Celebrate Recovery Share- Lesson 6 ACTION

We had 46 men at today's Celebrate Recovery® CRI® meeting. Over the past 6 weeks we have had almost 70 different men attend and have handed out 52 The Journey Begins blue recovery chips. We have 36 men committed to completing their current Step Studies.

I've trained 8 Step Study leaders, built a team of meeting managers, and delegated as many different pieces of the ministry as possible, but am still seen as the defacto "Leader" because of my age, length of ministry service behind these fences, and my willingness to utilize the gifts I've been blessed with. Today my active role was to review the highlights of Lesson 6 ACTION. The basic text of what I presented follows: I am a grateful believer in Jesus Christ whom Celebrates Recovery® from arrogance, selfishness, and judgementalism and whom struggles with abandonment and not using certain words. My name is Robert. We have spent the past 6 weeks together working our way through the 12 step process using the Celebrate Recovery® 27 week step study guide. So far we have come out of our DENIAL and admitted we are powerless to control our tendency to indulge our defect of character ..... whatever that defect may be ..... physical, emotional, relational, or psychological .... drug use, violence, PMO, anger, food, depression, rejection, etc. In Lesson 2, POWERLESS, we realized we were not God and that we needed to stop certain behaviors and/or start others .... the Journey Begins blue chips can also be used for tracking these changed behaviors. You can celebrate 30 days of going out of your way to bless someone with a hello, a soup, a word of encouragement, or a commitment to a Bible reading plan just as easily as you celebrate traditional sobriety. Your journey is just that, YOUR journey. We don't ask what you are celebrating your sobriety from or what changes you are making, but we will help you celebrate your commitment to that change, whatever it may be. In lesson 3, HOPE, we acknowledged God exists and has the power to help us recover. Lesson 4, HOPE, reminded us that it is insanity to think that repeating the same negative behaviors over and over again while expecting a different result will not lead us where we want to go. We have to balance our HOPE with realistic expectations. We should NOT expect, or even try, to change ALL of our behaviors at once. We should just focus on ONE defect of character at a time. Identifying that character defect is the trick. Drug abuse, lying, anger, unresolved depression, rejection and abandonment issues, excessive PMO, stacks of empty boxes of zoozoos and whamwhasms, are NOT the problem, but ARE a SYMPTOM of a deeper underlying character defect that needs resolved. Once you identify it, target it, and start that journey towards healing you WILL begin to see results. I just had a conversation with someone this morning who asked if he had to be "sober" from everything all at the same time. I reiterated to him what I just shared with you. In circumstances surrounding chemical dependency and abuse it is important to give up the ones that are killing your body, mind, and spirit. You need to get physically healthy first. Kick the meth, fentenal, K2, duece, coke, and heroine. Those are leading you to certain death. Keep the cannabis if that stabilizes your mood. Deal with that once your healthy and sober from everything else. We just need to begin with one character defect at a time. If possible, replace that negative behavior with a proactive one like working out, going for a run, or drinking cold water.

In lesson 5 we TURNED our lives and our defects of character over to Christ, asking for his guidance in our Recovery. In today's lesson we take Action. Maybe we have decided that we are FINE for now. That our Hurt, Habit, or Hang-up is not that bad. Compared to those around us, we are not that bad. But if we settle on just being FINE we remain Fouled Up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Egotistical. When we take ACTION ..... A = We Accept Christ as our higher power C = We Commit to seek and follow his will T = We TURN our character defect over to God and seek his guidance. We let go and let God. We also STOP buying the Zoozoos and the Whamwhams. We quit our mindless scrolling of album covers trying to heal our emotional wounds with booty shots and boob pics. I = We realize that salvation in Christ IS ONLY THE BEGINNING. Our eternal destination is assured. But there's no reason to remain miserable until then. Walking out the12 step process is part of the lifelong sanctification process. O = We take our recovery - stopping a negative Hurt, Habit, or Hang-up OR beginning a new positive Habit - ONE DAY AT A TIME. Sometimes we recover ONE moment at a time, ONE small step at a time. That small step may be showing up for a time of prayer in the sweat lodge next week. Maybe it is committing to attending the day long revival on March 17. Maybe it is attending Crossing service on Sunday. Maybe it is sharing a cookie for every one that you eat. Like Cheater said in his testimony we just keep moving forward, keep showing up, keep dancing. N = NEXT. How do I ask Christ into my life ... show witness tattoo symbols on slide ... ask your step study leader or our sponsors ... it is as simple as professing that Christ is God's son, came to Earth, was crucified, entombed, resurrected, ascended, and is coming back. Baptism is an outward expression of that inward decision of faith. If your ready for that NEXT step, we can assist you when you are ready. For next week read Lesson 7 on MORAL, answer the questions, and be ready to discuss in your step study group. Thank you for letting me share. I'm truly grateful for how the Holy Spirit has brought this group of men together to support one another in their journey toward sobriety. I'm also extremely grateful for our outside volunteers from Tulsa, Steve and Rich Bartlett. Without their support and commitment to this program we would not be able to meet on Fridays, have our CRI® supplies, videos, chips, books, etc.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day. I am half way through another 100 day demarcation. Only four more Valentine Days left, at most. Maybe less if Senator Humphrey has his way! I am so looking forward to the next phase of my life and finding someone whom will support my dreams and ambitions and whom has her own dreams and ambitions that I can support as well. A new significant other to love and cherish and be loved and cherished by. I can't wait to find my Maggie and explore the rest of the world with her on mission trips, for enlightenment, and for enjoyment.

