by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 9, 2009 | Blog
As I approached chapter 3 in Thin Within, I continued my running list of God’s attributes and the way he relates to me, His child. Praising Him for these truths sooo lifts my spirit and starts my day with my focus where it belongs…on Him! I only read, studied and prayed my way through the bottom of page 31.
Before I go ANY further, I want want WANT you to know how I feel about the “goal setting” activity. THIS IS IMPORTANT! 🙂 Thus, the additional video:
Giving Glory to God is the foundational purpose for your life. (Thin Within, page 28)
Note what is NOT the foundational purpose–that of being THIN! Or of weighing 135 lbs … Or a million other things that we might tend to chase after!
If we allow God to form and shape our character, we will become more like Jesus… (Thin Within, page 28)
Truly, this should be our #1 goal and the goal through which everything else is sifted! If goals that we set and our response to our behavior about these goals keep us from becoming more like the Lord, then we have to do some serious adjustment either of our goals, how we are thinking about them, or all of the above.
Therefore, I URGE you, I BEG you…do NOT make your physical goal a number on the scale! My goal is worded this way on page 31…as I shared in the video:
“After praying about it and inviting Him to indicate His will to me, my goal for [the end of the summer] is to be able to have more wiggle room in my Levis jeans (which are currently tight). I want to be able to move in them, work in them, ride horses in them without being goosed or rubbed raw.”
This is my physical goal regarding my size. It is NOT a weight. It is not even a “size”…it is “this pair of jeans will fit this way…” more than that.
If you feel like God wants to really shrink you down in size a lot by the end of the summer, then I encourage you to word your goal differently, too. “…my goal is to be…able to sit in the airplane seat in September without a seat belt extender…” or “…to be able to shop for clothes in Nordstrom’s instead of ‘Big and Beautiful’ stores” or… “to be able to sit in the chairs at the dentist office in August, without feeling the sides pressing in on my hips uncomfortably…”
See what I mean? 🙂 PLEASE ask God if he would have you do the same. Tell us about it here, ok? 🙂
PLEASE DO NOT USE THE BATHROOM SCALE AT ALL!!! I know this is radical, but you know how I have been singing the song “Focus on the Lord Focus on the Lord?” The scale is THE BEST WAY TO STOP FOCUSING on the LORD and to focus on yourself and your supposed performance! PLEASE DON’T GO THERE! You and I both have done that before and has it served us well? NO!
For the summer, will you PLEASE do something radical? Ask a best friend to keep your bathroom scale in the garage at her house and not to give it back to you until September? Or, better, throw it away?
PLEASE!
Judy Halliday likes to say that if we put as much effort into hearkening our God-given signals on the God-given HUNGER SCALE as we do on the man-made bathroom scale, we would release any excess weight and have lives of peace and joy! The scale is a tool of condemnation and can you condemn yourself into positive change? NO WAY!
Oh, my…I really am making a BIG deal about this. I mean it!!!!! In fact, I meet with my accountability partner in just about a half an hour…I am going to walk my talk and do that very thing…ask her to take my scale and lock it in her trunk!!! I don’t want it back!
Who is WITH ME!!!
by Heidi Bylsma | Jun 6, 2009 | Blog
We are studying the book, Thin Within, by Arthur and Judy Halliday. Come on along and join us! We are doing 2 or 3 chapters each week…so you have time to get the book and dive right in. Even if you don’t do the chapters at the same time that I post here about them, you can read whenever it suits you and join in here at any time. These blog entries aren’t going anywhere. In fact, if you go way back to the beginning of this blog, you will see my study of this book from November and December of 2006! 🙂 Still there! The internet is an amazing thing.
As you read (past tense) or read (present/future tense) chapter 2, I urge you to continue your list of God’s attributes.
Everything depends on our understanding of Who He is… (page 18, Thin Within)
Before I share my continued list, let me ask you…WHY is understanding Who God is so important to our journey? Why do you think the authors make this a focus? Why do I keep harping 🙂 on it here at the blog?
So, here is my continued list…along with some other quotes I want to highlight:
- God ordained that I would be here now.
- All the challenges and wonders that life offers, he knows about.
- Nothing about my life is hidden from him.
