Can of worms

Do you ever start something simple and realise what you thought was simple is in actual fact a huge ginormous can of worms?!

That’s me this week having opened a book to write up some notes. I read the book months ago but wanted to have the notes somewhere in all one place. As I went throught the book I was reminded again about the power of the things in the book and how it spoke so clearly into my life.

Made to Crave (which I’ve mentioned in previous posts) is a book which turns dieting and weightloss away from just a health or physical thing and rightly positions it to be an act of disciple with and obedience to God. Our bodies are a temple of God and we should look after and respect our bodies are just that – a dwelling of God.

Some key things started jumping back out of the book at me, things I’ve pushed aside or forgotten. One particular thing was about how we view our bodies and what they are worth. I think it comes down to value. And that is what I time and time again fail to grasp.

But as I thought this evening I began to wonder whether actually I do grasp this but it’s my habit that stops me from feeling it or believing it. Am I so ingrained in the belief that I’m not loveable that it’s go to thought process? Do I actually believe that or do I in actual fact believe that I am loved by God just-as-I-am? Is it not so much the belief I can’t grasp as the habit i cannot seem to break?!

And this is where my can of worms remains… More thoughts and ideas, more room for God to speak but still no sureness on how to step forward and how to break this emotion that stops me from living fully loved and working out of that place. The past? A habit? A scar? A trap? A lack of experience? Not enough feeling? All of the above?!

I am neck deep in my can of worms!

The heart knowledge

Have you seen the film frozen? Brace yourself but I haven’t… it’s worse because we own it but haven’t actually watched it! 🤦🏼‍♀️  I do however feeel like I’ve seen it given how many of the songs I know and how much of the storyline I know!

This isn’t a completely random thought it’s linked to the continuance of the topic nagging, maybe I shall call it God nagging?! But I’ll get to that in a second – just thought I should confess my lack of Frozen viewing with you before I continue!

We established I have the head knowledge for a renewing of my mind just not the feeling, the heart knowledge.

It’s something that feels too big for me to find the solution to. In fact I think this is often the point that I get to in the topic when it crops up. Knowing what I need to know but not feeling it and not knowing how to move forward to feel it.

As I ran this afternoon I listened to a talk on love and came back to a statement about really struggle with.

Susie who was speaking said: “The secret to loving people and doing relationships well is being loved my God” She then quoted Tim Keller: “Before love is a behaviour, love is an experience. We have to be captured by that love, shattered by that love and only then can it empower us to love”.

What I struggle with in this statement is that I don’t feel that I know I am loved and worth the effort etc BUT I do feel that I know how to love others. Seriously my brain really struggles because the statement when it comes up time and time again makes me doubt my love for others. Either I am loving wrong or am loving from the wrong place. OR I have felt loved by God at times and that’s enough to enable me to love people well? OR loving people would be easier if I lived loved? You’ll be sensing my confusing on the subject I suspect!!

I don’t know that answer.

I read a Proverbs 31 Ministries devotional this morning that touched on this subject. The writer was communicating on Galations 5:1 and how we are free because of Christ and that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be burdened by things because of that.

THIS is where the Frozen reference will start to make some sense. As I read the devotional it talked about how we slip into habits of pain or frustration and that even once the pain is gone we continue to feel it. God has taken away the ‘issues’ in life by dying on the cross for us but we often limp around as if we are still holding them. We need to let go of the past and walk without the limp.

I’m pretty sure that my past is what puts up all the road blocks to me living loved and knowing and experiencing just how loved I am. I’m pretty that I need to Let It Go as the song would say because that is what the bible calls me to do.

Nothing complicated or anything!!!!! I just need to let go of things and learn to live loved…..

Just don’t know how to get past a life time of past and move forward without the baggage holding on and holding me down.

The head knowledge

Do you ever find yourself coming across the same topic from numerous sources? Like it keeps coming up over and over and you get to the point that you start thinking that perhaps you should start piecing together?

For me the past few days have seen the same topic coming up. The topic involves self worth, body image, caring for and loving yourself. It’s not a new topic for me but it is something that I’ve never come to a positive conclusion on.

