Three Weeks Later

That first glass of red wine was amazing. I almost couldn't drink it, couldn't get it past my lips because I had denied myself for so long.

But when I did take that first sip, oh my. I truly enjoyed it. I savored the experience, sitting with my daughter and husband, the Christmas tree all lit up, the room warm and cozy. I tried to put into words what this year has been like or what it meant, but really mostly I just sat there and said "Wow". 

I can't believe I did it. 

Since then, the experience of drinking has been uneventful. It has also been mildly not-as-enjoyable as I would have thought. 

The first Manhattan?  Just okay.

The first gin martini? Eh. 

After all this time I thought that they would be extra good. Could my memory of what alcohol tastes like be that unreliable? Or did my tastes change during the YONA?

In an effort to find the taste that I remember I almost slipped right back into nightly drinking, as if my year long abstinence was a dream that I awoke from, shook off, and quickly forgot.

But I'm saying no to that. It's not what I want.

I've decided that alcohol is now just a drink of choice on occasion. I want those occasions to be more like that delicious first sip of red wine on December 6th, and not at all like the every night glasses of nondescript wine that happened the year before the YONA. The rules that I wrote about before won't be needed because I trust myself to make the right choices.

I'm glad I had a Year of No Alcohol. 

I am also glad that it's over.

I Thought I Would Write More

Funny how that's the thing I've been thinking for the past 24 hours. I thought I would write more. 

I thought that having this blog to chronicle the ups and downs - and honestly I was anticipating more downs than ups - would encourage me to write more. I started with the expectation that I would post twice a week. Then I said I would post at least once a week. This last month I haven't written anything. 

Part of that is due to a family situation that has taken up a lot of my attention. I felt like I couldn't write about it, and writing about anything else didn't seem natural. But that's really just the end of the line. All through the year I didn't write as often as I thought I would.

A year has passed. What do I have to show for it? Some insight. Some appreciation for my own fortitude. Some gratitude for the support of those around me. 

I could have written a book. I could have learned a language. I could have practiced and been able to do a pull up or ten. 

Why this? Why no alcohol? 

I still don't know. 

Suddenly I'm okay with that. A friend told me recently that I have a tendency to make things my fault. I can turn most anything into being about my shortcomings. I'm not going to do that with the YONA. Sure I didn't do anything else, but I did this. 

I made a promise to myself and I kept it. 

A hundred times, a thousand times, I could have had a drink and no one would have been the wiser. I could have cheated but I didn't. That's really important to me. I've said in the past that I don't trust myself, but now I know that I can.

That will be helpful in the coming months as I navigate learning how to drink again. I don't want to go back to how I was drinking before. I won't make it a nightly ritual for "stress relief" or for rewarding myself for a difficult day. I can make a plan about when and how much I will drink, and I know that I can trust myself to do just that.

I did it. A Year of No Alcohol. 

Go me.

After the YONA, Part Two

I asked my husband the other night if this YONA had been hard for him. He said not really but I couldn't leave it there. I asked if he thought our relationship had been strained this year because we weren't going on as many dates, or hanging out at wineries, or going to a bar occasionally to unwind after a long week.

He responded by listing all of the things that have been adding stress to our relationship this year. He then said that none of them are going to go away when I start drinking, and he asked me if I really thought that me drinking again was going to "fix" anything. 

Well, no. Not exactly. Okay, maybe I did kind of think that.

I've been focused on the alcohol related things that we haven't done this year. I've been thinking that once we can "hang out" again, once we can share a bottle of wine or a drink or two that we will connect again. That's kinda sad, that I think the only thing or maybe just the main thing that is connecting us is alcohol. 

The fact is that we haven't spent much together this year because he has been working long and different hours getting a new business off the ground. We haven't worked out together because I've been dealing with foot and hip problems. We haven't gone on vacation or short getaways because we've used our time off to go see my dad who lives about three hours away. We haven't done much of anything at all because money is really tight. 

Me not drinking has been the least of our problems.

I am glad I haven't been drinking this year because it might have become the worst of our problems. I am glad to know that I can survive really tough times without turning to wine. I am definitely going to take that knowledge into this next year, which holds no promises of easier work schedules or better health or vacations or  more money.

After the YONA

I've been thinking about what is life going to look like after my YONA.

I don't want to go back to nightly drinking so I've been checking in with myself just about every night and asking "Would I drink now if I weren't doing the YONA?" Mostly the answer is yes. I wonder if that is because I haven't been drinking, so every time I think of drinking I think "yes". 

I'm concerned. I wonder if I have "it", whatever it is that makes conscious alcohol choices a normal and natural thing. Whatever "it" is that doesn't make one automatically say yes.

I've looked at other choices that I make. I almost always say yes to homemade cookies, but I can say no to them when they are store bought. I can say no to candy. There are two bags of Halloween candy sitting in the office and I am not tempted at all. I can say no to most bread, no to pizza, no to many other things that are okay in moderation. 

Can I say no to wine? Can I come home after a long day at work and say, and mean it, that I choose not to drink wine even though it is right there?

I'm not sure.

So here is Plan A. After the initial celebration weekend I am only going to drink on Fridays or when we go out to eat. I will not drink on a night before I work, which includes working on Sunday morning at church with the Children's Ministry. 

I admit, a part of me is sad that I have decided only to drink on one night of the week and is afraid that I won't stick with it. However, if I can go for an entire year without drinking I can certainly go six days in a row. On the other hand, once the YONA is over will I have the incentive to keep my promise to myself? 

That's part of what this is all about. (There are so many things, aren't there?) I want to know that I can trust myself. I want to stop making promises and breaking them when the going gets tough. 

I think that learning moderation is going to be more difficult than practicing abstinence.

Bourbon

I've been wanting bourbon today. 

It hasn't overtaken red wine as my first choice of first drink, but it has definitely been on my mind. It's the smell of it, the first sharp taste of it, the smooth sliding down the throat of it. 

As I get closer to the end of the YONA it has been increasingly more challenging to keep the "want" at bay. It was easier when I had months and months to go - the end was so far away that thinking about it wasn't productive at all. Now that I am closing in on two months to go I have allowed myself the luxury - and by luxury apparently I mean torture - of thinking about drinking again. 

I won't quit. I won't get this close and then ditch it for the momentary satisfaction of a glass of something. 

But I won't lie either. I am really looking forward to that first drink.

71 Days (Not that I'm counting)

I just spent some time re-reading this blog. I've been all over the map, haven't I? I was glad to be reminded of some of the strokes of insight I had, in particular this one:

"I need to let go of the things in my life that are holding me back in order to make room for the things that God wants to put there."

