Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom. Song of Solomon 2:15
…A taste of the spaghetti sauce while it is simmering…”SooOOOOooo good!,” …it requires another taste and just one more!
…A french fry (or two…or six!) from a family member’s “Happy Meal”…”Ooh! I need me some of these!”
…Just one more handful of popcorn at the movies…”Ok, well, maybe one more….”
While it is certainly true that Solomon probably didn’t have these scenarios in mind when he penned the request to “Catch for us the foxes that ruin the vineyards,” there is definitely an interesting principle that we can draw from the biblical context of the verse.
Small foxes can ruin a wonderfully good thing.
Do you find that you aren’t quite experiencing the physical results that you feel you should be as you apply yourself to eating between physical hunger and satisfaction? While it is my deepest heart’s desire to convey that this journey is about SO much more than food and weight, the fact does remain–at least in part–most of us chose to connect with Thin Within in the first place because we felt that we could/should be a smaller size than we were (I know this isn’t true of everyone…many of you hope to be willing to eat what God calls you to eat instead of restricting).
It IS true that God may be teaching you personally that HIS desire for you is to be content at a certain size instead of something as small as you had hoped, but if the size that you think you are supposed to accept contributes to extreme health problems, perhaps there is still yet work to do. If you aren’t seeing some progress in letting go of the physical weight, I want to suggest that you evaluate:
Are there little foxes ruining this vineyard?
It takes a lot of work to get a vineyard to produce! The worst thing to a vineyard owner is to put all that time, money, and effort into having a producing vineyard only to have the little foxes ruin it all. Charles Wesley is credited to have said:
Spoil vines – foxes do this many ways, by gnawing and breaking the little branches and leaves, by digging holes in the vineyards, and so spoiling the roots. Tender grapes – Which are easily spoiled, if great care be not used to prevent it.
I realized that the little foxes running amok in my life and my attempts to adhere to the principles and boundaries that God has led me to embrace (0 to 5 eating) were a problem for me. I had waited for my definitive hunger signal at one particular lunchtime. I eagerly put left over Mexican food in the oven to heat up. Even as I set the timer for 15 minutes, I realized that my hunger was INCESSANT! I reached for small fox #1…a few chips. “Yum!” Then small fox #2…A cookie. “Yes, perfect!” Small fox #3…A bite of frosting from the jar…”That will do.”
All three foxes had dashed through before the meal emerged from the oven. By the time my leftovers were heated, I wasn’t hungry any longer and the amount of food that I had placed in the oven was based on my eating it from hunger to satisfaction…not from whatever-hunger-number-I-was-at-currently to a 5. Meaning, by eating the amount I had prepared, I was almost assuredly overeating! Being a “veteran” Thin Withinner I had put a fist sized portion in the oven, but only now I needed to be honest…there was a “three-finger sized” amount of space left in my stomach!
This didn’t happen just once before I became aware of the little foxes, either. It happened numerous times…each time with the justification of “Well, I am hungry!'” The truth is, if all of those little bites were going to be a part of my meal—used to satisfy my hunger—they needed to be considered. The portion I was yet waiting on from the oven might not even be necessary at all!
Having shared this with some of my coaching clients who have lamented that they wonder about their physical results not being quite what they had hoped, they have approached their eating with additional vigilance. You know what has happened? You guessed it. The physical changes are happening once again.
How About You?
On your way to your God-given natural size, every so often you might have to re-evaluate, refine, hone in on what is going on. Is it possible that you could benefit from evaluating if the little foxes are ruining your hard work? They can be quite subtle and we tend to justify and minimize them. Consider this thought, though…When we justify them not only do those small bites here and there represent energy that we are consuming that our body may not need, but might it also be adding a little bit of hardening to our hearts spiritually speaking? Maybe we can ask God to make us sensitive to His leading so that we get rid of the little foxes and welcome His Presence as the good Vinedresser that He is into our Vineyard!
I must start by sharing this happy realization. A few months ago, Heidi recorded a long winded 40-45 minute conversation with me about breaking free from dieting. The Lord has delivered me so far from dieting now that I can barely remember the details of how I broke free! Now, that’s freedom. But, I will use my journal to help me remember my steps because I want to encourage any of you who are still stuck, or partially stuck, in diet land to break free and leave it behind.
I was prepped from an early age to diet. I watched my mother and her friends diet, jazzercise, jog and talk about what they should and shouldn’t eat. While I did not follow an official diet until I was 31 years old, I knew that I should never eat chicken skin, fried food, chips, candy, ice cream, cream sauces, etc, etc. I knew the “rules” without following a particular plan. But, eventually I was tired of my extra 30 pounds, post-baby weight included, and I joined a popular dieting program. My type- A self jumped in with both feet and thus began my obsession with my weight, food, exercise and clothing size.
