The 34th Annual Area 29 Maryland State Convention in Hagerstown, MD

Do it or does He don't? Or do we work on it? You say work to me and you've lost me. You know, I'm a lazy at best. This says step 7 says, humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings in the prayer.

Finally, finally, finally, what Jack told me made sense one day. It just clicked and it's this. When we ask, if I'm gonna ask you, would you pick up this water for me and remove it off the table? Does that mean you're gonna sit there in that chair and work on it? No.

It means BJ is gonna come. She's gonna take this cup of water and she's gonna remove it and sit down with it, and it's gone. If I ask God if I'm entirely ready for him to take this cup of water, he'll take it and it's gone. What I finally found out from Jack is that I know where the cup is and I can go get it anytime I want to. The problem is if I go get that cup from BJ, it doesn't belong to me anymore.

And if I drink that water, it's gonna make me sick. My stomach's gonna hurt because they don't belong to me. That made so much sense to me. Character defects are something that I need to help me survive. Example, my lying.

I'm a liar. I it hurt me so bad that I quit it. I asked God, Please take this lying away from me, and he did. He removed the character defect of lying from me. It no longer belongs to me.

Now I don't do it anymore unless I absolutely have to. I might be in the middle of a sentence and I'm realizing this is not quite true and so I'm gonna confuse you for a minute back up and start back in the truth. I know it because the minute I start lying, my stomach hurts, my throat starts hurting. It don't belong to me, but I have the choice. I have a choice to lie today if I want to.

But see, I don't need that need. I don't have the need. He said, why don't you pray this? God, please remove the need of this character defect in my life so that I'm standing here and I'm telling you I'm a high school dropout. I don't lie about that anymore.

Somehow that just killed me because everybody in the world graduated from high school but me. I'm a high school dropout. I used to lie about that like a rock. I used to lie about my daughter that, her father and I were married and he dah dah dah dah. We were shacked up.

I'm standing here telling you who I am and most of you don't really care. It doesn't make any difference, but it was my life. I lied about it. The only defense I have now is God. I can't defend myself.

If I'm wrong, I can't defend myself. If I'm right, I don't need to. I don't have to explain y'all to me, me to y'all. I don't have to. This is who I am.

God loves me good and bad. He's accepted me good and bad, and that's the defense that I need is my God, my prayer. When you drive me crazy and I won't lie to you, I don't have to lie to you. I can talk to God silently while I'm sitting there grinning at you. God, she's a real witch.

That's the only defense I have is just talk to God. I don't have to lie about nothing unless I choose to, and that is such a freedom. It is such a freedom. It's a character defect. So here I can use again if I choose to, but I just don't choose today because it makes my stomach hurt.

God does and can remove them when we ask him to. I have to work on it. If I have to work on it, I'm a set screw with it forever. I worked on stuff before I got here. Explain to everybody.

Okay. One of the things that I discovered about taking the 6th and 7th step is I take it and I get up off my knees after I've taken it and I act as if it's really been done. I act that way, period. I act like I'm not a liar anymore. I'll tell you the truth.

That's how I act like I'm not a liar. I tell you the truth, period. And sometime down the road, all of a sudden, I'm in a meeting, I'm hearing somebody talk, and I'm thinking, I don't do that anymore. I don't feel that anymore. The character defect has been removed and I don't know when it happened.

I prayed about it and I thought as soon as I got up there'd be a bolt of lightning and the room would kinda vibrate but it doesn't happen that way for me. I just get up and act as if I can't lie anymore so I tell you the truth. And what happens is I find myself later on. I don't do that anymore. Isn't that great?

There's a story my my sponsor tells about the umbrella. God's grace. God's grace removes character defects from me. His grace keeps me in okay ness. His umbrella is over Saturday.

The grace of God is over Saturday for me. Now if I step out of Saturday and try to go into tomorrow, I'm not gonna feel good. The character defects are over there that don't belong to me. Fear, expectations, depressions, what ifs, and I just don't belong over there. So I step back under God's grace, I step back into Saturday and I'm okay.

