I’m feeling pretty low today.  The seemingly constant fatigue is getting to me.  I really thought I’d be recovered already.  I think how I view everything is tainted right now.  I’m frustrated, irritated and so not in the mood to deal with anything.  I’m in “hermit-mode”.  The only problem is, my schedule doesn’t lend itself to hermit behavior.  So, I must walk among the other humans and pray I don’t take my frustration and irritation out on anyone else.

Chocolate sounds good right about now… which reminds me of a commercial I saw the other day.  I don’t typically watch commercials but as the remote was set out of my reach (I was laid out on the sofa), I just let the commercials play.  This Hershey’s commercial got my attention because it refers to chocolate as “pure joy” and “pure fun”.  This commercial offers up “pure simplicity” and “pure happiness”.  Or how about “pure togetherness” and “pure enjoyment”.  I think we chocoholics believe all of this on some level, otherwise, why turn to it when we feel sad, over worked, chaotic, unhappy, lonely and bored?  Those chocolate people sing “I’ll stop the world and melt with you.”  Isn’t that want we really want?  We want the world to just stop for a moment and let us catch our breath.  Great ad campaign Hershey, this addict wants to run to the store for a fix.  Yeah, chocolate sounds really good right now.

A true friend of a recovering alcoholic wouldn’t ask to meet them at a bar.  Recovering drug addicts aren’t given a big hit of cocaine to celebrate their birthday.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  Food addicts can’t get away from food.  Unlike alcohol or drugs, we need food to live.  We must be around it.  And to add insult to injury, eating is used to celebrate all over the world.

I finished reading The Last Addiction, and the most discouraging chapter was the one about the woman with food addiction.  She’s the only story in the book that didn’t have a “happy ending”.  She gave up.

Food is everywhere.  We can’t eliminate it from our lives.  We need it to live.

Yeah, it’s different alright.

I’ve been recovering for the past 42 hours from a concussion.  It’s bizarre the thought process that your mind takes when you have so much time to sleep and think.  I felt a bit obsessed with trying to figure out exactly why I sustained a blow to the head and how on earth I was blindsided.  I replayed it over and over trying to figure out how I could have prevented the accident.  Utter futility.  Sometime yesterday I decided that it simply didn’t matter.  I have an injury that brought all of my plans to a screeching halt.  Apparently that was God’s plan.  So I was faced with what to do during my awake times (I’ve slept a lot during the last, almost, two days).

In the midst of the pain, I remembered where my focus had been the morning of the accident.  I needed some clarity, I needed a word from God on something and He provided it through a book I hadn’t read in years, but discovered in my closet that morning.  I thought the book was totally unrelated to the problem and figured spending a few moments reading it before heading out the door would prove to be a much needed distraction.  I left the house believing that God was going to give me an answer… He did… and more.

The “more” I didn’t expect came after I was literally knocked to the ground.  I kept saying, “I don’t have time for this”.  By all human standards, I was right.  I won’t go into the details of all that we had on the calendar for yesterday… all of which I missed, but I truly believed the ship would sink without me.  Ha!  God knew better, of course.  I’m not saying my family had an easy time managing the schedule, but it was taken care of.  Which left me, alone with my thoughts and a very patient Father.

To be honest, I didn’t want to think about stuff anymore.  I wanted to turn on a movie or TV show and be distracted.  I wanted distraction from the pain, distraction from the strain my injury put on my family, distraction from what I was missing out on, distraction from the heaviness of my heart, distraction from normal life, distraction from responsibilities… you get the picture.  The last thing I was in the mood for was to come face to face with reality.  And so I turned on the television.  My teenage Son stayed with me while the Husband ran to and fro with another kid.  He tried to work on his lessons with Napoleon Dynamite playing in the room (seriously, I did not want to “think” about anything so I picked the most mundane, ridiculous and yet somewhat humorous movie we own.)  When I realized he couldn’t focus, I paused the movie.  The book from the day before came to mind and I remembered that I had placed it in my backpack that morning in the hopes of reading it during our lunch break.  I asked him to retrieve it for me and I began to read where I left off.

I figured that eventually he would need to go to the computer to work and that one of my other kids, who were finished with their lessons for the day, would be sent in to “watch me”.  My Husband gave them strict instructions before he left that I was not to be left alone.  I planned to return to my movie when the “shift change” happened.  God had another plan.  The computer which houses all of our movies, recorded television, netflix…etc decided to suddenly start making a fantastically annoying noise (one of the fans).  My eyes and ears were so sensitive yesterday.  The machine was shut down immediately along with my plans of theatrical escape.  And so, I returned to the book.

I read until my aching, swollen eyes couldn’t take it anymore and I fell asleep.  When I woke up, I read some more.  The Husband came home for a few minutes in there before heading out again for more running to and fro with other kids.  He fixed the computer but by this point, I didn’t want to be distracted anymore.  I wanted to feel the full measure of what God was trying to get across to me through that book.  I’ve gotten most of the way through it and while the things that need addressing are many, one common thread jumps out.

At some point I really hope I adopt the belief system that this is a journey and not a destination.  I’ve approached my food/weight issues (as well as other issues) with a destination in mind, which doesn’t work for very long.  The problem being, that once the perceived destination is reached, I stop working and stop relying on the One who got me there.  The “destination” vanishes like a vapor, a mirage.  I awake in a stupor with a sugar hangover and extra pounds.  I vow to do better, which works for a time, and then the cycle starts all over again.

I have much more I want to write on this topic but my brain needs a rest…  The Husband is filling in for me again today, so I need to be sure I make physical recovery a priority too.

First of all, I did not feel like going to TaeKwonDo today… but I did.  I told God how I felt about that more than once today.  During class I really felt weak.  The kids and I came home to a house that smelled of dinner cooking.  Sure enough, the Husband and the Kid who stayed home were in the kitchen preparing hamburgers, chips & baked beans.  There was no way I was going to rain on this parade of service by spouting off a list of the items before me that were not “friendly” to my nutrition plan.  And so, I ate the food they had prepared… and it was delicious.

I just didn’t want to rob ‘em of the blessing of serving us dinner.  It was such an act of kindness, one that I never want to discourage.  If I had come in with comments like, “Really?  What the heck am I supposed to eat?  You know I’m trying to lose weight and you fix burgers!”  Then what if I added pouting and other such behavior as I begrudgingly fixed myself a salad.  It would have spoiled the evening.

I will have a talk privately with the husband later, probably tomorrow, and let him know that I’ve renewed my commitment to the plan.  No doubt he will be supportive.

It’s been a few days since I’ve had time to do much of anything on the computer.  While it was rather a nice little break from the world of inboxes and such, my eating habits didn’t fare so well.  In fact, I will be adding some bricks back to my “tower”.

I won’t say that “things are settling down” because the opposite is true.  What I can say is that my brain seems to be “settling in”.  I’m not looking forward to seeing the scale but I am looking forward to getting my eating habits back on track.  I still have goals I want to reach.  For example, there is a writing course I’ve wanted to take for a while.  I’ve set a poundage amount that I must drop before I can enroll.  Hopefully that will be motivating!

You may be wondering about my messy office.  Well, It is looking better than it was.  It’s still a bit messy but I’m sitting at my desk typing right now and not on the sofa.  I can even walk about in here now.  That feels pretty good.