Kindness and Wellness

Attraction is hard to pinpoint. I didn’t really know what kept me coming back to OA in those early days, over four years ago. I was attracted to the warmth of the OA rooms. Not the physical rooms—much of the time they were quite the opposite of attractive. Some of those ancient, cold, dark, damp, even moldy rooms might have deterred me from coming back. But thank God for the gift of desperation because it was one huge saving grace, especially when I drove two hours round-trip to get to meetings on cold evenings.

While desperation may have pushed me to the meetings, what attracted me was the genuine kindness, unconditional acceptance, and recovery of OA people. And before I understood it, I was pulled into my Higher Power’s loving embrace. I see now it isn’t anything magical or mysterious, but instead real kindness and wellness that drew me into OA and gave me a home, my own special place in a new family. The kindness was irresistible and the wellness was inconceivable! I craved both so badly.

In these modest rooms, I am finally being fed by a more sustaining source than I’d ever found in food. And the more I keep returning, the more I can’t imagine leaving. I believe it would feel like cutting off my own life-support system. Besides, I would regain every single gram, and much more, of the 37 kilograms (82 lbs) that I’ve lost since coming into this Fellowship. God willing, I will never have the urge to leave OA, because I know I would not last long out there alone.

I accept now that if I can’t do anything else right, I can at least keep coming back, being attractively pulled into God’s arms. Just as OA members are God in human skin for me, I hope to be God in human skin to others coming in the doors, “to extend the hand and heart of OA” to my still-suffering brothers and sisters, no matter where I am along this path of recovery.

— C., New Zealand