I didn’t lose weight the way I wanted to this week. I was annoyed. I didn’t deserve a tiny gain (and yes I can see that it is a tiny gain, but I still didn’t deserve it!) I was cross that my body doesn’t respond the way that scientifically it should. Calories in minus more calories out should scientifically equal less weight. SCIENCE SUCKS. Well that’s my current opinion! I’ll get over it, well I may get over it!

Going back to the topic of self worth and body image, the question my devotion book (Savor: Shauna Niequiest) posed to me today was:

What would it take for you to live well in your body this season?

My immediate reaction is to think along physical lines; lose weight, lose inches, get nice clothes. I move onto mental thoughts; be more confident, accept where I am, recognise my progress. However, because of the series of repeated messages my brain moved on to the idea of the renewing of my mind.

The devotional email that I had read first thing this morning was all 3 steps for renewing your mind. And so with that fresh in my mind I was prompted to back to look back to the email and I pulled out a few keys words for each of the steps:

Renewing you mind

1. Recognise negative thoughts – Does this thought help me? Is it true? Does it steal my peace? Does it match with God’s word? – Awareness is the first step to controlling thoughts
2. Reject negative thoughts – If you’ve decided it’s not really true, don’t allow yourself to entertain it any more. – Take control of what you’re thinking rather than letting it run rampant.
3. Replace negative thoughts – We have the authority and power to reject those negative thoughts and shift them to be more positive. 

Tracie Miles: Proverbs 31 Ministries

I think I probably do step one most of the time. I think I probably don’t do step two or step three! I’m an overthinker. I’m a look at the worst case scenario and then let that develop for the next 3 days thinker. I recognise this as part of my personality but I just don’t seem to be able to win. Although to be fair on myself I’m not sure how much I try and there are times when my overthinking is actually a positive part of my personality it’s just that for it to be a positive part it was to be based on step one above in particular IT IS EVEN TRUE?!?!?!

I decided to spend some time thinking about what I know (my head knowledge) of what God thinks about me. I came up with 27 “I am…..” statements.

I was quite surprised how many I could come up with and to be fair I could probably think of more if I hadn’t filled the page with these ones. 

What I’m beginning to realise is that I have the head knowledge for a transformed heart and for the negative to stop winning, I’m just know sure I have the heart feelings to go with it. As a feeler in personality that’s a big deal! 

Bottling it

Don’t you wish you could bottle some emotions? I don’t mean bottle them up and ignore them, I can already do that. What I mean is how good would it be to bottle up an emotion to be able to go back to and remind yourself exactly how something feels?

I think it’s so much easier to remember how a negative emotions feels than a positive one. Maybe that’s my personality? Or my outlook on life?

I’ve been pondering how useful it would be to be able to just open a bottle and remember exactly how somethings feels as a top up to willpower.

Willpower is such a fallible thing. You can have huge amounts of it in one moment and then none in seconds. Willpower is a finite thing to be fair. If you use it all up without replenishing it then it fails.

In a moment of achievement you feel like you can achieve anything and everything. Like that positive feeling will carry you through even when it’s tough.

Problem being it doesn’t stay. That positive moment fades and the willpower takes a life battering and all of a sudden you’re striving to just cope let alone win.

For me it’s food. Seems to always be food. I find myself wondering if it’ll always be food that I fight with.

[^^^ that thought just there is what I’m talking about when I talk about losing the high of achievement or the willpower runs low. The negative ‘I-will-always-be-this-way-woe-is-me’ thought.]

I lost 4lb last week after an amazing week of discipline and high willpower. 4lb took me to 11.8lb away from my first proper target minus 5.5 stone. And 4.8lb away from a mini target. In that moment I have the confidence to feel like I could achieve anything. Less than a stone away from a big milestone – I could easily do that in like a week?! (No one said I was being realistic – ha!)

But 6 days later I find myself battling myself with little willpower. All the things I found easy last week are hard this week. I’m hungry, but I know I’m not actually hungry. I’m finding it hard to be disciplined. I’m finding it hard to have a positive mental attitude. And because of that my willpower is battered and so I’m giving in, being dejected. Frustrated once again.

