me so that I can bring to relationship instead of going there to feed off of it. I have to know what I'm gonna bring. I have to be willing to bring forgiveness.

I have to be willing to bring understanding, encouragement. You know, I didn't realize that sometimes you know when you're pointing at somebody else and picking out their faults? Do you know they make more faults when you're doing that? When you're constantly because see now they're, oh, God. I've gotta do it right.

I've gotta do it right. And the more you harder you try to do it right, the more you screw up. At least that's my experience. When I'm trying to do something so right, I become so focused on it that I I I screw up a lot. And if I have the freedom to make a mistake, sometimes I don't make as near as many mistakes.

I have to change my life sometimes. You know? I had to be willing this past year to go back to work after being off for 21 years. Yeah. Willingness wasn't hard when you thought about eating, but but it was a hard transition to make.

And, you know, it was through no fault of JD. By the way, for all of JD, stand up. My other people may not know JD. No. His company was sold and, the new company came in and changed a bunch of things.

And they, they changed a lot of things, which made necessary for me to have to go back to work. But that was okay. That was okay because, see, I'm willing to work with JD or to do whatever I can for the unity of our home and for the betterment for the for the both of us. You know? And I could have been resentful a long time.

You know? But that wouldn't have made me happy about what I was having to do. And if I can be content about and accept the situation for what it was. And it wasn't JD's fault. It was just a thing that happened.

You know, not everything is a fault. Doesn't have to be blamed somewhere. Shit just happened y'all, and life keeps going on. And just because you're in the programs doesn't mean that you're insulated to life because people are gonna come and go out of your life. You know?

People are gonna die. You're gonna lose your job. Things are gonna happen, but we have tools to do with it. Plus, we have all the people who love us to support us through those things. You're gonna have to use a lot of honesty, you know, a lot of honesty.

You're gonna have to quit doing things like you make me. You make me so mad. You make me feel this. You make me. You don't make me nothing.

I have choices. Sometimes I choose to feel that way, you know, but we gotta take that if you from your vocabulary. The if, you know. That if is a fantasy word. It means in fantasy.

If hadn't happened yet. If you hadn't done that, well, whatever. You know? And then you've got to take away justification and rationalization. And I used to love a lady.

Her name was Holly. And, she was a long time member of AA. And she said justification and rationalization are just like masturbation. You're only screwing yourself. And that's true because, you know, you're hurting yourself more with that than you're hurting anybody else.

You gotta develop some communication skills, You know? And you have to be able to be on the same wavelength when you're talking. And, it's amazing. Now JD has a hearing loss. But even if he didn't have a hearing loss, he hears things differently.

He hears things differently than how I say them. I don't understand that. I can say to him, honey, I'm having some problems with the washing machine. And you know what JD hears? JD, a good husband would fix the washing machine.

Now I turn around 3 times and my washing machine is in 3,000 pieces out in the washroom, and I'm going, what the hell are you doing? And he said, well, you told me you want me to fix the washing machine. And see, that's not what I said at all. You know, those kind of things. So we have to learn to communicate.

It's like, what did you hear me say? How did you hear me say it? When you're seeing something is a little weird, you know, when you say something, you notice how you get a weird reaction? It's like, well, clarify that right then. Don't let it go for 2 or 3 days wondering.

You know? Just, what did you hear me say? And how did I say that? Another thing is keeping your mouth shut. Now there's there's a good way to do that and a bad way to do that.

You know? There's that sulking and silent scorn bullshit, you know, which lets everybody know you're mad even though we might not know why. You know? But that that's an attention getter. You know?

And it's I I love it too. This is a solid treatment. My sponsor says I just love this. She says, this is the way the most self centered people get even with you. They deprive you of their conversation or presence.

You know, it's like, isn't this a big loss? You're gonna keep your mouth shut. But I know for me, one of the main times I need to keep my mouth shut is when I get scared or feel threatened about something because that's when I feel backed up and that's when I lash out to keep you away. That's when that mouth will come, you know, and say things that'll make you stay away from me because you're scaring me. JD came home one day and said he was gonna build a boat in the backyard.

