Weight Watchers

At the beginning of this year I cautiously began a journey with Weight Watchers. Because my relationship with food, health and weight loss has almost always included fad diets, quick (un-maintainable) loss, and eating disordered thinking and habits, I was very careful in approaching weight loss this time. I chose Weight Watchers because there are no restrictions (you can eat anything you want as long as it fits into your daily points - fruits/veg are free!), no black/white thinking, no unattainable goals (they actually discourage losing more than 1-2 lbs a week, and are always quick to acknowledge "non scale victories" - successes that show growth towards physical/mental health & habits, not always appearing on the scale). These things and more have supported me in finding a more balanced mentality about health and weight than I have ever had before. So it was the perfect program for me. It offers the accountability I need because I check in every week - and if a week hasn't gone well (like when we were moving, or travelling!) it's only a couple pounds at the most and I am brought back on track - rather than like other times in my life when I could ignore my bad habits (and scale) for months at a time and eventually would discover an extra 40 pounds had appeared! The motivation I get from this program has & will work for me long term because it is so realistic. I've learned that the slower the change, the longer it lasts. This applies in weight loss AND habit forming/changing. There is no punishment when you don't 'stick to' the program (since there really isn't much of a 'program' to stick to). It's all about making small maintainable changes and just balancing out your eating and your exercise without depriving yourself of the things you really want (and lets be honest, sometimes need!) 

Before I become too much of a commercial, what I really came here for was just to share my excitement about the milestone I reached today! At my meeting this morning, I stepped on the scale and saw it read lower than I've weighed in at least 4 years. I have officially lost 40 pounds and my BMI is down 7%! For the first time in my life I KNOW I am losing weight healthily and will actually reach an ideal weight (I don't have a goal set yet, they avoid doing this until you are closer so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming, and they have your doctor recommend a healthy range for you - love that!)

In my 20's, while I was extreme dieting, I was the thinnest that I've ever been but was the most mentally unhealthy and the deepest in my eating disorder. When I looked in the mirror I saw a disgusting obese monster though I was hardly even overweight. After years of counselling, difficult years when I was not allowed to 'diet,' or restrict, I did gain a lot of weight (which is what happens after you have shocked your body with so much deprivation) but now I see that my health has reversed. I am now, even with almost 100 pounds left to lose, the most healthy I have ever been mentally. When I look in the mirror now I see exactly who I am. I don't see a thinner girl than I am, but I don't see someone disgusting. I feel sad for how I've treated myself but also grateful for how God has brought me to love who He made me. I see a body that has held me through 30 beautiful and broken years of life. I see strong legs that have walked every step I've ever asked them to, and would have walked many more if I had been brave enough to try. I see a tummy, scarred and stretched by the beautiful baby boy it grew within it and I can't see through tears right now as gratitude overwhelms me for what God has given me in this body, and for the regret of how I've regarded myself in the past, and the way I allowed some careless words to almost scar me for life. No more. I have learned health begins within. A healthy body can not make a healthy mind, but a healthy mind WILL make a healthy body. So now it is exciting to watch the pounds disappear, and know that I am saying bye for good. My husband has a 40 lb weight that I struggle to lift but I try all the time because it makes me smile to know the reality of what I am changing in my body!

I still watch many friends struggle with this battle of weight, body image, health, and the balance between loving yourself and needing everyone else to love you. We all have our own path there, but I offer myself to you if anyone ever needs some encouragement, words of (my little bit of) experience, or prayer. I am so thankful for a Husband who speaks God's wisdom to me. At times when I get too focused on the number on the scale he reminds me; our bodies will pass away. They are but for this life and not the next. There are so many more important things to spend our time and focus on, that are lasting. God does want us to be healthy but not in a way that is obsessive and hinders our worship of Him because we are worshiping ourselves - making ourselves more important than Him. So many of us are worshiping our health without realizing it. Whether it's the idol of vanity or the idol of health or the idol of longer lives with our kids it is still idolatry and puts our eyes on something other than Jesus. God alone has numbered our days and I believe and cling to the hope that it is not dependent on me. My life is written, and what He is giving me in this health journey is the freedom to enjoy it!

Many years of joy were robbed from me by my feeling that I was too overweight to do certain things, or too consumed with how others were judging me. I had the curse of looking ahead thinking "I'll be happy when... I'll do this when... I'll live fully when..." But the answer to this and every other question is Jesus, who said "I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows)." John 10:10 AMP 
A full life NOW, not later.

For every good thing, I thank Him. For every struggle, I praise Him. In everything I see Him. And because it's lavished on me, I love Him.

