At a Big Book Study Weekend in Adelaide, Australia

Above an alcoholic

before we go on to fear and sex or fear of sex. I don't know what the

want to tell you a little story about the resentment section of the fourth step.

There's a power in this shift in perception that is remarkable.

Maybe 15 years ago,

I was sponsoring a guy and he he did just did, just finished his fourth step and he got together with me and we were doing his fifth step and we got about 1/3 of the way through his resentment list. And

buried in the middle was the worst resentment he had,

and it was towards his father.

And his father was a horrid, violent alcoholic

and his dad threw out the kids whole childhood, would get drunk and beat this poor kid within an inch of his life.

And as a child, he ended up in the emergency room on several occasions of broken bones and contusions. And he he was so ashamed of what was going on at home. He would make up stories about he fell off his bike, he fell out of a tree or and there there wasn't the diligence about child abuse. This happens today and and nobody knew

he he had accepted a couple occasions his dad was actually forced into

abstinence briefly because his dad would get in so much trouble that, you know, he'd get sober briefly. But he he said, but it was even worse when his dad was sober because he'd be so irritable. And so it is abstinence would make him insane even worse. And he'd yell and he'd scream and get to your room and shut up. And you're stupid. And, and this kid had a childhood

of of horror and abuse.

He'd spent eight years in therapy trying to get free of it. He beat pillows, he did the Gestalt chair. He did all that stuff trying to get free of this resentment towards his father.

It affected his relationships. It affected his ability to work and be a team player. He had this thing with authority. He had a tough time, so he had to. Consequently, he had a couple little businesses that he that sometimes he'd do well, sometimes he wouldn't. He he was better. He seemed better off working for himself rather than trying to work for somebody else. And

it this really owned him. And here it is. Here it is, right in the middle of his fifth step.

We start talking about it

and he's

dumps it all out.

And when I, I, when he's done, I told him I first I start, I read him a paragraph out of in, in step ten, in the 12 steps and 12 traditions. There's a paragraph in there where Bill really expands on the principle that we're supposed to adopt here in this, in this was our course. And he expands it out in step 10 because this is something we're going to do the rest of our life. And he says it beautifully in step 10. And this is not a direct quote, but it's something along

lines. As we approach true tolerance and see what real Love Actually means, it becomes more and more pointless to get angry. Or we start to see how other people like ourselves are frequently wrong as well as emotionally I'll and it gets pointless to become angry at people who, like us, are suffering from the pains of growing up. And then I went back to the book and I, I, I read the paragraph on this was our course. And I said to him, I said, you have to

realize how you were perhaps like how you were like your dad sick too. And when he heard me imply like my like your dad, he flipped out. And he got he was really aggravated that I would imply that he was like his father who he hated. And he he went on this rant and just cussing and I like my damn father's venom's coming out of him. And if you've ever been around somebody that just all this venom is anger's coming out of

very frightening thing. And I'm just sitting there and I'm just kind of backing away because the guys exploding and I don't know what to say to him and he grunts out of gas and he's sitting there. He just kind of glaring and all I can think of is as well, he's

evidently not prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle. I guess I don't. I mean, I don't know. I got nothing here for you. And

what happened next, I believe, was the grace of God

when I, when I listen to a fifth step before I listen to one, I ask the guy that's going to take it to get quiet and invite God in to what we're about to do. And then as he's doing that, I do a similar thing. I ask God to use me

and I found myself he was he. I didn't know what to say so I just like motioned him on. He started reading this next resentment and he gets about halfway through this next resentment. And I stopped him because now something's something's happening inside of me.

And I said to him, I said, I want to go back to another resentment. And he thought at first he thought I wanted him to talk more about his dad. And he got a little on the muscle with me. And I said, no, no, not about your dad. I want to go back to that resentment in the beginning that that woman that you live with for all those years and that that she eventually threw you out and rejected you. And he said, yeah, what about it? I said, were there kids there? Weren't there?

He said. Yeah, what of it? I said to him. I said, listen, I'm just wondering

if in that, in all those years you were in that relationship and you were with those kids, if there ever was a moment when you were drunk or stoned on drugs or hungover where you might have ever done anything to hurt those kids.

