by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 17, 2008 | Uncategorized
Some may wonder why I posted the video in the previous entry. Merely because of just how powerful a thought it is to realize that Jesus laid down His very life for me to have freedom. If it is for freedom that I have been set free by the blood of Christ, I don’t want to settle for anything less than what he paid such a high price to give to me. I won’t let go until I am sure I have squeezed every bit of what Jesus wants for me out of life!
I am still at my friend’s house in Tulsa. I will be boarding a plane tomorrow morning. I will arrive back in California at 1:30 in the afternoon–about 6 or 7 hours after I depart (when you account for the time difference).
What awaits me in California has been hollering at me in email all week…
Mom Stuff.
Do any of you have an elderly Mom–with whom you may have had a tumultuous relationship growing up? Do you have a Mom who tries you? Who is, perhaps, a bit senile, maybe rude, very very needy and for whom you must bend over backwards?
My Mom is 83 and has been having a rough go of things the past couple of weeks. But it seems like all pandemonium has broken loose since I left. Thing is…this is the same Mom who is referred to in my testimony shared here in these pages. God has worked forgiveness in me, but it still tries me to the brink to deal with some of the things she brings on.
Most of the time, no…it is blessedly sweet, given our history.
But then there are other times.
So I go home, knowing that I may walk *into* a situation where my “flesh machinery” often kicks into gear. “Mom Stuff…” – dealing with my elderly Mom, the emotions that rage when feelings plague me that were birthed in my very dysfunctional childhood.
I know that the same King and Lord who chose to go to the cross for me infuses each moment I choose to set aside my will and my way with His blessing. Just knowing that I am serving my Mom…well, it is one of the rare moments I can choose to be like Jesus who gave himself for all mankind…even while we were yet sinners. To demonstrate so great a love.
So, I will return home prepared for what will hit–the flesh machinery that seems to lure me, draw me, to food when I am not hungry. I will resist and pray my way through knowing that if He could lay down his life for me (as one friend says), I know I can lay down food that I want when I am not hungry for Him no matter how strong the emotional pull.
I know through experience now that food will not make the agitation go away, but will only serve to make me more agitated, more irritable, more moody…not less. If I can walk through the coming trials with joy I am sure that I will experience “soaring on wings of eagles.” If I choose to wait on the Lord instead of rushing face first into a hot fudge sundae I know joy will be in that place…joy that lasts…
That is my plan.
by Heidi Bylsma | Mar 9, 2008 | Uncategorized
Have you ever been blindsided? Out of nowhere comes something that throws you into emotional turmoil and you don’t even realize it until some internal (and maybe external) damage has been done?
Today I am thankful that God redeems these things…these things that I could so easily call “failure.”
You know, some have told me in email that I am a “poster child” for Thin Within…that they “admire” me and “look up” to me. Gosh, please don’t feel that way. Being in the limelight declaring God’s praises and what He has done in me physically has also put me on the front line of assault by the enemy. And, frankly, I am not always willing to stand firm and fight. Sometimes I am not willing to resist. Sometimes, I cave BIG time.
And sometimes…I simply am…well…a FRAUD. 
Last Thursday afternoon, I found myself in the earliest stages of spirtual assault. Blindsided. I had no idea it was going to hit. In fact, in my pride, I had been arrogantly presuming “Hmmph…with the change in weather, and being more active, with my hunger signals being fewer and farther between, any fat I may possibly have left on my body will evaporate! This has gotten so easy….” 
Oh yes…so easy…
Interestingly enough, at the same time I was blindsided, I had chosen to begin to deal (yet again) with a MAJOR stronghold in my life–diet soda. Whether it be diet soda with caffeine or without makes no matter to me. I LOVE bubbles and I LOVE the SWEET taste of diet soda. I was willing to lay down Oreo milkshakes for a season, but dump the diet soda? NO WAY!
In the past year, I had found one particular diet drink that eclipsed all the others…by leaps and bounds in fact…The taste of this drink is UNSURPASSED (I will NOT tell you what it is, as, after having done that with one friend, she now blames ME for her addiction! 
