July 26, 2006

On a recent trip with my lovely sister, I saw that her suitcase weighed about 60 pounds as it was weighed at the airline check in. The check in person tagged her bag “HEAVY.”

On our trip to England, we did lots of walking while we were enjoying the sights. My feet and legs sometimes hurt from the pounding on the sidewalks and climbing and descending stairs. One day I realized that my excess weight was about the same as my sister’s heavy suitcase. I became aware of the damage I was doing to my legs. I also realized that I was shortening the time that I will remain mobile as I get older.

Years ago, I began asking my Higher Power to teach me to have healthy thinking about food. I have come a long way in terms of cholesterol and blood pressure. In other words, I eat healthier but way too much. All my overeating problems are powered by shame. I have begun talking about my fat problem to various people, including my daughters. That is also the reason I have begun this journal. Talking openly about my weight is helping a great deal.

My daughter Gina tells me that saying anything about my weight was a scarily forbidden topic for her and her sisters during the years she was growing up.

July 27, 2006

Today is my 68th birthday. I have received many nice greetings. My daughter Gina and I had a good talk. I told her that sometimes I am terrified of being hungry. She does not want me to ever feel deprived of food. She is trying to help me to have my relationship to food be both healthy and happy. She said, “Dad, can you imagine me wanting anyone to go hungry?” I had to laugh. The food she serves in her home is delicious, healthy, abundant and joyful. That is where I want to be on my next birthday.

I was routinely hungry as a boy. The family frequently ran out of food. My Dad got paid on Friday night. We always had big juicy hamburgers on pay day. We generally ran out of food on Wednesday and lived on white bread and mayonaise until hamburger night rolled around again.

On the week we paid the rent, we ran out of food on Monday. Those days are long gone, but the fear hangs on. My time has come to get past those fears. I am convinced that by the time I reach my 69th birthday, I will be free to eat happily not shamefully and that I will be able to more fully enjoy the body God has given me.

July 28, 2006

This has not been a successful eating day. Breakfast was fine. I was late having lunch and had a bean and cheese burrito with a diet Pepsi. There was a kind of angry rebellion in my choice of food. In my unhealthy mind set, a bean and cheese burrito is my favorite food.

Do I actually prefer the taste of the burrito more than a really good salad? No I don’t. There are lots of foods that taste better than the burrito. I do like the taste of beans and cheese but there is more to it than that. It is a “No one is going to tell me what to eat” kind of thing.

Maybe it is that the burrito does a better job of calming down my fear of going hungry. Maybe it is a way of feeling in control. I need to be in control because I don’t trust the universe to feed me. In a way I am not disappointed that I ate the burrito. If I can keep the shame out of my heart, the times I succeed in eating healthy and the times I eat unhealthily both can teach me about life giving food habits, .

If I feel shame, it inhibits my ability to learn from my mistakes and increases my likelihood to repeat my mistakes. Sometimes I eat to escape the shame of my overeating. I have all the time I need to learn whatever it is I need to learn.

July 30, 2006

I frequently eat when I am not hungry. Eating for non-hunger reasons has happened lots of times these last few days.

Here are a few of the reasons I eat.

1. I eat as a remedy for fatique. I have worked way too hard all my life. Eating is an ineffective way to replace my badly depleted energy levels.
2. There was a point when I simply gave up on my Mom giving me the comfort and nurture I so desperately needed. I turned to a non-human source of comfort namely food.
3. I eat to kill time. When I get bored, I try to eat my way through my day.
4. I eat to cover the shame I feel about the amount I eat and how much I weigh.
5. I eat because I do not trust the Universe to give me the food I need. I eat to stave off ever feeling hunger. Who knows when I will ever get to eat again.
6. I eat to calm myself down.

Once, when I was a chaplain at Union Rescue Mission, a tall, thin man came into my office. He was nice looking, about thirty five years old, with a big mustache. I liked him the second I saw him.

He began to tell me his story. I let him talk for a few minutes. As he talked, a powerful feeling of caring for him came over me.

I said, “Bob, before you go on, I need to tell you something. I love you.”  I felt surprised that I had said such a personal thing so quickly. He looked a little startled for a second. Then he continued telling me his story. A little later that day, he decided to join one of the mission’s residence recovery programs.

Some time later, he told me that when I said that I loved him it scared him. For months, he felt like I was chasing him around the mission trying to hug him. He peeked out of the doorway to his room, every time he left his room. He felt that I seemed to know when he was going to be in the hallway and showed up at just that moment to throw my arms around him.

Gradually he learned to trust me. That allowed him to enjoy my love and to return it. He did very well for about six months, but then he went out drinking again and disappeared.

He came back after an absence of about six weeks, badly needing detox. I put him in detox where he stayed for several days.

When he came out of detox, he was a man with a purpose. Bob asked me to make him dryout room coordinator. He had not been warmly treated while he was sobering up.  The room was dismal The food service was late and served him cold food. More importantly, I had failed to stop in to see him. That had hurt his feelings.

He was determined to reorganize the room, to find a way to make the atmosphere more cheerful and to take better care of the men drying out. He especially wanted to spend lots of time with the men.

When I gave him the Dryout Room responsibility he said, “George, I promise. No one in detox is ever going to feel abandoned and forgotten again, as long as I am the coordinator.”

The next months proved Bob a man of his word. He was in the room all day every day. He also stopped by to visit in the evenings. He repainted the room and hung new curtains. He personally delivered the meals to detox, and made sure the detox men got the best food the mission had to offer.

He became a very respected minister of hope and cheer. Eventually, he came up with a way to rearrange the laundry room so a wall could be added allowing a large, airy, attractive detox space.