I just went into a phobia. And instead of saying to him, JD, that scares me. That idea scares me. That sounds very expensive. We're we're struggling over here.

You know? Money seems to be the things we thought about. Money, sex, you know, those kind of things. But you they don't come out exactly like that. And instead, what I try to do is convince him that he's got a bad idea.

And then that way, I don't have to say that scares me. And so I said, honey, we don't need a boat. He said, I don't care. We I want a boat. I'm gonna build a boat.

And the more I tell him he doesn't want it and he doesn't need it, the more determined he becomes that he's gonna have it and do it if for no other reason just because I said so. You know? And if I could've kept my mouth shut and said, oh, it might not have been turned out. I saw aircraft drop tanks coming into the backyard, and I go, what the hell is that? He said, I decided now I'm gonna be able to party barge.

Well, when we got through, you couldn't it was, you know, it was big enough to sail in, but you couldn't get it out of the backyard. And every time I made a comment about it, it got bigger. And finally, I accepted the fact that that was his dream, and that's what he wanted to do, and so leave it alone. And I told him, I said, I'm sorry for raining on on your dream, but it was scaring me because, see, I didn't know how to be honest about those feelings. And so when I was honest about the feelings, the next day, guess what?

Now we thought about this for 2 years. He went out there and he had a cutting torch. He's cutting it apart. I said, what are you doing? He said, this isn't what I wanted.

But every time you said something, I had to come out here and do more to it. That was how he got rid of his frustration of me telling him what he couldn't have because it it wasn't anything he wanted. He's, you know, he's got this fantasy that he's a fisherman. He's a boat builder. I mean, he's built 5 or 6 boats now.

You know what I mean? And each one gets progressively larger, but we can get them out of the yard. You know, that's the bang thing here. But it was communicating, you know, feelings and logic don't have to have anything to do with one another. You know?

Feelings aren't necessarily facts. They're not necessarily logical. You know? Feelings just are. You gotta have an open mind.

And nothing will slam your mouth mind closed quicker than getting scared. Because when you get scared, you close down, you grab a hold of whatever your idea is, you know. You've got to take yes, but, what if, and I know out of your thinking and out of your vocabulary. And then ask yourself, how important is this? Do you wanna be right or you wanna be happy?

Sometimes I wanna be right, you know? It's just I wanna be right more and I wanna be happy, obviously. You know? Until I'm so unhappy that I realize, no. I really want to be happy.

And then how important is it? It's not very important. That that's what the amend steps are about. And then you, you know, argument. What does argument give you when you argue about it?

Don't you just dig in on your side? Do you really listen to what the other person says? I listen to the extent of what my rebuttal is to what you're saying. I'm not listening to what you're saying. I'm starting to think of something to talk to you right over here.

But it takes 2 fools to argue. A wise man will not argue with a fool. 2 wise men are certainly not gonna argue. So obviously, it must take 2 fools to argue, you know. And I don't like that, but that seems to be true, you know.

And then you have to look at love versus need. Do you really love? You know, I can remember my relationships were pretty much, I want you, I need you, I love you. Love came after need. Need was more important.

I would love you because I needed you. What I had to have in my life. And what I needed, I found, was approval. I needed approval and I called approval love. And I looked at my mother for a lifetime and because my mother didn't give me the approval, I thought that I deserved or that I needed to have to be okay.

I wasn't okay because I couldn't I kept looking for that approval and I couldn't find it. So as a result, I took hostages. I take hostage. You know? I have to have someone on around for me to be okay.

That was my approval, someone being around me. And then you have the mind readers, you know. You know, people that I know he was thinking, you know. You don't ever know just a good thing what other people are thinking. It's really a good thing, you know.

Because he who walks in another's mind is lost. You know, you can walk because, you know, it's like JD said, well, I thought you were thinking and I'm going, god. God, I never think like that. You know, we just don't think alike, you know? And you had to know the difference between a want and a need.

A want and a need. I go through and I see it twice. I want that. I want that. I need that.

You know, it doesn't take long to change. You know? I mean, you can go like that. You know? I and the truth of the matter is I don't have a clue what my needs are.

