Forgetting What I Know -- disaster or becoming teachable

 It is an interesting thing to ponder whether I can choose what I forget.  The reading this morning starts with a quote from Publilius Syrus that says, "We may with advantage at times forget what we know."

There is no advantage to me in forgetting what I know about the 12 Steps and what I have learned about myself in working the Steps.  There is an advantage, however, in forgetting all the old ideas and beliefs that get in the way of a happier, healthier and useful life.  If I forget program, my life is a disaster.  If I forget the old ideas and beliefs?  There's room to live differently, better.  Room for me to live my program beliefs instead.

The reading talks about how coming to OA, the writer knew what she knew:  her compulsive eating stemmed from an emotionally deprived childhood and nothing -- not God even -- can change that.  And then she writes that somehow in OA she forgot all of that.  She went ahead and acted as if everything everyone told her in OA was true.  She prayed even though it was as if her Higher Power was three letters of the alphabet.  She thought abstinence was dumb and did it anyway.  

This is perhaps the penultimate paragraph in the reading:  "I still know what I know but, thank God, I am no longer using it to keep me from getting well."  She says for today, it is just as effective to "act as if" she has forgotten what she knows.  It works anyway.

Sometimes when I am writing or sharing I recognize some "therapy speak" coming through in my voice.  Or I hear it in someone else's share.  It can sound hollow or even trite, not thoughtful, necessarily, like an equally ubiquitous OA slogan usually does.

What do I need to forget?  Myself.   I need to get over all the pain I have from the past I have.  It doesn't help.  It is an important part of who I became, who I am now, but it doesn't help me going forward today.  It is like an anchor, dragging me down.  

I need to forget everything I think I know about God, beyond my innate sense that there is a Divine life force in me and in all living things that propels me toward growth and toward survival when growth seems too hard.  

I need to put aside my doubt and act as if this is going to work.  I see it work for others; I hear them share that it works for them.  I can forget my relapses, my struggles in the past.  They do not serve me any more.  They are part of my story and inform my choice to live differently today.  Just today.  Let's live today.

Blessed be.

Being a Newcomer again

 I am struggling with my faith that God will do what I cannot do for myself.  I see and hear stories of recovery where faith and surrender to a Higher Power leads to healthier, happier lives.  And I feel stuck and unhappy.  I believe God will help you recover but I am not convinced God will help me recover.  That's f*cked up.  The years of therapy I have had suggest this is black or white thinking, future telling, any number of other cognitive dissonances based on a self concept of being unworthy, undeserving, somehow damaged more than anybody else.  And I know that is not true.  However, I still feel it.

This morning in my daily reader, For Today, I looked up all the entries in the index for 'newcomers'.  Date order be damned!  And this is what I found:

No one [in OA] made me feel that my illness rendered me less worthy of respect than other people.  Taking a cue from these loving, caring friends, I stopped being ashamed of myself.  The defences I had set up fell away, and I became open to change.

OA is a refuge from the harsh judgments society passes on compulsive overeaters.  [I need] unconditional acceptance and respect, not judgments. - May 9

This is true - the only person making me feel my compulsive eating, my size, my struggle with depression et cetera renders me less worthy of respect and help is me.  Shame is a big part of this struggle.  Feeling like I am not good enough for God's help.  Feeling like I am too long in OA to be a newcomer again, or a newcomer still.  Defensive that after six years, I still struggle with frequent relapses in my abstinence and my faith is shaky - not for you but for me.  My Higher Power offers unconditional acceptance and respect for my humanity and I don't accept that gift a lot of the time.  Pride.  Self.  This has to go!