). To willingly set it aside…for WATER??? Yuck..no way! Or that is how I felt about it until I practically evaluated what it will be like to travel for a week (I leave on the 12th) and then another week in April and HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO have my special stash of diet soda with me. Talk about being in captivity! In fact, I wasn’t even MOTIVATED by the conviction in my heart put there by the Lord. I kept ignoring that…it wasn’t until I fathomed how *embarassed* I would be if I *had* to have my diet soda the entire time I am visiting my friend…that I was willing to try to change. Sad, huh? 
I have known for YEARS that this was a stronghold. At times I have “dealt with it.” Only to return like a dog to my vomit.
In the past year, however, I have been increasingly convicted that all the diet soda I drink (and you would NOT believe how much I can pack away!) is actually the SAME problem as the problem that got me obese in the first place. Here I am proclaiming across the internet and to anyone who will let me spout off about it in person, that God has redeemed me, freed me, and given me a new relationship with food and my body…and with Him! But MEANWHILE those same sensual indulgences that led me to eat too much food, have been causing me to suck down literally over 100 ounces of diet soda a day on some days! (More often, not quite that much, but the point remains!)
Ok, so when the bible says “All things are permissible…” is it talking about drinking so much diet soda that you could surrender yourself as a human laboratory rat to any scientist wanting to know the effects of over-indulgence of aspartame? Think about it! YIKES! 
I was overwhelmingly convicted by 2 Corinthians 7:1:
Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
What are some things that contaminate my body? I know for a fact that nutrasweet is not innocuous. If you dare, visit this site. While the author(s) may or may not be Christian, take what is there, research some more and submit it to God. Yikes. I won’t even do that! I just know that I have this gut feeling (conviction) that enough aspartame to call myself a human lab rat has GOT to be “contaminating” my body and the stronghold is contaminating my spirit.
If I am honest…I have used diet soda “help” me “cope” with letting go of food! It has been my “pacifier.” So how much have I really let go of food if I have been clinging ALL THE MORE to diet soda for the same reason that I was clinging to food? I have to remember…food isn’t the enemy. It is my sensual indulgences that are the problem. Unrestrained, anyhow…
In my defense, I have been a soda addict (on and off…mostly on) since college, when a well-meaning study buddy showed me how to guzzle down enough Diet Dr. Pepper to make it through our Botany test prep all night marathons…So it hasn’t been JUST since November of 2006 when I began applying myself to living the principles that God uses Thin Within to teach.
I have gotten way off track of what I wanted to share with you – this has become about diet soda and not about what I intended to write about. I will change plans and go with God in this…
Is the Lord nudging you to join with me in trying to stop drinking diet soda? Ok…reducing your consumption? And those of you doing the “Crystal Light” thing instead…you aren’t off the hook! Same same! Or coffee with sweetener! Tea with sweetener! Do ou know that while you may be doing that which is technically “permissible” (there are no “Thou Shalt Nots” in scripture about drinking coffee, tea, soda OR aspartame!), do you feel convicted that it isn’t beneficial…that you cling to it…like I do…that it is a STRONGhold that is ground God wants you to surrender to HIM? Oh, my heart grieves that I have withheld this from Him so much over the years! And I fear that I will yet return to it, even once I am “successful” now! YIKES!
You see, even though the verse says “purify ourselves from” which implies to be RID of it, I can’t really fathom never having another sip of a diet soda ever again. Even now, I am in the weaning stages of it. I want to make sure I don’t have to have caffeine to make it through my day first. I know God is taking my heart and shaping it and forming it to be more and more willing. Well, I need someone to suffer with me! I hope you might consider offering this to God, too. Any time I insist that it is my right to have something SWEET, it is my conviction that I am demonstrating that I am yet mastered by something OTHER than God!!!!
I have actually been using diet soda to “reward” myself for saying no to food outside of 0 and 5! I feel like all is well if I have my diet soda to enjoy…oh, Lord, forgive me for not allowing YOU to be that comfort.
I guess I will write about homeschooling in California and unexpected fat machinery another time…tomorrow. For now…what will we do about this in our lives? What will I do? I may be giving God my “feet” right now. But my heart is NOT into this. I want to WANT to give this to him…
And to those of you who have been following my journey…will you please forgive me for being a fraud? Maybe not with food. But with the same things…my taste buds. I haven’t surrendered them to God if I still insist on having my way in any respect 100% of the time as I have with drinking diet soda. I really need your forgiveness. I praise God that I have His.
by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 29, 2007 | Blog
The horse dream ended up in a very real way being a nightmare—God continued to shut down everything to which I looked for satisfaction but Him (including my horses!). I stopped riding due to challenges the horses faced (the one in the picture wasn’t even 5 yet and came totally lame…surgery was required…he is only 9 now and is retired). Between that and my escalating weight (again), I stopped riding. This was a heartache as well.
