Prospective Retrospective

Happy New Year!

My habit is to write New Years Resolutions. Some I've kept. Many I recycle, putting them in the pot one more time, year after year. This year, there will be no resolutions. Oh, I do intend to improve in 2008. I lay claim to the promises! I've quoted those on pages 83-84 of the Big Book. This time I'll quote those in "A Vision for You."

God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order. But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the Great Fact for us.

Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. (AA Big Book, Page 164)

Resolutions imply I'm going to do something by will power and personal strength. I understand popular resolutions are:

• lose weight
  
• pay off debt
  
• save money
  
• get a better job
  
• get fit
  
• eat right
  
• get a better education
  
• drink less alcohol
  
• quit smoking now
  
• reduce stress overall
  
• reduce stress at work
  
• take a trip
  
• volunteer to help others

Some of those things I want to happen in my life. I promise not to get in the way of those that need to happen. But for me to do it by my will power and determination? That's not going to happen. I know because they didn't happen in other years with all the umph I could give them. But with God's help, the ones that need to happen will happen in my life. That "with God's help" doesn't mean with God helping me. It means with God's help in getting me to remember to get out of his way so he can make them happen!

Fifty seven pounds in 2007. And I didn't do it. God did it. How good can it get? I have no idea. I'm looking forward to finding out, though. Thank God!

Fat Cows, Skinny Cows

Consider Genesis 41:17-21.

Pharaoh dreamed of fourteen cows, seven fat and sleek and seven slender--gaunt. Now, Genesis calls the lean cows ugly and the fat ones sleek. And Peter Paul Rubens painted "Rubenesque" women, for their lovely plump figures. I was Rubenesque a hundred pounds ago, and I'll take this me, thank you.

Pharaoh's lean cows ate the fat ones and remained lean. The sages of Egypt couldn't figure out the dream. They were stumped. Why were cows eating cows, why didn't consuming the fat cow make the skinny one fat? It simply didn't make sense, and they couldn't devise any scenario in which it did.

The sages hadn't been to diet and calorie/weigh and pay organizations. They hadn't starved themselves to get rid of "sleekness." Nor did they have the benefit of OA and the twelve steps. If they had, they might have realized similar mysteries. You can live on few enough calories to damage your health and the weight stubbornly stays in place. But with a spiritual approach to the steps, you can eat full, satisfying meals, and amazingly the pounds slough off.

So, how do you get there? By surrendering. By turning off the analytical mind telling you the whole idea is absurd. By simply doing what you're told to do, whether it makes a whit of sense or not. By delving into your past to learn who you are and find your strengths while admitting and accepting your past. By letting God guide and following his lead without questioning.

When I was young Daddy would say, "When I say jump, you better jump and you can ask how high on the way up." That kind of obedience of our Heavenly Father can turn fat cows into slender ones and miserable cows into happy people. Promise.

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Are you analytical? Is it possibly a character defect? Remember, all character defects have a good side as well. How can you turn your will and your actions over to God?

December 26. Relief.

It was a good Christmas, peaceful, pleasant. Yesterday I visited with both sons and both daughters-in-law and spent the day with extended family near home. But it was a delight to go home last night and fix a pot of turkey chili, my staple food, one I eat probably six to eight meals in a typical week. Having turkey chili didn't wipe out the fact I found myself sneaking into the kitchen for a crumb or a taste of this or that. It didn't mean I didn't realize all over again how addicted I really am, how harmful my "closet" eating is. But it was a good Christmas. And this is a GREAT day after Christmas, back at work, comfortable, unchallenged by omnipresent food.

I'll share a poem I wrote Monday night. It sounds depressed, but really, it isn't. Just realistic I think.

Christmas Eve

Why write a Christmas poem?
After two thousand years
the subject's saturated,
glorious songs by
Handel, Wesley, the bigs.
Besides, why me? I've
decked no tree these last few years.
Writing checks passes for giving
and keeps me out of malls.
It's Christmas Eve--I sit
with my computer. But earlier
I went to church, sang carols,
felt "in." And I care.
In a grinchy kind of way.
I'm thankful. For computer
peaceful nights, for people
I care enough to write
checks to. For an account
that doesn't cringe.
For God's love, as much tonight
as last night, last month, a week from
Tuesday. I'm glad earlier years
torn between competing parents
have passed, dissipated, ended.
I'm glad for hope for peace on
earth for me, for others, for
people who let go and let
God grant us glory. For the Word
that's God who gives us words.
For Grace. Thanks, God.

