Steps 4 through 9 at the 2nd Annual Stay Sober For Keeps Workshop in Laguna Niguel, CA

All right, I'm I'm still JK, I'm an alcoholic.
I am an aposta coma. That was good food.
Woo. Go get going. I mean
too many times. I mean this four step where we're at it. I mean, I mean, have you ever somebody, I remember being an old school AA and somebody would say they were on their four step and it was like the people in the group would be like doing hell marries. I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. We'll pray for you and
this is not I mean I and and it's best through my own experiences is you know what is as I got that last desire, Chip and I and I walked. I started on this path and, and lo and behold,
within two weeks, I'm at this point, my 4th step is complete.
You know, my sponsor after the third step gave me the hug and he sat me down and he went over the instructions for the 4th step. And he uses these little forms to keep us focused on the task at hand here. But you know, as good as I feel on the third step, right? And I've told you about some great experiences I've had doing third steps. As great as I feel after my third step, there's still a whole bunch of of garbage blocking me from God.
And if I don't get to the causes, and if the causes of what's blocking me from God, I'm going to drink again.
And that's why at the bottom of the page it tells me next and at once vital and crucial, right? This is important. As good as I feel in three, there's a whole bunch of stuff blocking me. And as I relate it back to the third step, my job is to stay close to God and perform his work well. After I've done my third step, God wants to see me in action. And part of that action is me getting my pen and paper and writing my four step, not thinking about it,
doing it. My actions show God how willing I am not to pick up a drink. And we used a little forms. I mean the forms are based out of this book, right?
Milk sour Mom didn't bail me out of jail the last time.
Her this, this, that. That's how I start the inventory. I just go down the list, right? That all the names first, the people play, you know, all of that stuff first. Then what did they do to me?
I mean, it's laid out precisely in this book. I don't need the 1st, 5th step I did was, I mean, as one of those cathartic ones. It was in 1996. I'd moved back from Puerto Rico and the guy told me how to do it and I did it. And I had like 63 or 68 pages front and back of my stuff
and when I went over to this guy's house on a Saturday morning and it was like AI mean literally it was an 8 hour ordeal of me reading this stuff. And it was, it was kind of cool for me because I hadn't shared a lot of that stuff. It was a nice cathartic experience at the moment of me dumping all of this garbage on this poor God's kid. I don't know why he didn't like hang himself from like the ceiling fan.
But the problem with that is, is I did not understand the truth.
I was all into the justification. Well, the milk didn't get it's supposed to get here on Monday. It got here on Wednesday. And it's this and it's that. And it's like, I mean, like I can make Doctor Phil weep on my story. I'll do it. All right. But I don't if I don't understand the truth. This is all for not. And so I get these things. Well, I don't have I had one guy. Well, I'm a Buddhist. I don't have any resentments. And I'm like, you know what, pal? If I if you were drunk on a bar stool, you'd tell me all about it. All right, so let's just cut to the chase here,
all right?
We say their prayers and we get our papers out and we start writing. And I do the resentments first, and then I go through the same thing with the fears. Treatment center number one. I tell you, I didn't wasn't afraid of anything. Look at the crap that I do out there on the streets. I ain't afraid of nothing. By the time I got sober, I realized I was afraid of everything. Guys mask fear in different ways. How do we mask fear?
Oh, we'll just beat you up for it, right? We're going to fear. I'll kill you, all right?
We. I had fear of staying sober, fear of not staying sober, fear of being in love, not being in love, fear of this, fear of that. Have you ever like pulled up to a place and saw somebody's car or you thought it was a car so you just went on down the road? Fear, that's a fear. I had fear, fear of midgets. I had it all on my
just. It was one of my things. I was traumatized as a child.
I've all worked through that.
I had fear of everything
and it asked me some questions in the book the sex conduct. You know, too many guys. Mars, I have one of my buddies. He relapsed and he had one of the anyway, he relapsed and came back in and was got another sponsor and was doing it. And I I literally, I think he worked on his sex inventory for six months. I mean, he's going back through phone logs,
emails
and my buddy what what's up? And you know, he's asking me and I'm like, dude, you're missing the whole point of this exercise. This ain't a race, baby. God doesn't care. This is not who has the most or all. How did you treat them?
You know, how did I treat these girls in my life that I loved
and that, yeah, it always gets quiet. Nobody, nobody's joking around at this point. Everybody's like sitting there like, Oh, no,
but this is what I got to tell my guys. This is it's it's laid out in a simple format if you really want to get down to nuts and bolts. How they did it a lot of times if you were a Clarence Snyder guy back in the day, they got you out of the hospital. You did a third step prayer to get out of the hospital. They took you to the house and when you sat down at the kitchen table, you thought the heats off, they shoved you a piece of paper and said who you mad at?
And in one afternoon you got out of the hospital. You did a step three, you did a Step 4, you did a step five, you did your six year seven and you're on your eight step list. And one afternoon.
Screw 30 days
so this keeps us focused on the task at hand. This is not a long. It's not fun by any means.
The reason they haven't done in this point is this stuff can be very traumatic, it can be very painful. It can be a burden. It has been a burden on our souls and our spirits forever and ever. We don't want to spend a lot of time right now. All this crap.
You know, the little sheets that I use, it's got a little column for the names. It's got a little column for the cause. Milk Sour. It's not. Well, it was the 5th of June and the barometric pressure was rising and we had heard our song on the radio and then she, no, Debbie dumped me at Christmas. Did you get it?
We'll get into all the details later. I'm going to get a chance at my fist step to plead my case.
That's the beauty of this. I'm going to get it very small chance, but I'm going to get the chance right. But we don't want to spin and that's why they haven't done the way they do it. We don't right left to right like we're used to. We do the columns one is very simple. Cliff told me the instruction said go home and start. You got a week to complete it or else. So I went home. I had my little sheets of paper and I had my pen. I said a prayer, dear God, I'm starting on my force that please help me be honest. Column one Mom,
Dad, brother, sister, James, Joel, Debbie, Jeanette, Bubba, Bubba, Bubba. Until I can't write no more. Tell God thanks.
Now go back up to the middle column. Beside each name, write a little note to myself why Mom didn't bail me out of jail. Debbie dumped me at Christmas. This, this, this, this. Tell God thanks. Go back up to the top. What did it affect? Did it affect my personal ambitions? All that stuff, right? Check, check, check, check. Check,
right? Maybe I see it, maybe I don't, but we're getting through it now. We go to the 4th column. What is my role? Was I selfish? Was I dishonest? Was I self seeking? Was I fearful? Whatever. Maybe I see them all. Maybe I don't see any of them. There was a few on my forcep. I didn't see a one. I tell my guys, don't write what you think you want. I'm going to you write what comes to your head. If it pops in your head, write it. If it don't, don't. If there's something, some extenuating circumstances and you feel the need
little heart of hearts, to explain it, flip over the page and write it all out. I don't care. The idea is to get it done. To get it done. Why? Because the actions I take show God I am willing to go to any length not to pick up the drink. I tell God thanks. I move on to my fears, list my fears, answer the questions. Sex, conduct. List those relationships.
