I guess naming this blog entry “Humbled” is definitely a misnomer.
I can’t truly be “humbled” until I bend my knee. Which I haven’t…yet.
I know it is imminent, but I am busy having my fit, thank you very much. Sometimes I *want* to be miserable and I will thank anyone and everyone to stay out of my way and definitely NOT to remind me of all the things I have spouted off about here on my blog (and elsewhere) about *gratitude*.
Isn’t it “interesting” how we spout off ever-so-arrogantly about something and then discover–lo and behold–we don’t live what we have spouted off about?
Right now I don’t even want to think about that…Instead, I will just say that it is a sorry case of irony that I named the previous entry “Some habits are hard to break.” It was about a binge that didn’t really happen.
Well, this one did.
What is UP with this?
For months, I have considered finding or making up a recipe for peanut-butter, granola, almond slice cookies. Yesterday, I went into a bit of a tizzy about some things that happened. Got careless with my eating in the afternoon and evening. Wait…let’s be honest. It wasn’t “careless.”…it was intentional and rebellious. I got mad at God, if I boil it down.
Today, I continued my tizzy fit. I didn’t plan to, but I did. So by 10am I had enjoyed raw peanut-butter, granola, almond cookie dough…refridgerated it for 2 hours only to cook them up and have cookies for lunch and for mid-afternoon snack…when was the last time I felt a 0? About 10am just before the raw cookie dough which was absolutely wonderful, I might add.
Nuts.
What is this about? It is about my two biggest issues…things I thought I had dealt with again and again…only to discover there is yet a need. More forgiveness work…Mother again.
So what can I say to someone who might be reading this blog who looked for encouragement by visiting? Well, I know this…this is a temporary setback. Even a “naturally thin person” who had been thin all her life might have episodes like this. So I will NOT, decidedly NOT…allow it to define me now or tomorrow or any more moments.
Shameful behavior doesn’t have to be given the “right” to determine more shameful behavior.
God is more powerful than my past…whether it was a past of 5 minutes ago, 5 years ago, or 5 decades ago. I will choose to believe the truth–that God will determine my present and future. My past behavior will not. PERIOD.
How about you? Are you, like me, right now…choosing to MAGNIFY something that chaps your hide? Something that sets your emotions into freak-out, hyper-drive mode? Are you making stupid decisions (like about eating) based on this stuff?
So after I go take a hot shower and kick the dog (just kidding about that part–though she deserves it)–and after the family and I sit and watch an Andy Griffith Show rerun on DVD…I will try to take time to be still and know that God is God…and, perhaps, to magnify…to choose to FOCUS ON and MAKE BIG…the blessings God has showered on my life.
About a week ago, my husband and son ventured off to parts unknown (Alabama) to take in all the excitement and events of “Talladega.” They are NASCAR fans and so this was an experience of a lifetime for them!
My husband is very dear to me. He is my best friend and so much more. Whenever he travels relative to work, I know that I have a lot of emotional stuff I have to deal with. It was interesting, however, all that I see in retrospect when I look back at this past week (they got home last night) and old behaviors and habits.
First of all, while my husband travels quite frequently with his work, he rarely is gone for 5 nights without coming home. Secondly, my son has never left home for this length of time. Clearly, this was new uncharted territory.
Truthfully, I felt on vacation, too…as with only Michaela home to be responsible for at home and given she is quite self-motivated when it comes to her homeschool education…well, it *was* sort of like a vacation for me, too.
In the past, when my husband left town *or* I was on vacation, I would console myself and/or celebrate with food food food. I would buy ice cream, cookie dough, candy and on and on and eat it with abandon.
I haven’t done that for a long time, true.
But last week, I guess I was tested without really realizing it. I knew that I needed to be guarded, but I didn’t see some of what I did as the old behaviors modified.
While I didn’t buy a bunch of stuff like that, I *did* get lots of foods I wouldn’t normally buy. “Dinner” types of foods…stuff from the “hot case” at Holiday market, for instance. Fresh french bread, garlic bread to heat up, lasagna, hot wings, chinese General Chicken and the like. It really was odd to see it in retrospect. These are more “normal” foods, though…not “binge” foods for me. So I ate them pretty much 0 to 5.
==== Editing: As I read this completed blog entry, I was reminded of one incident that DID seem perilously close to a real “binge.” But the odd thing was, since I used the keys of conscious eating, I was sitting at the table not doing anything else but eating…focusing on my food and had the thought suddenly strike me, “What am I doing? This is the old behavior! I know where THAT got me…” and by the power of the Lord I was able to throw away the carmel popcorn I was eating. Amazingly enough, I emerged from that experience not really past a 5 (from what I recall). I am so thankful. But I also was humbled to see how close to those old behaviors I really can be… ====
Additionally, my daughter and I went out to eat a lot and had left overs from those experiences. Basically there was a TRUCKLOAD of food from which to choose any time I was at a 0. It was the strangest thing to realize that, as I looked back over the week, I had pretty much done the first of the behaviors that began the binge in the past…the purchasing of foods. It *was* modified…which I found intriguing as it wasn’t intentional per say.
