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

Tradition 7. Each partner are to strive to be fully self supporting spiritually, emotionally, and physically. Okay, the previous one says we don't over help one another and this one says take care of yourself Because sometimes we're so busy helping other people we don't get us taken care of. You know I've seen this year after year with people with their kids, They'll do everything and they won't take care of themselves and they don't realize that the lesson they're teaching their kids is don't take care of yourself, take care of somebody else. Instead, take care of you, that's the better message.

You know, when I was helping the others, I let my personal needs go and I live through someone else. This is where you take your life back and it's care back and you become responsible for yourself. You know it's nobody else's fault, you are the one who's responsible. You know I had a thing about I could not be okay if I felt obligated. And if you did something for me, I was obligated.

You know, I hadn't learned how to take care of myself there. And so my mother-in-law one weekend worked all day Saturday helping me put up purple hull peas in the freezer. And this was an ordeal all day long of shelling and blanching and putting them up. And at the end, she said, why don't we go join mister Clint and JD and Roger, and that was JD's father and his brother, and they had gone fishing up in a little town called Searcy, Arkansas. And it was right below the dam, And I told myself I do not want to do this.

I don't wanna do this but how do I tell her no after she has helped me all day long? Now you see I'm not taking care of myself physically because I am whipped, tired. Where that old lady got the energy, I will never know. Yeah. But it was fishing and she was one of those.

And, you know, fishing people have a thing, you know, they're they can fish whenever. And, she says, I'll fry chicken. And so here we are, it's a little after midnight, and we are heading up to meet them where they are camping. It starts to rain. I'm ready to go home.

It's raining. Oh, no, she says. She says, it might not be raining where they are. And the closer we got to Circe, the harder the rain. I said, I think it's starting where they are.

You know? And we get into the town of Searce and water is just flowing through the streets. They're having flash flooding in Searce. You know, and here we are and she's going Georgia. And so we go outside the town and we make a left turn onto a red gumbo road.

Now gumbo is real slick when it's wet and so the back end was meeting the front end of the car as I'm whipping them down the road like this, and we get to this little narrow one lane bridge. Water's running over the bridge. Never go through running water on a bridge. She says, I've done it a 1000 times. Oh, God.

You know? Now I have to. You know? You've got you've been dared. You know?

I've done it a 1000 times. So I started to cross and the bridge collapsed. So now we're going down into this creek that goes and the creek courses out of the banks because of the flash flooding. We're in this fast moving water, Got out. My the chicken is floating around in the back seat.

My mother-in-law says I can't swim. Fine time to tell me. Okay I get out my window I go around help her and I'm struggling and I finally get her and you know going against water rushing like that is very difficult and I'm having this tremendous chest pain, absolutely tremendous chest pain. I finally get her attached to a root over here on a tree at the bank and I went there and all of a sudden, you know what the problem is? This perch is swimming to my bra.

Because you know when you're sweat, you know how it get this loose and the it had swam into my bra. It was thinning me. That was the pain in my chest. I was being thinned to death by this bizarre perch. Okay.

Yeah. What? She thought that was your purse. No. I thought it was your purse.

No. No. Perch, p e r c h. A fish. A fish.

Fish had swum little perch about like this had swum into my bra. Well, we get out over the other side. They're all drunk. The boat has sunk. Food is floating around in the tent.

I mean, it's just ungodly over there. And so they get the pickup. They get the boat out. They work on it, they get everything put on the truck, and I'm thinking, where do they think they're going? There is no bridge.

Where do they think they are going here? You know, they drive down, they said, well, looks like looks like your car is gonna have to come out some way it went in. I thought well I I thought that but help is on the other side so JD and I here we go. We get across to the other side because you don't get so wet, you know. Get over there and we walk down that road because I had seen a house at the end of that road when I turned on.

I noticed it in the lightning, and so we went over there and this big old German Shepherd comes loping out, and I was mad. And so I kicked the dog and slapped him, told him shut the hell up. And then I knocked on their door, and I said, open up in there. We need help. And he heard verse of voices.

Are you opening the door? No. I'm not opening the door. Are you opening the door? No.

I'm not opening the door. Somebody open this door. You know? They wouldn't open the door. Now we found out later that there were some escaped convicts in the area.

