The next morning I hit up an additional 90-day OA meeting. I had been praying hard for help in getting “back on track”. I was rapidly losing confidence in the program and in myself. Luckily, I hadn’t lost confidence in my higher power. I asked that he would inspire me to take the right steps, that he would open the right doors and help me discover and understand what I was missing. One answer that came clearly to me was that I needed to find a new sponsor. That is much easier said than done. First of all, sponsors are scarce and hard to find. Secondly, and more significantly, I loved my current sponsor. She had worked with me for about two years and had been there for me through it all. She was supportive, insightful, encouraging and a true friend as well as mentor. The thought of breaking that relationship was difficult. Trying to make the call was nothing short of agonizing for me.
At the meeting Saturday I got the clear impression that it was wrong of me to ask for guidance and then disregard the clear impression that I had been given regarding a new sponsor. No sponsors were available, but after the meeting I impulsively asked a woman there if she was available to sponsor or knew any body that could. Not only was this way out of my comfort zone, but it was a leap of faith. She was already booked sponsee-wise, but invited me to call her another day to see if she could help me find one.
During a phone conversation she agreed to sponsor me at least temporarily. In the course of that conversation she said something that caught my attention like nothing has in program for a long time: she said that virtually everyone she knows who has real recovery and is able to maintain it has immersed themselves in the AA Big Book and their recovery is grounded in the first 164 pages of that book. An alarm went off in my head. I hadn’t even read the big book for three years. I was working the steps regularly in the LDS Addiction Recovery Program and that book had changed my life in many ways. I had experience so much personal growth and spiritual growth. However, I realized that I was still missing something important and that as a result I hadn’t been able to hang on to recovery from food addiction. The impression came that I would find out what I had been missing as I actually studied the Big Book. I believe in divine intervention. It is not coincidental that I found out after the fact that this particular sponsor based her program and her work with sponsees directly on the study of the Big Book.
And so I have taken a step of faith into the darkness, having a limited amount of confidence that my way will still be illuminated as I continue to try seek for guidance and follow it.
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