I woke this morning afraid and anxious about an upcoming meeting. Before OA, I would have felt stuffed from overeating and totally stressed-out from over-working to prepare. And/or I would have procrastinated and withdrawn into guilt and shame, avoided working, and rescheduled the meeting. I grew my fear instead of my strengths.
OA and prayer are my antidotes to fear. I cannot will myself into calm, but I can pray into it. I stop checking my phone, put it and my book aside, and ask my Higher Power to dial down the noise in my head. I pray because I have nowhere else to go.
I start by reading from “Voices of Recovery” or “For Today,” saying the third or seven step prayers and/or some from my faith tradition. It doesn’t matter how I begin, as long as I begin.
Nothing else matters during this sacred time. I pray because I need abstinence from spinning and destructive thinking, as much as I need abstinence from my trigger foods.
As prayer nourishes me, fear begins to lift. I take comfort, knowing that my Higher Power is bigger than my fear. The more I pray, the more I want to pray and the more automatic it becomes. I pray to exercise my spiritual muscle, to stay in fit spiritual condition and to be of service to my Higher Power.
Often, writing comes as an extension of prayer, as it did with this article. I pray and write to nourish my soul and deepen my recovery. Now, a final thought. What if prayer was my FIRST resort instead of my last? I will work towards that.
— Kate F.