Home Fellowship IDEA Event Well-Worked
Fellowship Recovery

IDEA Event Well-Worked

By
Posted on November 1, 2018
3 min read
1

Our International Day Experiencing Abstinence event was well attended by many in our recovering community in Milwaukee. We opened with a speaker, then did a writing activity. Perhaps you could write about this topic too: “What is the difference between dieting and abstinence?”

Then we read a Lifeline article (“Outside and In”) about the difference between trying to be abstinent versus being willing to be abstinent. We played a stand-up, sit-down game to indicate whether we’d tried anything described in the article. (That was our daily exercise! Ha!) Many comments arose from reading and discussing “Outside and In”:

  • “If I am trying to be abstinent, it is my way or no way.”
  • “If I am willing, I can learn.”
  • “If I am struggling, I’m thinking I can do this myself.”
  • “I can lean on God and surrender.”

We closed our IDEA event with a “morning abstinence prayer”:

“Higher Power, today is a new day for me and with your help it can be a day of abstinence. I ask for your protection, in case sometime during the day my desire to overeat is greater than my desire to abstain. I also ask for your protection from anyone or anything that may interfere with my abstinence. I know that I am powerless over food. I believe you will restore me to sanity. Please help me to know your will for me today and give me the willingness to carry that out. I turn my life over to you.”

When I say this prayer, I also turn over my will and my food.

— Edited and reprinted from Out of the Cocoon newsletter, Milwaukee Area Intergroup, First Quarter 2018

  • Learning More Each Day

    After several starts, I found myself knowing that OA was for me, thanks to the acceptance …
    July 1, 2020
    2 min read

  • Surrender Happens 24/7

    When I came into OA, I was on the edge of a mental breakdown. I’d tried everything to stop…
    July 1, 2020
    8 min read

  • Fully Covered

    I was thinking about why we buy car insurance aside from the fact that it is required by l…
    July 1, 2020
    4 min read
Load More Related Articles

  • Low-Tech Outreach

    I am on my intergroup’s public information committee. We make flyers with a tear-off porti…
    May 1, 2020
    2 min read

  • Available to Everyone

    Here are a few ways I carry the message to other compulsive overeaters. I print out OA’s C…
    May 1, 2020
    1 min read

  • Radio-Active

    I was listening to a commentary about obesity on our local radio station. The commentator …
    May 1, 2020
    4 min read
Load More By admin

  • Literature Prices and Postage

    I’m a member of a virtual group, and neither my current hometown nor the place I’m plannin…
    October 1, 2020
    4 min read

  • Awesome Silver Linings

    I am grateful for the coronavirus. No, thank God, I have not had it, and I know it has cau…
    September 1, 2020
    4 min read

  • Love and Service

    Love and service. These are, I sense, one and the same. Love, without service, is illusory…
    September 1, 2020
    1 min read
Load More In Fellowship
Comments are closed.

Check Also

Low-Tech Outreach

I am on my intergroup’s public information committee. We make flyers with a tear-off porti…