God help them if I'd have seen them. So we had to walk all the way back to town. Searcy did not have a phone booth. They had pay phones, but they were inside businesses. It's 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning.

There's nothing open except the funeral home. So we go to the funeral home, and there we the guy looks and says, can I help you? And I said, I just wanna lay down. I just wanna lay down. I'm so tired.

I just wanna lay down. And so we called JD's uncle who lives in another town up there who came back with a truck pulling a tractor to get us out of the creek. And his cousin says, did y'all know we've had more rain in the last 2 hours than we've ever had before? I said, no shit, Frank. Where do you think we've been the last 2 hours?

My god. You know? It's like, you know, you just wanna kill an old country boy sometimes. And so we got back over there and they worked and they worked and they cut some trees and stuff to get things to wedge under it so they could finally get a jerk on that tractor on that and get that out. And now the insanity goes more.

His daddy says of course, his dad's been sitting there, and JD is still drinking. You know, you get more booze while you're out, take back to the scene of the accident. You know? And he says, you know, Jim, I've been thinking. See?

That ain't scary. If we get old roadie, that was the truck's name, if we get just revved up, I believe we can come tearing down that little hill there and jump that creek. And I'm saying to myself, he's gotta be kidding. And about that time I hear roar. Now we have the truck in the creek.

2 days this adventure went. Getting everybody in and out of the creek is absolute total insanity, you know, and I didn't have to be a part of that. That didn't have to happen. If I had taken care of myself and said, Virgie, I'm sorry I can't go to the camp. I'm too tired.

Too tired, you know, and as a result like say it was a nightmare. I had a big resentment for a long time. When I worked, I worked in the insurance field, and I was not in the insurance field. I was insurance. You know, that was my job.

That was my identity. That's what I did. You know, I I wasn't a person and when I quit, it was like, I'm not worth anything anymore. I'm not getting a paycheck anymore therefore I'm not worth anything anymore. You know, it took me a long time to make that adjustment to be okay.

You have to know your capabilities as well as your limitations. You know, my first responsibility is to God and then to myself to be the best I can spiritually, emotionally, and physically. You know, for years I blamed JD for money problems. The drinking, the fines, and all the stuff that goes with it, but the money problems were mine. I was the one that would say, he spends money we don't have.

Well, so can I? When he quit drinking in a short period of time, there wasn't any money problems with JD. Took 10 years to pay off my little rippydoodas to the mall. Those times that I went to prove that I could spend money we didn't have to. Those kind of things, and to make you feel better.

Those feel good things. And then I would think, you know, okay, I can't afford to go to the doctor, but I can make appointments for JD to go to the doctor. I couldn't go to the dentist, but I could make JD go to the dentist. The reason was I was afraid. I had this terror of the dentist, you know.

I was 26 years between visits. I'd say that would qualify for being a little afraid, you know, and fortunately I had good teeth, you know, but there will come a point in time when I would like to say when I lived in Newfoundland, my husband got in trouble with the military because we had to go to the base dentist. That was one of the requirements. There was no dentist in the town, and and I kept canceling appointments. And finally, they told him that he would be in trouble if he didn't get me to the dentist.

And I went there and they had to give me sedative in the waiting room just to get me back there. I had gotten hurt when I was 9 years old and and that would be in my mind and I'd go and just go into this just absolute panic when I think about going to the dentist. I just couldn't do it And so they got me back there, and now here I was 26 years later, and that feeling that they gave me had fallen out. Funny thing about it is would you believe the dentist that gave me the filling is in our fellowship? I met him years later over in Georgia.

It was funny. He's in the online fellowship. I knew he wasn't exciting enough to be an alcoholic. Anyway well, you know how they are. Yeah.

Those kind of things. But the the bottom line there was I had to go. Now here I am. I'm sitting in a hospital emergency room. My mother, they think, is having a heart attack, but my filling fell out.

What is the greater emergency here? My filling. She can die. I've got to go to a dentist, you know. And then they finally came out and told me it wasn't a heart attack but they were gonna observe her overnight.

And so I'm sitting there and I'm going, oh my god. I've gotta go. I've gotta do something different. I've got to do something different because if you do what you've always done you get what you've always got. I've always lost the tooth.

