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The Magic Number

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I should be the poster child for “keep coming back” because my stubbornness is finally paying off. I regularly showed up to a meeting once a week for almost two years, but I wasn’t working the program and I didn’t have a sponsor. Today, I am a newcomer with a newcomer’s mind.

Until a month ago, I did little more than attend a weekly meeting and occasionally pick up a book of daily readings. Oh, I’d bought all our OA books and even cracked a few open, but my attention span was short. But there was one meeting I returned to week after week: an Eleventh Step prayer and meditation meeting. It was a new, small group that was quaint, quiet, and pretty special. I asked myself many times, why did I keep attending this meeting if I wasn’t working the program? My answer then was the same as it is now: hope.

I walked in knowing I was a compulsive overeater and food addict, so having people like myself talk about this disease openly, intimately, and safely was a relief. In hindsight, I wonder if I was waiting for them to ask me to leave, but they didn’t. They meant it when they said, “If you think you are one of us, then you are.”

I was afraid to stop coming because there was nowhere left for me to go. It was no secret that showing up was just about all I did. I’d occasionally pick up a white chip in hopes that it would launch me into working the program, but since I had no sponsor or action plan, the chip alone meant little.

I wish I knew the exact moment, but at some point, it hit me! I realized that I too was worthy of the promises of this program of recovery and, most importantly, worthy of the love of a Higher Power that would release me from the grips of this disease. Maybe I needed to hear the message some magical number of times—say, one hundred—before I could believe it. Perhaps, if had I stopped coming after ninety-nine times, I would have missed it. Now I have a sponsor, I’m working this program every day, and I’m abstinent a glorious twenty-eight days.

How many times do you need to hear that message before your heart and soul can take it in and believe it?

Don’t stop coming. Nobody will ask you to leave. There is hope, and you are worthy.

What if your magic number is just one more than the number of times you’ve heard the message so far?

When you are willing to work this program, it will work for you too.

— Chris

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