Article from Bariatric Support International:
Is Confession Enough, or is Repentance My Goal? - by Ken Miller
It’s Sunday night, 8:17 PM, and I’m sitting here at my computer thinking about my weight-loss success of the last two weeks . . . followed by my long fall into the simple-carbohydrate abyss. You see, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. That was the day I said to myself, “Hey, it’s a holiday, and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the holiday with my family.” And, of course for me, “enjoying the holiday,” meant eating until I was stuffed. I did a pretty good job on Thanksgiving day of eating the right things; mostly turkey and vegetables . . . but there was that mound of mashed potatoes and gravy . . . and that can of Dr. Pepper that called out to me. When I listened to their Sirens’call, I opened Pandora’s box, and I couldn’t put the demons back in their box.
After starting the Kick Start program on November 8th I lost 12 pounds in the next 11 days. I was 1/3 of the way to my goal weight, when Thanksgiving food, fun, and festivities gobbled up 5 pounds of my weight-loss. Boy am I sorry! . . . and thus this confession.
It’s been almost a month now since I returned from Burbank California where I attended Obesity Help’s West Coast National Convention. I spent the Halloween weekend surrounded by WLS patients at the convention where I listened to people talk about their personal demons. And, during the weeks leading up to and following Halloween there were quite a few posts on our website where people “confessed their sugar laden sins”. All of these confessions got me thinking about a question that’s been floating around in the nether regions of my brain for a quite some time until it crystallized into a principle statement while I was eating breakfast in a fast food restaurant Sunday morning before the last day of the conference.
The question you already know because it’s the title of this article:
Is Confession Enough, or is Repentance My Goal? Let’s talk about it for a minute before we get to the thought that came to me on that Sunday morning.
Now don’t take what I’m about to say wrong and stop expressing your feelings in our forums, but I noticed a definite trend that started one day just before Halloween after one brave soul confessed his sins in the BSCI forums. Confession became the mood of the next several days as patient after patient posted replies talking about those Halloween temptations that had been the most difficult for them to resist and confessed to those that had overpowered them. It almost seemed like the general feeling was that if you confessed to the world, you could feel OK about eating the [insert your downfall dessert here] that got the best of you. Mind you, I’m no holier-than-thou preacher of anti-carboyhdrate hellfire and damnation.
I didn’t have too much trouble with Halloween, but as I mentioned at the outset of this article, I too am a sinner who got waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of control this past weekend. And now I’m sitting here at the keyboard feeling like I ought to open up and share the details of my downfall with everyone and that a good clean confession will somehow make me feel better, or thinner, or something!
But I’m a little bit afraid to say what’s really on my mind because I realize that I’m walking a very fine line here and the slightest slip in how I express my thoughts about this subject will either cause readers who are members of the religious right to accuse me of blasphemy or those who are from the far left are likely to accuse me of attempting to force religion on them. With my luck I’ll make both sides angry, but, being the relatively insensitive guy that I am, I guess I’ll just forge ahead and hope for the best . . .
What goes through your head (and more importantly, what’s inside your heart) when you confess your culinary cravings and share your lip smacking lapses with the world? I imagine the answers to that question will range all the way from, “I’m telling people about my problems so they’ll share their problems and then, by comparison, mine won’t seem so big anymore,” to . . . “I want people to know that they are not alone . . . that they are surrounded by hoards of loving, caring, eaters who understand their plight because we live with the same problems every day and I’m just leading-out, knowing that others will follow my lead and we can all stand together and comfort one another as we exchange stories of the carbs that caught us in our moments of mortal weakness.
Confession is so easy (compared to repentance) that I’m sorely tempted to settle for confession . . . even though my scale keeps telling me that what I really need is repentance.
Every religion that has the improvement of individual people at the heart of its teachings, believes in and preaches the concept of repentance . . . which is that even though you may have made a mistake (or a sin) today, you can start over right now, vow that you won’t do it again, and you can be forgiven for your past lapses if you finally conquer that specific sin or weakness. Whether you’re a particularly religious person, or not, you’ll recognize this concept as the basis of improvement in your life and the development of the character traits that make up who you are.
Some religions have a list of “The Steps of Repentance” that looks something like this:
- Recognize that you’ve made a mistake.
- Admit, or confess your mistake.
- Do the best you can to make restitution to anyone who was harmed or offended by your mistake.
- Vow never to do it again.
- Don’t do it again.
Those are some pretty straightforward, easy to understand steps that don’t require a rocket scientist to explain what they mean or what I ought to do about them. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand what I should do, the problem is that I just don’t seem to have the will power to stick with the promise I made to myself not to do it again. And so, I find myself sitting here again today, confessing my sins, feeling better about myself for having confessed them, and I’m right on the verge of vowing that “I’ll never do THAT again.” But I’m AFRAID. I’m afraid that I’ll fail again, so maybe it would just be easier if I settled for True Confessions and gave up on the thought that I might be able to achieve True Repentance. But then, the principle that I discovered while eating breakfast a few weeks ago comes back to comfort me and I remember . . .
