Posted on

The heart knowledge 

Have you seen the film frozen? Brace yourself but I haven’t… it’s worse because we own it but haven’t actually watched it! 🤦🏼‍♀️  I do however feeel like I’ve seen it given how many of the songs I know and how much of the storyline I know!

This isn’t a completely random thought it’s linked to the continuance of the topic nagging, maybe I shall call it God nagging?! But I’ll get to that in a second – just thought I should confess my lack of Frozen viewing with you before I continue!

We established I have the head knowledge for a renewing of my mind just not the feeling, the heart knowledge.

It’s something that feels too big for me to find the solution to. In fact I think this is often the point that I get to in the topic when it crops up. Knowing what I need to know but not feeling it and not knowing how to move forward to feel it.

As I ran this afternoon I listened to a talk on love and came back to a statement about really struggle with.

Susie who was speaking said: “The secret to loving people and doing relationships well is being loved my God” She then quoted Tim Keller: “Before love is a behaviour, love is an experience. We have to be captured by that love, shattered by that love and only then can it empower us to love”.

What I struggle with in this statement is that I don’t feel that I know I am loved and worth the effort etc BUT I do feel that I know how to love others. Seriously my brain really struggles because the statement when it comes up time and time again makes me doubt my love for others. Either I am loving wrong or am loving from the wrong place. OR I have felt loved by God at times and that’s enough to enable me to love people well? OR loving people would be easier if I lived loved? You’ll be sensing my confusing on the subject I suspect!!

I don’t know that answer.

I read a Proverbs 31 Ministries devotional this morning that touched on this subject. The writer was communicating on Galations 5:1 and how we are free because of Christ and that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be burdened by things because of that.

THIS is where the Frozen reference will start to make some sense. As I read the devotional it talked about how we slip into habits of pain or frustration and that even once the pain is gone we continue to feel it. God has taken away the ‘issues’ in life by dying on the cross for us but we often limp around as if we are still holding them. We need to let go of the past and walk without the limp.

I’m pretty sure that my past is what puts up all the road blocks to me living loved and knowing and experiencing just how loved I am. I’m pretty that I need to Let It Go as the song would say because that is what the bible calls me to do.

Nothing complicated or anything!!!!! I just need to let go of things and learn to live loved…..

Just don’t know how to get past a life time of past and move forward without the baggage holding on and holding me down.

Posted on

The head knowledge

Do you ever find yourself coming across the same topic from numerous sources? Like it keeps coming up over and over and you get to the point that you start thinking that perhaps you should start piecing together?

For me the past few days have seen the same topic coming up. The topic involves self worth, body image, caring for and loving yourself. It’s not a new topic for me but it is something that I’ve never come to a positive conclusion on.

I didn’t lose weight the way I wanted to this week. I was annoyed. I didn’t deserve a tiny gain (and yes I can see that it is a tiny gain, but I still didn’t deserve it!) I was cross that my body doesn’t respond the way that scientifically it should. Calories in minus more calories out should scientifically equal less weight. SCIENCE SUCKS. Well that’s my current opinion! I’ll get over it, well I may get over it!

Going back to the topic of self worth and body image, the question my devotion book (Savor: Shauna Niequiest) posed to me today was:

What would it take for you to live well in your body this season?

My immediate reaction is to think along physical lines; lose weight, lose inches, get nice clothes. I move onto mental thoughts; be more confident, accept where I am, recognise my progress. However, because of the series of repeated messages my brain moved on to the idea of the renewing of my mind.

The devotional email that I had read first thing this morning was all 3 steps for renewing your mind. And so with that fresh in my mind I was prompted to back to look back to the email and I pulled out a few keys words for each of the steps:

Renewing you mind

  1. Recognise negative thoughts – Does this thought help me? Is it true? Does it steal my peace? Does it match with God’s word? – Awareness is the first step to controlling thoughts
  2. Reject negative thoughts – If you’ve decided it’s not really true, don’t allow yourself to entertain it any more. – Take control of what you’re thinking rather than letting it run rampant.
  3. Replace negative thoughts – We have the authority and power to reject those negative thoughts and shift them to be more positive. 

Tracie Miles: Proverbs 31 Ministries

I think I probably do step one most of the time. I think I probably don’t do step two or step three! I’m an overthinker. I’m a look at the worst case scenario and then let that develop for the next 3 days thinker. I recognise this as part of my personality but I just don’t seem to be able to win. Although to be fair on myself I’m not sure how much I try and there are times when my overthinking is actually a positive part of my personality it’s just that for it to be a positive part it was to be based on step one above in particular IT IS EVEN TRUE?!?!?!

I decided to spend some time thinking about what I know (my head knowledge) of what God thinks about me. I came up with 27 “I am…..” statements.

IMG_4625.jpg

I was quite surprised how many I could come up with and to be fair I could probably think of more if I hadn’t filled the page with these ones. 