God was insistent. Gentle, yes, but insistent. Would I look to Him? Or would I continue to resist His call?
In the fall of 2006, I got involved in an online Christian horse owner’s list. I wanted to fellowship with other believers who loved and were owned by 🙂 horses. I guess the group owner “Googled” my name and found out about my involvement with Thin Within.
The internet is an amazing place. We can be whoever or whatever we want independent of how we look. In real life, had this woman seen me, she might have been very polite and never even mentioned a “Christian diet book” to me given I carried 100 (or so) extra pounds—even if I “helped write” it! But, not having seen me, she didn’t know I didn’t practice what I preached…And innocently asked me about it. She had no idea that this was something from my past—or was it?
She was a tool in God’s hands to flush me out of hiding!
In fact, she asked me to lead the horse group members through an online study of the Thin Within book. Good grief! God was actually pursuing me! Rather than interpret it as indicative of His great love, I felt trapped. 🙁 And a bit annoyed.
Not willing to be Jonah and run the other way, however, I went along with it. After all, no one had to know the truth–that I was almost as big as ever and didn’t give a flying fig about surrendering this to God…right?
I am sure that precious woman didn’t have a clue how God was using her. She may have only known that she and others in the group wanted to lose weight (or, at the very least, make it through the holidays without gaining) and Thin Within was a “Christian diet” (or so they thought—it isn’t at all, but they didn’t know that yet).
It is funny how the Lord works things out.
Early in November 2006, I began to share lessons about Thin Within on the Christian horseman’s list. Getting to know the group, I also shared the video of Daniel and Dodger.
In response to that, I discovered that a young mom of a four year old boy…who had been diagnosed with the same autism spectrum disorder as my Daniel—Asperger’s Syndrome—was also present on the list! When we began to talk about our sons—hers only 4 years of age and mine 14 years old—we shared and talked and shared and talked some more. I had walked this road 10 years ahead of her…and God used her earnest questions to soften my heart some more. There were times when I would come through an email exchange in tears…both at the pain I had touched upon in my own life in order to reach out to her, but also with joy that the years of heartache had an outlet…a positive one.
God showed me again…He spins straw to gold if we allow it.
The question was, would I yet continue to resist that God is God? Could HE use me in some way to encourage another about her child’s autism?
How ironic…I found that, in spite of myself, I did have encouragement to offer her. If nothing else, I could share pitfalls to avoid, blessings to rejoice in…and as I shared with her, I found that God was redeeming many years of pain, years of resentment that He chose to make my son autistic, years of feeling God’s “cold shoulder.” I began to consider that God had much more tenderness toward me, and toward Daniel, than I realized.
As I shared daily in just two short weeks with the online horse group about Thin Within, God continued to melt my heart…this time, combining the awareness of the truth about Thin Within with his gentle nudge to look at all the areas of my life I had yet to surrender or to surrender…again.
Because of what I learned in 2001, I knew forgiveness of others, of myself and, even of God, was an important factor. I knew that, if nothing else, it would help clear the air in my life and lift burdens I was carrying needlessly.
Not so nearly the huge undertaking it had been in 2001, I was able to move forward quickly.
Early on, a song came on KLOVE radio that echoed the stirrings in my heart for the first time in a number of years:
You are my desire,
no one else will do….
help me find a way,
bring me back to you…
You’re all I want.
You’re all I ever needed.
You’re all I want. Help me know you are here.
God was making a way in the wilderness…and a way to bring me back to Him. That song was like a healing ointment applied to my heart, softening it. God gently peeled back the callus…and the heart beneath was tender.
Another song ministered to me deeply– “He’s My Son” by Mark Schultz. God used that song to show me that He was, indeed, aware of my heartache and pain. He reminded me that He, too, gave up His Son…only He gave His Son over to sinful man. He was not asking me to do that. He asked me to trust my only son to HIM—to the Lord. To let God be God.
