As I said in an earlier post, my new word for this year is self control. I am praying about areas in my life where I need the Holy Spirit to teach me self control. The main area I have always felt most out of control is food. I have struggled with weight my whole life. As a teen, it was always brought to my attention. I was bribed with a myriad of things to entice me to loose weight. Needless to say, much of my thought life was consumed by thoughts about weight but never in a helpful way. It was always negative. Negative about myself, negative about my efforts, negative about my results. I would try and fail. Try and fail. I seemed to be valued by others according to my weight and I percieved that value to be pretty low due to my failures to loose what was obviously making me less to others. So clearly..... DECADES of this has not really made me too confident or secure in my abilities to get the weight off or overcome my lack of self control in this area.
And yet, this is the area I feel called to be led in. I joined and began going to Weight Watcher meetings in January. I shared with my weekly ladies small group that I had joined. I asked them to pray for me that God would help me learn to have self control with food. I shared that what I really desired from this journey was to see that within self control, there was freedom. I admitted that I really did not know what that looked like but I wanted to learn. Those ladies were wonderful to me. They listened, they encouraged, and they prayed. When we were done, one lady said God wanted me to tell you to "Fix the relationship you have with food. When you fix the relationship, it will be done." What a very good word to my very rebellious heart. The thought of really thinking about my relationship with food was scary and exciting. Scary because I knew what I would find would probably not make me very happy. Exciting because recognizing that food was an unhealthy relationship in my life would most certainly bring good changes. But could I look myself in the eye and really have a conversation with my head and my heart about food and what it had become to me? Did I have hope that I could change when all other attempts have failed?
A few weeks and a snow day later, I sat down by the fire to have that conversation. I thought about my actions, thoughts, and feelings in relation to food. Then I made a list of my beliefs about food
1. Food equals pleasure.
2. Food equals celebration.
3. Food equals bonding.
4. Food equals accomplishment and creativity.
5. Food equals lavish indulgence.
6. Food equals freedom.
I took a break, said a prayer, and then asked myself about the realities of having these beliefs. In acting from my belief system with food, what was really happening? Was food really bringing me all of this or had food become an unhealthy addiction with negative results in my life? The next list came to me
1. Food = addiction
2. Food= unhealthy habits
3. Food= unhealthy coorelations
4. Food= negative self image
5. Food= rebellion
6. Food = bondage
And that was enough soul searching for that day! I was left with truths on the page. Truths to help me think about my relationship. Truths to guide my self control journey. Truths that were both scary and exciting just like I thought. Truths that I need to come back to and explore deeper to know and understand myself better. Truths that have brought hope that I can truly change.
Yesterday at my Weight Watchers meeting, I got my 25 pound charm. I have actually lost almost 30 pounds now. That is the most that I have ever lost in my 38 years of life! I am going to be on this journey for a while now but, I have already found an answer to the prayer I asked those sweet small group ladies to pray. I have found that there is freedom in self control. There is freedom in making mindful choices, better choices, healthier choices.
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