Like I’ve posted before, when I look back on pictures…even recent ones, within the last twelve months, I’m simply shocked. I never really saw, I suppose, who I was. Or, at least, let me correct that…what I looked like. Maybe I really did see who I was, and that’s why I didn’t know what I looked like.
I’m up late. Ridiculously late. And, I’m looking through my Ukraine pictures. Mike and I went to Ukraine on a mission trip only ten months ago. I was probably close to my highest weight, give or take a few pounds. I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t keep up. I rarely wanted to journey out far past what was easy or slow or safe. I compared those pictures to our prom pictures from last weekend and I was shocked. I couldn’t believe how different I look from then to now. I wonder about how people around me were feeling. Were they scared for me? Were they nervous? Were they anxious to tell me that I was spiraling out of control?
Mostly, I’m just sad right now. I’ve had so many emotions regarding this journey. Most of it has been pure gratitude. Unadulterated blessing and praise and delight and joy and energy-ness. But some nights, by myself, it can be sadness and fear and embarrassment. “How DID I get that way? I could get that way again, if I’m not careful. And wow, what must other have thought of me as I kept ballooning?” Questions that I’m sure I’ll ask again.
Here are just a couple examples of what I’ve been looking at…and granted, I realize now that I may never have posted a true “before” picture…and I know the reason.
Hey look! I have a neck again! Isn’t that swell.
I really don’t want to post these. I really don’t want to show you that I was *so* careless and *so* blind to my health and my fitness and discipline. And, I kid you not…right now, I was just thinking “what if I had been too chicken to do it? what if I hadn’t followed through? what if I never explored this option?” Okay, so I thought that, and my heart started racing, and I got all hot and sweaty, and I felt what I KNOW is panic creeping up inside me.
I cannot explain in words how I was just not really living. I wasn’t living.
I know this will be a battle for my lifetime. I’m not out of the woods, in the clear, or what have you. I’m simply ever more aware that my health is a supreme blessing, and I am insanely cognizant of the fact that what I’ve been given is a real gift from God. He rescued me in every meaning of the word. He saved my soul, and then he saved my health.
And now the tears. I’m crying because I want so much to be a reflection of the living, true God. Being obese doesn’t prohibit me from that. But, it made it so much harder to “Go” and to “shine” and to “walk in a manner worthy of your calling.”
I promised my Jesus that when/if I ever lost this blast weight, I would live in a way that would make good on all the lost years. I would look for the replenishment and the opportunities to take back the “years the locusts ate.” I would be more assertive about ministry and not let physical limitations be my reasons ever again. I’m on my way to keeping that promise, I think. I’ve lost seventy pounds. I have seventy more to go. Halfway there. I’m halfway to goal. And life is just so darn different that I can’t even imagine what seventy more will do and where that will take me.
I guess all I can say right now is “thank you.” That’s really all I can say.
Everyday Beautiful 