I then modified my response to it all without realizing it…eating pretty much 0 to 5. Though I do have to admit that I drank more diet soda than usual…and I wonder as I think back on it if this wasn’t the “bingeing” behavior showing up after all…drinking one soda upon another…
It is interesting to observe all of this. I think that it merits correction if there is a next time, though I am not entirely sure there *will* be a next time. All four of us in our family decided that we didn’t like having separate vacations this year…Michaela and I went to DisneyWorld during the summer for a week and the boys did the Nascar thing. Next time we want to be together. Maybe Daytona and DisneyWorld in 2009! LOL! I doubt it.
It is intriguing to me to look back over the past week and see that some behaviors that are from the “old” life were lurking there beneath the surface and I didn’t even realize it. I am thankful that God has worked such changes in me now that I didn’t just sit down and inhale one thing after another…Praise YOU, LORD!!!!
I think having an accountabilty partner helped with that, though. I wonder what I would have done without her in my life? I am thankful I didn’t have to find out.
I know now that I need to be aware of my tendency to do *modified* versions of old bad habits. I will be on my guard.
In the meantime, some of the food is spoiling since we couldn’t possibly eat 0 to 5 and eat it all! But you know what? That’s ok.
I claim that practicing gratitude to the Lord on High has transformed my “fat-loss” journey from years of impotent attempts that resulted in “failure” to releasing 100 pounds and keeping it off for a year (so far). God is the one who deserves all glory and fame, recognition, majesty, power and dominion. Before I discovered the power of this vital key, I gave food more credit, more power, more glory than I did God…
In November 2006 I had to come to a decision…would I have my past have more say and power over my present and future? Or would I let GOD have power and say over my present and future? By fostering a heart of gratitude and praise–slowly at first and now more deliberately–I made and make my choice… You can too! =============
Well, reader, do you believe me? –That gratitude can transform a life and even put to death besetting sins and habitual unworkable habits in your life? So, how can you and I foster a heart of gratitude? Where do we sign up and what do we have to do?
First, please understand it IS a process. You won’t decide right now that you will have a heart flooded full to overflowing with gratitude and presto, that is all there is to it! I wish it was so simple! So don’t be hard on yourself. The cool thing is, this is a process and God LIKES that you even WANT to experience this…so you have His complete support and help.
That said, one of the best things you can do to foster a heart of gratitude is to simply start noticing things…and magnify them. Things? Like what, you say? Well, like have you ever noticed just how many shades of color there are this time of year? (Any time of year, really…) No matter where you live, the browns and rusts and grays of the desert, the multi-colored hues of the parts of the world where the trees herald fall by changing, the greens down-under as spring explodes on the scene…Wow! God is a master artist! Just noticing things like that and, simply, praising Him specifically for it!
Praising him for your body…the tastes of great foods, the ability to experience the comfort of goose down blankets on a cool morning, the smell of coffee and bacon, the sound of the birds or the wind through the pines outside…or even the cars going by! It is amazing that man is so creative that he could design and build and use and drive a vehicle that has an engine in it! It is astonishing when you start to think about it!
I was challenged in April of 2007 when I stumbled upon an amazing blog. There, I read this challenge. If you read Ann’s entry, you will get a really great taste of how gratitude works. She is extremely eloquent, however. I can’t pretend to even come close to that, so I just read what she posts and absorb it best as I can and then try my own hand at a similar approach. In fact, I took her challenge by choosing to form my own Gratitude Blog. I do some written gratitude journaling in a notebook here at home and haven’t kept my online gratitude blog current. I should get back to that, though!
I found that by browsing around various blogs of others who were fostering a heart of gratitude, I could be taught how to do this. Try it! Click here to see a page of the “Gratitude Community.” Be blessed and drink it in. Some folks are so gifted at giving gratitude. Others of us must learn…but we can be taught. The Lord loves that we want to learn!
So here it is! A challenge to YOU. Try it! Either keep a gratitude journal and try writing three things (or however many God may lead you to) daily…maybe at the close of the day. Or create an online gratitude blog. Then share the link here in the comments. I would love to visit your gratitude blog. It is amazing how God will actually tutor His children in giving him the glory that is due him.
