Despair

I don't understand myself. I'm eating myself to death. There's this other person hanging off my body. My tummy sags halfway to my knees. I don't want to do much of anything. But eat. I muster up a few days of discipline and then it fades when I get sick or start cramping terribly. This is harder than anything, anything. It just feels impossible to overcome. Everything conspires against me to overwhelm my ability to do anything about it. 

I see my beautiful grandchildren, energetic and vibrant. I am missing out on so much, because I can barely even stand, much less run around with them. I don't want to do anything extra, because just surviving seems to be impossible. I'm whining. But I also don't know where to start. People are always saying, "You know what to do." No I don't. Nothing in the past has worked, so why would I know what I need to do. God have mercy. Please have mercy.

Pain

We are mortal....it's hard to believe sometimes, and the truth of it is that we just don't believe it. When we are young, it seems like nothing can stop us. Old people have nothing interesting to say, they are boring and cannot surely relate to us, their life is easy and ours is not.

Truth is, the older I get, the less I understand the Lord's ways. I should be getting that very well now....should be living a victorious life of faith...but I am defeated, doubting, wrestling with my flesh and my mind. I condemn myself daily because of my lack of discipline, yet it simply gets worse with the years. My strength is gone, I'm feeling the pains of the decades of brownies, diet soda and lots of ice cream. Dear Jesus, help me.

I am suffering with chronic issues: MRSA, pancreatitis, arthritis pain, and stomach troubles. Limping, unsure about what I'm supposed to do, feeling helpless and just plain ole tired. Lord, do you have anything left for me to do? I feel like I've spent too much, grinding away at crazy jobs while ill-fitted to do it, with so many pounds on my body. Paying the piper now.

Time Away

Ken and I are here at the beach, again. Apparently, by the time we make it home in a week or so, I will have had almost a whole month at the beach this year. Isn't that criminal or something?! There were a few years that we did such things, before Ken lost his job at Lucent (22 years, no retirement, basically nothing left in their 401K). God wanted us to cry out to Him, to face our flesh, to realize that we are not good. Only He is. And He is, and has shown us that repeatedly. There is a freedom in understanding this about yourself. It doesn't excuse our sin, but it explains it. Before, we thought we had something to do with goodness. Now I know that if there's something manifesting holiness in me, it's from Him and His grace. That is exciting to me. It explains Christ and what redemption really means. Who needs to be redeemed who is already good enough? Precious and peace-giving to my soul.

I'm going to a conference in a couple of weeks... it seems to me the Lord put it in my path. I wasn't looking for it, and then it was there. It's about food addiction, abstinence and accountability. All those wonderful things that challenge me. All those things that I am failing at all these years, with the occasional and short-lived victory. 

This past year has been hellish. Daddy unexpectedly died, with his boots on. How lucky can you get? I'm very grateful for having him as my own. Hardly anyone gets a Daddy like that. I can't think of him without breaking into tears, both grief and thankfulness. You tread into that water and there's way too much to push through. So you back out, leave it for another day and hope you can muster things stronger next time. Until I looked back over this year, I didn't recognize that I have been in freefall the whole time. not wanting to deal with things. My eating has been horrendous. I've had a few days of victory in there....a couple weeks here and there where I started another race but didn't persevere. 

My body defaults to this same weight that I'm at right now, in between diets. So weird. Nobody would believe that 20 years ago I weighed this same thing, but all with a different muscle/fat ratio. My belly looks like there's a keg of beer attached to my body. It's always lapped over, but there's no describing what I'm dealing with now. It's plumb scary. And nigh impossible to haul around. Up until five years ago or so, I was painting and up on ladders and scaffolding all the time. It didn't feel great, but I existed on 400 mg ibuprofen 3 times a day and had a lot of muscle under the lard. 

The strange part of this, to me, is that I am a redeemed child of God. How He can see me as His precious child, even though I can't seem to find a way out of this, is beyond me. I think of alcoholics and drug addicts as sad (no way they are redeemed, right?!) -- but am I any different? A "respectable" vice. I knew that if I were to injure myself or quit moving, it'd all turn to mush. And boy, has it. 

I'm in a truly helpless place. I'm reading, studying, mulling over what it is I need to do. The conference I'm going to shortly is hell. They restrict your eating from every single angle. It appears to be so difficult, every waking moment of my life will have to be focused on all the little ounces of food that I'm allowed to eat. Meeting after meeting, laser focused on my food addiction. For the rest of my miserable life. It seems like it will be just like that, with no freedom or joy, ever. Only discipline. Me, of zero disciplined. I want to throw up now. What will I do? Die a tortured, painful death or live a tortured, painful, disciplined life? Is there a choice? I may have already killed myself with my choices, even though my metabolism is crap...so my choices have to be less than most peoples'.... I don't eat two servings of anything and I love veggies. But apparently I can't eat sugar, flour, fat, potatoes, rice, bread, etc....and the weight is still going to inch off like a slug. So discouraged.