Now if I step back out of this and go over there to last Thursday when he was mean to me or 10 years ago when I told him this would happen, I feel real bad. I'm in a character defect of blaming or complaining or depression or something. It don't belong to me. So I step back into Saturday under God's grace, under this umbrella, and I am absolutely so fine today. Aren't y'all all just all fine today?

Just fine because we're Saturday. We're here. We're under god's grace, and that's where I wanna be. That's where it makes me feel good is to be here with you feeling okay. I don't wanna go into it yesterday or tomorrow.

I think that's it until we have an experience with making amends. Now I'll tell y'all something, up to this point it's been easy and fun and delightful for me. The next session that we're gonna go through is gonna be hard for me and I'm gonna need for y'all to get me prayed up, okay? I believe in being prayed up because I can't do this by myself. Do y'all hear me?

I can't do this. And I don't wanna stand up here and bone squall and you can't hear me and my mascara run and I'd like to present it in a halfway decent manner. It's painful right now. So I really need for y'all to pray up for me before we come back together. Okay?

Next time, by god, surely you'll be on time. This is the end of session 3, the start of session 4. Hi everybody. I'm Vanois Shaw and I'm a member of Al Anon. I am.

Hi. Well, I swam around the hot tub, hot springs. I feel great. Sure wanna take a nap, but there's just not enough time, is there, when you go out there and play in that water? And it was wonderful.

Thank you for bringing me back. That was really special. Well, when you get, they say, when you have an inventory, you have your list made for the amends. A lot of people say that. We did a little different because the 8th step says, what we're going to talk about this hour, 8th 9th.

8, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And 9 is, made direct amends to whoever possible except when to do so would injure them or others. When I first started off, the thing that she asked me to do was relationships and I read to you out of this 8th step and as you can see thus far where I kind of come from and what I've done up to this point. And it says step 8 is concerned with personal relationships. 1st, we took a look backward, which I've done, and try to discover where I was at fault, which I tried to do.

Next, we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done. And 3rd, having thus cleaned away the debris of our past, we consider how with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the very best possible relationship with every person that we know. So in my list on the inventory, it was destroyed because mine was pretty yucky, my first one, and so we destroyed that. So when we got to the 8th step, it says made a list. I think it's really important for me to remember that.

This says made a list. This doesn't say made a list and ran out. All this said was made a list for the people that we had harmed and became willing to make amends for them all. It doesn't say go do it. Thank goodness.

All I had to do was make the list. All I had to do is be willing, didn't say I had to. So it's like the 4th step. I'm, you know, I'm afraid to write the 4th step because the 5th step comes after it. I don't get in the 5th step.

I'll write an inventory and then I see what to do with it. Same thing with this. I made a list. And, of course, it's my definition plus your definition or his definition or their definition definition. What does harm mean?

What I think is harm, you may not think is harm and vice versa. There was a man that said this, I listened to some tapes, of his 12 twelve step and it was really good and he said that this is how he was told to do it. Make a list of people that you harm. Go to them and say, I know I've harmed you in this way and that way and this way and, will you forgive me? Then say to them, listen to this, say to them, tell me how I have harmed you and what you would like for me to do to take care of it.

Can you imagine such a thing? What have I done to harm you and can you tell me what to do that will fix it? That's a big deal, ain't it? That's really willing to go to any length. That's a big thing.

And I know since I've heard that, which is recent, there's probably some people I probably need to go back to, and we'll have to make another list one of these days to take a look at that because I did what I thought I harmed and, took care of that. Who did I harm? Who's on my list? My parents. My parents were on that list.

They were very hard working people. In my family was my parents, my oldest brother who broke the one who broke his neck. He almost died over and over and over through the years. It was just a long, dreary, tedious thing for my parents. Today, he's, he's almost died several times, not from the accident.

Today, he's almost dying from the stuff he's putting in his nose and in his throat and in his veins. He's had both legs amputated through the years. He's about this long. He weighs about £80. He's the most pitiful looking thing, and he's just hooked on all kinds of stuff.

Next was my brother who was, kind of the star of the family. He kind of took care of everybody. When I was a kid, he took care of me. When I was a teenager, he was out working and he did things for me. He, gave me his car.

