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.
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