All for Jesus,
Carly

No Greater Love

Ahhh God is so cool. Every once in a while I have one of these precious moments where in the inner workings of my mind God interrupts my thoughts and implants His own, and teaches me something that I truly did not know until then.

This was one of the most powerful pieces of evidence for me that God is real; when I noticed that some of the 'thoughts' in my head were not actually my own thoughts. When I have no good reason to think or know the things that are being spoken in my mind. When these thoughts convey a truth that I have not learned elsewhere. When these thoughts lead me in a direction opposite to the way that 'I' would like to go but end up being wiser decisions. When these thoughts speak contrary to my own feelings at the time, to encourage or motivate me onward when I am feeling weak and lost. When I feel 'something' telling me to do something that seems utterly ridiculous, but as I have come to believe that this may be the Lord speaking and I have tested the waters of actually obeying this 'voice' that seems so irrational at times, I have been astonished at how later on it all makes sense somehow, and the 'irrational' thing I was asked to do helps me or someone else in a way that I could not have anticipated; but God did.

Over the years since God called me to know Him, there have been occasions where He has... I am not even sure how to explain this... it's almost as though He answers a prayer that I have been meaning to pray, or should have prayed but didn't. A small example, years ago when I was working for the City I came down with a sudden severe flu and had to leave work early. I was delirious with fever and up all night on the bathroom floor, and ended up sleeping well into the next work day before I realized that I hadn't called in sick. My work environment was one that did not feel very compassionate or forgiving in these types of situations, and I was immediately in a panic thinking I was about to get fired for not showing up for work, and not calling in. I fumbled for my phone, still completely ill and nauseous, and noticed a voicemail from work. My stomach churned and adrenaline coursed through me while I waited for the message to play. Sure enough it was my Boss,  - "Hi Carly, I just wanted to call and tell you not to bother calling in this morning. I saw how sick you were yesterday and I don't expect you in today...get some rest and we'll see you when you're feeling better." Click. Wow. I was stunned! This kind of thing did not happen where I worked. Everything was policy, strictness, and unyielding expectations. Even at times in the face of reason. I fell down on the bed, heaved a huge sigh of relief, and lay in awe of God's graciousness, that He knew I would need that mercy even before I did. And even once I knew I had messed up, I didn't even stop to ask for it. Yet there He was, having gone ahead of me, preparing it in advance anyway.

Without taking away from my absolute gratitude to God in these kinds of situations, I usually have this feeling of regret in the back of my mind. I regret that I had not thought to pray for or about whatever the need was, or that I had not devoted myself to more sincere or serious prayer. I always think, "Oh how amazing a story would it be if I could say that I really invested in this issue, faithfully praying, furiously dedicated and determined to hold the expectation that the Lord would come through...and then when He DID - what GLORY that would be! What a powerful testimony of God's faithfulness I would be able to tell..."

This is pretty close to the musing that was going on in my mind today, as I reflected on the goodness God has lavished on me over the past few days. I was wishing I had been praying more for help, because as I saw how God WAS helping me, I wanted a story to tell of His great answer to prayer. Because I love those stories. They were powerful to me when I was discovering who God was, and I'm endlessly hopeful that they will continue to be powerful to others who hear them, especially those who don't yet know that God is a God like that! He is present, current, attentive, and knows you deeply whether you know Him or not, and is anxious to make Himself known, and to show us how real He is, how good, and how mighty.

So today, as I kicked myself for not being a better pray-er and regretted not having a great story to tell of God's faithfulness in answering my prayer...His sweet soft voice came into my mind, and said this:

"What you actually want is a story of YOUR great faithfulness." Oh, shoot. This can't be true. This is true. (See, I would not have said this to myself. I am not this humble). My wish is not that God had done something greater, it's that I had done something greater! What I am actually...sadly...regretting, is that I can not tell a story of my devotion, and my faithfulness, and my amazing prayer that was so good that the God of the Everything answered it. His response was perfect. He is always good. His help was timely and more than sufficient. I am not lamenting that God could have done more. I'm lamenting that I could have. And I am totally busted.

Then He said these words to me:

"There are no stories of your great faithfulness. You are not faithful. There are only stories of your great inadequacy and my great love for you." It is HIS great faithfulness that powerful stories are made of. And as much as some of that might sound harsh and demeaning to us, it is not! There is nothing more spectacular than being loved fully for who we are despite our failings and weaknesses. What a sad world if God were only unleashed through our accomplishments! And what tragedy, if God was only faithful when we were faithful; if God was only good when we earned it; if God only loved us when we were deserving. Rejoice, that is not the truth! God does not require a thing from us to be who He is. He does not expect us to work for His presence in our lives. In fact, I bet He wishes we'd quit trying. I bet He wishes we'd get over ourselves and all the things we're trying to be, and just rest in who He is. Then we would finally be who we are. Who we were made to be. And then His Spirit, everything good and pure and lovely, could flow through us, without our visions of who we 'should' be getting in the way.

