Grace
I almost hesitate to talk about grace at all – since I think that it is one of those words that people often groan about when they hear it mentioned. I know that at one time I certainly would have. But how else can I explain the willingness to help myself, especially when just the opposite had always been the norm for me?
I remember a Ziggy comic from years ago that I totally identified with. He was standing in front of a mirror, looking at himself. The caption read, “Well, what’s it going to be today? Are you with me or against me?” That’s me – willing to hurt myself, to chose actions that I am 100% certain are going to cause me pain and remorse, yet doing them anyway. I call it “playing for the opposing team”. In all of the times I indulged one of any of my many addictions (food being the first, worst and foremost), I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t know what the price was going to be. I just chose to pay it.
I think that is part of the bafflement for the otherwise competent, intelligent person, or even someone remotely “onto themselves”. I know for me, I can’t even claim ignorance. It isn’t as if I don’t know that the price in shame, remorse, self-defeat and often disgust will be agonizing. I don’t delude myself. I just decide that, in that moment at least, I don’t care; the gratification I can have right this minute is worth it. I decide I don’t care when, if you take one look at my history and all my attempts to bring my eating under control, clearly that isn’t true. I clearly do care. This total betrayal of self makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. So insidiously powerful however, is my desire for that indulgence in that moment, whatever it is, consequences be damned, that it is one of the specific isues that I teach a lot of strategies to deal with.
So, what does grace have to do with this, and what the heck is grace anyway? For me, grace is a free, unearned gift from a source that is greater than me that takes, in this instance, the form of the ability and willingness to help myself even in some of my most despairing moments. It is something that I don’t feel comes from me or that I even control that pushes me along the continuum toward my own recovery. It is the impetus to do something to help myself, even if it is only the tiniest little baby step. It is the wings beneath my feet. How could I leave that out?
I don’t think I even recognized that this was grace till years down the road when I could look at my history and the paths I now realize I have been led down, the connections found that I didn’t even seek, the opportunities that just showed up. It can be seen in the times when, in my darkest moments, at the end of some of my most self-indulgent, abandoned eating days, I still made tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch in advance so I at least had a shot at getting back on track. In hindsight I realize that, although I would like to take credit for it all, clearly “something else” has been participating here. I believe that the progress I have made is truly beyond my ability to have made unassisted.
Why me? I don’t know why I have received this grace, except that I think it is likely offered to us all. I certainly don’t believe that I am special, or specially deserving. But more importantly, name it what you will, the power I choose to believe in wouldn’t withhold it from anyone – ever.
I do think that there are several things that I have been taught to do to make myself available to it, to make myself ready to receive it, and I will share them with you. Perhaps you will find them as doable and useful as I have. Notthing ventured, nothing gained, right?
Grace can take some surprising forms. I have come to the conclusion that grace can take many forms; some of them really surprising. I had always thought of grace as some kind of fairy dust, gently wafting down on me and striking me with a desire to just do that right thing with serenity, acceptance and ease. In actuality, often the form that grace has taken in my life has been dramatic and painful.
Case in point: I was on my knees one day in my living room, for the umpteenth time, crying and pleading with God to help me to get out of an relentlessly painful and emotionally damaging relationship that I had been unable to extricate myself from for literally years. I had been torturing myself over this particular person, and knew that the only solution was to let him go. Not new news. I had known this for years, and was still in it.
So there I was, screaming at God, “Why don’t you help me?!” (and less kind variations on that theme) when a thought just sort of floated past me, like one of those airplanes at the shore with the banner being pulled behind it. Here’s what the banner said, what I heard, “Well, how badly does it have to hurt?”. It occurred to me in that instance that perhaps God was the pain; the pain that would eventually lead me out if I would let it. God/Source couldn’t/wouldn’t knock the guy off for me or move him out of the country, although those were the alternatives I would have preferred. I had to do the leaving. I had to be able to walk away. And, without that much pain, apparently I would never go. The pain was/could be the catalyst if I would let it. So, in that instance, I think the pain itself was a sort of grace. As Wayne Dyer would say, “New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”.
Maybe that is true for you with your eating issues. Thank goodness you’re not OK with it. Thank goodness it causes you pain and remorse. I have never seen anyone change anything that was really hard to change unless there was some great catalyst push it along. And, even though, down the road you will be able to create a new persona that you “go to”, I think that most people make difficult changes like this initially because they are “going from”. The agony you have suffered over this just may be the touchstone for change. It may be the grace that helps you step up and do your part, the part you can do, in finding a new life.
Begin your final weight loss journey now…
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