Keep it simple

In my imperfect view of my progress in this program, I am teetering between steps three and four.  (Part of the reason I know that is that I'm praying for the willingness to start on my personal inventory [step four], but I'm procrastinating by doing this - ha). 

I've been answering the questions written in a step workbook for OA, a series of questions eliciting your level of progress through each step.  Step three is the culmination of the first part of the steps, essentially realizing you can't do it alone and asking for help.  Once you ask for this help, you let your higher power direct your actions.  Your give up trying to control your life completely on your own. 

I was having trouble with some of the questions.  I felt silly imagining asking God to help me decide trivial details about my eating habits.  In my mind, in my version of compulsive eating, obsessing over every morsel that goes into my mouth is just as diseased as when I was obsessing over food and solving it with binging.  Weirdly enough, even as my thoughts and fears spiraled into certainty that I couldn't do this and would fail just like every time before….. (etc)… my fingers began typing a response. I had a written discussion with myself, guided by my higher power.

Those responses showed me that this program is more than just another way of exerting (fictional) control over my life, more than just another diet. It showed me that I don't have to obsess and live in the details; I can see the BIG PICTURE (Lena, I put that in for you) and KEEP IT SIMPLE.  I don't need a million rules or counting to make my life simpler, more peaceful, and once day at a time, SANE.  Here's an excerpt:

1. Am I ready to give up self-will regarding food? Explain.
1. I don't know.  I have a hard time discerning what's self-will.  I have a hard time knowing what voice is coming from what place.  Is this feeling coming from my intuition, my higher power who is telling me that this is a healthy and right choice for me, or is it coming from a place of tainted logic and fear and telling me I can't possibly do without (blank)?

2. How do I feel about completely turning my life over to a Higher Power for guidance?
1. Weirdly enough, I'm ok with that, at least on the big stuff.  Going to grad school made that clear to me - I know in the big decisions that God's will will be done, and I know that I will do my best to follow it when it's made clear to me.  Even when I have disliked the results our doubted that it was the right path, I am shown that this - this, right here, right now - is the path that was right for me all along.  After all, if I hadn't been dragged (practically kicking and screaming) to that particular grad school, I wouldn't have found the loving community and family I found in the local Student Center. I wouldn't have fallen in love with the silly, giggling, loving, accepting choir.  I wouldn't have gone on a retreat and figured out how to love myself. 
1. But food?  How can I discern God's will in my food choices?  In my eating plan?  God, should I eat this piece of cheese? Should I get the salad or the chicken? Isn't obsessing and ordering my life around food how I got here in the first place?!
1. Woah, slow down. I AM MAKING THIS TOO COMPLICATED
2. Don't I try, at least, to live in a feeling of love and kindness to all, even to myself (at times)?  Even on days when I don't feel like treating myself like the beautiful creature of God that I have been told I am, can't I at least try to treat myself with the same kindness I would want to show others?
3. Maybe this has to be my answer. I don't need a specific answer for every single tiny decision I make through the day.  That would be silly and exhausting. I'm afraid that will lead me down the road to obsessing over details that don't matter - just another form of compulsive eating.
4. Can I simply learn to live in love?  Can I expand that to loving, being kind to, and making caring decisions about every aspect of my life, including a food plan?
1. With God's help…. I can try. I'll re-read my letters and spend a few more moments listening, rather than talking, when I seek guidance and peace.
2. I can learn to ask God for guidance on an eating plan that nourishes my body without punishing it.  I can ask for the willingness to follow that plan, to live with it one day at a time. 

I received an email from a friend today.  It included a quote from Thomas Merton:  "All the good you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it."