Connection

I am personally convinced that the basic search of every human being, from the cradle to the grave, is to find at least one other human being before whom he can stand completely naked, stripped of all pretense or defense, and trust that person not to hurt him, because that other person has stripped himself naked, too. This lifelong search can begin to end with the first A. A. encounter. (pamphlet: A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous)

I visited last night with a woman I sponsor. The loss of her beloved cat has cast her into the depths of depression, even to entertaining suicidal thoughts. We spoke of the blessing, mixed though it may be, of actually having loved to that depth.

I had the privilege of meeting John K at the Region III Assembly/Convention this weekend in Albuquerque. His message is a powerful one, and one I will absorb again and again from the tape of that keynote address as well as from others I've found of him at the www.oalaig.org site. I liked him first as a geek willing -- no, eager -- to work with others to carry the message as addressed by the Information and Technology Committee there at Assembly, that before I knew he was the speaker that evening.

I heard him "stripped naked" and exposing my own nakedness in statements like

• I managed to fall in every pitfall imaginable in this program and screw it up in every possible way.
• Every diet works. For the first time. Then I've learned the way to manipulate it.
• You're going through the hardest part over and over again when you slip and slide. It's like moving a stalled car a few feet, letting it stop, then starting to push again, then doing that again.
  
• We have a weight we know we'll never let ourselves become, one that if we approach, surely we'll get control and stop. But we get a few pounds higher at a time and incrementally get to that point we would never consider reaching.
  
• He talked about really seeing overeating as a disease, long after "calling" it that. We don't have to feel guilty about this any more than we would about having cancer.
  
• I don't want a donut, the disease wants a donut. It just sounds like me because the disease is a good mimic.
  
• Do you really believe you're powerless? We know we're powerless over a bullet in a gun. We don't flirt with that one. We don't really acknowledge that we're powerless over food. We assume we can come back and get abstinence.
  
• In the small version, I am powerful, because I know I can pull myself back. But that sets me up for the next one, slip or relapse one at a time, again and again forever.
  
• If you think that food might ever be an option again, when you get to a crisis and it's food or pain, food's always going to be the only option.
  
• My disease is good at not only mimicking me but in doing a god impression.
  
• Maybe it's time you start beating yourself up. Cut the crap.
  
• Turning it over is not so much that as just getting my own will out of the way, keeping it from being an impediment. 
  
• Skin in, you can change. Skin out, you can't change.
  
• The steps are in order, the steps are discrete, and you do them one at a time. Eight/Nine, for instance, is not a step.
  
• if I choose the easier softer way of recovery, I'm going to get the easier, softer recovery.

Connection can be tough when it's somebody who knows you from the inside out. But connection can be wonderful when it's somebody who knows you from the inside out.

Moving Boulders

The reading today in For Today talked about cleaning house inside, talked of our Higher Power removing stubborn defects I can do nothing about. The mental image I had was a family story. My grandfather was born in 1888. The summer he was 14 he spent alone, in a 40-acre field, with his assignment for the summer being to till the fallow land of Erath County, Texas. He got that 40 acres ready that summer.

He was tall, strong, an athlete -- pole vaulter -- and macho. And a few years later, as a Latin teacher among other things, he took on a school where several mature and cocky young men as students ruled the roost. They'd already driven off a couple of teachers that year before Pop took over. A field behind the school building seemed a place where team sports might redirect the young men to better pursuits, and he allowed the use of school time to clear the land for that purpose. The boys liked the project and worked hard, quickly getting it ready -- except for a large boulder they tried and tried to move and could not budge. Pop could. He picked it up and carried it to the edge of the field, and that feat sealed the deal. He could then teach them Latin and the classics, reading and arithmetic, and whatever else he had on his agenda.

I can't. God can. Thank God!

Little Foxes

Consider Song of Solomon 2:15. At our OA meeting today, Joan quoted a favorite sermon she'd heard based on this verse, directing us to catch the little foxes that ruin the vineyard. This, in the context of the Tenth Step, makes a world of sense. It's the little foxes, darting here and there, bedeviling us, seemingly just a nuisance, until they take over and destroy the blooms in the vineyard of our recovery. Neat scripture. I've worked on a book of reflections on Ecclesiastes. Maybe the Song of Solomon should be next. But then again, there are other possibilities. Like the Letter to Philemon?

 

Have a good day, free of little foxes.

Snuffed Out

I really got a bang from the For Today topic today. It not only spoke to me, it YELLED at me. "Hatred is the result of not accepting the world and its people -- myself included -- as they are." Wow! Another "right-on" moment recently was last night listening to Jim P as a speaker at the Region III OA Assembly in 2004. He talked about getting up from supper and announcing, "I'm done eating." I like that. It's the part of the day I most struggle with the compulsion, tempted to report my food then add to it. So I think I'm going to start doing that. When I figure out my food for the day and know that I've gotten into the ranges set by my nutritionist, I'll announce I'm done and mean it! Then, not only will I mean it when I say it, but I'll live up to the commitment. 

Okay. I've fixed what I can eat the rest of the day, and when I finish eating this bowl's contents, I'm done eating. I can have dieter's tea or no calorie frozen ice pops, and that's it.