It's not that hard. But if I sit and Stew on it, I will make a mountain out of a molehill like nobody's business. And I'll never do it. I'll never, ever do it left to my own devices. And so, you know, it's like they say S rolls downhill. This is the way my sponsor did it to him. I know that's the way Joe Mcqueeney did it to him. And I know that's the way that's the way I do it with my guys. And I give him the same instructions and the same parameters and we go over the same stuff and they get it done. If something pops up in the week, you know what I'm saying that I don't have
split on how to take guys through the steps. We don't have, well, we, we're starting on Monday and by, you know, 183 hours will be every guys different.
There's guys that I know that can read with the best of them. They don't understand a darn thing. So I've got to literally sit down with them and do page by page and read this stuff and explain this stuff to him. I'm not rushing anybody,
but if I understand step one, I've had my last drink. The clock is ticking. If I don't get to the power, I am going to drink.
End of story. So that's why we don't waste anytime. I mean it. I mean, I guess I could pontificate on this a long time, but it's it ain't that hard when you have cliffs sitting there telling you it's pretty easy and shoving the paper your way. But here's where the rubber meets the road. I'm either going to say the prayer and start riding or I'm going to do what I used to do and it start justifying
and then I can start asking people in a a land. Well, now listen, I gave me a week. A week.
You can't do that in a week. You need years.
No, see,
thank God for Cliff Bishop and guys like him because he knows the truth. And the truth was is I had a small window of time
in my personal history to get sober.
And if I'm taking a guy through the work, who in the hell am I
to get between a man and his God?
My job is just to arrange the meeting, right? Like like Schwarzkopf said, my job is to arrange the meeting, right? All my job is to prepare them and give them the instructions so that they can do the work and shows so that that by through taking their actions, they will get to the power that saves their life. And I'm not going to try to keep them at Bay and do this long, drawn out cathartic.
I'm not a behavioral scientist. I have no idea what they do. I just do what we do and it seems to work.
And if there's something that I forgot or something that stuck in my craw or if there's something that comes, I was blacked out. A whole lot of the 90s. There has been stuff come up after my 4th and 5th step that I've had to call on and say, dude, all the sudden I remember this. You know, we have a way out, right? And we it's clear cut. But the idea was, was to get for Cliff was to get me in a position to where I was open up to the truth
and in, in seeing that and, and, and like Myers, my I can't remember exactly how you said it, but but getting all the getting rid of all the stuff that I think is me being getting to the real me and, and, and for me, it was just Wham, bam, in, in, in you're out and see the truth. And it was ugly.
But we got busy and we got we got, we started doing it and that's the way my guys, we do it. And you know, I've got one here today that he can attest to the same fact. We didn't. We wasted no time. Let's get in, roll up our sleeves and let's find out what's blocking us from God. And the actions I take show God I'm willing to go to any length. And I think that's probably where I'm going to end up. If your cat's got any questions,
this would be a great time because I know four step stuff, there's probably a million questions.
Any questions?
Anybody? Anybody. Bueller
Yes, we have a mic coming your way.
Is it a
OK, now it's on Oh, what if you worked or I have this girl that I worked with and we did steps 1-2 and three together and then sent her away, You know, on her way. She got steps 1-2 and three started on her 4th. But she between the week that I gave her to do her 4th, she drank again. Do we, I mean, I was like, do I continue with the 4th or do I start with the first again? Or, you know, I guess I just, no, I mean, and that comes up, but
obviously in that situation, to me, it would be like,
there might be something missing in one, right? I may not have a complete grasp of one in my true situation otherwise, you know? So we're going to. Oh, yeah, I totally get it. You know, lots of times people say that I've said that. Oh yeah, I understand my situation. But as long as I had a plan, as long as I felt that it didn't fully apply, as long as I was special,
You don't really understand me.
Nobody's been where I've at. As long as I had that going on, I was always going to gravitate towards not doing it. And so if I have a guy in that situation, we're definitely tap the brakes on Step 4. Let's go back and revisit step one and see where we're missing the pieces. Because somewhere out there, you seem to think you can drink successfully, or you seem to think that you can control the situation, or you can just pull up when you need to. So you don't. And obviously that's not where I'm at.
Yeah. So yeah, we definitely backtrack.
Yes, yes, Sir. Wait. OK, we got one up here.
I
on page 66, there's a bottom paragraph. It says we turn back to the list for it held the key to the future. My question is, is my interpretation and, and yours might be different, but I'd like to hear hear from you. We were prepared to look at it from a different entirely different angle. How did we how do you approach that and where, what, what columns are you looking at or what are you looking at from a they're leading us into the 4th column. Here's here's here's my general assessment on my 4th step.
Debbie broke up with me at Christmas. I hate her.
She must die, right?
Yes. Do we need to go any further? That's my assessment of the situation.
Me preparing to look at it from a different angle is where did I go wrong? What did I, how did I contribute to that Right. It's not like she just woke up one day and said I hate JK now.
I right. So I got to look at it going on in that paragraph, it says we began to see that the world and its people really dominated us, you know? So here I am stewing it because all I know is the first three parts.
She broke up with me at Christmas. I hate her, she must die.
I've moved on five years from now. Even when he ran into me at home or bound, the first time that was still a topic in my head was this guy. This happened years prior. Guess what? She has moved on.
I mean, while I'm drinking myself to death, thinking about something that happened back then, right? I'll show her what am I doing drinking myself to She owns me and doesn't even know it. That those things, those resentments, those fears
own me. So I got to look at it from a different perspective, the perspective of being of
column four stuff, selfish, self-centered, egotistical, full of fear. How did I harm these people? You know, did I put myself in a position to be harmed? Was my own self seeking motives? Did it get me in that situation? Was I dishonest about the situation? Those are all the things that I look at. Too many times in a a land we say we are going to look at my part. Well, that's not really true. It is my part. But having my part implies that you have a part. You may not have a part.
I looked at my wrongs,
right? We look for our own mistakes, right? So did I answer the the the question is, is that this my interpretation? You can say it's I'm looking at it from the perspective that person looking at me in my faults it you know, and where I what my part was, for instance, as she broke up with me at Christmas. I hate her. I want to kill her. You know that that's my inventory. The 4th is being is just that what
does she look at me and and my selfishness, myself centeredness and so on. How what I'm trying to say is is that I'm looking at it from from the person or the person's perspective looking back at me in that 4th column. How do you I know you can put you just check marks. That's what you're talking about. No, well,
on the sheet check marks, yes, right or however you want to do it or just write them out. I was selfish. I was, but they're asking me where I was selfish. That's what the book says, not was I selfish? The book is asking me where I was selfish, right, So that's a whole different thing. It's easy to say I'm selfish, self-centered. You get statistical full of fear. Where was I selfish? Where was I egotistical? Where was I self seeking? Those are the deep seated questions
asked about we got to get to the exact nature of our defects.
It's one thing to understand that I'm selfish and self-centered. It's a whole other thing to understand the my selfishness carries many forms.
So yes, we're looking at it from a different perspective, whether it's through the eyes of others or more specifically, what were my mistakes? You know, that's that's the do new perspective.
Yes, one up here
I feel like a candidate at a debate.
My name my name is Randy Harris, alcoholic chapter seven group. I had a question about between the 3rd and 4th column. Do we are we able to actually have an honest look at our part in it without doing what was told me the four step prayer when we asked God that we could show them the same tolerance, pity and patients that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend?
