What is the Cost

What is the Cost?                            

This week I am not thinking about just my weight loss journey. I am thinking about life in general. Many of my thoughts were in my head before going to church this morning. Many of them were expanded because of the worship time and then the message. It still amazes me how I can be thinking about something and Dave's message will expand my thoughts to greater depths. God truly uses him to speak to me where I am at the time. I think that is called divinely inspired.

 

I think about how my weight issues must be balanced with every other aspect of my life; my friendships, my thoughts, my desires, my actions, my need for happiness, my need for the even keel. My weight issues are a part of me, but just a part. There is a balance to everything in life. Even the earth is balanced in order to remain afloat. I think about the "what if's", the "how about's", and the "it is not…, but…"

 

Do I hear what it really is or do I hear what I "need" it to be? Am I ready for the answer and for what it will really take? Will it depend on how comfortable it will be to pay the cost? Am I willing to turn from the familiar to gain the benefit, the health, the happiness, the joy? Am I willing to walk through the process and keep up the steps, even though they can be tiring and the feeling of the challenge can be scary? Sometimes it is easier to feel horrible than it is to deny the familiar.

 

I think of coping skills and how the familiar can be so comforting compared to changing, even knowing the changing will bring bigger benefits in the long run. This week I struggled with eating some things even knowing they would make me feel horrible. Even though I knew the outcome would be uncomfortable (physically as well as emotionally) I still chose to side with the familiar instead of work the challenging.

 

Something Dave said today made me think "what is unavoidable pushes us to become knowledgeable to sustain ourselves, not necessarily for the value of the unavoidable". It is unavoidable that I will want to eat things I shouldn't, because I enjoy the taste. Even though often the taste isn't as good as I remember it being. It is through the knowledge of the outcome that I must base my decisions for my actions, not on the feelings of the moment. I must remember at the moment what those actions have shown me to happen in the past. Therefore my decisions are activated. I don't know if this makes sense. I sure seem to be able to over-look the inevitable misery for the instant gratification. There lies the need for balance.

 

Jesus said "Seek ye 1^st the Kingdom of God". Why is it I try to balance out everything? Why can't I remember in my moment of "weakness", that all the strength I need, is in whom I should seek 1^st? Why is the need for balance, how I justify not seeking God first? Why do I think I have to do it all on my own before I reach out to Him? Is it because the familiar is more comfortable than that which feels unnatural—seeking help 1^st? God must be everything to me, not just one of the things that mean something to me. If God means everything to me, then everything will fall into place.

 

Where is my safety net? Where do I place God? What is the cost?

 

God can free us from our past; from our familiar, to His healing. He is the safety net.

 

 

"Moments of joy will pass, but so will my pains and sorrows.

I will try to live with them, learn their lessons and let them go."

~Lori Erickson~