“With defects unattended, the insanity of compulsive overeating returns and that is death, spiritually and emotionally, if not physically.”
A truer statement was never written! When I let my defects go untended, it’s like a bramble garden popping up overnight, and there’s no way out of the bushes without getting scratched and stuck by the thorns.
That’s what my resentments are – those little needling, irksome annoyances, that if not looked at, identified and acknowledged, will grow into full blown thorny tensions at the sight of whoever my Disease picks to be my trigger. I may not even know or have ever interacted with the person before! But, boy, howdy, when my Spidey Sense of judgment and narrow-mindedness are testing the wind, no one is safe!And if I don’t look at my stuff in 10, 11 and 12 – identify it, even grudgingly accept that it’s a part of me at this very moment, and turn it over to a Fellow and my Higher Power, I am blocked from not only helping others, but even more importantly, I myself become the bramble bush separating me from my God and my Recovery. And when that happens, the food is going to call just like Avon. Only it’s Cheetos Calling! Or Oh, just one extra bite won’t hurt anything! No, it won’t hurt a thing except my quickly diminishing integrity and self-respect.
I used to think that shoving that negative side of myself down and hiding behind the food and the fat was the way to go. But my OA Program teaches me the converse is true. If I can accept my negatives as much as I long to be BFFs with my positives, I gain firmer footing so that those little irks don’t become life or death battles between me and the food, or me and my ego. When I turn over those resentments – and believe me, there are some that require multiple attempts – each time I get that much closer to the grace of forgiveness. And not just for the object of my resentment, but for myself.
And that’s when judgment becomes compassion for us both.
