jesus | fish in a blender

Day 3 of the Very Low Calorie Diet. hCG. Human Chorionic Gonadotropin, aka The Pregnancy Hormone. (If you’re reading this and wonder what on earth I’m talking about, please feel free to use google.)

I woke up one morning last week and decided “today is the day”. My bff had been talking about her latest round with hCG, and apparently it stuck in my mind. For the past 6 months or so, I’ve been eating as a reaction to life. I never understood ’emotional eating’ until I began emotionally eating. It’s been a rough year. I’ve had to give complete control of a situation to God and that has not been simply done. I discovered the morning last week that it had not been done at all.

I woke up and told myself “today is the day”. Actually, a voice inside of me told me. I don’t think it was my voice. You know the one – “Why bother? You’re a crappy mom. You’re fatter than you’ve ever been. Do you *see* your chins? Your hair is nasty. Those zits are disgusting. You’re a shitty friend. You don’t have any friends. Because you’re a **really** shitty friend. Look how hard your husband works. What if something happens to him? Your kids will be screwed if they’re left with only you. You really think you can keep a business running like he can? You forget everything. It’s no wonder no one wants to hang out with you. You’re lazy. You suck.” – you know, **that** voice.

“Today is the day.” It was the day to start getting my body back in working order. It was the day to stop feeding my face for the sake of celebration, the sake of loneliness, the sake of no-one-cares-anyway. It was the day to properly honor this temple that God has entrusted to me. It was the day to stop teaching my kids by example how to run their body into the ground. It was the day to pray.

Yep, pray. Overlapping all of these other things this day was about, PRAYER umbrellaed every single one. Two thoughts were happening simultaneously. PRAYstopfeedingfaceER. PRAYhonorGodER. PRAYstopleadingbybadexampleER. Prayer was the meaning of today. More on that later…

My answers to chapter 2 of Made to Crave, by Lysa TerKeurst:

1. The resounding fact that I have no control over my children. Oh, I can discipline, attempt to teach lessons, prepare them for adulthood, encourage them, love them and lead them in the ways of Christ. But I cannot control their thoughts, their actions, their relationship with people and God. We’ve had a tough year with our 15 year-old son and instead of reaching to God, depending on God, trusting God, I chose to control what our son does, who he talks to, what activities he can or cannot be a part of, and even went so far as to control the words that come out of his mouth and the thoughts that he is or is not allowed to think. Oh yes, I’m the parent and being responsible for my child is my job. HOWEVER. In all of this, I can only think of two times that I even consulted God as to what to do. In fact, the two times I did cry out to Him all I did was cry. A lot. I cried because I’m scared for my son. I bellowed because it hurts to see your child hurt. I bawled because everything I have done to ‘train him up in the way he should go (Proverbs 22:6)’ ended up turning to crap. I yelled because I was mad at God. I was disappointed in my son. I was fearful for the example he was to our younger daughter. I was disgusted by my son’s actions, thoughts, words and plain ol’ indifference to life in general. So I cried. And cried. And probably went into the fetal position with my helplessness and overall fear. My. Son. Is. Not. Perfect. I obviously failed as a mother, so I guess I’ll go eat worms. Only in this case the worms were cake and cookies and chocolate and pastries in outlandish amounts and all of the time.

2. My need to draw closer to God.

3. I would have received God’s guidance instead of getting fat(ter).

4. I used this ‘method’ about 14 years ago and lost 40 lbs. And kept off the weight, worked out and cared about what I put in my body. For 6 years. Even to the point that I was diligent in not gaining unnecessary weight when I was pregnant with my daughter. I have never gotten back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but I have still cared about food. Working out? No. I’ve totally not cared about that. But this past year, I have consciously, callously destroyed God’s plan for honoring Him with this temple He houses my soul in.

5. Moderate but longer-term approach. Although Phase 2 of the hCG diet is a rapid weight loss phase, there is a lot more to follow through with. One craving at a time – Hope, Trust, Need, Comfort, Growth, Communion, Desire, Truth.

Kind of a modge-podge of things in this blog, but if you stay with me, I will catch you up as I continue with this book.

