Step 6 - Surrender Story

While each of the steps has a related spiritual principle, in my experience, I have to work many principles throughout the entire process. Honest, humility and surrender are needed as I work every one of the twelve steps. Surrender has been one of the strongest principles in my time in recovery. 

I have a two part journey having left OA for about ten years, losing both my abstinence and a healthy body weight. The first time around, "I surrender" was a mantra. I needed it in the restroom at a new job or when getting ready to eat a meal with family and especially in the morning with the 3rd Step prayer. Doing the steps required a huge surrender of what I thought I knew about food, my life and myself. Surrendering in Steps 1 and 2 were necessary to stay and to keep going. Then, I surrendered by taking a leap, saying the 3rd step prayer with a sponsor. Writing and sharing my 4th step was a surrender of my lack of trust. But, in Step 6, I truly understood surrender. 

I had just read a thorough inventory and felt like crap. I had no idea who I was anymore. What happened to my defects and false beliefs about my family, my ideas about how the world worked that ended up being rooted in fear, pride and ego? I had no ground beneath my feet and did not know where the road would lead me. 

In part 2 of my journey, I surrendered once again. The 3rd Step prayer became my reality. I walked into unknown territory and allowed a Power Greater than Myself to take over, to lead and I was rewarded with peace with eating behaviors and a real serenity in my days. 

Now, I continue to surrender daily, sometimes at each meal and especially after dinner. I surrender when I pray and meditate or write a Step 10. People do not recover as fast as I would like sometimes or they make choices that are not within my control, so I surrender when working with others: Step 12. I may never get back those ten years out of program but I am grateful the surrender is still available to me today. 

KA

Working Steps 10, 11 & 12 Transform My Defects into Forgiveness and Compassion

“With defects unattended, the insanity of compulsive overeating returns and that is death, spiritually and emotionally, if not physically.”

A truer statement was never written! When I let my defects go untended, it’s like a bramble garden popping up overnight, and there’s no way out of the bushes without getting scratched and stuck by the thorns.

Taking It Easy in the Program - Being Good to Yourself in the Process

RICKICISM NO. 8 

Some of us arrive at our Program and soon develop a fired-up frame of mind, determined to do well but expecting miracles overnight. OA Long-timers know that it is probably not going to happen quite that way.

GROWTH AND GRACE NEVER END

 

I had a very dramatic awakening when I was 24 years old, but it didn’t enable me to let go of my eating disorder, which at that time was manifesting primarily as bulimia and anorexia. 

It's All In How You Look At Things

Rickicisms! Do you remember those? The late, great Rick D., an esteemed OA long-timer published his 70 program musings in the Foothill Intergroup newsletter over (at least) the last 10 years. At the October 26th, 2020 Intergroup meeting, the intergroup board voted to begin running a monthly Rickicisms on the the OA Footnotes blog. So, hold on to your hats people, we bring you...Rickicisms.

Fear and Perfect Program Person

I went to the Pasadena noon Thursday meeting today on Zoom.  As so often happens, I received a multitude of “God Shots” from listening and participating. It’s a writing meeting, and so I ended up with several lines of focused writing.  Today’s subject was fear, and the prompt was this: What action do I take when I become conscious of fear’s presence?

Writing as a Tool

When I began working with my present sponsor, she had me set up a morning routine which included three pages of free-association writing every day. In the interim, I've come to appreciate starting my day with my morning pages.