A few years ago, I was cleaning out an old drawer and found a picture of myself from 2002. Soon after that, I found a secret message through a journal entry.
Reading it almost brought me to tears.
I'm sharing it with you now. These feelings are very personal. I was hesitant to open myself up like this.
However, I will share them in case this saves someone's life.
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1/10/2002
For the first time in this process I considered returning to my old ways.
I went to the doctor’s office and he weighed me. 240 pounds.
Before I went, I had prayed for strength to look at that number and I did it.
But hearing him lecture me about my weight was just devastating.
For one thing, it was the manner in which he did it.
He didn't look at me. He just stared at his chart and launched into a spiel he must have given dozens of times.
He told me that what I was doing to my heart by being obese was the same as asking an engine designed for a Volkswagen to carry the weight of a Mack truck.
I tried to say something, but he just kept right on talking. I haven't felt that invalidated in a long time.
Anyway after I left, I felt like crying. There was just a dull pain and heaviness in my heart.
I felt like someone had just run me over.
I wanted to eat. It was true I was a little hungry, but that's not why I wanted to eat.
I wanted the pain to go away.
So I prayed, and I talked to God and asked Him for His comfort, which He gave. But I still had some pain. It was like grief.
But I didn't eat to deal with it. I went to sleep later instead.
When I woke up, I thought about my weight problem. I've allowed myself to let wrong thinking set up in my head.
I've been defeated so many times that I don't have the strength to fight anymore. But God's strength never runs out. So I have to borrow His.
So yes for me, my weight is a Spiritual battle.
Whenever I want to eat and I'm not hungry it means I'm trying to use food to fill a God-shaped space in me. I just realized something. Before, I used to think that the food was working. That it filled the space, but then it was temporary.
Now I realize all the food did was medicate me so that I didn't notice the space at all. The space never went away. My need for God never went away.
Food was just a way for me to deny my need for God, to hang on to my illusion of independence. It was my not-so-subtle form of rebellion, rejection.
The thought makes me sick. But, it was ignorance. I didn't know. I just thought this weight problem would be solved if only I found the right diet or exercise program.
But I was wrong.
My solution has to focus on filling that God-shaped space to make me feel truly whole.
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Some of you may not have been able to relate to my story. That's fine.
For some of you, your weight issue may be just about finding the right diet or exercise program. There are plenty of good ones out there.
If that is all you need, then Take Back Your Temple is not for you. So you could stop reading right now.
I created Take Back Your Temple because I knew a solution was needed for someone like me, for whom the excess weight was not just about the diet or exercise program.
After all, I read all the diet books. I was a registered nurse for heaven's sake! I knew how to eat healthy and exercise.
My problem was not being able to make myself do what I knew was right. This was a Spiritual and emotional issue.
That is where I needed God's help.
- He showed me how to do with Him what I could not do alone.
- He helped me to dismantle that wrong thinking in my head.
- He helped me find the strength to keep going when I felt like giving up on myself as a hopeless cause.
God showed me how precious I am to Him. Because I was finally able to receive His love for me, then I was finally able to love myself as I was - before I even lost a pound.
Today, I would not trade my weight loss journey for all the diets, exercise programs, and surgeries in the world.
Was it always easy? No.
But I discovered how to get that abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10:10. It's all about getting to know God through a deeper way, yes even through a weight loss journey!
I feel that God is calling some of you to a new life through your weight loss journey. And I'd like to share that journey with you. Come join me on the journey in the Take Back Your Temple program, starting today.
An old African proverb says, "If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together."
Let's go farther - together.
“Why do you spend money for what is not bread,
And your wages for what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
And let your soul delight itself in abundance (Isaiah 55:2)."