Hanoch Speaking to the Barcelona "Easy Does It, But Do It" meeting on December 27, 2023
The Daily Reprieve
Barcelona Meeting - Hanoch T
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Daily Reprieve, where we provide essays, speaker meetings, workshops, and conferences in podcast format. We are an ad-free podcast. If you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by going to Donate.thewreprieve.com and drop a dollar or two into the virtual basket. Please consider donating monthly by clicking the Donate monthly button. However, one-time donations are always welcome. Just click the Donate Now button. Now, without further ado, this episode of the Daily Reprieve. [Music] Today, the 27th of December, 2023, we are very happy to have with us Hanukh T from New York in the U.S., sober since the 27th of November, 1992. He will be sharing on the topic of how God keeps me sober in spite of it all. You are now on Hanukh. You have 25 minutes to share and Daniel will be timing you. How would you like to be timed? What do you mean, how? Well, do you want a warning after 20 minutes, for example? Yeah, how much time you give to me? 25. Okay, you have to 20 minutes. Give me a warning, yes. Okay. Okay, Hanukh, take it away. Okay, hello, everybody, but it's based on a little tomorrow ago. I feel like crying. I feel like crying at you. It's been many, many years since I saw you in Brooklyn, New York, right? You remember in 13th Avenue? You came to our meeting? Yes, Margaret, you remember that. And I was sober then maybe a year. And I can't explain this. You gave me, you came, you were to me then in all time, or you came to our meeting. And here's 25 years later, but 20 years later, and I'm sober. I'm meeting you again in a sober setting. And thank God, thank God. I'm like, crying. I go, it says, you know, it's like me, an old friend, not all time friend. And we both, we live different parts of the world. Even we bought the United States, but the different parts of the country. And I've stopped going to the international conference a year ago. Couldn't continue going there anymore. And to meet some old friends from those days, from those days, it's very, very, very emotional, very rewarding, sober. So thank you. Thank you. Now, talking a little bit about recovery, I think I want to talk three to five minutes about my acting artist to me. I was raped when I was 12. And I say, raped, I was 12 and an older boy, a high school boy forced me to have within sex. Then he convinced me that we did something terrible. And if I tell anybody, I would be disowned by the schools. I wouldn't be able to be kicked out of school. And so I better tell nobody because we did something together. And I believe them. Then when I was 14, again, an older boy, Barbie, 20, or worse me to have a sexual encounter with him, he used me. And he always told me that made me feel guilty right afterwards, how come I do this? And he never gave me my satisfaction. And I believed him. That's my fault. And he stayed with me for many, many years. Then I started acting out myself starting my estimation when I was 12. And days, maybe 17 started working the streets. Then age 20 picked up prostitutes. From age 20 to 25, there was my ammo street prostitutes. And I tried there was always an acting in and acting out, meaning always about acting out. Then come the promising guards into myself and never, never again. Sometimes two or three days, sometimes a week, the maximum was about three weeks of time of safe sober, then acting out worse than before. Days 25, I came, day 24, I came to AA because once I got hooked on the street prostitute, I started with drugs with them very heavy. And that drove me to seek help. I came to AA, and I told my sponsor, and AA, that's the drugs, that's not the drugs, not the alcohol. And he told me one thing at a time. After a year being sober from drugs and alcohol, I picked up a prostitute on the street again. And I came next day, it was November 26th, 1992. In November 27th, I came to my therapist, and I cried, and I told him, well, I was over. I just don't feel I have a place in life. I might as well finish it. I want to kill myself. I felt I want to kill myself. And my therapist pushed me to SA. And I came to you. And I say to you, to you, the people of SA. And I came to you crying that I cannot stay sober. The 12 steps don't work for me. Maybe for people in AA, but for me, it doesn't work. And you, the people of SA, told me, you're right. You will not be able to stay sober. You are a dead man. You can never fight this. You will never win this game. But if you give it up to God, you have a chance of getting one day, a day to be free. And I left my first SA meeting with the knowledge. I was sorry. At the last time I acted out when I came that I understood, when that motel, I knew that I am finished, that I can never never win this game, win this war. But what? You were the people of SA gave me a second step. First meeting I changed to. You gave me hope. You told me, yes, Anna, you cannot win this. But it's a very powerful God that will give you a daily reprieve if you beg him every day. And I start doing it every day. As a God, I'm sick. I'm sick. Just give me a day. Please give me a day. God, please give me a day. Please, give me a day. And here I