I was living in Australia, abstinent in FA for six months and had started attending my first live AWOL (A Way of Life, a closed study of the Twelve Steps) when I travelled to Brazil with my husband to visit family. I had taken my sponsor’s suggestion and planned the trip for just ten days so that I would not miss two sessions in a row and as the AWOL was going to close the day after I was due back from the trip.
Arriving at the airport in Brazil on the day of my return, I realized I had the departure time wrong. My flight was taking off in 20 minutes! The gate had already closed and there was nothing they could do: I had missed my flight. It was bad enough that I would have to buy another ticket, but worse than that, there was no flight available for the next two days. That meant I would be out of my AWOL.
Panic, guilt and remorse started to kick in. In desperation, I sat on the airport floor with my husband and cried. Up until then I did not know how much my AWOL meant to me. Suddenly, a thought came into my mind: God wants me abstinent and God wants me in that AWOL. This I know is God’s will for me.
From that thought I was given the strength to stop crying and to take action. I started looking for flights online and there it was: a flight that would get me back to Australia in time for my AWOL. It was a forty-one-hour flight. Instead of going the quicker way around the globe through Santiago, it would stop in Portugal, London and Abu Dhabi on the way to Sydney with long lay-overs. This was also the most expensive flight I have ever seen. It was about three times the price of a return ticket bought in advance, which was a huge financial stretch for us.
Still, I knew in my heart it was the right choice for me and trusted that God would provide financially if I took that action. I booked the flight and went back to my family’s home in Fortaleza to prepare enough meals for a forty-one-hour flight. Anyone in FA can imagine how many containers would be needed for this. I could not get hold of my sponsor but thankfully I was able to reach my sponsor’s sponsor and receive eating times suggestions for the extended journey. I also did some outreach calls.
On my first outreach call a fellow told me that the leaders of my AWOL had just decided to keep it open for another two weeks. My heart dropped. There were so many feelings. All that effort, all that money, all for nothing!
But in fact, I could not have been more wrong. The moment I decided to take the forty-one-hour flight ended up being the biggest turning point in my recovery. Until then, I hadn’t really trusted my recovery. I’d thought that sooner or later I would break, as I had tens of times in another food program. But at that moment everything changed. By committing to pay all that money and to endure a forty-one-hour flight, I was also making a commitment to my abstinence, to put my program first. I knew then that I would not just casually go to open the fridge one day and eat. Not after that. And for the first time, the phrase so often parroted at me in FA: “Don’t eat no matter what” had become mine. I felt the phrase in my heart as being my truth.
This experience solidified how important FA is for me and that my recovery comes first. I trusted that God would provide and that the money would come back one way or another, and it did! Most importantly, though, today I know: I don’t eat no matter what.