Saturday, 2013-06-29

Abstinent Today:

I am a gratefully recovering compulsive overeater, abstinent by the grace of God one more* day at a time.  †

It’s back to work today.  Folks may dislike Mondays, but because I work shiftwork mine vary, so I might as well capitalize them as opportunities to get started trying again to live well, be well, and serve well.

God, help me love selflessly, to serve all I can and harm none!

 

 

From today’s entry in Voices of Recovery:

We all live in an imperfect world, surrounded by imperfect people. The ability to love yourself and those around you is a gift from God that enables you to live fully, bravely, and meaningfully in an imperfect world.

Isn’t it great to be acceptable while imperfect!  I swear it’s liberating!  I’ve always been miserable for not being perfect, and this is much better.  The only drawback with being acceptable while imperfect is I have to recognize all you other less than perfect beings as peers, just as acceptable as me.  When I’m done accepting my fellows and my surroundings, I have much less to fret about, and I feel lighter whether I’ve stopped overeating or not.  Add to that the physical results, and watch out!

God, thank You for accepting me the way I am, but loving me too much to leave me that way.

 

 

From Proverbs 29, NIV:

²⁰ Do you see someone who speaks in haste?
There is more hope for a fool than for them.

As I try to shed my foolish ways, I am learning that a little pause between thinking a thought and blabbing it often is just enough to recognize that the thought doesn’t warrant expression.  This verse confirms that the hopelessness of the hasty outweighs that of the foolish.  I think I’ll keep on trying to take it slower.  Often, when I wait, the would-be audience makes my point for me, and then they get it more readily since it was their idea rather than mine.

 

 

From my reading through the Bible, currently in 1 Thessalonians 3 and 4, NIV:

4:¹⁰ And in fact, you do love all of God’s family throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more, ¹¹ and to make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, ¹² so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Contentment is encouraged in Scripture, except when it comes to loving one another.  The church at Thessalonica, and we by extension, are called to excel at it more and more.  It is this last bit that has always troubled me, since I am neither a machinist, a carpenter, nor an artisan.  I do not make anything with my hands, though I have read this passage from my childhood and heard the practice encouraged from both the pulpit and my parents.  I often imagine what it might be like if the premillennialists are wrong and we all have to suffer a tribulation in which the financial, governmental and logistical systems all fail.  I have no marketable skill or product by which I could survive.  Troubling!  I’m not even sure if I would feel competent to change the oil in my wife’s newer car.  It looks like a sewing machine under that hood!  One thing I can do is learn to lead a quiet life.  There is no reason for me to trudge through trivial drama of my neighborhood.  My job is to love, display grace, and serve others when I can.  I can be independent of the drama and still dependent on God.  I am learning that being God’s dependent is a good thing.  He’s good to His dependents!

 

 

 

From the “Big Book” of Alcoholics Anonymous, “He Sold Himself Short”:

Courage to face each day has replaced the fears and uncertainties of earlier years. Acceptance of things as they are has replaced the old impatient champing at the bit to conquer the world. I have stopped tilting at windmills, and instead have tried to accomplish the little daily tasks, unimportant in themselves, but tasks that are an integral part of living fully.

 

 

Footnotes:

*Abstinence began for me on May 11th, 2010.

† For the sake of accountability, the details of my eating are posted in my online food log.