They say "The Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." For the past month I have had a nagging feeling that God wanted me to begin sharing my story, past and present. I am not 100% sure what I am supposed to share, but I guess at some point I just have to sit down and start writing. So that's what I'm doing...taking that single step.
Since I was very young, 7 or 8 years old, I have 'struggled' with my weight. I was not actually overweight as a child, but some circumstances came about in my life that convinced me I was. I had some kind of fight with a friend at school and she and some other girls started calling me "fatso." I honestly don't remember if that happened one time or many, but it somehow cut me deeply enough to scar my self esteem, and from then on I believed I was obese and disgusting and needed to lose weight for people to like me. I had a grandmother who was overweight for most of my life, and I saw her attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, and I became convinced, at around 9 years old, that I needed to diet. I somehow talked my parents into taking me to Weight Watchers. I started becoming addicted to diets and fitness magazines and felt like I would never be happy and my life would never be good until I was thin. I never believed anyone who told me I was not fat and didn't have a problem. And over time, due to puberty and a depression that I suffered through in my teens, I actually did develop a weight problem, and that just made me feel all the more justifed, and all the more hopeless. I did not realize until recently that this weight problem is the result of the way I felt about myself, and not the other way around.
Obviously much has happened between then and now, but this story seems to be one that begins towards the end - now that I can look back at my life in the light of God's love. I lost and gained amounts of up to 60 pounds at a time. I moved to Australia and back, leaving me feeling like I had a strange sort of second life, but missed a couple years of my life here at home. I have been in and out of relationships, looking for love and acceptance though never offering those things to myself and never finding anyone capable of filling the voids I had developed. Though I am married now, to an incredible man who loves me truly and completely, there is still a healing needed deep in my own spirit, from years of hurting myself with my thoughts and beliefs. Woven in and throughout it all is the story of my soul's salvation - my love story with Jesus, and the undeniable ways He saved me then, and continues to save me now. But God doesn't just walk into our lives and magically make everything perfect. Instead, He walks in and asks us to follow Him so He can lead us out of our misery, along the path He has chosen for us, before we were even born. His path is the one that will heal our souls, no matter what our circumstances, because now we don't walk alone, and now it's not all hopeless. There is a reason, and a much greater purpose than just how things affect our own lives. I've heard it said that "We are but pencils in the hand of God, who wants to write a love letter to the world." So it's because of Him that I am on this journey, that I am healing and starting to put together the pieces of how I broke, and that I have decided to share it all with you...that maybe somehow He can heal you too, as we let His light shine into the darkness.
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