Unchained

I really wanted to throw the scale out the window. Not figuratively speaking but literally. Day after day I stepped on and held my breath, waiting for the numbers, hoping against hope that today would be the day that would begin to turn things around for me. I wore that scale around my neck like a noose (not literally, but figuratively) weighed down by the burden of being overweight and not a clue how to help myself. Did you ever see that commercial with the woman who had a scale chained around her ankle, how she drags it around with her and it even gets caught in the elevator door? That's me
I thought about it all the time, obsessed with the next idea to get myself back to the skinny me that dwells inside this overweight frame. I read all the articles, ate less red meat and more veggies, ate more red meat and cheese and no bread, ate salad until the smell of ranch dressing almost made me cry ranch tears, tried starving myself (that lasted about two meals) and then there was the exercise. This past summer I tried out a new exercise plan. I went to the park four or five days a week and ran. For an hour. Sometimes I even got up and went at six thirty in the morning. I gave it everything I had. And I didn't lose a pound. Finally one day in the late fall I ran three miles without stopping. It was the best workout I had had in years. I ran harder and faster than ever before and when I was done I cried all the way home because I knew it was useless. Four straight months and no change. I asked myself how this was possible? The next day I stayed home. And then for the next two months I stayed home and gained five more pounds. Finally in an act of desperation I bought a juicer (after watching a netflix documentary called "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead")  and decided to do a juice fast. Which brings me back to where this whole thing started; stepping on the scale. I had been juicing all week and was starving to death and should have lost at least a couple of pounds. Instead I saw with disbelief that I had gained a couple of pounds. It really hurt. I went to my room and cried. I didn't know what else to do. It dogged me, this weight issue. It followed me everywhere I went. It made me feel guilty every time I had a cookie or gravy on my mashed potatoes. I wore it like a heavy mantle of self hatred every single time I put on the one and only pair of jeans I have left that fit or looked at myself in the mirror and saw an overweight middle aged woman staring back at me. To make things worse as soon Tommy and I started juicing he started losing weight. It was like pouring salt into a wound.
This isn't the first time I have been overweight and that is part of what makes it so difficult for me to live with. When I got married I was a very tall thin 125 pound girl. I had never been on a diet in my life and never thought I would have to be. Then I had my kids and the pounds packed on. I remember after I had my first baby how fast the weight came off-for the first week anyway. One day, standing on the scale, (the first of what would become a lifetime obsession) I realized I was actually going to have to diet. I had no clue how to begin or what to do and I actually starved myself on a fad diet. I lost the weight but it was not a good thing for me to do. After I had Alyssa I just continued to gain and gain until my heart couldn't take it anymore and I began to have some arrhythmias and other heart  problems and had to see a heart specialist. That scared me into action. I began to diet and exercise in tandem. I did the Atkins diet to start with and then a low cal diet and I lost seventy pounds. I was elated the day I stepped on the scale and I was a 140 pound forty year old. And then I watched it creep back on day after day and it seems like there is nothing I can do to get it off. I despair.
So I was sitting in church on Sunday morning and thinking about all this. My mouth was singing hymns but my mind was on that scale. I thought to myself: self, on Christmas day this year, you are going to give yourself a gift. The gift of not worrying about being overweight. For just one day let it go. Doesn't mean you can go crazy and eat a ton of Christmas goodies, but just be free from the worry. Added to that thought was another thought: wouldn't it be great if everyday could be like that?To be free from the worry of it all? To be free from the self hatred and loathing I feel every time I see myself in the mirror? Then I heard that still small voice, the one that gets my attention every time. You can. That was all. I knew what I needed to do right then. That old adage "Let go and let God" was never truer than at that moment. I let Him have it. I let him have my negative feelings about myself and I let go of the worry that drags me down at every step about the way I look, that puts me in a bad mood when I can't find something to wear, or when I'm hungry and afraid to eat because I know I will just end up fatter than yesterday...I realized that the devil had a pretty good stronghold going on there and I'm having no more of it. So from now on when I step on the scale even if it goes up I'm not fretting. I refuse. I can't tell you how good it is that the "weight" of worry that has held me down so long is gone. I feel free. So free in fact that today, after juicing my spinach and pineapple/carrot drink I took myself to the park and ran two miles. And came back with tears, but this time with tears of joy.
And the best thing about this whole learning not to worry thing is that it bleeds over into other areas of my life. My finances, my children, my house. Doesn't mean those things are going to change, at least right away anyway, it just means I'm not wasting time on the worry any more. I can walk away from the scale and not be upset or downcast. I can put down the bill book and know that God has it under control. I can look at my kids, and even though they may be acting like fools at the moment, I can know that God is working in their lives (just like he is in mine even though I might be acting like a fool sometimes.)
Thank you God for revelation and refreshment. What would I do without you, Lord?