As I was writing these things down, I was prompted by God to share with you that I definitely see myself as running from God…or running from something. I am doing this by being far too busy and over committed. I have written about this before. But I see that I need desperately to BE STILL AND KNOW that HE is GOD! In the past week, I have been reverting to old coping mechanisms and while diet soda consumption hasn’t returned to my life, I still have been depending on caffeine to get me jump started again! I share this by way of confession. It only took 4 days of not getting enough sleep and presto…here I am…So, by admitting this struggle here, I want to add to my accountability…and, perhaps, solicit prayer. It is important to me that I not just treat the symptoms…but get to the heart. To do that, I will have to be still. I have structured my life so that I feel like I can’t be still. This isn’t ok…so I have some difficult choices to make. Do I believe what I have said here and what I read in Thin Within and the Word of God about God’s character?
- God is love
- God is creative
- God created me uniquely and very specifically
- All of creation (including me) speaks of His wondrous glory
His divine imagination thought of you in eternity past and He created you especially for this space and time. All of creation, including you, speaks of his wondrous glory. (page 19, Thin Within)
- He created the starry host and vast oceans.
- He wants me to know Him.
- He wants me to be authentic before Him <–this is what I am running from, at least in part! Go figure! :-/
- God loves me.
- God reveals himself.
- He will meet and surpass any great expectations I have of Him
- He is trustworthy.
- He meets me when I am honest.
- God is compassionate and gracious
- God is slow to anger (please, let’s take note of this! :-))
- God is abounding in love and faithfulness
So what on EARTH does any of this have to do with my NEED, DESIRE, EARNESTNESS, QUEST to lose weight????? 🙂 I am so glad you asked!!!
…God…wants to be your constant companion on your journey to healing and wholeness. (page 20, Thin Within)
If you think of God as a Cosmic Killjoy, you won’t likely want to depend on him on this journey. If you think of Him as angry and mean…you are likely to feel stomped on when you have a misstep or “blow it” in some way. The truth is, our God LOVES you as you are. He doesn’t operate the way so many of us think or have been taught! We want to know him as he really is.
- God is gracious, loving and good. (Did you see this in chapter 2?) 🙂
- God is wise.
Here is one connection between why we want to know God better and our desire to see changes in our physical bodies…
Since your body is one of God’s masterpieces (and since God is all of these things that we have been listing), it can be trusted. (page 20, Thin Within)
But, again, I want to reiterate…if we continue to focus on ME ME ME, we will miss it. We really will. So the most important reason that I will continue to shout from the rooftops that we must FOCUS on the Lord is because He is most concerned about the state of our hearts, not the size of the clothes we wear. He knows that when our hearts belong to him, everything else will fall into His perfect order and place in our lives and isn’t that we want, after all?
Getting back to chapter two, then, we now turn to some of the practical aspects of Thin Within relative to food and eating.
God is trustworthy.
God made my body.
Therefore, my body is trustworthy…I need to learn to listen to the God-given cues of hunger and satisfaction.
When I do this, simply put, I glorify and honor the God of this universe (I esteem his creation and exalt Him as wise and wonderful!) and I respect myself in a way that he desires.
Over the next few months, you and I will get to know these masterpieces that the Lord has made, our bodies. Instead of fixating on them, though, we will do it with a Godward focus. We will ask HIM questions we have. We will praise HIM when we experience a breakthrough. We will depend on HIS strength, not our own. We will not give in to the temptation to beat ourselves up. That is NOT His will and grieves His tender Father’s heart. (How do you feel when you hear your child say, “I was SO stupid!”)
I urge you to prayerfully read pages 20-23 where the physiological aspects of this process are discussed. Please don’t allow this to become a diet for you by fixating on this.
To honor God, who walks with us, and who leads and directs us, we need to honor the unique and amazing body He has made especially for each of us.
I loved reading (again) the quote from Isaiah 40 on the top of page 25…God doesn’t beat me up when I am weary (as I am now). He doesn’t have one ounce of disapproval in his heart…instead, he gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Oh Lord, I am so weary and so weak right now. THANK you that I can run to you…you have promised not a “holy beating,” but to give me strength and to increase my power. You love me and accept me as I am and hope for loftier things for me than that which I settle for. Help me to run to you, to wait for you, to hope in you. To cease the striving…to trust the body you have given me. When it says it needs rest, to rest…when it needs food, to eat, when it needs water, to indulge heartily! Thank you for all your provisions. In the precious name of Jesus…Amen.
by Heidi Bylsma | May 21, 2009 | Blog
In our world, we hear the message loud and clear all the time: Thinner is better.
So, then, how can someone lose a bunch of weight, keep it off for a year and gain some back and be happy? And be ok? And have it be the right thing?