In Richard Foster’s book on prayer, he encourages the reader to NOTICE. In fact, in one part of the book he says the following:
“Try to live one entire day in utter thanksgiving. Balance every complaint with ten gratitudes, every criticism with ten compliments. When we practice gratitude, a time will come when we find ourselves saying, not ‘Please,’ but ‘thank you.'”
What would happen if you were to commit to living one entire day taking captive any thought that wasn’t a thought of thanksgiving…and to choose to give thanks for anything and everything? What if you were to choose to NOTICE even the subtle hints of His presence and praise Him? What if you were to offset each complaint with 10 praises, thanksgivings, gratitude statements?
Let’s use our magnifiers to magnify God and His gifts. Let’s focus on these things…NOT on the things that we want and can’t or don’t have…Let’s be sons of Korah, rather than Korah!
…more on the wonderful way gratitude can change a life…from irritable, to thankful and joyful–and even from carrying extra weight on my body to releasing even the extra weight…
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Another way God has used the intentional practice of gratitude in my life is to pull the focus off of self. This, too, feeds the power funneled to fight against habitual sin. But by pulling the focus off of me, my wants, my body, my food, my rights, my this, my that, I am freed up to focus on God. He alone is worthy of that much focus! He is worthy of being magnified! I can’t make him too big. The fact is, even though it may seem remote to me at times…he IS good. No matter what may come my way, that TRUTH won’t change. By choosing to focus on HIM and not on my SELF, it puts everything into perspective.
Gratitude transformed our family vacation–and our family! As I mentioned previously…but this is a bit more about that…I hate going out of town. I don’t like to be gone long. I don’t like to go anywhere else and I don’t want to be away from home. I don’t like the traveling process, PERIOD. So, when my husband planned for our family to go to the East Coast for EIGHT days–our longest family vacation ever…AND the farthest away from home we would all have ever been–I was NOT very excited. (This is an understatement.)
But the cool thing is, we all chose to look for things to thank and praise God for during our trip. We did so frequently and some times earnestly…typically in response to something appearing not to be going our way…LOL! For instance, when my husband insisted in his perky positive way (why is he NEVER like that at home? LOL!) that we would do the DC Death March…the other three of us had head colds…OOOoooh it was painful! But we managed to praise God…and you know what? The next day when we were heading back into DC and got caught in a LOOOOONG traffic jam we could praise God that we had seen SO much of Washington DC the previous day since it was clear we weren’t going to get to see much of it on day 2!
In fact, on day 8 as we were coming back from the airport in our car heading home…(we live in California, so that tells you something about how long of a day it had been)…we were all excitedly talking about the NEXT family vacation! Can you believe it? The two days following our trip, we sat down to add entries of things we were grateful for from our trip to our online gratitude blog (which is in need of being updated now…). Click here and here to see those entries.
We truly felt like God blessed us so much! We could have gone on with more “normal” things to praise God for on our trip…like the fact that tons and tons of metal stayed in the air…who would ever think that an *airplane* would fly? LOL!
Tomorrow, I will share HOW to foster a heart of gratitude. 🙂
…the continuing lessons that God has used to transform my life…IS using to transform my life, including my physical size. Yes, gratitude IS connected to “weight loss!” 🙂 —-
Each moment I have a choice. I can practice gratitude–magnifying HIM and HIS purposes–or another approach. Typically it boils down to the path of self-pity or the path of praise! When I choose the path of praise and gratitude, I discover GOD’s purposes in my situation. I discover not only how awesome God is, but the things he has in store. Life truly DOES become an adventure.
Whatever we focus on or magnify–that will consume our vision. That will be all we can see. I have a choice about what I will be consumed by…I can be Grandma #1 or Grandma#2…a son of Korah or Korah.
So how *has* God used gratitude in my life?
He has used gratitude to transform our family. First of all from making stupid decisions based on discontentment and bad attitudes! When we don’t know what God’s will might be in a situation and the answer to our prayers seems slow to come, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 reminds me that we can HOLD tight and PRAISE and THANK him in ALL circumstances! This IS God’s will right now!
The biggest way that I feel God has used the practice of gratitude in my life is to enable me to overcome sinful patterns–even besetting sins. This is where the overeating, gluttony, overweight body comes in…or, rather, where it goes out.
The gluttony that led me to carrying 100 extra pounds on my frame was a direct result of allowing discontentment to breed in my life.
Let me back up…the reason for any sin in my life seems to be able to be reduced to a couple of simple truths…for me, anyhow: 1.) I believe a lie–that if I have x, y, or z, I will be happiest. This leads to the second: 2.) sin is often rooted in wanting something that isn’t mine to have!
This goes back of course to the first part of my lengthy story…where I wanted something that God had not called me to!
