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Surprised by time

Do you ever find yourself surprised by the speed in which time passes?  to try and write a blog and realise it was nearly a year ago I decided that I was going to have another go at writing my blog. Almost year?! I’m not actually sure where those 11 months have gone, but they sure have been full!

So wave two of trying to write a regular blog did not last for very long I got tied up by how best to write what things to say and let’s be honest having a six month old and never going to be go it go easily with trying to write a blog frequently. 

Ill try and give you a whistle stop tour of the past 11 months.

My children are now 1, 4 and 6 with two of them at full time school or nursery and number 3 firmly in my pocket. I can count on one hand the number of days I’ve had without her – 2 in case you were wondering! – in the past 17 months and that’s pretty exhausting but she’s amazing and makes me laugh a lot. She is also incredibly feisty and knows her own my mind. I often find myself thinking that I am in big trouble as she gets bigger. My 6 year old mostly loves school and it’s fun watching him learning to read and excelling at maths. The 4 year old started full time nursery school in September and he loves it. Plus just two school runs a day makes a HUGE difference to my day with the smallest one.

Since I lost blogged I’ve managed to lose 6 stone!! I mean that one probably needs a whole post about it. But I’ll just quickly mention it here. I am back to running anywhere up to three times a week and I’m hoping to run a half marathon later this year although I suspect it may be next year now. 

My business, Sprouting Butterfly, is still going and although it’s not as successful as I would love it to be it plays its roll in my own life and in the lives of my customers and for that I am grateful.

I had the incredibly privilege of being at the birth of my most amazing friends little boy. It is an experience I will never forget and such honour to be able to be by her side. She was amazing!

I went a course on how to tell your story and spoke about vulnerability at a women event in November in front a rather large cloud which was incredibly and terrifying in equal measure! Maybe I’ll post what I said at some point! 

I’m writing this post in the midst of a global pandemic (I mean you know that because you’re probably reading this in the midst of global pandemic too but I felt I should include it!) The country, and most of the world,has been shutdown because of a Coronavirus knows as Covid 19. It’s frightening, and isolating and terrifying and because of the impacts on our plans incredibly frustrating. We had been due to fly to America for a 3 week holiday over this time including a cruise to the Bahamas via Florida. As I type this I should be in the middle of blue seas and blue skies on a ship but instead it’s grey and cold and it’s a challenge to settle that in my heart. 

For the past 3 or so months I have been living with the need for two things to happen.

  1. this lost holiday – to get a rest, a holiday and an escape! The ship had childcare included which was just going to be so valuable and restorative.Plus the time with my husband and my sister in law and brother in law who are some of our best friends was hopefully going to be life giving 
  2. The one year old starting at the childminder. She had been due to start going two mornings a week after the Easter holiday and it was going to give much needed head space and rest. 

Unfortunately neither of those things are now happening and so I am processing disappointment but also trying to keep my mental health in check and balanced as much as I can. 

As an overthinking worstcase scenario thinker all I can tell you is that this whole pandemic is like living out one of my many and varied worst case scenarios but with no one to be able to tell me that I am being ridiculous which is tough. Interestingly I’ve spent a few weeks so overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions that I haven’t been able to engage with them. But I am slowly finding my thoughts becoming clearer and so that is where this new attempt at blogging springs from.

I hope you’ll enjoy journeying with me as I process random thoughts God places in my mind and also any interesting things I read or listen to.

Much love

Sarah

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What I deserve

Do you ever catch yourself thinking that you deserve something? I don’t mean the things that you actually do deserve like money for a job you’ve worked hard on or recognition for a role that you have played. No I mean catching yourself thinking i deserve X, Y or Z but then realise that there’s no reason you can think of that you deserve it. 

That’s what I caught myself doing earlier today. I was thinking about my birthday. A key piece of information you need for this thinking is that I’ve already made a decision to stick to my calorie tracking on the day, in fact I have gone so far that I have planned exactly WHAT I will eat and when so I don’t have to make any choice. Well when thinking about my birthday I caught this little voice in my head saying but you deserve a treat. I think for the first time EVER I heard this lie and I almost laughed out loud about it. It’s so unbelievably not true that I wonder why I’ve ever believed it before. 

Let’s start by looking at the definition for DESERVE: 

“DESERVE, MERIT, and EARN mean to be worthy of something. DESERVE is used when a person should rightly receive something good or bad because of his or her actions or character” Merriam-Webster

“to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.)because of actions, qualities, or situation” Dictionary.com 

Now when I look at those descriptions I that it is very clear that to deserve something you have to have DONE something. You need to have DONE an action to EARN it. So if you take that and look at my thought process about my birthday and a treat I am basically arguing that because I was BORN that means I should have a treat…. Now as a mum I think I find this statement more funny because I know full well that the person that deserve the treat for me being born is not me… my mum earned that treat! 

So I think it’s pretty easy to write off this idea that just because I was born I should be allowed to have a treat. But the thought process didn’t stop there, oh no.

What do I deserve? Not just my stomach and my cravings but the whole entire complete me? Mind, body and soul, what do I really DESERVE?

And in response there’s a clear shout. 

I DESERVE TO BE A HEALTHY WEIGHT. 

I DESERVE TO REACH MY TARGET

I DESERVE TO SUCCEED

I DESERVE TO NOT MAKE THIS JOURNEY LONGER

I DESERVE TO SHOW MYSELF I AM WORTH MORE THAN A SIMPLE TREAT

I DESERVE COMMITMENT

I mean if anyone reading this asked me to help support them lose weight and they turned to me and said it’s my birthday I deserve a treat, I sure as heck wouldn’t just say ‘Sure you do, go eat a weeks worth of calories in one day’. Not a chance. I’d be asking them why. I’d be reminding them of what they are aiming for. I’d be asking them if they really wanted to gain a pound or two or three which they will then have to lose again? I’d be reminding them of how much eating isn’t the answer to having a good time or making something fun. So if I wouldn’t let a friend go wild on their birthday without asking them questions and challenging them why on earth am I allowing myself to do it. 

(You may want to consider if you really would want my help cos if you’ve asked I sure as heck am not going to let you just cheat… not even on your birthday!!) 

So that’s the aim. The aim is to remember that I DESERVE more than a treat. I deserve to be healthy and investment in myself on EVERY day of the year. That’s why my meals are planned. Thats what I will remind myself in the morning. I AM WORTH MORE. And so are you.

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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.