Melting Down to Your God-given Size

Melting Down to Your God-given Size

 

 


• By Barb Shelton •

Inspired by Christina Motley


 

Christina and I are prayer partners for the current two-week span and she sent me this picture of the snowlady she and her daughters made in their front yard…

 

She wrote, “Fun in the snow! ❄️⛄️❄️ Isn’t she just adorable??? We named her Meridith!”

Recognizing that scarf as not only being Christina’s favorite flower, 🌻🌻🌻 but as having seen it ON her person in one of her porch chats…

 

Screen shot of Christina doing a porch chat

 

…I said, “Meridith is just toooooo cute!!!!! ⛄️ Did she have permission to use that scarf?!?!?? 😆”

She responded, “Of course! She and I are already becoming good friends! 🌼💕❤️🍃😀😀”

Aware that the warming weather would soon have “diminishing” effects on Meridith, Christina added “I don’t think she will be here long, though…😳☃️🍃.”

So the next morning I asked her, “How is Meridith doing? Is the warming-up weather imposing rapid weight-loss mode onto her?!?! ⛄️😄

(Just so you know, we DO actually talk about spiritual things as well! Right after this I shared my prayer for her from Psalm 22!)

On our Thin Within coaching call (with Heidi and Christina) later than afternoon, Christine told the rest of the girls in our group about Meridith, and sadly added that the sunshine had been shrinking Meridith quite a bit. A few of us shared with delight: “She’s melting down to her God-given size!!”

Christina went on: “Okay! Here comes the good part, girls! All Meridith had to do to shrink down to her God-given size was just be in the light and warmth of the sun! Isn’t that COOL?!?!?”

I said “I feel a blog article coming on!” and asked Christina to send me a picture of Meridith in her current melting state. Christina then asked me to do “before and after” pictures of Meridith, and to “use my magic” to put a face on her since hers had fallen off…  which I did using carrot and leaf emoticons, and the “draw” feature of my photo editor. Not the greatest, but better than a blank stare!

 

 

So how might this look in real life? I started pondering what “melting in the light of the sun” might entail, and remembered I had already written about this very thing in a blog article I wrote a couple years ago called “How Does God Redeem Stuff?

In it, I share five “methods” (actions, ways) God has led me to – and used in me to – redeem many things in my life. Two of those items – “expose” and “soak” – are perfect for our snowlady analogy as they explain what it means to expose ourselves to – and soak in – God’s warm light!

I’m going to share those two sections of that article here! (Well…  Assuming I can get permission from the author! I hear she’s quite a stickler!)

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EXPOSING

Let’s start by thinking of a rock on the ground.  It’s been sitting in the sunshine, so it’s nice and dry and warm…

 

Turn the rock over, and what might you see on the underside of that rock? … Scampering bugs, wiggling worms, dirt, mud.

What’s the best way to get the underside of that rock as warm, dry, smooth, clean and bug-free as the top of it? Should we urge the rock to go to a rock spa and get a make-over and scrub itself off?

Nope! Just turn it over and expose it to the Sun! Given a little time, the wet-turned-dry dirt can just be brushed off, leaving that underside nice ‘n’ clean – with no effort whatsoever on the part of the rock! All it had to do was let itself be exposed tot he warm rays of the sun.

Need a human picture? This guy is perfectly emulating this concept:

 

 

Likewise, I have had many bug-infested “rocks” in my life. Rather than try to clean myself up, the Lord has many times led me to just allow Him to gently turn one of my [many] rocks over in His loving hand and expose it to His warming, penetrating, healing, freshening rays! – which do all of the healing, cleansing work! All I had to do was simply lay there with my wound, dirt, or ugliness exposed to Him!

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SOAKING

My mother-in-love made the most amazing pickles! But they didn’t start out their pickley lives as winners. They began as dill – or, for the sake of our analogy, we’ll call them sour pickles.

To be transformed into the amazing sweet pickles they became, all they had to do was SOAK in the NEW brine that I put them in!

 

 

What does that brine consist of? 3 cups of sugar and 1 cup of vinegar. (See my “Grandma Shelton’s Rebrined Pickles” blog post for the recipe and directions.)

