Everything is Grace

“Everything is a grace because everything is God’s gift. Whatever be the character of life or its unexpected events—to the heart that loves, all is well. “

St. Therese of Lisieux

I’m a 12 stepper. For those of you who know what that means, you get me. For those of you who don’t, I work the 12 steps as best I can on a daily basis to be the best human I can be with the help of a higher power. It gives me freedom from my addiction of the body and disease of the mind depending on how hard I work it, and, more importantly, how much I trust in God. 

The title of this post is a massive statement about my journey. When I stepped into my first meeting at the tender age of 23, I hated that I was the youngest one there. I resented that “everyone else got to have fun and live it up for decades longer.” The thing for me was once I had learned about OA, I could never un-know it existed. I was gifted with the massive conviction that I had come to the end of my rope and here was my path to freedom. 

One of the hardest statements for me to hear was someone who referred to themselves as a “Grateful compulsive eater.” Shudder… First off, it didn’t make sense to me, but second, it pissed me off that someone could be happy for the same reasons I was feeling so miserable!

I have been humbled and loved into a place of recovery. On the other side of my eating disorder (God-willing may it always stay that way), I am grateful for the pain, the heartache, the drudgery and the misery that brought me to the world of living life through the 12 steps. It was actually an integral part in me opening the door back up to my faith. Looking back at who I was when I started and how far I have come from that broken girl who just didn’t know where it all went wrong and could not figure out how to be well, I marvel  at the power of it all. 

So I thank God for that awful time because it was through my greatest trial that I was gifted a way to live a life more powerful, more beautiful, and more free than I ever would have created on my own. With God, truly Everything can become a grace. To all those in program, God bless you, and for all those in need of it, my prayers are with you.