As newcomers we look at recovering compulsive overeaters who tell us of the happiness, freedom and joy in their lives and we can hardly comprehend that they were not always this way.  Those miraculous recoveries seem unattainable to us.  ...  members with years of program and lives that are happy, joyous and free are compulsive overeaters who, like the rest of us, began at the bottom.  Where I am today is a fine place to start.  - May 16

Where else to start but here?  And "here" arrives each moment.  There is no arrival and I'm done.  That is a lie I tell myself, along with the belief I should be more recovered than I am after six years in OA.  Members with more years and more recovery still struggle - I hear that in the rooms.  The standard is not perfection spiritually.  I can't achieve that and neither can they.  They don't claim it in their stories.  But they are happier, more joyous and more free than I am.  And I want that.  I need to suspend my beliefs that I can't have that too for whatever bullshit reasons my disease puts in my head.

There is no reason to be discouraged if newcomers [if I] express doubt that the recovery [I] see will happen for [me].  [My] experience of the disease is propelling [me] toward experiencing recovery.  -June 2

Ughhh...  my disease is propelling me toward recovery -- true!!  Or I wouldn't keep coming back.  My disease is also propelling me into the abyss with lies that I can't, I don't deserve this, God will do this for other people but not for me.  This tension is something I have to give over, give up.  It is a tug-of-war I can't win and the doubt it creates only prolongs my misery in my disease.  

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. ... I may fool myself and others by my talk, but my illness cannot be fooled.  - June 12

I feel like a fool, an incompetent.  Six years in OA and 270 something pounds.  I wear my disease.  I wear the lie of my recovery.  That is living in the past, however, and unhelpful.  Today, I can do differently in what I think (maybe?) but definitely in what I do.  The slogan of 'acting myself into right thinking' applies here.  I need to shut off the thinking and focus on doing what I know helps.

Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliances are relieved or not at all [Shakespeare].  ... I want what I see in OA.  I pray for the willingness to follow each step of the program and to believe that the food and the weight will be taken care of in the process.  - August 17

Yep.  I think the experiment of not tracking and not weighing myself for October is incomplete.  I am more aware of what I am doing (I think) and I need to continue to build on the changes in my plan of eating and my action plan I have started to identify.  I feel like I should continue on this path in November and also continue on my week-long (so far) practice of a meeting a day.  I need to hear the message from others and stop listening to the disease in my head.

Balancing - Physical (Purpose), Mental (Meaning), Spiritual (Hope) and Emotional (Belonging)

 I am in the process of relooking at my spirituality and my faith that I too can recover.  I felt stung by another fellow's honest reflection that my thinking / spiritual belief that God could but would God for me? is like a newcomer.  

I have been pondering faith and hope a lot in the last week – since last Sunday’s 100 pound panel at the Region 8 convention.  I feel all in progress and a bit disoriented.  I decided to try more meetings and I have somewhat unofficially decided to try 90 meetings in 90 days.  I am not at all confident that I will keep with this but for today, I am doing another meeting.  So I am at day six and meeting six. 

I just finished a new-to-me meeting this morning and it was a unique format, one I found very helpful.  They focus on recovery as balancing the physical, mental (thinkin), spiritual and emotional health as four quadrants where we try to live in the sparkling centre with our HP.  

The meeting script talked about how physical health gives us purpose, mental health gives meaning, spiritual health yields hope and emotional health creates belonging.  I was at a meeting on Friday night where the speaker shared how his ‘dependency needs’ were not being met so he filled them with compulsive over eating.  I’d never heard that expression before and my initial reaction was “I don’t want to be dependent on anything, that’s unsafe and unreliable!”  And then he shared the exact same belief, before he found more lasting recovery.  LOL.  Yep.  I need (and want) to build more trust that I am and can be dependent on my HP and the sense of hope that creates.  

The writing / meditation prompts were to consider all four quadrants of the circle and consider:

• Take note of your reflections and then develop them as you meditate and think about your reflections from each of the four perspectives.   For instance, in this way of looking at things, our emotional health can be indicated by our feeling of belonging or reflections from our attitude.
• Our physical aspect is related to how we may do things, or our way of being and way of doing and our wholeness as a person.
• Our mental wellness can be measured in our capacity to understand our friends and neighbours, or ideas, such as those presented in books or even in society in general. We have a certain level of intuition or have a chosen rationale for our chosen lifestyle.
• Our spiritual wellness is found in our sense of hope and on what we base our beliefs, our values and on what we chose to identify ourselves with. 
• Mental wellness creates meaning, physical wellness creates purpose, spiritual wellness creates hope, and emotional wellness creates belonging.
• These are just examples to help start the process. They are not marked in stone but merely suggestions. 