What bugs me is I can reason with myself I can do this. I can reason with myself that I’m worth the effort. That the food won’t help. That I don’t need it. That I was so pleased last week when I did well and achieved. But with that thought in my head I still eat the food…. WHY? Makes me cross with myself and the world around me.

So thats why I want to bottle that emotion of ‘I-can-achieve-anything-ever’ and just pop it open and REALLY feel it. Really remember how well I can do.

What also bugs me is as I think about this topic and as I work through the thought processes I KNOW there is another way of dealing with this all with God’s help. The problem is that I’ve never really worked out how to do this whole God and weight loss thing. I don’t know how to turn to him in the moments of weakness and depleted willpower and say ‘God you gotta help me’.

If I could work out how to do that then maybe that would be a little like bottling up the emotion to tap into but perhaps even better.

Run rabbit run

Have you ever achieved something that you weren’t sure you’d ever manage?

2.5 years ago I tried running again having done couch to 5k in 2012. I couldn’t do it. It left me in serious pain and I was heartbroken. I wanted to run and I couldn’t.

Roll forward to January 2017 and I decided that being a stone lighter I’d just give it another go. And it turned out I could run. In fact I quite enjoyed it, certainly more than last time.

I did couch to 5k for a few weeks and then decided to go it alone and just get myself up to 5k bit by bit. My aim was to hit 5k in less than 40 minutes having hit 40:50 last time I’d done 5k. The first time I ran 5k this time, in February, I did it in just over 39 minutes. I sobbed that I’d managed to do it… then realised I needed a new aim! Ha!

I aimed for 5k under 35 minutes. Seemed like it would be a challenge and that it would take a fair amount of work. In May I hit 5k in just over 34 minutes. Again i cried – I hadn’t really thought it was possible.

NEW CHALLENGE REQUIRED! – I wanted to raise money for Macmillan in memory of my mum. So I combined a running challenge with a money raising challenge. I entered a 10k race on July 9th and then told everyone so I’d have no choice! (Accountability is a great thing!)

I worked out I’d need to add at least 0.7km each week to hit 9.9k the week before my 10k. Well the first week I hit 7.5k, the week after 8k and then this week 10k. I think I was a little shocked with myself when I finished running. Not excited in an odd way just shocked. See 10k seemed unachievable. I’d come from thinking I’d not be able to run again full stop to running 10k. Totally shocked.

What amazes me is the encouragement that people around me give me. From some of the least expected sources through to the friends who always have my back they have built me up and encouraged me. They’ve inspired me and told me that I inspire them which has inspired me to go even further.

And the best thing is that whilst I go through my shock, and whilst I gain all the fitness benefits, I am also aiming toward raising money for a charity who had my mum’s heart firmly behind them. A charity who helped her in her last fight. Who could want more than that?!

Vulnerability

What feelings or thoughts does the word vulnerability stir up in you? For some maybe it doesn’t do anything because it’s something they wouldn’t even consider doing or ever necessary. For some the idea of vulnerability causes such a negative response. For others it’s something they’ve done before and been stung by. Perhaps more wish they could be more vulnerable but can’t bring themselves to do it.

For me vulnerability has become a necessity. Vulnerability has often been the start of friendships and relationships. It’s been the start of growth or changing of a path. It’s opened discussions, freed me from thoughts and actually often helped me to realise I am not alone.

When I started my weight loss journey properly back in March 2016 I was looking for inspirtational quotes to fuel my way. I found one that has always been in the back of my mind since but has become very real recently.

The quote read: aim to inspire, not to impress.

The defintions of those two words are very interesting to me

Inspire: fill (someone) with the urge or ability to do or feel something
Impress: make (someone) feel admiration and respect

I love that to inspire is to help someone feel a hope for themselves instead of impress which causes someone to feel something for you. Who doesn’t want to be a person who helps someone to be something they desire to be by inspiring them?!