As if to confirm what He was showing me in the stillness of my quiet times with him, another song came on the radio while I was driving through the canyon near our home:
God is God and I am not
I can only see a part
of the picture He’s painting
God is God and I am man
So I’ll never understand it all
For only God is God
God showed me unmistakably that he cares, that he is here, that he is making a way, even when I see no possible way for that to happen. He IS doing a new thing, even when I don’t perceive it.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19
He is faithful to complete that which He has begun (Philippians 1:6). I had allowed my vision to be blurred by bitterness and fear. As these blinders came off, I could begin to see the truth. Truth sets me free (John 8:32)—The truth that He loves, He cares, He is involved…He calls to me, to you. He beckons to us to draw near to His love…so great a love. So unfathomable, in fact, that we may miss it.
I challenge you, dear reader…believe Him for the truth. He says the truth is that He IS doing a new thing. Will you choose to believe God? To believe what He says?
Tomorrow, I promise 🙂 the close of this lengthy testimony.
by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 28, 2007 | Uncategorized
In the Fall of 2002, my family and I moved to the country to fulfill a life-long dream I had of owning horses. All the work of preparing the land, fences, including the moving of tons of rock (literally) by hand caused me to work my tail off (literally) outside. When we moved, I weighed in at 230 pounds. But I quickly began to shed extra weight primarily because I was working outside so hard. The physical demands being placed on my body were more than the amount of food I was putting in, so I began to shed weight relatively quickly. I deceived myself into thinking I was now applying the TW principles. I got down to 170 lbs, patted myself on the back and arrogantly reconnected with folks at Thin Within, including the Hallidays.
I again began to write articles for Thin Within’s ThinLine magazine. A few pieces were published, but, honestly…they were devoid of heart. I wasn’t living the message, and this time God wasn’t going to let me get away with not living the truth. It wasn’t about weight. It was about my heart which I continued to withhold.
I should have gotten the hint when a piece I wrote on the Abundant Life didn’t make the cut for the magazine. In my arrogance and pride, I refused to see what God was saying. I even tried participating in online support groups, but these experiences, too, were cold–devoid of heart for me. My heart was rock solid—frozen…HARD. I wanted God to snap me out of it, but He was calling me to live according to the truth that He had already revealed to me. He had done so much for me…and yet I continued to insist that He do more. I was not yet willing to make the hard choices.
I still hadn’t surrendered food and eating to the Lord. I definitely hadn’t surrendered my son’s autism…and it continued to be a heartache to me.
Not only that, but issues with my mother intensified at that time, causing even more bitterness—reopening the wounds that God had done so much healing of in the summer of 2001. Unfortunately, rather than apply what I knew to be true—that I needed to keep short accounts and walk in forgiveness moment by moment—I stored up bitterness. The wedge intensified, not only in my relationships with people (including my mother), but also in my relationship with the Lord.
I chose not to deal with this at its root—a big mistake.
God used the horses to minister to my soul and to Daniel’s. Below is a video showing a special connection between Daniel and our formerly abused mustang, Dodger. In the video, you can see where my weight had gotten. That wasn’t even my heaviest…it was on its way down! I wrote about the special connection Daniel and Dodger had and that piece was published in the Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul Volume 2.
As the big outside work projects were completed, the winter began and my body was no longer called on to do as much physical labor outside, the weight began to pour back on. The truth was evident. I hadn’t dealt with the heart issue…my heart was still chained to food—as if there had been any doubt! Shame intensified again…and I once again withdrew from friends that might remind me of the Thin Within message.
Stubborn. Rebellious.
It wasn’t that I didn’t *know* what to do! I knew all right. But I remained content (in a manner) with my arrogance and pride, refusing to surrender. I got angrier and angrier at the Lord.
My blood pressure had become an issue even while I was thinner and more active—before we had moved. Now it was off the charts and I needed more medication to manage it. I would fall asleep at night wondering if I would wake up or have a stroke and die in my sleep…or a heart attack. We live on the side of a steep hill and three times a day I went out to spread hay all over the hillside for the horses…and there were times I wondered if I would keel over down there and how long it would be before my family would notice that I hadn’t come back in…and I would be out there dead in my tracks. 🙁 You know…that isn’t the abundant life that Jesus came and died to give to me. And it is NO way to “live.”