My mind became full of rules – about exercise and food – and I became obsessed. When I look back, I can’t believe the time that I wasted planning meals and workouts – and all of the attention I put on my body and not on the people who really mattered. I am the saddest when I remember hanging out with my kids and, while I looked like I was paying attention to them, my mind was really in food and workout planning mode. I thought I was happy when I was skinny, but I am now so thankful that I had health issues that caused me to gain weight and then forced me to stop exercising. God met me in that fearful place and revealed to me that I could live a life in freedom with Him. I am not exaggerating when I say that the first Thin Within workbook truly brought me to Christ and helped me to really understand who Christ is and what he did and continues to do for believers. I started to sense that freedom from dieting and exercising was possible, but the lies of the world kept pulling me back. It took almost 2 years for me to really see the Truth and to really commit to this way of life. And I am not looking back!
The breaking of my diet chains was multifaceted, but the most important part was prayer. I prayed every day, starting last January, to be set free from the bondage of dieting, over-exercising and body image issues. Then, in February, when I realized that had some heart issues that were contrary to godliness, I prayed Psalm 51:10: Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Let me stress, I prayed this every day, multiple times a day.
And then I found the “God is doing a new thing bible study” in March and began focusing on the renewing of my mind. I took notes and studied the scripture and made scripture cards. With daily study and prayer, the Truths of God’s word and character and love moved from my mind to my heart. And within a few months, I knew that I would never, could never, diet again. I wanted my mind and heart set on my Creator and Lord, my Abba, my Savior, my Healer, and not on the size of my clothes.
Do I backslide? Sure. Sometimes I try on an old dress and hope it fits. Sometimes I eat too much at dinner. Sometimes I think about carbs vs. proteins. Sometimes I think I should run a few more miles. But then quickly, and it happens faster and faster these days, I remember the Truths in the Bible and the freedom, peace and joy that I feel when I live in God’s boundaries and on His path. I can then leave the worldliness behind and focus on Him. I put on His armor (Ephesians 6:10-17) and let Him fight my spiritual battles.
Friends, if you have put trust and faith in diets or workout plans, you are not alone. It is what our culture asks of its people, especially women. But you can break the mold, you can live in freedom. I, who used to be obsessed with counting every morsel that I ate and evaluating its nutritional value, drank a milkshake for lunch last week! A full fat butter pecan ice cream milkshake! But, since I have the freedom to drink milkshakes any day of the year (although this was my first in over a decade), I only drank 2/3 of it. I was satiated. It was enough. God’s love and grace is more than enough for each of us – they are sweeter and more satisfying than any dessert imaginable.
~ Carrie (Not South Africa) 🙂
What About You?
Do the chains of dieting still hold you fast? Do you believe that God can call you to freedom without the use of a diet or restrictive eating plan and rigorous exercise that is harder on your body than you know you should do? Will you consider possibly renewing your mind with truth? God never intended for food to torment us or for our avoidance of it to become an obsession. Let us know how we can pray for you.
There are so many exciting changes ahead relative to God is Doing a New Thing and the Thin Within ministries! I am so excited to roll out each one by one. But let me just tease you a bit with that for now and get to the point of this post!
We may just be beginning the 2013 holiday season, but it isn’t too early to think ahead to January and that time when so many of us want to start fresh (though, truly we can start fresh EACH day—we don’t need to wait!).
In January 2014, I will be leading an online Thin Within group studying the Thin Within workbook material. The first orientation meeting will be Monday, January 6th. The class will wrap up Monday, April 7th, 2014. Posts will be accessible here at the blog for discussion, but we will also have a “live” online meeting each week on Mondays, from 4:30-5:30pm Pacific Time. The web url will be made available each week to those who sign up and who provide their email addresses to me for that purpose.
Here are some details about the Rebuilding God’s Temple Workbook Kit #1. If you have done this workbook before, you can still join the weekly chats January 6 – April 7 and work through *any* of the Thin Within workbooks as they are all designed so that they all have the same lesson topics each week.
The first kit is the most comprehensive and comes with three pieces:
Workbook #1
The Temple Toolkit
The Memory Challenge Cards (click on the image to see a large version and some images you can click again to see it magnified further):
The contents of Kit #1
First, the workbook itself, is a spiral bound volume that has material for 12 weeks of study. To download a sample of the material, visit this link. The download is an Adobe Reader (.pdf) file of Week One – “Hope.” After you download it, print it and take a week to try it out! 🙂
Each week’s unit consists of the following:
Lesson material – This is dense written material that you will read to glean the concepts that we are teaching or reviewing during the week. I usually recommend about an hour spent with this, highlighting, asterisking, and looking up the verses in my own bible. I may even write comments in the margin or, if I am leading a group, questions to be sure to ask participants.