Recently I’ve had a number of people tell me that they have been inspired me or spurred on by me to make changes or decisions. What an honour. What an honour for God to use something that I am doing anyway to inspire people.

As i spent time with God this week I felt God say to me ‘you can’t effectively inspire without vulnerability and getting onto someones level’.

Vulnerability makes change seem possible not unattainable. It shows that it can be hard to make the changes but that it’s doable. Without the vulnerability you can inspire a desire to change; “I wish i could do that” but you probably won’t inspire a belief that it is doable.

Vulnerability and relationships are so important to grow and change and to be real. They are beneficial to the individual and the people around them. It creates the opportunity for community and support systems. It can remove loneliness and fear of being ‘different’.

Vulnerability is to take a risk that the person or people that you are sharing with will respect you. It’s not something to be done without consideration but in the right circumstances it can create and inspire beautiful friendships and wonderful communities.

Like learning to ride a bike

Have you ever tried to teach someone to ride a bike? I hadn’t really until today.

We got our three year old a bike with stabilisers for giving up his dummy and so we now start the process of learning how to do it. He happily asks to have the bike out from the garage, puts on the helmet, climbs on the bike and then he just sits on with his feet on the pedals going nowhere fast, or at all to be honest!!

I tried to help. It wasn’t pretty. It was the end of a long day with the kids and my patience was low, maybe bike riding should not be a post 6pm activity! Anyway he would put his feet on the pedal and push one foot down and start to move which sounds and looks promising. He would then take his foot off the pedal that he next needed to push to keep moving. He would lose the flow and he would have to start again.

It did not matter how many times I would tell him that he needed to keep his feet on the pedal, he would still keep taking that foot off and that lead to me getting more and more frustrated with him, losing my patience, raising my voice slightly, all the usual ugly moments you wish you could go back and change.

After a little while of attempting this and repeating the phrase you need to keep your foot on the pedal to no avail, my lovely husband came outside and I exclaimed “I just need to go inside for a few moments!”

As I sat down exacerbated by really quite a short exchange I just felt God say “that’s what you do”. And as I thought about it I realised it is in so many situations. I request to do something, get all kitted out for it, get lined up to start, take a small motion towards it and then I take my foot off the pedal and God’s somewhere in the background shouting “STOP TAKING YOUR FOOT OFF THE FLIPPING PEDAL” – to be fair He probably isn’t shouting that but in my head that’s what I think he is shouting.

It’s so easy to lose momentum. Something gets hard. Something is boring. Something is frustrating, The weather changes. You get injured. People distract you. Life gets in the way. Another ‘thing’ needs our attention and it seems more important. Priorities get confused.

The thing is that I am sure that there are things in everyone’s life where we keep coming back to that very same issue, and keep making a start and then taking our feet off the pedal without even really meaning to sometimes. If you keep going round in the circle to the same situation chances are you keep starting and then stopping.

I can think of a few things where I do this but weight loss is the most obvious. It’s easily been 10 years of starting and stopping. Getting distracted, giving up, life causing issues, children. I’ve all the excuses in the world and many of them are justified but for me weight is an issue. It’s something that need to be dealt with. It’s a physical, emotional and spiritual area of my life which needs me discipline, attention and effort. I need to keep my foot on the pedal.
I’m doing better with this. I’ve got further than ever before but my mojo has disappeared a little. My discipline is lacking. My focus fuzz. My attraction to chocolate stronger. I need to spend time getting back that self control and discipline so that God doesn’t have to keep shouting to me about my feet on the pedals! I can’t do it alone but I’m so blessed to have friends and family who have my back and maybe I need to start by asking for help!

Keep your feet on the pedals because you never know just what you might achieve if you stop pulling it off at the most important moment. Just imagine the progress and then maybe gaffa tape your feet onto the pedal which I will confess was what I was tempted to do with the three year old!

A new reality

Do you ever wonder why you don’t see somethings coming because they’re so obvious!?

Since my mum died when Zac was just 18 months old I am very deliberate about talking to him about her. I tell him about the things in the house that were hers, I talk to him about the things that she did with him, we have pictures everywhere and try to tell him when he’s playing with something Granny Sue got for him. He doesn’t remember her from his own memories but he’s creating memories through the information that I give him.