It was a bit complex as the instructions were to focus on the Voices of Recovery reading for today, make notes for each of the four quadrants in our life today coming from the reading, and then do a five minute meditation on that!!!   

I felt like this is a useful way to work and yet it was a bit fast for my first time hearing it all for me to take it up in any detail.  I found myself correlating the four quadrants to my past (feeling like I didn’t belong / emotional pain), my present (health concerns / lack of purpose), my future (preoccupation in depression/anxiety worrying things will not get better – that life has little meaning), and lastly spiritual health where I have doubt instead of hope more than is needed / true. 

Blessed.

Stop and Start Recovery - learning from a sponsee

This morning, I am playing my spiritual music list and right now the Bellamy Brothers' song, Let Your Love Flow, is on.  It’s been a dark few days here mood-wise and that is challenging.  I weighed myself this morning and I am losing and regaining the same five pounds!  Since New Year, I’ve done it twice and I have been bouncing around the same numbers since the end of July.  My sense is I am in some sort of holding pattern there so I am praying for insight on what I need to accept / acknowledge / understand / surrender to move forward.  So that’s for my two-way writing prayer meditation this week.

It occurred to me that my erstwhile sponsee is showing me this pattern but in big capital letters and broad strokes.  She will email me that she wants to start working her program again and then she doesn’t actually start.  Or if she starts, it’s a day at the most and then she stops.  A few weeks, maybe a month pass.  And I keep the channel open but I don't chase her.  I cannot work anyone else's program for them.  And as a sponsor, all I have is my experience, strength, and hope to offer.  Seeing her struggle is a reminder of how painful my life is when I struggle.  

Last week she emailed me a quick note yet again, thanking me for staying in touch periodically and that this was an ‘interim’ email saying she has her head around her again.  She shared that she’ll work her plan and let me know how it goes later that night.  And then radio silence!  So she is struggling with moving forward and consistent effort.  

I reflect on this from my sponsee as I consider my bouncing stagnant physical recovery as a symptom of the health of my spiritual program more generally.  I acknowledge to myself and to God that I am maintaining about a 75 lb weight loss for which I am very grateful.  However, abstinence is working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight.  While I am healthier, I am not a healthy body weight yet.  

Bouncing around, losing the same five pounds, is a stop and start physical recovery.  This is hard on my body.  It is also hard on my emotional recovery - a symptom of spiritual unease.  There's some block there to moving ahead, trusting God I have the strength to do the work necessary to move toward a healthy body weight.  Trusting God that I can safely face the uncertainty that comes with feeling smaller in my body.

And this brings me to a version of the Step 8 prayer I read recently:

God, in my illness, I have harmed myself.  Grant me compassion, tolerance, and patience. Save me from negativity now as I move toward healing. 

Blessed be.

On grief, suffering, and humanity: "What Punishments of God are not Gifts?"

This moved me last night and I wanted to share – it’s from an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper and comedian Stephen Colbert...  Anderson Cooper’s Dad died when he was 10 (heart attack) and he lost his Mom in early June.  Stephen Colbert’s Dad and two of his brothers died in a plane crash when Stephen was 10 and his Mom died a few years ago too. 

It’s really clear in the interview that Anderson Cooper is still very much in grief and he is asking some pretty big questions that are personal, not part of his “newsman” persona.

The interview is here -- https://youtu.be/iZ_zajwFPDs -- this is the part that really moved me:

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Anderson Cooper: I’m not the person I meant to be. I’m not the person I started out to be (because of the grief / loss / trauma).

Stephen Colbert: But you are the person you were meant to be.

Anderson Cooper: Maybe, maybe not. Maybe this is a warped version of ...

