The Denver Unity Fellowship's 12th annual retreat in Sedalia, CO

All right, morning everyone. My name is Louise. My name is Lee. I'm grateful. Recovering sexaholic just said I needed no introductions. I was kind of interesting.

I've got this is it's been a total privilege to be here this weekend. I'm sure we all feel the same way. This is just an amazing, amazing place. And then John and Barbara and God have made it even more amazing, and I want to thank them up front for that.

I'll be referring to you guys, if you don't mind that you've already been showcased all day yesterday. You probably won't. I won't mind if I continue to talk about what you gave us this weekend.

Before I I figured what I'd do is I ended with a song the other night. If you don't mind, I'll play one more song. Actually, I'll begin with the song. I figured let's begin on a high note. Then I can just fizzle out from there.

One comment about, you know, the guitar and what it's meant to me. I started playing when I was 11

years old and umm, umm, you know, it progressed from there and it was a gift. It was also from a sexaholic recovery point of view. It was also a fig leaf for me. You know, I would be asked to parties, I would bring my guitar to the parties and, and it was something I could hide behind. Frankly, I really was socially outgoing person, but socially inept. If you can put those two things together. And so

it was, it was a, it was a mode for trying to just connect as best I could with people and the best way I could. As a matter of fact, that

10th grade typing class girl who ended up being my wife. By the way, if you caught that the other night, Wendy,

umm, I, I gave her a tape of my classical guitar songs and the very end of that tape, I sang Heart of Gold by Neil Young on that. And I told she cried when she heard that. That became our theme song throughout her whole marriage. Heart of gold. But I just want to make a comment about just this whole idea of our gifts before sobriety and and like gifts of music or the gifts of the charisma that we used to use in the wrong ways or the gifts of that masterful mind that we used in wrong.

I certainly did use my music in wrong ways. You know, many nights going down the basement and just fantasizing about playing for whatever, you know, and, and anybody play guitar in here? There we go. There's a couple guys play guitar. You know how we learn how to play guitar, right? Why we do it? To get chicks, right?

That's not why I learned though. But anyway. So my music was misused in many respects, but it was also used for the gift of playing for weddings and

and making people move places that you couldn't move them in any of the way. Successful music,

as far as those gifts go, you know that my music went dormant for about 10 years. It's only been the last eight or nine years or so that it come back and to be a gift for me. And so I was talking with a woman yesterday here, one of the spouses that was very lamenting about her spouse giving up music.

And I assured her as best I can, I'm not God, that it'll come back. If the seeds there, it'll come back. You know, we got some other musicians in the audience here and I'm sure they would say the same thing, that it'll, it'll come back. So all those gifts will come back. I'm going to sing a song here that all of you probably heard before, but you might not have ever thought about it in this context. And this is a song that really speaks to the still suffering sexaholic out there.

It really describes the suffering alcoholic,

but I think it's, it's sung by the, uh, suffering spouse. Also, umm,

and for the Essenons, who I deeply respect that are here, you know, umm, never, never blow out that candle if you can help it. Umm, that candle that you had lit for so many years that was drawing your spouse back in. My wife, never, she never blew out that candle. And I think this song is what she would have sang to me. I think at some point

I'm just too nervous nervous to play.

That's the wrong

Why don't you come to your center

then? I'll fight in fences for so long now.

Your heart moaned and owed that you got your reason.

These things that are pleasing you will hurt you somehow.

Don't you draw the Queen of Davenport? You beat you. She's able. No, the Queen of Hearts is always your best faith.

Now it seems to me some fine things I've been laid upon your table,

but you only want the ones that you can't get.

That's the problem.

Oh, you ain't getting no younger.

Get pain in your hunger,

they'll die you home and freedom was with freedom. That's assumption talking.

Your prison is walking through this wood all the low. Don't you think it's time? We know when it time comes

I won't snow and the sun won't shine. It's hard to tell the night time from the day

now you losing all your eyes and loads and it's from me on the field and goes away.

They're strong. Why don't you come to your senses?

Climb down from your fences.