I went into Caedmon’s room early this morning to borrow her comb and spray bottle. She was sleeping, and my attempts at being quiet of course made more noise than necessary. She awoke, but the most amazing thing happened. Not only did she wake up, but when I looked at her, she had a giant smile on her beautiful face. It was a smile that lit up her eyes and lifted my spirit. There was no apparent reason for her joyful countenance, but it touched my heart in a way I haven’t felt in a while. Immediately, her pearly white beam said to me, “Another day! How exciting! I can’t wait!”.

I don’t know about you, but I can assume the vast majority of us do not start our days with that kind of enthusiasm! For the past few months, not only have I not looked forward to the start of a new day, but I have dreaded each start, afraid to feel only anxiety and loss and sadness. I have very reluctantly dragged my broken spirit through every roller coaster of a day; either not feeling at all, or feeling so much I can’t concentrate or even breathe; fighting every invasive thought that enters my confused and angry mind.

Many years ago, long before it had a name, I began ‘cutting’ myself. I would carve tiny incisions into my wrist, just to feel something – to let myself know I wasn’t completely dead inside. For a few days this past month, I wanted so badly to cut myself again, this time engraving words of hate and anger and disgust. Loathe. Hate. Sick. Fear. Hell. Gone. Void. Dead. Fall. Fail. I could envision myself doing it. I contemplated how to go about hiding it from my husband. I imagined what a release it would be to experience the knife in my skin again, shredding away the unwelcome thoughts that trespassed.

A friend of mine reminded me that lamentation is one of many parts of worship. Another friend brought me back to Job, showing me where Job’s relationship with God was purely hearsay before God allowed Satan to destroy everything that was his life, less his beating heart. Job did not truly appreciate the awesomeness of God before he suffered through every adversity imaginable. He learned through writhing pain that because it was from God, it was good and flowing with purpose.

I am struggling without Rhonda. I miss her so much, I think I actually feel my heart ache. Jeremy and I felt so abandoned when we couldn’t be a part of her funeral. Now, it seems Papa Boyd is doing all he knows how to include us. Because of this, we are spending quite a bit of time with him. Wonderful? Yes. Without pain and agony? No. But, we are so grateful for the time he is giving us. Life is just different without Rhonda – she was such a moving force in our lives.

This summer, my family and I have undergone some fairly intense crap. My mother-in-law’s husband of 10+ years somehow decided he was going to come to my house to sleep with me. Ewww. We then found out he had actually invited me via note (which I did not read) to come to his house while Barbara was out of town, and had been planning his visit to my house for quite some time. Needless to say, my kids were crushed, as they loved their papa. That has been the most painful part of this entire drama. That he would do something so stupid, only to risk his relationship with his grandkids he adored? My mother-in-law left him, and is now divorcing him. He is no longer part of our lives, as Jeremy put a stop to that as soon as I told him what happened. Unfortunately, just because he’s not a physical presence, he is the elephant in the room. The kids don’t know exactly what happened, only that it was wrong and we are protecting them. I can still feel him kissing me, touching my shoulder, hugging me, stroking my face…yuck, yuck, yuck.

Life is full of pain. Full of heartache. Full of problems. Trouble. Affliction. Irritation. Torture. Agony. Sin. Only through all of this do we see the beauty of what Christ did for us on the cross of Calvary. The magnificence of His sacrifice on behalf of His creation who sinned against Him. The brilliance of God’s plan to save our souls through Love, not law. Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians how important suffering is to our relationship with Christ. Because we suffer, we understand Christ’s suffering. Because we fall, we appreciate the blood that flowed from His sinless veins. Because we hurt, we reach out to those who are hurting, expressing Christ’s love for them through His death. And, as I am going to get tattooed on my hand as a constant reminder, it is the ‘but nots’ of life that give us hope in Jesus :

2 Corinthians 4:8-10

We are hard pressed on every side, BUT NOT crushed;

perplexed, BUT NOT in despair; persecuted, BUT NOT abandoned;

struck down, BUT NOT destroyed.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus,

so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.