Out of the Darkness, Into the Light. Trust. Have Hope!
Gradually, imperceptivity, step-by-step, sluggishly transformative...things change!
Life's metaphors may speak about our journey towards increasing health and friskiness, from imbalance to greater personal balance and health. Many examples in life abound:
- In gardening: weeding, preparing the soil, adding compost, planting seeds, watering, and waiting for the harvest of delightfully colorful, nutritiously splendid, sumptuously growing, and tasty produce.
- In waiting for fruit to ripen: oh the beautiful blossoms, then small green leaves and tiny fruit, the seasons of warmth, cold, and rain...all connected, to bring about a crunchy and delicious apple or other fruit (I LOVE plums, peaches, pineapple, grapes, oranges, and more!).
- In going from winter's early darkness: from just 1.2 minutes a day increasing the light and warmth that is available, until we arrive at the splendor of summer's long and warm days!
- In arriving at a destination: when you drive your vehicle from place to place, you have an awareness of your starting place as well as an awareness of where you are going. You accept that you cannot get there instantaneously; you accept that you will travel the distance, and in time, you will arrive at your destination. You do not get so discouraged at the midway mark that you just turn around and go back to your starting place. You accept the distance between your starting place and where you desire to be--and you continue to move in the direction of your destination. You understand what is required, and you do it. We want to understand that the journey between where you are now and where you want to be--on all subjects--can be just as easily understood. You keep taking the required steps and don't stop until you arrive at your destination. Just as it is possible to contemplate a trip from Portland, Oregon to Seattle Washington, contemplate a trip from financial insecurity to financial security, from confusion to clarity.
- To really understand this evolutionary process I encourage you to get up one morning before dawn (in summer maybe around 5 am, and in winter around 6:30 am) and sit in a chair with the lights out where you can look out the window. At first the sky will be completely dark (except for stars or the moon), and very gradually you will notice the outlines of trees, buildings. The images of household objects will come into focus, until you can see everything clearly.
- So consider the journey from wanting to ride a bicycle to riding one...or of desiring to drive a car to driving one...or from inner distress to peace...or from illness to well-being...and lastly see how this gradual learning process applies to your journey of arriving at and maintaining a healthier weight. Come into your true self...a gradual awakening...just like the arrival of the dawn.
Step-by-step: Visions of health into realities, you make the difference!
Moment-by-moment, choice-by-choice, you plant seeds of well-being and nurture them and...
You reap the harvest of health and friskiness!
Don’t Give up!
Taken from my diary in 1992 during a emotionally discouraging time:
Oh, Bobbie sweetheart, remember where you were…
v How you hurt.
v How you felt that no one cared.
v How you didn’t see a way out.
v Remember how friends and OA program people pointed the way out in love?
v Remember how friends believed in you, even when you didn’t?
v Remember how God guided your life? How you made plans for death and God gently led you on towards abundant life?
v Remember when you kept practicing behaviors that led to pain, misery, and death, when you tried SO hard not to do so?
v Remember how frustrated and overwhelmed you felt?
v Remember you wished that death could come to take you out of it all? Remember that you wanted the pattern to die, not you?
v Oh, see the light in yourself and others!
v How long did it take you to learn to focus on the “good” and not the “bad” in yourself and life?
v How long did it take you to be willing to give up celebrating death? Many years!
v Be gentle with you and don’t give up!
v Trust in you!
v Love yourself…as you are and as you are becoming!
Contemplate how do you keep and nurture hope during difficult times?
May the seeds of self-honoring and respect, self-empowerment and awareness, sprout, grow, and...
blossom into a wondrous, abundant new life for you!
Investigate the Epilogue-The Tree Story
Along your journey of change, be gentle with yourself!
Be respectful towards yourself:
"Don’t shout at the apple and demand that it ripen!
It won’t ripen any faster and all you’ll get is a sore throat!!!"
—Advice given to me by my counselor
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over...
it became a butterfly! --Proverb