Leaving the familiar behind is uncomfortable, even painful. Stepping out into the unknown requires a huge leap of faith. When we dare to try Thin Within or to venture toward some other “intuitive eating” approach to managing our health (food, eating and size), this leap of faith is definitely required. We have relied upon the tools of scales, calorie (or point) counters, food labels and bathroom scales all our lives. The thought of leaving all of those tools behind is counter-intuitive, certainly! God’s invitation to trust him as we step forward into the unknown comes with a lot of uncertainty. What guarantees do we have? Only that he will show us what he has in mind…in his way and in his time.

Last week, I had a tennis match scheduled early in a town a 60 minute drive away (when there is no traffic). Warm-up time was 8:30am, so, to account for the traffic on the main highway and the plan to stop for a quick breakfast, I left at 6:30am (I am a tennis die-hard!). Conditions where I live in Cool, California,  definitely weren’t ideal for a tennis match:

Everything indicated I was a nut to leave the warmth and dryness of my home to make this trek for a tennis match that might not even happen! The sky threatened to unload even more rain on an already saturated world. I had yet to receive a call or email from my team captain indicating the match was cancelled. I had a decision to make: Would I go against what made sense, travel the distance, battle the traffic, risking the possibility it might be for nothing and the match  cancelled after I got an hour down the road? If I waited to leave, hoping for the cancellation call, what if it didn’t come? I might risk being late and possibly bring my team a default! NOT a good idea. So, I resolutely packed my car with my tennis gear and started down the highway, wondering if I would end up turning around.

About 15 minutes from home, I wondered…maybe this wasn’t so futile after all!

The distant horizon seemed to breathe a bit of a promise. But in the foothills, these things can be deceptive. Would the journey be worth it? 

As I got on the highway about 20 minutes from my home, it was clear that the worst of the weather was behind me, but I still wasn’t convinced! Not until I got farther down the highway.

By the time I drove past Sacramento (a good 40+ miles from my house), if I looked behind me, I could see why I had wondered, but going forward…there were barely any clouds in the sky! Once to my destination town, I couldn’t believe the springlike conditions!

Having stopped for a quick bite to eat within 15 minutes of my destination, I received a text from another player on the team who lives near me in the foothills. She hadn’t left her home yet and it was, in fact, pouring rain on her end of the line. “I assume the match is cancelled?” I responded with a text joking that the opposing team might think we were nuts for even wondering given that there wasn’t a cloud in the sky down in the valley! Hard to believe that the photo above was taken just an hour and a half after I left my home where the sky was so dark and everything so wet!

Although there was no rain and the match wasn’t cancelled, we did have to do battle with extreme wind. I thought one of my teammates was going to be blown right off the court! It wasn’t for the faint of heart and I, unfortunately, lost my match in a third set tiebreaker.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if the faith required to leave the warmth of my home that morning wasn’t at least somewhat similar to what we are called to when we feel God leading us to let go of all our diets, dieting paraphernalia, beliefs about food and body weight and to join him on an adventure to trust him with our body’s signals…to eat when we sense a physical sensation of hunger, stop when we are no longer hungry, to eat foods that are “normal” and enjoyable to us and to be sensitive to the many other reasons that we feel drawn to food, going to God to have that “heart hunger” satisfied instead.

I wonder if “leaving and going” to the “land” that God has for us might not be rewarded with “almond blossoms and blue skies” like I was as I left home last Tuesday.

The return trek back to the familiar after my tennis match looked pretty unintimidating. I even had the top down in my convertible!

And by the time I was here:

…it was clear I needed to pull over and put the convertible top back up. Sure enough, I was heading back to the familiar…back to the dark, dreary, wetness.

I want to encourage you…if you are uncertain about the invitation to “leave and go”–to set aside all that you “know” about food, eating, and diets, to risk, to change, to be challenged in a new adventure with “intuitive” eating…a non-diet approach…be it Thin Within or something similar…it will be worth it. There is something waiting for you that is vastly different than anything you have experienced before. It is freedom. It may take a lot of faith to keep on the road. Doubts may assail you. Everything may seem to indicate that this isn’t “intuitive” at all! But hang in there! Victory you have longed for awaits down the road!