He gave me my spending money. He pretty well told me where I could go and where I couldn't go. He was, he was my hero. He, kept people away from me that shouldn't be around me for a long time and, a really neat guy. I have a younger brother, who's just mama's pet.

Yeah. You know, he ain't never done nothing wrong, missed nothing. He was the last kid at home and by that time they had recuperated and things were going well and they bought him a brand new car. They bought me no brand new car. They have he's the only one in our bunch that went to college, graduated.

He's very athletic. He's in the Hall of Fame at Texas Tech for his basketball abilities. He married this cute little girl and they got 2.4 kids and he's got a Ranger and, you know, he's just coming right on up in his company, you know, he ain't done a damn thing wrong yet and it just makes me sick and I just love him better than anything. He's an okay guy. Now my parents, in my madness, told me when the murder happened, my mother said to me, we don't want you coming over here anymore.

We don't want anybody to see you coming in and out of the house. She said to me, if anybody asks if you're our daughter, please don't tell them that you are. And I said okay mama, you know, I understood that. My brother Jimmy, the second brother, he quit speaking to me because of all my antics. He, in 28 years didn't speak to me.

We'd be around the family, and I wasn't present. I mean, he walked past me. My hero wouldn't have anything to do with me. It was probably one of the most painful things in my family because he was my hero. I just I just loved him a lot.

When I divorced my practicing alcoholic, I had 2 kids. I was in this program. I was in this fellowship. Being a high school dropout, some of the things that I was taught to do was follow directions and I got directions from 3 different totally complete different people out of 3 different worlds. They weren't even in Al Anon that suggested that I might be become a nurse.

Now I had never thought about being a nurse. I never had a, you know, a dream of being a nurse. I never played with Band Aids when I was a kid. I get carsick and I just couldn't imagine bedpans. It's just but somehow or another I got in nursing school.

It was just a miracle story all in its own. People that, that love me help me get through school. I worked at the same drugstore for 10 years because I don't know what else to do in helped me get through school. Some people in the program helped me get school. One of the men in the program named Bedford helped me get on Texas rehab and paid my way through the school.

A lady helped me get on welfare, pretty lady, lovely lady, Put me on welfare, boy, and that was a trip. And people in my group did things for me and and they helped me. They picked me up and they gathered me and they took me to nursing school. By the time I got in nursing school, I pretty well worked these steps. I was told how to do these steps by my sponsor.

It says that when we make that list, we put our own emotions aside. We just make them. When I do make the list, I take it to my sponsor. I don't go out on my own to make amends. I did once before I told her before she kinda got on me.

There was a lady in my group I didn't like. She was just weird and, one time she did something nice and I liked her. So I went to her one night and I said, you know, I just used to like you but I like you now. I was making amends. I just thought, you know, that was what you're supposed to do so I made a mentor and then I was so proud.

Now I went and told my sponsor that I made amends and I told her what I did and she all the color kind of drained out of her face. And so she set me down, explained to me, number 1, that I had made a list and number 2, that I didn't make amends without checking out with her and number 3, that I make amends. I just dumped my garbage on this lady. That I had felt bad about my own feelings for her, which she didn't know and went and informed her about it. And as I've talked to somebody that, you know, what goes around comes around, always is full circle for me.

And several years later I was in the group and this girl came up, she says, I need to make amends to you. I thought that's okay, you know, they driving home in the car and I thought, I wonder what I did to her. I didn't do anything to her. What did I do? I wonder what I said.

I spent, you know, next couple of days pissed off at her because I didn't, she didn't tell me what I did. She just didn't like me now she liked me and my mind is tripped off. So it's dangerous to do those things. So I made the list of these people in my life and I took them to my sponsor and we, she and I, used some good judgment on it. What to do and what not to do.

Some of these demands were a direct amend. It was going to someone and make an amend. Now I don't know if you're the alanine of my type, but I've already told you to say I'm sorry just it just chokes me. She said to me, these that I go to make amends to, I'm careful about the way I say it because I'm just really subject to and I just laugh at my husband. He's always doing this, you know, but I'm subject to say, well, I'm really sorry that I hurt your feelings.

