This post has been about a week in an emotional roller coaster of a process and it seems that God always gives me a prompt to write at night when my mind is starting to unwind from the day and I am attempting to fall asleep!
So instead of tossing and turning… with words flying through my mind and prayers that I will remember what I was thinking tomorrow, I write tonight instead!
Tomorrow is my 33 birthday! Part of me is excited as I LOVE birthdays and feel that they should be a special day for each person as we celebrate life. I haven’t always had awesome birthdays… not because people haven’t tried to make them special for me but mostly its my own fault. I never voice my hopes and desired for an extra special day because I never wanted to seem self centered or like a brat that wants it to be all about them. Yet every once in a while… we need a day to have it be all about ourselves!
There is nothing selfish about celebrating the life that God has given us and I am ready to take my life by the reins and each day thank God for the moments He gives me! I am surrendering myself to His will and knowing that I am in his loving hands resting in the fact that He will provide for my every need.
I read a blog about a week ago… I tried finding it but couldn’t… if anyone knows the author or the link please let me know! Anyway she made an awesome point that christian women have been told true love waits. BUT what are we waiting for? There has already been a man that loved us so much that he died for us 2000 years ago! I am not found complete or whole by a man I meet or marry. I am found complete in God and His son Jesus alone! And by having the mind set that I am in a holding pattern of waiting for my life to start until a guy comes along and finally sees my worth is no life to live at all!
*^ (CORRECTION: The above blog I’m talking about is found here.. http://gracefortheroad.com/2012/02/03/idontwait/
That is what I feel I have done for way to long in my life… many times not even realizing it or worse yet lying to myself and saying thats not what I was doing.
I made a mistake of buying into that lie that I wasn’t complete til a man loved me and gave me his last name. It was a horrible and heart wrenching time! I married a man that didn’t love Jesus as I did and made me chose between him and Jesus…
Which ladies… is never a good choice to have to make and never one a good man should make you have to make!
Needless to say the “fairy tale” I envisioned by choosing a guy over God came to a screeching halt when I miscarried our baby April 6, 2007! There had been warning signs of our marriage foundation crumbing beneath the weight of life that was hap hazardly being build on a foundation made of sand. When the winds and waves crashed against our glass house set on a foundation of sand it was inevitable that it would not be able to stand.
My way of dealing with life was running back to the Rock of Ages… burying my face at His feet like Mary did when she anointed His feet, and weeping for forgiveness, crying out to be taken to heaven so I could be with my baby, and eventually getting myself to a woman’s shelter where I would be safe from the man I desperately loved that couldn’t deal with the pain and hurt of life. His way out was drugs, alcohol, and abuse.
So now 5 years later I sit here after a move back to New York that could only be God alone bringing me back here and I know that I am not the same person that I was 5 years ago. Yet I know I have so much farther I want to go.
I have been telling myself and others for a long time now that I knew I needed to get healthy.
For those of you who don’t know my story…
When I was 5 years old, my family and I was at my mom’s work picnic on this farm. I remember bits and pieces of the day but not much…
Here’s what I can remember…
-It was a mid-summers day in Iowa which meant it was pretty warm but beautifully sunny. Im pretty sure a summer rainstorm had just swept through but had cleared out a quickly as it had appeared.
-I remember there being someone that had brought a hot air balloon and as a child I was soooo excited to think that I might get to ride in it!!
– I remember the smells and scents of picnic food cooking on the outdoor grills mixing and mingling with the farm “fresh” air of manure, animals, dirt, and green grass as I ran around with the other kids playing hide and go seek or some childhood game like that.
– I remember how much my little girl self despised shoes and went bare foot everywhere she could get away with!
-And last I remember the searing pain as I stepped on a nail as it punctured its way through all the way from the bottom of my foot through to the top.
-The next thing I remember is sitting on the kitchen counter with a group of adults around. They were talking about how they needed to pull the nail out. How I was going to need to go to the doctor and get a shot so that it wouldn’t get infected.
Well I don’t remember if it was that day that we went or the next but all I know is that instead of the Dr. looking at my medical charts to see if he had given me my DPT shot already, he looked at my age and said, “Oh she’s getting ready to start kindergarten next year so give her her DPT shot instead of just a tetanus.” That one medical error would have a lasting and profound affect on my life!