Do we because I was when I was taken through my four step I top to bottom person cause
affected then I ask God to help me from being angry at that person that way I could take an honest look at. He told me it was called the bridging prayer. Is that something that the primary purpose group encourages or is that actually because it to me, it looks like it does through the the reading of the literature that,
you know, there's a prayer to be said before we actually look at the 4th column. And then I'm glad. I don't understand. Is says we avoid a tally, a retaliation in an argument. Who are we retaliating and arguing with? Because this is our inventory. Are we arguing with ourselves? Well, it almost looks like it's a preliminary to a nice type of man's almost. Yeah. Well, thank you. No, that's that's good stuff.
I'm trying to get this out succinctly
when I when I'm in the physical process of doing the inventory, Yes, these are my instructions all right. And and in writing these stuff on the page can be troublesome and we've got a prayer for that. Like you're saying, obviously at that position, I'm not a,
I look at that little prayer almost on a, on a day-to-day basis, you know, of, of
hey, the world's full of knuckleheads. And instead of playing ball with them, I'm going to realize in my head and my critical thinking that these people are kind of twisted and I'm going to see where I can be helpful these people. But the same thing applies to my, to my four step. But I didn't go into the, for me personally, I didn't get into the depth of it because at that point in the line, I could, my eyes were barely uncrossed.
All right? It was a simple process for me to get the stuff on paper and, and look for the mistakes that I may have, may or may not or think I've made in those situations and try to be as honest as I can about each situation. All right. And like I said, there's some that I didn't check. I have anything listed up. I didn't see where I was selfish. This one lady, she an illegal immigrant, ran a red light and totaled my car. OK,
and I had insurance and she didn't, right? I didn't really see my part. I was not being selfish or dishonest or egotistical when I wrote. The 4th
fist step was a different answer because there's a whole back story behind that and I was all of the above. But but
did I answer the question? Now I feel like Rick Perry,
that's why he's not running. Yeah. OK. We'll pass off.
That's a great question. That's a great question on this stuff because the, the, the unless we can understand, it's interesting that if you start down the bottom page 66, we'll look at this real quick. We got like 5 minutes.
This was our course. We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick. Now this is a novel idea. They're introducing us to an idea that we'd never even thought of before. I'm only thinking of the drama. She's a mean girl. That's as far as it went. And now they're they're, they're getting us to look at this thing from a different perspective. This is sort of answering his question too. At the same time on this thing, though, we did not like their symptoms. This is column one and call, I mean column two and column three.
But we did not like their symptoms and the way these disturbed us. They, like ourselves, were sick too.
So now I'm beginning to look at these things from a different perspective that perhaps these guys are spiritually battling the same battle that I'm battling, which which puts them in a in instead of an adversarial kind of a relationship. All of a sudden it puts us kind of side by side heading down the same path. And it's an interesting thing how much drama you can get over with if you understand that they're struggling too. And the saddest part about that stuff is guys, is it oftentimes we begin to realize that they're struggling with the same stuff that we are
a program to deal with it, which is it? Which I mean, which is a death warrant for them. I mean, this is a disaster for those guys. At least we can see clear and, and walk to the through the, through the deal. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity and patience we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. Wow, what a great what a great way to look at this thing as we begin to scoop up some of these ideas and and and and address these things.
Yes,
he asked a simple question. Don't you don't have a mic, brother. Why don't we talk about this right as soon as we get done off this podium, OK, because the taping, it's going to sound goofy, even goofier than me. OK, the answer that stuff guys, I think so let's let's go take a break and then and then if we come back, if we have some more questions about this stuff, then we'll talk about that. And we're kind of heading into the homestretch around this 12 step stuff, which is really the reason we came to talk about this stuff. Thanks guys.
How do you all, you know, what's really cool is that other than some people going to sleep a minute ago, I mean, most of you guys are still here, which is a, which is a big deal like that. You know, in, in, in Europe, they had this, this, this idea that in these workshops, it's what they want to do is they want to just dump as much stuff into a weekend as they can. And so the, the workshop start like at noon on Friday and they'll go all day Friday, Saturday, they start at 8:00 and they go all the way through to like 8:00 or 9:00 at night. And it's just like it's
beating. I mean, it's just like you, you just, I mean, it's, it's it, I mean, I got plenty to say. I mean, I, I can fill some time. And then they get up Sunday morning and they do it again and go until like 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon on Sunday. It's just two dad gum much. And so these, these guys that are organizing these things we said, guys, listen, it's not that we can't, it's not that we can't bring some stuff to talk about because we can. The deal is, though, is that I don't care how entertaining you are. I don't care how engaging you are as a speaker,
you physically can't sit there that much.
You just can't do it. At some point in time, you just go clink. And I'm thinking about, did I get the stuff out of the dryer? Did I, you know, I mean, I just got a million things. My head just starts going like this and, and it's, and we're going to, we're going to avoid that at all cost. Because the reality of what this is, is what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to leave here today feeling a bit engaged and a bit energized to go to your, to your respective meeting places and, and, and this kind of stuff and be
be energized a bit to, to so that you can get a little bit of momentum going.
That's what these things are fun for rather than a verbal kind of beaten that just, you know, holy cow. So what we're going to do is I think, I know, I know the program says 530, but probably and truly I just for you clock watchers like me, and I'll live by it. What we're probably going to do, we're going to, I'm going to kind of move rather briskly through this idea of 6789 and we're going to talk specifically about some things that I think are important. We won't cover all of that deal, but what I'm trying to do is get this thing set up so we can spend a bit of time in the last hour that we're talking about this thing, talking about 10
and 12 and JK, and I'll split some of that stuff up. But really and truly everything that we came to talk about was that, I mean, there are some other stuff that's important, but, but, but everything moves us to a place of that, those last three steps.
And it's kind of ironic because in a lot of places, it's those last three steps that get kind of shortchanged. And we kind of skirt around them and, and, and we talk about them very little and we do very little around them. And the miracle of recovery, the miracle of who we become as sober members of this deal, all is determined by that, by how active and effective we are in those disciplines of 1011 and 12. And so we want to spend a little bit of time with that, but I suspect we'll be, I suspect we'll be clear out of here by
even if we do Q&A, we'll be clear out of here by probably 4:30-ish or 4:45 like this. So you, and maybe not even that late, but I guess 'cause I, you guys need to,
I remember doing a talk one time in, in, in Yakima, WA and it was a, at the end of it was the end of winter and everybody was just like, like, like, I mean, we were all, you know. And somewhere during the course of the day, the day turned out just like this. It was really pretty outside and the sun came out and some clown decided it was a good idea to open the doors. And they open these big sliding doors on one side and everything just kind of came in and everybody, everybody just went clink and just shut off. I mean, nobody was because everybody was looking. These cats have been have been
cooped up all winter and it was the first good spring day and they're going skinny guy from Texas spring day and it's just like it's bad. And so we, we, we want you to, to leave with some energy and we'll do that. The
an amazing amount of questions and answers and comments, mostly comments around the, this inventory stuff that we talked about. I think that anytime we approach this stuff and we look at it, there's a reason why this has been a real goofy part of our program
and why it's been left up to a bunch of folks to, to to move and manipulate some. I'm not saying that there hadn't been some exciting things that people have done in inventories, but by and large, I've seen this from both perspectives, both as a right and long and talking long and all this kind of stuff. And I've seen it doing it shorter and more abbreviated. And I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that that that a more abbreviated inventory, if you'll try it and trust the process, you'll begin to see that the stuff gets moved away
quicker and cleaner.