Two of the “sweetest” things we can soak in are:    

  • God’s Word, the Bible – “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)
  • Worship – Whatever we look at, we become more like it. The more we focus on fashion, the more we want to be fashionable. (And thin!) The more we focus on food, the more we want it. But as we dwell on the Lord, the more we want Him, and the more we actually become like Him! And “As the Spirit of the Lord works in us, we become more and more like Him.”   

(In the article I share a bitter, “vinegar-esque” thing we might soak in that actually aids in the transformation process, but we’ll just stay with the sugar aspect here.)

These pickles take a week to be completely transformed into the best pickles I have ever tasted! EVER!!! And they didn’t even have to go on a self-improvement kick! They just soaked in that transforming brine, getting sweeter as the days went by!

Likewise, if we soak in God’s Word, letting His “higher thoughts” soak into us, renewing our minds…  If we get our eyes off of our sour selves and worship our mighty, loving God, we will become more and more like Him, and get sweeter as the days, months, and years go by!

 


 

So thank you, Christina and girls, for creating Meridith and sharing her with us, thereby inspiring any of us who are struggling to melt down to our natural God-given size to:

• lay down our striving to fix ourselves and…

• simply spend more time exposing ourselves to the Son, soaking in His healing warmth.

 

 

 


 

 

Your Body – What is Your “Natural, God-Given Size?”

Your Body – What is Your “Natural, God-Given Size?”

 

PicsArt_06-17-10.01.46

When I was in high school, my mom put me on a diet. I was supposed to drink  nasty tasting shakes for breakfast and lunch and then eat a full meal when I got home from school, which was a full course meal,  including things that I could never manage to stomach. I don’t know if my mom thought I *wanted* to diet or what. I know that, in my memory, I cooperated…even to the point of trying to stomach eating lettuce covered with oil and vinegar. Now, just the thought makes me gag. I can’t stand lettuce and I can actually smell it if it is in food that I order at a restaurant (always requesting NO lettuce).

I was an athlete, but would often cut school to go to my best friend’s–my “eating buddy’s”–house where we often made a pan of brownies and then ate the evidence that we had been home when we were supposed to be at school. Not one crumb of the brownies would be left.

What began in junior high as a response to molestation by a family member developed into a full-blown coping mechanism–a refuge, a comfort, a recreational activity, too! Because I was involved in sports, I often kept ahead of too much extra weight. I do remember weighing myself quite a bit. I remember the numbers, too. I also remember the numbers on the scale during all the diets I went on over the years. I charted my weight on a graph on the wall during one season. Then, there were the diet program weigh-ins. So, I would have NO problem pulling a number out of my mind that seems “reasonable” for what my “natural, God-given size” would be.

BUT…

that would miss the point…

GOD-given, means that it is God given.

It doesn’t mean that Heidi has to grab a hold of it and declare “HERE! This is it! When I reach this number I will  have arrived!”

In fact, I distinctly remember in 2007, after I lost all the extra weight I  carried having actually gone too far so that I could have the accolade of losing ONE HUNDRED pounds, I still hated my rear end…my hips. You see, even when I was really *thin*…I hated my body. Freedom clearly wasn’t in a number for me! There was something in my HEAD that needed to change. I needed to “drop the weight” of a mental image of the ideal body.

So now, I see that “natural, God-given size” means, God has in mind the way my body, fearfully and wonderfully made, hand-crafted by him, will look or be. And it definitely isn’t what this world uses as a standard for beauty. You know what? I think I am beginning (after all this time) not to care what the world says. I want what GOD wants for me. There is FREEDOM there!

And “Natural” means natural.

I don’t have to be fearful about it. It just is. Like naturally curly hair. Or a natural blond. Nothing added. It just is.

Notice Thin Within doesn’t promise you that you will be a “natural, God-given weight.”

In fact, what we really want to do–dare I be so bold–is get rid of the bathroom scale. Instead, focus on getting to know your body and the God-given hunger scale: hunger and satisfaction, 0 and 5. Let’s stand on God’s promises instead of the bathroom scale and the ever-elusive happiness that joy is found in a number. You are MORE than a number!

