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I need a big stick

Do you ever do ridiculous things to try and help you remember things?

I was running today and I ran past this tree on a drive way. In fact I ran past it three times because i decided to go back and get a photo of it but didn’t want to be obvious so i had to run a few meters past it, turn around and then run back past it to continue on my way. It’s not a great photo because as I said it was taken whilst running but it captures what I wanted it to. It seemed worth going back to get a photo because of the thought process that God used it to prompt in my.

The thought:

That tree is so small, it’s roots aren’t established, and so that tree needs help. It needs a tree bigger than it is to help keep it up and help it settle into the ground.

As I think about weight loss and the past 16 or so months of actually achieving a steady loss and as I think about Lysa TerKeurst’s Made to Crave I can totally see how God would use that image to poke me as I ran past it.

I can totally lose weight on my own. I can do it in my own strength and I can get to my targets AS LONG as nothing gets in my way. As long as I just keep going and keep my head down then why wouldn’t I manage it?

Problem is that I’m not managing it. My roots aren’t deep enough in the weigh loss journey to keep losing weight when things like special occasions or bad days come along and create wind to continue the tree metaphor.

I wobble and I get shoved around although i can maybe withstand it I can’t really achieve or grow and I end stagnant and STUCK!

What I need is the big stick that anchors me in place. What I need is God. I need His strength to sustain my willpower and decision making skills. I need His wisdom to help me make wise choices and eat the things which are beneficial despite everything being permissible. I need Him to help me see that there will be weeks when I can have made all the right choices but I won’t lose weight but that He is pleased with my discipline and pleased with me for making this walk with Him REGARDLESS of the scales and the tape measure.

There will hopefully come a day where my weight loss journey will become a weight maintaining journey and that it won’t be so much about the relationship with God because He will challenging me on the next thing and my roots will be deeper and more able to keep me stable but for now I need this stick to keep me upright!

I’m ignoring the thought process that the trees roots are going to wreck these peoples lovely drive way when it gets bigger and starts pushing them up! You can’t win them all! 😉

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Listening to His whispers

Are you any good at listening to God? More importantly are you any good at listening to Him and DOING something about what you’ve heard?

I’ve had a number of things niggling me for quite some time about what I do next in life. I am a stay at home mum and I don’t intend to change that. In fact I mostly enjoy it and I try to remind myself that work was monotonous too and that’s not just a home thing!

However I have felt God pushing me to take steps in areas of blogging, creating and possible photography.

I was thinking about dreaming the other week when I was looking at writing down my rule of life for small group. My personality and my giftings lend themselves to being a helper. To getting along side someone who comes up with plans and dreams and then helping them to get it done whether that’s with ideas or just doing as they ask me. I realised as I was thinking about this that the problem with being a helper is that when you try and dream for yourself it’s very hard to do. Firstly because it is hard to believe that your dreams might somehow work and not fear that the promptings you hear from God are just your own thoughts. Secondly it’s incredbily hard work out what steps to actually take to actually make progress and who to bring along with you in that dream you’re not sure will work in the first place!

So with these promptings I’ve spent a lot of time putting myself down.

  • I’m not good enough.
  • I don’t have time.
  • No one would want me to take photos.
  • No one would buy something I create.
  • No one would read the blog post.

But the thoughts keep coming back and somewhere in there I am starting to think more and more that it’s a God nudge.

However I keep coming back to that same problem: I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO START WITH ANYTHING EVEN IF I WANT TO!!

Since Friday, what I am finding as I try to open myself more up to God’s prompting and strengthening for weight loss, He also seems to be talking to me more about the other things in life and how to move forwards.

I talked with a friend as we went for a walk who reminded me that although I was comparing my abilities with people around me, God has created me as an individual. I am me and no one else is. A good wet fish round the face to remind me stop comparing myself so much and so harshly.