After a year, Bob felt it was time for him to go home to his family back east . This time he left the program in good standing and for a good reason. We didn’t see him or hear from him for a while. That is not unusual, as many men who beat the street, want to forget about their whole skidrow experience when they leave.

About eighteen months later, he showed up at the mission again. This time he looked prosperous and was at peace. He had gone home and had gotten a job in a convalescence hospital, and moved in with his family.

Unfortunately, there was too much damage already done to his marriage for his relationship with his wife to prosper. After a year, they separated. He had taken it as well as possible and had not begun to drink. Instead he traveled across the country and came to see me. I arranged for him to stay at the mission for a few weeks.

I found out that his birthday was coming up in a few days. I invited him to come home with me for dinner. When he came, my four little girls had made him gifts and we had cooked him dinner. The fellowship and food were great and he loved his gifts.

After dinner the girls went off to play. Bob helped us clean up. Then we sat down to enjoy coffee. The atmosphere was warm and very mellow.

When we got settled, Bob said, “Do you remember the day when I first walked into your office,” I did remember and told him so. I expected him to want to recount that story.   The story was a favorite of mine and I was looking forward to hearing it again.

Then he said, “George, when you said,’ Bob I love you’, No one in my whole life  had ever said those words to me before; not my mother, not my father, not my wife, not my children. That was the first time anyone ever told me they loved me .”

When he said that it took my breath away. I was so glad that God had somehow gotten through to me and prompted me to speak. I loved him at that moment more than ever.

Years ago I asked one of my daughters, who was about twelve at the time, “What do you think about guilt?”

She replied, “Guilt sucks.”

I think that statement is a needed and profound piece of theology. Feeling guilty is unnecessary. We all swim in a giant sea of God’s forgiveness. Total forgiveness is ours for the taking.

Feeling guilty is paralyzing. Nothing in my life has limited me more than feeling badly about myself because of real or imagined guilt.

Not only do I want to be free of guilt, I also want you to be free of guilt. I do not want anyone, especially my family, to feel guilty about anything having to do with me. As far as I know, I have forgiven everyone of everything.

If you the reader need my forgiveness, you have it. If it helps you to talk about some issue with me, fine. If it doesn’t help you to talk with me, then please accept my forgiveness and have a wonderful day.

I work daily to keep myself from dragging up the past. I want Christ to be welcome in every corner of my heart. I want you to enjoy total forgiveness in your relationship with your higher power however you understand your higher power.

I had the chance to express all this to my daughters a few years ago. We were in the midst of a family tragedy. My beloved nephew Steve had been struck with an aneurysm in his brain stem. We were all in shock and grief. It was pretty clear that he wasn’t going to live.

I took my girls aside to talk to them. They did not like for me to talk about my death.

I said, “When I die, I don’t want you to feel guilty about me at all. You are wonderful daughters. If I see you feeling guilty after I die, I promise, I will appear in your room at three o’clock in the morning, wake you up and go Oooooo, oooooo, oooooo.”

They laughed a little when I said it, but I think they got the message.

I have had a series of visions given to me at important times in my life. One of the visions concerned Heaven.

In this vision, I was just outside a structure about the size and dimensions of a high school gymnasium. The building was my heavenly home. It was being prepared for my arrival at some unknowable time in the future.

As I walked into the building, I saw workmen doing various jobs around the interior. When they saw me, they looked at each other with an expression on their faces that said, “What is he doing here already. We are not done yet.”

I just kept walking. In fact, I never stopped walking during the course of the whole vision, until I went to sleep as the vision ended.

The ceiling was high. There were large windows that were a few feet apart around the entire room. The windows were about five feet wide and fifteen feet high. There was no glass or screens in any of the windows. That would have been unnecessary. There were no bugs, bad people, or bad weather to keep out.

As I looked out the windows, I saw a beautiful view. My heavenly home was built on a grassy hill out in the country. A half mile or so down the hill, you could see a small valley full of trees. I knew instantly, that a beautiful stream ran through the valley.

There were things displayed between each of the windows that puzzled me. I couldn’t see the displays clearly enough to really see what was on view, but I could see that no two displays were the same. Some were free standing. Some were  on  tables. There was something displayed between all the windows.As I walked past, The displayed items seemed like enormously ancient antiques. 

Suddenly, it hit me. Between each window was a display of items taken from my earthly life by God. Each item represented something I did in my earthly life for which God wanted to thank me.

I knew that from time to time the items would be  changed to some other token from this world that God wanted to use to express his eternal gratitude. I was to live in this house, always surrounded by fresh reminders of God’s appreciation of me, my life, and my work.

Toward the middle of the room, there was a grouping of several pieces of overstuffed furniture . Altogether, fifteen or twenty people could have been seated in a very comfortable, intimate, conversational setting.

When I saw how the furniture was arranged, allowing a large number of people to be face to face in close proximity, I said, “Why didn’t I think of that? I am going to remember how to do that so I can do it later at home” When the vision was over I could not remember how it was done.

There was a  section of the room that was partitioned off. It was not in the center of the room but it was not against one of the walls either. The partitions were more like room dividers than they were like walls. They did not come close to meeting at the corners, so you could get in the space through wide openings in each of the corners.

I walked into this space and found it contained a huge bed. On the bed was bedspread that was a beautiful, deep, dark blue. Little tiny but bright lights, were all over and within the fabric of the bedspread.

I laid down on the bed. As I laid down, I sank down through the bedspread and into the bed. The bedspread  became the night sky and the lights were stars. That meant that in my heavenly home, I could enjoy the most beautiful, starry night sky imaginable, any time I wanted to.

I drifted off to sleep. Going to sleep ended the vision.