Hi, everyone!
As always, God’s timing is impeccable. I weighed myself this morning and was delighted that the outrageous goal weight I had hoped to reach by day 30 is a mere 3 pounds off!! If that isn’t a God thing, I don’t know what is.
But then I noticed that I got a little too concerned…my thinking shifted–*that* fast. I went from gratitude to concern. NOT ok. That makes it more about weight. It isn’t about weight at all!
So, as I opened my book to day 24, that was where my mind was.
On page 257, after reading some good stuff :-), I was asked to answer this question: “What must I do to complete the restoration project God has begun in me?”
God led me to respond by saying: “I need to keep my focus on Him, keep exalting Him, desire to know Him. When my focus becomes me, my weight, my size, or if people notice and comment, that will derail me.
I must focus on being thankful to the Lord and not feed my ego. It hasn’t been ME! That is so patently obvious! Church is one place where I see people who might say things to me to stroke my ego. I don’t want to even go there. Today, I will intentionally wear a big baggy sweater because I don’t trust myself to receive any compliment. Not yet. The reason….in the past I lost 100 pounds with a popular commercial dieting program after my second child was born and got ego stroking all along the way–LOTS of it. When it came time to maintain, the compliments stopped coming and my ego starved…Apparently, I had made it all be about ME. I won’t make that same mistake. I rebounded and gained a lot of weight back right away back then.
This time, instead, I will foster an attitude of praise and worship to God. The simple truth is, He has done some amazing things in me. I know this more than anyone else could ever know (I know how I have lusted for food in the past and he has cured me of that, for instance). I want to keep it in my mind constantly that God is God and I am not. He is good, He is sovereign. He cares. This is *HIS* restoration project. He put it in my heart to be willing. That is His work as well.
All of these thoughts were going through my head this morning. I read these words on page 258: “We encourage you–no matter what trials or tests you endure, no matter how ‘well’ you think you are doing–to keep your focus on the one you serve. Our battle is about so much more than food. It is about the abundant life we have been given in Christ.”
God sure confirmed what I had realized he was saying to my heart! LOL!
The book then quotes “Betty” as saying this: When I realized weight loss didn’t totally hinge on how well I did the program, but was something God was doing in my life, I was able to relax. I recognized that my responsibility is to be in relationship with God and to seek His guidance.”
YES YES YES! This is the heart of all of it. That is why releasing weight is incidental! When it isn’t *about* getting thin, but is, instead, about heeding the Lord in all things, walking with Him, loving Him more and more, learning Who He is, His character and allowing Him access to my heart, my mind, all of me….the food fades from being such a focus. With diets and similar approaches of “controlling food”,” food is the focus…so much harder to deal with. But the food doesn’t need to behave. LOL! The food is innocuous. It is what *I* am fixated on that matters.
It is amazing to realize that God has removed this weight from me while giving me such amazing satisfaction in eating with my family, out at restaurants, desert foods…whatever. There has been *no* sense of “deprivation.” Much to the contrary. There has been so much more *satisfaction* than ever before!
Anyhow, on pages 260-261 there is an exercise to again re-evaluate the goals from day 3 and that were re-evaluated on day 16. This time, the reader is asked to adjust the goals and add action steps to break them down a bit more.
Never before have I been anywhere close to experiencing the realization of the goals that God led me to set in day 3. This time, however, it is happening! In today’s exercises, I enjoyed breaking down the goals a bit more and fine tuning them.
My Goal #1 is to reach a certain weight. Before, it was to “close in” on the weight. Now it simply is to get there. Wow. If it happens….well, God has already done so much. This is HIS work, not mine! The action steps I have for this goal are to keep my focus on the Lord, NOT on food or the changes physically. I want to foster a greater prayer life throughout each day and each meal. Continue to eat 0-5. Continue with moving my body because it is such fun! And another important action step is to write out things I am grateful for each day…always keeping my focus on the Lord!
Goal 2 is to continue to exercise at least 4x a week and to enjoy it. This is such fun. I use the Dance Praise program for our computer. It is a blast and it is edifying at the same time. We bought it a year ago at Christmas time and my daughter and I have loved it.
Goal 3 has to do with doing some clean up in the master bedroom and bath as it is a disaster. I have chunked this down into daily steps I will take to do this. We have company coming and want them to feel at home and comfortable in the master suite!
The thing I have really been convinced of is that I need to really focus on the Lord…foster an ongoing “pray without ceasing” sort of prayer life. I want to do this and build gratitude more into my life.
Tomorrow I will be facing an extremely stressful situation. I must drive a long way with one of my horses in the trailer (I am nervous about this) to take him to UC Davis vet clinic in the hopes of finding out what his prognosis is for a happy life. He is only 8 and miserable. I must process all of my feelings with the Lord through prayer.
Heidi