I want to tell you a quick story. Is it? It'll be story 10 minutes. I want to tell you the story. And, and while y'all just sit back and, and, and doze. And if you snore, I will poke you a little bit, but you're welcome to sleep.
A guy asked me on the break. This is a little bit out of place, but I want to bring it here and set it right here because it I won't have another place to put it. And there was a guy that asked me about doing multiple fifth steps earlier. And we were talking about that some and we were talking about the idea of revisiting the idea of, of, of,
of fifth steps.
I was raised in from the sponsorship lineage where you did one fifth step. God bless you. We did sponsorship lineage one time. We did the, the, the inventory one time. And then that was it. We were done with it. And you never did it. You stayed current in 1011 and 12, but you only did one inventory.
And then my twin brother on the other side of the equation, the evil twin, Chris. Chris is from a sponsorship lineage where they do multiple fifth steps over and over and over again over a period of time. OK, now and I and I've got no, I've come to a place in my in my recovery where I've looked at this thing from both sides and, and can no longer judge either way as being the end all be all. I see it's kind of like a double edged sword. I see both sides of this thing. And so, so I'll tell you this story The, the, the
five or six years ago
there abouts we were in Alaska. Chris and I were in Alaska doing a workshop and it was a long weekend kind of deal. And we, what we decided, I don't know whether Chris decided it or I decided it, but one way or the other, we were going to be done on Saturday night about 8:00. And rather the sun was still up. I mean, at 8:00 at night, 9:00 ten o'clock, you can read a newspaper at 4:00 AM. And we were, we were, I just said, why don't we just go to the airport tonight and we'll save the conference, the, the, the, the fair on the, on the hotel room again. And, and then we'll just catch the flight at 6:30 in the morning.
And we just finished doing this talk. And I thought, this is we're up and it's OK. You know, you got a little energy about you. And I'm thinking this is going to be great when we get to to Anchorage International and, and the people are waning. There's just not very many people there. And we're starting to talk and I'm grousing like a like a big dog. I mean, I'm, I'm,
I'm cussing everybody. I'm just like, I'm telling, I'm telling, I'm telling Chris stories about our family and, and I'm, and I'm hating my sister and I'm hating this and I'm hating that and why is my mom this way and this kind of stuff. And Chris is just sitting there kind of looking at me. I don't think Chris said anything the whole time like that for like 2 hours. He's listening to me rail against everybody I know. And I'm, I'm thinking we're just making brother conversation. You know, it never occurred to me that he wasn't talking. I just like
selfishness and self centeredness. Comma is the root of our.
So we, we finally, Chris looks at me like this and he got his hands on his knees, his elbows on his knees. And he looks over at me like this. And he says, how long has it been since you did some inventory? And I went, it's none of your business. And I just started looking straight ahead like this. And Chris goes, no, really. And I went, I don't know, 14 years ago, something like that. And he goes, OK, he didn't say another word. Now, by that time, there's nobody in that airport. There's nobody there but me and Chris. There's a guy way down
on the other end of that terminal with one of those floor sweeper things going like this. And that's all you can hear in that terminal is Chris and me and that guy down there. And so finally, after about 30 minutes, he just sitting there looking at this wall. I said, if I write some inventory, will you listen to it? And he goes, yeah. And and so I look around and there was an envelope in my big book. And I picked it up like this and flipped it over. And I said, you got a pen? And he gave me a pen, and I just started writing it on. That's why I turned these things
envelope inventories.
It's not big drawn out notebook after note back after notebook on stuff. It's an envelope. And I'm just writing this stuff down. And so it took me about 25 minutes to write down these resentments I had with my family and with some of the stuff that was going on at work and some of this other thing like this. And, and, and I'm just kind of writing this stuff down like this and it's real quiet. And finally I get it, finish it. I look at Chris and, and he says, read it. And I saw I read through it like this and he makes very few comments And there's a couple of times he looked at me and he goes,
what about this? And he made a suggestion and I went, OK,
and a little bit later he made another suggestion. But basically that's just about it. And I remember setting it down like he said, that's it. I said, Yep, that's it. And I put it in my big book and I'm just sitting there looking straight ahead. It's all quiet in there like this. And I'm thinking,
I think I'll run to the bathroom real quick and, and I get up and walk in there like this and I'll go in this bathroom like this. And I'm standing there in front of this, this, this, I'm going to the bathroom.
Why I get myself in these, these cul de sacs. I can't get out of it. So I'm just, I'm just sitting there like this and, and, and all of a sudden I turn around and I'm washing my hands and I'm looking in the mirror and all of a sudden I look at myself and I went, holy cow. And I'm telling you guys,
I felt like I was
brand new, sober and clean as I've ever been. You understand what I'm saying? It was this this weird kind of deal. It's just like I just, I felt like, like big old dumbbells had been just lifted off my shoulders and I just dropped them clunk on the ground and I walked out of that bathroom. Let me tell you how I as I was walking out of that bathroom, some guy showed up in the terminal and he walked in the bathroom just as I was coming out and, and, and he's looking at me and he goes like this when I walk by. And it took me a minute. It took me a couple of steps on the outside of the bathroom to know that I must have been grinning ear to ear when I walked out of that bathroom,
because he's looking inside the bathroom to see if there's somebody else in there with me, Becca. But he's just like,
but it's just the reason I'm telling you this story, guys, is this area of 4th and 5th step stuff is an area that sometimes I think us older guys and gals tend to ignore. We tend to go, I did that. I don't need to do that again. And I, I understand the wisdom around staying active in the disciplines of 10/11 and 12:00, except that my experience was that I needed to go back and look at it again. I needed to go back and investigate those things as I went back through. And I remember walking back to Chris and it was like I
floating down that terminal like that. It was just the craziest thing in the whole wide world. If you've been around for a little while and things have gotten a little stale and flat, even if you're carrying the message, guys, I mean, I'm a, I'm a 12 stepping fool. I'm still doing a bunch of stuff. But even if you've done this, I think that it's possible to daily build up this sort of patina of uglyness in our lives. Some they're not big, big goofy drama. There's none of that going on. It's just little, little, little crazy things. Somebody said something a little resentment here. It's a little bit.
All of that stuff begins to stack up and begins to kind of kind of haze things over and pretty soon trying to feel that sunlight of the spirit is getting harder and harder and harder and you're feeling more distance and this kind of thing.
Try that, see what happens. It'd be the, be the coolest at the end of this inventory deal, they gave us
a, they gave us some instructions. Bottom page 75, top page 76. They, they, they, it's an interesting deal. We go through this thing and we do this, this fifth step. We got the 5th step promises in the middle of 75. And then they give us some instructions and they say returning home, we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour, carefully reviewing what we have done. We thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better. Now, taking this book down from our shelves, we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps.