Whenever I had a toothache I would leave it alone and after a while you can't stand hot in your mouth, and after a while you can't stand cold in your mouth, and then after a while you can't stand your tongue in your mouth. You know and then you have to it either falls out or you got to go and you're gonna lose the tooth. It's just that simple and I didn't want to do that anymore. And so I said God what am I gonna do? And so I prayed and I prayed and I prayed and, the next thing you know I opened up the phone book and I said, god help me find you don't have a family dentist when you don't go.

And I opened it up, and there was a half page ad said, we cater to cowards. And there I called the number and they said they'd take me right now. Now can you believe that? Never having been, they're gonna take you right now. When I told them I was 26 years between visits, I think they got the clue.

But anyway, I went over there and I was just terrified. I was just terrified about how that was gonna go. But when I got there, there was a little arrow and it says we cater to cowards up the top of the stairs and and I ran up the stairs because I was debating going up the stairs or throwing myself into the freeway. Just and so I went up there and I got in there and the woman looks at me and she says you must be miss Thompson. I didn't have a clue.

How did she know? I mean, the fact I was pale and shaking had nothing, I'm sure. I could not fill out my thing. I was shaking so hard. And so I had to give it to her because I told her, I said, I am so scared.

And then they had music on, and the music was the local FM station. And then all of a sudden, I heard the voice of the DJ, and it was a girl who was my grandbaby in sponsorship. And that voice when I heard Anne's voice, I began to calm down. And then when they took me back and the last time I went, the the dentist office looked like a barber chair with a tarantula hanging over it. Well, I mean, that's what it looked like to me.

And so when I sat down in this nice little chaise and they lean you back, there was these little panels on the ceiling and they had a poster right over the one over my head. And it said, God, grant me the serenity. The serenity prayer right over me. So see, God went ahead and planned in love each step of the way, and I was able to get over the fear, And I was able to take care of myself, to take care of my dental work, to take care of myself physically, you know. Now I knew, let's see, in the fall of 99, I had been having problems for 6 months or more with my back.

And, I've been going to doctors and they said it was first one thing, then it was another thing, and then it was this. And then I had this right, and they say it was shingles, and they say it was this, and they say it was that. But nothing was seemingly getting any better. And then this deal happened with my sister. And when Dorothy did the little crash in the car with me, it was, needless to say, it was very, very scary.

But also, I had to do something to take care of me because I was really gonna have to take care of her. And up to this point in my life, I hadn't had to take care of my sister, you know, like to make sure everything was right for her. I didn't know. At this time, she's in a coma. But when that happened, I started shaking, and I couldn't quit shaking.

Now our HMO had changed when JD's job changed. And so we won't have to find new doctors, and I hadn't done that yet. You know how you put all that stuff off. And so I just, got the doctor that would be closest and and I called and made an appointment and they took me that next afternoon because I couldn't quit shaking and my sister doctor said you need to get seen. And I was in there with him just for a very few minutes and he said they ran an EKG, and they did some blood work, and they did all these other things.

And he came back in, he said, well, miss Thompson, you are borderline diabetic. Well, see, I didn't wanna hear the word diabetic because look at Dorothy. You know? I mean, this has just happened to Dorothy. You know?

She's diabetic. And I'm going, oh god. I don't wanna be diabetic. And then he said, and, you've got a something wrong with your heart here. You know?

And see, if that hadn't happened with Dorothy, I could have dropped dead somewhere never knowing that there was something wrong with me. And I told him about this pain in my back, and he said it was from the neuropathy. He said that was what the problem was. He says that's causing that pain back there for you. And so you see, he found out in just a very few minutes what all these other doctors had been missing.

So if I hadn't had to change doctors, we might never have found out what the problem was. And so he began to give me some medication for that, and in just a period of days, that pain went away. That pain all went away. And, I kept on doing what they told me to do. You know, that's the important thing.

It's just you it's just like the program. You gotta keep on doing it. You know, it's working. You know? So many of us, it works.

It works. It works. I don't think I'll do it. You know? It's working so well.

Let's not do it anymore. You know? And I see people do that with other things too. This works. This works.

This works. I'm tired of working it. You know? And, I didn't wanna do that. So I did exactly.

He told me to go to see a dietitian. And so I went to the dietitian, and I did exactly what she said. And as a result, in 8 months I lost a £100. I'm and I'm not diabetic anymore. I'm not even borderline diabetic anymore.