Voices of Addiction

Today we were at the ocean for hours....it was beautiful, breezy, cooler than the rest of the week. All I wanted to do was float, but there was seaweed. A lady waded in and asked me if there were any jellyfish. I told her no and then we talked for two hours while the seaweed wafted all around us. Amazing how you can find out so much about someone in a short period of time. Ken asked me if she was nice....she was. But she still wasn't a kindred. Kindreds are amazing and rare. I've had a few kindred friends over the years, and I knew it within moments of meeting them. My baby sister, before she even emerged from the womb. A friend in first grade. Susan in middle school, a smart, funny friend. Nerdy Gail in high school. Grace in college, friends in microseconds. Funny, irreverent, she will say anything. Stacie, whom I met when our husbands worked on their freezing, beat-up farmhouse. Kathy, across a table on a cruise. Our pastor's wife, Michelle. Instantaneous bond. Cool. God brings those people. There's no explaining it.

My big toe and third toe on my right foot both have a fungus. The doctor instructed me to put cream on it at night, then sand them down in the morning and apply anti-fungus drops to them. We've been in the ocean all week and now those two toes are turning red. My big toe is hurting. This is scaring me. I have diabetes and I'm eating the house down. Is my toe going to fall off? My urine smells like the cat's been in the bathroom before me. That can't be good. Meanwhile, I'm reading this book about food addiction and I kind-of threw it down a couple of days ago, in disgust. 

Why do I have to deny myself anything? Why can't I have anything I want? Why me? Why is my body betraying me?

Why am I a total and depraved brat? 

I'm a Christian, aren't I? I'm having doubts. I know the Lord, have talked to him since I was a young child. But I'm acting like my body belongs to me. How dare He or anyone tell me I can't have something? Why is it that I am not allowed to just eat and not feel the effects? I have to eat. Lord have mercy. How many times have I prayed? How many times have I felt the tug of the Holy Spirit before diving into a doughnut or brownie...and then ignored it. I am free. I am not bound by the law. I am covered. Dear Jesus. How many times will you forgive me? How many times will I ignore the little voice in my head? How many times will I dive again, deep into the ocean of denial? My poor family, with me over and over again saying that I am going to do right. Promises broken repeatedly. One week, I'm eating right. Avoiding sugar. Standing in victory. The next week, I'm throwing down ice cream and pizza. The objects are not essentially evil, but my abuse of this body is, when I know that it does nothing good for me at all. I'm lazy and don't want to stop, to plan, to restrain myself. I work my butt off, then laze the rest of my life away when the juice runs out. So tonight I sit here on vacation, in the most beautiful of places, full of food and full of crap. My toe is red and hurting. My kidneys are suffering. Yet I press on with my plans to keep on keeping on. The things that I need to do, I don't do. I fail, I get up, I try for a minute then fall down again. Clarity. Then fog. God.....

Plodding

Where did two years go? And if I read my journals, way back to when my firstborn greeted the world in 1984, I had the same concerns. Even my post from two years ago says the basic same things. The pain of this world, the flesh and the devil. Mostly the flesh and its insatiable need to be satiated. And it never is. Here, all these years later, wrestling with the same demons and no better off, rather, I'm worse off. Because years and more fudgy cake make for a larger mountain to traverse. With the ravages of time, my body has begun to quake and labor under the burden. I've lived so much, ate and drank (too much KoolAid and Diet Coke for sure), thrown caution to the wind, not listened when the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear. 

There can be so much condemnation in my own heart, knowing that I am not caring well for the temple of the Holy Spirit. It's an awful thing, waking up every morning to the lard that is sitting on my stomach. I don't care what anybody says, self esteem and all that, it's still lard and I don't like it. And people talking about loving yourself, etc. Well, I love myself too much. And I hurt myself, because I'm a brat and I want what I want, without consequences. There's far too many lies about this subject. We're brats. We don't have low self-esteem. We love our pacifiers and how dare you take them away?

Bright lines. Been hearing about that too. That's about being black-and-white about my eating. Treating myself like an addict. No sugar. No sweeteners. No flour (of ANY kind). And this is not a temporary diet or program. It needs to be for the rest of my life. No cheating, no passing go. Accepting it and embracing it. Lord have mercy. One week in and I'm scraping at the walls. I've lost 8 pounds but that demon that's chained in the cave would love to eat the house down.  It's not about volume, so much, as it is having all my choice sweets and carbs, without consequence.

But filling myself up with that stuff every day also leaves me with chest pain, pain running down my neck and left arm, and guilt every night and every morning. You would think that would be plenty of incentive, but that's just the nature of addiction. This week has left me extremely sharp because the sugars are clearing out of my brain. I have been able to say "no" to several different people and situations with power. I have been able to enunciate things that needed to be said. I have asked forgiveness for places in myself that I haven't visited in years. I feel hopeful, that maybe I can get something done. My house is neat and tidy, the laundry is caught up (not the ironing, but that's not my job. Just say no!). The rings on the counter have been wiped off. I can't remember when that's stayed that way for more than a day or two, but it's been great for over a week. Miraculous. I pray for the steady, consistent, boring habits that will carry me through what is difficult. I always chafe against those, but it's time to put on my big girl panties and plod. I've been doing worse than plodding anyway because of my self-induced physical encumbrances, so why not do it with a plan?