And it looked like the blood ran out of his face and he hung his head down. And I have no, I don't know what's going on with this guy. And he lifts his head up and he, I just remember there's just on one side, there was a tear coming down his cheek. And he, I remember the voice, it was, there was a lot of pain in this voice, as if it came from some tortured abyss within him.

And he said

just like my God damn father.

And I said to him, I said,

how did you feel about yourself when you hurt those kids?

He said I couldn't stay drunk enough.

I said, how do you think your dad was? Do you think he might have been like that? And you know, he said, I don't know. I haven't talked to my dad. I've hated him for so long. I have nothing to do with him,

but he's a bad alcoholic and I don't know that he's ever been able to get sober, he said. My sister told me that she's the only one that goes and sees him anymore. Nobody else in the family has anything to do with him. And he lives in a little trailer all by himself out in the middle of the California desert. And

his sister had told him that his dad had been forced to stop drinking because of liver and pancreas problems. And, you know, and he'd try to drink and he'd, he'd just be racked with pain. His body would not print process alcohol anymore. And so he lived all alone in this trailer. And his sister said that she was, he was the most negative,

depressed person she'd ever known and she would make herself go over there. It was be torturous just to be around him,

but he was all alone. And I said to him at one point I said, do you think you could be like that? And at one point he said to me,

he said, maybe without Alcoholics Anonymous, my father is a vision of my future.

And we we started doing the last part of this where it says putting out of your mind the wrongs his data did, disregarding his father entirely. What kind of a son were you?

And he said, you know, I, if my dad is sick like I think he is, I, I, I never cared about that. All I cared about is me. He said I borrowed. He said I was a terrible son. I borrowed thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars over the years off my father and never paid him back a dime because he's an asshole and justified every every bit of it. I gossiped and slandered about him. I to the point where he said he turned most of the family against his father,

but that wasn't a hard turn because his father irritated everybody

until his dad was pretty much all alone except for the one sister who kept going over there.

And

we talked about this immense process because what we're really doing is we're it's it's odd they don't tell you this in the beginning, but you're everybody on your resentment list ends up on your eight step list. That's isn't that horrid? Oh my God. And

we we got to the immense part where he had to disregard his father entirely and he had to go and face his dad. And

he called me up. He didn't have a cell phone. I don't think many this was, I might have been even before cell phones. There weren't many cell phones in those days. He called me up from a pay phone outside this trailer park and he,

he told me he was scared. And we talked a little bit and I, we talked about, I said, you know, you got it. You're, you're going in there to clear up your side of the street. You're going in there to forgive your dad.

You're going in there to be the son that you've never been able to be, regardless of how sick your father is.

And he went and I said, call me when you're done. And he called me up later and I said, what happened? He said, well, you know, I went to the door of the trailer. I was scared to death. I, I felt like, I, I felt like there was going to be a monster on the other side of that door. And I knocked on the door and, and it wasn't a monster that opened up the door. It was this little old shriveled up old man

and he said I looked at my dad and he was pathetic. He was lonely and depressed and and weak and shaky.

And he said at one point I looked in my father's eyes and I saw myself.

And he made the amends to his father and and he opened a door and and when he made the amends for how he reacted and what he did to his father, his father that was like a dam broke

and his father was able to ask him to forgive him.

You see, alone, his dad didn't have what it take took to make the amends. He didn't have the tools,

but once once he opened the door and cleared up his side of the street, his father fell right in line and and he spent the all that money he owed his dad. He used to take care of his father until his father died and he started spending a lot of time with his dad and they they be actually became very close.

And he said one time it we had him speak, it'll be the 10 minute speaker this little meeting. And he he said that the greatest thing Alcoholics Anonymous had ever given him next to his sobriety as he got his daddy back.

And he had, he'd been in therapy eight years trying to get that, and he couldn't get free of it

because there was too much of him blocking the grace of God that had to come in so he could forgive his father

because he had to 1st understand his father. And to understand his father, he had to understand himself.

See, what he saw dead on was He saw his dad's pain.

He saw the insanity, he saw he talked. At one point he was told me about his dad's childhood and how his dad had been so brutally abused as a kid.

