The Power of Six
I feel that in a natural progression this blog seems to cover the beginning steps. I admitted I was powerless over food and things were unmanageable. I believe in God and turned my addiction over to Him, which led to doing this blog. The weekly soul searching process in writing the posts makes me reflect on my “moral inventory.” My weekly process involves a lot of prayer, continually turning it over to God, and revealing my internal struggles in my writing. I seem to get stuck half way through the process on step 6 with having God remove all of these “defects of character.” I realized I’m only going through the motions to this point. I haven’t made the all-important turn of humbly and honestly asking to be transformed in a specific uniquely personal way by God.
The 12 step
program talks about character defects that can potentially manifest in our
lives and create the unmanageable part of any addiction or cause us to derail in the
recovery process. The program requires
you do a “fearless moral inventory” of yourself to find out what you have and
what you need to get rid of. The fearless part requires you to be rigorously
honest. I did this exercise this week
and journaled my wrongs in the past and now. This was not easy, painless or pleasant. I felt like I was reliving a lot of negative
things from the past that I thought were already behind me. A pattern quickly emerged of the same
characteristics from before and still now. The purpose isn’t
to go over all of the individual situations but to use this heart exploration to
identify the “defects of character” that caused them. The inventory is of these character defects. The problem is, as revealed in my exercise, the
same character defects are still present.
I realized this could be the reason why I often feel I’m one Thanksgiving sized meal away
from gaining it all back.
There’s an anonymous quote that reads, “Our
defects of character are the bars of a cage.
The central point is not to study the bars, but to get out of the cage.”
A guide to defining if a characteristic is considered a “defect” is to ask a
simple question. Would I want to teach
my nieces or nephews to behave like this or to believe this? Would God want me to do these things? Clearly I knew the answer to these questions
but wasn’t exactly sure what to do next.
Sitting at my desk I gaze out the window, watching
birds fly by, and wait in the stillness. Sometimes
the answers come to us when we take a moment to just sit still. I sat there
and started to write allowing whatever came into my heart flow onto the page. I wrote about all the times my life went off
track, which seemed to be in direct correlation with the yo-yo number on the
scale. The key discovery for me was realizing
the same negative self-characteristics and thoughts that got me into trouble
with food are still present. I’m
just not acting on it. This exercise was
a true eye opener. Perhaps this
discovery is the key to healing and the way to find freedom from feeling
trapped on the diet roller coaster.
Could this be the source of my fear?
Could this be why I feel like I’m going through the motions?
I bow my head in
prayer.
Dear God, Please
show me the way to remove these “defects of character” that are holding me
prisoner in my own mind. I want to truly
transform in this process. I want to
learn what I need to learn so that I can continue to help others find their
path to healing. In Exodus 15:26 you say
you are the Lord that heals and I am in need of healing. Psalm 147:3 says that you heal the
brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.
Please bind these defects and remove them from me. I trust in your word and your promises. In Jeremiah 17:14 your word says, “Heal me,
Lord, and I will be healed; save me and I will be saved, for you are the one I
praise.” May this be so, Lord…Thank you,
God. Thank you for your healing, thank
you for this journey. Thank you! This is my daily prayer.
...Then God gave me
this vision.
My Guardian Angel
is taking me on a journey. We are
floating in a hot air balloon named Recovery traveling to the land of
Serenity. Our trip together, in this big red Recovery
balloon, launched when the blog launched.
We gently float above the trees, slowly and steadily making our way to
Serenity. I can see the breathtaking beauty of the land of Serenity
just beyond the horizon. I start to lose weight on our journey and notice sand bags appear on the side of the basket. The more weight I lose the sand bags grow larger. The balloon starts to lose
elevation and is struggling to stay afloat.
I fill with fear that my journey will end before we reach our
destination. My Angel tells I must release
the sand bags to stay on our path. I
look down at the sand bags and notice they are all labeled. I read each label as I cut the ropes loose. I watch the bags fall away disappearing into
the air. The first bag reads fear,
self-pity and self-justification. The
second bag says self-condemnation, guilt, false pride, phoniness and
denial. The third bag’s label says lying,
evasiveness, dishonesty, laziness and procrastination. The last bag reads negative thinking,
perfectionism, criticizing and gossip. Freed
of the heavy and useless weight, the Recovery balloon effortlessly rises and
gracefully floats onward.
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Laura