92 Days Till Easter~~~~~~~Falling Links

December 29, 2012

Well its 92 days till Easter and already I have noticed some links falling off the chain that had me bound. As nice as it would have been to have the whole thing drop off instantly it just doesn’t work that way.

 

That’s one of our biggest problems is patience and waiting for the results to happen. We live in a society that expects everything instantly. We don’t have time to wait. We expect the traffic lights to turn green the minute we get to them. We expect the bank teller at the drive thru banking to be helping no one but us, after all isn’t that why they are there waiting in that booth just for us!

 

Whether we noticed it at the time or not the chain we find ourselves attached to, went on one link at a time and that is exactly how it’s going to come off. For me I find the link of making bad food choices is starting to fall off. Also the link of not being able to say no to the temptation of food is beginning to lose its grip.

 

Thank you Lord for giving us the ability to remove the chains we ourselves installed. Forgive us for our laziness and unwillingness to do our part. Having the right attitude going forward is one of the biggest pliers that will help remove unwanted links to a chain that doesn’t have to be there as long as we stick with You Father God. Praise you for this journey and may I learn what I need to learn and share with others what needs to be shared in order to help them remove the links and uninstall the chain.

93 days till Easter~~~~~~~~Enslavemenrt

December 28, 2012           Enslavement
                                                             

Too often we are enslaved by something and don’t even know it. Even when we know it we don’t want to do anything about it. We accept it as our new norm instead of putting out the effort to free ourselves from what it is that has a hold on us.

 

The other day as I looked through old pictures of myself, I noticed I have been overweight my entire adult life. Thirty years or more I’ve been enslaved by something I just would not take the time to free myself from.

 

Once again isn’t that what Easter represents is the freedom that Christ has set us free for. Not the freedom to do what we want but the freedom from the enslavement of sin. God put the key in the door of that entrapment to sin and unlocked it with the blood of Jesus Christ. However, for some odd reason we remain standing in the jail cell that once held us. Indeed the jail cell of sin wallpapered with our acts of doing whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted and ignoring the commandments of God.

 

How foolish is that? Pretty foolish I must say. Every time I eat what I shouldn’t be eating the clicking sound of the key to my cell needs to go off in my heart. A sound to remind me whether I’m going to accept my enslavement to food and bad eating habits or walk free out of my cell that God already released me from.

 

We don’t need to be afraid, we need to be determined to take action and truly find the opened door to our freedom in Christ. Daily by our choices we need to accept our new norm of not allowing things like food, drugs, alcohol, money, sex, attitudes, and more to control us.

 

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Free from sin, not freedom to sin.

Growing Beyond~~~~~~Hunting bad eating habits

Remember Elmer and his rabbit hunting? That's what I am doing but it's habit hunting instead.

Bad Eating Habits …      Just to name a few :(

*eating by the clock

*because its there

*seconds just to eat more

*while cooking

*Socially

*eating after certain things, after walking, during a movie, etc

*have to finish what I started eating

*emotional eating

*overeating after 5pm

*inability to say NO cuz I might hurt someone’s feelings

*out of control eating on weekends

*acting as if I have to eat it because this will be my only chance to eat a sundae, pie, cake, cookie

*mindless eating, eating without even thinking about it

94 days to Easter~~~~~~~~~~~~~Habit Hunting

December 27, 2012

It is now 94 days till Easter. My task today is to go out hunting habits. To get rid of the old habits that feed my desire to eat what I want, whenever I want, as much as I want. Habits such as eating by the clock, eating because I happened to be in the kitchen, eating because I’m upset, eating because everyone else is eating and eating beyond full just because I can. Other things that need to be hunted down and gotten rid of are the habits of eating too fast and eating while cooking as well.

 

The hard part about dealing with habits is the fact that they happen so automatically that you commit the bad habit before you even realize it. Suddenly tonight as I was cooking dinner I found myself snitching yet another bite of food from the pot. There was no pre-meditated decision only an old habit that took control once again.

 

Truth be known over the years of trying to “diet” the one thing that crashed most of my diets were the habits I couldn’t seem to break. Nice try, Karen, but no cigars or candy! As much as I would like to blame all those bad habits the true culprit was me. It was me that allowed something to control my behavior, it was me who easily gave in to temptation, it was me who chose food over God when I knew the consequences. It was me not McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, Papa Murphy’s pizza, Dunkin donuts or anything else to blame for my obesity.

 

So although indeed the bad habits have to go I’m the one responsible to make sure that happens. They are not going away on their own, and they are more than happy to stay as long as I welcome them into my life.

 

 

95 days till Easter~~~~~~~~~~~~~Committment

December 26, 2012

On my journey to be free from my slavery to food it is now 95 days till Easter. On this day I make a commitment to stop dieting. It's time to stop trying to make food behave and place the responsibility on myself. Wow! That is so opposite of what the world starts on January 1st, the commitment or resolution to diet.

I need instead to do it God's way and stop doing anything that makes me talk about, focus on, lust after food, or allow it to control me. Eating by the clock, savoring the smell of food, lusting over a mere picture of food, or falling for the power of suggestion to eat what I don't need all have to go.

In my commitment the battery on the clock needs to be removed. There is no more eating in the morning because that's what we are supposed to do or eating at noon or six o'clock because they are the appointed times to be hungry. I need to allow my stomach to tell me what the appointed time is not the clock.

My desire to keep my commitment to myself and God needs to be stronger than my desire to eat what I want when I want it. A good scripture to think of here as I begin is, Philippians 4:13 "I can do everything through Him who gives me strength."