State Senator Humphrey has proposed some interesting legislation this session. 2025 House Bill No. 1343, is an Act abolishing the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; transferring all duties, powers, and responsibilities to the State Department of Corrections; transferring all real and personal property; providing for codification; providing an effective date; and declaring that an emergency exists making it immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health or safe, by reason whereof this Act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval. He is taking a page out of the Felon-in-Chief's playbook proposing yet another seemingly outlandish proposal (see 2025 HB 1310 renaming the Department of Corrections as the Department of Corruption) to draw attention to a very, very serious issue. Oklahoma uses its Correction's system as its primary default for housing (and supposedly treating) those with a wide range of mental health issues. This is not only wrong, it is amoral, and quite frankly criminal. I don't have the time or adequate words to convey in this blog post just how overwhelmed, inadequately staffed, under funded, and poorly trained the OKDOC corrections officers are in regards to dealing with those residents whom are suffering from a plethora of undiagnosed mental health issues. In my 12 years of incarceration I believe that 25-35 percent of the residents I have encountered can attribute their so called criminal behaviors to mental health issues (these "criminal behaviors" range from chronic homelessness to cannabis use to temporary mental health crises to larceny that supports their addiction/self-medication use). They should not be incarcerated. They should be in diversionary programs and receiving treatment. They should be in a therapeutic setting where they can experience stability and healing. What I find the most abhorrent in regards to this particular issue is the way this state, this country, provides no alternatives and intensive treatments for its veterans whom come back from combat with trauma induced mental health issues. These men and women come back from years worth of service, can't or don't handle their cascading mental conditions in a healthy way, and find themselves warehoused with common criminals. It is appalling. Kudos to Senator Humphrey for his dedication to criminal justice reform in this bass ackward state and for shedding some light on this important issue.

Not Like Me

Maybe it is because of the continual news coverage of the Felon-in-Chief since January 20th and the bombastic hatemongering that he spews on a daily basis, along with the numbness so many of us now feel as we sift out the small nuggets of truth from his copious daily falsehoods and fairy tales, but his unwarranted and unfounded speculation about DEI hires being the reason for the crash of American Airlines flight #5342 on January 29th has me thinking about Bella Mendoza and Myrtha Mikle.

Were these two DEI hires so intimidated by their new young(er) white boss, and having their sub par job performance exposed and dealt with, that they felt that weaponizing false allegations of abuse was their only way to remain employed? Although they eventually admitted to filing false police reports and committing perjury at my civil and criminal trials, the lies of these two DEI employees had already wrought the damage they intended to inflict. Although the jury acquitted me of Myrtha's lies, if my trial was happening now instead of in 2012, we'd certainly be raising this speculation about DEI retaliation as an issue to reinforce their reason for lying. I hate that my mind has gone here. I hate that the audacious racism of the Felon-in-Chief actually has me thinking that maybe DEI initiatives have created more problems than they have solved. I hate that my time of being incarcerated has led me to believe, to know through 12 years of close observation, that certain stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. (On a tangentially related note I cannot wait for tonights Super Bowl and halftime show to finally be over and those whom are so "stereotypically" hyped about their "affiliated" teams and "colors" can calm down). I hate that one of the antichrists of this decade, the one that currently sits behind the Resolute Desk, along with his DOGEbags, has so infiltrated my own thoughts and feelings about DEI initiatives (that I previously thought of as necessary to ensure that everyone got a fair shake in the most WASPy parts of our nation) that I actually find myself thinking that he might have a point: that some of the things that are most wrong with our country can be traced back to DEI initiatives. These thought are so not like me, at least not like the me prior to October 21, 2009. Thank goodness for Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan to counter his trumpeted false narratives. I am scheduled to be incarcerated for only three more Superbowls. I need to protect my character, my conduct, and my conversation from the influences of those whom are quietly and subconsciously influencing me to be "not like me", "not like us", or not like Christ. I cannot allow myself to believe the lies of those whom are millionaire charlatans, democracy disruptors, and Constitutional corruptors. I have even had to restart my Celebrate Recovery® "The Journey Begins" blue chip date a dozen times in the past month as a particular word makes it way past my lips. I refuse to buy in to racism in the guise of Christian Nationalism. I cannot, I will not, allow this incarceration or current Executive Office leadership team to have a negative affect on my life. I refuse to be jaded and reemerge from my warehousing angry, bitter, and not like the me that I believe that I was created to be.