Wants are always changing. And you want the reason you know that, you get this, and God, when I get this, everything's gonna be great. You know? And you get that and then, yeah, I gotta have a bigger one. I gotta have a better one.

My wants are always gonna be there, you know, telling me that's the source of some of my discontent is all those wants instead of practicing being content with what I have right now. And then you've gotta be able to communicate what your needs are to your partner. You gotta be vulnerable enough to say, you know, I really need this in my relationship, or I I need to talk to you about something, you know, or whatever, you know, and let that other person live. And it helps to have a little balance. What's balance?

I didn't have a clue. I just want things my way. Then everything's in balance. Now, you know, we're like a pendulum. When you come in, you're, like, way over here.

You get a little program, and all of a sudden, you're way over here. You know? And it takes a long time before you achieve the balance in a relationship. Like, for instance, I wanted JD. I wanted to be around him 24 hours a day because I had to watch him.

I had to watch him, watch what he was doing. You know? And so I came in down on it and they said, let him go. Let him grow up and be whatever it is he needs to be. What'll he turn out?

I don't know. But it will bound to be something better, you know, than what you're trying to do here. And so I let go, and boy did I let go. I went right over here. Now to show you, before I would say we're gonna go the, to the show tomorrow night and we're gonna see.

And so it went from that to I'm going to show tomorrow night. If you wanna go, that's fine. If you don't wanna go, that's fine. But I'm gonna go. Did you understand?

I'm going without you. And he'd say, okay. And I'd say, I invited him to go to the show. Because see, in my mind, I had. I was telling him he could go with me if he wanted to.

See, I was setting him free, but I did it in such a way as he that he knew or felt that I didn't want him to go. But, see, I really want him to go, but I was my pendulum was way over here. Didn't know how to communicate that to me. You know? So it took a while to have some balance there.

You have to have balance in a lot of areas. And meditation and prayer is what makes you a better partner. That's what brings the balance into my life and being able to accept progress, not perfection. And that's and my partner as well as myself and the other people. You know, remember, sometimes doing the very best you can, you screw up doing the very best you can.

And so you've got to be able to allow that other person to do that too. Tradition 2. For our family or relationship purpose, there's but one authority, a loving God as he expresses himself in our informed family conscience. Each partner is God's trusted servant. Neither governs.

You know, I love in our understanding itself. It talks about arrogant, smug, self righteous, and dominating my inventory. This is where I play God because it made me feel indispensable. I was needed. You know?

And also gave me the divine right to manage and control. And where unity doesn't exist, love can't exist either without being damaged. Humility exists when this tradition is practiced. You know, control was comfortable because I was afraid. Control freaks are very fearful people.

That's the reason you need to control. Because if you can control everything out there, you don't have to deal with the fear in here. It makes everything seem okay to you. And with some but the thing about it is with control comes the big R, responsibility. If you're in control and something goes wrong, it's your it's your baby.

But my thing was you didn't follow the directions. You see, if you'd have followed the directions, then it wouldn't have happened, you know, because see that was always my out. There's the justification and rationalization of blaming coming out again. But, rationalization of blaming coming out again. But, it was because of the low self esteem.

And not having God in my relationship accounts for the lack of quality in my relationship. It also meant I wasn't gonna have many close relationships. I couldn't have but one friend at a time. I didn't know how to do more than one in my life. You know, I didn't know how to to love different people.

You know, it was just all or nothing, all or nothing, and it would just suck the blood out whoever I was with. You know, it was just it was too much. Now in this, you notice, it says an informed family conscience is needed. Well, how do you have an informed family conscience? That's when you sit down and everybody brings the information they have to the table decision?

Well, sometimes it's not hard because you both agree on something. But say you don't agree on something. We try to pray about it, and then we come back and discuss it again. You see, we brought God into it now. You go back and you pray about it.

And then what happens usually is either we can negotiate, you can give in, they can give in a little, or a third solution nobody thought about has appeared. There's just something that happens when you bring God into that decision making process. And that's what I call an informed family conscience. You can do it with 2 people. You can do it with 6 people.