Stephen Colbert: So there’s another time line with a happier Anderson Cooper?

Anderson Cooper: Yeah! I mean no. There’s not, it doesn’t exist, an alternate universe but... but yes, I guess...

Stephen Colbert: But that’s what I mean about faith.

My experience and learning from the experience of my mother, what I read and what I experience in my particular faith, extremely imperfectly, admittedly, is that there isn’t another time. This is it.  And the bravest thing you can do is to accept with gratitude the world as it is and then, as Galdalf says, so too all people who are in such times.

Anderson Cooper: You went on to tell an interviewer that you have learned to love “the thing that I most wish had not happened.” You went on to say “what punishments of God are not gifts?” Do you really believe that?

Stephen Colbert: Yes. It is a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering. There’s no escaping that. And I guess I’m either a Catholic or a Buddhist when I say that because I’ve heard that from both traditions.

But I didn’t learn it - that I was grateful for the thing I most wished didn’t happen - but I realized it. It’s an odd, guilty kind of feeling. I don’t want it to have happened. I wish it had not happened.

But, if you’re grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do - not everybody is, and I’m not always - it’s the most positive thing to do, and you have to be grateful for all of it . You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.

And then, so what do you get from loss? You get awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply, and to understand what it’s like to be a human being, if it’s true that all humans suffer.

So, at a young age I suffered something so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life, with friends, or with my wife or with my children, is that I have some understanding that everyone is suffering and, however imperfectly, acknowledge that suffering, and to connect with them, to love them in a deep way... and that’s what I mean, it’s about the fullness of your humanity.

What’s the point of being here, being human, if you cannot be the most human you can be? I want to be the most human I can be. And that involves acknowledging, and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn’t happen- because they gave me a gift.

and in the Christian tradition, that’s the gift of the sacrifice of Jesus:  that God suffers too.

❤

Where to find God

This morning, I discovered some passages by Khalil Gibran, whose work I first saw in a quote from the OA For Today daily reader.  In his work, The Prophet, he wrote:

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather,"I am in the heart of God." And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

and this:

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and the rivalry of your elements into oneness and melody. But how shall I, unless you yourselves be also the peacemakers, nay, the lovers of all your elements?

and then this:

Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; and you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

And as I can feel autumn in the air, the calendar ticks over to the new month of September, I hold in my heart my faith and I feel overwhelmed by love.

Blessed be.

Effort, a Plan and Faith

The quote in For Today this morning is from Antoine de Saint Exupery, who wrote the wonderful children's book, The Little Prince.  It reads:

As for the future, your task is not to foresee, but to enable it.

Today, I am not planning the outcome, I am only working my process.  I ask God to help direct the outcome of my actions, the changes I am making, and my recovery.  I take responsibility for my wild self, just as the Little Prince did the fox, the flower.

Never in a million years did I realize how much work recovery would be.  Now I know it takes daily, consistent, dedicated effort.  There are no days off.  There are no holidays.  These are false luxuries which set me back in my recovery.  I choose daily - am I working toward recovery, am I making myself more able?  Or am I choosing a set back, self harm?   And I make my choice.  Free will.  Yet I know I am happier if I surrender my wilful, wild self to what someone who loves me wants for me, what my Higher Power would want me to be.  There's work involved in that but it is worth it.

Another quote attributed to Antoine de Saint Exupery that fits with today is, "The one thing that matters is the effort."  

Blessed be.

Divorce

I have taken Step 3 multiple times.  I know the Step 3 Prayer by heart.  This weekend, I am reframing my commitment to abstinence and my surrender to a power greater than myself after a slip last week that shocked me to my core.  

My addiction to food has been a comfort that stood in the place of a true friend, a true lover, a true partner.  It has been destructive.  Addiction is a bigger force than me.  It is a bully. 

