It has been a pretty good week, but the reason it has been good has been simply remembering encouraging thoughts when I feel really low. I've definitely had some low days. So here are the 3 things that carried me through the rougher days and the days when food was more of an obstacle to me.
1. Last week I told Carol that I wasn't making forward progress but I was also not falling fast as I had felt the week before. She told me something interesting. In the wonderful world of mental health, if you are not making backward steps, it is considered forward progress. So in other words, just holding on is still considered going forward as long as I'm not going backwards! That one saved my sanity, not gonna lie, a few times.
2. My husband has a favorite thing to say. "It didn't get broken in a day, it won't get fixed in a day." When the house is a complete disaster, he reminds me that it didn't get blown up in a day and I shouldn't expect to fix it in a day. He reminded me 3 different times in my life that it took 9 months for my body to grow a baby, it will take more than a few days for my body to go back to being mine. He reminds me when our check book is overdrawn or really tight that we didn't get into finiancial difficulty overnight and we won't get out overnight either. You get the point, it wasn't broken in a day, it won't be fixed in a day.
3. I have a wonderfully dear friend who went through a very very very dark time in her life. Along the same lines as the one above, she made a series of poor choices for a long period of time to fall to her lowest point ever. As she started to get her life on track, it still took years for her to be the amazing Godly woman that she is today. In her 12 step program, her mentor used to tell her to just do the next right thing. Sometimes I cannot look at an entire day, sometimes I just need to look at the next 5 minutes. Sometimes I can't think about the future right things, sometimes I can only take the step directly in front of me and do the next right thing. Eventually it gets easier and easier to do the next right thing because you have been getting lots of practice.
Those things have helped me tremendously this week. Knowing that if I continue to just do the next right thing, that the problems that weren't caused in a day will likely not be fixed by days end and knowing that stabilty is forward progress makes, me feel like I'm getting it! One foot in front of the other, one step at a time. In the immortal words of Dory, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming........"
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