Hurt people hurt people.

We don't mean to.

It's almost like sometimes they can't help it.

This is a powerful thing.

This is where we get restored.

And that brings us to the next section of the inventory on fear.

You know, it's fears a funny thing. It's

the book says that it's an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. And that is so true. It's so true to the point where by the time I'm four years over four years sober and I'm doing my first by the book inventory, the resentment list was was easy. And, and I'll tell you something, funny thing, most of the resentments by the time I'm four years sober are people in a a

well, that's it's where they have all the stupid people grouped, right? You know what I mean? I mean,

but I think I'd resented home. I found something wrong with about everybody I knew in A at some time or another, you know, I

and I got to the fear list. I'd finished the resentment list. I got to the fear list. I'm sitting at the kitchen table in my apartment with this legal pad, and I wrote fear across the top of the page and I'm sitting there and I'm drawn a blank. I can't think of anything I'm afraid of.

And I knew that when I first got sober, my guy was facing the two years in prison that haunted me. I was afraid of being home. I bet all the IT seemed to me that all the things that I got was afraid of where I'm not longer I'm no longer afraid of. And I felt as if maybe I don't have any fears. And so I went to this intergroup meeting and there was a guy speaking from out of town and him and my, my sponsor and I had a bunch of people went out to a restaurant after the meeting and I'm talking to these guys. And I said this old

said, you know, I'm writing a fear inventory. And I, I discovered I don't have any fears. And he said, really? I said, yeah, I can't think of anything I'm afraid of. He said, can I ask you some questions? I will say sure. He said. Are you afraid of large, angry barking dogs?

Well, I mean, everybody is. We're not talking about everybody. We're talking about you. Well, yeah. City afraid of rattlesnakes? Well, everybody we're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Black Widow spy. Yeah, Yeah.

Afraid of dying old and alone?

Yeah. Are you afraid of what people think of you

all the time?

Are you afraid of? He said, he said. Are you afraid of cancer?

I, my first four years of sobriety, I must have had cancer 50 times. I mean, I had, I had eloquent death rehearsed in my mind, deathbed speeches. I mean, I never got to use. I, I've been one time I, I woke up in the morning and I, I knew I had some kind of leukemia or bone cancers. I could something's wrong with my leg and I got my God, I could feel it in there and I went down to the hospital in 175 dollars. Later, two hours

later, I'm late for work to find out that I slept on my leg. Funny, you know, I'm in the hospital rehearsing the speech I'm picturing. He'll probably ask me to talk at the convention before I die, and I'll tell him

so when he says you're free to cancer. I said, oh, my God, he said, are you afraid of rejection? Yeah. Are you afraid of being sick? Can't take care of yourself? Are you afraid of that nobody will ever love you?

Are you afraid that maybe God doesn't really care about you the way he seems to care about these people in AA?

Are you afraid of stuff out of your past catching up with you? Are you afraid you'll never really make all these things right? All this money you owe, you'll never make all your amends? Are you afraid of? Are you afraid of?

He said. Are you afraid of homosexuality? And I'd spent time in jail where I was always worried about that, you know, And he went on and on and on and, and he finally said, so is there anything you're not afraid of?

It was like, how do you do that? How did he do that? To me? It's like some kind of jujitsu. I mean, it's like a, you know, they just turn her. I mean, if you're new and you don't want to change and all you want is relief, stay away from the old timers. They just use that spiritual jujitsu stuff on you. Next thing you know you're wrong.

How does that happen? How come I'm always the guy that's wrong? Well, that's the nature of the beast.

And I started making my resentment list and the book has some very specific things to say about it. It talks about fears. It says that fear, and this is brilliant. Wilson was brilliant. He says fear sets in motion

trains of circumstances which brought me misfortune I felt I didn't deserve. But did not I myself start the ball rolling? Well, what does that mean?

Well, psychiatrists refer to this as self fulfilling prophecies

that I get a fear and the fear drives me to change my unconsciously to change my position or angle of approach to life until I make the fear come true.

