Prison Life

I have a weight problem.  I have wrestled with my weight since my teen years. And just to clarify that is 30 plus years now, a reasonable amount of time to figure something out I dare say.  My first memory of thinking something was off with my body was around fifteen when I remember a then boyfriend (which I had no business having, but that is a whole other post) commenting about my thighs in a less than favorable way, I can still remember the shorts I was wearing and where we were.  Oh hindsight.....I should have shut it down right then and there, instead I decided to run.  By that I mean I took up jogging to get my substandard thighs into acceptable, boyfriend pleasing condition.  Thus began the battle that would be my constant companion all through my teen and adult years.  I am now 48 years old and ready to move beyond this relationship.
Over the years, I have tried diets, programs, exercise (not too much), supplements, etc.  I was very good at being rewarded with good numbers on the scale at the meetings and did enjoy good success on several occasions as a result of those programs,diets and meetings.  I even made the local newspaper several years ago well by backside did as I was weighing in at a weekly meeting.  What I loved about that picture was how baggy my pants looked.....I still own those pants, they are not currently baggy, in fact, they do not currently fit.  Truth, is hard, but truth will set me (and you) free. 

John 8:32 (NIV)
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

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I don't know about you friend, but I sure want to be free.  I long to be free, and I may even know what will set me free, but I remain bound.  My bondage is a prison of my own creation and restraint and it seems absolutely ridiculous that I would chose to remain bound when I have the tools to be set free.  It is.  I have often wondered "Why is it so hard to do the things that are good for me and so easy to do those which in the end hurt me?"  But I do them, repeatedly time and again....what is up with that?  While I don't profess to have any answers for anyone, let alone, my own self, I do think I may be on to a hint of something that just simply makes sense.  Indulge me through this train of thought won't you please?
It is a trust thing.  And if you recall from a few posts ago  I concluded that fear is simply a lack of trust.... it's just that simple right?  No.  There it is again - imagine that - that fun packed four letter word that God has asked me to deal with this year.....fear.  Now this is where the ride gets a little crazy so secure your seat belts and hold on while I make a quick pass around some curves.  It looks like this in my mind......
I use food to fill an empty place inside - not my stomach.  The emptiness is there because I am afraid of something.  I am afraid of something because I am not able to trust.  Therefore I am using food to fill an emptiness which it was not designed to fill and will never succeed in filling.  I gain weight.  I feel emptier.  I eat more.  I gain more weight. The emptiness gets bigger and louder.  I self medicate with food.  I turn on myself for my lack of control and the whole messy cycle begins again!   Exhausting!  Destructive!  Sad!  Not to mention, absolutely not what God wants for my life.
Do you see the obvious problem here?....I am using a  hammer to cut a piece of wood.  I need a saw and I know what one looks like, how to use one and where one is, but for some reason, I keep picking up the hammer!  WHY?  I. don't. know. But I know someone who does. 
The Prince of Peace.  He wants to take away the chaos and confusion and put an end to the journey around the same old mountain and set me free to live and walk the path He laid out for me before I ever was.  So what is stopping me ? Fear, which of course brings us back around to.....you know by now....trust.
 It sounds like it might be a little taxing, a tad hard doesn't it?  It is.  This is....well, I've lost count of how many panic attacks I have fought off just getting this typed out!  But then I find myself back at square one, facing my old nemesis ....fear.  I cannot retreat, it is no longer an option.  For goodness sake I have exposed myself  here and there is no turning back now.  And even more than that, there is that possibility that this just might help someone other than me. Believe me when I tell you if this helps one - it is SO very worth it to me!! That is all I need to acknowledge to keep moving forward.  I have this fleeting vision of standing there one day (a thinner me of course....with a great outfit on a perfect hair day) and looking at this fear and saying in the most confidant and convincing voice "I laugh at fear."  Does anybody else have those victory moments?  Ok....moving on.....
I've acknowledged that it's hard and that I am afraid so, what am I going to do about it?  Take baby steps forward....one foot in front of the other and keep moving....forward.  This post is really more than a baby step, this may classify as a leap - a little 'catch up' of sorts.
For now, that's all I have it in me to share.  
I currently reading a great book (see sidebar)which is providing some really interesting insight and ideas to approaching this battle, this prison that so many of us keep ourselves trapped in.  I will be sharing more, but before I commit to doing too much here I would love to know if this is something you want to read more about. 