I got to I got to tell you when I did my inventory with Chris, I mean with Clifford, when I first got to primary purpose group and I read this thing when we finished like this and it said that that deal like this, I asked Cliff, believe it or not, the steps are in here because when the group I was, the steps were always on the wall. I didn't know the 12 steps were in the center of this book.
I'm just telling you, man, some of us are sicker than others, and some of us just flat ass ignore it. And if nobody's holding you accountable, we just assume that everybody knows all this other kind of stuff, guys. And I'm telling you, there are a lot of guys here that don't know anything. Sometime when you meet Chris Raymer, when you meet my twin brother personally, ask him how long he took him to figure out what a big book was.
I mean, he's all over town and Barnes and Noble asking people for a big book and they're looking at him going, well, how big a book do you want? You see what I'm saying? I mean, we just assume that everybody knows these kind of things. We, we don't. We don't,
it's just crazy like this. They're going to ask us some questions at the bottom of the saying, carefully reading the 1st 5 proposals, we ask if we have omitted anything for we're building an arch through which we will walk a freeman at last. Is our work solid so far? This is great, great information to reflective information or the stones properly in place.
Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation if we tried to make mortar without sand? All of these are wonderful mortar metaphors from Bill's experience with his with his grandfather who is a brick Mason. And a lot of this stuff comes to to bear. I mean, it's just like pretty cool stuff. And so if we can answer these to our satisfaction, we then look at step 6. We've emphasized willingness as being indispensable. And look at the way that this is written. I mean, I can think of 100 ways to write this and none of them are as effective as the way it was written.
Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things we've we have admitted or objectionable?
Guys, I think that the reason that God does not remove things from us is that we don't think that they're objectionable. You see, I think that a lot of times This is why this exercise here is so amazingly powerful. Because for some of us, this is the first time that we got to put a bead on it and and see and and and and come to grips with the fact that it's simply objectionable and that we need to have this stuff removed.
Either ask us the question and then can he now take them all? Everyone, that's a question
we don't necessarily have to answer. Yes.
I mean, as the more and more you sponsor, the more and more you'll realize that there are things in our life that sometimes we're not willing to get give up. Have you ever sponsored a guy or have you ever sponsored a lady who's having a extramarital affair with some guy and she's not ready to give that up yet? It happens all the time, you see. I mean, there are a lot of things guys have you sponsored guys like this and they're twisted up in porn and they're they're ready. I'll give up anything, but I'm not ready to give up the porn. It happens all the time, you see, because for them in this situation, that's not objectionable yet,
but it will be.
Trust me on this. It will be if we if we still cling to something we will not let go. We ask God to help us be willing. What an amazing, amazing paragraph that is. Even if I'm not ready to have this stuff gone, I'm going to have submit to the process until, until God makes me willing to to to get rid of it. And it's an amazing thing to see a lot of this stuff. I'll tell you a quick story. This is a weird, a weird kind of a of a deal, but
we had a,
one of the things I didn't want to give up was that I used to, I used to do a lot of deliveries in town in Dallas and there was this, this a bunch of strip joints. Now these strip joints were kind of part of my old life and, and, and I knew a lot of these people in here. It was kind of a social sort of a thing too.
There's a lot of girls in there naked. And it was just like, it was just like, I'm not going to make, I'm not going to lie to you that it was all this big fellowship Y thing because it wasn't.
But so we get, we get, I do this inventory with Clifford and I'm looking at this thing and one of the things that came up and I went, my, I'm just not ready to give that up.
And, and, and so there it was. But I was willing to be willing. I mean, I was, I was asking God to help me be willing on the thing because I wanted to be done with all this. I knew that this was no way to live and I knew it. And so as funny as it would be, about four weeks after this all happened like this, I, I went into town is really cold in Dallas and I remember going to town to make a delivery about 2:00 and it's starting to sleet. And I'm thinking, man, we're, we're done with work today. I'm going to go by and, and, and stop in and see these folks and these friends of mine. So I go in there and I remember
out of the car and feeling a little uncomfortable and I walked up to the door and I get right to the door and I open it up like I've done 100 times. I open it up and I walk towards the door. And as I opened it up, I felt like I had been abandoned. Now, guys, I don't have any other way to explain it. I went huh? And I closed the door. It's freezing cold out here, guys. The winds blowing 100 miles an hour out there. Typical Dallas winter day. And I'm, and I'm just, and I open the door again and I, as I step in, it was like God was standing there out there going, OK, slick rock,
but you're on your own if you go in there. And I went and closed the door again. And I'm standing on the outside, my hands still on the door. And one more time I opened it up and I'm holding the door open and these girls in there are screaming. I mean, they're mad because I'm holding the door open and they're freezing in there. And, and I finally, I just went Dang. And I closed the door and I walked back out in my truck and I just sat there and just got, I mean, I just sat there and I, I finally started the truck up and drove home
about a week later,
same kind of situation. And I remember pulling back up into the parking lot of this place and I stopped my truck, swung out of the cab of that truck and my feet hit the ground in the parking lot of that place. And the same thing happened, the exact same thing. And it was like it was like, rock on if you want to do OK. But I'm telling you, I've never felt so alone and so hung out and so vulnerable. And I did standing in that parking lot. He wasn't even going to, he wasn't even going to let me get to the door this time. He's going to stop me as soon as my feet hit the parking lot.
Now, listen, I'm not here to
expound any morals on anybody else. I'm not trying to push anything off on the thing like this. But but I think when God's ready for you to be done with something, he's ready for you to be done with something, whether it be that or whether it be overeating or whether it be smoking or whether it be whatever that what it didn't matter, whatever it is when he's ready if you're going to be done. And I had no more say in that in the man of the moon like this. I just know I was, I was ready and, and I'd been in a, in a, in a, one of those places in, in 15 years
and which is just fine. I didn't have any business being in there in the 1st place. The, the but man, I'm just kind of blown away. The, the process works if you just simply submitted the process. When ready, we say something like this and they give us this great seven step prayer. They end it with with an Amen. We've completed step seven and then look what they say in the middle of that page. Now we need more what action? Once again, we're implored. There's there's a momentum if you go back sometime when you don't have anything to do, just go back and read from the beginning and start moving through the
and what you'll see is is that every time you get finished with a step, there's something that controls you momentum wise to keep going to keep it. So there, there. There was never intended for us to just sit. OK, I'm done with that. I'll rest a month or two.
I didn't say that. Now we need more action without which we find that faith without works is dead. Let's look at step 8-9.
Look,
when we were doing your inventory and I'm listening to your 5th step, I got a piece of paper laid out on on, on a table in front of me. And as you're going through this thing, I'm making a list of the harms you've done, other people, the things that I'm seeing. I'm going to ask you about these things you see. And no matter how convoluted it gets, I can always see it a little clearer from my perspective about where all this stuff lays. And So what I'm going to do is I'm going to help you form your eight step list
as we're doing this thing. If I think that you've harmed somebody or if it appears that maybe you owe somebody an amends, I'm going to make a little note about it and we can talk about it later. Step eight said that we that we, we, we, we made a list. It didn't. There wasn't a lot of thought process to this stuff. In meetings, you hear people talking about this ad nauseam. I'm working on my aid stamp. I'm working. No, you're just wasting a bunch of time. It takes you about an hour. Did you hurt that? Listen, here's what would do if I was with somebody I'm sponsoring. If we're in a room like this, I'm going to say, OK, listen, what I want you to do is I want you
imagine everybody that you know, regardless of whether they were on your inventory. I want you to think about the people that you know, go back, look at address books, go back, look at annuals, go back, do whatever you want to do. But as these names come up, I want you to picture them
walking through that door right there and walking around here and then walking right back out that door. Now listen, if the man or woman that you're thinking about walk through this door and you look down, he's name needs to go on that list. You see what I'm saying? If it made you uncomfortable to look at him when they walked in, you need to at least investigate the fact that you owe them an amends and write it down on the deal. And then he'll go out the den like this and just keep on doing it until you got a pretty good old list of of stuff there. And then we'll go back and we'll
revisit the list and then we'll see what that is bona fide or not.
