When I was working as President of Union Rescue Mission of Los Angeles, I often went out on the streets of skid row to talk with the homeless. I found it enjoyable and relaxing.

However, occasionally a disgruntled client from among the street population served by the mission, would make a threat against me of some kind. I have been threatened with violence, hell, arson, getting me fired, lawsuits, going to the press, stealing donors, undercover FBI investigations and many other creative negative thoughts.

Generally, nothing came of them. Many people who had become angry with me, apologized with deep sincerity after they cooled down or got sober.

One day, when I was standing on the sidewalk in the front of the chapel, a middle aged homeless man came up to me wanting some service from the mission. I turned down his request. I cannot remember any more of the circumstances or details of our conversation. I do remember wondering if he were mentally ill.

He became ragingly angry and screamed the accusation I most often heard in those days, “And you call yourself a Christian.?

It was definitely a very unpleasant experience for me, but I did respond in a quiet voice. I was thinking about the Proverb that said, A soft answer turneth away wrath.?

He became more and more frustrated. In retrospect, I think he became much angrier because he could not get an emotional response from me. Finally, with his face beet red, he shouted, I am going to buy a gun and come back and shoot you.? Then he stormed off up the street.

I did not spend much time thinking about the threat. I wrote if off as meaningless.

The next morning several people were waiting in front of the mission for me to come to work. I saw them before they saw me. I felt somewhat frightened by the anxious way they were looking for me. I braced myself for a disaster.

As soon as they saw me they rushed up to tell me what had happened. One of them said,?Do you remember the guy who said he was going to buy a gun and shoot you? Well, he came back last night after you left. He couldn’t find you, so he went out into the parking lot and shot and killed a homeless guy he found there. The police arrested him a few hours later.?

I was stunned. I really did not feel the total emotional impact of the news until I got home that night. I don’t think I ever told my family or anyone else what had happened.

I also did not find a professional to help me process. In those days, I had a powerful drive to bury negative emotions and just keep going. From the time I was a toddler, I have always felt I needed to be the strong one.

I am very glad I am writing this. I am realizing at this moment, as I write these words, that I have never processed that horrible experience.

I can suddenly feel, but not quite contact, many other horribly negative experiences on skid row that remain buried deep in my gut. The next thing I am going to do, is e-mail my friend Beth. She is the closest remaining contact I have in the rescue mission world. I should also call a program friend or two. I may not make the calls tonight, but I will make them tomorrow. I have no idea why I am hesitating to call my friends. I will definitely share my memory at the powerful meeting I will be attending in the morning.

The following ideas have helped me.

• When I turn the same thing over to God over and over again, I think I am giving it to God and then taking it back. That is not necessarily true. Most of the time I find that while I have taken back almost all of the pain from God, I have indeed left a small percentage of the problem with God. If I do that often enough, a huge chunk of the problem ends up in God’s hands. Then I can surrender the rest fairly easily.
• One definition of addiction is the state in which I use the object of my addiction to solve the problems created by my addiction.
• Admitting I am wrong is the first step in the removing a character defect.
• Honesty cannot be the result of recovery because getting honest has always been the first step in my recovery.
• My disease is located between my ears and just in back of my eyes.
• The “Road Less Traveled” is less traveled because people are afraid of being faced with their inner reality.
• Much of my suffering with depression stems from my anger about not getting my way.
• I can never do my best because I can always improve. Therefore, doing my best is an unreasonable expectation.
• Things never get better when an alcoholic drinks. In the same way, things are never improved when I heap shame upon my self.
• My fellow program members are delightful garbage men. They lovingly haul away my garbage every time I am willing to put it on the curb.

The following ideas have helped me.

• In a relationship, I need to let “love cover a multitude” of my partner’s sins. It is helpful to just let most things go. However, if I cannot let it go, I need to talk to my partner about my feelings. If we can not lovingly resolve our differences, we need to seek out a competent third party to help us.
• Early in my recovery, I told my therapist she was missing a sure bet. She should put me in a room with 500 women. I would then point out the women to whom I was attracted. My therapist could approach the women who were attractive to me and give them her business card and say, “You may not know it yet, but you need me.”
• Given to me by a lovely program friend: “Don’t let my reactions justify their behavior.”
• The second fastest thing in the universe is the speed of light. The first fastest is the speed at which I can turn from serenity to anxiety.
• Sometimes it is necessary for me to detach now and worry about the “With love” part later.
• I must look like a banjo to some people, judging from the way they try to pick on me.
• A pre-program presupposition of mine: “I nag, therefore I am.”
• I am a writer because the single requirement to be a writer is to write.
• I write for living, not for a living.
• If someone consistently writes for a few minutes everyday, the time he spends writing tends to grow regularly. That is because writing has become part of our human survival genetics.