However, I just really wouldn't have done that if you hadn't. She's we don't do that. She said, this is the way you go and make a direct amend. And this is what you say, for my part in our disagreement, I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?

Then I'm done with it, and it's up to the other person what they do with it. Well, that's a tough stuff. It is for me. What's that? Some were letters.

I had to write a letter with she and I decided to, write a letter to my brother Jimmy because he had moved down to South Texas and he wouldn't allow me in his home. He had quit even letting my children in his home and he didn't hardly speak to my kids. So I knew there was no way I could he was unapproachable. So she said to write him a letter and so I did. I wrote him a letter and I told him that I was in this program and and what my life was about and that I had humiliated my family, and I knew it in in him and I had broken his trust.

And that I was really wrong, and I was trying to live a a different lifestyle, and I hope that he would please forgive me and I mailed it. And, of course, I never heard a thing. Nothing. My mother said to me one time, she's, I'm gonna say this to you and I'm not gonna say anything else, but your brother got your letter. I said thanks, and that was all that was ever said.

They never spoke to me and it was never any different. But I had done what I needed to do. In my head was because I heard a little drift from down that way, from down south Texas, that he might be drinking, and if he was, then I probably knew what it was that was going on with him and I resigned myself to this. I didn't accept it. I resigned myself to this.

That there would come a time when it would be okay. Eventually, I had it in my head, everybody's gonna get sober and eventually everybody's gonna work the steps and eventually it's all gonna be okay. But he was the one in my life that didn't do that. I made amends to my brothers and it was accepted and it was my other 2 brothers accepted. It was done okay.

I made amends to my children and to my parents. I graduated from nursing school and I was asked by my class to give the class response, which is pretty neat deal. It's pretty big deal. And I was given the class response and I was looking out in the audience. It was in a huge church and there was probably 8 100 6, 800 people there.

It was wonderful. And I looked over here and here was all my AA family, just bunches of them, you know, just it was really exciting. And I looked down the middle of that bunch and there was my mama and my daddy. They were sitting there and I saw my daddy and he was crying and he was telling somebody that's my daughter up there. They were telling people I was their daughter.

They didn't do anything different. I had a different lifestyle. I had made amends to them and I had changed. And what a neat deal it was. The results of amends sometimes just blow me away.

You know, there's promises about the amends and I'll read them a little bit, but the amends that I made and what comes about them is that full circle stuff. This employer that helped me get through, school, who helped me with financially. He had a sister that worked at the drugstore with me and she was a real witch. I mean, smiling, know it all witch. And I didn't like her at all.

And when I was first around the program, I remember hearing this in in the meetings and they said a lot back then. They said, if you don't like somebody, write a list of everything about them you don't like. Just put it down there. One, mentally I was, she's a witch. She thought I'd know it all.

She just tried to tell me what to do. She didn't know what to do. I had this long list and then they said, Rhonda said this, I'll never forget it. Then Rhonda said, when you get through, go back and put your name at the top. Well, that was kind of startling to me.

You know, I thought I was not like her. However, I put her on my list. She was on my list, practically the first one on there, which is amazing to me because that was a nothing. The only thing I did was try to drag her over the counter one day. You know?

And I still didn't like her and she didn't like me. Because she was one of the first ones on my now I've got this family that I tore apart, but she's on my list. Isn't that amazing? So right after I made the list, guess who I saw? I hadn't seen her in 10 years.

I hadn't seen her in 10, 12 years, hadn't seen her. Nowhere. Didn't know horse, you're still in Texas or kingdom come. And guess who I saw 2 or 3 days later? It's the damnest thing I ever saw in my life.

I went to a shower, opened the door, walked in. She's the first person I saw. And for me, at that time, I made a great huge amen. I said, well, how how are you? She said, fine.

How are you? And I said, great, and passed right on by. And that's best I can do. Now this is what I know about amends. This is what I know about the God that I love and understand and try to be a service to, but there's full circles.

He gave me another opportunity to make amends and if I screwed it up the second time, I'm sure he would have gave me the 3rd and the 4th and the 5th because he loves me that much. A few years later, I ran into her again at the drugstore, her brother's drugstore, and I said, hi. She said, hi. Let's have cup of coffee. And I said, sure.

