Being a Newcomer again

 I am struggling with my faith that God will do what I cannot do for myself.  I see and hear stories of recovery where faith and surrender to a Higher Power leads to healthier, happier lives.  And I feel stuck and unhappy.  I believe God will help you recover but I am not convinced God will help me recover.  That's f*cked up.  The years of therapy I have had suggest this is black or white thinking, future telling, any number of other cognitive dissonances based on a self concept of being unworthy, undeserving, somehow damaged more than anybody else.  And I know that is not true.  However, I still feel it.

This morning in my daily reader, For Today, I looked up all the entries in the index for 'newcomers'.  Date order be damned!  And this is what I found:

No one [in OA] made me feel that my illness rendered me less worthy of respect than other people.  Taking a cue from these loving, caring friends, I stopped being ashamed of myself.  The defences I had set up fell away, and I became open to change.

OA is a refuge from the harsh judgments society passes on compulsive overeaters.  [I need] unconditional acceptance and respect, not judgments. - May 9

This is true - the only person making me feel my compulsive eating, my size, my struggle with depression et cetera renders me less worthy of respect and help is me.  Shame is a big part of this struggle.  Feeling like I am not good enough for God's help.  Feeling like I am too long in OA to be a newcomer again, or a newcomer still.  Defensive that after six years, I still struggle with frequent relapses in my abstinence and my faith is shaky - not for you but for me.  My Higher Power offers unconditional acceptance and respect for my humanity and I don't accept that gift a lot of the time.  Pride.  Self.  This has to go!

As newcomers we look at recovering compulsive overeaters who tell us of the happiness, freedom and joy in their lives and we can hardly comprehend that they were not always this way.  Those miraculous recoveries seem unattainable to us.  ...  members with years of program and lives that are happy, joyous and free are compulsive overeaters who, like the rest of us, began at the bottom.  Where I am today is a fine place to start.  - May 16

Where else to start but here?  And "here" arrives each moment.  There is no arrival and I'm done.  That is a lie I tell myself, along with the belief I should be more recovered than I am after six years in OA.  Members with more years and more recovery still struggle - I hear that in the rooms.  The standard is not perfection spiritually.  I can't achieve that and neither can they.  They don't claim it in their stories.  But they are happier, more joyous and more free than I am.  And I want that.  I need to suspend my beliefs that I can't have that too for whatever bullshit reasons my disease puts in my head.

There is no reason to be discouraged if newcomers [if I] express doubt that the recovery [I] see will happen for [me].  [My] experience of the disease is propelling [me] toward experiencing recovery.  -June 2

Ughhh...  my disease is propelling me toward recovery -- true!!  Or I wouldn't keep coming back.  My disease is also propelling me into the abyss with lies that I can't, I don't deserve this, God will do this for other people but not for me.  This tension is something I have to give over, give up.  It is a tug-of-war I can't win and the doubt it creates only prolongs my misery in my disease.  

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. ... I may fool myself and others by my talk, but my illness cannot be fooled.  - June 12

I feel like a fool, an incompetent.  Six years in OA and 270 something pounds.  I wear my disease.  I wear the lie of my recovery.  That is living in the past, however, and unhelpful.  Today, I can do differently in what I think (maybe?) but definitely in what I do.  The slogan of 'acting myself into right thinking' applies here.  I need to shut off the thinking and focus on doing what I know helps.

Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliances are relieved or not at all [Shakespeare].  ... I want what I see in OA.  I pray for the willingness to follow each step of the program and to believe that the food and the weight will be taken care of in the process.  - August 17

Yep.  I think the experiment of not tracking and not weighing myself for October is incomplete.  I am more aware of what I am doing (I think) and I need to continue to build on the changes in my plan of eating and my action plan I have started to identify.  I feel like I should continue on this path in November and also continue on my week-long (so far) practice of a meeting a day.  I need to hear the message from others and stop listening to the disease in my head.