A Story of Recovery:

Turning Over the Key

For the last two years, we have been trying to sell our house. I don’t need to tell anyone that it is clearly not a seller’s market. For this food addict, who likes to have things go her way and according to her time frame, this has been a most challenging time. It can be a real roller coaster ride. We get the call that someone is coming to look and we spiff the place up, clearing off surfaces, setting the table with a vase of flowers, vacuuming, dusting, and generally fluffing and buffing until it looks its very best. We go out so our realtor can show the house without the overly eager owners salivating on the back porch. Then we wait to hear the feedback. Our realtor calls, says the showing went well and the potential buyers loved the house, the setting, thought it was priced right, gorgeous view, blah, blah, blah…and then there is the ever-present…but… (fill in the blank).

If I let myself, I go from “oh joy, maybe this time” to “no one will ever buy this house— we will be living here until we are 90, until the house falls down around us.” However, if I actually practice the FA principles in all my affairs, I get a grip on my self-will-run-riot and utilize the tools of my Program.

My best experience of this happened about a month ago. I had sunk into one of those places of thinking that nobody will ever buy, and instead of mucking around in there, I picked up the phone. My fellow recovering food addict on the other end of the phone, who had recently sold a house, talked about the need to let go and let God.

“Okay,” I said, “All very well and good, but how?”

“Well,” she said “how about giving your house key to God?”

Now there was an idea I could grab on to. I tend to be pretty concrete, so this sort of thing appeals. I am also very visual. I got an image of my open hand with the house key in it, asking God to please take it and do with it as He would. It was a Step Three moment—turning my life, my will, and my house key over to the God of my understanding.

Since that time, each time I feel that old familiar when-are-we-ever-going-to-sell-this-house anxiety creeping up my spine, I immediately send up a prayer to God saying, “Ah yes, I remember now. I gave the key to you, and I know that you will give it to just the right person at just the right time.” Without having to turn to food, or compulsive exercise, without having to binge on fear, I relax into that kind of knowing that is only given by the grace of God.