The problem here is guys, is that sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we where we I have my head is an amazing thing about talking myself out of an amends. Well, he screwed me more than I screwed him. I don't know him anything. I mean, that's a popular one, you see, but it didn't talk about like this. If I harmed him, I owe them an amends. Guys, let's let's let's look at this thing real quick here as we slide into this night step stuff and we look at this.
The text says now we go out to our fellows and we repair the damage done in the past. We attempt to sweep away the debris which is accumulated over our effort to live on self will and run the show ourselves.
He didn't talk about booze. Again, they're just talking about just being being goofy here. OK, Didn't mention the booze. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. Remember, it was agreed at at the beginning that we would go to any length over for victory over alcohol. If we haven't the will to do this, we ask until it comes. Every one of us, almost every one of us has issues in our past, things that happen to us that we just simply don't want to address. We don't want to go there with this thing.
The trick is Mark Houston used to always say, how free do you want to be?
And this is one of those kind of situations, guys, where I think we all need to ask that question, is it good enough just to be OK or would you? Is there more? I, I, I just, it's one of those kind of things where I think that it's, it's like this, this thing is like,
it's, it's, it's like, it's like somebody telling you about sex and then you have sex and then you go, wow, they left out all kinds of stuff. You know what I'm saying? I mean, there's more, there's more. And and this sometimes I think, is a place that we get ourselves into around this immense process
because nobody's coming after me with dogs and pitchforks and torches before, because the blowtorch is backed off a little bit and I'm kind of comfortable in my skin again. I don't want to go stir anything up. I don't want to look at anything where I might owe somebody an amends. And yet there's amazing freedom in this ability to simply go to it. Does it take courage? Yes, it takes courage.
I think the mistake that you and I make in this thing is that we think this is about us and this has got very little to do with us. This has got to do with God's ability to affect change in our life. And all that we had to do was, is just exert enough courage to go take the action. The, the healing is about God. The healing is about what he's going to do. And so when we look at this thing a little bit, this is not another lame old way for you to manipulate somebody. This is a way for us just to say, I made mistakes. I did things that I wished I hadn't. Do I
you an amends for what I did, for how I treated you? I mean, how hard is that to say? Well, sometimes it could be pretty hard, but a lot of times it's not. A lot of times we just get lazy. And the thing that bothers me the most guys, is that within our fellowship worldwide, what happens is a lot of times is it sponsors stay really dogmatically, really focused on guys up through step four. And then they hear their fifth step and then they just let them go.
They just freewheel out there like this. And these guys run out there a couple of days and they realize that nobody's going to hold them accountable. Nobody's going to say anything to them like this. And those amends just go by the by the wayside. And so the experience of of, of, of reconciliation
that is so powerful, it's just right there. But we just don't have the courage to go do that from a sponsorship standpoint. Guys, what I'm imploring you to do is, is grab these little guys and gals that you're sponsoring and hold them a little closer through this process and be asking them once they get some amends made, once they start the process, stay with them. What's next? What's let's talk about this tonight. What's next? You see, don't let them stop because once they stop trying to get it prompt again, primed again, it could be hard, it could be never. And so if you can just kind of keep them going, I mean,
I mean, stop and remember in your own experience, when you made an amends, what's the first thing you wanted to do? Go make another amends if if you could. And so this is the reason why sometimes these, sometimes these immense lists are so undaunting. I mean, they're just like, they just go on and on and on. And so, so help them. Would you want to look at a, at a men's list that look like some of the guys you sponsor? No way, no way. And So what I do is when they bring me an 8 step list, I say, we're going to review this thing. This is like within a week after, after he does six and seven, at least within the next three or four days, I'm going to
look at the list and he's going to bring me this list of names. And I say, OK, help me organize this. I want you to tell me who you owe money to and let's put them over here. And then we'll, we'll, we're going to move the list around. I want to isolate who you owe money to because you're flat broken. You're living in a halfway house. You don't have any money. So I'm going to move. You obviously can't make these amends yet. Let's move this over here and then let's take these over here. And I want you to pick, let's pick out three that you can do right now and they'll pick out three. And that's OK. Now these are what you need to do this week. These are what you're going to start with. And then let's just see where we are.
God drives this. This is not this is not, I'm not missing that fact. But we need to stay proactive and engaged as we go on through this stuff. You know, you see all that, right? I mean, this is pretty, pretty easy to do. And then, and then as he begins to go through this thing and, and see
you folks that have sponsored guys and gals doing this thing, you do, you understand how you've seen the experience of, of, of what some reconciliation can do. When people get clear of in your own experience too, you get clear of some of this stuff that you've carried for years and years and years and you get it set right.
And it's an amazing deal to watch these guys walk back into the room standing 3 inches taller. I mean, it's just the craziest thing. And it had nothing more to do than just a, a willingness to submit to a process and, and get on through the deal. We'll, we'll,
we'll talk about that thing at the top of page 77 is probably the most important part of the stuff that we're talking about around this immense stuff. Because I'm thinking, OK, listen, I want to get these guys off my back. That's the reason I'm doing the amends. And they're getting ready to dash that against the rocks at the moment. We're trying to put our lives in order. Yes, we get that, OK, We all understand that. But this is not an end in itself. A real purpose is to fit ourselves, to be a maximum service to God and the people about us.
Sweet. This is the. This is the
there are two reasons to do amends, 2 concrete reasons. There may be others, but two that we're going to talk about. One, this idea of aligning ourselves with God's will. God doesn't want us frustrated and at odds with our brothers and sisters. So we're going to figure out a way to do this kind of stuff. This is how we get up close to God. We do what he asked us to do. The second thing is, is that is that in order to do a men's in the process of doing amends, I can quit being a phony,
OK? I mean, listen, how do you, how can you sponsor
effectively and tell the guys, the protegees that you're working with to what this process is about if you're still sitting on 10 amends that you haven't made? This is why it sometimes got, especially guys our age, my age that are older in this deal, really, really need to be careful with this stuff. We need to go back and, and revisit this thing. And sometimes I think we just need to find a place, get quiet, get on our knees and say, God, can you show me again who I need to make an amends to and then sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil and rewrite another inventory. I mean, rewrite another, another
eight step list so that we can get current again, so we know who we got to go see. I think, I think it's an amazingly important. I think that sometimes we'll, we'll find things that we needed to do that we hadn't done in the 1st place, that we, that we should have done.