No doubt some of the things that are holding me back are my beliefs, one of which I crushed this week in another moment of insight. I have been believing that this whole Christianity "God thing" was a phase. I have been waiting for myself to drop it, the way that I've dropped dozens of programs and grand plans before it. They say that it takes three weeks to make a habit but for me it has taken almost a year. 

You know, I've stuck with the YONA even during the really hard times. I've stuck with it in times of celebration and boredom and anger and pain. Just go with me on this one, but that is what I need to do with God as well. I need to stick with him even when I don't see the point or the purpose, even when all I want to do is the spiritual version of ditching the YONA and grabbing a glass of wine. I'm not sure what that would be, but it seemed like a good analogy when I started that sentence.

Anyway.

I needed this year to prove to myself that I have staying power with something that makes no rational sense at all. 

God and the YONA

A faithful reader asked me to explain how God relates to the YONA.

The short answer is that there is no relation. But since I couldn't spend a year writing about how I wasn't drinking I had to write about something and God is what has been on my mind this year.

The long answer is more complicated and it begins with me deciding to believe that God exists and that he loves me. (I don't believe that God has a gender but am using he because using she bugs me) From there I asked myself "What would it be like to live as if God existed? What would it be like to live as if the Bible were true?"

I was raised a Catholic, but not a very well educated one. The fourth of five children, I was left out of the religious education that my older siblings got when my parents decided they couldn't afford four children in private school. I went to "CCD" (Sunday School not on Sunday) off and on, but since I couldn't even tell you what CC or D stands for it didn't have a huge impact on me.

Catholic God was scary. Church was boring and sometimes scary. I walked away from the Catholic Church when I was in college, went back for a visit to get my daughter baptized, and never returned.  God was awkward to talk about and if I were to be honest I was kinda mad at him for some stuff that happened when I was a child.

My daughter, who never went to church as a child, has had a solid belief in God for as long as I can remember. What I don't remember is talking to her about God, so I have always considered that a sign that he exists. I wasn't going to be on speaking terms with him, but I was glad that he was a presence in my daughter's life.

Years passed and I got a yearning to go to church. I didn't want to go to a Catholic church, so we went to a non-denominational Christian church. It was there that I slowly began to accept that God wasn't such a bad guy. He didn't just want to punish me for doing wrong things. I couldn't quite call him God yet - when I spoke of such things I always said The Spiritual. I was connecting with The Spiritual. 

More years passed, some of them non-church going ones, and I once again wanted to connect. We found another non-denominational church, and it was there that I slowly began to accept that God loves me. He wants to have a relationship with me. He has been calling to me all these years, waiting for me to turn in his direction. 

There's a song lyric that I love which describes what I think about that time. 

Be Still, I'll never leave you

When you're far, I am near

"Don't Give Up On Me"

MercyMe

No matter how far away I was, God was always right there with me, waiting for me to turn to him.  And believe me, I was pretty far away many times.

So all of that lead up to my question to myself last fall, right before I started the YONA. What would it be like to live as if Christianity were true? I stopped asking questions (I can hear the shrieks of the atheists from here) and decided to just trust and believe. 

I don't think that anyone has ever convinced anyone that God exists. I go on faith. I have decided to live like a believer. So that is why there are posts on here about God and my search for him in my life. I believe you have to be looking in order to see his presence, and while I am in the beginning stages of life as a Christian I have seen him and felt him often enough for my belief to be justified. 

God didn't tell me to give up alcohol, although he did have a hand in telling me what day to start. When December 6th hits - in 94 days - I know he's not going to mind me going to back to drinking. While connecting with him I've learned something about moderation, and that's a good thing.      

Be Less

So I was reading a book a couple weeks ago and the author suggested that sometimes we should ask God what to pray about. I thought it sounded like a good idea so that night I asked God "What should I ..." and before I could even get the question completely formed in my mind the answer came. 

Be less.

It's like he had been waiting for me to ask.

Now, be more, I get. I am always looking for ways to be more healthy, more helpful, more friendly, more consistent, more fun. But less? What do I need to be less of?

There were some immediate answers. Be less self critical. Be less demanding. Be less impatient. While those are all things I need to work on, I didn't think that was the direction God was leading me. Those are all really just a different way to say be more. Be more self accepting. Be more flexible. Be more patient.

In the following weeks I mulled this over. I said little prayers asking for more information, but God kept quiet. Obviously this was an assignment for me to figure out. 

Be less.

I've noticed that while thinking about this I am at peace. It flies in the face of the "not good enough" thoughts that took over my brain long ago. It takes away the striving, all of the "I should"s and the "I ought to"s. 

I've also been contemplating why I'm here and what I'm supposed to be doing. I read a lot of empowering words, people telling other people that there is a grand purpose for our lives and we should risk all to achieve those things. There is only going to be one me in the world ever and I have an important part to play. I need to get at it!

Talk about stressful. This is the ultimate Be More.

So while I still can't put into words what I think Be Less means I sense it has something to do with not trying so hard. I am no longer focused on the big "why am I here and what should I be doing?" question and more focused on today, right here, right now. 

Be less.

I am looking at the trees and not the forest, and certainly not the path through the forest while trying to figure out where it ends and what I should be building as I travel along it.

I think Be Less is just another way for God to wrap his arms around me and say "Hush".

Eight Months Down Four To Go

About ten days late with this post, but I just passed the two thirds mark for the YONA. 

I no longer am afraid that when I start drinking again I will fall back into the same old patterns. This past week was challenging and not once did I wish I could drink the pain away. Not once did I try to eat the pain away either. It was just abundantly clear to me that neither one of those options would make me feel better. 

I reached for God to help me through the tough times. Unfortunately, if he was there I didn't feel his presence. So I sat and felt the pain, and then I cried and I felt the pain some more. And when I thought I was done with it, and I was all on board, opening my heart again with a promise to God that I wouldn't hide, I was blindsided by a pain, a heartache, that left me reeling. 

Here's my heart, I said to God. I won't wall it off. I won't hide it to keep it from being hurt. I will keep opening up and trusting. And then I got slammed.

What do I make of this? What kind of answer is that to give me? 

This is faith, or at least it is my faith as it currently stands. I still trust God. I don't know why the heartaches happen, and I don't know why I was knocked down just as I was standing up again. What I do know is that even though I didn't feel him this weekend, God was with me. 

Always in Pain

At one of my recent chiropractor visits I found myself telling the doctor that I am always in pain. While that is true enough - and irritating enough - on a physical level, I've begun to wonder if that is also true on a psychological level as well.

I had a couple of conversations this week that brought this to mind. 