am. It's 31 years later, 31 years. I'm taking a dream. So I only beg God for a day. It's 31 years. That every day I take, give me a please. God, give me a day. Give me sober a day. And somehow the day is accumulated. Not a day. Another day became a month, two months. I'm still asking God, every day, give me a day, not more. And these days are accumulated. Now, the first year there was period was very hard. I would say, you know, the first three weeks I was sober in the field. Then comes the pink clouds, where it's not the best thing in sober. Then after the pink cloud goes down the drain, a very bad, very bad depression. In the first year, after a few months being sober, I fell into a very deep depression. And I couldn't see how I could live without acting out. I did not want to act out, but I couldn't believe the life without acting out. And in the first year, I would say the second half of my first year, the hardest period in my life. I used to sit on the couch in my house, beg God to God, kill me, kill me, I can't live like this. I just can't go rather kill me, take my life. I don't want to act out, don't act out, but I don't see how to go on like this. It was through all pain. It was so bad for me. And God took me through it. So God did not kill me. It's funny. It didn't listen to my prayers. But yes, he listened to my praise. He kept me sober, kept me sober. That first year, the second half of the first year, I was a very deep depression. My therapist told me maybe go see the kind of trust, give it some indication. I went to see you because the kind of trust, and I told him, don't know my history, and he said to me, I'm giving you nothing. I'm not going to give you nothing. He said to me, you have to go through the pain to stay sober. He said to me, you will go through it once, and God, God willing, you will never going to have to go through this again. He was right. It was right. They never had to go to the pain, to the pain to again. My wife makes a lesson piece. In that period of time, she told me that she's having an nightmare. She couldn't, she said, I can't let me do like this. She said to me, maybe go act out, maybe. So that's what I said, story one night, I was sitting in the couch in my living room and crying, crying, crying to God, to take me, kill me, I can't go out like this. My wife came to me, said to me, get out of the house, leave the house. I don't know if she can't have you this way. It's okay. I'm leaving. She begged me, begged me, and I said, fine, that's what I'm leaving. And I put on my coat, my shoes, and I was heading towards the door. This is an entire gift. And I was going to the door. My wife ran to the door. He said, no, no, I'm sorry. You come back, you're staying here. You're not leaving the house. I said to you, I said, you just asked me to leave. He said, no, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I was saying that he's not leaving, he's staying in the house. I was trying to have a fight. If I was leaving, I was staying in the house. Finally, I think it was a gift to God. Only some voice in my head. My team said to me, Hannah, listen to your wife. She's talking to you. They said, where are you going? I came back now and I said down in the couch and I said, okay, crying. So God kept me, God kept me to a sober. You know, it's God kept me in. By the way, my wife never told me not to work again. So I had four special children, one after the other, that are born when I say special, they were, I had three children and were born very real, hereditary disease. They were bound to a wheelchair, to a bone thick. And four had special children, one after the other. My wife wanted to have kids and I was scared to have more kids, but she insisted on having more kids and she said about to believe in God. And for many years, there were special kids in my acting out here. There were punishments from God, God, it's hard to take advantage of my acting out, punishing me with those special children. After I was sober a few years, my wife who taught me that these are gifts, these are special children. We were gifted. We are gifted to have these special children and God gave them to us. And the resonate, finally, after going to many steps, I was able to see that God gifted me with special children. So after being sober, I lost one of the children that died before I got sober. And when he died, my acting out escalated at least triple times as much as number four. And after I got sober, I lost two children. And one was in 2002. I was sober nine years then. It was very painful. But I was able to go to sober. I tried my wife together. We did it so, but I buried my son sober together. I went to him. He was very, very dramatic. I took a new camera to a meeting, and then I took him back. I gave him a ride back from where he came, and I came home, and then my son died at the corner. And I didn't think he came, and he died. He died in the spirit, I felt he died in the spirit of, I say, I came actually in the meeting. And I was able to bear his feeling a little and bury him sober. It was in 2002. Well, I was able to go back. And it was over two years when my mother died. It was over two years. And it was a dramatic time, very painful when my mother died. And I went through with sober. My sponsor came to the funeral