Betty M. AFG Female

**Betty** (0:03)
You know, before I start, I have a son. He's 50 years old, and because of drugs and alcohol, he is bipolar and schizophrenic. I got a call before coming down here, he's in a group home now, and he has seizures, he blacks out.
He's 6'2, and he's a black man. And that scares me, because when he has those seizures, it can happen anywhere. And he may wake up and not know where he's at. One time, and I know when he's off his medication. A year ago, I had to become his payee, and I had to put him in a group home. He stopped paying his rent. I don't know why, and I really didn't ask, because I have to turn my adult children over to God, and I have to do what I can. And my sponsor, I have a sponsor, and I do sponsor my home group, is the Now There's Hope Al-Anon Group. We meet in Cleveland. So if you're ever up that way, and we do still meet, next door to us is an AA meeting also.
So when I took over being his payee, and I'm like, okay, God, you're assigning me another position I didn't ask for.
And I'm like, we're going to talk about this, because I talked to God, and I'm like, why? And when I first came into Al-Anon, they would say, why not you? You know? And I'm sitting there, because my son, before this happened, he was so outgoing. I mean, he had a personality, had a lot of women, and he always attracted the wrong women, the women that had drinking problems.
And one day, he called me out of the blue, and he was asking me, Ma, how do you comb a girl's hair? I said, what are you talking about? This child is not his child, okay? And I said, where's her mother? Well, she's not here. And when I met this young woman, she came to my house years ago. She sat in my house with these dark glasses on. She never took them off. And I'm looking at her like, okay. And I told my son, you know what? You can do much better.
But when I came into these rooms, I used to say to myself, because I came in, I was in my mid-20s. And my first husband, as you know, Bobby Moore is my second husband. And when he speaks tomorrow, you know why God did not put me in his life when he was drinking.
And I have to tell this, we have a 37-year-old daughter. My kids are 56, 50, and 37 So you see the span. So Bobby, you know he likes to dress.
So he had left his shoes, and I'm going in the car. Oh, no, Betty, they're in the car. So I go down to the car, and I'm looking in the car. I said, Bobby, your shoes are not in the car. Well, I put them in the car. They're not in the car. I don't know what to tell you. So I said, call our daughter because she lives with us. So he called her, and she said, well, dad, your shoes are here. And he said to her, and she's a Bobby Jr. He said, well, could you bring them to me?
She grew up in AA and Al-Anon, and her response was, dad, it's not about the shoes. It's about the message that you're going to give.
So this is what I'm living with, okay?
I'm going to read you a page, and I thought it was very humorous when I read it. It's from one of our books that's new, and it's July the 8th, and it's, in a recent meeting, a fellow member compared Alcatraz, a prison on an island, with alcoholism, a prison of my own making. The analogy resonated with me immediately. After I worked step seven, humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings with a sponsor. I came to realize my own character defects often acted as prison bars. Self-righteous trapped me in my own isolated perspective. People-pleasing, keeping the real me hidden away, not speaking up for myself, binding me in a chain of resentment. I believe my higher power, whom I choose to call God, can use my self-imposed time in prison to help me change my ways, but he doesn't want me to stay there. He wants me to live in freedom and applause when I take steps toward it. Today's reminder, I've done time in the family disease of alcoholism, but I do not have to serve a life sentence without parole. I have rehabilitated myself each time I make use of the Al-Anon program. Al-Anon has given me a new life and the freedom to live richly in the present. And that's what I try and do. I try to live in the present. A little background on me.