Finding It: And Finally Satisfying My Hunger for Life by Valerie Bertinelli Read Free Book Online Page B

it to the feeling you have after an unhealthy eating streak, with little to no physical activity. Now re-think
going to the gym, the bag of chips
, or whatever your devil seems to be today. The choice becomes a little easier, right?
Here’s a big question I’m never going to solve, but I’m wondering about it: Most people have clean or relatively clean bathrooms in their home. Why then are public bathrooms so messy? Does everyone decide to miss the toilet?
I think people can do a little better in general if they take a moment to improve their aim. It ‘s a good life lesson— something to think about anyway.

Chapter Four
Warning Lights
    Whoever said “if you want to make God laugh, make plans” was right—and as a result, I had a problem.
    I had a full calendar of out-of-town book signings ahead of me, all of which had been carefully scheduled and coordinated to coincide with Wolfie’s Van Halen tour dates. I thought it would be fun if we were in the same cities at the same time. But all the planning turned out to be for naught when the band suddenly cancelled dates at the end of February and all through March while Ed dealt with health issues.
    The band put out a statement saying he needed to undergo tests and “determine a defined diagnosis.” I didn’t ask Wolfie for any additional details. That only put him in a difficult spot. I didn’t really want to know either. I had seen him through many hard times in the past. I felt badly for him. I knew how important playing with Wolfie on the tour was to him. I also knew from my ownexperience that you had to learn to get out of your own way if you wanted to change.
    Three weeks later, I was back home between travel dates to celebrate Wolfie’s seventeenth birthday. Ed, looking better than I expected, and Janie, joined Tom and Tony and myself at Il Tiramisu, our favorite neighborhood Italian restaurant. I believed we had gone there for Wolfie’s birthday the past ten years. None of us could remember exactly. However, we did agree that the owner, Ivo, and his son, Peter, made the best pasta fagioli in the vicinity.
    The evening was surprisingly relaxed and warm. At home, after remarking on Ed’s fragility, Tom and I recalled our own journeys through tough times. He had struggled through a difficult divorce and I had climbed my way out of the depths of self-punishment. Tom said he always knew that things would work out as long as he followed what he felt in his heart was right and true. I asked how he knew, and he said it was his faith in God.
    “I couldn’t have made it without my faith,” he said.
    My first reaction was to think, really? I was different. I had needed to find faith in myself before I could think about whether it also involved a Higher Power. Of course, now I found myself thinking about and talking to God all the time. But I remembered the way it had been.
    “You know what I did during my darkest days?” I asked. “I ate.”
    “What got you to turn things around?” he asked.
    “I had to,” I said. “I knew I couldn’t go on any longer the same way. All the proverbial reasons.”
    Tom scratched his head.
    “Did you think God was helping you?” he asked.
    “All I know is that nobody is helping me when I’m running on that damn treadmill,” I said.
    “Come on, V. Seriously.”
    “Honestly, I wish I knew God the way you do.”
    “Well, you like the way I know the Bible,” he said.
    “I do.”
    “I have head knowledge,” he said. “You have the knowledge in your heart.”
    That caused me to pause.
    “I’m open, I’m curious,” I said. “I’ve only had a very few times in my life that I would call spiritual, where I’ve felt a connection with a higher power. For whatever reason, though, I don’t have that same thing in me where I can blindly believe.”
    “Then how do you know right from wrong? In a way where you answer to a higher authority?”
    “I don’t know that I answer to any authority higher than my conscience,”