Each of the reading portions of the lesson are divided into these segments:
Introduction – A brief overview of the week’s focus
Spiritual Information – The relationship this material has to the Scriptures
Physiological Information – The “mechanics” — what you can actually doto make additional changes in your eating to honor the Lord
Integration – How it all works together
Exercises – Don’t worry! These aren’t calisthenics! LOL! They are basically guided daily quiet times. 🙂 Each week includes “exercises” for each day of the week. Days six and seven are optional and a bit “lighter.” Days one through five include the following sections:
Going Deeper – This relates some aspect of the lesson you have read to your life
Bible Study – This shows how Scripture illustrates or illuminates the principles taught in the lesson
Knowing God By Heart – One of the best parts, this is a study of the attributes of God. We have found that the way a participant views God impacts how she will view food, herself, her body, as well as her willingness (or not) to surrender this aspect of her life to the Lord for His purposes.
Getting Practical – These are suggestions for putting some of the mechanics of the program into practice
Memory Challenge – Hiding God’s Word in our hearts will enable us to be reminded of our commitment to him when we are weak! Memorizing scripture is extremely helpful for renewing our mind and changing our thinking!
Review of the Week – This provides a space where you can summarize what God has shown you or questions and thoughts you have had. This section is especially helpful when you meet with others in a group setting. 🙂
In addition to these resources in the workbook, there is an extensive Introduction at the beginning and Appendices in the back, providing a great deal of material that will support you on your journey.
But wait! There’s more! 🙂 (Couldn’t resist saying that!) Not only do you get the Workbook, but when you purchase the first kit, you also get the Temple Toolkit. This is a resource that offers a place for you to log your own journey throughout each day during the full twelve weeks. As you progress through the material, the pages change to match what you have learned in the workbook. Let me show you what I mean.
The first image below shows Days 25-28. Click on the image to see a larger version and then click again to see FULL size what these pages look like in the temple toolkit:
Days 25, 26, 27, 28 in the Temple Toolkit
As you progress through the workbook and new material is introduced, the Temple Toolkit changes, too:
Days 49, 50, 51, and 52 in Temple Toolkit
Again, click on the image above and then click again on the bigger image to see it full size. You will see new tools have been added.
Of course all of the tools are optionalas you go through the 12-week workbook. If you have come out of a background of excessive charting and graphing, you may only want to use the journaling pages. Or, as time goes on, you may experience freedom with one tool and not another. The Lord will lead each of us individually. Some have freedom to use all the tools, charts and graphs. Some have the freedom not to.
By the time you are closer to the end of the first twelve weeks, you will have been introduced to all of the tools. Note how the material in the toolkit has evolved:
Days 77, 78, 79 and 80 in Temple Toolkit
Again, “Wait! There’s more!” 🙂 When you order the first kit, you get not only the Workbook, the Temple Toolkit that changes as you go through the material, but you also get the Memory Challenge and Temptation Buster Cards:
Memory Challenge and Temptation Buster Cards
Again, click on the image above and the larger image, to get a full size view of what these include. You cut them up and can carry them with you so that Thin Within isn’t just a bible study that you begin in the morning and leave behind the rest of the day. These resources are very supportive in helping you to keep the principles that God is leading you to embrace and apply with you throughout the day.
Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.
Do what it says.
Anyone who listens to the word
but does not do what it says
is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and,
after looking at himself,
goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
~ James 1:22-24
We don’t want to just accumulate head knowledge, but then leave it behind for the rest of the day! We want to ACT on what we learn in our times of study and in God’s Word!
$40 includes three months of workbook material and exercises, as well as the Temple Toolkit and a set of Scripture Memory Cards, one verse for each week. There is no additional cost to participate in the class at this time.
Did you knowthat there are 3 additional workbooks, each covering 12 weeks? The material is designed so that people who have gone through workbook #1 before, can do workbook #2 or #3 or #4, even while most in the group use workbook #1. Each of the workbooks are presented in 12 weekly themes that parallel each other. These are the themes for all four of the workbooks:
Hope
My Body–God’s Temple
Identity in Christ
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part One
Restoration
Counting the Cost
The Fight of Faith
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Two
Building Godly Boundaries
Forgiveness
Prayer
Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Three
When the group is on week five, everyone will be studying, reviewing, learning about the theme of Restoration. This helps prevent the material from becoming stale! It is a great system that allows people of all experience levels to enjoy a group together, studying and reviewing together.
