A rough "journal" entry

First bit of news. I am in a happy place (physically). I am HOME in GR for a few days! So refreshing..now if all my people would come home from work, so I can see them all will be perfect!

Second thing: This blog is first and foremost for me. It is my version of a journal. I can’t seem to stay committed to writing in a journal for more than a week, but I can here…don’t know what that is all about but it just means that at times you are gonna get something that is a bit raw and unpolished and I refuse to edit it to make it nice! (this was added post writing!)

Now on to the rest of this blog entry.

I tend to be a head person. I figure things out in my head first and by the time it comes out of my mouth (or fingertips) it is very well packaged with the struggle and the answer to the struggle. Part of this is a “look good and put together” mentality, part is just who I am, and part is a way to talk my way through something and maybe if I have the right answer, the right behavior will follow. Regardless of the motivation for it though, this does not serve me well, not emotionally anyway. (By the way, this happens so fast, I don’t even realize I am doing it, and is often subconscious. I can’t stop it from happening, but I can add to it!)

For years, I had been what I call emotionally bankrupt. I would feel the extreme emotions (about once a month 🙂 or happiness, but the everyday little disappointments or sadness or anger just was not there for me. I wasn’t depressed, I was just “good” or “fine”. IN the past 2 years I sought counseling on this and came to know that my emotional health and my ability to feel my emotions ties DIRECTLY to my weight loss. When I am fully connected and present in what is real for me I am better able to manage my eating and even my exercise. This whole emotional connectedness really took off in my last 6 months in GR. I was experiencing emotions all the time! I felt a little crazy at times! Crying one minute but full of true laughter and joy the next! Emotions were not all consuming as I once thought…they just were. IT was a good thing.

The other day, I was talking to Coach about an email I sent him re: some hard conversations I had with mom about my weight loss journey and the hurtful things she says and does at times. I reported the facts, relayed the conversations and ended the email. While the conversations were uncomfortable, I was fine! I was good! The next day while chatting Coach asked me. “So how ya holding up?”

I wanted to say that I was good or fine, except that suddenly my eyeballs were filled with a salty water like substance and I could no longer see my computer to say anything. I realized I wasn’t sure exactly how I was but fine or good did not fit. Coach pointed out that is my body telling me that my heart was hurting. GO figure! What struck me though was that 1 month back at home and I was already back to numbing out my feelings and living in a state of fine-ness. I wasn’t connected to the emotional reality of those conversations or to how I was really doing in my new home. It took so long to get plugged in to those emotions and one change (although a BIG one) and I am unplugged so quickly!

I don’t want to be FINE! I want to be great! fabulous! I want to experience all the emotions again. I want to be able to write what is really going on for me and not the packaged stuff that has been of late. Not that what I have written has been untrue…it just hasn’t been fully true, because I didn’t realize what was going on.

I was and am still trying to adjust. Figure out my routine. And in a way who I am as a 32 yr old woman living in her mother’s house? Am I adult or child? (feels like child at times) It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know what I should be doing. And I am great at self talk. You know the stuff that sounds like “I can do this!” “I am doing this!” “This time is different!”

While these statements are true, the other truth is this. I am terrified and feel very alone in this in my new place. I keep thinking, if I can just make it to 75 lbs then I will have lost more than ever at one time and maybe, just maybe, then something will stick and I will be able to keep going.

Coach asked me how all of this (the conversations and the fact that I realized I wasn’t feeling things again) were impacting my food/exercise. I wish I could easily say that it wasn’t…at least not yet. But if I look at it really, sure I have still been counting my calories and if anything have been under eating, but the quality of what I have been eating has not been so good. Eating for comfort again has most likely been happening because all my old comfort foods are around and readily available, this time I just count them. But that doesn’t allow me to feel whatever is going on. And this journey is NOT just about being physically healthy. It is also about being emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy. If I am really honest, if I had to choose between physical or emotional health. I will take teh emotional health anyday. I would rather feel everything and be fat than feel nothing and be thin.

It has certainly affected my motivation to fight to get to the gym when I just don’t want to. In GR, it just wasn’t an option to not go. Granted many times, I could call or text someone to coordinate a time to go together, but there were plenty of times that I had to choose to go myself and then to stay there the entire time, actually working!

So here is the recap of my crazy off the cuff journal entry above….My heart hurts. Everything else is self talk.

Who Am I?

When I feel like giving up. When I feel like I cannot do another thing. When I feel like I don’t have what it takes. When I feel like my world is spinning out of control and all that I know to be true is being shaken to the core. When I feel like my faith has been devastated and I cannot trust anything. I remember. I remember the times I have been clear God has spoken to me. I remember the feeling of complete security I had in His words. Today is such a day and I am working hard at remembering. Here is my story of who God says I am.

I was participating in an exercise. But it didn’t feel like an exercise. In my mind’s eye I had travelled a long way, through a lot of junk to get to God. And yet He seemed to be asking for more. I had a stone in my hand. Really it was more than a stone. It was a pure white stone, but it had all these amazing colors bursting out of its core. You might imagine an opal, but it was far more beautiful than any Opal I had ever seen. The colors were filled with life and beauty and the white part was the whitest of whites. I was told that the stone represented me and could I imagine giving over this stone to Him. Would I? I couldn’t imagine this. I felt fear grip my heart at the thought. What if it got lost? or broken? or if it didn’t matter to Him?

I remember holding tight to that stone and questioning myself. What is the big deal? It is God! Of course he will treasure this stone, especially if it represents me, right? Then I was weeping. This was no longer just an exercise. I really felt like I couldn’t fully trust God with all of me and that broke my heart. How could I not trust Him? He has been so faithful all these years. He had never done anything to cause distrust. I began to cry out how hard this was for me. About how I didn’t understand my hesitation or my fear, but it was there. It seemed like forever that I wrestled with this. Trembling, I reached up and released this stone to Him and in so doing told Him despite my feelings, I choose to trust Him. At that point I had never felt more vulnerable, more raw, more undone.

Immediately, I heard a voice. I would swear it was audible and I actually looked back to see if someone was speaking to me in the room. This voice said, “I have loved you with an everlasting love. And I have called you by name!” I wept. I knew God was speaking into my fears. Letting me know he had my heart in His hands and that He would be tender. His kindness undid me even more. I didn’t think that was possible. I wondered out loud and for the first time I called Him Father. “Father, I have been named Kim, but what do you call me?” I had heard that God has a name for each of us, but figured I would not know mine until Heaven. But in this moment of honesty, tenderness, and what seemed to be open communication, I asked.

Again, immediately, I heard this response. “I call you enough.” So matter of fact. Without hesitation. As if there was nothing to think about. He knew who I was.

It was enough. I didn’t know one could cry so hard. I didn’t know I had ever questioned my being enough. But those words hit me like a ton of bricks…and I knew it was true. No matter what…I am enough for Him.

Later, as I processed this experience and prayed more about it I felt like God said this to me. “Kim, if you never change another thing about you, you are and always have been and always will be Enough”.

I need to remember this story today. I need to remember His tenderness and kindness.