with my mother. I had people from the program who walked me in the funeral. And I said, if you never believe me, I said, and I'm able to go to the pain sober. When I was sober, ten years, 2002, was when my son died. At that point, I didn't have a drug to act out, meaning I had to go to the pain in a very rural way. I had to bury a child and try, try, to open. And I did it with my wife together. We still, every day, we'd try together, not about our child. I would love them. And I didn't have to act out of my feelings. I was able to go through the pain. It was a gift. I was able to go to pain in a sober way, be able to cry in a way that's painful. Talk to God and thank God for the years that I had my child and accept. I used to pray to God, help me, help me, accept you well. It's painful. I mean, they want to. I learned a sobriety. I could tell God, the God, you know, you're a loving father, but I'm a lot of pain now, help me go through it sober. And also, even though I don't feel the grace now, help me. I should come to a place that I should be able to see the grace and everything it put me to. And everything I did, and everything pain for the God put me to, that I did pray and beg them. They said, I should have the patience, the way to come to the moment where God will show me the grace, show me the goodness, everything. It happened to the King. And in 2011, I would say 2010, my wife got ready and I started to go back to 2009. My mother got very sick. My mother was gone. She had a stroke. My wife, basically, was living in the heart of the home. She lived here. It asked me every day with her mother. She wasn't home. It was a hard time for me. I lost my wife in a way. My wife wasn't home. And I had to accept it, that she and I had to, I was able to give my wife her space and say, be with your mother. Right now, you know, you mother needs you. And I know you're not available for me. Even though she used to come home, sleep home, what she wasn't here. She was my wife. I was married and I had a wife, but my wife was busy with her mother for a 10-month period, like she wasn't. It was essentially emotional that she wasn't my wife. I was married to her and I was able to do that sober. They would tell my wife multiple times, your mother needs you now, and your job is to be with your mother now and it's okay. I will go to meetings and be connected to God to my people. Went to me sober. And the day my mother died, my wife took a shower and she felt something. And she told me, after the funeral, that she thinks she has to go to a doctor. And the nightmare came true. She went to a doctor, after the shower. She discovered that she had a tumor, meaning recovering from the time of losing her mother. And then she discovered that she had something that she has to deal with. The year and a half, she started going to doctors, started going to chemotherapy, chemo didn't work. Every kind of chemo she tried, the doctor changed from month to month to month. It's their side, different methods to help her with her cancer. It didn't work. It didn't work. And she died. The end of later, she died. And I lost my wife physically. It was very, very painful for me that the last half year of her life, I saw that we both know. We both know she's dying. My wife couldn't talk about it. I was learned. I had to go to therapy. And I learned the time people. It's too scary for them to talk about the dying. And my wife, without you know, she knew she died. She couldn't talk about it. So I had to go to therapy and meetings. My wife felt hard, my response, my therapist, and my son would be nice to my wife. And she'd go with us and back evidence. Just not talk about the future, not talk about what's going to be after. And she died, after she died. It was a very painful, very painful period where they had to go. I had to, the person that I loved them was the person that was there for me in my worst condition. I had to walk her through hell and walk her to the grave. I saw the candle extinguishing, you know, little by little, the candle was going out. And I had no partner to talk about. She was my partner, but I could not talk openly with her about her condition. She couldn't talk about it. It was two people for her and my recovery and my eight and nine steps taught me that I have to be there for her. And my being there for her was to be there, give her love, but not talk about what's going to be, not talk about dying. And those days, I have to be honest, it was the worst period. The turn of coming close to Hector, it was with a period of time, the last few months of her lives were suddenly, I started having illusions in my hands. Maybe took care of her, maybe I need a break, maybe. And I started thinking to myself, God will not be angry, God is a little farther. God will not be sad if I act out. Just literally, you know, five minutes, okay. Okay. Even the people and I say, I know the people and my friend and I say, well, except me, say, honor, it's such a hard time to deal with it. But what helped me then is, I remember my first step. I knew that if I act out, there's no end to it. I know that the beginning, but I know if I turn on the switch, I cannot turn on the switch, like the turn and on. But after there's the island, there's a reaction to the island, and I have no