Once again throwing myself at the foot of the cross, face down and at His mercy. That is where we find grace. That is where we find the means to do what we ought, because where I am weak and completely unable, He is strong.

Where do I begin?

Nobody ever starts out their life wanting to be fat, do they? Maybe back during the Dark Ages, where being fat meant being the king... but in reality, how many people reallllly want to be king? Either way, as a child, I remember being horrified that I might grow up to be fat. My Mama was and is fat, though compared to me now she is almost svelte. It was awful to her and she didn't ever seem to know how to undo the fatness that had followed her all of her life. Although she said very little to me about it, I do remember her saying "don't ever get fat. It's much easier to keep from getting fat than it is to get it off once it's there." It always seemed to me that it was difficult for her when summer came, to wear a bathing suit and all that.... 

Somehow, I didn't get the memo. I didn't take it to heart that I had to hunker down to stop that fat bus from rolling on in. 'Cause it's true....once it's there it's really hard to get rid of. Sort-of like a body.

I'm thinking about all the Ann Rule books I've read (she writes, very factually, true crime stories) -- about how difficult it is to get rid of a dead body. Lots of people get caught because they don't know what to do with the body. And then in another thought, how if you get abducted, a good way to keep from getting hauled off is to go limp and act like a dead body. They can't carry you off if you don't help them. We've had to bury beloved dogs, 80-lb-ones, that have been put to sleep by the vet. It takes at least two people to carry a dog like that. Imagine a 200-300 pound person. Who needs a taser? Except there are those freaks who actually like dead bodies.  So what's that got to do with being fat, besides the fact that it might take five people to cart you off when that last globule of fat seals off your carotid artery? Sorry for all the graphic morbidity. Morbidity. Morbidly obese. Oh my word, that's what they say I am. Morbid. What an awful word. Thank God for God, because if morbid was my sentence, I mean, why would I ever get up?

Maybe I need to think about that carotid artery. About the embarrassment of five people trying to get me on a gurney. But embarrassment hasn't seemed to motivate me so far. I gleefully fling myself into the surf every summer with all the other whales then fry on the hot sand. Every chance I get, I get out on the dance floor and re-injure my poor feet, loving every minute. I'm sure I embarrass my kids and my relatives with the fact that I really don't care who sees me dancing. I don't care how cute or how ugly you are, that is the way to live. Why wait until everything's all lined up and perfect? Get over yourself and go ahead and live.

Meanwhile.

That artery is slowly (or not so slowly) getting filled up and those feet are getting heel spurs. You can only get so many cortisone shots and second chances. Then you simply can't get out there. You can't move. You can't breathe, wondering why you didn't change something.

We've only got so many days on this planet that God ordains for us. 

There are many brownies, cakes, pies, biscuits, and chocolate delights to be had. Much food and drink. New adventures in Foodland.

But maybe I've reached my quota. Who am I kidding. I've already had a double-dip quota and everything's spilling over into the river. 

Here's to admitting the truth. I have lost and gained a bunch of weight in my adult years. I lost 60 pounds a couple years ago, got halfway to my goal, plateaued for a year, then gained it back, a pound a week. Isn't that precious?

There is a lot more I could say right now. But the elephant in the room is, "Whatcha gonna do about it?" Everybody is so nice and doesn't say anything to me. I am an addict and need rehab. The Holy Spirit lives in my heart and I must grieve Him with my choices. Little ones, easy ones, quiet ones, little foxes. Everybody else is eating it, why can't I?

Yes, I live and I tend to live large, no matter what size I am. But I am not taking good care of this tent that He gave me. This tent that is fearfully and wonderfully made. It is a slap in His face, in my dear husband's face, even in my mother's face -- who carried me for nine months then raised me right....it's like a spoiled child who pitches a fit because he wants a candy bar in the store. There's no one to force me not to take the candy bar, because I'm grown and can do what I want. Yes, I (and you) can usually do what we really want to do. Sweets and carbs are so compelling for me. Morbidly(!) addictive. It's even, and particularly, a slap in my own face. They tell me to love myself. Well, yup, I love myself so much I'm killing myself. It's a weird thing, sin...

I am not walking in victory. It hurts many things and many people, especially me. Especially my feet. 

I am loved. I am filled and surrounded by love. This is not about love. It is about a brat who needs to get out the switch and tan her own hide. Because she's not a baby, she's not a wayward adolescent. She's an adult. So grow up and act like one.

As the team in Remember the Titans chants, so do I today: "We need a victory!" Lord, I need victory. Not just one, but a permanent, serene change of heart.