And my blood pressure I had been on high blood pressure medicine since I was 30. I no longer take blood pressure medicine. They had to start, taking the prescription and making it less and less because I kept passing out on them. You know, it was I was being over medicated and, my blood pressure. And it was really scary when you quit taking blood pressure medicine that you've taken for 28 years.

You know, it's like you become emotionally dependent on taking that pill to make sure your blood pressure is okay. And then you're not taking it and it scares you like, am I gonna be alright? Because I didn't wanna have a stroke. That's what I saw mama have, you know, those kind of things. But I did those things that they told me to do, and I did them exactly like they told me to do.

And, I've I've been the recipient of that. And so now I don't have to be on all that medication. I take vitamins and calcium and stuff now, and I take the little aspirin. I take one of my heart pills. And but you know the doctor told me the last time I was in to see my heart doctor, he says you're doing a normal EKG.

Well, that was good news to me because see I failed my stress test. I failed the nuclear stress test and then they did the heart catheterization and yes I have blockage but I don't have to have surgery immediately, you know. But I do have to watch what I eat because I don't want to finish clogging all that up, you know. So, but I'm doing what I need to do and I found that preventive measures are best to try to work on things, you know, instead of having to try to find the horse after the gates open, you know, that kind of thing. So I'm responsible for my own self.

And I'm responsible for my own spiritual condition, and I'm not gonna live off of the serenity of others. I've seen people do that too. Try to live off the other person, their partner's program. Them not doing the deal but and trying to to get it by osmosis, you know. Like one partner quits going to meetings and the other one keeps going and the one that quits going to meetings begins to try to feed off the other one's program.

And that's real hard. You know? That's hard on both people. Unfortunately, it can be very, very painful. Remember, there's no hope when you blame people, when you're into the blaming because you're powerless over people.

And if they're what they're doing is the cause of your problems, you're just SOL. But if you are contributing to the problem, then you can do something about that. There's a lot of hope if you take responsibility. And I had a need to know why all the time. Even if you know why, what does it change?

What does it change? You just know why, but it doesn't change anything. Father Hillary used to say, it doesn't matter how the horse got his ass in the mud. Get it out. You know, it's just not important.

You know? And I am responsible for my own feelings. I choose how I wanna feel. I choose how I wanna be. Tradition 8.

Our marriage or relationship should remain forever, a free giving relationship, one to the other. Now I don't know about you, but I was a scorekeeper. I kept score when I did stuff, and I didn't know it. I had self deception really bad. I thought I gave for free.

I would tell you I was a real generous giving person, but I had a hidden price tag that I didn't even know there was myself and that was because I would compare. Comparisons are a form of score keeping. What I do compared to what someone else does for me. Like, for instance, I'd say, it's your turn. I've done it the last 12 times, not that I'm counting.

But you know how it's real funny how that will come to your mind. You know? And we did this on just little dumb things like taking out the garbage. You know? It's your turn to take the garbage out, I'll take it out the last 16 times.

You know, isn't that amazing? You know, or the clothes hamper, you know, it was like people who put their clothes in the clothes hamper. Who empties a clothes hamper? You know, the official clothes hamper emptier? I don't think so.

They're not all my clothes, you know, that kind of thing. And I used to be real picky about all that because I wanted to make sure I didn't overdo anything and so I overdid counting. You know, that was the deal. You know, I overcompensated. But, you know, it says just for today do something you don't wanna do just for discipline as well as doing something without being found out.

You know, there there's that in our just for today. So that helped me with that score keeping. A lot of times I would do something for somebody and I would think it was a free gift, everything's great, and then something would come up where they had an opportunity to do something me and they didn't. Here's when I called in the chip. Here's when after all I've done for them, this is where you get the martyr, you know, and that's that score keeping I've done for them.

But I've been freely given God's love and it's unconditional and God's acceptance, and I need to give that back. That I could be this way, free giving with was with my sponsor. You know, she told me she says everything that you know, I wanted to get her a real nice gift as appreciation. She said, absolutely not. You pass it on.

You give it to someone else. She said, that's how this deal keeps going. Pair passing on. And I remember that first, big AA conference. The old granddad used to be in Hot Springs, and, oh, it was great.