Please give me some feedback.....Would you be interested in going through the book with me?  Tell me what you want, this is for you...and I am more than happy to go deeper.  Do you have any interest in my journey/progress, would you like to share yours?  I would love to hear your ideas about what this could look like! 

I will leave you with this for now, the good news is, there is Good News!  And He is the key to release from our prison cell.  You put yourself there and with His help you can sentence yourself to freedom for life!!  

 

Confounded by Simplicity

Seven simple words.  Clear, concise and easy to understand.  So it would stand to reason that if one desired to or chose to follow them it should be a pretty clear cut, straight forward task.  Tell me....has that been your experience?  Because it sure hasn't been mine!  
This can be an huge area of struggle for me.  I know that I should take things to God, that His ways are right and true and that He will always be fair and just with no selfish hidden agenda. I often do not naturally default this way however.  I tend toward one of two things.....
1) I can 'fix, do, handle' this myself (God needs my help)
or 
2)  I seek the counsel of man
Actually, now that I think of it there is another that had been known to surface....
3)  It doesn't even cross my mind that God might be remotely interested.    
Scary right? You bet it is.  This is serious business.  God cares about so many facets of our life where we deny Him access without even entertaining a moment's consideration.  He is in the details, He created the details!  
So why do we tend to be bent toward doing things our own way or seeking help from someone who we think may have a good answer?  Pride.  Fear.  Insecurity.  The way I see it is this, and please understand this is just a peek into the rather chaotic and often confused place that resides between my ears....pride is based in fear and fear is an absence of trust, so what we are really dealing with here are trust issues.   Trust issues, pretty sure they are a standard feature in the luggage that most people carry one around.
Wow, I am thinking as I am writing this, I knew God was calling me to deal with fear in 2013, but really what He is asking me to do is trust...... Him.  Simple. Gulp. Ouch.
I am immediately reminded of a teaching in an Elijah House class I attended  several years ago and an 'Ah Ha' moment that I had when the woman leading the class said these words "How you view your earthly father is how you view God".  Ginormous Gulp.  Questions immediately began a rapid fire sequence in my mind that even today still kick in to a lesser degree when my thoughts 'go there'. 
I have never met my earthly father.  I know very little about him and what I do know is likely skewed through my mother's perspective.  I have NO relationship then to base my relationship with my Heavenly Father on?  Surely God would not leave me high and dry like that?  I certainly can't have a relationship with God built on a trusting loving relationship with a father who has only been absent and non-existent to me my entire life.  
In my years walking with the Lord, I have learned that things are more often that not, not what they initially appear to be.  We serve a very complex and detail oriented God.  He is the Master Weaver and He weaves threads of fear with trust and hope with sorrow and though something may at first glance look like fear, what it really is on closer inspection is pride or pain.  He is the only One who can clearly identify the elements of His glorious tapestries.  
What do you do when you attend an event or gathering and taste something delicious that you know your family would love?  You ask who made the dish, you seek out that person and you request the recipe right? Simple.
Matthew 7:7  (NIV)

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

 

So we must seek Him, and ask Him and He will tell us what we want to know......simple.  Please, let me know how this is working out for you, because for me, most days, I'm not even clear on the question.

The A List

Most of my live with brief seasons of exception I have felt 'not good enough'.  I still feel that way more than I care to admit.  Over the years I have come to refer to this lack of self worth as not being on "The A List".  When I first began dating my husband, I really wasn't even sure if we were dating....stay with me it will make sense I promise.  You see he was (and still is) a perfect gentleman and so there were not 'obvious' signs of interest and because nothing direct was said and I had very little experience with gentlemen I was left waffling back and forth in a game of  he loves me he loves me not. 

