Happy Joyous and Free episode 6 with Ed

SPEAKER_1 (0:13)

Good day, everybody, and welcome to Happy Joyous and Free. In the spirit of attraction, we present this week's speaker and hope you find something in this message for your own recovery.

More information about us will be available after today's talk.

Ed (0:27)

My name's Ed, I'm an alcoholic.

SPEAKER_1 (0:29)

Hi, Ed.

Ed (0:30)

And it's just an honor to be up in this neck of the woods. I get to see several people that I've known for a long time, Vicki and Cindy and Angie, and a couple of Marks over here, and Dave back there, and Bob, and I could go on and on. But I'm just glad to be here. There's a lot of people with a lot of sobriety here. I feel a little intimidated by that, because I'm used to speaking in places where it's generally a captive audience, literally. And they tend to be young people, young enough to be my grandchildren. But I love doing that work. In fact, I was taking a meeting to KSR, I can say it was a formatory of the Grange back in 2001 I might have had six years of sobriety at that time. And it was a speaker meeting, so I would bring the speaker every Wednesday to the enough is enough group. I'm sorry, the hope for tomorrow. In fact, Cindy was one of the many speakers we had. But one day, an inmate came up to me and he said, I asked my sponsor to come talk. And I said, well, who is he? He gave me his name. His name was Jim. You understand, he just passed, true. But he rattled off Jim's phone number. And I said, where was Jim? We didn't see him. He lives up in Cincinnati. And I thought, at the time, I thought two hours for him to drive to come and speak in a meeting. But I just didn't have a lot of experience with that. And he said, just call him. He says, Mr. Ray, hey, he'll come. So I called this guy up and told him, you know, I had to get some personal information from him to get him cleared to go into the prison. And so I asked him for his name, his Social Security number, his driver's license, his date of birth. I tried to get his master card number. He wouldn't give me back. But I got everything else. And now this is a guy, of course, I've never met. But eventually, the day came where he's cleared and he's scheduled to come and he shows up. And we go in and we have the meeting, he speaks and then afterwards, oh, an interesting thing is that the inmate, who originally asked him to come talk, had gotten in trouble and was in segregation. So he didn't even get to be there for the meeting. And I said, as we're processing out, I was like, gosh, Jim, you know, I'm sorry that so and so couldn't be here to hear you talk. And Jim said, that's okay. He said, my brother was. He knew his brother was somewhere in the penal system in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He did not know he was in that facility of 2,500 men, or that he'd be in that particular meeting of 225 guys. And that was just one of those myriad experiences we have, where we know that God's working. God is working in our lives. And Jim, of course, said a good example for me. And after that, he made a commitment to come once a month, and he would bring one of you all with him. And again, we'd get you cleared, and you'd come, and you'd talk at this meeting. And just, I look back on that, and I realize that I've stood on the shoulders of giants. And they're in this room right now. And thank you for the example that you set for me. So I've got a, you know, I feel like Elizabeth Taylor's eighth husband.

I know what's expected of me. I'm not sure if I'm up to the task.

I will share I've been married for 39 years. I mean, it's five different women, but it adds up.

I'll try to work at all my exes while I'm up here. And they were all good women, you know. They were good mothers. They were good housekeepers. We got a divorce. We kept the house.

And the only thing they had in common was me. And I realize that today.

And my life didn't start out that way. I was given an opportunity not to afford it to most people. When I graduated from high school, I was given a congressional appointment to go to the United States Military Academy at West Point. The Corps, bareheaded, saluted with eyes up, thanking our God that we of the Corps are treading for they of the Corps and the tribe. They are here in ghostly assembly, the men of the coal long dead, and our hearts are standing in tension as we wait for their passing tread. So I'm from the era of Vietnam. During that 20-year conflict, we lost 58,000 Americans. But I understand that last year alone, we lost twice that number to alcohol and drugs.