The following are ideas that have helped me.

-I need to believe in a Higher Power that is capable of anger. I want Him to be angry about the fact that I was molested as a boy.

-Anger is a part of my makeup. It is not some foreign interloper.

-Sharing with trustworthy friends and family is the appropriate action in regard to my anger. Repression is never helpful.

-Suppressing my anger just plants it in the soft, moist, rich soil of my heart. Suppressed anger, once it is thus planted, is bound to grow and multiply.

-Inward anger results in depression. Outward anger brings hostility. If my anger frightens me, it results in passive aggressive behavior.

-I can not accurately say, “You make me angry.” I can only accurately say, “You revealed my buried anger.”

-My anger is always rational. If I release 100 pounds of rage in response to a 10 pound provocation, it feels irrational. However, if I take time to ask God to help me see reality, I realize my anger is not in response to my immediate situation but to an unhealed, buried anger I was unable to talk about when I was a boy. Then I can see that my 100 pound rage was actually in response to a 100 pound provocation that happened decades ago.

–If I choose, I can use my anger as a trailhead to a trail that leads back to an old hurt that my Higher power would love to heal.

-The healing of my anger is a slow process because my Higher Power never pushes me beyond my ability to safely cope.

-It is my secrets that kill me.

The following ideas have helped me.

-A local public safety department has as it’s operating motto,”Civility and Respect”. That says it all.

-The Old Testament word for intercourse is “Know” as in Abraham knew Sarah. Knowledge then implies deep, tender intimacy. I have come to “Know” many folks in my program.

-When I am hurting, I do not need a solution. I need someone to listen carefully to me and to tell me that my pain is legitimate.

-When people thank me for my influence on their life, they seldom tell me of some service I performed for them. They nearly always say, “You were there for me.” It is presence that matters, not service. Service seems like the the means I have that opens the door for me, so I can provide presence.

-Care not cure changes me.

-I am no longer emotionally blocked by shame. However, I still have the old habit of acting blocked. Therefore, the slightest movement toward action usually gets me going.

-Freedom is doing what I should do because I so thoroughly enjoy doing it.

-Sometimes my idea of happiness is God’s will+ money=serenity. However, whatever I put in my happiness formula after the+ sign, is the thing that my disease uses to torture me.

-What is it that I think I need in addition to God to be happy?

-For me to attempt to live my life without meditation is reckless foolishness.

The following ideas have helped me.

-”Praying only for a knowledge of God’s will and the power to carry it out.” In other words, there is no “Plan B” when it comes to God’s will.

-God does not need my permission to do Her will.

-If I am fasting because I don’t want to do the thing I know God is asking me to do, it is not fasting, it is a hunger strike.

-For me, there is often a substantial period of time between getting “A knowledge of God’s will” and getting “The power to carry it out”.

-To me, there is a when of God’s will as well as a what of God’s will. I am much better off if I do God’s will in God’s time.

-Very often, God’s will is expressed to me simply as doing the next indicated thing.

-Doing my duty is one way to figure out God’s will for the next moment.

-It is never God’s will for me to be a victim.

-The presupposition of “Turning your will and your life to the care of God” is that God cares.

-The word recovery means getting something back that used to be mine. Since I never had serenity, I can not have it returned. In my case recovery means, I get back the gift of being the person I really am, the person God created in Her image.

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The following are ideas that have helped me.

-A million dollars in the bank does me no good if I do not know it is there. Every bit of everyone’s sins are already completely forgiven . However, it is hard to enjoy that grace if you do not know it has been given.

-One way for me to think about a decision I need to make, is to ask myself “What advice would I give one of my daughters if she were in a similar situation?”

-When my program gave me ears to hear, I realized that God had whispered in my ear a version of “I love you” a billion times, beginning in my Mothers womb.

-Whenever I have one, an “Aha” moment always seems familiar to me. I think that is because the new thought in my conscious mind is the duplicate of something my Higher Power has already said to my subconscious mind many times.

-When I let my anger process itself, I never like the time and manner in which it does so.

-Jesus told Thomas, ” Put your hands in my wounds, then you will know who I am.” I think it is also as I touch your wounds and you touch my wounds that we come to know who each other really is.

-The only way I can truly feel safe, is to open myself up and be vulnerable with trustworthy people.

-When you are very young, being responsible is a very different thing from being mature.