The first conversation was with a co-worker who also lives in my neighborhood. I don't see him very often so we were discussing this and that, and thinking about it afterwards it began to dawn on me that everything I said was negative. 

"Did you hear about the neighbor who was arrested during that big drug bust?"

"Let me tell you about this horrible woman I heard yelling at kids at the pool last week."

"Don't you hate it when people let their yards go? Those weeds make the whole neighborhood look bad."

Why didn't I talk about how peaceful it is on my patio? Where were the words about the cardinals and the hummingbirds? Why didn't I think to bring up how nice the new playground equipment is?

The second conversation was with a friend who is also reading the book I've mentioned here a couple of times, Made to Crave. For 45 minutes I whined about how hard it is, how much I'm struggling, and what isn't going right. She also asked about my husband's new business, and all I could do was complain about not having a steady paycheck and not liking him being gone so many nights.

Just as easily I could have talked about the better food choices I am making. I could have said that there have been times when I have been balanced, when I haven't turned to food but turned to God instead. Certainly I am grateful for any amount of success in my husband's business and for the good reviews he is getting. I could have been more optimistic about the business' future, or more appreciative of the hard work he is putting in for our family.

Ask me how I am, and I will usually say fine. Listen to me talk and mostly what you'll hear is what is going wrong.

Am I truly always in pain?

Recognizing this is one thing. Changing it is something entirely different.

The Voice of Truth

Out of all the voices calling out to me

I will choose to listen and believe

the voice of truth 

~ written by John Mark Hall

sung by Casting Crowns

 

This week I had a wake up call. A long time friend decided she needed to take a few steps back from our friendship - be friends from afar - because she can no longer tolerate the denial she sees in me. She doesn't want to point it out, doesn't believe it is her place to point it out, but at this point needs to be a friend who loves me from afar.

On the one hand, maybe I am in so much denial that I simply can't see it. Despite all of the introspection and work that I do on myself maybe I am just spinning my wheels from one thing to another in order not to focus on the thing - whatever that is - about which I am in denial. It is certainly not the first time I have heard this theory. My trainer also believes I am hiding from something. 

Are these two both the voice of truth?

On the other hand, I have worked so hard on myself for so long that maybe the wake up call is really that I need to get over myself. The idea that I am someone that someone else has to stay away from is ridiculous. Absurd. And yet I treat myself that way, don't I? I treat myself as if I am a mass of broken parts that need to be fixed, that at the same time are too broken to ever be fixed. Possibly I have been loving myself from afar for a long time and it is time to stop the madness that is Project Ginny. Maybe there is no deeply buried anything that needs to be faced.

Is this the voice of truth?

Surely you see my dilemma.  This reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  After being poisoned by a demon Buffy comes to believe that she has been in a mental institution, and that her life as a slayer has all been a hallucination. She sees her parents still happily married, not divorced, and she begins to prefer this new non-slayer life. Buffy keeps falling back into her slayer "hallucination", and eventually decides that the slayer life is her true life. It was heartbreaking watching her say goodbye to her dream mother, but she had to decide which road to take, which life to live.

And so, which road do I take? Do I take the one that tells me that I am in denial, hiding from something that has been plaguing me, pursuing me, for most of my life? Or do I take the one that says I am fine? Which is the voice of truth?

Maybe what I'm in denial about is that I am fine, and that I always have been and always will be. That seems the easy road, doesn't it? But is that me choosing to stay in the happy parents-are-still-married-and-demons-are-not-real world?

When am I awake and when am I asleep?

I woke up in the middle of the night last week with a single clear thought in my head.

"I need to let go of the things in my life that are holding me back in order to make room for the things that God wants to put there."

There was no background chatter, no sensation of waking up and remembering. It was simply coming to a complete and sudden wakefulness with this sentence in my mind, over and over, as if asleep me wanted to make sure awake me knew it was important. Above all thoughts of addictions to food or alcohol, more than any ideas about shortcomings or weaknesses, I have lived my life holding on to the belief that I am too broken to be fixed.

The voice of truth tells me this is a lie. 

All of the other voices, the ones in my head and the ones from my friends, are lying to me. There is a strong pull to believe them instead, but that road has led me no where. No, that's not entirely true. That road has led me here, right here, to where I am, believing that I must no longer love myself from afar.

ready to be done

I am more than ready for this to be over. 

I am not dying for a drink nor am I tempted to drink. I just want to be done with this because it is like this "thing" hanging over my head.

It's a burden. It's annoying. 

It is a simple decision that I made seven months ago that once was interesting but now is boring.

I haven't learned anything except that I can say no to alcohol.

And truth be told, I'm a little irritated that I am not going to give this up.

Why is that? Why can't I just say "I don't want to do this anymore"?

Am I afraid of what it might say about me? Am I worried that I will end up regretting that first drink because I didn't stick this out to the end?

What is that all about? 

I used to think that it was a good thing to stick with my commitments. But when commitments no longer make sense is it still a good thing?

I know I can walk right in to the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and pour myself a glass of wine. No one - except my daughter - will be disappointed. That's not a guess; she told me so just now when I asked her. My husband would probably be immensely relieved and completely supportive. Others may or may not congratulate me for making it this far. Most others won't care one way or the other.

Maybe my irritation is about having to wait. I wonder when was the last time that I had to wait so long for something. 

And it's not like there is going to be any big payoff at the end of this either.

I'm not counting days until a big vacation.

I'm not awaiting the arrival of a baby.

I'm not looking forward to retirement or the start of a new job or a visit from a good friend.

All I'm doing is passing time waiting until I can have a glass of wine again. What a waste of the passage of time.

There are 148 days until the end of this project. What else can I do in 148 days? Maybe if I have something tangible to show for this I can make it through the next five months without making myself crazy.

And there it is. The thing that has been lurking around the edges of my mind for awhile now.

What would it be like to read the Bible?

After doing some careful research with chapters and verses and numbers of each, I have decided that a reasonable goal is to read the 150 chapters of Psalms during these last five months of my YONA.  I was going to go for the entire New Testament, but the numbers weren't coming out as neatly as they do with Psalms. I'll start out reading the first three today, and then do one a day for the next 147 days.

Well. So now there's that.

A Difficult Week

On the plus side, I didn't turn to alcohol when everything crashed down on me this week. And by everything I mean the weight of the words that run through my head when I am believing the voices that don't come from God.

How do I know these words didn't come from God? To begin with, I wasn't in the hot tub. If you're new to my blog you can read about my God in The Hot Tub conversations here, here, and here. Also, they were soul sucking words, words of discouragement and defeat, words of failure and fault. God doesn't speak that way. 

I know that.

But sometimes I don't believe that.