We have some friends, had kids, and everybody had a everybody had a boy on things that were going to affect the whole family as a whole. Timing is really important too. The moment somebody walks in the door is not the best time to pounce on them with a major decision. And that decision can be, what do you wanna eat? You know, isn't it funny how nobody wants to take responsibility for picking out the restaurant?

Does anybody have that problem? Y'all wanna go out and eat? You know, where you wanna go? I don't know. Where do you wanna go?

I don't know. Where do you wanna go? Well, I was like, oh, you wanna go there? Oh my god. Well, no.

I guess we don't go there. You don't go. I don't care where we go. Okay. But oh, god.

Did you have to come here? Isn't that amazing? It's amazing. You know, all of that crap over. Where are we gonna eat tonight?

You know? Like, it was the end of the world, and you weren't gonna get another chance at it. You know? But I would think about something all day long. I've gone through all the ins and outs.

I've done the whole committee process, and JD walks in the door. Guess what? And I he I I lay it on him. He hasn't had time to sit down his lunch bucket to to do anything. Now I've had all this time to think about all day, and I want him to give me an answer in 3 seconds.

And he doesn't even wanna hear it right then. He wants to come in, sit down, relax, and and get the end of his day. You know? And and it's like the self centeredness and the excitement that builds in you. You just it's so hard to keep your mouth shut and wait for the right time to present.

Because my mama used to say to me, when I'd wanna know something right now, she says, well, I need to think about it. And I said, well, what can I think about? Like, you said you do or you don't. She said, you wanna answer right now? No.

So that has worked really well. You know, if you want answer right now, if I don't have time to think about it, no. Because that's putting too much I don't have time to pray about it. I don't have time to do anything about it. You know?

Hey, just give it a rest. The way we made decisions, like for instance, we went to buy a new vehicle and JD had in his mind what he wanted, a sports car. I had in my mind what I wanted, a station wagon. What do you do you see anything or problem here? So we get to the car dealership and after the fight, we bought a truck.

Nobody wanted that. That was our decision making process. You know? Could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car.

He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car.

He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a smaller car. He could have got a I could have got a smaller car. He could have got a larger car, but we bought a truck since nobody wanted that. Also, on the decisions on our group conscience, we will pray, God bless it or block it.

You know, on those things where you really just don't know, you've prayed about it and prayed about it and you say, well, I just tell God, you know, I mean, Okay. I really want your will. I don't know what it is. But here's what I'm gonna do because I haven't got anything either way. I don't know.

So if we're not supposed to do it, block it or bless it. And sometimes I wonder about that, but I find later when I feel like I've really made the wrong decision, and I wonder why God didn't bless it or block it type thing. It's like I had a lesson to learn there that I would never have learned if I hadn't gone and done it. And so you're gonna learn one way or another. So the the learning is a blessing.

You have to remember that. In the learning comes the blessing. Allowing the courtesy. That's another thing that's very important here is courtesy. Courtesy in the home.

We usually treat complete strangers with more courtesy than we treat the people who we love the most. You know, we're, the if you're busy standing out there at the elevator thinking and pouring over stuff and somebody says, excuse me, could you tell me what floor such and such is on? We would be very nice and what have you. If that was my loved one, can't you see I'm busy? My god.

You know what I mean? You just you just go off on them. You know? But I found that by saying please and thank you and showing some courtesy. Courtesy is just a form of love and action.

You know, it's treating somebody with a little dignity and respect that you would like to have. You know? And, you you quit fighting so much. You really quit fighting so much. You know, one of the courteous things that I found was that, that where I had not been is that I made all these decision regarding JD's things.

And JD has his closet at home, and I would go in and I would rearrange his closet the way it should be. And and then he couldn't find his things. You know? And then some of his things were gone because he really didn't need those. And, you know, I just had a tendency you know, straightening, cleaning.

You know, I'm an obsessive compulsive. Things must be in order. JD, on the other hand, is a pack rat, and he never knows where anything is. And you just have to allow him to have that space to not know. And, you know, I went in there, and I took his favorite pair of boots.

These crummy old boots that he had had forever and a day. And I determined that these need to be thrown out. And so I put them out in the in the garbage. And so I noticed the next time I cleaned his car that they were back in there. And, he had opened it up, saw his boots.