People came in from all over everywhere. And, when he was at the old Arlington Hotel. And here it was. JD had gotten sober. JD had gotten fired.

I had had the the sole financial responsibility of everything and god I felt so much pressure. And, my sponsor said, are y'all going to the convention? I didn't know what a convention was. And I said, well, I don't guess so. I said, after all, you know, JD hadn't had a job for 6 months and this is really hard times here.

And she said, I just asked. And I said, well, I hadn't no. Hadn't thought about it. And she said, well, you might wanna pray about it. Well, I didn't know how to pray about things.

I didn't know you could just pray about anything and everything, you know. And so I said, okay. So I went home and I talked to him and I said, do you wanna go? He said, I don't know. I said, everybody says we ought to go.

And he said, well, then maybe we ought to go. And I said, but we can't afford to go. And he said, well, then maybe we ought to go. And and I said, but my sponsor said to pray about it. And he said, okay.

So I said, well, you wanna pray with me? And he said, well, I can. And so he came in and we both got down by on our knees by the side of the bed, and we said, god, if it's your will, we'd like to go to the convention, whatever it is. You know. Thank you very much.

You know, wasn't real formal or nothing just pretty simple. And the next day I went to the office and I used our watch line and I called down to Hot Springs, took an action, made a reservation. 30 minutes later, JD called me back. He said you won't believe it. I got a job.

I said, you're kidding. He said, no. I got a job today. And I said, well, that's great. He's been with that same company now almost 25 years.

You know? Well, except it's been bought out. But anyway, so now we're trying to save up money to go to the convention. Well, you know, we've got 6 months of back bills to take care of and I didn't feel it was right to go to the convention on somebody else's money. Like your bill, you know, your creditors.

And so we were paying so much on the bills where we had just made minimums or less than minimums and and but I had figured up what it would take for us to go to the convention if we had cheese and crackers in the room every day for meals. You know, something you could survive on. You might not like it by the time you got home but, you know, you might never go to the bathroom again, but, you know, I mean, here you could survive. And, so we were wondering about all that and I figured it up and here it was and JD came in one night and he said, I don't have anything to wear to our convention. Because JD smoked all the time.

And when he smoked and he drank, he spilled his ashes. And this was the days of polyester. So he looked like a colander. You know, he had all these little holes burned all over his clothes, you know? And I said, oh my god.

Well, I didn't realize that you could go to a convention in just normal clothes, you know? I thought you had to really dress up. And I now got her. I wouldn't have asked because then somebody would have known I didn't know and, couldn't have that. And so I said, well, we'll we'll I don't know if we can afford you a suit because, JD, it's not in the budget.

And, because I was thinking 3 or $400 for a suit. And then we got this ad in the mail from a mail order place in Chicago, and it said that it had a suit that had a reversible vest, 2 pairs of pants, and a sport coat I mean, the suit coat all for 49.95, which was real cheap back then even. And I'm going couldn't be much. But I kept thinking about it and I thought well nothing ventured, nothing gained. You know, we could order it.

If it doesn't work, send it back. So we ordered it and told him that, you know, he has a little bitty short legs, so you need to alter the pants and send him all the information. Well, the week of the conference, I just told him that day. I said, JD, I'm gonna have to call and cancel our reservations because we are $35 short of the bare minimum for the hotel room and the gas over there and the registration fee. Fee.

We are short $35. And so that afternoon, the mailman brought the suit. And so JD's trying it on. And, he reached in the pair of pocket the pants into the pocket, and he said there's something wadded up in here. And he pulled out a 20, a 10, and a 5.

And I would never have thought to tell God to do it like that. You know, that would have just been absolutely beyond anything. And so we just sat there in the floor and we cried, and we thank God. You know? And so we went ahead and we went over there to the convention, and, you know, we didn't have to eat the cheese and crackers because somebody invite us to lunch and somebody invite us to breakfast and, you know, the fellowship will carry, you know, they they love you.

And they knew we were trying really, really hard. And so it came the night of the banquet. And of course, they had closed circuit TV in the rooms and they had a big TV in a a room downstairs that if you didn't go to the banquet you could sit in there and watch it on this big screen TV. And, so we were feeling sorry for ourselves. You know how ungrateful we are.