In the midst of the lies I believe that I am broken in such a way that I will never "get it", whatever the "it" is that makes grilled chicken and brown rice equal weight loss. I have been on a diet of basically that - lean protein and either brown rice or a sweet potato, or a protein shake and oatmeal - for six weeks. In the first week I lost 4 pounds. Since then I have bounced up and down the same two pounds over and over again. Admittedly, I have added some things on occasion, but those things account for less than 10% of my overall intake, and most of them have been what are generally considered healthy choices - mostly fruit, some bread, but yes, three or four non-alcoholic beers as well. And there was that serving of homemade rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream that I do not regret in the least.

My trainer has a chart on the wall of his studio that shows how many pounds his clients have lost since he opened in March of 2013. I looked at it yesterday and it was almost up to 1000 lbs. One thousand pounds, and not a single one of them is mine. I weigh now what I weighed when I first walked into his studio fifteen months ago. I lost some, then I gained some, then I settled right back where I started.

What is wrong with me? This is the main lie that has been running through my head this week, that there is something wrong with me because I haven't found the tools that will help me get healthy.

I'm also in pain again. The workouts with my trainer have taken their toll and my hip/leg/feet are just about back where they were when I quit the workouts before.

If you were telling me all this, I would say without a doubt that this trainer is not the trainer for you. 

And so I am quitting the workouts with him again. I'm off the Extreme Fat Loss food plan too. Maybe my body doesn't like protein shakes. Maybe it is resisting the lack of vegetables in the summer while they are so abundant. It's for sure my body does not like the workouts that I love so much. 

Nice to see you again Square One.

Halfway Point

A week and a day late with this post, but I passed the halfway point on June 6.

Not drinking is easier than I thought it would be. The anticipation of not drinking at events usually turns out to be worse than the experience of it. It's not such a big deal not to drink; I don't feel weird, and I haven't had but a few moments of feeling left out. 

There is still, however, a longing. A regret, almost, that I made this deal with myself. I am aware of how easily I could change my mind and have a drink. There is  nothing but myself keeping me from doing that. There is nothing but this "what would it be like to?" hanging over my head. I wonder, at times, what this is really all about.

Part of it, I think, is testing to see if I can trust myself to keep a promise to myself. I've been slippery in the past, making and then breaking dozens of promises to be healthier, eat better, drink less, sleep more. 

Six months is more than enough time to realize that I am not going to break this promise this time. Why oh why did I have to go with a whole year? Certainly six months of no drinking is a long enough time. The Half Year of No Alcohol (HYONA?) doesn't have quite the ring to it, but it would have served its purpose.

That's assuming I know what the purpose of this year is. 

Which I don't.

While it is true that I have a closer relationship to God now than I did six months ago, I can't see a solid connection between that and not drinking. It's not like I've prayed to God to help me not drink. It's also not like I've been severely tempted to drink and have turned to God instead.

Maybe it is as simple as this experiment of not drinking has merely been  a means of allowing a relationship to develop between me and God. All throughout the day I find myself turning to him more and more, and I don't know that if I hadn't taken alcohol out of the equation I would have even thought to do that. It is possible that if I had given up anything else - magazines, Spider Solitaire, that blasted 2048 game - and told myself that I would turn to God instead I would have ended up right where I am now. Maybe it was just the choice to make God a part of my life, and the thing that I gave up was meaningless.

I guess I'll never know.

But here I am, halfway through a Year of No Alcohol, wondering what the next six months will bring.

The Habit of Sadness

At work the other day there were donuts in the morning and cake in the afternoon. Old me on a diet would have used the excuse that these were for a celebration - two retirements - and therefore I was allowed to have some. More recent me may have resisted both the donuts and the cake, but it would have been a struggle and I would have been angry. Today's me didn't think twice about having either the donuts or the cake, but today's me was sad.

I couldn't finish the sentence "I feel sad because ..." but I recognized the feeling of sadness. Every thought that I tried to associate with the feeling didn't ring true. I didn't think I was being left out. I didn't think the donuts or cake would have tasted amazing. I didn't think that I would never again have the opportunity to have baked goods.

Undoubtedly I felt sad when I thought about the donuts and cake, but as I worked it over in my mind I slowly came to realize that feeling sad was merely a habit that I had developed.

Event X = Feeling Y

So now what? Good to know, certainly. Should I purposely conjure up the opposite feeling? I could make up new thoughts about how I am honoring myself and choosing good foods for my body, but that feels, at this moment, like so much blah blah blah.

I'm in a funk.

Even though I started this post days ago the funk has stayed with me. I've had a few moments out of it, but I am on a downhill slide. Or maybe I'm looking wistfully back at the mountain of weight behind me and wishing it were still about climbing that darn thing."Time to head north" sounded great, what was it? More than two weeks ago? I'm wandering aimlessly now, no longer hearing the voice of God. Is it time to hit the hot tub again?

More questions than answers. 

Here's how I picture myself. Head down, I'm watching one foot go in front of the other. I stop periodically to open a can of tuna fish and eat it without feeling - no joy or gratitude or awareness of making a "good" choice. I've had more than a couple difficult days where I feel hungry most of the time, and I am currently both hungry and nauseous. In the back of my mind I'm wondering if I'm nauseous because I'm hungry. This doesn't feel right.

This still feels like ignoring my body's hunger signals. It's not right when I ignore them and eat when I'm not hungry, and it isn't right when I ignore them and don't eat when I am hungry.

I've been here and I've done this before. I need to make different decisions but I don't trust myself to know what the right decisions are. 

Or is that just another habit? Not a habit of sadness but a habit of not trusting myself?

I exhaust myself.

In two days it will be the six month mark of my Year of No Alcohol. I miss it. It feels I am depriving myself for no good reason. The results I am seeing are not ones that I would have chosen. Nothing is clearer; I haven't made any huge leaps in my health or my weight. 

Hard, hard, hard. And yet ...

Onward. Ever onward.

A Can of Tuna Fish

This would have been an entirely different post if I had written it yesterday.

Yesterday I was full of hope, riding high on a little bit of weight loss, and a sense of a new beginning. Today, even though I spent the first part of the day in celebration with a group of women at church, today all I feel is hungry. I've been hungry all week.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

About eight days ago I met with my trainer Marcus and agreed to a six week, three time a week workout schedule with him. I also agreed to utilize some nutrition software that he had. The software had a number of different meal plans you could choose, so I thought I would see what some of them were all about before signing up for one. The first one I investigated was "Extreme Fat Loss" - bingo! That sounded perfect. I looked at the meals - basically it was a lean protein and either rice or potato for most meals, with protein shakes as snacks. No way, I thought. I hate protein shakes. Next!