Open the key. It may be raining, but there's a rainbow above you. You better let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you.

You better let somebody love you.

OK.

The desperado was not a partner and

didn't know how to be a partner, and that certainly was me.

I learned a new term this weekend. It's called couple Ship.

I learned that and that to me is kind of is even deeper than partnership.

That's what I learned this weekend. And I'd like to reflect on what I think we heard this weekend, kind of a recap, you know, at the end of the Olympics. It kind of goes through, here's what we saw in the Olympics for the last whatever, 11 days, whatever.

I feel like we've been through that kind of a beautiful event that it's worth recapping.

First of all, I want you to think about, from John and Barbara's point of view, the selfless

service and giving that they did in the partnership with SA and S Anon.

To fly from Chicago out to here and to take that weekend to do that, that's an example of selfless giving and service and partnership to us and to themselves. And Barbara talked about the courage she needed to come here to people she didn't know. I think partnership involves courage a lot of times.

I know early on in recovery

we get ahead of our spouse, if you want to call it that, either

the SNR SA. And we are a lot of fear that our other partner may not make it, you know?

And there's a lot of courage required there, you know, And I've heard that courage is not the lack of fear. It's the response to fear, you know,

So it took a lot of courage in this partnership that we saw

and that commitment to recovery.

I'm sure it took a lot of trust in each other. I don't know about you, but would you know for sure what your spouse was going to say if she got up to this podium?

Took a lot of trust and it shows the trust that they had in each other to come here.

And it took trust in the fellowship, the partnership of the fellowship to be able to come here. And

I mean, you think about it, this was open. It was open and that was beautiful

and I think it took unconditional love,

which is the core of

partnership and coupleship

and it took the core of it all. That's trust in God. At the end of the day, there's no way any of this can happen without trust in God. You know, this was not a self help weekend, by the way.

No, I'm sure we've been to those. I was at the Dale Carnegie class, everyone, Dale Carnegie back in, uh, 1987 searching, uh, I remember, uh, just to show how it doesn't work without God. I had, I got back from that class and it said, never criticize, complain in public. You only do that in private and you praise in public. And that was the, you know, the head thing they were trying to drill in as one of the principles. And so I got out on my wall, I took a little piece of paper and I had a count,

little blocks of a calendar. And I think, OK, I'm going to see how many days in a row I can try to, you know, be this kind of a person to everybody. And I don't know, I think I went like 5 days in a row. And then also the exes started getting spotier and spotier. And that's the truth of what we've heard this weekend. If we're not bringing God into it, it'll just be something that evaporates. And for that matter, my spirituality is only as a shelf life of about 24 hours anyway.

I have to renew it each morning

at noon. I only work, I only live 1/3 of a day at a time myself. I don't know about you, but I get up in the morning, I have that prayer, meditation Dean with God. I go to work at noon. I break out to a meeting or go out to lunch and be with God, come home, do that meditation after supper, a little bit of meditation and then have the evening and then a prayer before going to bed. So

I never live a whole day, you know, without that breathing, that breathing in that partnership with God.

I think I heard also work, a lot of work and commitment.

Uh, you know,

it was actually, I'll tell you what I felt.

I'm really never embarrassed in my essay groups or a, A either when I share from the heart. But I have to tell you, Friday night there was a point of embarrassment at the very end when I had to share about where I was at now in the last being in the basement for about 18 days. And by the way, I got out last Saturday.

I asked, You know, it was mutual. We came to a mutual understanding. What

what really was that, by the way, the two pieces that we agreed on as we laid in bed cuddling umm, she came down to me. It was I asked for her commitment and our commitment into recovery. She started going some al Anon meeting. She's sneaking up on the essay. Maybe Essenton again, maybe. And she asked for commitment from me,

for a growing in that intimate purity

instead of allowing the little sexaholic Mr. Hyde in there from time to time.

And that's the when I heard that, I knew that we were ready in my mind. And so I got on my knees yesterday, Saturday afternoon, last Saturday afternoon, I asked if I could come back. She said yes,

I think that's true partnership. And I was a little embarrassed to be 21 years having to take the marriage engine and have pieces all over the driveway

and tell you that that's where I was at.