decision of turning it off. And I beg God, I said, by God, please give me a day, every day, give me a day of killing me, eat a kid, be sober, take me. God took me to itself. I said, my wife's bedside, she died, I'd call my kid, tell them when we died. I'd become my kid to my high school, to teenagers in high school. At the hospital, I call my friend, I said, go pick him up in school, tell them what's happened and bring him home. Very painful, and I went to his sober, I prepared the funeral. It was 2011, 2014, and watched another child. It was painful, this time was again in a different way because I had no part of my life was gone. I was the only parent's life. It was a child. I was 29 years old. My boy, I thought, died. There was nobody, no part of the cry with, and was the people in their say, they cried with, I found two good friends in the city. So I'm sober. My kids, I'm a sober daddy, my kids, I took care of my kids, my kids was living home. I just appeared from my house here every night at the top of my kids. I said, to see them all, all of them, they got married, that family is today. And I have one child who lives here today with me, two to six years old, mentally retired. It's on diamonds, father, and mother. I can start every night with them to sleep. I get up in the morning, help, get dressed. It goes to a dayamp. It's just sober. And over here, they go to meetings and they're not fair saying. I'm saying to my parents, you know, it's not me, it's not me, it's God. I'm more convinced now than ever before that I'm not staying sober. But some kind of American God is keeping this guy sober. It's through you people, through you, the people that say that God is keeping me sober and forever, ever grateful. It's not enough that I could give back, not to God, not to your people. The job is to fill up and be available for the new camera, to do so. They go to my integral meeting, I go. I'm a long-timer. It's a dirty year, I go to the integral. Why? Because young international people don't want to go today. Most people, they come to meetings. I go to the integral and they want to present in my own group. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for staying sobering on the day. Thank you, God, for putting me to the church, your wonderful fellowship for men and women. I love you. I can express my love to God and to you people, what you have done for me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. I love you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you for your share. There was so much. Oh, geez. I thought I was going to keep it together. So much pain and you shared it with us. My question is, over these many decades, how has your concept of your higher power changed or evolved or has it changed? Could you describe what it was like 30 plus years ago and what it's like now and if there were any changes about your higher power about God? Well, I came to it saying, no, God hates me and I'm the worst person on there. I think God's going to punish me for helping for women acting out. And then over the years, it has changed. I have a lot of higher power. God loves me. God has chosen me to show that he exists. I carry the flag of God that was chosen for that. God chose, I should be a person to show people, the God exists. And he proposed to miracles that this is my pleasure in life today or then all the pain. Thank you, Hannah. Okay, I have a question in the chat from Avi. It says, Hannah, I'd love to hear more about how you have dealt with your children's situation. I have an autistic daughter who I don't get to send to school. I'd like her to go to. I have watched her be treated differently by friends and have even witnessed her being mistreated by family. I do my best, but it's hard to watch her head towards a life I did not choose or want for her. My answer, I've come from there and God chooses special people for special children. The last special children, God wants to be in this world. We don't know why, but God is above our understanding. We don't understand his calculation, but we, the special people were chosen to be of service to these special children. And it's a privilege to have these children to gift. God has given me a special gift. Today, my son, I can back fill it, I can stop her. And I feel I'm doing something very special. God has given me an opportunity and most people don't have it. Thank you. Thank you. I was reading the chat. So I'll say, thank you, Daniel, for your question and Hanukh for your answer. And thank you, Avi, for your question and Hanukh for your answer. And now, Abdel Raman, would you like to ask a question? Yeah, thanks, Margo. Actually, I don't have a question. I just want to express my deep gratitude for you, Hanukh. Thank you so much for me. You are approved that there is a loving and caring God. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome to come. And if you want to, Hanukh. Thank you. It's all part of the program. I've come to appreciate my children through working the steps after I did four and a fifth, six and ten minutes steps. I was able to come to a place where I see a loving God and everything it put me to the light was a gift. My special children was a gift. The fact that I was able to take care of my wife through her illness, told them it's her mother and her illness. And after if she died, I tried a lot, but God chose me to be to pay her back. I abused this woman so much for 15 years. I acted out on her and after I got sober the first year, I was telling me the person I went to, she couldn't, it was so hard for her. And God gave me an opportunity to be a living adventurer. To this day, I talked to my children about their mother, about special them, about their words. I'm able to live a nice step expecting nothing from my wife. I think she would do for me today. My child that lived with me today, I do am the service. And I it's my wife who taught me in the beginning, I was very bitter about my special children. So I pulled the into it and I felt forced. But today I thank her because of the steps I came to display. Thank you. Thank you. I know. So we have a question in the chat. What advice from Amir? What advice does the speaker have for newcomers that struggles sedating sober? The first thing is to come to me and believe that I'm God, what did it for us can do it for you. I think that the right many of us are the other feeling I'm different, the feeling I'm different, maybe one more from me. So we have to come to turn and I'm not different. If it was for the people that say it couldn't work for me too. Thank you. Thank you. Guy Preston, go ahead. Hey there. I just wanted to see if you had any advice for making amends to family and friends. What ways can an addict show that we've changed and that we're trustworthy and better people now that we're sober? So it takes a long time. I took me in other words for my wife, my girlfriend, please. It took me time to turn on what I was able to be. I had to be, I did not to be a partner and everything she did. It took care of my children and to fully embrace her for what she's done and what she's doing and be of service. Thank God. I didn't know it was going to come today. Somehow I guess I got decided to give me an opportunity to make a real nice step with my wife. It was a gift that came very unexpected. So it's not a question in the day to day basis if we do what's right today with the wife and the family members. And in time, God will show us that you go on what we could do for them. Thank you. Thank you, Preston, for the question and thank you, Hannah. And now, Aaron, hey, hi, my name is Alex. I went back to Alex. Okay, I want to ask a question. It's like me. It's like me. Do you have two microphones on? We're hearing an echo. Okay, now we have an okay. My name is a hero. I'm so excited. I'm sober for a thousand six hundred thirty, three days. Hannah is actually my sponsor. So I want to ask a question that I wanted to discuss with him today, but I can ask it a public. The best way I had had a lot of times during my being sober that life was going very rocky. So I had to stay very connected. But my way is always when life becomes very comfortable, what is the best way to keep your step one alive every single morning? Thank you. The answer for me is that I'm afraid myself. I don't remember my first day. I run. When I go to a meeting, always I stopped in no camera. The first, a few weeks, a few days, a few months, a few months, a day long. When you're down, I'm just like, I'm 21 years here. I'm 31 years here in the program. As they put me back together, calm, I talk to you, you want to spend time together. For me, it's important to spend more time within the cameras. It's not only for both of us, it's for anyone, for me. Thank you. Thank you, Aaron. And thank you, Hannah. I have a good question, if I may. Go ahead, Daniel. Thanks so much. I appreciate the share. Have you been able, you know, in recovery to talk about happy, joyous, and free? I'm just curious with how much tragedy you've been through with like a kid who's in it. Do you find joy? You know, is that possible in the program or is like just, does it have a big layer of boom, a heaviness over it still? Thanks for sharing. Okay, so first of all, there's a lot of happiness in my life too. A lot of happiness, my children, I have five healthy children that I've grown up and to marry their families and the joy with them. But I want to say that the biggest joy of my life is a big of service for God. I mean, when I make for my son, I'm making breakfast, it's a joy. I'm 66 years of age and I haven't been a very tired child, 36. I get him up in the morning, I help him get fresh, I can practice it. God, thank you. Thank you, God, that I can be a service that you've taken me. This age to be a service to a child, when it's only 36, but it's meant to be a tired, like a child of 60 of the range. It comes only, you get by hug, I mean, it's a special joy. Then talking to a newcomer, joy is spiritual, spirituality, I can bring it joy in my personal life. It's nothing compared to it. Leave me, nothing more, nothing, nothing material, anything. I can give me the joy of being of service. God has chosen me to be of service by his children, nothing more than that. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel, and thank you, Hannah. I take my life, you are my goal, you are death-ified to death, right, my goal. What, I am what? You're good, that's the fight. Yes, I can. And now we have a question from Zisha. Hi, good afternoon, my name is Zisha, and I'm a sexaholic. Thank you so much, Margaret, for your service, and thank you, everybody, for joining. Hannah, wow, you're a real inspiration, even though I get to go once a week to a meeting with you, and I hear so much, but you're a real inspiration. I didn't even know, I didn't even know all the pain that you just, you know, maybe I knew, I never, but now I was like driving, I was able to focus, I like to hear that pain, wow, and to go through it and be the inspiration that you are, you're showing me the commitment that you have for this program. It gives me, it gives me so much hope, so thank you for that. And if I can have, so I have one question, so because you're the number of peers that you're in the program, and I thank out one day at a time sober, so what has changed, so what I'm trying to say is like, let's say, what were you doing to stay sober in the beginning year or two or five, and has anything changed like from your daily routine, like as far as phone calls, reading, check-ins, meetings, like, I want to see how it goes, you know, being in such a chunk of years, so just, that's my question, if it makes sense, thank you. I don't know, but I never thought of it, I have big, big news that no way, the gift is that I did not change, I still do the same thing, I get up in the morning, at the moment, I taste them, I read the big book, and I read the white book for 31 years, every day, I read two pages, and the big book, two pages, the white book, and back out, it gives me one day sober. I say, God, please, keep me sober for 24 hours, God is about to act out, show me before this, what I tell God, every day, 21 years, and I'm still connected, I have an own group, in a long group, I mean, the group that I'm connected to, that whenever, if I can't come, please, three or four people that I call and the train is going to tell them I'm not going to be there today, because I'm out of town, I can make it, the people that know this in my meeting, and have my seat there, and I'm committed there. Physically, I go to last meeting, that's when my wife died, and to be here with my children, physically, I go to only one meeting a week, but I am with people in the program every day on the phone, I meet people in the program every day, and I join two meetings after COVID, two meetings started, so I started joining the meetings, and part of terms after my every day, I do it in terms of what I do to say it's over, every day, when it takes them, they vote, white vote, and they are, every day, thank you. Thank you, thank you for your real inspiration, and yeah, it's your under commitment of service, you can see it, you can see it, wow, thank you, I'll be with you, thank you everyone. Thank you, Xishal, thank you, Hanukh. Nancy. Yeah, I'm Nancy's next to how like, you know, when you answer the questions, and you talk about joy, your whole face lights up, and when you talk about your son, your whole face lights up, I can see the joy, it's not just the words you say, I can see it all over, and I remember meeting you at least from a distance that really international conventions that I attended in the 90s, and it's just, you know, like when you talk in the beginning about being able to see all these people that you've known that are still here, that are still sober, what a gift. When you say you spend time meditating in the morning, can you describe what you do for that? It's about 15, yes, about 15 minutes in the morning, after I get dressed, I take my shower, sit down, and I talk to God, I figure out, thank you for what they gave me. Sometimes I say a few things, items that yesterday I had nice things that happened to me, and I say, God, I say, thank you so much for everything you have given me, give me please another day, so I'm connected to you, and I say, God, if I'm not connected to you, or take me, I'm the one I'm living from, I connect to you, and I read the books, I read them in the white book, and as I come easier, in the beginning, sometimes there was a resistance to me that had to pray, how God has got to help me. Now I became a really routine that I do it every day, it's about a routine life, and I know every day is a gift, knowledge is more than never before, that they longer sober, giving that it's only a day at a time, to one day, today is not guaranteed for tomorrow, not guaranteed for tomorrow, every day is a gift, and that's a gift that I can't explain it, that the knowledge that I'm able to live it only one day at a time, that itself is a joy, that gives that I don't have to worry about tomorrow, I don't care about tomorrow, I want to say so, thank you, thank you. Now I go, I only say something to you, Margo, I met you came to Brooklyn, it was probably 1994, '95, yes Margo, be honest with me. I don't remember. I saw you on my own group, you came to remember me, well I met you on the meeting, and I looked up to you, and Margo, I'm saying it's a way of you sober since 1986, I'm sober since 1986, when I came to her I said you an old timer, I looked up to you, see what you gave me, look, see, reflect, see what you gave me, you kept this guy sober, God sent you, God has chosen you, put you on the throne to keep the guy sober, to carry the message to this guy, thank you, thank you Margo. Wow, my sense of purpose just expanded exponentially, thank you, thank you