Keeping vigilant.

When I started the OA program, I had to learn to be honest with myself.  One of the things that I had to be honest about was that if I bite my nails on weekdays, I might not be able to stop myself from doing it on Shabbos.  I decided to make sure to keep  my nails polished so that I wouldn't bite them on Shabbos.  Now that I am on OA for 844 days (give or take a few minutes), I wanted to see if I needed to keep them polished.  For a few days everything was fine.  All of a sudden a nail broke and I wanted to "just even it out".  Before I knew it I was fighting to keep myself from biting my nails.  Back on went the polish.  I learned an important lesson from this.  Even when we think that we have conquered a bad habit, there are no guarantees out there.  We always have to stay vigilant, because the Yetzer Hara is stronger then we are.

In OA we learn that the tools are a protection of our abstinence.  You don't sit down and decide to break your diet, first you skip a meeting, then an outreach call, and before you know it your program is sliding down hill.