I listened to on Friday as I was running which talked about the reaction of “I can’t” and how this guys Dad had always responded to him “I can do everything through Christ who strengthens me”. He started the talk asking people to think of what their ‘I can’t’ things are. For me the first thought was weight loss. I can’t lose weight, it’s too hard. Secondly, I was about to try doing hill repeats for the first time in my running to help me be a fitter runner. I’m not sure I can do this. It’s going to hurt. It’s too hard. And then I came on to creativity. I can’t. No one would be interested. I’d fail.
Listening to that talk I felt God talking to me about tasking the risk and taking a step. Jumping into what God is calling me to and to stop saying I can’t. Because I can do all things though Christ who strengthens me.
I came home from my run, which by the way I manage 5 reps instead of the 4 I was aiming for, and sat with Ross as we registered my blog domain (WholeheartedJourney) instead of using the free one I’d been using and didn’t like the name of AND we registered a domain for my creative adventure which now feels more like a reality.

I also did some investigating into Compel Training which I had heard of over a year ago but hadn’t gone back to. Compel is part of Proverbs 31 Ministries which is headed up by Lysa TerKeurst of Made to Crave fame. They teach writers to write better. They occasionally open up their enrolment and it’s currently open and so the obvious thing to do is to sign up for a month and see how I get on.

Finally I listened to a talk this morning by a lady called Crystal Evans at the She Talks conference. She talked about being a Kingdom woman. She talked about how invites into interruptions and invitations in life and how, as writers and speakers and leaders, we can use these interruptions to grow and write and share. She said that “it’s in these broken places that the most beautiful things grow” and as she spoke I just felt God’s prompting that He can use the interruptions that have happened in my life for bigger things and that to write about them is wise. Crystal also repeated the idea that God uses us right where we are. We don’t have to be sorted or write but just open to using our gifts for the glory of God and THAT is what makes you a Kingdom woman.

DO WHAT YOU CAN WITH WHAT YOU HAVE

And so I continue to listen. I continue to ask God for His help daily with weight loss hoping that it becomes more of a habit. I continue to hope that I open myself up to God I will hear more of his interruptions and promptings and that I will do what I can with what He has given me knowing that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

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Back to square one

Where’s your head at? That questions always makes me think of Basement Jaxx song and the advert Pringles advert…

But the question is where’s my head at?!

I’ve been having a fight with myself and have been for about 2.5-3 months. The fight is about weight loss and discipline and sticking to what I want to do not doing as Paul says in Romans 7:15:

I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

I start each day (well most days) with the best of intention to stick to my calories and this week I am going to lose weight and get back on it and be amazing. And then dinner time I’ve eaten something which puts me over my allowance or I get to the evening and I am tired and so I look for something to eat as if somehow that will make me not tired anymore…! The break in America became the month of May not being the end of the world, became fighting to get through June and now nearing the end of July I am just 0.4lb lighter than 2 days before we flew to America four whole months ago.

It’s crazy because it upsets me but I don’t chose to REALLY do something about it which has been the problem for years. It’s not the plan that’s the problem, it’s me.

I’ve debated changing my goal weight, there was nothing really special about 5.5 stone except that it would make me just overweight not obese. I’ve debated just settling where I am but I’m not sure I could find proper peace in that choice. I do not expect the world to just full in place and become happiness and rainbows at my target weight but I feel peaceful that at that weight I will be able to be more at peace with my achievements until I am ready to fight the final 2 stone off – the LOOOOONG term goal!

I’ve tried going back to basics with losing weight and it hasn’t worked. So now I’m going back to different basics. I’ve gone back to reading Lysa TerKeurst’s book Made to Crave and am trying to get a new, more God focused, perspective on the weight loss journey. I’m exhausted from trying to do it in my own strength and feel despair about my lack of progress and so at rock bottom I crawl back to God and ask Him to help me again.