I give I give you an example. I give you a couple examples. One one was the first relationship I ever got in, in sobriety. I got into this relationship and I'm, I'm not sober very long. I don't have very much self esteem and I got a lot of fear. What's the fear? The fear is she's going to dump me and I don't and I like, I don't want, I want to be hooked up with someone. I don't want to be dumped. So what's happens? Well, the fear drives me. I don't know that it's driving me. It's shifting me and my it's controlling. My

fear is the muscle of the ego. You want to get me to act selfishly and crazy and nuts scare me. Scare me. And next thing I know, I'm driving by her apartment at 3:00 in the morning, just making sure no guy's cars are there. You know, I used to I'd watch people hug her at a meeting. I'd go up to her. Hey, don't be hugging my girlfriend. People start thinking I was nuts.

I went through her, she left the room. One time I went through her purse looking to see if there's any guy's cards in there, A phone number. I mean.

It drove me to be smothering and controlling and possessive.

And here's the sad part.

I don't even know I'm doing that.

My sponsor tried to tell me. He says you're going to run her off.

I don't know what he's talking about, she said to me one time. She says I don't like to go to meetings with you. I said why not? She says. Because every time I look up, you're looking at me.

Well, yeah, I mean,

and I didn't even know it. And what happened? I'm afraid she's going to leave me. What happened? The fear drove me to be so possessive and smothering. I literally drove her away out out of my I drove her out of my life

and I made the fear come true. I remember the day she left, it was she went, she ended up going with some other guide and I just, I felt gut shot.

And in the midst of this, this horrible feeling of desolation,

was this little voice,

which is the voice of the enemy. And the little voice said to me, yeah, but you were right. I like being right. I'm dying here, but I'm right. I made it come true. Is it? Could my ego be that strong that it would that would destroy me to be right,

that it would maneuver me around? I had, I had a job one time before I got sober and it was a tremendous opportunity for me. My father was very politically connected and he threw a he one of his best friends had just started this environmental engineering outfit. And it was back in the days when water pollution and air pollution, everything, all this stuff was, was like cutting edge stuff. And everybody's on the, on the bandwagon for, for water and, you know,

pollution, all the, all the factories now are getting mandated to have it their smokestacks tested and their water tested and everything. And this, this, this was a great opportunity. This guy gave me a job working at this company and he was going to pay for my schooling and teach me how the business so I could become an environmental engineer. A tremendous opportunity for me. But I want to work with a fear. And the fear here's the fear is that the people that work there

aren't going to accept me, that the people that are work there are probably saying things to each other like, well, you know that Bob, the only reason he's here is his dad's friends with the guy who owns the company.

And I was afraid that they weren't going to accept me. So what happened? Well, the fear drove me to be defensive enough and on the muscle enough with those people. And like, what do you mean by that kind of thing? And that haven't walking around with that edge in me until one day they call me to the office and they say, Bob, you're a hard worker, but we're going to have to let you go

because you just don't fit here. You're not a team player. And I made the I made the fear come true.

And I don't even see. The sad thing about people that are asleep in their own lives is I don't even know I'm doing that

because I don't. I can't see past myself. I can't see me the way you see me Now, if you, like my sponsor said you're going to drive her away. I can't see that. If I would have had a sponsor in those days, he would have spent. You're going to lose that job if you keep acting like that. It worked, but I don't even know I'm doing it.

It says. So these fear, they brought us misfortune we felt we did not deserve. But did not we ourselves set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classed with stealing.

It seems to cause more harm. Nothing has ever robbed me of abundance and love and opportunity as fear has. How many opportunities come into our lives and, and your head says that you wouldn't like, oh, you can't do that again.

And so I, my past is littered by unmet opportunities,

by peep, by opportunities to love people and have friends. And there's, there's people in my life today that I'm very, very close to. My sponsor is one of them where at one time I kept them like this. Why do I keep them like this? Why do I have a little judgment? Why do I keep them at arms? Like, because I'm afraid. I'm afraid if I let them in, they're not going to like me. So I reject them first because I don't want to risk it, right?

And, and he's one of the great people. He's one of the the central figures in my life today. I kept him like that for a long time.