But then I got to hear John and Barb all day yesterday and working on that engine, you know, and it's kind of a funny thing. We talk about marriage. We talk about our society, talks about marriage as work, children in society are not valued. Everything you know from beginning of life, to be honest with you, all the way through.

How many times have we heard that? Children, you know, I can't wait till my kids, whatever, you know that, get out of that. Oh, they're teenagers now, you know,

well, they're gifts. They're in the most precious gifts you have of sobriety besides our relationship with God, our spouse and, and, and So what I'm trying to say is that

God turns that all inside out when we get in recovery. Yeah,

these things that the society says, they become the most precious. And that's what I heard.

I heard, uh, I heard the heart of a mother. And sometimes I have to talk to guys when they first get in sobriety because they sit there and they go, you know, I'm not. They get jealous now for one time. They finally want to be in coupleship, in partnership. And, and they're like my wife, I'm second fiddle at home. The kids are #1 And I say, hey, guess what? God made her that way.

A mother's heart is the most mysterious, beautiful heart,

and guys will never understand that. But that's the truth. And at the same time, paradoxically, the, the, the woman can't, you know, I mean, it's the man and woman together.

And the guys we take care of, the periphery, guard the perimeter, as my sponsor says.

And I think the mother needs to understand, if I may say it this way,

on the South side, is that, umm,

my wife is the most precious person to me on earth.

You can't compare love, OK? There's no you can't compare love. I love my three daughters. I have 3 beautiful daughters, 2 grandsons.

My middle daughter is going to get married, my oldest is already married on his and my middle daughter is getting married in August. But I'll tell you the most precious person that God in my heart of a husband is my wife. She's the queen. And then from there everything goes out. And I heard that

I think God designed the marriage that way. And when I can accept that, what both people can accept that, it makes it a whole lot easier in that household, that early recovery household.

I think partnership is working towards the same goal, the

goal of growing in love. When I heard that this weekend too,

you know that love of God, family, each other.

What is love?

I guess I could have sung song about that. I could have some many songs about that, right? What is love? The best definition I ever heard was from Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Love is the unselfish willing of good for others.

Love is the unselfish willing of good for others.

There's three parts to that. There's the unselfish part where I have to die to self. There's the willing, which is all the only gift I've got. If you think about it, I have no control over my body, my life, even my psyche, my wife, the health.

The world didn't end yesterday. I guess

all I have is my will.

Where do I point my notes? And God takes it the rest of the way.

They were asking me at breakfast to have, well, you're ready, Lee, I said. Well, if God's ready, I'm ready

because I I'm just the fan. I'm going to plug into the wall, the outlet of the wall and let God turn the fan on and hot air will start to blow I guess.

But you know that's that is love. It's unselfish willing of good,

good for others, you know, I know we have many family members, maybe sons and daughters, spouses that we hurt for. We long for goodness to happen in them, in their lives, right?

That prayer unselfish willing of good has nothing to do with anything outside myself. What I'm trying to say to you is prayer for that person,

unconditional love for that person, and then God lets the rest of it grow.

I was, umm, early on in recovery, I was at a, uh, uh, I used to play guitar at mass and things like that. And uh, I was up there 11 during a sermon and I, I kind of faded off to be honest with you from the sermon, but it was a good thing. I faded off into this this conversation, if I may be so bold with God. That's and I and I just was like God, I love you so much.

What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? I just can't believe this love affair now I have with you and just want to go out in the world

and justice. I just can't stand it, and he said.

I just want you to be

see. He knew I had the doing down. I had the doing down pat,

he says. I just want you to be in fact be a tree

and sit there What? Be a tree,

he said. Look at this. I plant the seed,

and what does the tree do? It only grows in response to everything I give it. I give it the earth, the sunlight, the water.

The wind and all it does is grow in response to everything I give it.

We talk about coupleship.

That's the ultimate coupleship, isn't it? My coupleship with God,

you know, and if I don't have that couple ship with God, there's no other couple ships

possible.