Workbooks #2, 3 and 4 cost about $25 each.
To order materials, call Thin Within 1-877-729-8932 (9:00am-5:00pm Eastern) or visit this link at Amazon.
To sign up for the class starting in January 2014, visit this link and fill out the form. This email list will only be for the class information.
The group I will be leading starting January 6, 2014 is an “open” group. You can join the chat at any time. There will be more details to come—but if you want to get the information sent directly to you, please sign up to be on the class email list. Hope you can join us!
How About You?
Do you need and want support? Now is your chance. I will probably not be leading another class through the workbook in 2014. Sign up today and purchase your materials! 🙂
Want to lead a group? If you want to live dangerously :-), you can lead a Thin Within group. The best way to do this is to plan to use the material here at the blog and the videos will be created along the way. Plan to join us for the discussions here, the videos, and the class sessions on Monday. Then, following the Monday classes, you can meet with your own group of people live and in person to lead them through the material using the resources provided to you by your own participation in the online class! By the time class time rolls around for us online each Monday, you will have all the material under your belt and be ready to teach it yourself! I would love to know if this interests you! 🙂
When I was sixteen years old, I moved from a little town to a big city. I had to make new friends and had the stress of a new school. At home, my dad was battling alcoholism and my mom was fighting cancer. So needless to say, it was a rough time. I became friends with a girl involved in ballet. She was tiny and her whole world was about being thin. I got sucked into that world.
For the next ten years I was held captive in the bondage of disordered eating. I was extremely thin. Then I became bulimic. For about three years I threw up everything and took laxatives to purge out the rest. I have a memory of being so ill from the laxatives. Eventually they made me so sick that I would vomit.
I remember one instance when it was about two in the morning. I was hanging over the toilet bowl throwing up from the laxatives while down the passage, I heard my mom awake and throwing up, too. She was throwing because of her cancer chemotherapy. She was trying to save her life. I was trying to end mine. In that moment I vowed never to take laxatives again and I stuck to my word.
Unfortunately, I just traded one addiction for another—an over-the-counter appetite suppressant. It said on the box, “discontinue use after 30 days.” I stopped after six years. This pill was so dangerous that eventually it was taken off the market. It damaged my colon, adrenal glands and thyroid.
But I was thin. So I didn’t care.
At some point I stopped taking the pills. My weight went from about 50 kg (110 lb.) to almost 70 (150 lb.). I turned to diets. I reached for the next diet promising me lasting freedom. I would lose some weight and then gain some. We all know the story. I did every diet known to man.
When I was 25, it dawned on me that I had devoted ten years of my life to this. I was desperate. Being locked in this battle was exhausting me, even though by now my weight was “normal.” But I thought about food constantly. I’d wake up in the morning with the best of intentions, but by 10am I had binged or overeaten or something. I was riddled with guilt and self-loathing, declaring a starvation diet, only to mess that up too.
At that time, I cried out to God in absolute desperation and exhaustion. I went to a Christian book store and asked God to lead me to books I needed to read. I bought about seven books. I got home and started on my journey back to freedom. That was on a Monday. The following Friday, as I was just waking up from the night’s sleep, I heard an audible voice saying,”Fast.” I got a big fright, but I was excited because it was a very real, supernatural thing that happened! I prayed about it and felt I needed to fast until the following Monday.
The weekend started. I lay on my couch and read the books I’d bought. I wept and read. All weekend. My body was in physical pain. Dying to your flesh is never easy. When I woke up on Monday, I knew somehow that the bondage had been broken.
God gave me some stringent boundaries, though. He said I must never diet again. And I was not to weigh myself. To this day (ten years later) if I diet, disordered thoughts come back. God doesn’t intend this for everyone. Those boundaries were for me, personally.
In those early days, I struggled to follow his mandate for me. I would get up in the morning and take out a laminated copy of a diet I wanted to follow, intending to put it on the fridge available for me to read easily. I argued with God, pleading with him to allow me to follow the diet. Even so, I felt very strongly that this was going against what He wanted for me. So, every morning, I put the laminated diet back. I had no idea how to eat normally. One of the books I bought before the fast was Thin Within. During the week after my healing, I hungrily read that book. It gave me peace. I knew that this was exactly how God wanted me to eat.
