Drat! It should be HARDER.

"If you're not afraid of something, then there's nothing to overcome and it's not courage. But if you're afraid and you do it anyway, that's courage." Mur Lafferty 

Just do it. Act as if. "...praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry that out." (Step 11) I know all this stuff. I know how to plow ahead and be successful. I know how to do the things that need to be done. But they don't. I don't. I hide my head, and things become a crisis before I do them. And I fear. It's comforting to know others fear, others who are successful and out there where I want to be. 

I know I'm good. I know I can accomplish what I want to do. So why do I hide my head and avoid doing them? Why am I not moving forward?

I am moving forward. Not at break-neck speed. Not a lot faster than a turtle sometimes, but hey, have you seen a turtle move when you see him in the road and turn around to get a photo of him? They do. And they get somewhere. And I'm getting somewhere. One day at a time.

I've got fears. I've got self-esteem issues. But I can do things. And I am. God's will, God's design for my life. Putting that out there, not my fears. But it's so scary....

At the Beginning

Step 1. We admitted we were powerless over food, that our lives had become unmanageable.

Three years ago, I came to OA, and I was powerless over food, my life was out of control, chaotic, far from manageable. Right now? I'm just as powerless over food as I ever was, and I cannot manage my life one twit. The difference is that now I know I don't HAVE to manage my life and that being powerless over food is just fine as well as I'm NOT managing my life. When it's turned over to my Higher Power whom I call God, when I admit sometimes on a second-by-second basis that good's pull is still as strong as it ever was, that the control over the food, the power over food comes -- from without, or from the God within me, however I choose to envision it at the moment. It's not as though it's imposed on me, but God's very internal. And he's not a puppeteer, not pulling strings from the inside or the outside. Turning my life and will over to my higher power doesn't take away my own ability to control. But when I rebel and act on my own -- in defiance, in doubt, in fear -- then I plummet back into the abyss of my old unmanageable life. I don't like it there.

I came into OA three years ago. For a while when I do chips, I've talked about time in program or abstinence. I know I have been fudging because I wasn't clear about my own position, and that made me sound less of a hypocrite to myself. From now own, I'm going to say it exactly like the script says it.

And I haven't taken my third year chip. I didn't take it on Dec. 16, the day before my abstinence date, and I've missed the last two meetings because my kids from out of state came in an hour before the meeting the 23rd, and they left the morning of the 30th. But I would have felt really ambiguous about accepting the three year chip then. I'm abstinent today, have been yesterday and the day before. I will never take that third year chip. I don't know on in December of 2010 whether I'll take a 1 year or 4 year chip, but I know I've taken the first step one more time and this time my life's out of my hand, and I won't take it back. With God's help and your support.