Learning AGAIN To Get Out of the Way

Wow. Wow!

 

My friends at Silver Boomer Books took cover drafts for my new book (Slender Steps to Sanity -- Twelve-Step Notes of Hope) to a meeting last night, asking for votes on four possibilities. I tallied the votes, and there was a clear winner, but it seemed everybody had a very definite favorite, and they disliked intensely the other options. So God took over and told me the answer. "None of the above." He's right. The new cover is perfect, then to top it off, God addressed another issue I've had with the book forever: How do you market a book in OA? He told me. "You don't."

 

But the whole story is even more interesting. Half my life ago, I entered into a partnership in my chosen profession. Soon, I was bringing in more money than any other partner. Then the partnership fell apart, and I was left as a self-employed professional. My billing fell off -- I gave my services away. I could earn money for my partners, but not for myself, and that was at a time I really needed the income! I ended up finding an employer who would give me a paycheck for my services, and I've been loving that job the last 21 years. 

I've had books published before, and I know very well books get sold these days only when the author markets them -- at least until the writer get to the point of best sellers, but even those generally find the writer out pitching the book, just in grander forums to more people. My books have been praised by those who've read them. But plenty of people haven't read them. Add to that the fact of writing anonymously, the marketing of this book has been a fear that probably kept me from getting it out earlier.

 

But then, my kind friends at Silver Boomer Books are in business to sell books. Now, don't get me wrong. They're so open to recovery, to our kind of service and our message, they've developed a Recovery imprint for their third book (my new book) as well as for others planned, one very close to publication. But still, business is business, and they need to be paid for their trust in me and my book, though I've always said I won't take any profit from this book but will give it back to OA and compulsive overeaters.

 

So, this morning I woke with my answer. God's answer. I'm going to use the free books I get as part of my contract with Eagle Wings Press (Silver Boomer Books) and give them free to others in the rooms of OA and looking toward the possibility of exploring them. Then, if the recipient wants me to keep giving them away, I'll give another away for every ten dollars given to me. They can say to whom the book for their money will go, or I'll choose various intergroups and groups or individuals. It's a way I can do service and the recipient can pass on the service, doing their own for somebody else.

The book has been sent to the printers. We'll have it within a couple of weeks. Now, I've got to find out just what God wants me to do as the next right step. But first, I want to thank you, my readers. The book started out as meditations here on this blog, and your support has been invaluable to me. Thanks!

Tolerance

I've recently had two people ask me to sponsor them, coming from encounters with other members of OA with whom they could not work. I was reminded of that, reading this morning from Not God, A History of Alcoholics Anonymous by Ernest Kurtz.

For all their thinking in terms of "salvation," neither Bill Wilson nor Dr. Bob Smith nor Alcoholics Anonymous as such ever fell into the treacherous trap such an understanding could lay -- the oppressive burden of obligation to impose vision and the consequent intolerance that often ensnared those conscious of possessing "saving truth." "In the early days of of A.A. I spent a lot of time trying to get people to agree with me, to practice A.A. principles as I did, and so forth. For so long as I did this...A.A. grew very slowly." Quickly although painfully Wilson early noted, "Nor have we ever had the slightest success in insisting upon some particular form of salvation. Nevertheless we can bring people within the reach of salvation -- that is, of the salvation they choose." (pages 152-153)

Kurtz goes on to quote Wilson as saying "The way our 'worthy' alcoholics have sometimes tried to judge the 'less worthy' is, as we look back on it, rather comical. Imagine, if you can, one alcoholic judging another!"

It's like raising children. You can tell them, give them something to rebel against, or you can show them. I've done enough telling people what they ought to do in my life. God, help me live to show them how to let you tell them how.

In the Context

I enjoyed the meditation readings today, but the reading that's sticking with me is the cartoon today, One Big Happy. The mother's answer to the question about why it's called bath tissue is that sounds nicer than toilet tissue. Begging to differ, the child says toilet contains two of her favorite words, toy and let, the illustrative sentence making her name the indirect object and toy the direct object of a directive sentence. Bath, on the other hand, does not sound pleasant, and she stretches out all the sounds to illustrate. Father, entering the setting, says he feels her pain. He, too, hates to get a hair stuck in his mouth. 

Husband asked me yesterday if I'd called one of our sons to see what's going on with a situation. I said no. He said I didn't seem to care. There's no reason for me to even ask if he's called the son this week or this year. 

I've been getting some medical help the last three weeks, getting a lifelong bad habit corrected. The presenting problem that drove me to the extreme of finally taking care of it, though, wasn't getting better. On Friday they discovered the two weren't related, and with treatment for the presenting problem, now finally there's considerable pain relief there.

We've thought we knew the answers all our lives. Maybe we did, but we didn't know the questions until we started turning this life over to God and seeing his guidance and direction.

My abstinence is clean since March 30. Thank God!

D-E-N-I-A-L

DENIAL. Don't even know that I'm lying. Geesh.

I have told many of you that the betrayal last April/May was one I was able to take in stride, that I wasn't angry, was over it. Denial. Don't even know that I'm lying. Yes, the woman who betrayed me is a sick woman, yes, I've moved past the professional hurt. But still, there were relationship issues way behind that, and the plain fact is, I weigh now basically what I weighed last April/May. I didn't let it go. I held on, tight, keeping the resentment and the hurt on my own body. As though that could hurt her. How ridiculous. How true. 

But not, it's not denial. Now I know I really am over it. Maybe it was the April around the corner that got me here, because the first part of April was when the other stuff started happening last year. But I've been absolutely abstinent since Monday first thing, March 30, and I'm not denying I'm taking back my life.

Thank God!