Day 11

So far, so good. 

I weigh 194.  That is the least, best I remember, I've weighed in 15+ years.  When I got pregnant with second baby, first son, I believe I was 189 lbs.  So in 5 lbs I'll be at my lowest in nearly 17 years.  From then, I don't really know.  We didn't have a scale for a while.  Bad idea.

I have to say, when we got married, I wasn't much of a cook, but we were great at eating.  We would go through a whole thing of frozen Salisbury steaks (6 portions) with mashed potatoes, eating the gravy, with a can of greenie beanies to make us feel less guilty.  Our special Saturday breakfast was scrambled eggs, pigs in a blanket (probably 5 each) and a whole pack of cinnamon rolls (4 each).  We plumped up pretty quickly.

And I ate as if I were incapable of getting full and somehow immune to calories.  My favorite type of suicide was a box of Little Debbie zebra cakes.  There were 10 in a box, and I would eat most if not all of them, guzzling half a gallon of milk (skim, of course) to wash them down.

In those days, I didn't have a real job.  Okay, I've never had a real job.  But I was teaching piano lessons and substitute teaching and playing secretary for a small pest control company and volunteering for the March For Jesus, while my beloved husband was working 70 hour weeks as a consultant.  I was lonely.  I filled my time with pretending to be a teenager working with the youth group, taking up too much time at the houses where I taught lessons (and other houses where I didn't have any real reason to be there), and, well, eating. 

I made an effort from time to time to slim down or exercise or be more disciplined.  Usually I started feeling like I was in a healthy place about an hour before I got pregnant again. 

So here I am (and I let this one sit for a while, so today is actually day 20, and I've gained, not lost weight), still at the brink of being healthier and thinner and stronger than I've been for a long time, but also at the brink of going back to the way I've been for a long time.  Funny thing about brinks - they go both ways. 

I am struggling with my addiction, struggling with exhaustion, struggling with the desire to grow and change and conquer, and with the desire to just give up.  But I can't, because I've come too far. 

It doesn't feel like I've come very far.  I feel fat.  I feel ugly.  I feel like I just had a baby and am not sleeping and want to eat the world.  I feel like a failure, not a success, even though I've just succeeded.  I'm over the elation of being smaller than I have been, and just in the trenches of still being bigger than anybody wants to be.

Jesus, I need Your help.  I cannot walk near to You unless You hold me close.  And I cannot walk in self-control unless You grow it in me.  I am only a failure unless You shine and live in and through me.  Please draw me near.  Help me each day to turn to You, to stay close to You, to hear these words of Yours and obey.  Thank You for loving me no matter what.  Thank You for not rejecting me or accepting me based on my performance.  Thank You for seeing me as Your bride, for calling me beautiful, for seeing the end from the beginning.