Margo, I've always looked up to you, I've heard you at conferences, thank you, thank you so much, and I have a question for you, so when you came to that moment, when you said, when you thought about acting out, because the pain was so great, and you said, you know, my group would forgive me, God would forgive me, but you remembered that once you opened the door, you can't close it, what kept that thought in your mind, what money had you put in the bank up to that point that you were able to think through it through the acting out? So, I probably took it from God, but God, you soon paid me back for the money I did, for doing being consistent, for doing that meditation, the reason why you're in the bank book every day, even my wife wouldn't, but I did it in that, I did not miss a day in the hospital via bedside, I brought along with me, the white book and the big book, and did not make it take away a bedside, and probably God accepted my prayer, God said, I'll give him the first day, God kept my first day for life, the gift was that I remember the first day that I remember, I can open the door, but I will not be able to close it, thank you. Thank you, we have time for a few more questions, or comments. My Clara, I'm a sexaholic, my Claudia. Thank you so much, how I had goes out to you, and I'm so feel so blessed and honored to hear you today. It's really a gift to experience your way and how you go through your pain. I'm also experiencing a lot of pain, and I'm so grateful that my God keeps me sober through all this, and yeah, now I have one more example that it works, and it will give me strength and hope on my way that I heard you today, and when I'm in my pain, I will think of you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I want to say something, I do not feel I have a pain for life. I have probably a challenging life, but I feel God has given me a very unique life, and thank God I'm able to accept it in grace, that I'm able to keep, to carry God's words, God's message. We are created to be a service to God in this jumbling, and it's either my children or the children, people that say, I'm a service. It's a beautiful gift. The joy, I can't explain this. Every day, maybe the blessed day, the beautiful blessed day. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Claudia, and thank you, Hannah. Margot, there's a chat message. I'd like to relay to Hannah and everyone else here. Nancy did a little census, and we have 16 different countries in the meeting today, which is just an amazing, amazing thing. Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Buddy. Yes, I'm Buddy. I'm a recovering sex-aholic. Thank you, Hannah. I thought I heard you speak previously at some conferences and things. I've been around a couple of years myself. Recently, a lot of my childhood is coming back to me. I don't remember very much of it at all. You had talked about being raped. I also sexually assaulted twice, and I heard you say that you have to feel the pain to heal it. I am struggling with that, trying to stay present with the pain. I also have some physical pain, some spinal injury pain that goes along with that. And all of this has really got me questioning my God. My faith in God has really changed over the years. So I'm just leading with my weakness. There's no question in that. Just leading with my weakness. So thank you. I don't want to say something about it. That the white book teaches us that when we have trauma, childhood trauma, we should deal with that. Part of the gift of being sober, I was able to go back to therapy and deal with my childhood trauma sober. And I dealt with that. I dealt and I called the two people that raped me. I was able to call them and to forgive them. Today, I pray. I pray for them. That's God. I forgive them. I try to forgive them. I cannot say to you right completely. I would like to erase completely my anger towards them. I work in it. I pray for her. I pray for her. I pray for forgiveness. I say I forgive them. I forgive them. I forgive them because really, when I do a foreign attempt step on it, at the end I came to I say to that, and I will be alive today because of that as a result of all of that. And within my children, I went to therapy, live with my wife. I went to therapy and cried, cried, cried for hours. I used to release the pain. It's here tonight. Knowing God is a good God, a loving Father. It doesn't mean that we don't, it means that we are a children and my job is when I'm afflicted with pain. I've learned. Actually, when my wife is very sick, you have to come and pray to God's God. I believe in you. I know, whatever you plan me through is for the good to live. It's your grace. I just don't feel it. Help me go through it sober and help me. I say one day come to see good in it. Everything I've prayed to let God, I say, be able to come to see the good in it. Okay, something to do with time. Thank you. Yes, I am in therapy. I have been for a couple of years now, and that's what I see. It's taking time, a lot of time. Thank you. I would like to thank you for listening to this episode of The Daily Reprieve, the best source for experience, strength, and hope for SA members. Please subscribe to this podcast to be alerted new episodes. 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