B3

I work with guys, God seems to bring engineers and stuff like that in my life. I wonder why? And we liked it. We we get the first step down on power is unmanageable and insane. The second step. But we a lot of times we can even gloss over the second step that hey, it's about God. I believe in God. Let's check the box. Let's move on. That's not what the second step's about. The second step is about coming to believe

with every fiber of my being on the sustenance of God. Just like those trees out there

we can't engineer. This is my point.

We work hard and we should work hard, but we have to leave the results to God,

and that's really hard to do

right. It's really hard to do.

So it's a commitment to God.

The other thing is in this couple ship that I saw this weekend, and I've seen it in my own marriage, is it is commitment to appreciate to the mystery of that other person. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. I've never read the book. I probably should.

It's appreciating the mystery. You know, I used to think of. I used to tell people, especially when I was, you know, trying to justify my acting out. I used to tell, well, you know, my wife. My wife is just the opposite of me,

you know, We're just opposites. And I've come to see us as compliments,

complements of each other.

Uh, and that's a beautiful thing. We, we heard John talk about. There's my recovery, there's my relationship with God and self and others and fellowship. We are far to talk about her relationship with God and others, fellowship. And then there was this other beautiful, mysterious bond of which both come incomplete and complete

and complement each other. There's no comprehending that, so don't try.

And I appreciate more and more especially amazingly enough, after 28 years of marriage, 29, almost watching my wife even in these last two sessions with awe at the beautiful, mysterious person that's in there on her journey.

You know, guys will never understand women. Let's just

put that aside. I mean, did you see last night how quickly Barb said she had blue eyes instead of green?

She's in bat an eyelash.

I mean, that's you don't want to mess with that

later to get up here. So I really have green eyes. We've been all had, including John.

So there's no, you know, we're outgunned, OK? We're totally outgunned

and I think for the I think for the S and honest, I may speak of

right respectfully speak here is that I don't think the ethanol will ever understand addiction,

what it's like to be addicted. Well, you have I'm sure you've grown in that. I'm sure you've accepted that and that's and that's what my wife has done. But my wife has come to accept and she really has that she'll never understand addiction. Now my wife loves popcorn, my life. She adores popcorn. And the best thing I used even last week in our session was when I was talking about sometimes my attraction to her, which, you know,

transcends passion. It transcends everything.

Sometimes I said just imagine, OK, when you're walking in the movie theater and you smell that popcorn on you and just what happens inside of you, You're just like, I got to have that popcorn, even though you maybe just shake. She ate dinner the other night and then we went to a movie and, you know, on top of a dinner, she had popcorn and she was miserable. And I said, that's what this draw of addiction is like, is that we, we just can't stand it. You know, we just, we just come. There's a magnet, you know,

we just can't stand it. And so that's as close as I can tell you what addiction is like if you just like,

can't stand it any longer,

even though we're good people. And that's the thing I had to learn.

I had to get a partnership with myself early on

to understand that I was a sick person and admit that, but I wasn't a bad person. That's what you guys started teaching me,

and in that new partnership sprang everything else with God and everything else, there's really a partnership and a commitment to self. Never He did I, I,

I used to go running. Let's see what stays here is here, right. I used to go running with this woman that I was having the affair with, uh, along the lake and,

and we ran along the lake and we kind of made it our own, quote UN quote. Well, after I was sober. It's kind of tough to avoid Lake Ontario when you live in Rochester, NY. It's right on the lake. You're seeing the lake, you know, every other day and the idea that that was hers and my leg was tearing me up. So I went up that lake on a lunch hour. In recovery here now.

Few weeks in recovery

and I went back to reclaim.

Reclaim that late for me and God.

And as I ran along the path, I'm going to tell you this. I've never told this in a meeting before.

As I ran along the path, all of a sudden I came to the end of the path which I had passed before. And you loop around, you go around somewhere else and there was a beautiful statue of Mary holding Jesus about this high white statue of Mary holding Jesus

Mary.

And I immediately saw it for the first time. My eyes had been scaled over

and I knelt at the statue

in honor of God and for the first time I realized that

I have been held captive by something

that I was getting free of and I wanted to be free of.