When I was a child, addiction sold me on the idea that food abuse is my friend, my life guard, my protector.  None of that is true. My suffering was prolonged and made worse.  I learned to hate myself.  I stayed in this abusive relationship with my self into adulthood, for decades.  I need to leave my addiction behind me and never turn back  A divorce.  Finality.  No reconciliation.  

None of the promises addiction made to me -- that I would feel better, that life would be easier -- ever came true.  Not once.  Instead, I suffered more.  Suffering I know is not better or safer than unknown blessings.  My addiction has been an abusive partner in my life and I have been working at breaking free for more than three years.

With every fibre of my being, every tear I have shed, I want to be free of the pain addiction brings to my life.  The isolation.  The self hatred.  The fear.  On Tuesday, the price of my self worth was 200 g of chocolate mini eggs or $4.50.  God, that breaks my heart open.  An open heart is ready to heal.  

I am a child of God.  My worth is immeasurable.  So I am divorcing my lying, cheating, abusive addiction and turning toward God as my life partner going forward.

This is my promise and my prayer:  

I am walking away from addiction.

I walk toward God.

I walk and if it gets too hard, I accept that I will fall.

And when I fall, I will crawl toward God instead.

And if I can't crawl, I will stay where I am and I will trust God.

I do not go back.  I do not look back.  Because I have walked away from my addiction.  My decision is final.

I choose the path that will give me a loving peaceful life.

I can go to God when I have doubts.

When I fall, I will fall into God's hands. I will not fall into disgrace and destruction because I am walking away from my addiction.

Blessed be.

Breaking Down the Anatomy of Giving Up

Sometimes it feels like I am in an endless cycle, an emotionally broken loop, where I make some progress, I get scared or frustrated, and I either give up for awhile (or I want to).  And there is an anatomy to this process that I repeat every time.  A run away train of negative emotions.  This morning, I am grateful for my coach (who has his own recovery and addiction) for identifying the steps I take toward giving up in -- he pointed them out in my own writing! -- and then tracing the leaps of distorted logic that take me from "this is hard" to "I can't".  Sometimes we do not clearly see our own patterns and this is where working with others is invaluable.

Now that I see the pattern, I see it in myself and also when I work with other fellows in program.  It comes into play emotionally when we are confronted with something emotionally challenging that requires us to honestly look at and then do the work to change our behaviours.  For me, it has been arising as I take steps to work through my depression.  In a sponsee, I see it as the sponsee struggles with confronting her past as she works on her Step Four inventory.  It goes like this:

"This is difficult" (my thoughts are a jumbled mess)

and that leads in the logic to

"This is impossible" (I cannot focus)

and that leads to 

"I am not good at this" (technically true; it is new)

and that leads to

"I don't like this at all" (I feel overwhelmed)

and that leads to

"I don't want to do this" (I am stressed because this is hard)

and that leads to

"this is crushing me, it must be wrong" ("I can't" / panic)

and that leads to

giving up.  

There is a Japanese proverb that says "Fall seven times, get up eight."  Which is great except when you want to learn to stop falling.  Getting up is hard.  Learning not to fall is harder.  More advanced.  When I get to the point where I want to give up because working with my hard feelings (and then actually doing something to change them) is just so hard, I remind myself what the Big Book says (p.417):

And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God’s world by mistake. Until I could accept my compulsive overeating, I could not stay abstinent; unless I accept life completely on life’s terms, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitude.

And I pray to accept that I am struggling and affirm to myself that I will not give up.  I will ask for help and I will try again.  And then I remind myself that "faith without works is dead" [Big Book, p.76] and I push myself to do the next right thing.

Blessed be. 

The Basics: Things I can change...

One of my OA friends shared about how lonely and unhappy she is at New Year’s – another year where she has no husband, no children, not the life she wanted or expected by now.  And I find myself thinking if I can lose 10 pounds a month, I will be close to a normal weight by next Christmas.  At the same time, I know physical recovery is only one part of it and last time I got close, I completely crashed emotionally.  And I am not sure if I am strong enough to try again.  The doctor is saying the two goals is to fix the depression and my weight.  So.  I need to gather my reserves and try.  