There's things in my life I've come to just really love that I was afraid to try. I remember when I first got sober, there were there were people in a that used to go on these ski trips. You know, they they, they try to talk. Hey, why don't you come skiing with us? Oh, I don't like skiing. We have you ever been? No, but I know things.

Wait. I should stop once in a while and ask my head. What's your source of information here? Well, what's really going on? I'm afraid I'm. I'm afraid of the learning curve in skiing. I'll, I'll start. I'll do it. I'll sign up for anything if I can start at the top,

but I'm afraid of looking stupid. I'm afraid of falling down

and I didn't trust, I didn't feel good enough about myself or trust God or life itself enough to take risks yet. So I discounted, never went skiing for 10 years. And when I was 10 years sober, I finally I'd grown enough spiritually to take some risks. I started skiing. I felt I became within two years, I was an avid black diamond skier. I skied all. I skied all over the world.

People asked me. They knew that I was used to being playing bands and stuff. When I first got sober, they asked me, we're going to get a band together. Why don't you? I I was afraid.

I was afraid because I associated it in my mind with the old life and my as a drunken music, drunken, drugged up musician. I couldn't do it because I didn't trust God enough.

You know, I didn't realize that my life is actually on a different basis. I could. I can do these things now.

A guy asked me to if I wanted to go scuba diving with him and some guys that were going out to the lake, I wouldn't like that because I was afraid.

And all these things have become

important things to me in my life and and I was robbed of the opportunity of having their experience for years in sobriety because I'm scared.

I'm afraid

when it says it should be classed with stealing, I don't think, I don't think that's an exaggeration.

There was a friend of mine who died of cancer named Rusty. He was sober a long time. He's one of the old timers in my first Home group. And I used to sit with Rusty and when he was dying and he said to me one day something I'll never forget. He said, You know, kid, he said when you get into the home stretch

and you look back over your life, it's not really the mistakes you made that you that that are bad. It's the things that you were too afraid to try that you regret.

The people you're afraid to love are let in the opportunities that life had presented, that you were too afraid to try.

I never forgot that

I I wanted. I want to do it all.

I am. I'm I trust, I trust God to the point today I'm almost dangerous.

I mean, no, really it's like I'm leaping, I'm jumping here. I just, there's no abyss. I'm jumping. I know he'll catch me. I'm I'll take a shot. Just about anything. I I'm in. That's one of the things Scott and I say to I just, I ran into him. We were down, we were scuba diving down Turks and Caicos and I told, I said I'm going to Australia. You know, he says to me, he says what I would say. He says, oh, I'm going to.

I'm in.

Just people call me up. Do you want to come over here and do this? Yep, I'm in my my daughter thinks I'm crazy sometimes, she says. Where you going?

Such and such a city and such and such a state, she says. Oh, where you stand, I don't know. You don't know You have a place to stay there. Oh, I'm sure I do. But we're dead. I don't know.

How are you going to get there? I don't know. Somebody will pick me up who? I don't know.

You're going on an airplane. You're going to a city you've never been to before. You don't know where you're staying or who's picking up you up. And you know no one there. Yeah. Isn't that great? She thinks I'm nuts. But it I've, I've been doing this for years, and it always works out. It's always. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

I do trust God today.

I know, I know that he'll take care of me. And that's what the book says that the answer is. We list our fears. We ask ourselves why we have them. Because we're going to uncover an amend, unmade amends, unfinished business. What? Amends is just things that have to be mended. Amends are not a matter of right or wrong. That's the ego's territory. Amends is just mending separation. The Spirit doesn't care about right or wrong.

The Spirit cares about unity,

to become back one with, to mend the mend the rip between me and this person, between me and life itself.

So I asked myself why I had these fears.

Sometimes I find out that I'm. I'm afraid. I've fears underneath fears underneath fears. So I'm talking to this guy and he's telling me about he doesn't wanna go to this one meeting. And I know that there's something kind of fear underneath. I said, what are you afraid of it? That means, oh, I'm not afraid of anything. OK, well, how come the idea of going to that meeting creates a little anxiousness in you? Little anxiety, apprehension.

Well, it's not that. It's just I don't like the people at that meeting.

Anybody in particular? Well, you know, Joe goes there. I don't like Joe, Hun.