I went to a funeral today, a dear old lawyer. The preacher talked about his playing Devil's Advocate with the high school kids he taught in Sunday school. Neat picture. And neat idea as it relates to recovery. The term, of course, comes from the person in the Catholic church arguing against sainthood for a person being considered. But the things said are outrageous. And that's okay. God can take it. 

Okay. It's a rambling post, but it's a post. And the title? It's also from the For Today reading. If I don't work the program, everything I value is snuffed out.

I'm done eating.

Beyond Mental Control

Mind over matter. In answers.yahoo.com, an explanation of the meaning given by Sadeae is:

It has to do with will power. You must have will power to overcome obstacles. For example, you can choose to quit smoking rather than continuing to smoke...you can experience an enormous amount of pain and not succomb to the pain......you can loose weight if you decide that is what you want to do.

If you have the will power, you can succeed at anything you "put your mind to". This is the essence of what "mind over matter" means.

Sure. So I've been told. I've never started smoking, so I never had to try to stop. As to enormous amounts of pain, does that mean physical? Psychic? Emotional? Not sure I'm qualified to respond there. But as to loss of weight, I've got more than fifty years' history proving mind over matter as described here doesn't work. For me. For others I've come to know and love in OA. I've heard it. I've believed it. I've tried - HARD - to live it. I haven't managed. It's caused the psychic pain in my life, the emotional havoc. It's made me feel like a miserable failure. But I'm not. I wasn't when I believed it, I'm not now that I don't believe it. I've got a defect that causes a craving, one just like Dr. Silkwood described:

I do not hold with those who believe that alcoholism is entirely a problem of mental control. I have had many men who had, for example, worked a period of months on some problem or business deal which was to be settled on a certain date, favorably to them. They took a drink a day or so prior to the date, and then the phenomenon of craving at once became paramount to all other interests so that the important appointment was not met. These men were not drinking to escape; they were drinking to overcome a craving beyond their mental control. (Alcoholics Anonymous, pp xxix, xxx)

Look at those words. Craving. Phenomenon. Paramount. Beyond their mental control. How hopeless! Phenomenon means can't be understood. Craving is feeling a powerful desire FOR something. Not just an emptiness, not just discontent, restlessness, but the savage need to get the substance, for me, the food, the sugar, the pastry, the ice cream. Paramount. NOTHING can be of more importance. Mind over matter? I think not. I can't think of anything else of my own, by my will power. I'm helpless, hopeless, a failure. My mind can't overcome the matter. No matter what.

I'm powerless over food. My life has become unmanageable. 

But there is a Higher Power who is able to restore me to sanity, to relieve me of the insane cravings, the pain, the phenomenal NEED. And when I let him, he does. Again and again, continually, forever. And besides that, he throws in more than a TV salesman in an informercial could promise or even intimate. And his promises are real and happen. Thank God!

Willingness = Courage

I groggily said the serenity prayer in my head as I tried to motivate me out of bed this morning, and the words kept getting tangled. I knew "willingness" wasn't in there, but I kept trying to shove it in. Sitting here, reading "The Doctor's Opinion" then saying it right, I realize I wasn't wrong in the first place. Yes, we need serenity to accept what we can't change, wisdom to know what that is, but for the rest, the part we can change, we need courage, and for me right now that means willingness. Maybe always it means willingness, but I know for certain today it does. And that's all that matters. Today. Having the willingness to be courageous enough to avoid the chemicals that for me produce "the effect... so illusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false." (Alcoholics Anonymous, page xxviii) 

Listening to me

You know, "they" all say you get more out of sponsoring often than the person being sponsored. It's true, of course. And sometimes the reason it's good is that you listen to what comes out of your own mouth, or from your fingers on the keyboard. Recently in talking to a woman I sponsor, I said several things that catch my own attention. I include basically my part of the conversation, hers where necessary for context:

She: but my insides are a mess

Me: Okay, so stand aside and allow them to be fixed. This is the one time it's okay to be helpless. When you're yielding to somebody who really CAN control your life better than you.It's none of your business what anybody, including family, thinks of you. It's none of your business what you weigh. It's none of your business how fast you run. It's out of your hands. You're there to take orders, to do the next right thing.

She: how do i know what the order is?

 me: the order of the next right thing?

"Be still, and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10)

 She: so take a second between stimulus and response and shut up

 me: yep

(In responding to a question about what her character defects might be, I answered from seeing in her what I see in me:) me: It's self-loathing. It's excusing mistakes by thinking they're your nature. Hiding your head in the sand.
"courage to change the things i can"...tough part
to grow up and be the grownup in charge instead of the child who can't
fill in any blank after the can't.
the person you get most irritated by has the character defects you hold onto hardest.
Understanding is part of the cure.
I'm getting to see more and more what in xxxx is like me. And it's scary, but when you can see it, you can see the way out.
She: ok. i am very similar to my mother.
Me: yep
She: OH MY GOD
Me: And it's natural. But you're also a very creative person who has the ability to see it and grow out of it, not to do what she did which you can see very well doesn't work.
Forgive your mother. And forgive yourself.
love your mother. and love yourself

My sponsor told me before I work with somebody to say the 3rd step prayer. That night it was working. It was what she needed to hear, I think. But I absolutely KNOW it was what I needed to hear, to affirm, to accept as the truth for me.