As you commit (and commit again and again) to eating 0 to 5 or between the parameters of hunger and satisfaction, you will not need any man-made device to tell you if you are succeeding. Success is not defined by the world or by your past. It is defined by God.

Your natural, God-given size is, by definition, the size you land on when you eat according to the way He made your body. Eating according to the cues of hunger and satisfaction will cause you to land on and maintain your God-given size.

This is GREAT news!!!

Aren’t we tired of pursuing a number on the bathroom scale?! Then, assuming we ever land on that number, we live in fear that we won’t *stay* at that number?! That is definitely NOT freedom!

Here is a sound file about this very thing. I hope it is helpful! Again, feel free to download it.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/94321872″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Would it be helpful to you to get off the bathroom scale–to give it away or at least to have a friend or family member hide it for a month (or two or three)? Can you recommit to obeying the God-given signals of the hunger scale–0 and 5–or physical hunger and satisfaction? Will you trust him that he will bring you to the size that you want to be?

What will you stand on? 🙂 Here is a bonus! Good ol’ country rendering of “Standing on the Promises of God!”

Prepare Now for January 2014’s Thin Within Study!

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:  

    1. Workbook #1
    2. The Temple Toolkit
    3. 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 do to 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 optional as 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 know that 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:

  1. Hope
  2. My Body–God’s Temple
  3. Identity in Christ
  4. Celebration of God’s Grace, Part One
  5. Restoration
  6. Counting the Cost
  7. The Fight of Faith
  8. Celebration of God’s Grace, Part Two
  9. Building Godly Boundaries
  10. Forgiveness
  11. Prayer
  12. 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 Easternor 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! 🙂

Numbers: Do They Work For or Against Us?

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Photo Courtesy of iStockPhoto

Why does one of my coaching clients (and friends) say: “I don’t plan to ever weigh myself again.” The answer may surprise you!

Counting Calories

I heard on the radio this morning that obese teenagers are more likely to use calorie information at fast food restaurants than non-obese teenagers  This fact was presented as if it were a good thing, as if counting calories is something that will help obese teenagers to slim down and get healthy. I think that some of the teenagers in this study are obese BECAUSE they are using external signals such as calorie counts offered by fast food restaurants to tell them how much they can/should/will eat, instead of relying on their God-given signals of hunger and satisfaction. The non-obese teens don’t need the calorie counts. They might order the bacon double cheeseburger and eat one third of it, stopping when they are satisfied.  Are calorie counts (masquerading as “nutritional information”) part of the problem or part of the solution? I’m all for nutritionally dense food, but something tells me the teens aren’t checking protein, fiber, and calcium counts. They are focusing on the calorie information. And, I’ll wager, it’s not only not helping them, it’s actively hurting them. It’s getting in the way of their ability to listen to their internal signals.

Pounds

Similar to the perhaps inadvertent problems directly caused by calorie information, are the problems caused by the bathroom (or gym or doctor’s office) scale.

When I was a child and didn’t know about calories and couldn’t have guessed my own weight with any kind of accuracy at all, my eating was fine. But when I started counting things (calories and body weight), my God-given natural appetite regulation system was disrupted and it wasn’t long before I had a bona fide eating disorder. I was trying to externally regulate something that is much better left to the natural, internal regulation system ordained by God. My weight and my appetite take care themselves and run smoothly if I honor and respect them and don’t get in there and try to improve on God’s handiwork.

I don’t plan to ever weigh myself again. Why? Because I am finally convinced that weighing myself is part of the problem, not part of the solution, just like counting calories are, for me, part of the problem, not part of the solution. I’ve heard many times over the years that in order to fully recover from an eating disorder (or disordered eating, or whatever you want to call it), a person should entirely stop weighing herself and trust that God knows what our bodies should weigh, and trust that our doctors will tell us if we gain or lose precipitously. But other people telling me rarely results in me doing whatever is advised. I don’t learn very well from other people’s experiences. Eventually I had my own personal experience of divine intervention that really got my attention.