Not my kind of guy. Oh, really?

What don't you like about Joe? I just don't like him. He's just, he's a, he's an egotistical guy. I don't like him,

I said. Is there any chance that you're afraid of going to that meeting because you talk crap about Joe everywhere else and alcohol synonymous, and you're afraid somebody else has gotten it back to him and now you're afraid to face him? And he looks at me like a deer in the headlights. And that's exactly what was going on. Why do you have the fears? Often you'll uncover some unfinished business.

We run into people all the time. They're afraid of doing their taxes. Why?

Because they cheat on their taxes.

Years ago, we don't have this much anymore because you don't see too much of it. But 15 years ago, half the people, half the guys that got sober had a panic and fear of having AIDS. Why? Well, because they stuck needles in their arm and they had unprotected sex almost irregularly.

Why do you have the fear?

It's something. It's either something you are doing that you shouldn't have done or something you haven't done that you should have done. It's unfinished business.

I did. Guy come up to me one time. You see, you're so funny. Is it this recovery house?

And he says, can I talk to you? And he's sober four or five months, I guess. And he said, I'm doing a four step and I'm stuck in the fear section. I have several fears and I don't know why I have them. I said, well, let's talk about it. And he reaches in his pocket, pulls out a cigarette. He lights it up, takes a hit off and he says, well,

I got this, you know, I got this fear of cancer

and I don't know why I have it. You know, my parents didn't have cancer, and I've never traumatized by cancer as a child. I don't understand why I have a fear of cancer. And I'm looking at him like

he's looking for deep psychological reasons. I said to him, could it be because you smoke? And it was like, he looked at me like, oh, that's too simple.

Why do we have these fears? Why do we have them?

The book says, what's the answer? Well, we've got to. We have to remember we're on a different basis. What basis? Not the basis of living your life on self will, but the basis of the third step decision. I'm on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. I trust infinite God who can handle the load of my life rather than my finite selves.

I don't know if anybody other than me has ever had the experience of being sober for a period of time and feeling like you're having a nervous breakdown

because there's so much stuff to worry about. When I am the center of the universe and my life and everything around it is my responsibility, Oh my God, there's stuff to worry about. There's a whole world out there full of people, and they're all thinking stuff. I don't know what they're thinking. But you suspect it's about you, don't you? So you have to always be guessing.

Sometimes you have to accuse people of things just to see, you know what I mean? Just to see

you feel like you're. I felt. I remember one time I ended up in a psychiatrist psychiatrist office. I was sober at my parents' house for several months, not drinking, just angst.

And I had this like, nervous breakdown. And he said you got free floating anxiety and a panic disorder.

No, I had self-centered fear.

I was trying to play God. I was the center of my life. I was trusting Finite Bob

rather than infinite God. It's almost in the, in the US we have in in the laundry rooms in our homes. We have this one electrical outlet that has 220 volts and it's for the dryer. Now everything else in the house is 110. But if you'd go into the kitchen and get an appliance that's designed for 110 and you plugged it into the 220, it's going to overload and burn out because it does not have the capacity to handle that load.

And that's what I am like when I am trying to handle my life.

I don't have the capacity. I just I will either angst up and just terrible anxiety and then implode into depression.

I don't have the capacity to handle the load. That's why I need God.

There's a thing that bleeds into AA every once in a while at a treatment centers and and out of psychology that that might be that might be legitimate for non Alcoholics, but I don't think it's right for us. And it's a sentiment that these feelings of inadequacy, these feelings that you're not enough, that something we we should strive to get over.

There's as if we need to become complete and whole. I think that's wrong. I think the best and the most precious

thing I have within me and going for me is my sense of not enough. It's my inadequacy. Because from it I will come to the table here and I will come to God and I will come to you and I work these steps truthfully. If I could become enough, you'd never see me again.

Why would I come here and listen to all this stuff and put it money in the basket and listen to 5th steps and go pick up these knucklehead newcomers and go down to the detox

and pay back the money and Oh my God.

But I, I've never, I've been very lucky here. I've never been able to become complete enough that I could leave you.

I think that's my greatest blessing.

