Awakenings

I’m on a journey.

Aren’t we all?

I like to look back at moments and think “Yes, that’s where my journey began” but often times it’s not. It’s just where a leg of my journey began. Because everyone’s journey begins the moment they breathe the air of life. At birth that first gulping breath of air begins the journey. Sometimes that journey is a thousand steps in the wrong direction and then you have to take a thousand steps back to get back where you started.  But those two thousand steps hold a gift. It’s invaluable. It is knowledge and wisdom.

In December of 2012 I began a weight loss journey. I decided I needed to take some weight off before I reached a point where it was truly affecting my health.  Just like my last major health journey when I quit smoking, I turned the battle over to God. I prayed and I told him I couldn’t. I couldn’t do this on my own. I wasn’t strong enough.

So God helped me, and through his strength alone I was able to follow the Weight Watchers program and lose 48.6 pounds in 10 months. That’s a whole lot really fast.  I dropped 5 clothing sizes so fast I couldn’t even keep up. I was exercising following the Points Plus Program and eating right. I felt good. I was invincible. I could totally do this.

Then, I lost sight of the fundamental truth in my success. I forgot the one mantra I knew going into the fight. The mantra I said over and over for months after I quit smoking. The one prayer that got me through, “God I need you. I can’t do this alone.” I wasn’t invincible. I wasn’t strong. I couldn’t do THIS alone.  I stopped losing weight.

From October 2013 to April 2014 I gained and lost the same 8 pounds time and again. Then I added a few more to that, and then ten more. And then I had to go buy clothes in those in between sizes that I had skimmed past before. And that was humiliating. And yet I kept going up and on January 2, 2015 I had gained back 26 of those pounds I had lost before. I felt defeated. I felt weak. I just didn’t know what to do. If this program can’t work for me, how can I do this?

And then I remembered, it’s not the program, it’s not me. I am weak.  And as Paul so eloquently states, when I am weak I must admit I need help and God is strong.

2 Corinthians 12:9-10

⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰That is why for Christ’s sake I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

God, the Creator cannot be defeated. Nothing can defeat him. And only when I am separate from him, only when I choose to live apart can I be defeated. And more often than not, I am defeated by the person I hold closest, me. My actions defeat me. My behaviors defeat me. I tell myself I’m good, I’m strong, I’m victorious, but I am not. I am weak. I am selfish. I am defeated. When I choose to rely on my own strength. When I chose to fight my own fights. When I believe “I’ve got this.” I don’t. God does.

So here's where I've been. Now onto where God is taking me.