And as I ran back to my car,

I started crying. As I ran,

I heard a child inside of Maine, maybe 12 years old.

The inner child, John Bradshaw.

I never heard of the inner child at that point,

and the child was crying, saying I never meant to hurt anybody.

I've never meant to hurt anybody.

And I said to that child, I promised to take care of you on day to time the rest of my life.

And so far, you know, arrow over haltingly, I've had that partnership,

as a matter of fact, going back to those gifts and that new sobriety, you know what they say in a a, from the time we start acting out drinking, that's where our maturity stops. That's where our growing stops and we get sober. I was 30 years old when I got sober and in the Sai had the psychology, if you will, or the essence of a 14 year old.

That's a good and bad thing, by the way. It's not a bad thing. It certainly means I have to grow, of course, and I'll still have some temper tantrums

and I'll still be rebellious

and I'll still think that my parents are stupid.

But the good part about it that I started embracing is that 14 year olds like to have fun.

I started shooting off model rockets again, for example, this time with my kids

or by myself. What the heck?

I started playing Legos with my little three and five year olds, you know,

and really enjoying that.

So, you know, as you start to come out, I know we've got new people here, you know, and, umm,

just embrace that child and justice, enjoy playfulness.

That's a partnership with yourself.

You know Saint Theresa. Oh, she's a St. Yes. But Mother Teresa of Calcutta

had all her, you know, the nun houses throughout the world, Sisters of Charity. And there was, there was a requirement in that house, which you might not believe, an hour a day. They were supposed to commit to recreation.

These are sisters picking people up off the street and

an hour a day was to recreation and that's a commitment to that partnership, that coupleship with myself and recreation. Recreation isn't that amazing, so I have to commit to having some of that fun on a weekend. I didn't know what to do with my weekends when I got sober.

What I came up with, being the engineer of course, was a template, if I may use that heady term. It was my weekend involved spirituality, some work, maybe work around the house or maybe some work, work, you know, a little bit and recreation.

Typical Saturday for me is a get up. I go to my 8:30 to 10:00 meeting, maybe talk with a guy or two after the meeting, get out there around 11:00 or 10:30. I've done my spirituality Now of course we're going to pray throughout the day. We're going to try to be God's channel throughout the day. But I've, I've had a block of spirituality. Go home, maybe run some errands, go out, do the honeydew list or whatever.

And then maybe about 3:00 or 4:00, go down and play guitar or go ride the bike.

And what happened from the early on in recovery is I didn't, I would get to places like what do I do with my time? You know, I'd get to that stuck point

and I would say to myself, OK, let me step back. I had my meeting this morning. I've been working out in the yard, or maybe the opposite. I got home and just started playing whatever, right? And I'm starting to get a little little grumpy a little. What am I doing here? Oh, I need to do some work,

you know? Anyway, that's just helped me a lot to be in partnership that way.

So we have to embrace that mystery of the heart, mind and soul.

And really what I think it involves is the incomprehensible divinity within each one of us, The incomprehensible divinity. You know, I think God gave us divinity, and I would suspect most of you see it that way. There's a divinity, a divine within us. And I really, I've never read this before, but I think part of why we misuse our powers

is we are, we have a divinity within us.

You see, I'm not powerless in the absolute sense. I have extreme power, extreme power to destroy.

That is a power I do have. It's a misuse of this divine, intimate infinite power.

And so part of my partnership is to embrace that divinity, respect that divinity in myself and where it can go and offer it back to God who gave it the 1st place, and then respect that divinity within my wife

and others.

One of the gifts of sponsoring in that partnership of sponsoring is that when I see the guy who's come in or been there for a while and having to restart their program, I look across the table and I see somebody good.

They may be so full of shame they can't see it themselves, but I see that kernel of goodness,

and I'm sure for the Essenon, if I may boldly speak again, that they see that kernel.

That's what keeps them in that hope. My wife calls it the Doctor Jekyll. Mr. Hyde,

you know, Doctor Jekyll predominated and he still can come out, sadly enough.