The book itself, I'm not going to get into it, but the book itself breaks this thing down paragraph by paragraph and it tells us what to do in specific situations around money, around divorce, around jail, around the rest of this kind of stuff. And and and the deal has always been how free do you want to be?
If you if you want to be free, you're going to be a lot more diligent at the immense process. If you don't really care you you'll you'll soft sell it You you'll kind of skirt around the outside of like this. I'll tell you a quick story and then I'll be done here. The
there was this guy that I that I sponsored in at home rebound where, where JK hailed from and the it's an indigent place. It's it's just, it's just it's just not much. Not no fancy spancy stuff, no saunas, no spa. No, it's just
guys come in right off the street. They have nothing. They get sober and, and it's, it's cool. And so I'm sponsoring this guy there. And, and Jim is an interesting guy. I've, I've asked him if I could tell the story and he said yes. And the, the, the, here's the picture of this situation. Jim had just got out of jail, out of the penitentiary, and he's got Aryan Brotherhood tattoos on both arms. He hates everybody. It doesn't matter
if you're remotely, if you're wearing a different color shirt, Jim hates you. I mean, he doesn't matter what the deal is. He just, he just hates you. Long greasy hair, real bad acne, bad breath. Just horrible
guy and just this, and naturally he asked me to sponsor him. OK, I get, I get these guys. I mean, they just, they just, God loves to bring those guys into my life. And so we're, we're, we're working through this stuff and, and he, he, he embraces the steps, he gets through this stuff. 2-3 weeks after the deal, he's through his stuff and he's ready to go do his amends. And then he's just like kind of an amazing sort of transformation. He's coming to all our meetings, He's doing all the stuff he's supposed to be doing. And, and, and he's just, he's just, you can tell that the, that the work is
enough, that it's that it's changing. We get down to this immense stuff. And I'd listen to his fistf and I knew he had this resentment against his dad and his dad was, was just the marquee decide. And I mean, he's just just horrible kind of guy and, and, and lives way out in in West TX. And, and, and I knew that this was going to be a struggle. I knew that it at some point in time we were going to have to deal with this amends process with this, with this dude. And there was a, there was a long litany of problems of grievances with his dad. But one, one of them, I'm just going to mention one of them
on a regular basis, my guy, we used to hack this guy off just to piss his dad off. And his dad would beat him with one of those great big old western belt buckles that was about like this on the end of a belt. He used to beat him with this thing until he was bloody, and then he'd hold him in a bath of salt water until the kid passed out. Now I know, I mean, I just can't fathom that kind of anger and I can't fathom that kind of of of cruelty to a kid.
But he lived through it and I thought he was making it up. And I said, brother, I said, are you serious?
And he said, hell yeah, I'm serious. And he took his shirt off like this. And he's standing there in front of me. And I'm telling you right now, he looked like a man made out of hamburger meat that they had just put together. His body was toward a shreds by that dad gum buckle. And I thought, man, man, man, man can't do this.
And so now I'm freaked to the Max. I'm freaked times 10 because I don't know what to do. I don't, I mean, how do you get past this kind of abuse and this kind of stuff? And so we set out to deal with it. And he's got one day free and he said, I'm going to go down there and make this amends. I said, OK, buddy, listen, you do me a favor. You call me on the way down there. You call me, you got a brand new cell phone. You let me know what's going on and let me know what's happening. And I'm going to talk you way down there. And if you get down there and this thing starts going South, if you start making, you know, trying to justify your behavior or any of this other,
you stop and come on home. There's no sense walking into a buzz saw. And he said, I'm cool. So the little crap, he, he leaves and he doesn't call me. And I, I know how long it takes to get from where I live to where his dad is. And so I know how long it is. And I'm just, I mean, I'm like pacing the floor. I'm just like, why didn't he call him? Why didn't he just like one of your own kids out there like that? Well, he about about an hour after he's supposed to be down there, he calls me. And he said, well,
I'm finished with my dad. And I said, oh, slick, that's not the, that's not the job. That's not the deal we made, man. You were going to do this different, right? And he said, well, I know, But I got down there and I decided I was going to, well, I'll tell you about it later. And I said, no, you tell me about it now. I want to know how it went. And he said, well, he said, I pulled up in front of this in front of our old home place. And I walked up to the door and this old guy answered the door. And I said, what do you mean this old guy? And he said, well, my dad, but he's gotten old. And I said,
OK,
we do that. And he said, yeah, I know. But he, he wasn't as threatening as he used to be. And I went OK. And he said, and I, I just, I just, you know, we sat there and we talked for a little bit and, and I told him the things that we had talked about. I told him that I was sorry that I had disappointed him, that, that there were things that I decisions that I made that I knew were a disappointment and that I, I just, I wish they hadn't happened. And I said, you know, as my dad, you deserve better. And he said, my dad just sat there and all of a sudden he started crying and he just wept and he wept and he wept and he he said, Myers,
I got tired of hearing him cry. He just kept crying. And I said, Jim, come on, man, really? And he goes, man, I just like. And then there's this silence on the phone and I'm going, are you OK? And he goes, yeah, I'm all right, but I'm not telling you the whole truth. And I said, why don't we? Why don't we try that just as a novelty, OK. And he said, what I didn't tell you was that I was lying to you. When I told you I was going to go make my amends. What I was doing was I was going to go kill him. And I.
Pistol stuck in my back when I walked up to the house because I was going to shoot him for what he did and I and I just went Jim, Jim what
what changed? And he said I just couldn't do it. He said, to be honest with you, I don't know what my dad looks like, but when I saw what God had as an image of what my dad was, there's no way there's no way I could shoot him. There's no way I could even say something unkind to him. What I saw in front of me was a man who had been struggling with his own demons for his entire life and he simply didn't know what else to do. He handled it all wrong,
but he handled it the best he could.
And I just went, holy cow, man.
And I said, are you OK? And he said yeah. And he said I don't think he's going to be on my Christmas card list every year. I don't know that we're going to be buddies forever, but But I'm OK with what happened. And I said, no, all right,
that would have been enough for the story, except that we we Friday, the week, the following week was a Friday. And they coined out of that treatment center that little treatment place. And so that's his night to coin out.
And so we're standing there
and always just freaks me out telling the story. We're, we're standing there at, at this coin out. And, and we got, there's like 60 or 70 clients in this thing like this. And they're all cramped down in this, in this cafeteria. And we're standing real close like this. And I look across the room over here and Jim is standing there with two black guys, one guy over here and one guy over here holding his hand and they're saying the Lord's Prayer. And we say the Lord's Prayer and I can't even talk. I'm just looking across the room at this Aryan Brotherhood guy
who hates everybody in the world, especially black guys,
and he's holding these guys hands. And when when he gets done, he they drop hands and and I'm looking at the thing. I didn't even pray. I'm just sitting there. I can't take my eyes off this guy holding these hands of these these black guys. And, and, and at the end of the deal, one black guy scooped him up and gave him a big ol hug, told him he loved him. And the other guy scooped him up, told him he loved him. He's little bitty guy like this little and me and, and, and and they just sat there and hugged each other. And I'm just thinking, guys
see, we come in here, guys, see, this is the thing that kills me. We come in here as haters.
