bootleg internet :)

kenley is letting me borrow his laptop and someone is letting me borrow their internet.

remember that one time i started a blog to write about my journey with weight watchers, oh yeah. i did.

so i'll write a little bit about what i'm learning about in my journey of living a whole, healthy life with discipline and grace.

realization.

for the longest time...well, i guess five years, i was in denial about my relationship with food. i definitely found comfort in food through celebrations, loneliness, happiness anger, solitude, companionship and community. i had always been fairly active through high school and a majority of college. i assumed that my body would just adjust to living a sedentary life. i didn't think that it would adjust to being over 200 pounds...more specifically 228 pounds. damn. she just wrote that.

i invite people to be a part of my life and this is an important part of my life, it is my health.

so. i realized there was something wrong when i went to get my nebraska license and didn't know what to put in the 'weight' portion of the application. hmm. i knew that it was harder for me to fasten seatbelts on planes...i knew it was harder to bend over to paint my nails...and shit, it was a lot harder for me to climb the three flights of stairs to my apartment. well. 185 sounds good. to me it was an acknowledgment that i wasn't the weight i should be. but i didn't realize that it was far, far from the truth.

the truth was that i was a morbidly obese 25 year old woman. i had odd heart pains, my feet hurt in the morning, i slept much more than i needed to, i avoided the gym, i wore guachos - a lot and i wasn't happy.

it went beyond my weight. i'm realizing that our lives are much more interconnected than we like to admit. when i don't have enough alone time, my health suffers...and when my health suffers i don't want to spend time with Christ...and when i don't spend time with Christ i'm not being refreshed, inspired, filled up to be given those around me. it's all tied up together.

so. now. i look back to almost a year ago and i wonder what happened. my mom spoke into my life in ways that no one else did. i wonder if we have the courage to call each other out...not in a negative way...but in a way to encourage and uplift them. my prayer is that we live towards wholeness: spiritually, emotionally, relationally, physically...all of those areas and more. and as we move towards wholeness we can offer ourselves to each other. this goes against what our culture thinks we should do or who we should be. it makes more sense if we indulge ourselves in things that make us feel good. why would we want to eat a balanced diet when we can feel better eating what makes us feel good...why would we want to use our bodies and exercise when we can just not (i know, bad sentence). i hope that we can move to honoring God's creation - our body through whole health.

anyway. these are just some thoughts. i'm definitely still working through what this looks like. much more later. it's too late to write more.

peace to you.