At the same time, I am feeling adrift, lost, and unhappy.  I was the only single person at Christmas other than the children.  And it has been that way for years.  My whole life.  And I have not responded to B’s email because nothing has changed, I can feel that.  I’m lonely and I would like cuddles.  So would he.  But I will feel worse about myself if I trade holiday loneliness for less than meaningful sex.  So I am putting on music, I am doing some of my work and I am just letting myself be sad.

I hear the woman and I watch her speak.  She is beautiful.  She is tall, thin, with high cheekbones, dark hair and eyes.  And she says things I feel.  And I sit beside her, fat to her thin, normal height to her skyscraper, lighter hair to her dark, lighter eyes to hers.  And the main difference between us is I am not a bulimic.  That is probably a difference that would surprise a lot of outsiders.  It surprised me when I first came to OA. 

I remember judging the bulimics and the recovering anorexics when I first came to OA.  I thought being fat was an entirely different issue.  You look so normal – even like models, some of you.  And yet when I listened, I heard how you are so unhappy too.  But now I see it as just another variation on the pain I feel, I put myself through, the self-hatred, the loathing, the perfectionism, the not good enough, the numbing out.  So I am learning not to judge other people for I really don’t know much on the surface about what they are living with or through.  I see their pain and I don’t know how to fix it any more than I know what to do for myself other than the next right thing.  Hopefully it will build into the right life.  I have faith it will grow me to be right-sized for the life I do have.

Today's For Today reading is helpful.  It starts with the Serenity Prayer.  That helps.  A lot.  It also says this:

I was spending most of my energy on things I could not change, worrying, fretting, and trying to make them come out my way.  Meanwhile, I was ignoring things that I could change, spinning my wheels where they did the least good.  No wonder I felt so much stress and self-loathing.  Now, when I find myself troubles by an issue or a situation, I can think about it while I say the Serenity Prayer.  If it is something I can change, I think of the steps I can take to begin the change, and I pray for the willingness to take action.  If it something I cannot change, I turn it over to my Higher Power and pray for the willingness to accept it.  This exercise brings serenity to my life and helps me feel God’s presence.

So I try.  I pray.  And I feel my overwhelm change, slowly, but surely, how I am feeling this morning.  I am feeling a bit better.  And this loneliness, this unhappiness, this frustration with my physical recovery -- these are all things I can change.  So I think about the steps I can take to begin the change and I pray for the willingness to take action.

Blessed be.

How’s Your Faith? Step 3 in Action

Like many OA meetings, my home group welcomes newcomers by asking an experienced member to explain OA in broad brush strokes and to share what they were like when they first came to OA, what their fears were, what they learned, and how they are now.  One common theme is the use of “God” in our program. 

Faith.  It is a troubling concept for those who have struggled with the diet mentality of willpower, self-control, and personal responsibility thrust on us by well-meaning family members, concerned physicians, and a for-profit weight loss industry.

We have all the good intentions:  to start again Monday, to never buy [binge food] again, to go to the gym...  As the Big Book says, “Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help” [p.62].

Reluctance to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God (as we understand God) can be a HUGE barrier to progress.  We struggle with the spiritual principle which underlies the Third Step:  FAITH.

Step 3 is where we decide to trust God with our recovery. We admit powerlessness to overcome addictive behaviours on our own (Step 1). We realize (at least in theory) a Higher Power can deliver us from the insanity of addiction (Step 2).  Now we are ready to take the step of giving these matters over to God as we understand God.

This is a huge leap forward in faith.  We trust that God can restore us to a right mind; a sane mind that leads to sane and healthy behaviours and a life filled with greater serenity, personal power and even joy.  We recognize that we need guidance to find a new way of living. 

If we are willing to try to find a Higher Power through the steps, then we have to make a decision to WORK the steps. And, as Lawrie C says, that really is all Step Three is -- a DECISION (http://www.therecoverygroup.org/wts/2005/2005-03q3.html).  It’s not actually turning our will and our lives over. It’s just a DECISION to do that. In order to turn my will and my life over, I have to get rid of the things in myself that are blocking me from my Higher Power.  And that takes work, in particular, Steps 4 and onward.

