Twelve O'Clock and All's Well

All is well. Food and games are under control, this day, this time. For supper last night we had our staple meal of turkey chili. I had a slice of bread, a supplement, and then the pudding supplement I put in the leftover part of the fruit and supplement my husband didn't eat at lunch, so I had an extra half of supplement and an extra half serving of fruit. I did eat a spoonful of fat free cottage cheese and two cheese sticks yesterday. Today I had 2 eggs, bread, supplement, a Santa Fe grilled chicken salad from Arby's with 1/2 the included tortilla strips and 1/2 a package of low-fat ranch dressing. Plus a supplement and a grapefruit. No games.

But all is well way beyond the absence of compulsive eating and computer games. How do I say what I'm feeling? I think of John Wesley's journal entry, "I felt my heart strangely warmed." This certainly, to this point, isn't a day memorable hundreds of years hence, but God's presence is very real today. There's another illustration I want to use. Not one a good Methodist girl's supposed to know about. It's the third chakra, below the heart, above the navel. 

This is our third chakra, a yellow lotus of ten petals, located at the solar plexus—the place where we get those butterfly feelings when we feel scared or powerless. Its element is fire—fire—that radiates and transforms matter into energy, giving light and warmth. This chakra represents our "get up and go," our action, our will, our vitality, and our sense of personal power. Its name, Manipura, means "lustrous gem." We can think of it as a glowing yellow Sun, radiating through the center of our body. Source

That's what today feels like, a glowing sun radiating through my body. It's neat. And it's how I most thoroughly feel God's presence. 

In Sunday school this morning, we had four teens and an adult, all Navajos, and a missionary working on the reservation. They were visiting the college where I graduated almost 40 years ago, one starting school there next year. The other three, all fourteen, were seeing what possibilities might lie "out there" beyond their thoughts and contemplation. The missionary and some of the others, at her guiding, talked of the conflict between cultures and religions. Some of the "others" were quoted as talking about everybody having the same god, everybody praying. While I understood the teaching that it wasn't true, my inner me said, "Oh, but it is!"

Meditating the morning (which I start with random readings) God kept telling me things like:

• Reaching is the essence of recovery (For Today)
• "Problems have been our stimulus. How well, though, shall we be able to meet the problems of success?" (As Bill Sees It, page 207) 
• "We have tried to hold the love of our children for their father" and that our husbands seemed to like it when we had the same behavior that characterized them. (page 106 BB)
• Growth comes from inconvenience and discomfort. Tend to business, be clear, and wait on God's will.
• I should know my limits and boundaries in all four area, spiritual, mental, emotional and physical.

I repeatedly prayed the 7th step prayer, wanting to commit it to memory, both as to the words and, much more importantly, in my behavior. "My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding. Amen." (AA BB p. 76)

But the main understanding I came away with was the meaning of intercessory prayer. I've always been hesitant -- and I believe for good reason -- for in asking God for something specific, we're imposing our will on him. But this morning I found myself praying aloud (first time since establishing the meditation time a few months ago) that God bless those people I'm concerned for in the four areas, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. I think that's the realization I came away with that warms my heart--and my solar plexus. 

All is well, at this time, on this one day.