It's like we're old friends or something. And we went we sat down and we started having a cup of coffee and she said, no, I've got cancer and I'm dying. I said, well, I'll be damned. My daddy's got cancer and he's dying. And she said, you know, I my it's just tough.

My family, you know, they just won't accept this and they won't let me talk to them. I said, well, I understand. I just can't talk to my daddy And she said, I want to tell them so many things and they won't listen. I said, I know. There's so many things I wanna tell my daddy and I can't.

She said, tell me and let me tell you. So I sat there and told her all the things I'd like to tell my daddy and couldn't, and she sat there and told me all things she'd like to tell her family, her loved ones, and they wouldn't let her. And we cried together and we loved together. And because of that meeting, because of that, a man was made between us. I was able to go back home, crawl in the middle of my daddy's bed and sit there and cry with him and say, daddy, I'm gonna miss you so bad and I love you a lot.

It's gonna be real hard when you die. And he said he knew it and he loved me, and I was his favorite kid. And I'll carry that, you know, from now on I stood by my daddy's bed for about a week and took care of him and I wouldn't, you know, I just was the one that took care of him and I did I did a really good job. And the guy who, helped me get through school, I was able to take care of him when he died. The lady who put me on welfare, I was able to take care of her when she died.

Sweet things, sweet things. This is a man named Bob White, who, Marcy's husband that y'all know that, died of cancer, and I was able to go down there and sleep with Bob. We, I I was able to take care of him. So these are men that they're just they're so full circle. They're so amazing.

I was able to to tell my children I've been the best I could for you. I've helped you the best I know how. What a miracle. I've asked my daughter to forgive me, and she has. What a miracle.

We're still working on that. What miracles? What miracles? When my, when my brother married, he had 2 kids, Tanya and Butch, which I just love them both better than anything. And he had this he married this weird lady.

She's an alcoholic. You know, our family is surrounded with it, so it makes it good sense of what's going on. Tanya, my little niece, I absolutely loved her better than anything in this world. Just she looks just like me. Just drive those people crazy.

She acts a lot like me, and her mother would say to her with complete and total disdain, you're just like the noise. It suited me and Tanya just fine because we just loved each other so much. Tonya is an alcoholic. On drugs pretty bad, real bad. Tonya had a child out of wedlock and then child had a.

She had another child out of wedlock and my brother quit speaking to her. He tried to help her once and then she would accept the help and that was the end of it. He just wouldn't speak to her. He just literally blocked her out of his life. He never laid eyes on his grandchildren.

2 sweet, precious little girls. When my daughter had a year of sobriety, we went back to Lubbock for her. My stepdaughter, my husband, I went back to Lubbock to be with her. She asked me to give her her year chip and that need. And my niece found out that I was going to come in town through my drunk brother, not her dad, and ask if I'd look her up.

My mother had asked my little niece not to come to her house because my little niece had embarrassed the family. She was so cute. I mean, she just did stuff that was wonderful. I mean, they took she's she and her hot head boyfriend stole stuff and they had stolen so much and put in this apartment and there was so much stolen stuff in there that the police had to go in the U Haul trailer to get it out of there. And the newspaper come took pictures of it.

Alright. And there she was on the front page about U Haul trailer and my mama just threw a fit. So my mama asked this little girl not to come in and out of her house. She heard I was coming and so she asked if the word would be get sent to me that she liked to see me and, of course, I want to see her and finally got a hold of her and went picked her up and she weighed, I don't know, £80, £90 a little skinny thing. She had on 2 pair of pants so that stay on, 2 pair of Levi's.

She was dirty. Her hair was dirty. I finally found her sitting on the curb with this little kid, just you know dirty little wet kid in her lap And we got her and we took up my mama's house and my stepdaughter, 12 stepped, that little girl. It was so painful for me I couldn't stay in there. I had to go outside.

My my daughter, Tracy, couldn't stay in there. It was so painful her her and her cousin have been so close off of the years. It was so painful. Her she couldn't hear it. She couldn't listen to it, and Sheila 12 stepped, that little niece of mine, and we took her to her first AA meeting that night.

