Keep Spinnin' Round

I remember when my middle son was learning to roll over. He'd wake up in the middle of the night and roll over, then roll back, roll over then roll back, roll over then roll back. Then he'd plop his head mindfully back down and go right back to sleep.

This is how he's always been when he's learning something new. He does it over and over and over. Sometimes he still looses sleep over it. Luckily our days of a family bed are long since passed since he's taller than I am now, so his lost sleep is no longer mine.

But the other night I was the one awake in the middle of the night rolling over and over. And over.

I had been sound asleep for a few hours, it was the dark night and I could tell it was not going to be a quick turn. I was nattering on something big. So after about an hour I finally just got up and ran a steamy bath. And I picked up my book. I've been reading Geneen Roth's old book "When Food is Love" in little tiny bits. Sometimes literally a paragraph at a time. This night I soaked in the tub until I was totally sckrunkled-up and wrinkly and read almost the entire book.

It's hard to explain what happened next. But I felt like that baby who had practiced enough and was finally going to go plop my head down and go back to sleep. Reading the book is amazing. She sees inside my head and even more than that, she understands what's going on in there way better than I do! It's a big web of childhood, and acceptance, and love and care and food and trying, trying, trying to do it all just right. At one point in the book she tells the story of deciding to stop dieting, to just take care of herself and give herself what she wants until it becomes what she needs because she's taking care of herself. So she goes to her Wednesday night Weight Watchers meeting to tell the leader her plan. And the leader tells her that the ONLY way to fight a weight problem is to watch everything you put in your mouth for the rest of your life. I laughed out loud.

That's just the thing. That leaves it a weight problem. And you have it forever. And you fight it forever. But I know that there has to be another way.

I think I can see it. Forgiveness February is good.

There has got to be another way.