April 2025
“Might controls everything, and without strength, you cannot protect anything, let alone yourself.” Dante’
I used to think I had the strength, power, and inner resources to control my weight and my life. I mean, hadn’t I gotten skinny in high school? Sure, but how long did that last? And then what about the many pounds I gained in college, plus the nervous breakdown in just a few months’ time? Then the 100 pounds I gained after I had my children?
It took me a long time to really have the capacity to be honest with myself and admit defeat. I needed help. The OA Program has offered me that help. I’ve learned to rely on a Higher Power, God, who enables me to follow my recovery program. I not only know how much food I can handle being on my plate, I also know how much anxiety I can handle carrying on my shoulders. Actually, I don’t carry any of these by myself anymore, I turn them all over to God now. With my Higher Power in my life daily, I now have his strength and might that protects my abstinence, recovery, and sanity.
I still have a ways to go on my journey. Are we ever really done? I think this is a lifelong commitment, to daily walk with God before me, leading, guiding, and directing my path. I am in this OA thing for life and I love it! Karen, April 2025
What Sponsorship has meant to me. My first sponsor instilled in me the principles of the program. Before I moved on to another sponsor, I felt as though I had been given a firm foundation in the OA Program, which is a real gift from a sponsor. I will always be grateful to Bob for grounding me in OA. I learned something from every sponsor.
From one sponsor I learned the importance of drinking enough water, and that sometimes when we think we want food, we are actually thirsty. If we drink water, often the desire for food goes away, because we were really thirsty, not hungry. From other sponsors, I have learned the importance of taking time for morning prayer and meditation. Another sponsor helped me come to an appreciation of the Tenth Step, and still another showed me the importance of making a gratitude list.
Being a sponsor has helped me to grow as a person and in knowledge and appreciation of the OA Program. Assisting others and watching them grow is a wonderful experience. I have learned to trust the Holy Spirit within when speaking with a person I am sponsoring. It may not seem like I have said anything of consequence, yet it may be just what my sponsee needed to hear. God works in mysterious ways.
Each person that I sponsor has added a dimension to my growth in the program and as a person. I learn from those I sponsor as well as share my program with them. The one thing it has helped me with is the challenge to regularly do prayer and meditation in the morning. Over the years, I have had difficulty with this, as I am not by nature a morning person, but a ‘night owl’ by nature. I have tried to convert to a morning person, but it is an on-going battle that I have to stay on top of, or it will get the best of me. It is amazing the difference it makes on a day when I do it, vs a day that I don’t do it!
Like the Big Book says, the key to this program is to be in ‘fit spiritual condition’. Being a sponsor challenges me to do this daily and motivates me to do what I need to in order to remain in fit spiritual condition. Charyll L., April 2025
What’s Coming:
May 3, 2025 Renewing Our Recovery a 1 Day Retreat
10:00 am – 3:30 pm
May 31, 2025 Sponsorship workshop
August date TBD OA Picnic
Submissions welcome, send to Charyll L celofs27@yahoo.com