For Today: February 26th

For Today: February 26^th

Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don’t set any conditions.

Artur Rubinstein

As a compulsive overeater, I know that making conditions for happiness doesn’t work. I thought I could only be happy if I was thin. So I dieted and lost weight. I went out and had a lot of fun and excitement. That was happiness, wasn’t it? It wasn’t.

Happiness is freedom from compulsive overeating---and that freedom does not come until I give up the conditions, the “Yes, buts” and the “If onlys.” How enslaving conditions are, and how fearful it is to let them go, to lose control. Life doesn’t come made to order. It comes as it comes, on its own terms, whether or not I accept it.

For Today: Setting conditions is putting myself back in the driver’s seat. I can have the courage to trust, to let go and know that the ability to do this is a great blessing.

This passage from Step One says it all:

“We sometimes recognized we had living problems, but felt that life would be manageable if only we could stop the compulsive overeating. Whenever we did stop, however, we found life without excess food unbearable. Even getting to our desired weight didn’t cure our unhappiness.”

I too thought that being thin would cure me of all my problems, that it would lead me to feel true ‘happiness’, which it never did. I’d get thin, then wake up one day & say Now What? I did not know how to live as a normal weight individual. I hadn’t developed new techniques for handling my disease; I hadn’t developed new hobbies, new friends, or, more importantly, a relationship with God. I didn’t feel that He could help me with a ‘silly thing’ like compulsive overeating!

Boy was I wrong.

When I lost weight this time, I surrendered myself, my life & my disease over to God & I haven’t looked back.

Nowadays, I consciously have to tell myself to STOP setting conditions to my happiness. “When my daughter feels healthy, THEN I will be happy.”  “When I have X amount of money saved up, THEN I will be happy.”

NO. For today I will be happy, NO MATTER WHAT! If I live my life waiting for perfect conditions to exist in order to be happy, I will be waiting forever.

I have to sometimes remind myself it’s  OK to be happy, that I am ALLOWED to feel that way, in spite of everything.

For today, I choose to be happy. For today, I choose to let go & let God. For today, I choose to be adherent to my Food Plan.

For today, I choose to LIVE