But she knew the good part. She saw the good part, and that's what I see in the guys I work with. That's that divinity within.

So I think there's a commitment to understanding gentleness. And I love what I heard yesterday about the commitment to trying to grow in communication. Wow,

I when Barbara said that she started she had to take out a couple keywords out of her vocabulary when she talked with John. Don't use the word always. Don't use the word never.

This is inflaming to a guy. I'll tell you this much. And I wanted to stand up and give her a standing ovation.

I wanted to buy the CD, I don't care how much it costs and take it home.

And that's a community that's a commitment to communicating. Now there's nothing, I'm sorry, there's nothing that sparks me so much to say. You always, you've never see, I'm an engineer, OK? I'm an engineer. If you said to me 80% of the time this is what you do, I'd be like,

that's fine, that's cool.

I can, I can handle that. I know what that means.

But the words never and always are really to be honest and very serious. They're condemnation. They're a condemnation. And you will never change, man. Never say that. I'm sorry. Never say that.

That is an absolute in my opinion. Never say that to anybody that is or never even think that it. I know we have people in our families that you know, I'll never, never change. We cannot do that. That is a disparaging

thought that leaves God out of the equation. Equation.

OK, but I love her commitment to communication and my wife is getting that too, by the way, if she ever hears the CD. OK, I got some more explaining,

but you know, she one of the things I might, I don't know if I shared this Friday night, but I shared this amazing rationalization, you know, that I can do, which is really lying to myself. But I sincerely haven't tried to deceive her. And now she's got this idea now, OK,

But she would call me a liar even a month ago. You're lying to me. I'm like, I'm not lying. This is what I really thought. And then the next day, I come to her and go, you know, that is what I really thought. That was screwed up. And so she understands now

that I'm not lying and that's helped me a lot on that communication. But it allows me the freedom to come back and say I was deluded, I was rationalizing, this was BS. He gives him that freedom. You know, that's the other commitment that I saw this weekend is that they had the freedom. They've given each other that freedom and that space to grow. We had a reading over the 10th Step workshop

which was a really good workshop. I forget who facilitated, but anyway,

the, uh, we had a really good reading over there which said that I'm the key and I'm the key. And basically the guy just ticked off his wife. She's not changing, she's just rooted in her stuff. He goes on a fishing trip. He realizes that he's back as he talks with this other sexaholic, that his attitude is keeping her in bondage.

This attitude is and that if he can just open up his attitude fear as a child of God, as a fellowship member

in this fellowship of humanity, even if she's not going to Essendon see her as a fellowship of humanity.

And he walked in that house with a new attitude, and she cautiously started coming out.

I heard it said, I heard it said, guys, that women are like a flower,

sometimes closed and then sometimes opened up very cautiously.

So if they get hurt,

closes back. Now when I see my wife open like a flower,

I'll be honest with you,

it scares me sometimes

because it's like, wow. I think it's because I'm looking at the face of God in many respects,

that beautiful love, unconditional love of God.

But boy, do I regret it when I make that flower close.

So I got to be committed to that, you know?

I got to be committed to the fact that life has beauty and pain right next to it.

Right next to it,

you've all seen a rose. What's your first thought about a rose?

Aha, keep coming back. But anyway,

take this off. It's getting warm, but

that's good. Mike, you stole my thumb. Roses are beautiful, right? And that was probably the first thing most of you rock,

but there is the thorns right there. You got to be careful how you handle a rose or you get hurt. So that's the commitment to gentleness,

gentlemen and understanding

and on my part as far as communicating, and this is something I want to share with you, that,

umm, just came to me, uh, I think an Angel sat down across me at, uh, the truck dealer the other day. I was, I was kind of in a really bad place. I was nervous about a meeting that was going to happen at work and I was just very honestly depressed. I was just, I was almost catatonically, it was just this sad state. And this guy sat across and came, you know how it is, you're waiting in this place. And I was over off the side and he sat right across from me and he started saying, oh, you're from Ohio. He had a state hat and all that stuff with me. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. And I

want to talk. I was so irritated that this guy came to me and it ended up being one of the most awesome conversations. It took me out of myself. It was amazing. And one of the things he shared with me, it was a life story. He was in a one of these life classes that taught by John Wooden, the basketball coach. I think he's the most successful record in history in the professional basketball league. Phenomenal philosophy. And man, he was giving a class and this guy was in it. I think in the company that this guy worked in motivational class and he asked this.