Everywhere we look, even in our Christian circles, it is conveyed to us: Weight Gain can’t possibly be a good thing…and it definitely isn’t the godly thing. :-/
I have news for you! It can TOO be godly! Weight gain can be a good thing! I have this on good authority! 🙂
While I know there will be times when I will struggle with this, and Lord knows I certainly have during the past 6 months, God has been at work inside me, through me, in spite of me. I am at so much more peace with myself and my size than I ever imagined. And I am also at peace with food and with God about all of it! (Sunday mornings do tend to wreak havoc with it a bit, but even the past couple of Sundays have been miraculously peaceful…thank you, Lord!)
I have given Him my heart in this.
That counts for something BIG! He has been doing a HUGE work in me.
God IS doing a new thing!
Strongholds and idols galore have crashed to the ground. They have been busted apart! Three years ago, I never would have imagined I would be where I am today…free. Just because I have disappointed people who have followed my story by gaining some weight back, doesn’t mean that the story has had an ungodly, sad, or failed ending! I stand here today testifying that right now, as I am TODAY, I am a testimony of God’s grace and his amazing rescue!
To those who think that “Heidi used to be an example of success on Thin Within. Now she is just like everyone else who has tried it. She has failed. She has gained weight back…”
I say this…
HEY! Listen up! I was outside of God’s will being owned by the strongholds of diet soda and caffeine, a certain size body and the scale! I clung to the scale to prove I had value and worth to “justify” that I was TOO still godly! GOOD GRIEF! No! Don’t buy this lie! I went to the scale for my worth…even though I hid that fact from many I talked with on the Thin Within forums, in person, and in email. (I wasn’t completely honest…I really WAS owned by the scale…even more than I realized at the time…) And I constantly had a diet soda in my hand…CONSTANTLY. That is bondage! That isn’t godliness.
I was obsessed by my body, my looks, my clothes and stifled by fear that everything upon which I was fixated would vanish.
Please hear me, my blog family. 🙂 You are dear to me! Know this! While my “Super Duper Thin Within Woman” cape is torn and my crown tarnished ;-), while I have fallen from a pedestal in many ways…this weight gain is NOT indicative of any of that. FAR FROM IT!
In fact, get this…I believe that this weight is actually an award of victory…that pronounces that God is king over areas of my life that were not surrendered to him while I was struggling to maintain such a low weight on my frame.
Please know this, too….I enjoy DAILY accountability with a partner who is one of the best gifts God has ever given me. My goal continues to be to honor the Lord and glorify him with my eating and drinking every moment of the day. I shoot for 0 to 5 eating–and am not perfect, but I continue to live out the patterns I have established over the last two and a half years.
And I stay off the scale. COMPLETELY.
Additionally, I am gloriously free from caffeine headaches if I don’t have soda constantly…I can honestly say, THIS IS A GIFT FROM GOD!
My friends…this IS that to which God has called me! I am enjoying experiencing the reality of his promises!
It is hard to post this so blatantly. I mean…someone would ask…”If you are so free, then why the weight gain?” Well, I have to say it again…the size I was before was NOT God’s “natural God-given size” for me! Why would I want to do whatever it takes to be something he doesn’t call me to be? Caffeine is a drug! How would people feel if I had taken amphetamines to be thin and finally admitted it!? They would likely feel compassion for my admission and celebrate my “coming clean” –they might even understand the weight gain, perhaps.
Why not in this case?
I am convinced that my “natural God-given size” is closer to where I am than where I was. And it is ok! I have gone ahead and purchased new jeans in one size up…and have gotten out some of my old clothes that I had celebrated putting away…I now celebrate that I feel ok about needing another size.
I am ok with this. I mean, if I still need to feel good about things, I can look at it this way…I have released 80-85 pounds and a truckload of strongholds. God has worked this in me.
I am praising him! I hope you will praise him along with me!
God really IS doing a new thing!
by Heidi Bylsma | May 4, 2009 | Blog
Mean Church Lady told me about 5 years ago that I was hiding the glory of God in my life by gaining weight. I hate to admit I was flattened by her assessment. No one really has the “right” to say that “God’s glory is hindered” by another person’s weight. Certainly the enemy’s voice straight from the pit of hell was given voice and skin that day. It has messed with my head ever since.
I am not the only one that Mean Church Lady has evaluated…Someone I know was told by Mean Church Lady that she needed to consider having a breast reduction surgery.