Merry Christmas!

It's 7:20 in the morning. We're dressed and ready to go when our 5 year old niece wakes. My boys and their wives are with their newer families. Excuse me. Christmas calls.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Retribution

Consider Psalm 51. 

We compulsive eaters certainly understand the despair, the misery and hopelessness inherent in the psalmist's cry. We've cried it as well. "God help me!" In my case, the prayer that resulted in God's taking away my compulsive eating was simply talking aloud to God as I've done for years, saying, "This is stupid!" Whatever the cry, whatever the circumstances of our sin, whether we know exactly what they are or just have the vague notion that God doesn't hear us, we know the sentiment. That's what sin is, you know. Separation from God. And he didn't separate himself. We caused the rift. 

My misdoings aren't exciting, just devastating to my own sanity. I once considered a friend of mine, how he must feel about a situation which resulted in legal proceedings:

Retribution

I wish to God I could unknot the mesh
that is my life, to rectify the sin
constraining howls within my soul, confess
the blackness haunting me from depths within.
Would that the soul who huddles from the ghost
of my misdeeds could grasp the peace I've lost,
could find a haven, knowing countless hosts
of demons foist repayment of all cost.
For justice through a system made by man
is travesty compared to that by guilt 
repaid. And bitter might-have-beens will pan
society's responses 'til they wilt.
So lock the doors, confine this worthless soul
for even full release won't make me whole.

The regrets, whether for legal felonies or moral turpitude obvious only from the inside, result in intolerable distance between us and God. What can we do to fix it? The psalmist suggested scrubbing with hyssop. What's that? It was used in biblical times for cleansing--the temple, and people with leprosy among other uses. And the hyssop branch lifted to Jesus on the cross carried vinegar for thirst. Scrubbing with hyssop or antibacterial disinfectant or lye or any other cleanser won't fix sin, no matter how much we may want a solution. 

It's not the cleansing with hyssop that makes us clean, nor can washing make us whiter than snow. It's the willingness to be cleansed, the acceptance of the washing done by God. Once that acquiescence happens, then God can create a clean heart in us and renew--or create--a steadfast spirit in us.

At that point, with joy and a willing spirit, we are able to move on to the twelfth step, to teach others in our situation, other "transgressors" God's way and turn other compulsive eaters to God and the joy will be passed on and on and on. Thank God!

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How contrite are you? Have you received God's assurance of your acceptance? Are you passing on your joy and peace?

A Human Doing

Consider Psalm 37, especially verses 3 through 7.

The meditation from The Recovery Group this morning says something about before recovery being a human doing, not a human being. Neat! And right to the point.

Today is December 22, Christmas Eve Eve Eve, my daughter-in-law says. "Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him" is a Herculean task in the days of rush and purchase, cook, eat, wrap, eat, run back out for the forgotten present, trek back for wrapping paper, watch the weather, we need to leave now or we'll not get there. And it's an even tougher time for many compulsive eaters, whose solace in food has been denied them, perhaps by the miracle of it's being removed, and else by the commitment to another person to follow our food plan despite the additional pressures and temptations. Add to the omnipresence of our trigger foods the reunions and time spent with the people with whom we interacted to become the mixed up crazy individual who first walked through the doors of OA.

We're reminded, at times, that "Jesus is the reason for the season." Yet there's another reminder for compulsive eaters necessary on such stress-filled days, joyous though they may be. That is that God can and will remove the burden of stress. All we have to do is let go and let him take it. Sometimes it's a bit more complicated, since we've held on so tightly and for so long we have no idea what we're holding--so enter steps 4, 5, and 6. But simply the willingness to let God take "our difficulties" whether we understand or not will lead to peace and serenity, a state of being (not doing) exquisitely more beneficial to us--and to those around us--than anything we can become as a human doing.

On this day it's good to stop, think, and pray.

God, I offer myself to Thee-to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always! (AA Big Book, page 63)

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Are you a human doing or a human being today?

Wow!

I found myself looking for somebody else's words to help me write my words to a woman I sponsor. Instead I found words that cannot be matched, the words of Terry Heaton. The essay is entitled "How I know God loves me."