We were feeling sorry for ourselves. We were gonna miss the banquet. We were gonna eat that cheese and crackers after all. And we were sitting there and still thinking about all the good that had happened to us. You know, we're whining.

And, about that time there was a knock at the door and I went over to the door and there wasn't anybody there. And, going back, I noticed something was under the door and there was a little envelope and there were 2 banquet tickets in the envelope. And we took those tickets and we were seated with the speakers that night down at the banquet. We fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous that night. There was a speaker there.

I don't know if, how many of you heard had the opportunity to hear Jim Williams from Dallas. But Jim was fabulous. He was so funny and we just fell in love with Alcoholics Anonymous that night. And it's like we knew we were gonna be convention junkies from then on because that was so much fun. Just absolutely laughed till we cried.

But you see the people at Alcoholics Anonymous gave to us. And thank God, over the years, we've been able to pass that on to to other people who couldn't go and couldn't do. It's been real neat. When I felt obligated, I felt like you were in control, and I was out of control. I didn't know how to just say thank you and let that be enough.

Thank you. Did you know thank you is a complete sentence? Did you know the word no is a complete sentence? You know, you don't have to have a lot of explanations and stuff after it. And, we had a a little deal in our group one time about learning how to accept the gift graciously.

When someone would give you a compliment, you know, and someone would say, God love your blouse, Carol. And Carol's like, this old thing Kmart blue light special 399, you know, instead of just saying, thank you. You know, so we would do that to each other. We would run around and give each other compliments. We'd test one another to see if that would work, you know?

Well, I had been wandering around and I told JD, I said, everybody tells me I need a computer. And see, it's so hard to make those changes to to go from, you know, I'm old. I can't do this. You know? That kind of thinking.

And, because when I left work, we had MTSTs. I mean, that was a big deal then. You know? But, anyway, I said, I wouldn't even know what kind of computer to get. I wouldn't have a clue what kind of computer to get.

And so my sponsor said, well, you could pray about it and take an action. So prayed about it and that August we started a computer fund. And by Christmas what we have in it $30, you know, some massive amount and, years ago. And I'm thinking, you know, well, it's not important if you don't know because it's gonna take a while to get there. And, I was invited over to a girl that I sponsored at the time and her boyfriend, and they invited us to dinner.

And after dinner oh, and they still had their Christmas decorations up, and it was in January. I remember that because I remember thinking why has he still got his Christmas decorations up? And then when he said his mother had decorated his house, I really worried about it. You know, 30 some odd years all in your mother's decorating your house. But anyhow, not that I'm judgmental or critical, And, he said, Santa Claus left something for you under the tree.

And I said, he did? And he said, yeah. And I said, well, what? And he gave me this box about this long and about this wide. And I opened it up and it was a keyboard.

And I said, oh my god. It's like an Adapurl necklace. You get a keyboard now. You get a monitor sometime. You know?

And he just laughed. He said, no. We just didn't wrap it. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, we're upgrading our computers at the office.

And he said, we have downloaded everything that we need off of it and we're letting you have the computer, the printer, you know, the whole schmear, you know. And I'm going, you're kidding. And he said, no. And I said, well, is it IBM compatible? Because see, I knew that was important.

I'd heard that. And he said, it's an IBM. I said, oh, this didn't have to be compatible. Okay. And one of the other people that was there that night was a girl who worked for systematics, and she said I'll come over set it up and show you how to work your computer.

So whenever I'd have a question I would call her and she would tell me and I'd write all my questions down and I had a file and so I wouldn't have to call her back and ask her the same thing twice. You know, because that's one thing I've learned too in the program is that when you ask a question, write it down so that you don't have to keep asking the same stuff over and over and over. You know, write down the answers. Answers. And so I began to do that, and I learned how to do it on the computer.

Well, see the amazing thing about that was the gentleman who gave me the computer's last name was Grace. So by God's grace, I had a computer. You know? Now, you know, this, a lot of times people don't realize that in Al Anon, our part of the family disease can be terminal also. Alcoholism is a very serious terminal illness.

The girl, married this gentleman, they both came down and on for a while, and then they got healed as we sometimes people think they are, and they left. This past New Year's Eve, he shot her in the head and he committed suicide. It is a fatal illness. You know, but she hadn't hit bottom yet so we just pray for her. So pray for a girl named Sammy.