-To run from my problems is to run into the destructive embrace of total emptiness.

-If you think escape and numbing yourself is an appropriate way to live, visit the nearest rescue mission and look into the vacuous eyes of the men and woman that spend the day sitting in the chapel.

The following are ideas that have helped me.

-It is possible for us to love our children to death.

-One day at a time means dealing with things only as they actually come up.

-I want to be a detective examining my life for a chance to affirm myself.

-The twelve year son of a friend of mine wrote,”Good decisions make life easier.

-God does not have a sore throat. She can make herself heard.

-I never have to pray God in from Chicago. She was involved in all my situations way before I was.

-At its roots, all my anger is at God, because I know God could solve all my problems if she wanted.

-Somethng a friend said to me when I had been feeling down for a couple of weeks: “Here are two nouns and two adjectives; Heaven and Hell, happy and sad. You hook them up.”

-When people say to me, “If God is so loving, how come there are so many hungry people on Earth”, I reply, “Have you thanked him for your lunch?” It seems to me, that if God is going to be blamed for the hungry people in the world,  She should get credit for all the people that eat.

-The only way out is through.

April 23

I decided to start writing this journal again. I am doing this for two reasons.

First, I have lost about 20 pounds. However, I have stayed at the same weight pretty well since I stopped writing. I have not regained any weight, thank God. That is good. However, maybe this journal was more helpful to me than I realized.

Second, I heard that several people have drawn courage from the journal. They have lost a very significant amount of weight. That is their victory not mine. However, that is the way it is supposed to work. I found strength in the love and acceptance of my daughters. Others have been encouraged by what I have written. Now I am writing again because of my loved ones sharing about their victory.

I am convinced that my compulsive overeating is driven by my shame. I can not battle shame by myself. If I listen lovingly as you share your shame, I can take your shame from you and pass it on to my Higher Power. Then you return the gift of acceptance back to me. That “Loving exchange among members” is the heart and soul of my 12 Step program.

April 24

In the Bible in the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul quotes an Old Testament scripture. He is using the Old Testament passage to describe the work of Christ.

He writes, “The reproaches of them who reproached thee, have fallen on me.”

Matthew was a hated tax collector. Jesus took the shame that had been dumped on Matthew, and gave Matthew the honor that God had given to Jesus as God’s son. Mary Magdalene was described by her culture as demon possessed. As such, she deeply shamed. Jesus took the shame of Mary, and gave Mary the honor that God had given to Jesus as God’s son.

I don’t need to be forgiven for my compulsive overeating. It is a disease, not a sin. I do need to talk and write about my eating shame so I can trade my shame for the loving honor given to me by the members of my OA group and by you as you respond to what I write.

April 25

I am feeling the old food/exercise rebellion. Here are the three A’s

Admit- By writing and talking about the rebellion

Accept-I am not in a good place. I need the exercise and I need to eat healthily and I am powerless over food.

Action- Ask my Higher power for help. Find an OA meeting, refuse shame.

There is no use fighting this battle on my own. I need help. Specifically I need the help from Higher Power I find in the hearts of my loved ones.

April 26

I need people who are willing to listen to me and not judge me or minimize the the food shame pain I feel by saying something like “You just need to make up your mind and do the right thing.” The right thing is find fellowship, not jack up my will power. Putting shame preasure on my self is exactly counter productive. Shame controbutes powerfully to my compulsive eating.

The following ideas have helped me.

• I learned how to deal with unhealthy people effectively, early in my program. Then I learned that I was better off when the difficult people had been taken completely out of my life.
• When I am in a crisis, I am tempted to think the crisis is going to last forever.
• When I simply cannot hear something God is trying to tell me, God arranges that I tell the thing I will not face in answer to someone’s question. Then God turns on my hearing aid and I have to listen to myself say the very thing I have not heard. When that happens I just know there is a big grin on God’s face.
• There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and it is not a train.
• If I get on the green line train going the opposite direction from my destination, no amount of adjustment or manipulation will correct the problem. I have to get off the train I am on and board the train that is going where I want to go.
• One time, I was bitching about how judgemental my boss was. My friend said, “That makes you the judge of the judgemental.”
• When I need self care the most, it is the hardest for me to give it to myself.
• My program gives me independence. I am able to be serene no matter how unhappy my immediate circumstances are.
• The permanent solution to people pushing my buttons is to ask God to remove my buttons one by one.
• I use to be a full 88 note piano keyboard on which troubled people could play unhappy concertos. My program has dramatically reduced the number of keys available to be played.