One year later: a changed life

I want to celebrate today, not because today marks my one year anniversary using MyFitnessApp, or that in that time I have lost 94 pounds. I want to celebrate the depths of Love that God has opened up for me.
The following are 6 excepts from my personal journals from this past year that I want to share with my friends. If you have the time to read them, I believe they illustrate the dramatic change in my thinking and emotional health that is so much more impressive to me then the 13-inch reduction in my hips and waist.

5/18/19

Why do I have issues with food, Lord?
I feel like if I never had to eat again, I’d be fine. Is that avoiding my addictions? I HATE FOOD. I hate having to eat it. I hate having to decide what to eat.
Why is food and my weight so emotional for me? I believe I am going to lose weight and get healthy because I believe that You have said that is what is holding me up in Your purpose for me.
I know I need to eat, and I know I don’t need to eat. I avoid dealing with my eating issues. I don’t get comfort from eating. Food has lost its appeal for me. Until I get so hungry I can’t control myself and I stuff myself and I stuff myself some more, to the point of it being abusive.
I have to stop abusing myself by not eating and stop abusing myself by what I do eat.
How do I do that?

6/20/19

I still eat when I’m full.
Full still feels so empty, but not where the food goes.
I tell myself I’m not hungry.
I tell myself I’m not hungry when I open the fridge and look.
I tell myself I’m not hungry when I make myself a snack.
I tell myself I’m not hungry when I stand at the counter and eat.
I tell myself I’m not hungry, but I don’t stop.
I scream on the inside that I’m not hungry! Stop forcing me to eat! Stop! The food says be quiet, my hand says shut up. I give up and believe that after I will be full. Even though after comes guilt, anger, and something else I can’t look at.
I still feel empty somewhere deep inside.
Like filling a container up to what you think is the line and when you go to look it’s less then last time. But that can’t be. How can I fill my face and still feel so empty and alone inside?

Food has always been there for me, such a toxic friend.
Food comforts me into being uncomfortable.
Food makes everything feel right, until it’s in my body then I’ve filled myself up with nothing that helps.

I wish I didn’t have to eat ever again. I wish I didn’t have to decide when to stop, I wish I could feel full where it counts. I wish I didn’t have to feel, full or otherwise.

I punish myself with water. I drink it until I’m so full and uncomfortable and then I drink more so I won’t eat more. I can’t control myself when I get like this, so I sabotage my sabotage, and I just take the bloated pain as if to say, “There. Try to add anything else in.”

I tell myself I’m not hungry, but I am. Just not hungry for food. What am I needing to look at?
I am hungry for safety. For comfort.

God breaks gates of bronze and chains of iron. I am in a deep prison and Jesus finds me. And he brings me out. I said find me and he’s found me. Help me to understand this next step Lord of eating and this pain and fear I am covering up with food. I don’t want food to be my prison. I don’t want this fat body as a prison anymore! I want to be free from all of the past hurts that this body has endured. Empty me, Lord and help me to find you in everything. Help me to understand your way.

7/21/19

I’m afraid to live my life the way it was meant to be lived. I’m afraid to be happy, such a foreign lost emotion.
I am good at enduring. I am good at taking hold of a promise and putting one foot in front of the other, content that I’m walking in circles. I am good at barely surviving. I am good at hiding.

As I step out of this body, more everyday, I step closer into my new life with You, Lord.
A life of your unfailing Love and hand directing my steps. Your comfort today, Lord, is all that I really cling to and I know everything will be as you have planned. A season of transition is upon me and I will walk upright into it, one step at a time.

Thank you Lord for your grace in my life that I would be able to lose myself, but find her again in your hands. You had me all along, safe, secure. Waiting for me to notice that she had gone. Waiting for me to stop trying to fill this emptiness with things that don’t and will not ever satisfy. Thank you Lord for giving me your grace to have courage in the face of this fear.

8/15/19

I saw the hill and I chose to climb it.
Each step built upon the other. Slow and steady. Consistent and patient.
Looking at the top for the end of the race, the endurance wins the prize...
When I got to the top with burning legs and breathed out lungs... I was the only one.
I looked and saw before me the higher way. The span of sky that I couldn’t see from below...
I caught my breath.

I started to walk down the other side of the mountain. Steps came easy. All I had to do was put one foot in front of the other and balance... the decent was quick and focused. And what took like ages to climb, led me well on my way back home... with new breath.
With a new step. A new perspective.

10-21-19

In Isaiah it says “This is what the Lord says— your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.” Isaiah 48:17

Like the me I have grown up to be, is being distilled and stilled by the hand of God, closer to accepting the mindset of the daughter he originally created me to be. Because it’s not our outsides that He’s concerned about, but the condition of our hearts.

As the excess that was added to this body and my heart by my choices and my indecision gets burned off and melts away, God is adding to me an endurance and stamina to just keep moving forward in His life with Joy and anticipation of a future with Him. Because you see, when I gave him my life... 22 years ago... I neglected to hand over the deepest parts of my soul. The hurts that I kept boxed up and I kept dragging them around with me each time I took a step forward they would pull back on me as a stubborn child would walk with a parent...

Forward just enough to get by, being obedient, but adding a resistant heaviness to each step ahead. My whole life I have been carrying things; bad relationships, worries, thoughts, responsibilities that were not mine to carry. Dragging them with determination but no real destination for them. There’s no place in my life for these things. Ultimately it would exhaust, drain and destroy who I was created to be.

I gave Him my life. I gave Him my heart. It’s His to do what He destined to do all along IN ME. And in doing this IN me, I can be His. Walking with Him through this world, that says look at the outside, judge what you see, criticize what you refuse to understand... I hear Him saying, I have made you to be an effective vessel, filled with the Holy Spirit, so the Light that came to save people in this world can save us from ourselves.

I don’t know why God has asked me to just keep walking forward. I don’t know why God asked me to nourish this body to get it healthy. I don’t want to know why. Where I am going is where He is taking me. I trust Him that when the time is time, He will have prepared and trained me into what He needs and that His purpose for my heart will be complete. What I do know is that I don’t know and that’s a perfectly safe place to be with Him.

12-19-19
You remind me that I can love myself.
I can love myself the way I am, the way that I was and the way I will be. Because love does not rely on what the eyes see everyday, but what the heart knows and believes.
My heart knows and believes that You love me with such an endurance and presence. The part that I can trust and cherish. I look back and realize You have always been there loving me from the inside, out.
But sometimes I allow other voices to call out to You. I allow the endurance to fade. I allow the run to stop. I let the fear in and it wrecks me.
But then I remember Your words over me. I can rest in Your voice. I see Your love in my own eyes. Your endurance on my own face. Your perseverance in my own steps. I will not be afraid to love the deepest parts of me. Because that place is where you are the most alive, Jesus. That is where I am myself, scars and all, free to be the one that fits perfectly with the God that made me.