"In all probability, we shall never be able to touch more than a fair fraction of the [compulsive overeating] problem in all its ramifications." - Alcoholics Anonymous, page xxi (last paragraph of the forward to the second edition).

Although originally written about alcoholics, this statement is so much truer for compulsive overeaters.  I look at the people around me and I see so many who belong in program.  I've heard it said that everyone belongs in at least one program - the question is finding their drug of choice.  It takes only five minutes on any webpage to see the obsession people have with dieting and their weight.  So much money and energy goes into eating disorders and their ramifications.  There is so much suffering. 

When I think about how many cities have next to no OA presence, I am horrified.  The other week my usually packed Thursday night meeting was next to deserted.  One person shared that she was horrified to see that there were so many empty seats.  Just a casual stroll through a store suggests that there should be people pounding down the doors to get recovery.  Yet this program is only touching a small fraction of us.

I can only stop and pause and be insanely grateful that I was chosen to be in these rooms.  Really, I can only see the hand of God in moving me into OA.  I never would have found my way here on my own.  It took quite a few nudges to get me into the room and quite a few more nudges to get me to stay.  The life that recovery has given me is so much richer than I ever imagined it could be.  My feelings are deeper, my connection with my son is deeper, and my awareness of how my actions affect others is deeper. 

But for the grace of God, I'd still be quietly eating myself to an early, lonely, unfulfilled death.  When I see an obese person walk down the street I'm filled with a simultaneous sense of sadness (I once was told that every pound of fat is really a pound of pain) and relief that I get to be one of those people that doesn't have to let the pain rule my life and determine my future.

Newcomers. . .

The May 4th Voices of Recovery quotes The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions of Overeaters Anonymous:  "All who have experienced the pain of compulsive eating and want to stop are equally welcome here."  It goes on to tell the story of a woman who came to the meetings fighting the program.  "I had no desire to refrain from compulsively eating.  Instead, I wanted to diet.  I did not take the suggestions seriously.  Tradition Three illustrates the reason for my inability to grasp this program.  I wanted the weight loss and even the pleasure of it without having to earn it first.  Today when I watch newcomers struggle with the program as I did, I try to show the same compassion and acceptance as those before me."

I remember my first day in Overeaters Anonymous.  I came into the rooms believing that I didn't need the program - I was fine.  When the woman who shared told my own story, I was shocked.  But I decided to sign up.  She'd lost all her weight so clearly whatever these people were selling worked.  I asked her to sponsor me at break and felt I had put a check in the box to have them wave the magic wand that would fix me.

She told me to read from the Big Book, and I read Bill's Story and put the book down again.  Not only did I not relate to the story, but I figured that all the Big Book contained was a collection of people's stories.  Why would I bother reading about a bunch of alcoholics when I could sit in a meeting and hear people tell me about their own stories of recovery - and on topic, too!.  I was already sold on the program, just get to the good stuff!

That sponsor told me to write down three things I loved about myself every day. I thought it was the dumbest assignment in the world.  And yet when I sat down that night I couldn't think of a single thing.  Everything I loved had a "yeah, but. . ." attached to it that was a disqualifying factor.  I eventually found myself on the phone with another woman I'd met in meeting, sobbing because I couldn't find anything to love about myself.

Eventually I was able to identify a few items - I have a set of freckles on my leg that looks like a happy face; I always have a flower painted on my big-toenails; and I have three freckles on my foot that make a straight line.  Each night I came up with three new things - sometimes it was that I loved a dish I cooked, other times it was that I loved knowing how to knit.  But each time I failed to understand what the point of this exercise was.

Every time I asked that sponsor why we were bothering with this (get on with the wand waving, already!) she told me we were working on my first step.  She asked me to identify trigger foods, so I started cutting out things like soda and coffee.  Eventually my "abstinence" was to not eat French fries, doughnuts, or drink coffee and soda.  Yet I still binged on sweets and snack foods to my heart's content.  So after three months I decided I was wasting my time and left program.

When I came back I decided I could do it on my own.  For the first two months back in the rooms I was back to my original "abstinence" - still binging away - and I decided that I could identify my own trigger foods.  Since my first sponsor didn't "do anything" for me, I'd sponsor myself!

But through this all, I was just as clueless as that woman was.  I wanted the results without the work.  I didn't want to surrender to another person.  I didn't want to work the steps.  I didn't want to change my life.  I just wanted the magical fix.

But there is no magical fix.  There is a miraculous one - but that requires work to attain. 

It wasn't until after I'd gotten another sponsor, surrendered, and gone through my first step that I learned what my first sponsor was doing:  she was trying to show me that my life was unmanageable.  She was waiting for me to notice just how hard it was for me to find things I loved about myself, and she was waiting for the light bulb to click that maybe, just maybe, whatever it was I was doing to run my life wasn't working.  But because I never left the disease, I never was able to see what she was trying to show me.