In Step 3, we have faith that we can turn over that rigid sense of self and an obsession with food that binds us up in resentment, anger, and fear.  We read the Big Book on how the addict is constantly battling for control:

“…like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. […]  What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. […]  What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well?” [Big Book, pp.60-61]

We realize we have to let go of our need to be in control.  But practically, what does that mean?  It takes Step 3:

This is the how and why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. […]  Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. [Big Book, p.62]

Step 3 is the first step that requires action. The first two steps focus on reflection and introspection.  Now, we make a decision.  We shift our mindset from thinking about OA concepts to carrying them out.  So, Step 3 is the simple decision to let the God of my understanding be the overall manager of my life. I “let go and let God”.

We read in the OA 12&12, that practicing this principle of faith means that “we will no longer go through life acting however we feel like acting at any given moment.  Instead we will look to our Higher Power for guidance and strength as we face each decision” [p.103]. 

It takes a recalibration of our default reactions to life.  We start to ask for help with behaviours where we are like the child who never grew up.  If my immediate reaction is “Oh!  I wanna…” then the right answer may be “no, I shouldn’t have that.”  And if my kneejerk reaction is “no!  I don’t wanna!” then usually this is precisely the thing I should do.

So, we take the Third Step Prayer and – privately, with our sponsor, or in a meeting with our fellows – say: “God, I offer myself to Thee – to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always” [Big Book, p.63].

The Step 3 Decision is to ask for help, to seek guidance, to stop and mindfully canvass our Higher Power for direction in all our affairs.  We can start with food, but sooner or later, we will turn to God in all things that trouble us.  However, we haven't completed the transaction when we say the words of commitment in prayer.

Just saying the Third Step Prayer does not turn our will and our lives over to God.  We have to choose, over and over, day to day, to bring recovery into our lives.  That's what Steps Four through Twelve are: the way to turn our whole lives - past, future, and present - over to God.

The AA 12&12 describes the process as letting God in and then doing something about it. “Like all the remaining Steps, Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God - or, if you like a Higher Power - into our lives. Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives” [AA 12&12, p.40].

We practice consciously seeking God in big things and small.  That is: 

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done." We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves” [Big Book, pp.87-88].

This is serenity:  the spiritual state of acceptance that helps us recovering addicts to achieve a state of calmness and peace.  Taking Step 3 (daily, if need be) is how we drop our resistance to recovery.  As we practice being conscious of a higher power, our inner voice will gradually turn from a hunch or occasional inspiration to gradually becoming a working part of our minds [Big Book, p.87].

And boy, will we need this!  Once we put the food down, we will likely begin to contend with emotions that we have stuffed down. Wounds that have been numbed. Dreams that have been shattered. For many, addiction is a way to cope.

Some of our difficulties coping are centred on emotions. In the process of letting go of compulsive food behaviours, we “get to know” our feelings.  Our developing coping skill of turning our troubles over to our Higher Power for guidance is put to the test. This is inevitable. We find ourselves actively pursuing those uncomfortable emotions, the very thing that we have been addictively avoiding for years. It will be uncomfortable at times.  Very uncomfortable.  [Remember the Tools?  Work them when it’s uncomfortable.  Work them when it’s not uncomfortable so you have practice for when your emotions get icky.]

As OA-er Dominica A writes, “My emotional dam broke and a lifetime of stuffed emotions came flooding out.  I had no idea how to contend with them.  Let Go and Let God.  When I get into self-will, I say, ‘God, I surrender. I give this to you right now. Take it because I don't want it. I trust you.’  Then, I do my best to let it go.”

This is Step 3 and faith.  We remind ourselves if we turn it over and don’t let go, we end up upside down!  We right ourselves and take Step 3 again.  Daily.  One day at a time.  That’s faith in action.

-Jennifer S.