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 I was a single mother at the time trying desperately to recover  from a long and ugly divorce and he was a good guy that I knew through work who helped me out with man things like installing shelving and moving heavy things around, you know tools and strength things which I certainly did not excel in.  This is probably when I first openly examined  my inward tendency to A List.  This is the endless loop soundtrack that played in my head continually in those days...."Why would a man like him be interested in someone like you? He's too successful, too attractive, too good, too this, too that for you".  You get the jist. As the tape played on and I found myself growing more interested in him, I became more convinced that there was no way on God's green earth that a man of his caliber...an "A List" man,  would ever want anything to do with a woman like me.  A woman like me being, a single mom, a failure at marriage, not thin enough, not educated enough, not interesting enough, not pretty enough and most assuredly not good enough in a myriad of endless ways, B List material at best on a good day, but all too likely if the truth be known pretty much just a C List girl with little hope for better.

Time marched on as it has a way of doing and an amazing thing happened, just when I gave up  any shred of  remote possible hope that this great guy could ever consider me worthy as a romantic partner in his life, he got really desperate made his feelings known, and much to my shock and  incredible delight it turned out he had his eye on me after all. 
I was thrilled!!  BUT  I spent the next year secretly thinking that he would come to his senses and this fairy tale I was living would end in an awful mess with me making Cinderella before the ball look like she had been leading a charmed life by comparison.  I thought that maybe he had some 'issues' that had yet to surface and that I was once again being led down the garden path by someone who was less than honorable and not what he appeared to be.  As  more time passed,  I allowed myself to start believing that maybe something good could happen to me after all.  The more I believed and allowed myself to open up to the possibility that maybe, just maybe someone wonderful could love me, the more I felt like the princess in the fairy tale.  I began to feel safe and secure for the FIRST TIME EVER.   Sisters, you would think that this was just where I wanted to be but because it was such foreign ground to me I really spent each day in ….fear.  Yep that four letter word was present in just about every moment.

I had been so beat down in the ten years prior to this relationship that I had a long climb up and out of the pit that I had called home for so long.  I would make a brief appearance out of darkness and into the light and then doubt and fear would grab hold, the endless loop tape that had been briefly silenced would start up again at a deafening volume and I would retreat to the 'safety' of the pit where I was miserable, but it was familiar. 

Obviously this was no way to live long term, but I really didn’t even know at the time that I was living this way because how I was living was so much better than how I had been that I didn’t question much of anything.  I was grateful and holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop as a standard operating procedure on most days. 

Something had to give and it did.  The it arrived in the form of a beautiful diamond ring and a marriage proposal that literally took my breath away.  Ok now I was really panicking!!  He wanted to marry me???  How much longer could this craziness possibly go on before the bottom fell out?  We began to make plans......a destination wedding....really? Wasn’t that something reserved for A Listers?  Oh wow things were completely out of control.  Jamaica...oh my! A simple wedding ceremony barefoot on the beach,  with sand between our toes,  just the two of us and those necessary to make it legal.   The plan moved forward.  The date was set, arrangements made and we were unbelievably happy and excited about the new life that would begin on Jamaica’s  sandy shore.   I bought a lovely long, flowing ivory dress, with beading and sequins that did not come from the clearance rack at K-mart for $24.99 as I had the first time (that was probably some foreshadowing….you think?). 

We flew to Jamaica and exchanged our vows shoeless on the beach and got lost in each other for a few  magical few days before we came home to begin our life together.

All through these months of courtship and plan making My Prince was always supportive, encouraging and worked hard to help me believe that I deserved all the good things that were happening to me.  I wanted to believe him, really I did, but it was a constant uphill battle for me.  I thought so much of him, valued his opinion and trusted him completely (I still do on an even deeper level) and so slowly thoughts of "if he sees something in me, maybe something is there, if he thinks I deserve to be happy, have nice things and be treated well, maybe I do". 