Confession is a one-time event . . . Repentance takes a lifetime.
There are some weaknesses and habits that are so ingrained in me that I’ll never be completely free from the temptation to indulge in them. I think I can safely say that eating is one of them. But I have real hope that I’ll be able to get my eating under control because I’ve seen others who’ve learned the wisdom of that old saying, “Moderation in all things” and they’ve found ways to turn moderation into good habits that serve them well. And I think to myself, if they can do it, I can do it. I just need to keep trying. Just keep doing my best to do my best just for today, and let yesterday and tomorrow take care of themselves. I can’t do anything about the mistakes I made yesterday, and I can’t be sure I’m going to be able to be perfect tomorrow. All I can change is today . . . right now . . . this very moment; and all I can do about right now is the best that I can do. Sometimes it’s enough, and sometimes it’s not. But it’s all I have to give.
I’m almost 53 years old and one thing a lifetime of struggle to overcome my bad habits has taught me is that God cannot rightfully ask me to do any more than my best effort will produce. And, I’m quite confident that whomever your God happens to be, or if you’re just accountable to yourself, the same is true for you. The best you can do is the best you can do. Period!
Well, if that’s true, then . . . why do I always feel like I’m not making it? . . . not completely living up to the standards I believe I should have achieved already? What’s wrong with me”?!?!!! Actually, nothing is wrong with me that can’t be corrected with a good dose of patience and a dash of “get up and try again, you dummy; and this time get it right.”
What’s making me feel so bad is the one thing that’s absolutely essential to my ability to eventually improve myself . . . and that is my ability to see a better way of living that is beyond my present ability to reach.
If my reach did not exceed my grasp, I wouldn’t have any understanding of how I might improve myself. I MUST be able to see beyond my present capabilities or I COULD NOT improve.
So, am I doomed to a lifetime of always feeling like I’m not making it? Absolutely not. The other thing I’ve learned in my 53 years on this planet is that I HAVE made progress already. Most of the skills and good habits that I possess, and that I now take for granted, were once beyond my reach . . . but now they’re second nature. I don’t have to think about them anymore, I just do them out of habit . . . GOOD habit(s).
So what happened? How did I move from the point where these habits were beyond my reach until I arrived at the point where they’re now deeply ingrained parts of who I am? The secret lies in that principle I told you about earlier . . .
Confession is a one-time event . . . Repentance takes a lifetime.
Those bad habits and character flaws that I’ve been able to overcome have been conquered simply because I didn’t give up. I rose each time I fell. I recognized that I had made a mistake. I confessed the mistake (to myself as well as the other people who were affected by my mistake). And, I vowed (for the thousandth time) to get it right next time and never to make that same mistake again. And I kept doing the best I could . . . and failing . . . and doing the best I could . . . and failing . . . and doing the best I could . . . until one day, I did it right. And then I knew that if I could do it right one time, I could do it right again. And I kept trying and trying and confessing and repenting, until I made that once impossible dream into a reality. And then into a habit . . . and since then, I seldom have to worry about it anymore because now I’ve developed GOOD habits that serve me well, without me having to struggle to make them work. They’re mine now, and no one can take them away from me.
And now I know that eating the right things and eating them in the right quantities, EVERY TIME, will someday be my natural way of doing things, because I won’t give up when I fall down and fail. I’ll get back up again and I’ll give it my best shot again tomorrow. And, again the next day. And the next day. Until one day, I won’t have to think about it anymore or struggle with it anymore . . . and then I won’t just be abstaining from my bad habits anymore, I will have conquered them once and for all and I’ll be completely free of them forever. And that will be a day that will feel so good that it will be worth all the time and effort I’ve put into picking myself back up and dusting myself off and repenting, and repenting, and repenting until I got it right. And if it takes me a lifetime to get it, that’s okay, because the best things in life don’t come to us at the end of the journey . . . they come to us as experiences along the way.
Confession is a one-time event . . . and if I stop at confession, I’ll always be struggling to abstain from my weakness because confession alone is not enough to conquer it.
Repentance takes a lifetime . . . and even if it takes a whole lifetime before I finally conquer it once and for all, I will have had many successful days along the way that I never would have experienced if I hadn’t been striving for the final victory that true repentance brings.
And now, I feel so much better about myself that I think I can go another round or two with my digestive demons. It shouldn’t be that hard, I mean, I’ve got three whole weeks to prepare for the most difficult week of the year . . . those 7 days between Christmas and New Year’s Day (with my birthday thrown in there too).
Wish me luck . . . and the same to you!
Ken Miller, President
Bariatric Support Centers International
PS. One more thing I’ve learned during these past 53 years:
“The pain of regret is always greater than the pain of discipline.” I don’t know who said that originally, but I’m sure learning how true it is.
Sharing Food mistakes, but then what?
Thanks Suzanne
Dave
Linear Mode