Actually come up amongst the 50 people. And so Tony, this is my new friend. Tony came up, came up and and John Wooden had a basketball and he threw the basketball at the time and Tony caught the ball

OK and then he had AI guess he had a professional basketball player. John did or has good access to professionals and and he asked the pro to to send the ball to throw the ball to Tony. And so the probe did what he does on the basketball court. He threw the ball to Tony about knocked his fingers off.

It's always like, yeah, his knuckles, you know, bruised. And so John said, let me ask you, Tony, which path did you prefer to receive? He's like,

of course, the pass from you, John, he says. Tell you what, As you go through life interacting with others,

you're going to need to learn how to throw the basketball,

sometimes hard, sometimes more gently.

Instantly I realized what I do.

I go to work every day mostly too. I'm in a professional environment. We throw the basketball pretty hard. I mean, we're, I'm in engineering, we're trying to solve problems, We're debating each other. We're trying to figure out solutions. Hey, back and forth. What do you think about this? No, no, that's not going to work. You know, when I get home, how do I throw the basketball? Same way

my wife comes from a different world profession. She's a different gender. I can't throw the basketball to her that way.

I've got to learn how to throw the basketball.

That's a commitment. That's a partnership,

the commitment to being present in the day

and present in my marriage. John talked about this several times. There was number escape hatch on his marriage. I'm telling you, I had the same thing. I had that little back door. I want to tell you that my wife had a when I was way before sobriety, maybe three years, whatever. She had her tubes tied, tubal ligation to not have any more children. And I got to be honest with you and I don't, I think we did process this and share this because we both regretted it since then.

Reason why I was supportive of that, you probably know where I'm going, is I didn't know if the marriage was going to last.

I had that escape hatch right there.

You know, I was sitting next. I was in the exit row.

I was in the exit row and I thought three kids is enough damage to if I leave

when I got sober about within about a year sober in that very trying, tumultuous time, I remember standing in the bathroom and she was picked. You know, whatever, we're all pot.

And she talked, she brought up the D word, as far as, you know, something about divorce, whatever. And I said to her, I said for me, divorce is not an option. That's the first time I ever said that out loud. The force is not an option. I said there's no back door anymore. I'm committed. It's going to be your decision if that's the case, but I'm committed. And she looked at me.

She had mixed feelings, I suspect. And I'm just guessing because, you know, I'm just guessing. I'm a man

is that she was still ticked that I kind of had almost maybe trapped, you know, but at the other, the other thing I could see in her eyes was she couldn't believe that commitment and the heat of a battle. I would I would pledge that commitment. And that was a moment for me. That was a spiritual moment, at least for me. I don't know about her, but there's no back door.

There's commitment to the present and there's commitment to the future. Now we talk about being in the moment. That's good,

but if I'm not committed to the future,

why be here today?

I mean, if the Rapture was really coming with any of your showed up Friday night,

I'd be like, no, you know, call Tom. Hey, I'm not showing up, you know,

but I'm committed to the future. And there's something about us addicts that I want to share with you is that I started realizing is when I acted out or even in sobriety, when I went in recovery, when I sit there and go, you know, I don't really need to do that or whatever, it's, you know, I'm going to go. You know, sometimes that's a good thing.

You know, you need a break, whatever. Not often,

but most of the time it's, it's rooted in the laziness, the thing that John talked about. Whatever, you know what it is, I'm not loving my future self.

I'm not loving my future self when I don't care. Take care of myself in the present.

You're all sitting here right now,

I suspect because you love your future self enough to sit here and try to be open,

you know, And God is well pleased. Right now. God is up in heaven after this whole weekend. He's got pictures of every single one of you in his wallet