I have decided that I need to get to know my body again…fresh…as if I didn’t have a history with Thin Within or with my body and eating 0 to 5. So yesterday, I began the process of starting from scratch. Including with the “Bodometer” process, asking God to help me identify my hunger numbers afresh. “What does 0 feel like now?” “What does a 5 feel like now?” “What should I call this sensation, Lord? Is it a 3?” And to begin to eat less food, even if it means I eat more frequently because I get hungry more often. I have stopped listening to the voice of God speaking to me, thinking I knew what I could or couldn’t eat and when based on all my experience. Enough of that! For whatever reason my body has changed and I need to invite the One Who created me to teach me about my body all over again!
Rather than be frustrated, I choose to view this as an exciting new adventure. The thing I don’t get excited about, though, is that I know it means eating less food than I have been for a year…and maybe two! The fact I don’t want to let go of more food to honor the One who let go of his Kingly glory in heaven and his human life on earth to save my soul really tells me a lot. It saddens me…
One thing I rediscovered, though, yesterday as I returned to this process–if I capture THIS moment, if in THIS moment I say no to the flesh and yes to His leading, no to my flesh and die to self…and throw away the food he is leading me NOT to eat (or put it back in a container in the fridge–whatever!)…if I do that in this moment (it takes only a moment to make a choice to obey his leading), then it is followed not by moments or minutes or hours of regret, but it is followed, instead, by moments, minutes and hours of joy delighting in the the fact that I obeyed his call. It is a wonderful exchange!
Continuing in chapter 6 of Get Thin Stay Thin, I read…
God allows us to see the futility of placing our hope and trust in the false idols we embrace. Then he invites us to discover the aching, unfulfilled emptiness at the core of our being and to take the first step toward God-centered healing. GTST, p. 128
Perhaps when I began this leg of the journey in November 2006 (when I began this blog), my focus wasn’t God-centered healing. It was “fix my body”-focused healing. So it wasn’t really healing at all. I really really needed not to keep adding to my head knowledge. I needed to have my body change. I was worried about my health…about waking up in heaven. Seriously. That is what scared me into practical change.
But since that time for whatever reason–noble or not–I have allowed getting a thin body to be an idol and to be my identity. Even before I began to gain weight, God was trying to get me to see that I was in such an arrogant place. I’ve been clinging to idols all through this process. He now calls me to recognize this fact and to:
There is definitely an aching, unfulfilled emptiness at the core of my being.
But I see the light ahead. There IS hope.
I step toward what you want Lord. I invite you to heal me. I want to be focused on you, Lord, not my jeans, not the reflection in the mirror, not on what my friends call “looking ‘hot,'”…I want YOUR wholeness, YOUR holiness. But, Lord, I DO want to be thin again. I want a body that is fit. I want to be energetic. But I want all of this in a way that you direct with YOU as my focus, depending on YOU to heal me through and through. I want these changes to come forth from inside of me…from within. Genuine…from the inside out.
Our bodies do change. You are heading towards your change of life. I have started mine. I do require less food, and yes, I hated that. It was a horrible surprise. Now I have come to accept it. And yet I still have days where I say to heck with it in rebellion. And then I remember this is not about me, it is about Him. And begin again.(((HUG)))