One morning, I wanted to weigh myself at home. I had the wherewithal to pray and ask God if this was a good idea. I heard very clearly in my head “you weigh X#s.”  “Should I still weigh myself, though?” I wondered, “Probably not,” I thought.
“But I want to.” My brain did this dance for a couple of minutes and then the “I wanna” part of me won out and I weighed myself.  [I weighed] X#s. Not a big surprise. Why had I been so willful? Who knows. Oh well. I’m not perfect. Chalk it up to that. I went on with my day. I went to the gym mid-morning. There’s a scale at the gym. The “I wanna” part of me thought, “I should weigh myself to see if they gym scale and my home scale register the same number.” And then, I heard the voice of wisdom, only this time, with a bit more power clearly say in my head, “If you want to never binge again, you need to never weigh yourself again.” !!! “But, but,” the “I wanna” in me spluttered, and then, as a quick follow up, I heard a powerful, “It may seem like a high price to pay, but it is THE price. “

Wow. Ok. So…I won’t weigh myself. You’ve got my attention, God. It does seem like a high price. But really, is it? I don’t think Jesus got up every morning to check his weight. Nor did any of his apostles. There are still people on earth who probably go their entire lives without even seeing a scale. It’s not like I’m being asked to do something actively unhealthy. There is, as it turns out now that I’ve thought about it, nothing helpful in me knowing my weight. It never stopped me from binge eating. It never made me feel closer to God. It sometimes made me proud and it sometimes made me feel like I could afford to binge, but both of those outcomes are ones that I am much better off without. I am so grateful for this experience because I feel like God tried to show me this in a multitude of ways over years, but I wouldn’t listen. So finally, I had to hear his wise, loving, but scarily clear voice telling me exactly what to do. I can’t complain any more that I’m not sure whether or not I should weigh myself. I’m quite clear that I shouldn’t. And I don’t plan to. Not ever. Thank you, God.

Catherine Wilson Gillespie, Ph.D.
Mary Collier Baker Distinguished Professor
Drake University School of Education
Des Moines, Iowa

Attitudes: Entitlement and the Value of NUMBERs in This Journey

scale3

When I create the audios and the videos, God speaks truth into MY life through the process. It reminds me of what is true and how great my God is. He uses my rambling on to you to remind me yet again of what is true and what He wants from me.

I hope that when I create the audios and the videos that you will have yet another modality for learning the stuff that God may want you to know. I hope that he uses it to breathe over you an enveloping peace, a saturating sense of his love, and a call to press on–to pursue holiness and excellence.

You may not agree with everything I say, but I do so hope that you will sense his invitation to intimacy with him and that he wants to use this struggle with food and eating as a forum in your life for a wonderful adventure of dependence on him.

This week, God has used my video and audio creating time to really minister to me. Does that sound just so selfish? As I speak the truth that he has given to me, then as I listen and evaluate, delete, re-record–whatever the process may be–he again and again bathes my mind with the truth. I hope it works that way for you as you listen or watch.

And if it is helpful to you to download the files and put them on your iPod to play, go right ahead and do that. I sure hope that doesn’t sound self-aggrandizing. I don’t mean it that way at all. I just know that, at least for me, every way possible that I can to create a way to bathe my mind with truth, is another step toward renewing my mind and experiencing the transformation promised in Romans 12:2.

This week, we looked at the premium we place on our appearance or weight loss in this journey. Barb has really gotten to the heart of a very important issue. I have an audio here talking about some thoughts I have about this aspect of our journeys. Just so you know, I am experimenting with a plug-in microphone, so I apologize for the fuzziness…the microphone was TOO close to my mouth for part of the recordings…I will improve on that in the future.

Appearance Eating
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Entitlement is a poison that can taint our pursuit of godly character. It affects not only my eating, but my relationships as well. In this audio, I share some of the things that God laid on my heart about entitlement. I have found that this is a perfect example of how God uses this journey about food, eating and my body to show me character qualities he wants to build into my life generally and I invite you to consider that may be the very purpose he has us on this course.

Entitlement Eating
[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/84470916″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

How about you? What connection do you see between what God is doing in the realm of eating, weight, how you view food and your body and growing you into Christlike character on a broader scale? What is God showing you about this connection?