Click here to segue to a blog I read earlier this week that started out this journey I've been on with God about who I want to be and who He made me to be. Reading these words gave me such peace that it's okay to just be who I am, without striving or comparing - check it out.

The truth is this:

"God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)

Read that verse over, and really ruminate on what that means... It was not at all dependent on you.

C.H. Spurgeon, in a sermon delivered November 23, 1856 said this, (I've helped myself you out by dictionary.comming some of this old-school lingo Spurgeon uses that I didn't you might not understand. You'll find new-school lingo in [these]. Here goes.) "Let us for a moment consider what sort of sinners many of us have been [how much we really do suck sometimes], and then we shall see it was marvellous grace that Christ should die for men—not as penitents [people who feel or express remorse for their mistakes], but as sinners [people who are still smack in the middle of making a bunch of mistakes, and could care less to change]. Consider how many of us have been continual sinners. We have not sinned once, nor twice, but ten thousand times [can't seem to get it right]. Our life, however upright and moral it has been [people like you, and you consider yourself a good person], is stained by a succession of sins [but you still mess up from time to time]. If we have not revolted against God in the outward acts which proclaim the profligate [badass...can I say that on here?] to be a great sinner, yet [still] the thoughts of our heart and the words of our lips are swift witnesses against us [they sell us out] that we have continually transgressed [keep screwing up]."

What do you think? Should I be an official Spurgeon translator? :)

My point in sharing that quote is to get us to really absorb the reality of our sin; the hopelessness of our ability to do the right thing, all the time. Any of us. Only because knowing this makes Jesus's death all the more poignant - that even knowing the worst of humanity's filth, He hung on that cross in absolute love with us.

Though it's important to acknowledge at times, do not ever let your sight linger too long on the issue of your sin. God will shine light on it so you can see it and renounce it, and then walk with Him away from it. He will convict you but He will not condemn you. Staring at your sin will bring guilt and condemnation. Staring at Jesus will bring life and freedom. He does not save you as a charity, because you need it and He takes pity. He saves you because you are a cherished one. He wants you, and it is worth it to Him to get you back, whole and holy. He does not call to mind your transgressions, nor does He want you to dwell on them. He wants you to dwell in Him.

Bask in this love that we can not comprehend... The hardest part to understand, because it is so out of this world, is that there is nothing we can do to earn it. We do not need to earn it. It just is. We can not shake it. It is relentless. His love is the promise that never breaks. It's what promises are meant to be. It's why we are hurt when one is broken, because we know they are meant to be kept, forever.

So my prayers do not call God to action, His love does. My devotion does not inspire God's faithfulness, His love does. My behaviour does not earn me favour with Him, His love does.

It's all Him, and no me.

This is why His strength is made perfect in our weakness, (2 Corinthians 12:19) because when we finally know our weakness we are set free from striving. When we stop trying to accomplish anything apart from Him we can be swept up in the love of God that is everything we need, where we finally understand that who we are can only be completed in Him. It's not that we are weak and He is strong...it's that He is strong and we are His.

And suddenly words like this make sense, "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me." (Philippians 4:13)

So when I say that God is faithful despite my inadequacies, this is not an insult to me. This is my glory to God! It's a testimony of God's great love and faithfulness, and my worth and value in Him. That He doesn't need me to be anything special in order to love me. But because He loves me, that makes me something special. If a great man of stature, wealth and fame loved a plain and lowly woman, all people on earth would look in awe and wonder what secret beauty this woman held that this great man could love her so completely. They would not wonder 'if', they would wonder 'what.' The fact that she is loved rules out the 'if'. Love places value on a person. And the greater the one who loves, the more valuable is made the beloved.

I am the beloved. You are the beloved. And the One who loves us is the greatest there ever was, is or will be. The most high God. The mighty King. Of stature, wealth and fame. Your beauty to Him is incomparable. And your value is unaffected by who you are, or what you've done. Your value is intrinsic because He placed it there when He formed you with His hands. He calls you beautiful. He proves you valuable. He made you, and when He lost you, He traded His life to get you back.

You are worth dying for. There is no greater Love than this.

Dear God

This is for you.

May you lead me in what to share, and what not to share...

May you be glorified...

May you be lifted up, and draw all people to yourself...

May you be revealed as the Way, the Truth, and the Light...

May you use this honesty to break the power of shame in my life...

May you use my story to show others they are not alone, in their struggle nor in their life...

May your light cause the darkness to flee...

May you set the captives free!

AMEN <3