This same Mean Church Lady was sure to hand out all kinds of approving comments as I released the weight. How kind of her to let me know that I had her approval. :-/ A part of me thrilled to it…a sort of “in your face” to Mean Church Lady…but I never should have bought into that at all….it feeds all the yucky stuff in me.
So…well, can you see where this is going? Mean Church Lady is so willing to offer approval or not based on appearance…so what would Mean Church Lady say now? I figure it is a matter of time before she says something to me now. Each week she is there…and I am confident that each week her magnifying lens scrutinizes every aspect of my body… heavy sigh.
Ok…so why do I care? Mean Church Lady needs to take a flying leap! Why does God allow Mean Church Ladies, anyhow?
When I really step back and consider Mean Church Lady’s approach to life and to other people, my heart is stirred by compassion. Someone(s) very significant in Mean Church Lady’s existence, no doubt, emphasized performance and appearance…withheld their approval of her based on her appearance. It really is sad. Maybe she still feels that lack of acceptance. 🙁
Mean Church Lady may not have ever known the total joy and peace of resting in God’s embrace based completely on what Christ has done for her (which is something I have moments of…and hope to experience more and more…it is a process…).
Mean Church Lady may be under so much self-imposed pressure from her own sense that she needs to perform or achieve and look a certain way to be acceptable that evaluating others based on the same standards is just a natural extension of the junk she struggles with in her own life.
I turned to chapter 2 in The Search For Significance again this morning in preparation for meeting with my accountability partner tomorrow. It was balm for my soul, given Mean Church Lady was at church again yesterday (she rarely misses)…I see her each week from the platform as I play guitar and sing on the worship team. The Lord has been teaching me to focus on his presence during that hour at church each week. That I have an audience of ONE and that ONE has declared me 100% acceptable. He delights over me and receives my praise and worship no matter what my size or what I am going through. Like I said, it is a process. When you have focused on the approval of others all your life, shifting to receiving the truth of God’s limitless and unconditional love and acceptance isn’t “natural!” It is TRUTH, though!
Isn’t it amazing that we turn to others who have a perspective as limited and darkened as our own to discover our worth! Rather than relying on God’s steady, uplifting reassurance of who we are, we depend on others who base our worth on our ability to meet their standards. Because our performance and ability to please others so dominate our search for significance, we have difficulty recognizing the distinction between our real identity and the way we behave, a realization crucial to understanding our true worth. Our true value is based not on our behavior [or size] or the approval of others but on what God’s Word says is true of us. The Search for Signficiance – McGee – page 19
by Heidi Bylsma | Apr 30, 2009 | Blog
In March, I journaled my way through chapter 8 of Get Thin Stay Thin, formerly published as Thin Again and Silent Hunger. My accountability partner and I met together and discussed these pages as we did the rest of the book. There is just too much good stuff in that book, not to continue sharing the rest of it here at the blog!
Five Things to Consider When Making a Choice About What and When to Eat:
1.) Consider your motivation. Is it food that I really need? Or am I trying to satisfy a fleshly appetite while attempting to avoid dealing with some emotion or conflict?
“I can satisfy my silent hunger only by turning to God.” (Page 175)
2.) Notice the way I think. If I’m not hungry, I may be operating out of old habits and patterns. What unworkable beliefs or conditioned responses are in operation?
3.) Evaluate my daily lifestyle.
Perhaps your internal emotional state is so frenzied that you keep yourself in perpetual motion to avoid the Spirit prompting you to stillness. (GTST page 177)
This is incredible to me today…over a month after I wrote this quote in my journal. Just moments ago during my quiet time, this thought came to me from another source (by John Eldredge) and God whispered to my spirit that my busy-ness this week (which is way out of control–more than most weeks) is precisely this very thing…an attempt to outrun the call to be still and know that God is God…to wait on him. There is something he wants to address deep within me…why do I run?
4.) Be vigilant and pray.
You are in the process of taking every thought and choice captive to Christ. This involves attentiveness to your old ways of thinking and behaving. It involves a willingness to be honest with yourself and with God as you go to him in prayer… (GTST, page 177)
When you invite God to enter your life and allow his will to intervene and govern your attitudes and choices, you will be blessed in all areas of your life–body, mind and spirit. (GTST, page 177)
5.) Continue to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Having just spent time here at the computer, I think I will go be still with the Lord. The frenzied pace I have been keeping can’t be his will. I was convicted that my evaluation of how life is going is how little I have on my schedule that I dread. Good grief! That isn’t the abundant life! No wonder I feel unsettled in my spirit! Jesus came to give me HIS peace, HIS life, HIS joy!