Growing Beyond ~~~~The master of food

The purpose for Christmas is the fact that Jesus is the reason for the season. Praise the Lord for that. Soon Easter will be upon us and the purpose for that occasion is the fact that we are the reason for the season. Christmas we celebrate the birth of Christ, on Easter we celebrate the birth of ourselves in Christ through accepting the gift of His love and forgiveness.

However, what about the time in between the two seasons of the coming of Christ and His death and resurrection for our salvation. One year I had an elder at the church challenge his Bible study group to find something to be thankful for each day between the two seasons. It was a really interesting assignment as I made sure I went beyond naming simple things like "I'm thankful for my toes" one day and "I'm thankful for my ears" the next day and so on. Also a challenge was making sure I had something new each day.

This season I have chosen something different to pre-occupy my time in between the two seasons. I will be taking a journey "out of Egypt." Not Egypt the country but Egypt as the symbol of a place of slavery as the Israelites were in, in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Years ago I went through a program called Weighdown or "Exodus out of Egypt by Gwen Shamblin when I did I lost 60 pounds. The focus of her program was to stop trying to make our food behave and take on the responsibility of self-control ourselves. The object of the program was to eat like God designed our bodies to eat, to do so when we are truly hungry and to stop when we are satisfied.  

 
As successful as the program was for me since then I have found myself back in that imaginary place that is real, that place of slavery once again. The idol of food that I vowed to never bow down to again slowly returned and I have only myself to blame for the self-inflicted chains I bound myself into once again in extra pounds and bad eating habits. Indeed the minute I was diagnosed with cancer I gave up caring about my weight. I had bigger fish to fry, problems to solve, battles to fight. I didn't need to concentrate on my weight.

Wrong! There is no excuse good enough to justify purposely doing damage to my body simply because I love food and don't want to exercise self-control. When I went to the Cancer Treatment Center in Arizona they told me that body fat in a woman produces hormones, the very thing my cancer is made from. For every extra fat cell I have I'm feeding my cancer. How nuts is that!

It's time to break that chain of slavery I have wrapped myself in and get back to what God wants for me in my life. He wants my undivided love, no sharing it half and half with food. My total worship, no dividing it up between the donut I'd love to eat or the extra serving I think I need and God. He wants me in control of me instead of allowing Satan to control me with his temptations and lies.

Instead of growing beyond my current pant size I need to grow beyond my slavery to food and other things in my life. Therefore journey with me to Easter starting the day after Christmas. Your bondage may not be to food, it can be to alcohol, gambling, tobacco, sex, money, drugs or other things but its still a form of slavery. As Galatians 5:1 says, "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery."

The time is now, to stand firm, gain control of ourselves, and walk as Christ designed us to walk. Time to grow beyond our slavery and set ourselves free as Christ's death and resurrection intended for us. Let the journey begin.

The Need to Care

 Several weeks ago I told a group of teenagers that were boasting about something they like to do that is harmful to their health that some day they were going to care. They may not care now what they were doing that was harmful to their health but some day they would care and it may be too late. The picture the three of them put on facebook for all to see was their act of rebellion to show the world they didn't care as they made gestures to the camera.

Recently my doctor put me on an additional medicine to manage my cancer. Its a drug that could raise my cholesterol level. In precaution to see where my cholesterol started out I had blood work done. Guess what? It was high. Along with my cholesterol, my blood sugars are high, and my blood pressure is high. Go figure!

Two weeks before I was diagnosed with cancer I had lost over 30 pounds and finally got myself under 200 pounds. I was so tickled and proud of myself that I finally was getting somewhere in the weight loss game. After I found out about my cancer I lost my ability to care about my weight. Instantly it was, "Well I'm dying of cancer then what is the point of trying to lose weight and maintain it where it needs to be."

As the result of that attitude I have now in a year and half gained back 37 pounds. When my cancer doctor told me I would have to go on medication to try and get everything down to where it needed to be I thought, "No way." I need to get my weight down first then see if medication is needed.

On my way home that day from the doctor's I got to thinking about how I was no different than those teenagers who were boasting about their choice of lifestyle. To demonstrate my thought I went out and bought a candy bar to take a picture similar to the one they did minus the hand gesture to prove my point. With me no hand gesture was necessary because the wing expansion of my upper arm was all the gesture needed to the camera to demonstrate the fact that I didn't care.

Quicker than it has for the young teenagers my time has come that I better start caring again. I can't stop myself from getting cancer, or stop it from going out of control but I can my weight, my blood sugars and blood pressure. Today I talked to a nutritionist and I told her that I'm not fat, I am undisciplined. And that is the truth with all of us, we aren't fat we are undisciplined. We need to start caring to the point we are willing to take care of that which has been entrusted to us, our bodies.

My rebellious behavior isn't justified simply because I'm an "older" adult and not a teenager. Age has nothing to do with it. Those girls need to start caring now and so do I. We shouldn't wait until we "feel" like doing it we need to discipline ourselves into doing what we know is right and do it now. Right for us, right for our bodies, right in God's eyes.

"The time is now to start caring before its too late." Those were my words to the teenagers' weeks ago, and now they are the very words I find myself feasting upon today. For when we start to care it shows up in our attitude and its rewarded in our actions. After all, why wait till we are brain dead to stop doing dope, why wait till we have destroyed our liver before we stop drinking, why wait till we have a heart attack before we decide to lose weight, and why wait till we have lung cancer before we stop smoking. Waiting is bad for us and good for our enemy. Now is the time, not later to start caring.

**After I took this picture I didn't eat the candy bar I hope you know, I fed it to our three baby pigs. They loved it!