Today's reading was a good reminder of just how much I struggled as a newcomer, and just how much I need to show compassion to those still suffering from compulsive overeating.

Finding a Higher Power, Part 1

When I came into program I didn't have a higher power let alone a Higher Power with capital letters.  It isn't to say I didn't believe in God.  Being an atheist involves a certain measure of faith.  While it is impossible to concretely prove the existence of a Higher Power, it is also impossible to concretely disprove the existence of some Higher Power.  So the act of being an atheist is as much an act of faith as the belief that Christ is the Son of God or that Buddha obtained enlightenment.  And faith was something I was fresh out of.  So I was indifferent to the notion that there was a deity out there, but one thing I was most certain of was that any deity that might exist most certainly wasn't interested in me.

So I needed some sort of starting point.  I have met people who have chosen non-deity Higher Powers, such as mathematics (no matter how much you dislike the outcome, 2+2 does not equal 5), the laws of physics (gravity is a cruel taskmaster. . .),  mother nature (not much you can do if good ol' mother nature decides to drop a tornado on your head at lunch time), the door knob (this seems to be the classic example I hear in meetings, so for a few months I told the door knob on a regular basis what a shit job it was doing running the universe), the ceiling ("I am powerless over whether that ceiling decides to collapse and crush me"), their sponsor (if you have made them your "boss" then you have placed them as a "Higher Power" over you - although this one is a sticky one long term), the people in the OA rooms (this was the route I went with once I stopped thinking that the requirement for a higher power was stupid),  a celebrity (I've heard people go with Chuck Norris' beard, Burt Reynolds, Burt Reynolds' moustache, and other such silliness - but guess what: it worked for them), time (you can't stop it and you can't control it), and the universe (we can all agree that the universe exists).

I have heard two things in meetings that have stuck with me.  One person who struggled with active atheism was told by his sponsor, "Can you believe that I believe in a Higher Power?"  That was a starting point. 

The other thing I heard was:  "All I need to know about God is that I'm not Him."

In my experience with program there are two stages of the Higher Power proposition.  The first is accepting that you are not calling the shots for the universe.  There is some force outside of your control deciding that Joe down the street is going to have a heart attack next week, or that there is going to be an earthquake next month, or that you're going to suddenly have the worst food poisoning of your life the day you have a big interview.

The second part of the proposition is learning to trust that somehow things are going to work out for the best.  All you need to do is do the footwork (i.e. if you want a promotion then work hard and show up on time, if you want a college degree then enroll and go to your classes, if you don't want food poisoning then don't eat the leftovers growing mold in your fridge, etc.) and let The Great Whatever do the rest. 

This second proposition is much harder to reach.  It involves not only the understanding that you aren't in control of the world, but surrendering to whatever is. And us addicts hate surrendering anything.  It is the difference between deciding to sky dive and actually jumping out of the plane.  In my experience you can't force this part - it just comes with time.

But for today, you don't need to be at that second part of the proposition.  All you need to do today is reach the point where you know that "I'm not Him/Her."  And that isn't a hard point to reach.  On an intellectual level, most of us know that we didn't create the universe.  (Those that don't know this have much bigger troubles than compulsive overeating.)

But the most important thing about finding a Higher Power is understanding that it really doesn't matter if that Higher Power actually exists.  What matters is that you act as if you believe one does.  My sponsor once shared in a meeting that she didn't know if there really was a Higher Power out there.  But even if there was nothing - well, nothing was sure doing a better job running her life than she did.

A Metaphor

Today I wanted to make a long outreach call, but having a very high energy toddler on my hands I knew that was unlikely to happen.  So in a moment of mad inspiration, I did what any mother would do.  I taught him how to drive.

In reality, he was sitting on my lap while I allowed the car to roll forward at a staggering 4 miles per hour.  He steered and I gently reached in to correct the wheel when he looked likely to hit a curb as we rolled our way around our cul-de-sac.  A few neighbors paused to call some greetings to us, and the bright smile on my son's face was infectious.

Every once in a while he didn't want to let me correct his steering and swatted my hands away.  When that happened, I applied the breaks and told him he wasn't going anywhere until he let me help.  He pouted but eventually realized that he needed my cooperation if he wanted to keep driving. 

I realized with surprise just how much this is like my own interactions with my Higher Power.  When I allow Him to gently guide me, He lets me steer and keeps things moving forward.  But when I refuse help, He puts on the brakes and lets me sit in frustrated misery until I'm willing to surrender.

Relationship With God

This is an excerpt from a blog written by an incredible young woman named Sheila.

"Having a relationship with an infinite, all-knowing, all-powerful being who doesn't talk back is really, really hard.

This post is to summarize those things I do know about God. Some of them are things I know by instinct; others I have to remind myself over and over again, because there's a part of me that can't quite wrap my head around them. I find myself just defaulting to Jerk-God because the real God is just too puzzling to understand.

What do I know about God?