We will celebrate our 8th anniversary next month, this wonderful man has yet to come to his senses and I pray he never does - lol!  Fear could have very easily robbed me of the happiness and personal growth that I have enjoyed since I said "I do" on the beach.  Fear only has the power we give it. 

When you focus on fear it becomes part of the fabric of who you are and controls how you function.  This becomes an entry point for the enemy who is then able to further infiltrate and destroy even more in our lives.  We must stand strong and speak God's truth to the lies by which we have been deceived. 

1 John 4:18   (GW)

 No fear exists where his love is. Rather, perfect love gets rid of fear, because fear involves punishment. The person who lives in fear doesn’t have perfect love.

2 Timothy 1:7   (NKJV)

 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
 Do you A List? Others?  Yourself?  Events?  Things?  Have you had success in breaking free from  A Listing?  Share....Please!!

And the Calendar Turns...

Do you feel it?  There is a humming, a buzzing, there is a fragrance of hope, excitement and anticipation are in the air.  I love this time of year. A New Year - all fresh and shiny.  No mistakes, no regrets, no unpleasant memories.  A blank canvas sitting at the ready.  I am not much of a resolution maker, I do however readily admit to having a few areas of focus that I 'intend' to pursue in the year ahead.... I just like to make them user friendly enough that they remain palatable for a slightly longer time period than the typical resolution does.

Of course after this waining season of indulgence, I like most of you, am very aware of how snug my jeans are - but that's old news...I have bigger fish to fry (well maybe poach) in 2013.  I have piles that need sorting, purging and things that need organizing and systems that need to be thought through.  I put a book on my wish list and was happy to see that My Prince paid attention and it was under the tree.  After all, he lives with me....he knows!  Books are a tricky thing I have discovered over the years though....you have to read them and apply them to make their principles play out in your life....it's all in the details dear ones I promise ;-)

Truly for me there is one four letter word that I am standing battle ready to deal with this year....fear.  This is where the rubber meets the road and the 'real' begins.  Y'all I don't know about you, but there are lots of things that scare me...really there are.  I am 48 yrs. old and pretty sure I am entering into that joyous season of mentalpause menopause and I am just plain, flat out fed up with being afraid and allowing the enemy to hold me back from everything that God has for me!  Can I get an Amen Sister?

I mean really girls, we are selling ourselves out to fear!  Fear that the enemy of our soul giggles over when he sees how he cripples us with it! I believe the term here is righteous indignation.  Maybe it is getting ornery in her old age - either way, that sucker is on notice!  I am scared but I am not going to let that hold me back any longer.  Please do not be alarmed, I will not be taking up Nascar Racing, there will be no skydiving or Fear Factor appearances in my future.  2013 will be a year of facing a few things that have been collecting dust in those dark back corners of life's closet however.

 

I worked with a guy years ago who used to say "If you're scared, call the police".  I am scared but the police can't help.  I am calling,  but not with my iPhone, rather with the oldest and most reliable technology there is, prayer. I am calling out to The One who knows me and loves me in spite of my fears and who wants to help me to face them and make them a part of the testimony that He will use to help others who walk the path behind me.

That dear ones is what it is all about.  Reach back and see who is there behind you, following a path that you once traveled and lovingly share their journey. By giving of yourself you can help them find their way.  You can be the sign pointing the way out if you will just look back and see who needs directions.

Sisters, if we can remember where the fear in our lives comes from and look up instead of focusing on the fear, I believe we have the battle half won already.  By deconstructing and exposing the plans of the enemy we take away his power to trap us in that old familiar snare of fear.

What's on your list for 2013? Is fear something you want to tackle as well? I have a few books lined up to read on this topic and will be sharing with you what I learn along the way. 

In the meantime, I would love to know where you are with the whole fear thing......phone lines are open and operators are standing by!