Home Recovery A Gift from Grace

A Gift from Grace

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Before I returned to OA in 1999, my life was a prison of my own making, and I had no visitors. It was a world of isolation because all I trusted was food and how good it made me feel in the moments I was consuming it.

My compulsive overeating began when I was 5 and a half years old. I was starting kindergarten, and I wanted nothing more than to stay at home, where it was comparatively safe, rather than face that unknown world full of other children. I feared them because I didn’t know them. And as I grew up, nothing they did took away my fear, so it continued, as did my compulsive overeating.

While I have claimed my seat in OA continuously for seventeen years, a significant change came about for me around two years ago—that’s when I truly took Step Three.

I’d always believed in a Higher Power. It was that very Higher Power who led me back into the rooms seventeen years ago. My mother was walking out of my apartment one morning because of my emotional abusiveness toward her, when this thought came to me: “I need to go back to OA.” It was a thought reaching out in hope, and I knew it was God speaking to me because up until that moment I’d been living a life of pessimism. I knew it was God because there was a noon meeting starting in a couple of hours and, with the help of my mother, I could get to that meeting. I walked into that meeting weighing 337 pounds (153 kg).

What changed two years ago was that I started trusting God, the one who brought me back to life by way of the rooms. Coming to trust in my Higher Power, which I call Grace, has led me to overcome my lifelong fear of trusting people. I have also been able to trust Grace to not let me starve between dinner and breakfast. Today, I weigh 126 pounds (57 kg).

I received a gift yesterday, one of the many bestowed upon me by the Grace of God. A dear OA friend needed someone to go with her to have diagnostic tests done on her beloved dog. She was feeling so much pain and fear during this process. I am grateful that she allowed me in and trusted me with her pain. She also shared with me her love for her dog, and I was able to share my time, a shoulder for her to cry on unabashed, and my heart. Did I do this perfectly? Certainly not. But the gift was that I did it: I let another person into my life because I trusted that God would walk with me, giving me her Grace. For this, I am grateful.

— Gloria H., Albany, New York USA

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