The thing I tried to run away from, the thing I tried to fix and cure, is really my greatest blessing.

I am not enough.

It is who I am.

I yearn, I yearn from for the power from which I came

because I am not enough. So we trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. And that's the trust seems to be the answer to fear. But trust is more than faith. I was a couple years sober and I was, you know, I had a lot of anxiety. I hadn't really done much on the steps yet. And I was talking to an old timer and I was telling him, I said, you know, I don't know what's wrong with me. I get up in the morning, I get down on my knees, I pray, I say the third step prayer and and I'm just all day long

get this edge in me, this I worry about stuff all the time. And he said, well, you have faith and you pray. And I said, yeah. And he said, you know, it's really not enough. He said Alcoholics of our type

have been dying of alcoholism with lots of faith and lots of prayer, he said we have to take it up a notch. You have to trust God.

And he said, I'll tell you the difference between faith and trust. He said if you went to a circus and you sat in the audience and you watched a tight wire act and you watched it, a man come out to the edge of the wire on the platform and he's pushing a wheelbarrow. You could sit in the audience with all the faith in the world and think, this guy's a professional. I have absolute faith he can walk across that tight wire pushing out wheelbarrow.

I bet she's done it 1000 times. Professional. I know he can do it. And then he said to me, but if you trusted you'd go up and get in the wheelbarrow. And when he said that, I got this sinking feeling,

you know, because I knew what he meant. He I that I really had to let go of my life and stop maneuvering and worrying and manipulating and wondering, and they had to get in the wheelbarrow. The problem is, I understand what he says. I understand the value of getting in the wheelbarrow. I think it's a good idea to get the wheelbarrow. I like going to meetings where we read about getting in the wheelbarrow. I like going out to coffee with people where we philosophize at great depth about getting

a wheelbarrow. I just ain't getting in the wheelbarrow, you know? And why am I? Because I'm afraid I believe my head more than I trust God. I'm afraid if I ever became that vulnerable, if I ever gave it all and got in that wheelbarrow and dropped all my defense mechanisms and I stopped trying to do for me and just totally trusted and relied on God. I get in that wheelbarrow. I get halfway across that wire and I'd hear that voice.

Is that Bob?

Oh no.

Because I don't really trust God.

So what do you do if you're like me and you know, you know you should, you know you're burning, you keep hurting yourself based on self will and self-reliance. You know it. You're causing problems. You know you need to get in the wheelbarrow and you can't. You're just emotionally handicapped. What do you do? Page 53 it it talks about what happens to I think most of us at some point.

And some of us, it happens recurringly

in the very middle of the page. It says

we became Alcoholics. And then it talks about a condition that happened to me in my sobriety on many occasions. It says crushed. That's a pretty good word. Crushed by a self-imposed, which means I did, it didn't mean to, but I did it. Crushed by a self-imposed crisis I could not postpone

or evade means there's no wiggle room here. I can't get out of it. The consequences of what I did are coming at me

and I don't know what to do here and I am powerless. Crushed by a self-imposed crisis I could not postpone or evade. I had to fearlessly face the proposition that God is either everything or else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What's our choice to be?

Out of absolute collapse comes faith and trust.

When I was just a few months sober, the first time I ever found myself in this place, I, I'd been sentenced to two years in a state penitentiary in the state of Pennsylvania.

And now I'm sober and I knew the warrants were out and I knew it was just a matter of time before they picked me up and I was going to be extradited back to Pennsylvania and do 2 years and possibly additional time for, I don't know, for crossing state lines and stuff. I don't know. I think I've heard rumors that they tack on time for that stuff for, for fleeing. And

a man in Alcoholics Anonymous who I respected, I went to him and I told him about the fear. And he said to me, he said, he said, here's what you have to do, kid. You got to got to call your PO and talk to the courts and offer to go back there and turn yourself in and do the two years. And I thought, are you kidding me?

Oh, man, I, I, I, I don't know what the jails are like here, but I'll tell you, in America, they're brutal. They're bloodbaths. I still got scars, physical scars from fights I've gotten into with people in jail and cellblocks.

I don't want to do the two. I don't jail well. I do not jail well