Incremental Growth

I remember, years ago, when we had someone plant the pine tree. We moved here in 1994, and sometime - I'm reasonably sure within a year - Biff planted a twig he called a pine tree. I don't think it was a foot tall, and I know for certain some of the weeds I mowed down today were larger that that tree. But while mowing I was startled by a sight - a pine cone. From that tree. It's really been a tree for a long time, but the cones I've noticed before were anemic little things. This one wasn't! When did that happen?
I've become aware of changes in me. Not changes happening, but realized transfigurations. The very act of mowing was one. Previously, I would have tentatively proposed the project to hubby, not wanting to offend, having an aversion of taking a task he might possibly have hired out or planned to do soon. And I know my bringing it up would have been, in some frames of mind, asking permission to make a decision, and in others, trying to go the extra mile to earn praise or recognition or acknowledgment. But I did it because I'd grown embarrassed by the yard. Even the house next door, normally by a totally derelict appearance making ours shine as a potential show home, boasted a more manicured lawn.

In other situations, with other people, I'm asserting a leadership role, no longer anxious to avoid offending at all costs some possible idea, unexpressed, obscure, and - truth be told - unlikely to occur in anyone's imagination but my fertile garden of what-ifs.

As to abstinence, after the initial year of pink-cloud eating, emotions roiled, and old habits inched their way back in. Abstinence from early 2008 until early 2011 was the white-knuckle variety, something I'm as good at now as I was all those years from age 13 to almost 60 which I was on a "diet" - steadily gaining most years, reaching that awful 300 pounds on a doctor's scales. I worked with my sponsor, and she pointed out a pattern I hadn't detected. I'd do pretty darned good white-knuckling it for a month. Then the old "reward due" attitude would butt in, and for a few days nobody would have seen my eating as having any redeeming qualities. Remorse came quickly, especially as the depredation grew with subsequent slipping periods, and another month would begin. I didn't gain substantial weight back, was truly on a food plan many more days than not, but self-esteem was a word in the dictionary, nothing with which I was even slightly acquainted.

Then something happened. I didn't know it at the time - no "scales... fell from my eyes," no significance "burst upon me." Instead, it was a "different footing," "roots in a new soil." (Quotes from page 12, Alcoholics Anonymous.) But some time in late January, I got it. I found out how to surrender, how to let go. I learned there's no effort in abstinence, just accepting the rules laid down for me by a benevolent friend whose knowledge and insight know no bounds. My roots are firmly planted in rich loam. Thank God!