Yes? Okay, bear with me here because this is a topic that is so incredibly hard for me.
Food.
Weight.
Self.
These topics have always been hurdles for me. Sometimes they don't rear their ugly little heads and then other times they completely annihilate me.
Have you ever sat and read pages of a book and yell to yourself "holy hannah! That is 100% me! or for me!"
That happens to be more often these days but one of the most profound moments for me was after Christmas. I received the book Uninvited by Lysa TerKerst from my kids for Christmas because they knew I had been wanting to read it so bad. We were driving to and from El Paso, and I love to read in the car, so it seemed the perfect time to start this Uninvited adventure with God. At the time I had felt very "uninvited" to many parts of life at that moment so the irony of it all had not been lost on me.
As I turned each page I felt as if this woman I had never met had been welded to my soul. Page after page I attempted to draw lines under sections of words that I yelled "yes yes yes I agree!" Driving along at 80 mph with wiggly lines all over the words God whispered I wasn't alone.
As the new year continues forward and each resolution keeps getting mentioned one that haunts me is one that plagues each woman and man these days... weight... The battle with food and self image and what's healthy and what isn't has been a struggle for me as long as I can remember. Growing up dancing competitively and playing sports never helped. Having the imaging of "must look good and compete with all the other girls in Wranglers." never helped. Once my parents got divorced cigarettes because my food supplement of choice. At the time it was cheaper to buy a pack and suppress my appetite then it was to get a combo meal at the local fast food chain, and my size 4 Rockies thanked me.
It had been the first time I had felt I "looked" great! I remember one time during my "skinny" years that an ex-boyfriend came up to me at work. I was in a nice tank top and skirt above my knees and the first words out of his mouth were "wow, you look awful." I was crushed! This guy had been my first boyfriend and yea I wasn't in Wranglers when he saw me but I still thought I had looked nice. My manager was floored and piped up, "I think she looks great today!" We walked outside to talk and he told me I hadn't looked good at all even though I had noticed I was turning heads while I walked down the hall. (Partly because people were wondering who I walking with and partly because my future husband was in a store we had walked passed.)
After he left I felt a door to that friendship closed for good, but it left me with even more self doubt. Having danced and played sports the world's view of looks weighed heavy on me. I felt I had to weigh a certain way to fit in or be liked, or to even have a shot at a good boyfriend. The ex-boyfriend wasn't good for me, but years later I can see God's laced words in the words that he spoke to me that day. I did look nice, but I wasn't looking as God wanted me to. That guy wasn't seeking how God wanted me to look but I can hear God in that moment because I still painfully remember the yearning for God to be back in my life even then. My world at that time had been turned upside with my parents divorce and my looks and those that associated with me defined me. Yet I felt empty and a piece of me missing.
It was God 100% but it wouldn't be until even more world fell around me I would find myself crying out to him at night to fill the void, but daytime I had no one around me I could cling to to help that feeling. So, I clung to responses I got.
Insert years later of inner self destruction of low self worth that wasn't helped by my husband's unfaithfulness via internet and coworkers and the weight added back on. Add babies to the mix and that was just the catapult to the downward spiral.
3 years ago I hit rock bottom. The heaviest I had ever been and left in a puddle of tears in the middle of our church atrium crying on the shoulder of a friend. I had had enough of failed dieting and getting no where. My friend prayed over me right then and there and claimed God's provision in a way to help me get my temple back to His glory.
That was the most self defeating part... I had let God down and not taken care of His temple.
Breakthrough had come and I was blessed with a healthy way to lose the weight and reshape His temple. He had blessed every step of the way. I hit the 45lb loss mark and seemed to hit a plateau, but I was near a healthy weight (well, what the world deems a healthy weight for my height) and knew this was the stopping point.
I was okay with that.
However, along the way I lost sight of God's temple and wove my way back to an obsession of the numbers on the scale. It's sad that people really do talk to you and treat you differently when you look a certain way and my scale and I had a scary telepathic connection. I could literally fold my fingers into each other, as if I was holding my own hands, and tell you almost the exact numbers that would appear on the scale. It became a sickness but the sick part is I was proud of myself for being able to do that.
Gross, huh?
I became obsessed with the macro numbers of foods around me too. I could look at something and tell you exactly what it was. Kept me in line eating wise for sure but deep down I had let it turn into an idol I was never supposed to have.
Insert right after ending my weekly communication with my personal trainer friend and family came to town. OUT.THE.WINDOW. went the eating right because let's be honest when you are driving all over no one in the car cares about portion control at all. Oh and the alcohol... Totally didn't help. One week of them in town and losing weight became gaining weight. I mentally started to freak the heck out! I was desperate to jumpstart my metabolism again and to get back to the last numbers that had appeared on the scale.
Family member after family member came to visit and again and again I felt I was out of control. Finances changed drastically and trying to buy and prepare food for myself again stopped because let's be honest... healthy = expensive and when you have 5 mouths to feed you fit the budget.
That moment was 3 years ago and I am still trying to get back to those last numbers. I am also 20lbs heavier than those last numbers when I stopped the correspondence with my friend. I can still tell you the weight I am based on my fingers and the scale. However, God smacked me with hard truth when I changed a daily Bible verse sign a couple weeks ago.
It's HIS temple. Not mine.
My head and heart have resorted back to worldly views of healthy. Not God's. I haven't helped by putting healthy in and I've let old habits come back in, but I need to make sure that I start each day the right way. This will forever be a daily battle for me. I have a ton of work ahead of me. I will lose the 20lbs again, but it won't be for me. It'll be for God.
He needs me to it for Him and for me. The mental battle is very ugly inside because Satan desperately wants to keep a hold of this vice he uses on me all the time, but God will be victorious in the end.
We will get healthy again.
I will not allow it to be an addiction again. God blessed the knowledge the first time. He equipped me with a way I can implement again, but I firmly believe he won't bless those efforts with weight loss until my heart and head are in it for the right reasons.
For Him...
...Not for me.
I thought about posting a picture but I can't. I can't; not because I'm ashamed of where I had been but because the whole process was never supposed to be about the looks or shape. It was always about the transformation of my mind and looking at myself as God's temple. I asked for God's eyes to make His temple healthy once.... I need that same mindset to do it again. Not the world's mindset of healthy.
I share all of this because I need to bring light to the war that wages inside of me daily. My battle with food is far deeper than this post goes. The connection with the top of the post hurts because as Lysa was describing how she was comparing herself to another female I battle that same inner conversation more times in a day than I would like. It hurt because I saw myself outside of my mind saying those same words and I know God cringes every time I have those words come in.
I may or may not ever get back to where I was 3 years ago and believe it or not that's okay. What I've realized is God's view of a healthy temple doesn't reflect the world's number scale. It's a full package... our heart, souls, and mind... along with the types of food we put into our mouths that feeds our body's functions... but also the kinds of foods we place into our souls as well.
God's temple... It's the full package.
It's not just a food package... it's a heart and mind transformation where our focus goes off of ourselves and back to The One that created us in the first place.
I need to get back to the heart I had before. I watched what I placed in my body food/drink wise as well as what I fed my soul like a hawk. I need to get myself right again with God because it won't just be the way my jeans fit that will change. I need to view myself as God sees me... that will change too.
And I don't know about you but I can't wait for the transformation!
"You are not your own, you were bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body."1 Corinthians 6:19
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