I jog with several girlfriends three times a week. It’s dark when I arrive at our meetup place. I see my friends stretching. I park my car and join them.
This has been a tender mercy in my life. When I first moved here I asked the Lord to send me fitness friends. That same week Sarah approached me and asked, “Do you want to run with our group?”.
The Lord heard my plea and inspired her to ask.
Over the years, these women became a great support to me. You don’t need a therapist if these friendships are in place.
On this day, I found myself with Sarah as my running mate.
I was in a deeply desperate place. I had logged eighteen years of struggling with the madness of “I need to be thin”. Do you know this struggle?
In our society, being thin is the elusive platform to stand on. The final destination where all my troubles would dissipate because I looked amazing. I pictured myself climbing onto the winners block with a toned body, while waving to the crowds, a bouquet of flowers cradled in my arm. Look at me! I made it! I’m skinny! Now I can be happy!
Don’t judge me, I was young. This is the mentality of that phase. Am I pretty enough? Am I thin enough? No other success could compensate for failure at the waistline. It was a very vain dream. Truly, it wasn’t about being healthy. It was about looking great.
Eighteen years of self beatings ensued because I wasn’t enough in this category. What is so ironic is when I look back at photo’s of that time, I looked amazing. But this madness to be thin consumed me. My brain went crazy with thoughts of how to approach and kill the beast of being over weight. Of being a compulsive over eater.
Actually, I was good at weight loss. I just couldn’t stay there and when I failed, I failed really well!
Followed by, you guessed it, more self beatings. More yelling into my journal. I was not nice. It was traumatizing and the trauma stacked.
With this load, I jogged alongside Sarah. There has got to be some kind of rest! I have got to change! And once I change, I can rest!
I asked her the golden question, “How does a person change?!”
She responded with something I had never heard before. What she said, probably came through her.
“You have to ask Jesus Christ to change you”.
What?! Now there’s a novel idea! I hadn’t thought of that. Or maybe, I had heard of it, but this time it struck. And it stuck.
I knew that Christ said to pray with all the energy of your soul to be filled with his love, with charity. But I didn’t know I could apply that energy-prayer to changing me so I could be…… skinny foreverrrr!
The weekend was coming. I would use that time to approach him.
In my next blog, the low valley is entered. Doesn’t that sound fun.
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