~ GRATITUDE ~
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It is good to say thank you to the Lord, to sing praises to the God who is above all gods ... He is my shelter. There is nothing but goodness in Him!
The Bible, Book of Psalms
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Since I first walked into these rooms, I was welcomed with open arms. Everyone said, "Welcome home." In my gut I felt welcomed into the fellowship, but only now, after years of accepting it, do I finally get it.
Who is this God everyone is saying cares about us? I felt God was too busy creating and managing the universe to concentrate on any one individual, let alone each and every one of us. Now, I don't know how anyone else acted while in the clutches of their disease, but I do know how I reacted. I was not a very nice person to be around. If you said the sky was blue, I would say it was black. Nothing was right in my world and I refused to trust anyone or anything; I was rebellious. That is how I treated God! I dared God to fix me, to take away my desire for food, to come into my life so I would know it.
Well, people told me God meets you where you are. I learned the hard way that God does reveal Himself to you in whatever way works for you. For me that has been by learning to listen to people share in meetings and verbally state what God has been trying to get through my thick skull. When I read program literature, I
hear little voices of recovering people speak of how God is doing for them what they couldn't do for themselves. I watch people in recovery living a new kind of life, in which they are participants. I learn from them how to live rather then bouncing off the walls because I only reacted to life. I am beginning to see all the little things that I have been given from God through my interactions with fellow compulsive overeaters. My
soul feels welcomed in this fellowship. I feel I have a new family in which to heal my wounds from my family of origin. I am filled with immense gratitude to a God that cares enough about each and everyone of us.
ONE DAY AT A TIME . . .
I will stop and take inventory of all the blessings I receive, each and every day, from a loving, supportive fellowship and a God of my understanding who loves me enough to put up with all my baggage.