My daughter's first AA birth date was my niece's first AA meeting, and my stupid brother, he missed the whole thing. Connie has been in and out. She got some sobriety and then she lost it and she got it again. She lost it. A couple of months ago, she went to my brother.

He had lost a lot of things due to his drinking and he was living on a houseboat and she went out there with her little, her little daughter, who had heard about her granddaddy but never seen him, and she went out, she got on this dock, and she walked out there and and, my brother was there with some other people and he turned and saw her and said, well, what do you want? She said, well, we just come see you, Deborah. I wanted to see who you were and and I just needed to to see you. I just needed to tell you that I loved you. He says it's kinda late for that, ain't it?

See, I did. I guess it is. You're busy. He said, yes. I am.

And he turned his back on. And she left. And This poor guy, you know, he just didn't know how to live, I guess, because he took a gun and killed himself. Never forgiven that girl. Never forgiven me.

Just a alcoholic yucky death, you know. This makes me hate alcoholism. I don't hate my brother. I hate alcoholism. I hate what it does to people and my old niece is just, you know, she had some sobriety and, she lost it during Christmas because of this.

He died right before Christmas. Thanks. And, it has been so hard. I know that many of you in here have experienced this. It's just damn tough that you just don't know what how to do it.

You just don't know how to do it. And this little girl is, 30 years old and, she's drunk. She lost her sobriety and she's just drunk and she just doesn't know what she don't know how to live and she keeps calling me and. Yeah, we were. I went back for that.

And I swore I would never go in his house, but I went back for that. To support my mom and take care of my mama. It's just such a mess, I mean, everybody there was drinking That's the only way they know how to handle that and I saw myself having to totally disengage myself from my family and I heard them talking about this guy. I heard them talking about Jimmy and I thought, I wonder who they're talking about. I don't know him and I sit in this house that he had bought my little nephew, a 100,000 dollars house, a gorgeous house, he'd give it to him for wedding presents and Tanya's living across town in a squalor, he didn't give her a nickel.

The disease of alcoholism is just yucky. And I went out in the backyard and I thought, god, you know, what is this? You know, what is this? And it dawned on me that I hadn't accepted his disease. I hadn't accepted his unforgiveness.

I had resigned myself to it and it was painful when it came to it. It was just and then I remembered probably in his way in his way, he did what he could do for me with what he could do with forgiveness and not forgiveness and all that stuff. When my daddy died, my children were in school. And one of the few words my my brother ever said to me is he came in there, he said, Benoit, would you like for me to go get your children out of school and tell them? And I said, yeah, please.

And he went and got my kids and he was kind to them. He pulled it out of school and brought them over my mother's, and I thought when I was standing out in that backyard, that's probably the only way he knew how to do it. That's the best way he could do it, and I've got to accept that and I've got to live with it and go on. It's made me think all again about amends. It makes me think about forgiveness because as far as I know, he's the only one who hasn't forgiven me in my whole life that I walked up to and say I was wrong.

Isn't that marvelous? It's just marvelous. He's the only one I can think of. That made me, you know, woah, who have I not forgiven? Who has come to me and I've not forgiven them?

Who in my illness and who in my judging? What would happen if you get a phone call at 7 a. M. Like that and they're gone? Because that's what happened.

7 a. M. I got this one phone call and it changed a lot a lot of people's lives And I had to take a look at who's in my life that I have not forgiven. Who do I owe them into? Who do I need to straighten things out with?

What do I need to do with it? Who do I need to make direct amends to today? And what a relief and a joy and a wonder it was because I can only really think of truly, in all honesty, one person that I know of that I've harmed, that I probably hadn't really squared away with and I need to do that. Isn't that glorious? That's the promise of this program that these things will happen.

What it says is At the conclusion of the discussion of step 9 in the big book, we find some remarkable promises as follows. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are halfway through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.

No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. The feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook for life will change.

Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that god is doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Are these exact what is it? Extravagan.