Except there was no next. There was a glitch in the program that kept me from returning to the home screen and selecting another plan. I texted Marcus who told me to just give that one a try.

That's part one.

Part two is the book that I mentioned a few weeks back, Made to Crave. After reading it I felt ready to explore another option, another way of dealing with food. So against all of the voices in my head screaming "NOOOO!" I said "I can do that" and agreed to the food plan for six weeks.

The thing is, I've listened to those screaming voices for all of my life and what have they gotten me? They've gotten me into this struggle, into this fight I have with knowing what to eat and eating what I want. I have relied on my own "power" to force myself to eat things I don't like and to give up things I do like and have hated it almost every step of the way. 

This time - and this is why I haven't written in weeks, because I am afraid of making this next statement - this time I am approaching compliance to the food plan as obedience to God.

I have not been tempted, not once, to eat anything off of the plan. It has not been a struggle, there has been no back and forth in my head about "I want this. I can't have this. It's not fair I can't have this. One bite won't matter. I'm too fat to eat this. If I were a skinny woman I could eat this." There has been no chatter, no voices crying out.

There has, however, been a lot of hunger.

A couple of years ago I asked a woman trainer I know what she eats for a snack and she told me that sometimes she eats a can of plain tuna fish. Later on that day I ranted to a friend of mine that I would never, EVER, eat a can of tuna fish for a snack.

Today I ate a can of plain tuna fish with gratitude.

I was hungry. I've been hungry all week and today it came crashing down on me. I am weak and I am angry that I am hungry. I want to sleep so that I can more quickly pass the hours between when I am allowed to eat again. I am still not tempted to eat something other than what is on the plan. I made deviled eggs and potato salad (with bacon!) and crab cakes to take to my father, and I was not tempted to eat any of it. I am committed to obedience to God but that doesn't make me any less hungry.

Lisa TerKeurst, the author of Made to Crave, quoted a passage in the bible that I have thought of often this week.

You have circled this mountain long enough. Now turn north.
Deuteronomy 2:3 (NAS)

I have thought about my weight loss struggle as a climb up a mountain. Sometimes I ascend, other times I slide back down. During the times when I have been at the top of the scale and the bottom of the mountain I have imagined gazing up at it, wondering "Can I do this again?"

This is not about my weight or my food or alcohol. I have circled that mountain long enough. 

It is time to turn north.

I'll be bringing my cans of tuna fish with me.

Three Times Down

A light bulb went off on Sunday ...

Three times in my adult life I have been at a weight that is considered healthy. (Yes, this is another post about me and weight, but it's also about God so please stick around).

The first time was in 1995 after my mother passed away. It was a difficult year for many reasons and I escaped some of them by throwing myself whole heartedly into NutriSystems and packaged food. I lost my desired weight, felt great, quit, and within a year was back to my original weight. I had learned nothing.

The second time was in 2000. I joined an online weight loss program developed by Laurel Mellin. The basic theory behind her work is that everyone knows that they need to eat less and move more, but we don't do that because of long held faulty beliefs about ourselves and life. We have unreasonable expectations about ourselves and others, and we turn to food for comfort instead of feeling uncomfortable feelings. At the time it was called The Solution, but now it goes by the name of EBT (Emotional Brain Training). It was a messy emotional time for me as I slogged my way through the sludge and faced some pretty tough things. I honestly believe I would not be where I am today were it not for the work I did in that program. I lost weight and felt much better in general, but soon enough life got the better of me and slowly I gained the weight back. I had learned a lot about myself and how to have reasonable expectations but couldn't hold on to it for long.

In 2010 I joined a training studio and met the trainer I've mentioned before. I worked my butt off for two years and lost the weight again, but he pushed some buttons that I would rather he would not push, and I left. I learned some more about food choices and a lot about proper form for weight lifting, but still something was missing. This is also the time that my injury forced me to stop running and within a year I had regained almost all of the weight I had lost.

Three times my weight has been down, and two times it has come back up. 

At first I focused on food, but with the packaged food I learned nothing. Then I learned about how the bad thoughts in my brain affect all of my choices, but I couldn't turn that into lasting change. Then I learned about exercise, but without consistently making good food choices and still sometimes listening to the bad voices in my head, all I was doing was beating myself up.

In the nearly twenty years since I began this project I have learned a lot about diet and exercise. I have read many books about how the brain works and how to change habits that are detrimental to my well being. But on my own I didn't have to power to keep all three things going at once.

God is the power.

I've said many times in the past twenty years that I think I have to do this on my own, but I am not capable of doing this on my own. It never made any sense to me but that's how I felt. Now, however, it does make sense. 

I have to make the healthy choices in my life on my own by relying on God's strength to support me.

How many times have I read it on the back of running shirts at half marathons? 

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13

I am now quoting scripture. Who would have thought? But I get it now. It's not just a slogan on a shirt it is the way to get through things that  you can't do on your own. 

Three times down? The fourth time's a charm.

Random Thoughts

• I often turn to books to help me work through situations. The swirling cyclone that is my brain calms down the moment I pick up a new book. I am interested in what other people have to say about what I'm experiencing, how they have gotten through, and what techniques I can learn from them to help me navigate my life. As I was coming home from the book store last week I thought about this, and wondered if and when I will ever turn to the Bible during times of trouble. It seems so natural for me to go to the words of other people. What would it be like to go to God's word instead? I'm not ready to make that an official "what would it be like?" question and actually see what it would be like, but I feel certain it is on the horizon.

• So far I am keeping my promise to eat whole healthy foods in appropriate amounts and to eat only when I am hungry. This is a simple thing that has never been easy for me. I see my years of studying nutrition and attempting to eat this way as training for this moment. There are no doubts in my mind about what I should eat, and that makes this easier, but by no means easy. I miss chocolate.

• My daughter joined me in April for a month of not drinking alcohol. It was her birthday present to me, a show of solidarity, support, and love. She has successfully navigated two birthday parties, one of which lasted the whole weekend, and a couple of other social gatherings. It doesn't seem to bother her as much as it did me when I started. She says that all she does is think about me doing this for a year, and it doesn't seem like such a big deal to quit for a month. She's wrong about that. It is a big deal and it's nice to have the company. She is also happy not to be spending the money on alcohol when she goes out - definitely a bonus.

• The woman that I modeled my year of no alcohol after finished up her year last December. I asked her what it was like drinking again, and her reply was my biggest fear. Nothing changed. She went back to using alcohol as a de-stressor, and having 2 or 3 glasses of wine most nights. That was accompanied by bad food choices which led right into feeling like crap. Abstinence is easier than moderation. I have eight more months to figure out how to get to a place where I can practice moderation around alcohol. I am not interested in making this a LONA (Life of No Alcohol).