That neat thing too is there's a gentleman that works for Rick and he is a computer expert, whatever you call him. And I knew nothing about computers. Well, a few years later, I told JD, I said, I need bigger, better, faster. You know how it is when you get a computer. You know, I said, I gotta have a bigger, better, faster.

I gotta do something here. And, that year right before Christmas, I got a telephone call, and this guy said I had made up my mind which one I was gonna get. I had gone and looked at all of them. I had a little more idea, but see mine didn't have Windows and mine didn't have Internet ability and I wanted that. And so I'd gone and checked out all these different things and I had a pretty good idea what I was gonna get and JD said, well, if you want that, go ahead and get it.

I said, so much money. And he said, if you want it, get it. And so I prayed and I said, god, bless it or block it. And if I don't hear from you any different about tomorrow, I'm gonna go down and get this one. Well, later that night, the phone rang and this man said, is this Mary Pearl Thompson?

I said, yes, it is. He says, well, this is Santa Claus. I said, okay. And he says, and I'm from South Dakota. And I said, I thought you were at the North Pole.

And he said, no. I'm from Gateway in South Dakota, and I wanted to call you and let you know that a computer is being built for you. It's a state of the art, the the newest, fastest, anything that we have, and it's being sent to you. And he said it won't be there in time for Christmas, but it is on its way. And I said, and who sent this?

He said some elves. And I said, would these elves have a name? And he said, they prefer to remain anonymous. And so I got my computer, I got my color printer, and everything that I'm using to this day. I love my computer, you know, and it's because God has put some very special people in our lives, you know, some very, very special people in our lives, and I am so grateful.

But that's the thing. I never could have taken something like that before. I wouldn't have been worthy of it. I would have felt like I had to do something for somebody else because they did that. And how could you possibly do for someone else?

And there's so many in this people who have been so giving for many, many years, giving and loving and kind and sharing. You know? It's just it's amazing to me. But the gentleman that came to work on my computer and set it up, his name is Mike, and he's an earth person. And, Mike is a computer nerd.

He really is. He'll be the 1st to tell you that, you know. He doesn't deal well with people, he deals with machines. And I said, well, I deal well with people. I don't know Jack about machines.

And so Mike and I decided we would help one another and so I give him lessons on people skills and he gives me lessons on computer stuff. And it's it's worked out really well for us because it's real nice to be able to have somebody, a nonprogram person that you can depend on to pick up the phone and call at 3 o'clock in the morning and go, Mike, you know. And so he's developed some people skills. He doesn't tell me where to go when I do that. Do you know what I mean?

It's a real you know? I used to say all the time and still can sometimes, it's not fair. It's not fair. Be grateful life isn't fair. Because whatever you sow, you reap, but it you don't get it necessarily from where you sow it.

You know? Whatever goes out, what goes around comes around. You know? And you say, I've been so good. Why is this happening?

You know, that's like when this stuff with Dorothy went down. You know? I said, why is this happening? You know? What what is going on?

And then when I got sick and and they were telling me all this bad news, it seemed like every time I, I went to the telephone, every time I went to a doctor, I got more bad news, bad news, bad news. And it's like just send me to another planet. Put me away from here. I've had all the bad news I can stand, you know. Life is gonna keep happening to you, you know.

We're not insulated here from reality. We're just not. But you know I'm glad that I'm not a score keeper because in the long run God has given me so much more. And there's a gentleman from Louisiana, he's a little Cajun guy named Joe, And Joe's he has a little prayer that he likes and I like it too, and it says, thank you god for all you've given me. Thank you god for all you've taken away.

Thank you God for all you've left me. You know, and that's true because there was a lot of things that were taken away, but I've also been very very blessed And I am very grateful for what I have, for what I have left. Self worth used to be a lot from the outside sources for me, but today it's strictly from being that child of God. I don't have to do it because I've done this or that. And I know today that I'm entitled to the best that life has to offer.

And when I look for the best, I get exactly what I need every time, you know. Look to God to give you the best that's for you and you'll get more than you have ever dreamed, you know. And when my self worth was dependent on y'all, shame on me. Shame on me, not shame on you. You know, I looked for my mother to be that kind and loving mother all my life, and mother was to the best that she could be.