First, I know his definition. He is the creator of all things. That is what most people mean when they say "God." I tend to explain by saying that all things we know of in this world have a temporal beginning and a cause. But we know, because the universe is here at all, that something had to come behind all these causes -- something different, something that didn't have a temporal beginning or a cause. . . .

And when I look at the created world, really look at it, I feel like the person who made all these things is someone I would very much like. I mean, think about it. He could have created us like the plants, just needing some sunshine but never having to eat. But he made us able to bite into a juicy steak or crunchy apple. We could have reproduced by budding, but he gave us sex, pregnancy, birth -- things so weird and wonderful I sometimes imagine the trouble I would have explaining them to aliens. He didn't paint everything with a broad brush; every detail of creation is worked out perfectly, so that no microscope can see the infinitesimally small but absolutely organized structure of everything.

This comforts me more than anything. I know that Jerk-God could never create this wonder. Jerk-God would have had the world be so much less fun. Real God gave us a place we could really delight in, because he wanted us to be happy.

Someone who would go to the trouble of all that creating wasn't going to be happy just setting us on our way and letting us go. He wanted to have an actual relationship with us. Now I think we all know that it's impossible to have a real relationship that's forced in any way. God made us able to say no to him. . . .

This God is someone who is awfully eager to get to know us. . . .

I was struggling internally a few weeks ago with all this when [her son] started singing to himself. He sang a song from Mr. Rogers: "It's you I like, the way you are right now, way down deep inside you." I couldn't help but think, "If Mr. Rogers can love me just the way I am, what kind of person is God if he can't manage the same?"

It's hard to believe in this. It is so, so hard to believe that at the same moment a person could know everything about you, and I mean everything ... and at the same time love you. It's hard to believe that there could be a person who couldn't deceive or be deceived, who is pure unchanging truth ... and at the same time love you.

We tend to pick one or the other, love OR truth. Either God lies and says everything I do is a-okay and I never do anything wrong, in which case he can love me, or he sees the reality of what I am and the people I've hurt and the lies I've told, in which case he can't possibly love me. I think this is one of the mysteries of God that we'll never fully understand, how he can see us and our faults and still smile at us, the way I smile at my boys, and say, "I love you just the way you are, not later when you've earned it, but right now."

All of my spiritual life . . . has been a process of trying to be worthy, to be good enough. I feel that God has made a terrible mistake by loving me, and the only way to make it right is to try to be good enough so it won't be such a mistake. . . .

. . .  I want to be a better person because everyone wants to be a better person, this is a good thing to do. But God isn't my personal trainer. Sometimes he might want to talk about other stuff besides how awful I am.

In fact, I think that, if he's anything like all the other people who love me, he doesn't like hearing about how awful I am. Think how you feel, if a person you love starts bashing themselves. You want to run in and yell, "Don't talk that way about the person I love!" Why wouldn't God be the same?

To understand God, I have to redefine my terms.

God loves me.
Old definition: God tolerates me and gives me things for no apparent reason, considering how much I suck.
New definition: God actually likes me, enjoys being with me, and sees all the good in me.

God wants me to be happy.
Old definition: I'd better do what God wants, even if it makes me miserable, because if I don't things are going to be even worse.
New definition: God wants me to be happy, and if I'm not, it isn't his doing. He hates seeing me suffer, and though he can't always rush in to fix everything, he really does care about my struggles.
. . .

If God is like this, I really do want to know him. Not because I feel guilty that he loves me so much and I've loved him so little in return. God can handle that. He wouldn't have created mankind if he couldn't take a little rejection, and anyway I actually do love God at least to some extent, so it's not like he's actually getting rejected by me. The reason I want to get to know God is because he seems like the sort of person I would like to know."

Third Step Prayer

The Third Step Prayer can be found on page 63 of the Big Book, second paragraph:

God, I offer myself to Thee -
to build with me and 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!

One Thread At A Time

"Weaving the Fabric of Our Lives" - Beyond Our Wildest Dreams, p. 175

"The image of my Higher power lovingly guiding the weaving of my recovery tapestry - spiritual, emotional, and physical - adds to my peace and serenity.  As long as I use the tools . . . my recovery tapestry will not unravel, and I will continue to move forward in my recovery." - Voices of Recovery, p. 8

I remember one of my first outreach calls I made on my current sponsor's instructions.  I kept asking N. about whether I would ever eat bread again, among other things.  She said "I don't know, but not today."  Any time I asked a panicked question about the future, that was her response.  Eventually I took up the same philosophy.  It tracks well with what you hear in meetings and from the readings - recovery happens one day at a time.  All it takes is one day of compulsive overeating and the person who had twenty years of abstinence now has zero days.  It is so easy to slip.

But I love the image of the tapestry.  I read this passage and had the mental image that every day I am abstinent I am adding one more thread to my tapestry.  So I will build my life, my recovery one day and one thread at a time.