Some people take longer to get what God is trying to say and I would put myself squarely in the category of very dense, pound cake dense. Which is why I am happy to announce that God rang through the clutter today. I may actually have heard Him finally because of the clutter.
I have been really disappointed in my excess weight for the last 15 years, well actually that may be more like 13 years as my youngest is nearly 14, up until then I was my appropriate size. I never had a weight issue until I became a mom. And it wasn’t until after the last child that I felt defeated, the excessive weight gained during each of my other pregnancies came off soon enough but not that last one.
So began my struggle with my weight.
I have had some very good successes. I have studied nutrition and physiology and understand a fair amount of some basics. I have managed to avoid extreme fad diets although I have participated with friends in ones less than what were best but they were okay.
But faced with some recent health developments and turning 50 I have once again been on the look out for getting the pounds off that have been hanging around for the last 6 years and stave off the problems that are rearing their ugly heads.
What I have found instead is confusion.
I rarely ever, on any subject, hit information overload. I love information. I love to thoroughly study a subject, but these last few days trying to figure out what I should be doing have hit a wall that I just couldn’t seem to climb over. So much contradictory information out there. I know there are some blatant lies in many “diet” books. Not all of them but a good deal. I think it is funny that you could open any book on “diet”, or “nutrition” or “eating styles” and for the most part the introduction is the same, the other guys are all wrong, your problem is from having listened to all those other people, now your ready to listen to the truth and this book or program will fix you for life.
I’ve been up against this before. This is nothing new. But my feeling of overwhelmedness in the face of it all is new.
I didn’t know it but I was set up for a eureka. I was in the tub late this afternoon after working in the garden. My mind was fairly clear, meditating on the subject of fasting, this week’s chapter in Celebration of Discipline. The Holy Spirit was reminding me of times when He controlled every aspect of my fasting, how deep and lasting those fasts were. I was so thankful at that moment that I had those wonderful experiences. I know that sometimes God can show how much He cares about the details of our lives by speaking direction to us, loud and clear. Especially when we decide to hear Him. We have, in this family, too many examples of God’s clear and direct leading for me to think even for a moment He doesn’t do that.
I must have been walking around with my fingers in my spiritual ears for quite sometime. Because as soon I realized what the Holy Spirit was leading me to see and understand I heard Him say that He has always been ready to lead me in my choices for food, nutrition and fitness. Duh, why wouldn’t He? If He cares and desires to lead our family in so many other areas that the majority thinks is out of His circle of concern, then why not something as vital as our health, directly impacted by nutrition and fitness. Rapidly he brought to mind different scripture but mostly Colossians 2:6-10, 18-19, 20-23 (emphasis are mine):
As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and
power.Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God.
Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations— “Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,” which all concern things which perish with the using—according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
I’ll let those things sit and foment for now, Dirt and his motorsickle await.