Here is how it plays out with regard to overeating (or not).
In every moment, I have a choice of magnifying on my desire for food that my body doesn’t need. I want a hot fudge sundae, but I am not hungry. I get irritated and frustrated and allow my thoughts to run away with me and before you know it, I have resentment toward the Lord that he is “holding out on me.” I want it and I should have it…and on and on my thoughts go, crescendoing into one big climactic binge…or it could go that way. This is the path of self-pity…Poor me. Everyone ELSE gets to eat, but I can’t…(do you hear the whine?). What am I magnifying if I do this? This is a CHOICE I can make!
On the other hand, the MOMENT I sense that I am not hungry but want whatever food, bite, taste, etc. of that food…if I in that moment refuse to MAGNIFY my want and, instead, choose to magnify what IS true–that God is worthy of PRAISE (this is the Path of Praise)…it will transform the moment. For instance, I can praise and thank God that my body is so efficient. It might go something like this:
“Lord, right now I want the chocolate chip cookies that I could make from the tub of dough that is in the refridgerator. But I am not hungry right now. You know, Lord, I praise you that my body is so efficient that I don’t need food very often to fuel me! I am able to make it for hours on just a little bit! Thank you that this means I am ‘cheap to feed!’ Lord, we *have* saved a lot of money since I began eating this way. Thank you so much for that added blessing. I am thrilled to know that my body is reliable and you will allow it to signal me when I need fuel again. I really *am* fearfully and wonderfully made. Thank you, Lord! And thank you that I have the freedom to eat a cookie or two when I am at 0. There are no diet laws…I am free, Lord. What a joy that is to finally be FREE of all the dieting laws I was so ensnared by for all those years! THANK YOU, Jesus!” At first, I may need to do this with an act of my will. I may not FEEL thank-FULL…but as I choose to GIVE THANKS for the many ways God is at work in my life now and in the past and will be in the future…anything and everything I can think of…I begin to realize that having what I thought I wanted is not the big lure that it would have been had I kept on thinking about it. Again, it is all about what I CHOOSE to magnify! What HE has given? Or what I want that is out of His will for me?
In this way, fostering a heart of gratitude has not only changed the moment for me…my NOW, if you will…but it has changed my hour, my day, and ultimately my LIFE!
More next time…to be continued…(I promise we are almost done!)…
Let me put it another way…God has used gratitude–something that many of us roll our eyes about and say “yeah yeah…tell me something NEW” over…to make me my natural God-given size! SO THERE! How is that for a sales pitch? 🙂 Over the top? Here is the continued message (transcript sort of) that I shared on retreat with ladies from my church. They weren’t all Thin Within’ers so I am modifying it for those that may visit this blog… ======
This takes me to the “Tale of Two Grandmas.”
Grandma #1 was in her 80s, she had a leg amuptated, moved to a nursing home to live the rest of her days (and she knew it at the time), but she consistently chose to focus on the Lord and what HE had in mind for this situation.
She chose, moment by moment to MAGNIFY God. To make HIM the biggest thing in her life. She knew that God still had a plan for her in her new situation. Rather than magnify her physical pain, the fact that her husband lived elsewhere, how hard it was to learn to get around without two legs, the hollering of a patient in a nearby room or the smells from across the hall, she chose to ask the Lord what HE wanted her mission on this earth to be. God wasn’t done with her yet and she knew it and relished it!
So, she chose to learn Spanish! She wanted a way of connecting with the employees and many of them were Spanish speaking–they would help her learn Spanish and she would, in turn, teach them about the love of her Savior through her words, actions, and attitudes. People loved being with Grandma #1…all her days. She magnified the Lord and others saw him through her.
Grandma #2 is also in her 80s. She is in relatively good health–both legs in tact. But she has made the opposite choice–like I did on those Sundays at church and like Korah–to magnify everything that isn’t “perfect” in her estimation. The food isn’t tasty enough where she lives, there aren’t enough special speakers and events to stimulate her mind, and there are too many inconveniences. She magnifies these things and this leads to depression. She is convinced that moving is the only solution.
Sometimes…catch this one…bad choices happen all because of things we focus on. What we magnify often motivates actions…My husband and I wanted to move, get a new job, change churches…the truth was, nothing was wrong with any of those things…or not enough to make a huge decision! We were magnifying things that bothered us and allowing them to get bigger and bigger until they were reason enough for making life changing decisions! Just like Grandma #2. Just like Korah–the course of his life was changed by allowing rebellious thoughts to become rebellious actions…
Discontentment, allowed to breed unhindered in our lives, results in actions that we regret…maybe immediately, maybe over the long haul.