Put It Down

I've made a hundred or more promises to myself and to others to change the way I eat. There is no lack of knowledge on my part as to what that should be, either how much or in what proportions. Time and time again I've said "this is the time" and time and time again I have failed to maintain any dietary changes.

So what makes my commitment to not drinking alcohol different? How is it that I can go from nightly glasses of wine and weekly over indulgence to not a drop in four months?

I promised God I would stop drinking for a year. That's the difference. You can read about that here if you missed it.

Last week I started a book called Made to Crave by Lysa TerKeurst. I could probably highlight the whole book, circling dozens of sentences with notes saying "that's me". It's making me uncomfortable, which is how I know that it is important stuff for me to recognize. 

So yesterday as I sat in the hot tub - you know where this is going, right? - I was thinking about the book and food and alcohol. I "know" that I have to change the way I eat but I am unwilling to do it. I was thinking about this unwillingness, and I realized that in order to fully commit to eating healthy I have to promise God that I will do it. I am resisting that because I know once I commit to God I have no other choice but to comply and that's scary. I've done so much work around my food choices and I've given up alcohol, why isn't that enough? Why do I have to give up chocolate and bread and pasta too?

"Put it down, Ginny. Put it all down."

Words from you-know-who popped into my head.

I pictured myself as a little girl clutching onto the things that she thinks will make her happy. Arms loaded with worthless goods as the riches of heaven await. (I can't believe I just typed that sentence.) I see God holding out his hand, waiting for me to make the decision to choose life with him over a life of empty, ultimately unfulfilling promises. Food satisfies my body but doesn't satisfy my soul.

The problem is that even though I know that food has never given me what I hope for, it is comforting. Although the satisfaction may be short lived, it is real and immediate. It is not so with God, or at least it hasn't been so far. It would be so much easier if I had something to think back on, some time in my life when my pain was eased by turning to God. For that to have happened I would have had to turn to him, which I haven't.

So this involves another leap of faith. 

In my relationship with God the past few months I have turned to him in praise, thanking him for things that have happened or for the flowers or a gorgeous sunrise. "Thank you" is easy; it doesn't require faith. "Please" is harder and more intimate. I don't want to be disappointed. I am afraid that he won't come through for me when the going gets tough. 

Can you see me clutching things closer to my chest and stomping my feet? 

All night long I pictured God's hand reaching out to me. Even as I ate that bowl of ice cream and chased it with a couple of miniature Reese's Cups I felt his watchful, and hopeful, eye on me. There was no condemnation of my actions; it was the loving gaze of a parent waiting for their child to make the right choice. "Soon" I silently said. "Not yet."

This afternoon I received in the mail the results of a physical I took a couple of weeks ago. My cholesterol is higher than it has ever been, with a particularly high triglyceride level. My spiritual nudging is followed by physical proof of my need to change my eating habits.

And so.

I will put it down. I will put it all down and take God's hand. I will turn to him instead of to food when I am happy or sad or stressful or tired.  I will make the choices I know are right for my body, and I will ask for his help when those choices don't come easily. 

This, my friends, is my surrender.

Restless

I'm restless. And bored. 

I have two posts in draft form that I started but couldn't complete. I have a number of books that I wanted to read, but now I find I only want to want to read them. I can't find a movie to watch or music to listen to. I want to work in the garden but not quite.

I feel like I am waiting for something to happen.

One part of my brain tells me that I should make something happen for myself. Another part tells me that I need to be still because I am, in fact, waiting for something that can only be found when I am still. More evidence that it is complicated being me.

I've had the house to myself for two days. I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many times it has crossed my mind that this is what it will be like every day once my daughter moves out and my husband dies. Who thinks that way? 

And yet isn't that how you decide what it is you want to do? Sure, I have to take into consideration how my actions will affect my family, but really when you come right down to it, this is my life and I have to be the one making it up as I go. It's just me, or just me and God if I'm going to go there, and no one else.

One life. We get one life. Am I going big or am I going home? Is going big what I want? Is it necessary? Is it fun? What would "going big" look like for me? Do I want to spend the rest of my days wandering around my house wondering what to do next? 

I feel the urge to jump but I know not where or into what.

The other thing that keeps crossing my mind is that this is what my father must feel like every single day. He is alone for days on end, especially when the weather is bad. He has trouble sleeping. Days and nights must go on forever. 

I'd be drinking now if that were something I still did. Drinking dulls the buzz in my head and makes it easier not to think about the future or what I want or what life is going to look like in the years to come. My father starts to drink in the early afternoon and I'm not saying that is why he is alone and lonely at 78 but the older he gets the more he drinks and the more alone he becomes.

Just now I was reminded of a song. I looked up the lyrics to make sure I was going to quote them correctly and ended up watching a video of the band performing it instead. Come to find out I've had the lyrics wrong. The song is Dare You to Move by Switchfoot and all this time I thought the chorus said "Dare you to move like today never happened." I have always thought that this song was about picking yourself up after a terrible day and dusting yourself off, rubbing some dirt in it, and moving on. Turns out I have been missing the last word. 

Before. 

Like today never happened BEFORE.

That is part of what has me so restless, one day has been bleeding into the next and I haven't been treating each day like it is a new day. They've all been reruns of days past. These lyrics somehow completely escaped me:

The tension is here
Tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

I am feeling that tension, but I've been calling it restlessness. Boredom. I guess that is what I am waiting for, what I'm being still to listen for, the whisper of where I am going next.

Here's a link to the song if you'd like to take a listen: Dare You to Move

The "Why" of Things

I don't know if is age or faith, but I am hitting a point where discovering the "why" of things isn't as important to me. 

This revelation came to me in the car last night. I was listening to music. There were lyrics that were really speaking to me, calming in a way that I tried to describe to myself. Slowly I realized that I didn't need to have that inner dialog about why the words were calming. It didn't matter what the reasons behind my emotional reactions were.

That is wildly strange for me. I have named and analyzed nearly every emotion and thought that has run through my brain for years. About fifteen years ago I began therapy to deal with the abuse that occurred when I was younger, as well as to stop what I saw as destructive behaviors. Honestly, that was mostly about my weight. I knew that I was eating as a coping mechanism and I wanted to stop doing that. The self discovery was amazing and I don't regret a moment of it. Being asleep and not acknowledging what you are feeling is a sad way to live. I think, though, that I may have swung too far away from being asleep and gotten into being hyper vigilant. I find myself over-analyzing and over-thinking far too much of what happens in my life. My weight has fluctuated a lot throughout the process, but the person that I am has only gotten stronger. Calmer too.