As I go through the questions in the personal reflections I time and time again find that I am saying that my struggle is that making God a part of my every day life is not my habit. That asking Him for help is not my habit. That remember He CAN help is not my habit and find myself frustrated that I don’t really know how to make it habit.

There are positives in this situation. Although I have not lost I have mostly maintained my weight around the same point. A few gains and losses means I have not spiralled and let the weight go back on in frustration at the lack of progress and the disbelief, whether conscious or unconscious, that I am not worth all this time and effort. For those who know that is a MASSIVE change. That spiralling is the reason I spent 6 years on Slimming World gaining and losing the same 1.5 stone without every really making progress.

Also positive is that I recognise the need to change. That sitting in this frustration is not healthy and that I need to get myself to my target to release myself from  it by getting to my target.

It’s time to get more serious about making this journey one where I rely on God and hopefully then make progress to meet my goals BUT more importantly I hopefully will develop my relationship with God opening myself up more to hearing from Him, being more aware of His presence and the feel more of the push from Him to take chance and move forward in all areas of life.

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Like learning to ride a bike

Have you ever tried to teach someone to ride a bike? I hadn’t really until today.

We got our three year old a bike with stabilisers for giving up his dummy and so we now start the process of learning how to do it. He happily asks to have the bike out from the garage, puts on the helmet, climbs on the bike and then he just sits on with his feet on the pedals going nowhere fast, or at all to be honest!!

I tried to help. It wasn’t pretty. It was the end of a long day with the kids and my patience was low, maybe bike riding should not be a post 6pm activity! Anyway he would put his feet on the pedal and push one foot down and start to move which sounds and looks promising. He would then take his foot off the pedal that he next needed to push to keep moving. He would lose the flow and he would have to start again.

It did not matter how many times I would tell him that he needed to keep his feet on the pedal, he would still keep taking that foot off and that lead to me getting more and more frustrated with him, losing my patience, raising my voice slightly, all the usual ugly moments you wish you could go back and change.

After a little while of attempting this and repeating the phrase you need to keep your foot on the pedal to no avail, my lovely husband came outside and I exclaimed “I just need to go inside for a few moments!”

As I sat down exacerbated by really quite a short exchange I just felt God say “that’s what you do”. And as I thought about it I realised it is in so many situations. I request to do something, get all kitted out for it, get lined up to start, take a small motion towards it and then I take my foot off the pedal and God’s somewhere in the background shouting “STOP TAKING YOUR FOOT OFF THE FLIPPING PEDAL” – to be fair He probably isn’t shouting that but in my head that’s what I think he is shouting.

It’s so easy to lose momentum. Something gets hard. Something is boring. Something is frustrating, The weather changes. You get injured. People distract you. Life gets in the way. Another ‘thing’ needs our attention and it seems more important. Priorities get confused.

The thing is that I am sure that there are things in everyone’s life where we keep coming back to that very same issue, and keep making a start and then taking our feet off the pedal without even really meaning to sometimes. If you keep going round in the circle to the same situation chances are you keep starting and then stopping.

I can think of a few things where I do this but weight loss is the most obvious. It’s easily been 10 years of starting and stopping. Getting distracted, giving up, life causing issues, children. I’ve all the excuses in the world and many of them are justified but for me weight is an issue. It’s something that need to be dealt with. It’s a physical, emotional and spiritual area of my life which needs me discipline, attention and effort. I need to keep my foot on the pedal.
I’m doing better with this. I’ve got further than ever before but my mojo has disappeared a little. My discipline is lacking. My focus fuzz. My attraction to chocolate stronger. I need to spend time getting back that self control and discipline so that God doesn’t have to keep shouting to me about my feet on the pedals! I can’t do it alone but I’m so blessed to have friends and family who have my back and maybe I need to start by asking for help!

Keep your feet on the pedals because you never know just what you might achieve if you stop pulling it off at the most important moment. Just imagine the progress and then maybe gaffa tape your feet onto the pedal which I will confess was what I was tempted to do with the three year old!