In late 2005, when I reread an email I had sent off to my sister in an emotional frenzy, I was shocked at the absolute hatred I verbalized for our mother. God used that to knock me soundly upside the head. I was shocked at what I had become. Not just physically…but inside, too! After all the “forgiveness work” I had done in 2001, what had happened? It was a reflection of the deterioration of my heart that was visible outwardly in what I had allowed my body to become as well.
God used that exposure and a series of events to begin to peel away the hard callus over my heart. My Mom ended up in incredible emotional and physical need. God used this to show me what “faith choices” really were. I could step out in faith and choose with an act of my will to do that which I didn’t FEEL like doing. I discovered, as I stepped out in faith and believed Him for what He wanted to do, that my heart softened to my Mom who had so great a need for the first time in her life.
This was a difficult time as I lost my Mother-in-Law with whom I was incredibly close. In a very real way, Phyllis had been the godly loving Mom I had never known in my own biological mom. She was a prayer warrior who loved Jesus and she was my best friend even before I met her son :-). To lose her at the same time that my own Mom needed me—I knew it was no accident.
God had greater things in store.
Part 6 of Heidi’s TW testimony is here
by Heidi Bylsma | Dec 24, 2007 | Uncategorized
In the summer of 2001, I began to work through the material in the Thin Again book. (This is NOT the Thin Within book, as the Christian version of that wasn’t published until 2002.)
I had read through Thin Again, but hadn’t processed the questions at the end of each chapter. I knew God was calling me to take time to allow him to heal me. There were reasons that I struggled with this cycle of eating, gaining, pulling myself up by my bootstraps and dieting, losing a lot of weight, only to start the cycle again. By insisting that it was all about my rebellious choice to sin (something that I felt WDW taught in error), I hadn’t dealt with some root issues.
God used the summer of 2001 to walk me through the valley of the shadow of death. I discovered that at the root of my tendency to overeat was bitterness, anger, lack of forgiveness. Many might not understand how these things could be attached to overeating. Throughout my life, I had experienced abuse and early on I had taken on some coping mechanisms for that. I had to own my responsibility for choosing behaviors that didn’t honor God, yes, but I began to see that there were underlying reasons this was something so challenging for me.
God gently but firmly led me to face into all the wrongs done to me…I journaled each and every occurrence of anything that I could think of that had wounded my heart. From my earliest years to just moments ago. Some might say this is self-indulgent. All I know is that God led me to do this. He led me to journal specifically that I CHOOSE TO FORGIVE EACH AND EVERY ONE. He led me to make this leap of faith…that he would enable me to do it.
In this, there was great healing. Because I chose with every painful memory to journal how each offense made me feel, I cried my way through that summer finding comfort and rest only in the arms of the Lord. Choosing to forgive, however, was like unlocking the shackles that had held me.
God used a Thin Again friend I had made in a Yahoo group to help me to go through this process…something that Thin Again calls “unwrapping grave clothes.” This precious sister was there to pray me through this process, to hold me accountable for pressing on, to spur me on to love now in the present, to continue to choose to forgive, even as I faced into past wrongs.
In all of this, I also had to choose to forgive myself for sins I had committed against others, against myself, against God. I know that 1 John 1:9 says that if we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of ALL unrighteousness, but somehow, I managed to resent MYSELF. I even resented God! Not only did I need to choose to let God be God (“forgive” him, in a sense), but I had to confess that arrogance to him as well.
As you can see, this is a multi-layered issue…thus the imagery of unwrapping graveclothes like when Lazarus stepped forth from the grave when Jesus raised him from the dead. The Lord was raising ME from the grave of past wrongs, bitterness, lack of forgiveness…and I needed the help of others to unwrap the graveclothes just as Lazarus did before I could experience the life that Jesus intended.
God did an amazing work through this. He established a truth in my life for me that I couldn’t deny. Almost without question, even now 12 years later when I revert to “that which I do not want to do is that which I do” with regards to eating, it almost always indicates that I am feeling wounded and am in need of forgiving someone. During that summer, I learned just how powerful choosing to forgive really is.
Today, if I struggle with rebellious eating, my current accountability partner knows to ask me “Who do you need to forgive?” It is a powerful truth in my life that bitterness, wounding, and lack of forgiveness are directly connected with overeating.
You can probably do the math, however. If I learned that in the summer of 2001, how was I at 250 pounds five years later–in the summer of 2006 when my “before” picture was taken? 🙂
More on that the next time…
Part 3 of Heidi’s TW Testimony is here…