I keep thinking back to when God told me "hush". It made me realize that I do waste valuable time trying to figure stuff out. Getting to the very bottom of emotions is a never ending and pointless task. Not only is it life sucking, it is also exhausting.

I'm tired of tiring myself out with worry.

My daughter is 25 years old. She lives at home, has a college degree, and suffers from depression and anxiety. After a couple of years of working low wage jobs she is currently unemployed and writing a novel. She pays rent, she pays her expenses, and she frets about living at home at 25. Up until yesterday I worried about her a lot. I worried that she would live at home for the rest of her life and never experience life outside of the nest. 

I realized yesterday that one of my main worries is what everyone else must think about us, about me as a mother who apparently can't get her child to grow up and leave. Once I named that fear I decided that it doesn't matter. There are all types of lives and life stories and ways of getting from the cradle to the grave. I can't control what other people think. I like having her here, and if this is the decision she wants to make about how and where to live her life then okay. I am not interested in navigating her life choices for her. I hard a difficult enough time with my own that I don't need to be directing hers. 

She is going to be okay regardless, just as I am okay despite the difficulties and challenges of my life. Or maybe I am okay because of the difficulties and challenges. That's something else I no longer feel the need to analyze.

I am just going to enjoy the music that plays in my life. I'll control the few things I can control and I'll let go of what I can't. 

I am a little clearer now on which is which.

My Husband (edited)

The other day I took a shower following my late afternoon workout. It was time to make dinner and I didn't feel like getting "dressed dressed" if you know what I mean - back into the jeans and top I had worn that day. So I took out an over-sized t-shirt and a pair of baggy jammie pants, and put them on. Staring into the bathroom mirror with my hair dripping wet I thought "wow", and not in a good way. I decided that the least I could do was dry my hair with the hair dryer and not let it air dry as is my normal routine. 

Even after that, I was not looking my best.

I thought about my husband working in his office down the hall and wondered if I should make more of an effort. Does he get tired of seeing me in my comfortable clothes? There was only one way to find out.

Trot trot trot down the hall. 

I stepped into his office and said "Honey, will you please tell me LONG before you get tired of seeing me in oversized t-shirts and baggy pants?"

He looked at me - looked me up and down actually - and said "I will never get tired of seeing you. Period."

TWO DAYS LATER

When I published the above post I knew it wasn't finished, but I didn't know where else to go with it so I simply stopped. His comment speaks for itself, with no need for explanation or elaboration. 

Later on that evening my daughter and I were contentedly watching tv. The house was calm and peaceful and life was good. And then my husband came home from work. He has been involved in the opening of a new business for almost a year now and things are coming down to the wire. He had spent the entire day putting out fires, crossing t's and dotting i's, and he was completely wound up when he barreled through the door.

I wanted him to relax. I wanted him to come home, collapse, and feel happy, safe, and loved. That is not what happened. He was manic and couldn't turn off, or least he couldn't turn off as quickly as I wanted him to. Within ten minutes of him walking in the door I was completely unglued.

Our daughter had casually mentioned that she was thinking of moving in with her cousin and my husband was totally against the idea. He barely let her finish her sentence before he was all over her telling her what a poor idea it was because she could just stay with us as long as she wants and she should save up her money and they might get in a fight and then what and on and on and on. I reacted to his immediate negative reaction and we blew up from there.

Happy scene of domestic bliss.

As much as my husband is the man of wonderful loving words, he is also the guy who fixes things. He had spent all day giving orders and solving problems, and it is completely unreasonable to think he can simply turn that off once he walks in the door.

When all I focus on is that part of him - the manager - I get triggered and fight with him. I wish that in the heat of the moment I would take a breath and remember the parts of him that I love. If I were to do that, there would be far fewer heats of the moment. I don't like getting upset like that. I really don't like that he came home from a challenging day at work and entered a challenging night at home.

If there's a secret to remembering the good in the moments when it's not so good, I'd like to know it. Fortunately in quiet moments like this I can edit my husband and remember the words of love to the exclusion of all else.

I think that is how we've stayed together so long. He edits out my over-sized t-shirts and baggy pants, and I edit out his manager mode.

Forgiveness

When Jesus was asked how many times we should forgive our brothers he replied "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven".

When I was a young child I was molested. For the past forty years as the memory has crossed my mind I have been given the opportunity to forgive the man responsible. In the beginning, that wasn't even a possibility. As I got older I came to a place of acceptance and played around with forgiveness. What I'm discovering after all this time is that every time I think of what happened I have to forgive him all over again. Occasionally it happens simultaneously with the first thoughts, but more often than not it is a process. The wounds are there; the pain is there. I feel the hurt of betrayal and, when I can, I forgive once more. Seventy times seven times. 

This is what I think about when I want to feel virtuous about forgiveness. I avoid thinking about the fact that I just unfriended someone on Facebook because I can't forgive her. What has she done, you ask? Nothing. She has done nothing. She hasn't answered texts or emails, and she hasn't reached out to me in almost a year. We were close friends at one time and then we weren't, with no explanation. It is as if she simply forgot about me. I am not even up to one time forgiving her.

I unfriended her on Facebook because I decided that I didn't want to be presented with all of those opportunities to forgive her. If I don't see her or hear about her - we don't have any mutual friends - then I don't have to think about her or feel hurt again. This is ugly business on my part. I am holding on to this grudge with both hands, with both feet firmly planted in the ground. I will not be moved.

And for this, I need forgiveness.

Poured Into

It's 1:15 a.m. The house is quiet. My mind, not so much.

I felt my Mother's presence today. Although gone for nineteen years she undeniably came here for me today.

Life has been tough lately. I may have mentioned that. The demands on my energy are many, and although I do things for me they sometimes become just one more thing to check off of the daily to do list. Truly I am trying so hard to stop trying so hard but ...

But.

Yes, but.

I needed to be poured into. As I felt her love pour into me, I laid my head down on the table where I was sitting and I wept. Just as I received the incredible gift from a couple weeks ago I allowed myself to receive the gift of her love pouring into me. 

It was a powerful thing, and I am glad I didn't turn away or shoo away her memory when I first realized she was there. I've put up some walls where she is concerned, been angry at her more often than not, but she came anyway. She filled up the spaces around me, and then she touched my head and told me everything would be okay. 

I've done that for my child. It's what mothers do. It's what parents do.

And if I let him,I bet it's what God wants to do too.

Trying So Hard to Stop Trying So Hard

I have lost the desire to work on Project Ginny: The Body Edition.

