Well, here it is April and the good news is: I'm still fully connected to my single New Year's resolution: in short, that I will let God teach me how to do what I've never had a clue how to begin: loving my body.
I have been at this prayer thing now long enough in life to understand that when I ask Him for something, 99% of the time I don't really understand what I'm asking for. The answers are almost never going to come in the ways my lil' old imagination can conjure. The timing is going to look "off" according to my own expectations, but it's also going to be perfect. The pieces of the answer will almost always blow my mind, but they always link together to create beauty that far surpasses what men can muster with our puny little attempts.
I have continued to keep my hands off the process. No dreaming up plans or schedules. No choosing my own measure-able marks of the journey. I am asking Him, and I am waiting on Him, and I am staying out of His way as completely as I can manage.
Wanna know something crazy? IT'S HAPPENING. I mean, I am not there, but I get glimpses of it now. This is not "results based" emotion. I've been there, done that so many times. Dropped 50 or more pounds too many times to count...started feeling really, really good about how much better I looked...and then BOOM. Sudden inexplicable end of all motivation, all the weight hammered right back onto my poor groaning frame. This is not that.
I started with following the simple directive: choose love. CHOOSE to love my body. Feed it what it needs, not what it wants. Don't respond to its "spoiled brat" demands. Take responsibility. Love it enough for discipline. Move it around. Take care of it. I have been doing this, one choice at a time, with far better consistency than any of the previous highly planned and structured attempts.
I have dropped some pounds. I don't know how many; this is not about that. There is a scripture that tells me to seek first the kingdom of God, and all the rest will be added to me. I'm thinking loving my body as the gift it is from God is definitely a "kingdom" goal...so...the pounds are dropping as an "added to me" kind of deal and not as the final goal. The point here is: I am learning to love my body while it's still somewhere in the 100 pounds above target weight range. BEFORE it gets to anything close to that condition that has brought the happy feelings before...those ones that carried me exactly nowhere.
Anyway. This weekend another piece clicked into place. I've had this sudden awakening to my need to fight against insecurity in the last few weeks. My tactics against it are different than they have ever been before. It has been a very God-led thing; I've just been following along and generally being amazed. Over the weekend, someone said just the right thing and the light bulb went on: this battle against insecurity is a battle for loving my body. I have been shutting insecurity's nasty voice off for SO MANY YEARS by stuffing food in on top of it, trying to squash it down into silence, to sedate my body and brain into not upsetting me. I have done it mostly unconsciously and unknowingly, but occasionally with full deliberate zeal.
Without understanding what I was doing, I have started "telling on" insecurity when it starts its crap. I write it out and refute it, but what I don't do is shovel food into my pie hole, trying to still its voice. When it shuts up this time, I guess it will be when it leaves. Feeding it has only ever hurt me more.
I have no idea when that might be. But tonight, grasping the fullness of the connection there, I feel hope.
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