MURDER OR SUICIDE? THE CHOICE IS CLEAR. ~ IF I DON'T KILL MY "SELF" I WILL KILL MYSELF!

If I don't die to myself, I will commit suicide by food.

256 Days Between...

February 16, 2010
and
October 30, 2010

256 Days

= 6144 Hours
= 368640 Minutes
= 22118400 Seconds

Weight management is, well…crappy some days. 
I restarted getting healthy on Feb. 16^th this year.  The road traveled thus far has had its weary days and super wonderful days.  When I’m in the “mullygrubs” it’s easy to focus only on the downside of things.

Sometimes I just want to quit.

Been there, done that and I have the 6XL t-shirt to prove it!  

So sometimes I feel cornered between two options and I don’t like my choices.

Choice one: Die to myself and give up my selfish life.  Jesus had something to say about that to those who would follow him –

²² “The Son of Man^[a] must suffer many terrible things,” he said. “He will be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He will be killed, but on the third day he will be raised from the dead.”

 ²³ Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross daily, and follow me. ²⁴ If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.                                             

Luke 9:22-24 (New Living Translation)

Footnotes:

1. Luke 9:22 “Son of Man” is a title Jesus used for himself.

There is a spiritual element for me to managing my weight.  One of the “crosses” I bear is learning how to eat healthily and in a way that keeps my weight under control. 

This is counter-productive to my selfish self.  My selfish self is clamoring to ignore weight management sanity…”Eat what you want now, take up your cross later!”

This week I’ve been eating very healthy foods in very un-healthy quantities.  I’ve been continuing to eat well past the feeling of full…to the point of painful discomfort in my stomach.  My stomach doesn’t care that it is full of fruits and vegetables, being overfull still hurts.  It means I’m making my stomach stretch beyond what has been “normal” for me.  Beyond what I need to maintain my weight, much less lose any.

I don’t mean to whine or have a pity party. 

I am frustrated.   

My “cross” is nothing to the one Jesus bore for me.  Besides the physical agony he endured on the cross he took on himself the pain and judgment for every one of my sins (and everyone else’s too!)  My pitiful complaints are nothing compared to what He endured for us!

 I am really eternally thankful to God for this gift of life I’ve been given!

The struggle is good stewardship of my life that God has entrusted to me to live.  Being overweight is not God’s best plan for my body and it limits how God can use me to help others. 

Here’s a thought – Losing weight and keeping it off is merely a means to an end.  That is to say that having a healthy body (along with right thinking and a godly mindset) leads to real living and being available to become God’s “hands and feet” to the world around me.

I’m nothing special on my own.  To the degree I allow God in my life, He can use me as a tool for His purposes if I let Him.

I’m a “tool” alright!

A tool just lying on the bench getting fatter by the moment is not useful to the One who would use it.  A tool is nothing unless it is placed in a skilled hand and used for the purpose for which it was intended.

God can use anyone fat or thin, or any other descriptive you can come up with.  God will never be limited, but I can limit my usefulness to him by being unhealthy…especially by my own hand.

The question is will I submit to this “cross” of weight management sanity?  Will I “murder” the selfish me that only wants to eat what I want, when I want and have as much of it as I want? 

By the way, why do I want all this extra food when it makes me so unhappy, unhealthy and un-thin?  Therein lays the rub!  Answer that question and I’ll be on the path to wellness.

Food probably isn’t so much the issue.

  
It’s not so much what I’m eating as what is eating me!

  
 Food is the symptom of a much deeper and subtle enemy.   

However it would be a hell of a lot easier to just focus on the food if it could keep me from getting below the surface to look at the real demons looking back at me in the mirror.

Probably weight management will be more “manageable” if I can get help in dealing with the spiritual and emotional elements that have my knickers in such a twist.

Or, 

Choice two:  I can follow after my own selfish and sinful desires to commit slow suicide…one forkful at a time.

How can I not choose life and right living?  

 God please help!

And He will…stay tuned! 

‎"One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14