For Amy...

One of my new young friends (by young I mean young enough to be my child!) just found out that if she doesn't change she will have diabetes and heart problems VERY soon. This was sad, sad news for me as I know very well the cruelties of diabetes. I have lost friends and family to it and have many in my close circle who struggle with it daily.

I knew that this was serious news and I hate to see her fall prey to some disease if she can do ANYthing to keep from it. I told her to go to my blog and learn about my own journey with weight issues. Today I went to my blog to find that journey and apparently it's not here, never been written? I don't know. Honestly, I thought I wrote about it but I can't find it, so here I go again.

I'm 5'3" and at age 26 I was the mother to a four year old, a two year old, and a 6 month old and I weighed in at 172 pounds. I was MISERABLE. I was a church member and working in different areas there and trying to keep up with a house, land, these kids, pets and a husband. I was perpetually tired and I used food to comfort ME, because I deserved it!!! I paid myself for being a "good" mom and wife by eating ice cream or cereal or ice cream with cereal on top at night after the kids were in bed. I also paid myself for the torture of a shopping trip with so many littles by buying all of us a candy bar at the check-out, they were only .44 a piece. :/

By the time my youngest was 6 months I thought surely I'd lose my mind. I had being doing okay but things were catching up with me. My lack of exercise coupled with my obesity was causing me to drag, but I was also nursing and up most nights and then up all day. Exhaustion can have devastating effects.

I read of a book in my Crossings Book Club stuff and ordered it. (I am not going to endorse the book.) I read that book and in it the author talked about how the Lord Jesus LOVES us in a way that I never had thought about Him loving me before. I wanted this love and this "Man" to rule my life and I asked Him to do just that as I knelt by my little Bug's bed. An old Ronnie Milsap song comes to mind, "Oh, what a difference [He] made in my life!!" Nah. Scratch that, it's too much of an understatement. He gave me new life and I got up from there a different person. The Lord used food to get my attention. He used my abuse of a good gift to show me the True and Perfect Gift.

From that time until I got the little girls in 2010 I had been pretty active in trying to encourage women in their "dieting" struggles because I have my own. After I was saved that day I cared very little for food for quite a while. I lost down to 125 and could wear 4s and 6s modestly. However, sin crept in little by little and stole my joy in the Lord and I started using food as comfort again. ARGH! I still do that.

I have studied food and the affect that it has on our bodies, I know all the trash that I want to know about the "whites", the artificials, the empty negative foods but none of that matters on some days. Some days I just WANT sour cream and onion potato chips and only Lay's will do. :) And you KNOW, you can't eat just one.

For 15 years now I have struggled to be obedient to what my body is telling me in this area and more importantly to remember: "What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit which are God's." (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

I am not my own. My body and my spirit belong to God. Everything I am belongs to God. He has been very gracious to give me food and I have abused His gift. It is necessary for me to change my ways. I told Amy that I would eat as she has to eat, although with no artificial sweeteners. Now I have told my blogging world (which is actually rather small...) that I am trusting the Lord to help me eat right. I need help because I KNOW THAT I CANNOT DO IT. I KNOW that mere human help is not enough, only our Supernatural Creator can help me...I'm an almost hopeless case.

The steps that I will take are: prayer and crying out to the Lord, and reading and meditating on these and other scriptures that He shows me:

1 Cor. 9:25a
Proverbs 26:14
1 Cor. 6:13-20
Proverbs 23:1-3
Daniel 1
Hosea 4:6a
John 4:32b
John 6:27a
1 Cor. 10:31
Proverbs 27:2 (seem like it doesn't fit? It does. Don't get haughty.)
Psalm 63:1
Gal. 5:22-24 (temperance--don't say SELF control)
Col. 3:17
Romans 12:1-2;13:14
James 4:7, 17
1 John 2:3
Gal. 2:20; 5:16

This is by no means an exhaustive list, these are just some of the scriptures He has shown me over the last 15 years.

May the Lord bless all who seek to obey and follow Him. Let us NOT make our bellies our god.

Blessings!