Crumbing Walls

I came into FA in 2004, having grown up regularly going to church. On Sunday mornings, my dad would make breakfast for all of us, then usher my mother, brother, sister, and me out the door while he settled down with the Sunday paper. My mom taught Sunday school, and that was always part of the ritual. For the next several years, my concept of God developed as something “out there” that had very little to do with me.

As I grew up and left home, I stopped going to church except to attend weddings and funerals. The seed had been planted, however, so I continued my quest for this higher being in many different religions, including yoga and various forms of meditation; wherever I thought I might find what I was looking for, although I was not at all certain just what that was.

In the meantime, my food addiction flourished. I was in and out of several diet clubs, and I tried various other methods of controlling my weight and feelings. The list included commercial diet programs, macrobiotics, vegetarianism, veganism, and towards the end, the raw foods diet.

What I now understand is that no kind of being, higher or otherwise, had a chance of getting through to me as long as I was plying myself with alcohol and food. It wasn’t until

I got to FA and put the food down that I began to develop a relationship with the God of my understanding. The addictive behaviors had constructed a wall that was impenetrable for most people, or God, to get through.

As I stayed abstinent day in and day out, and as the days turned into weeks and months, that wall began to crumble, and as painful as that crumbling often was, God was finally able to get through. I began to trust God rather than putting my trust in food, which had long since proved very untrustworthy.

Over the years that I have been in this program, my trust and faith in the God of my understanding has grown tremendously. When my husband and I moved to Maine, I reconnected with a church nearby. It was different from the church of my childhood, and thankfully, I was different from the child I had been. The spirituality I found in FA was enhanced by my church community and vice versa.

Of all the things that FA has given me, this growing faith is the most profound. This faith never could have happened until I stopped eating addictively. There is good reason why abstinence is the first tool we read at FA meetings. Without that, none of the rest of it is possible.