For Today: September 25th

Patience and diligence, like faith, remove mountains.

William Penn

All the plans I made, all the resolutions I vowed to keep were poor substitutes for patience.  At times, doing nothing but waiting is harder than writing lists and following schedules and doing this and that.  Always, I need to remember: in God’s time, not mine.  I am not running the universe; the world does not bow to my wishes.

I turn my life over and do the footwork.  Little by little, defects crumble, stumbling blocks are pushed aside and my path becomes smooth—until the next bump in the road.  That is how growth happens: with patience and diligence, and faith in a Higher Power.

For Today:  I accept God’s timetable.  If I don’t know what footwork I should do, I can let it go for now, confident that an answer will come.

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The trouble with weight loss & diets is, I want results NOW.  I want to step on the bathroom scale every morning & see that I've lost weight.  After all, I deserve it...........I've deprived myself of all my favorite foods...so I should lose a TON of weight in a very SHORT time.

That is the nature of diets; the nature of compulsive overeating behavior; and the nature of doing things MY way without one ounce of patience.

The reason that OA gives thumbs down to formal 'diets' is because of this very thing. 

When I committed myself to the OA way, I surrendered my powerlessness over food & agreed to stick to a pre-written food plan.  I agreed to do the footwork and let God do the rest.

One of the toughest things I had to learn was patience:; to just sit and BE without doing something to hurry the process along.  Without micro-managing anything.....without controlling the world...........

I had to learn faith, perseverance & commitment if I wanted to reap the benefits of this wonderful program.  Yes, the weight loss is nice, but the peace of mind & serenity is even better!