After that weekend of being delivered from my eating disorders, God not only untangled my confused and sick thought patterns, He also did some physical healing. If you have suffered from an eating disorder, you’ll know that it is very much a mental disease. So much goes wrong in your head. So when God took his hand and wiped my thoughts clear, I thought that things surely couldn’t get better. But in his loving mercy, he also healed a few physical issues that I was suffering from as a consequence of my eating disorder. In my early twenties I went to a doctor and he diagnosed me with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. He concluded that I would be bed-ridden by the time I was 40. My body was riddled with some nasty viruses. I was so malnourished that my immune system was hanging on for dear life. My thyroid and metabolism were so broken—a consequence of years of yo-yo dieting, starving and purging. My colon didn’t work properly because of the laxative abuse. I looked and felt terrible all the time. When you are in such a “yuck” state, then often your emotions and attitude also reflect your internal environment. I wasn’t being a very God-pleasing wife, to say the least.
When God healed me of all that eating bondage, I walked with Him everyday doing things his way and I began to notice healing he was doing in my physical body, too. Before the healing, I had to take my temperature everyday for a few days as part of the diagnosis of an under-functioning thyroid gland. Normal is 37 degrees. When I did it, all my readings where 36 or lower. A few weeks after starting to eat 0-5 I felt God telling me to take my temperature again for a few days. Each day it was 37 degrees! God is so good!
Continuing in her healing, Carrie completes a 10k!
He didn’t stop there. He slowly corrected all the chemical and hormonal imbalances. He restored my colon to normal function. He took away all my aches and pains. And then in 2010, he really did a miracle—I trained for and ran my first half marathon! As I crossed that finishing line (in a good time I might add) I almost started to weep. My body had been so broken. It was meant to bed-ridden. But here was God, who in his love for me, healed and restored me. A body that was meant to be sick and frail had now just completed 22km of grueling terrain. As I crossed that finishing line, with my praise and worship music filling my mind from my iPod, I knew God’s goodness. I got it.
He is in the details of my life. He knows my heart. He cares about my eating and being free from things that entangle and enslave me.
He is Good.
It’s been ten years since my healing. I am not overweight but I still wonder if I am at my God-given size. I stumbled upon Heidi’s blog after calling out to God. Through Heidi’s posts, I have come to realize that I struggle with greed and some other challenges! God said to me the other day that praise was lacking from life. It is such a weapon of warfare! So I’m now trying to praise and sing to him when ever I can. I can’t lie to you and say that what I weigh doesn’t matter to me. It still does. I would love to weigh a certain number. But I’m not obsessed by it. And I think as God works in me, that number won’t matter anymore. The whole point of my recovery and my future healing will be to keep looking at The Lord. He reminded me of this hymn and it’s become my theme tune:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look full in his wonderful face And the things of this world Will grow strangely dim In the light of his glory and grace
God bless
Carrie (South Africa)
What About You?
Do you find yourself struggling with a full-blown eating disorder? Or do you occasionally engage in disordered behavior to try to manage your weight? Will you choose to take the steps toward your freedom today? God CAN heal you. Maybe the first order of business is to pray…and follow that with a call to a trusted physician who you can be honest with. If you feel led, will you post here and let us know how we can pray for you? God intends for you to experience FREEDOM!
Halloween Candy…is it the bane of your existence? I am fortunate. I live in the country and we have never, in all our ten years living here, gotten a single solitary trick-or-treater. I haven’t had to deal with candy in our home. So while I feel for those of you who have to face this challenge, I am not dealing with that particular challenge right now.
How are you managing with the candy everywhere? Do you have a boundary? If you are like most of us, it can definitely help.
Halloween often signals that time of year that we both LOVE and HATE! Tons of holiday festivities for Thanksgiving, Harvest, Christmas and maybe other winter holidays, too. We know that lots of different foods are available only once a year and now is the time they are likely to be readily accessible!
Halloween doesn’t have to herald a two month long food-fest! We can be victorious in maintaining our godly boundaries.
Here is a video that tells about 7 strategies that you can use each holiday season.
(NOTE: I can’t get the video to embed from Vimeo or YouTube, so here is a link to Vimeo.)
(Note: Here is the same video embedded from YouTube, but it won’t work for me…does it for you?)
If you watched all the way to the end, you saw that there is an eighth strategy that might be helpful for some who want that extra nudge of support through the holidays…it’s one-on-one coaching. If you are interested in getting personalized help (from yours truly :-)) through the holidays, click on the COACHING page for details. I would love to help you make it through these next couple of months and come out the other side a CONQUEROR rather than the conquered!
How About You?
Which of these strategies might be the most helpful at the Halloween party or Harvest event that you are attending tonight? 🙂 Of course, if not that event, how about the Thanksgiving feasts, Christmas cookie exchanges, Christmas parties, or New Years bashes? What other strategies have helped you during the holidays? Are you committing to eating within your hunger/satisfied boundaries this holiday season? You can do it!