Come in here. Just
it's not about the booze anymore. It's not about that stuff. It's about it's about being different. It's about being transformed into something that we could be and it you can't make sense out of it. You can't think your way into this stuff. The only way you can do it is to take the necessary action. Most of us get here hating and conniving and doing all kinds of crazy lame O stuff like this. And here's this guy who was so transformed that he got over years and years and years of bigotry and hate,
he realized that he was out of the judgment game forever, that the judgment was in God's hands, that all of that stuff was God's business to deal with. And I can think of no, no finer place on God's green earth than right there. I don't have to judge you. I don't have to be involved anymore in that game because it always ends bad. It always does.
I love you guys. You want to come talk for three minutes?
No, 10 minutes if you want to share something real quick and then we'll take a fast break. OK,
wow, so you want to hear some of my lame O amends?
I,
I mean, he did a great job of, of describing that. And I remember that,
you know, our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. You ask people and say, well, my job is to be of maximum service. I don't know how to be of maximum. My job is to fit myself. How do I do that? By taking these steps, by walking this process. You know, the more I had my list, Cliff had me divide up my list as well. You know, it ain't in the big book. Take it for what it's worth, but I had the ones I'm ready to do right now. And then I had the ones that there was
yeah,
but
right, there was a extenuating circumstance somehow, right. And then there was a third column I had over there, there's no way in hell column. And we went over this. And This is why, you know, my sponsor at this point is an insider in my life. He knows me better than anybody else. So he sits down with me and he guides me through this process. I'm not taking my I could take my immense to all my little buddies out there and say, well, what do you think I should do about? No, I go to my sponsor and he gives me clear cut directions. They give us a little template in the book and we he turns me loose and I start
these things down because see, in my pea brain, because I had a long list of amends and I had a whole bunch of financial amends and I had some amends where I thought the people could kill me and get away with it back in the day. I don't really necessarily want to seek these people out, but I harm them.
The actions I take show God how willing I am. The more actions I take, the more faith that I get. Me looking me with my little finite brain, looking at all my amends. It's a very, very daunting task and I look at all the outcomes and they all suck,
but it ain't my job to fix the outcome.
My job is to trust God and take the action. And when I started, Cliff gave me those first little three, Hey, these these cats are in your day-to-day world. Let's let's do these guys. I'm like, yes, Sir. And we talked about it, we prayed about it and I went and did it. And once I started doing it, the next one started rolling in and we started going and all of a sudden someone's cropped up that I don't know how they were going to work, but they were there staring me in the face. And so we talked about that, we prayed about that and I went and did it. And even on the way to do it, I thought there's no way this is this is going to
be ugly.
And I remember always saying another little prayer and putting myself in front of this person and going through the immense process and guess what? God does his perfect job. Tom Ivester says it best. I mentioned to somebody out there in the parking lot. He says it the best. And I told him I was going to steal this every time when faith in preparation collide, the results are what God does. And the more actions I take, the more faith that I get, the more amends that I got done, the more faith that I got so that when these big, daunting, ugly
ones, even if it's in my head, when they those are rose, I have the tools necessary to trust God and go do that. And God does the healing. Was it my words?
Wasn't that I was slick. I was like Meyer said. I wasn't trying to manipulate, but God put me in the position to take care of it. And God help heal those relationships. You know, they're not ducking me. I'm not ducking them
and I can't stress enough because I mean, if they tell you on 6076 and then they tell you again on 79, this is where we're going to slow down. It's it's typical, but I have a sponsor who, thank God, holds me accountable. I try to hold my guys accountable. We get the list, we start going and we start doing this stuff so that they don't flounder,
you know,
because it, it sucks to get this far and then all of a sudden you get stale because I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do. I mean, I, I can't say that I've done 100% of my amends, but I've knocked out on my original amends list. I have knocked out everything that is on that original list with the exception of one
and it was one of the girls that I was told that I can't seek out.
He said when God wants you to make amends to this gal, she will appear. There was another one on that list. God saw to it that I get in contact with her. She got in contact with me and that was one of those mind blowing amends because this is one of the gals that could have got away with it back in the day. You know, I harmed her mercifully with my words and my actions.
And I had made amends of some other people I used to work with. And they were blown away, shocked that I was alive. And we, we did the amends and I gave them my contact info and I told them if there's anything I can do for you guys, just please let me know. And we went our merry way and, and it was done right. Lo and behold, unbeknownst to me, several months later, they were out to dinner, husband and wife, and they ran into this old girlfriend of mine and they were catching up. And they're like, you're not going to believe who we ran into.
And they told him a brief story and said here's his number.
And I get a call out of the blue from this chick
and I'm like, let me step outside. And I went outside and she kind of told me some stuff. And I'm like, like, I don't know where you're. I don't know where you know. I know she'd done some spiritual retreats. And I was like, if you got to pray about it, do whatever you do. I need like 15 minutes of your time face to face. I'll do it in a public setting,
whatever, whatever you want to do, but I need to speak to you if it if you would be so kind to see me some point.
And she says, well, I think about that.
And she said, by the way, you sound good. I'm like, OK, I hung up the phone and a few days later I get a voicemail from her saying Mimi at Starbucks in Lakewood at 6:00 on Saturday.
And I had gone over to Cliff's house on that Saturday and I'm like, buddy, this is a biggie.
Damn.
So we went over it together, we prayed about it. I don't know why I'm crying, but we we pray about it and I get to Starbucks and I get there early and, and I see her drive up and we I make this amends. And it was really, it was a cool experience. And we didn't spend a whole lot of time after that catching up or anything. But you know, we chit chatted for a few minutes. But you know, Cliff had told me, get in, get out, right? We're not here to catch up on Tanya. We used to live together. We're not here to catch up on all that.
Get in, get out, man. Stick and move, baby. And so as I'm walking her back to the car, as I'm walking her back to the car, man, that's like this, like he's saying, stepping out of the car into the parking lot and he feels, God, I'm walking her back to the car and I've got this little voice in my head like, dude, this was your girl. Do this again.
And I stopped her at the car
and I said, look, I used some stuff in our deal to harm you mercifully, mercilessly or however you say that word.
And I put you in horrible positions and I don't even know how it came out. And I said, you're one of God's princesses, and I had no right to do that.
And like I said, I don't know how it all came out. And she stopped me when I was done. And she just kind of like dumped my chest. And she's like, dude, you rock.
And I gave her a hug and it was good.
Never dated her, never called her. We e-mail occasionally. I mean, it's been years, but
God fixed that. I'm not ducking her or her family. She's not ducking me. Her and her family know that they have a friend in a, a now, you know, throughout the years, but she's still in the restaurant business. Throughout the years, there's been a couple times where she's emailed me, said, hey, here's a buddy of mine. I'm going to have him give you a call. You know, I've got in touch. Talk to their family and, and clear up all that wreckage. That's what God does. That's not what JK does. Left to my own devices, I'm like, well screw them and move on.
But no, I needed to take care of that. And God fixed that, right?
And that was. And so I've got one more out there that's like that. Don't know how that's going to go. I'm ready to go. But see, this is the stuff we put God to the test. You know, my buddy Kurt says test God. I don't know how it's all going to work out. They may throw me out of the office, but my job is to rely upon God and walk through this program and walk through this process. The results are what God does,
and that's all I got on that.
Anybody.
We're going to have a break.