Obsessed with lights, reflections, and shadows, my golden retriever, Daisy, slams herself into the wall as I open the back door. The sun has just risen above the hill in the distance and Daisy is convinced that the prey animals–squirrels, perhaps–scamper a mass exodus on the facing wall, reflections moving in synchronization with the door. She earnestly assaults the wall to stop the invasion.
Never deterred by the obvious pointlessness of her behavior, the beliefs she possesses drive her to pursue the illusive prey.
Sometimes, she tries to “control” her urges. Body still…alert, watching, quivering…yet seemingly resolved to “leave it,” when, suddenly, she flings herself into the wall yet again, overcome by the urge that has ruled her for her seven years of life. Daisy has never successfully captured a reflection. Why she keeps at this behavior, one can only guess.
I wish I could explain that reflections have no substance and thinking differently is necessary in order to be victorious over the impulses she faces. I would expose the fact that believing the lies keeps her stuck in destructive and futile behavior.
Can you identify with Daisy? Do you keep slamming into a wall but feel like you accomplish nothing?
I wonder if you, like Daisy, might benefit from thinking differently.
My focus in the pages I have written here since 2006 has clearly been on the “success” that you will experience (losing weight) if you eat when you are hungry and stop when you are no longer hungry. Whether implied or stated explicitly, I have asserted that you will experience the physical transformation seen in my pictures (down the sidebar and elsewhere on this site)–that you will “release” all your extra weight and keep most, if not all, of it off your body permanently. That if you eat “0 to 5” and go to God for all the other reasons you are tempted to eat, you will be transformed!
This IS true, but this is only PART of the truth! Believing that 0 to 5 eating will physically transform you without incorporating the whole picture can actually perpetuate discouragement and, even, captivity. Without the context of a renewed mind, changed thinking, and new beliefs, 0 to 5 eating is just another diet.
I know some of you are dealing with this. You have done everything. You feel like Thin Within is a last hope. And some of you have tried TW, “released” weight, regained it, tried it again, lost weight, gained it again…and you find you are on another figurative treadmill…only now feeling more hopeless than before. I really believe this is the same behavior that Daisy’s reflection madness illustrates for us. We could restrain her externally, but true lasting change has to come from some place deeper. Somehow, she needs a new belief about reflections on the wall. Perhaps we need new beliefs about food, our bodies, about weight and about God!
We need to stop slamming into walls chasing something illusive! Maybe what we keep chasing is serving only to distract us from what is really worthy of pursuit.
I propose that we turn a new direction. I hope you will go with me down this new road. Instead of chasing lights on the wall, I want to chase hard after God. I want to pursue a transformed heart and a renewed mind. I don’t want to settle for a change in my body–I don’t want YOU to settle for that! Or for the promise that we think having a smaller body will offer us when SO MUCH MORE is offered by our great and generous God who lavishes grace and mercy on us so freely!
I want nothing less than God very God, breathing his life into me and through me. I want to sense his presence so powerfully, that it is palpable. I want to invite him to expose lies that I believe in a new way…not just if the truth feels better than the lie I have believed. Sometimes the lie feels good, even more “truthful” than the truth! That is why we grab at it. It is familiar. But nevertheless a lie.
I want to rebuke any lies that somehow whisper comfort and solace to me when I desperately long for it and there seems to be none forth coming. I want to be willing to stand cold, alone, bare before my God and trust him that if I am exposed and left standing it is for very good and perfect reasons.
Let’s stop slamming into the walls, led astray by what we are so convinced is true. Let’s take time to pause and consider together. Over the next weeks and months, I hope to do that here. And you are invited to join me.
Was there anything that I shared in this blog post that resonated or rang true for you? Won’t you share with me what that was/is?