So the obvious thing that I missed, or maybe just haven’t prepared myself for, was the fact that because she’s a ‘real’ to him as I can make her he would start to ask questions. Question like “Can we go and see Granny Sue? I’d really like to” and “Where does Granny Sue live?” have popped up in the last week. What I haven’t faced is the reality of having to find answers to these questions. The reality of having to explain painful things in simple terms to a 3 year old who doesn’t yet have the brain power to fully understand so often ends up confused or reasking the question in the hopes that he will understand the next attempt to explain.

Whilst I am so grateful that she is ‘real’ to him and that he can recognise her and talk about her I am also going to have to come to terms with a different version of the grief I’m experiencing. I also have to learn how on earth I explain simply that she was poorly, she died and that she’s in heaven now where we can’t see her. Not a simple task!

A divided heart?

Are you expecting bigger results than your commitment?! 

I totally am! I listened to a talk this evening whilst running about having an undivided heart for God. The talk asked what in my life gave me a divided heart. That got me thinking about my weight loss journey. What is giving me a divided heart at the moment is chocolate! That sounds really shallow but let me explain! 

Because I am walking more and running I am earning more calories and so it is far easier for me to fit excess chocolate into my calorie allowance. The problem is that I’m almost certain that it’s causing me to mentally find it harder and that I am finding it harder to lose weight because I am eating that excess chocolate. I’m within my allowance, I continue to be obedient to what I feel God is calling me to do in losing weight and I continue to be disciplined in sticking to my calorie allowance but the freedom of extra calories means that my obedience and discipline is now half hearted. My heart is divided between the chocolate treat I want to eat and can have and the wanted to lose weight. The discipline is lacking because I CAN have both. 
I am looking for undivided heart results of weight loss with a divided heart to the discipline.

My problem is that I can’t find a way out of this half hearted discipline. 

I suspect part of the problem comes from the fact that for 51 weeks I’ve been living in a world of restriction, obedience and discipline. I see results to that world but that world is hard to stay in for such a long time. It’s almost like half of me is trying to find the way of the strict world by making excuses based on the truth that I have the calories to eat the extra chocolate – thing is just because I can doesn’t mean that I should.

I am hoping this revelation to my divided approach to my weight loss is specially when it comes to the food side of it all, will help me to find some focus and help to pull back towards God and the journey is laid out for me travel. 

Moments

How often do you stop and take on the moment? 

I’m stuck in the babies bedroom with him asleep on me after his nap ended too early. On a Thursday we go to small group so needs to be awake late and so I have resorted cuddling him back to sleep. 

Sat in a dark room, listening to sleep baby snuggles and the irritating clock mechanism (why is it still in here almost 3 years after it first started bugging me?!) trying to stay awake and wishing I was somewhere else. 

And then I actually stop and listen to the babies snuggles and he breaths so sleepily and feel the warmth his cuddle and realise he won’t be my baby for long. Not my baby baby, he’ll always be my baby! 

The three years with Zac have gone by so incredibly quickly. The parenting quote of the days are long but the years are short is so incredibly true! 

And so for a moment I’m enjoying this cuddle and his smell and snuffles and fidget (whilst writing this so I don’t forget or fall asleep!!) and I’m reminded to try and find more moments to treasure in my day to day, mundane life with these two gorgeous and totally infuriating lovely boys! 

Actually I’m reminded that I need to just stop more often. Not just for my mumminess or my memories but my own sanity, for my Sarah-ness. 

There’s so much I can strive to get done. There’s so much I strive to get done and don’t get done. There’s always the next thing and so much to fit in that it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the amount.

But I need to stop. I need to be still sometimes. I need to sit with God. I need to read. To just BE and not to produce just for a little while each day! 

The idea fills me with fear. How do I fit in 10000 steps?! How do I clean the house?! How do I spend time with the boys? How do i fit in reading bible plans? But stopping is the best thing for me and I hope that by prioritising that I can strive less and thrive more!