Coming Soon

... to a church basement near you! ...

Yes, after much prayer and soul-searching, hubby and I had a meeting today with the pastors of a local church, who are open to allowing us to have CoDA meetings at the church building.  It's early stages yet, because the proposal still must pass approval of the board of directors, but if we get that, we could have our first meeting as early as February 21st!

CoDA has chapters in every province in Canada except PEI as far as we know.  (for more information on what codependency is, please see my page on "What is Codependency?" the link for which is located near the top of this page.) If you want more information on what CoDA is, you can click here.

The only requirement for membership (as stated in CoDA's traditions) is a desire for healthy and loving relationships.

One of the things I like most about 12-step groups is that they provide a blueprint for developing a relationship with God, broken down into twelve easy-to-understand (yet not so easy-to-take) steps.  A quick study and comparison of the twelve steps of ANY 12-step group (from AA to Overeaters Anonymous) is that the first step defines the problem and the rest of the steps are about developing and maintaining that relationship with the only Power that can help the sufferer recover from his/her problem.

And another thing I like a lot about 12-step groups is that irresistibly attractive atmosphere that is present in each and every meeting I've been to:  acceptance.  I have talked about acceptance before on this blog, so I won't belabor the point.  But it is absolutely imperative that acceptance be present in any group situation where healing is the goal.  That's what these groups are about (healing) and that unconditional acceptance is there to give people a safe place in which to get better.

One is not long in a 12-step group before the concept of a loving, accepting, gracious, merciful, and forgiving God comes to the fore.  The more people ask this God to reveal Himself and get to know Him, the more He resembles the One who walked the shores of Galilee nearly 2000 years ago and called people to a life of freedom and purpose.  The roots of AA, which is the parent organization for all twelve-step programs, are in the firm bedrock of an evangelical Christian organization/ society that was in place in 1933 when one Bill Wilson became a member of it.  Bill was an alcoholic and he found forgiveness and mercy from God through Jesus, in this society, then known as the "Oxford group".  The principles on which AA was founded are biblical principles and it's the spiritual aspect of "the program" which makes it work so well.  

I'm excited about this new opportunity to reach out to hurting people, people who are suffering just like I did, in our community and I'll keep you posted as I know more about when and where we'll start up.  I have a funny feeling that God is going to show up too.  Whenever He does... it's always worth while.