Just Pray

I've been struggling with food issues, again, despite having all kinds of knowledge, accumulated wisdom, and support from lovely people and skilled experts. In reading Mary Oliver’s “Morning Poem,” it occurred to me I’m not asking for divine help. I’m not really praying but just sort of going through the motions.

Here’s the line that captured and opened my heart: “each pond with its blazing lilies/is a prayer heard and answered/lavishly.” The idea that prayers are heard and answered lavishly reminds me that relying on myself to muscle my way through an addiction can never work.  When I first got sober, my prayers were desperate, heartfelt, and almost constant.  That worked to get me from one difficult moment to the next until I could go to bed early and make this “one day at a time” thing work.  My addiction to sugar is longer, stronger, and more pernicious than anything I experienced with alcohol, and I need stronger spiritual muscles to get through the cravings and obsessive thoughts. Prayer builds the bridge to a new life of freedom.

Clearing the Channel

If I don’t ask, I can’t set in motion the answer, the new creation. Once I ask, a channel opens up. And it flows to me lavishly beyond what I can imagine. Source grants my deepest hope and beyond. I don’t need to know how or expect an answer by when because that slows it down and introduces resistance. All I have to do is pray rather than reach for the old comfort. Each moment I ask for help is the dawn of a new morning; the world is created anew in the asking.

Listening to the Real Need

When I can believe or act as if help is available if I only ask/pray, I will never be without exactly what I need. And as I realize that what I need is never sugar, flour, alcohol or a new item, then I move toward a deeper, truer listening, to the wounded child who was not heard, who couldn’t articulate what she needed and soon silenced the fact that she needed anything as she reached for a cookie or something nearby to soothe.

 I want to give her attention, compassion, and kindness. I’m learning to be gentle with her and never give her something to shut her up, so she soon learns to trust me and let me hold and comfort her. And that feeling of peace, I’m coming to see, is all I’ve ever wanted.