You see I had already had my immunization DPT shot a couple months before that!
The “P” in the DPT shot stands for pertussis which is a vaccine against whooping cough. When they gave me the second dose of DPT it knocked out my immune system and I got very ill. It took 4-5 years, countless doctors visits and finally a homeopathic clinic in Reno, Nevada to finally get “better” and recover from 80-90% of the effects of the double dose.
However the lasting effects are still surfacing even 24-26 years later.
One of the complications was that my body was no longer absorbing nutrients and vitamins like it should. So my receptors in my brain that tells people they are hunger was always telling my body I was hungry and lacking nutrients. In spite of my body not getting the nutrients it was definitely getting the calories and because of that I started gaining a lot of weight. So my struggle with weight came at a young age and totally opposite how most children or people become overweight.
I grew up with people telling me if I just exercised more, ate less, ate healthier, less calories, stayed motivated enough and prayed harder that I would be able to loose weight BUT I didn’t. It became a frustration for me and then it became a defense. If someone didn’t love me for who I was and made comments about my weight or even their weight a lot I would leave them behind because to me they weren’t worth my time or energy. Which in some respects was true but I was bordering on unhealthy obsession of avoiding people that talked health, weight and anything related to that.
Boys were always so cruel growing up also. They would make fun and say horrible things. I learned to say things before them about myself and weight. I figured if I beat them to the punch line it wouldn’t hurt as bad.
I would get and still do get frustrated with people that weigh less than me and talk about how fat they are or feel that they are. It would always make me feel more self conscious and in my mind I would think.. wow if they think they are fat… what must they think of me!?!
This last week has brought many of these feelings back as I finally came face to face with my fears and coping mechanisms that I have cycled myself through for the last 30some years.
I am finally coming to the point in my life that I don’t want to hide behind layers of fat to protect myself because I am finally getting healthy spiritually and that is helping me to see and identify the ways that I am unhealthy physically. For the first time ever I am to the point in my life and growth that I want to get healthy so that I can have more energy and spend more time glorifying God and doing the things He has called me to do!
I don’t need to wait for a man to love me enough to want to change… that man already died to show me His unconditional love and support!
I don’t need to hide from others the hurt that has helped apply layer by layer of unhealthy-ness.
So… as it is 1:17AM on September 16th and already my birthday, I am giving myself a challenge for this year!
As I have found out already.. the years go by whether you plan for them or not they fly by!
And to make no goals is to not reach for anything!
My goals for my 33rd year of life is this…
-Continue learning and practice healthy eating as a lifestyle not just a diet.
-Blog this journey so that Lord willing my progress can touch someone elses life.
-To begin to be open and honest and share lifes hurts, habits and hangups so that I can be free from the privacy and secrecy of them. If the devil came make us feel like we are the only one and isolate ourselves from others He can inhibit our effectiveness… I don’t want to give him that power anymore! I am taking that poser away from him and putting my faith, hope an trust in Jesus to bring my story to the people that need it the most!
-In getting healthy, I know I will loose weight. I don’t want it to be about the numbers and how many pounds I want to loose. Yet I know that with the last statement above I need to be open and honest… something most if not any woman does when it comes to her weight and the actual digits on the scale! I weighed myself last night and I was actually surprisingly shocked to find that I have lost close to 15-20 lbs in the last couple weeks back in NY! I am currently at 260 pounds. By my next birthday I want to loose at least 70-100 pounds. This goal will be the “skinniest” I will have been since I was 12-13 years old.
So in doing this I am looking to God to give me the strength, self- discipline and self- control that I will need when times get hard!
In this process I am going to work with my mom, who is a health nutritionist and chef, to create healthy recipes and snacks and post them on my blog as well in hopes that someone can benefit from them as well.
I am doing this all so that I will be healthy enough to go back over to India and minister to girls and women.
I am doing this so that my light and testimony may touch many others.
But most of all… I am doing this to glorify my heavenly Father and creator! Who made me!
Psalms 139:13-17 (message translation)
13-16 Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
before I’d even lived one day.
17-22 Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful!
God, I’ll never comprehend them!
I couldn’t even begin to count them—
any more than I could count the sand of the sea.
beautifulmess916 