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.
Wednesday, October 9, 2019
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.
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.
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.....
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.....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)