What I’m beginning to realise is that I have the head knowledge for a transformed heart and for the negative to stop winning, I’m just know sure I have the heart feelings to go with it. As a feeler in personality that’s a big deal! 

Posted on

Bottling it

Don’t you wish you could bottle some emotions? I don’t mean bottle them up and ignore them, I can already do that. What I mean is how good would it be to bottle up an emotion to be able to go back to and remind yourself exactly how something feels?

I think it’s so much easier to remember how a negative emotions feels than a positive one. Maybe that’s my personality? Or my outlook on life?

I’ve been pondering how useful it would be to be able to just open a bottle and remember exactly how somethings feels as a top up to willpower.

Willpower is such a fallible thing. You can have huge amounts of it in one moment and then none in seconds. Willpower is a finite thing to be fair. If you use it all up without replenishing it then it fails.

In a moment of achievement you feel like you can achieve anything and everything. Like that positive feeling will carry you through even when it’s tough.

Problem being it doesn’t stay. That positive moment fades and the willpower takes a life battering and all of a sudden you’re striving to just cope let alone win.

For me it’s food. Seems to always be food. I find myself wondering if it’ll always be food that I fight with.

[^^^ that thought just there is what I’m talking about when I talk about losing the high of achievement or the willpower runs low. The negative ‘I-will-always-be-this-way-woe-is-me’ thought.]

I lost 4lb last week after an amazing week of discipline and high willpower. 4lb took me to 11.8lb away from my first proper target minus 5.5 stone. And 4.8lb away from a mini target. In that moment I have the confidence to feel like I could achieve anything. Less than a stone away from a big milestone – I could easily do that in like a week?! (No one said I was being realistic – ha!)

But 6 days later I find myself battling myself with little willpower. All the things I found easy last week are hard this week. I’m hungry, but I know I’m not actually hungry. I’m finding it hard to be disciplined. I’m finding it hard to have a positive mental attitude. And because of that my willpower is battered and so I’m giving in, being dejected. Frustrated once again.

What bugs me is I can reason with myself I can do this. I can reason with myself that I’m worth the effort. That the food won’t help. That I don’t need it. That I was so pleased last week when I did well and achieved. But with that thought in my head I still eat the food…. WHY? Makes me cross with myself and the world around me.

So thats why I want to bottle that emotion of ‘I-can-achieve-anything-ever’ and just pop it open and REALLY feel it. Really remember how well I can do.

What also bugs me is as I think about this topic and as I work through the thought processes I KNOW there is another way of dealing with this all with God’s help. The problem is that I’ve never really worked out how to do this whole God and weight loss thing. I don’t know how to turn to him in the moments of weakness and depleted willpower and say ‘God you gotta help me’.

If I could work out how to do that then maybe that would be a little like bottling up the emotion to tap into but perhaps even better.

Posted on

Run rabbit run

Have you ever achieved something that you weren’t sure you’d ever manage?

2.5 years ago I tried running again having done couch to 5k in 2012. I couldn’t do it. It left me in serious pain and I was heartbroken. I wanted to run and I couldn’t.

Roll forward to January 2017 and I decided that being a stone lighter I’d just give it another go. And it turned out I could run. In fact I quite enjoyed it, certainly more than last time.

I did couch to 5k for a few weeks and then decided to go it alone and just get myself up to 5k bit by bit. My aim was to hit 5k in less than 40 minutes having hit 40:50 last time I’d done 5k. The first time I ran 5k this time, in February, I did it in just over 39 minutes. I sobbed that I’d managed to do it… then realised I needed a new aim! Ha!

I aimed for 5k under 35 minutes. Seemed like it would be a challenge and that it would take a fair amount of work. In May I hit 5k in just over 34 minutes. Again i cried – I hadn’t really thought it was possible.

NEW CHALLENGE REQUIRED! – I wanted to raise money for Macmillan in memory of my mum. So I combined a running challenge with a money raising challenge. I entered a 10k race on July 9th and then told everyone so I’d have no choice! (Accountability is a great thing!)

I worked out I’d need to add at least 0.7km each week to hit 9.9k the week before my 10k. Well the first week I hit 7.5k, the week after 8k and then this week 10k. I think I was a little shocked with myself when I finished running. Not excited in an odd way just shocked. See 10k seemed unachievable. I’d come from thinking I’d not be able to run again full stop to running 10k. Totally shocked.

What amazes me is the encouragement that people around me give me. From some of the least expected sources through to the friends who always have my back they have built me up and encouraged me. They’ve inspired me and told me that I inspire them which has inspired me to go even further.

And the best thing is that whilst I go through my shock, and whilst I gain all the fitness benefits, I am also aiming toward raising money for a charity who had my mum’s heart firmly behind them. A charity who helped her in her last fight. Who could want more than that?!