Extravagan. I couldn't say it. Promises, we think not. They're being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

What a glorious set of promises. The directions for me that helped me get through all of them are one of my time in this book and I went through there once and I marked off what it says to get these promises. Exactly what do I do? And end into action And here are some general principles which we find that guide us. 1, remind ourselves that we had decided to go to any length for a spiritual experience, any length, and making amends any length.

We ask that we'd be given strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be. If we have domestic troubles, we take care of that. I had a few. I don't know about y'all. If we're not sure what he or she knows, should we tell them?

Not always, we think, that's why we need to make the list. Perhaps there are some cases when the utmost frankness is demanded and I love this. It says this is what I just love. Listen to it now. The alcoholic is like a tornado roaring his way through the lives of others.

Yep. Don't that sound wonderful? Hearts are broken. Sweet relationships are dead. Affections have been uprooted.

Selfish and inconsiderate habits have kept the home in turmoil, and we had a part in it. We had a part in it. I always want to think, well, he's the tornado, not me. We had a part in it. We ought to sit down with the family and frankly analyze the past as we now see it, being very careful not to criticize.

Their defects may be glaring, but the chances are that our own actions are partly responsible. So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness, and love. The spiritual life is not a theory we have to live it. This probably is my favorite thing in this whole book. When my current husband was trying to decide whether or not he really wanted to marry me, if he really wanted to take a chance on marriage.

He was so full of fear. He picked up this book and he started reading one night and he saw the spiritual life is not a is is not a theory. We have to live it and that made his decision to propose to me. I love it. Our behavior will convince them more than our words.

There may be some wrongs which we can never fully write. We don't worry about them if we could honestly say to ourselves that we would write them if we could. Some people cannot be seen. We send them an honest letter. There may be a valid reason for postponement in some cases, but we don't delay if we can.

We should be sensible, tactful, considerate, and humble without being servile or scraping. As God's people, we stand on our feet and we don't crawl before anyone. What a marvelous thing. What a marvelous way to live. When I found out about making amends and straightened myself up and got those the majority of them down and the wreckage of my past year pretty well has been taken care of.

We read the promises about the 9th step and then one day we were having a few of us got off and had a 12 step weekend similar to this big book study and I read this and it just absolutely it was so wonderful that I always try to read it again and again and again and you all have heard this a lot of times, but I'm gonna read it anyway. Henry Ford once made a wise remark to the effect that experience is the thing of supreme value in life. That is true only if one is willing to turn the past into good account. We grow by our willingness to face and rectify errors and convert them into assets. Our past thus becomes the principal asset of the family and frequently it is almost the only one, my past.

This painful past may be of infinite value to other families still struggling with their problem. We think each family that has been relieved owes something to those who have not, and when the occasion requires, each member of it should only be too willing to bring former mistakes, no matter how grievous, out of their hiding places. Showing others who suffer how we were given help is the very thing which makes life seem so worthwhile to us now. This is my favorite line out of this paragraph. Cling to the and the dark past is the greatest possession you have, the key to life and happiness for others.

With it, you can avert death and misery for others. It is possible to dig up past misdeeds so they can become a blight and a bearable plague and get it out of other people's lives. When I go and I make amends to you, then it's done and I can bring this up anytime now. Forgiveness is, I was told, recall without pain. So I can recall these things, most of them without pain.

I'm still grieving my brother and it's still hard for me to talk about it. It still comes up. And there'll be a time when I can probably talk about this without a whole lot of pain. But I've got to because it could be the key to life for somebody else. Absolutely.

So when I get through with that, I'm at step 10 and step 10 says, promptly now, keep this thing cleaned up and the instructions on step 10 are in the book. I love them. Step 10 and a lot of it I do almost on a daily basis, not always because sometimes I'm out on the road, but when you're talking about prayer and meditation and people wonder how to do it, this is one of the things that I always do. It it just tells me what to do line for line for line. My husband and I have a good time with step 10.

We have nicknamed it a promptly. You owe me a promptly and when we do it instead of having to really do it the right way, I just say, okay, promptly, promptly, promptly, you know. Promptly, it it depends on who you are and what you're talking about. That's what promptly means. Right?