Continuing to Grow

I recently attended our local OA Unity Day celebration about an hour away from my home. On the drive to get there, I had time to contemplate my life now and compare it to the year before when I also attended this event.

At first, my mind was prone to go to the negative side—I’m a year older, tired, and overwhelmed by rigid schedules, appointments, and service commitments. But then another line of thought emerged—I’m really handling life problems much better than I used to. In fact, I rarely look at them as problems anymore; rather, they are “opportunities for growth.” (And I’ve noticed that there’s no longer an angry adjective tacked to the beginning of that phrase.)

The event’s central theme was to take us through the new Twelve Stepping a Problem wallet card, which I saw when it first came out at World Service Business Conference. Awesome!

The moderator suggested we choose a current problem and take it through the Steps as laid out in the card. As a group, we made our way, writing and then sharing. I was astonished to find that I could not come up with a current, small problem. I was still thinking about the changes I’d experienced during the past year.

I’ve been in OA for twenty-two years now. My abstinence has evolved. It took several years to lose the weight, about 50 pounds (23 kg), with some fluctuation in times of stress, major changes, and loss. Most recently I faced the death of my husband of over forty years; I found myself living alone for the first time in my life. The Twelve Steps and the OA Fellowship carried me through everything.

The amazing piece, which I learned by examining my “life after loss” scenario during this Unity Day event, is this: I can see I am continuing to grow. I am actually growing up spiritually and emotionally. Things used to be all-or-nothing for me, but now I find myself able to work through them without either fighting or fleeing. When someone says “no” to a request for help, I still have an emotional reaction, but I don’t simply shut down like I used to. I pause and ask HP, “What is the next right thing to do?” And the answer comes. Sometimes the answer is “do nothing” or “wait.” I still don’t like that much. But when I follow that guidance, I am amazed at the results. I don’t have to bulldoze through life or run away from it.

This is such an amazing path to be traveling. Thank you all for being there with me.

— N.S., Oro Valley, Arizona USA