The Dress Fits

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When I read “My Favorite Color” in the July 2015 Lifeline, my heart lifted. I too want to share the joy of living and the freedom that I have found in OA.

In a few months, my oldest granddaughter will marry. Rather than spending months fretting over what to wear to the wedding, I knew immediately what I will wear: a lovely silk dress with hand painted flowers, one that has been in my closet and that I bought for some other happy occasion more than ten years ago. Thanks to OA and my Higher Power, I know the dress will fit and will be entirely appropriate for me. Like the writer of “My Favorite Color,” I too have been given the gift of being my authentic self.

Forty-one years ago and with thirteen months in OA, I attended my niece’s wedding. I weighed the least I had weighed since I was 10 years old, and I wore a gorgeous red gown that I made myself. I was thin but not in recovery (my disease was doing just fine, thank you). I remember pacing up and down in front of the enormous dessert table and stressing over which one (just one, of course) I could eat, while the festivities went on around me. In the end I surrendered to my disease, ate everything that called out to me, and took home leftovers, which I ate that night. That dress is no longer with me, nor is that waif-like young woman.

What is with me is my Twelve Step program of physical, emotional, and spiritual recovery. I recently celebrated the forty-second anniversary of the day I came to my forever home in OA. In a few weeks, it will be thirty-seven years since the morning I woke up knowing it was time to surrender my life to the power greater than myself.

I now live one day at a time as I experience the joy of knowing, even with small things like the dress for my granddaughter’s wedding, that I am following the path set before me to the best of my understanding—and the dress will still fit!

— Linda, Surprise, Arizona USA

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