One friend recently told me that it is like I am putting on one hair shirt after another. Another friend said that every time she read I was adding something to either my To-Do or To-Don't list she cringed.

I am tired of punishing myself for having this body. I am tired of spending so much time and so much money on trying to force it to be something other than what it is. I've muddied the process up with unrealistic expectations and anger and hatred and regret that I no longer know what balanced or healthy would feel like.

Don't get me wrong, I know what balanced and healthy are. I know what I should do in order to attain those things, but the whole endeavor is covered in the muck and slime. Even when I am skinny my brain is still fat.

Have I mentioned lately how difficult it is to be me?

I try so hard to be good. I try so hard to be healthy. I try so hard to fix everything that is wrong with me, all the while a little voice in side of me is shouting "Will you relax already??"

Once in awhile I will listen to the voice and collapse, but that is not the same thing as relaxing. It is merely a stopping point for gathering strength to take another run up Mount Everything I Should Be and Do But Am Not Being or Doing Yet. 

Here is my newest plan:

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Be still.

Be held.

Relax.

From there I'll see what I feel like doing.

And God said "Hush"

On Friday a burden was lifted and it doesn't matter what it was or how it came to be relieved.

The first thing I wanted to do was have a drink to celebrate. As the day wore on and I considered all of the stress that had been lifted off my shoulders the urge to drink got more pronounced.  It was such a relief that I almost convinced myself that having a glass of champagne or sharing a bottle of wine with my husband was the only way to celebrate our good fortune.

I rationalized my decision with "It's only one night of drinking" and "No one has to know", but also with "If I told anyone what has happened they would understand my celebration." It was tempting.

It was also an excuse. 

I didn't give in and I'm glad of it. Just as drinking doesn't take away pain or stress or anger or sadness, it also doesn't increase joy or relief. I will follow through with my Year of No Alcohol in both the bad times and the good.

So back to the burden and the lifting thereof. My brain is a complicated thing, and it doesn't process things in a simple manner. All weekend it worked and worried, spinning in circles as it tried to understand how it came to be that I was blessed. There is no deserving of such a thing. 

Mostly I wondered what role God played in my good fortune. Ever since I was baptized in October life has gotten increasingly more difficult. It would have been easy for me to think that I had been a fool to trust that God would come through for me, and yet I kept trusting. Honestly, I had no energy for anything else. I couldn't force the situation to be resolved and I was out of options. So I did as I wrote about a couple weeks ago - I stopped holding on and I allowed myself to be held by God.

He came through for me in an extravagant way.

What does that mean? How did that happen? What brought about the change in my circumstances that relieved my stress? Did God do it? If he did, why did he do it? How do I know it was him?

Spin. Spin. Spin.

I decided to talk to my pastor about it. As I considered how to approach him I realized that the story was long and involved, but that possibly I could pare it down to a couple questions. I thought about talking to one of two church small groups I am involved with. I wanted someone to explain to me how I came to be blessed. I knew it was an extravagant blessing that I received and I was immensely happy to receive it, but my old lizard friend kept whispering in my ear "Yea, but ..." 

• I don't deserve it
• It doesn't make sense
• What does it mean?
• What does this say about God?

Then I realized that the only one who could answer my questions was God, so I took them to him.

And God said "Hush".

Like a father to a child who is scared and doesn't understand what is happening, he held me in his arms, stroked my hair, and said "hush". I don't need to understand. I don't need to know what it means. I have been blessed and that is more than enough to know. 

Now every time my mind starts spinning, asking questions to which there are no answers, I hear God say "Hush" and I am calmed once more.

Coming Together, Falling Apart

"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. And then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that." - Pema Chödrön

There has been a fair amount of falling apart going on in my life recently. 

I have felt tested, but now I am feeling a kind of healing as well. Surviving the downs does that for you. There are times when I cry out "This again?" when faced with the newest version of an old pain - as I did when talking about friendship earlier -  but even in my sadness I know that healing is happening.

I hope I am on the precipice of things coming together again.

On Being Held (Part 2)

I wonder how much back story you need for this one.

In 2010 I began working out with a personal trainer. Over the next two years he pissed me off, made me cry, called me out, and pushed me harder than anyone ever had. He also listened to me, asked me questions, encouraged me, and believed in me. Sometimes I thought he was the only one who was asking too much of me, and other times I thought he was the only one telling me the truth. I lost 60 pounds with him in two years, and when he asked more of me I quit.

In early 2013 he opened his own facility and I began training with him again. I had regained most of the weight I had lost but knowing that I had succeeded with him before I thought I could do it again. I went from personal training sessions to group training sessions. Nothing happened on the scale, and then my back/hip injuries got the better of me again. I dropped out of the sessions for a couple months. When I thought I was ready to return he made me an offer: I could come to his studio and by myself do an upper body workout that he created for me. When I got back into good enough shape - and by that he meant able to do one of his normal full body workouts - then I could return to the group session. It was a very kind offer and I took him up on it.

Two days ago I had a medical procedure done on my back that was one of those "it's going to feel worse before it feels better" sort of things. I texted my trainer and told him that I wouldn't be able to do some of the workout. When I got to the studio I asked him if he had gotten the text, and he said yes but that it was up to me to decide what I needed to do to modify the exercise. He said this was my workout and I was the one who had to do what was right for me. If something hurt, don't do it. Keep it simple and just keep moving.

Interesting. 

As I did the workout the bad thoughts tried to come out. I wondered if this was his way of ditching me. Did he no longer think that it was worth his time to help me? Was he abandoning me? Or was he empowering me to do this on my own?

One piece to this story that I have started to type out once or twice already but keep putting off is that I credit this man with leading me towards God. It is a long story, for he approached this subject very slowly and cautiously over a couple of years, but he is the reason I decided to trust God. He has a deep faith which isn't apparent in his words necessarily - he is not the "shout hallelujah" type - but is definitely evident in his actions. 

Knowing all that, I still questioned whether he really had just had enough of my disappointing results this time around. As I said, the bad thoughts. I know, however, that when I don't know for sure why someone is doing something I get to make up a story in my head about why that thing is happening. I can either make up a bad story - he is abandoning me - or I can make up a good story - he is empowering me because he knows I can do this on my own.

The trouble was, I didn't like either story. Empowering me still felt like abandoning me. So I wondered how else I could view this situation.

And that's when I recognized that I was being held.

I have held on so tightly to this trainer, asking everything from him, wanting him to save me from myself. In the middle of my workout I realized that I could stop holding on and instead allow and accept that I was being held. He was providing a space for me, a safe space for me to do what I needed to do. 

Suddenly I felt both peaceful and powerful. 

"There's freedom in surrender

Lay it down and let it go"