With all the not being able to run lately due to arthritic feet protesting, and not being able to bike as much due to schedule craziness, I've been, I'm sure, on a plateau for awhile, weight-wise. I don't have to step on a scale to know I've not gotten smaller in a little while. The result of that (which I recall happening last year, too, when various things took some of my running away from me) is that after shrinking consistently, being on the plateau can feel like getting fatter. I've been fairly at peace with it, as I understand the goal here is not about size, but about letting Him teach me to love my body...but still...I've held the opinion that I've probably put on some weight.
Saturday night was a Christmas party for work. I SO wished I had something *new* to wear for it - something I haven't already been seen in eleventy-zillion times. Then I remembered! In the back of my closet hung a brown silk suit - skirt and shirtish/jackety high dollar wonder that is TO DIE FOR - a hand-me-down from my high school BFF, who asked me to treasure it well. I got it from her back in May, and at the time I could button the skirt if I sucked everything in as hard as I could and pulled it so tight it hurt. I couldn't even begin to zip it. I brought it home, trusting that one day it would fit. What if it fit now? I doubted it. Still, I really wanted something special to wear, so I pulled it out and tried it on, bracing myself for that terrible feeling of trying on something that's too small.
To my surprise, it fit. It came with matching sky-high heels and I put them on and WOW it was fun to look in the mirror. I was so excited.
In the end, though, I couldn't wear it. Because in the end, it didn't pass the darn "sit test." I HATE THE SIT TEST. That's when something looks great on me standing up, and then I put my wooden chair in front of the mirror and try sitting down, and watch in horror as the shifting that happens is too gruesome to be witnessed by anyone else's eyes. DARN THE SIT TEST! But I'm sure glad I remembered to do it before I walked out the door feeling all like Mama Hottie. That would have let alll the air out of me, when I sat down at the party. I just need to lose probably 10 more pounds and the sit test should be passable in that suit.
I settled for a black velvet shapeless dress that I've been wearing since last February. It's a lot bigger on me now than it was then, but it's still perfectly acceptable and hey, I haven't over-worn it, I don't think, so it was fine.
On an unrelated note, my schedule has been running over me lately with all the gentleness and kindness of a freight train. It's been an item of prayer and concern for me. I spent yesterday (other than church time) mostly doing what seemed totally counter-intuitive to me - when I felt like I should be "catching up," I rested, and rested, and rested some more. Oh, I puttered and got some important stuff done, but mostly I rested and hung out "virtually" with my guy (thank you Jesus for cell phones). This, it turns out, was a good investment of my time. I had gone to bed Saturday night feeling kind of desperate and depressed with that, "I'll never catch up" feeling that blankets one in exhaustion and confusion. This morning, I am refreshed, revived, and ready to take on the world. WE NEED REST. That's why God built a day of it into the week. It's a gift to us, and a needed one at that.
And a final note: MY FEET LET ME RUN THIS MORNING! HALLELUJAH!!!!! It was sooooo great to be back out there. I lost my mind and thought that 25 degrees was warm enough to not need my headband, and so my forehead and ears were frosty frozen for the first quarter mile or so until my body could work up its usual massive amount of heat. After that I was fine. When I got back home, some dude in the lobby, who I could tell even without my glasses on is MUCH leaner than I am, commented to me how he nearly froze on his run this morning.
Hey. That's the benefit of carrying around all these surplus pounds. They insulate me, and they cause my body to be a super heat producing factory when I move it hard. I suppose I'm gonna miss that, when more of the pounds leave me.
Eh. They can leave anyway. That's what layers are for, right?
HAPPY MONDAY.
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