Flashback Friday Devotion #34 [The Opposite Way]

Hi, Everyone.
Before I forget, I want to tell you that I've decided to take Monday off, for the holiday, to spend time with my family. I will still post on my blog at www.LifePlanChristianCoaching.blogspot.com. We're at the God's Armor devotions there. Thank you for understanding my need for a respite.
Please pray for those having surgery today, as well as those recovering from surgery. As always, I love to hear from you, what the Lord is teaching you, any needs that you have, etc.
Today’s devotion, from my personal journal dated May 12, 2007, took me back to a time where I made the decision to go in the opposite direction, as far as my eating goes. The Lord was teaching me so much, yet I was still stuck in the past, in many ways, and the past was affecting my present, especially in the area of weight. Sometimes it still happens that way, all over again.
 

Flashback Friday Devotion #34 [The Opposite Way]

     I really needed the Lord today, and He was faithful. It was a difficult morning, physically and emotionally. It was hard to be at the Mother/Daughter Brunch without either of my girls. Judy, a precious sister in Christ, gave me a hug for Leah (my oldest child, who is a missionary in the Dominican Republic), which was sweet. I couldn’t think about any of it, though, because I didn’t want to cry. I had to sing, twice, so I had to keep it together, as best I could.
     Once I got in my home, though, I wept and wept. I missed another milestone in my Nathan’s (my baby’s) life…his graduation from Emporia State University. He understood that I couldn’t make the drive, the hike to the stadium, and sit in the bleachers. He understood, but it still makes me so sad.
     I grieve for the years that I have been “absent." I grieve for the “me" I could have been. I grieve that I used food in ways it isn’t intended to be used, and now look at me. The only thing worse than looking like this is feeling like this, not only emotionally but physically. It hurts to be this heavy, in every way.
     My weight and the consequences of it have ruled my life for so long. Every pound above the 155 lbs. that I was created to be is a pound of pain, and there are so many of them.
     The Lord let me cry it out. I knew He was there with me. I could feel His Presence. When I could get quiet before Him, He reminded me of I Corinthians 5:7, and I knew He was encouraging me to “clean out the old leaven so that [I] may be a new lump, just as [I am] in fact unleavened."
     I’m so glad that God sees me as a perfect “lump." He gently reminded me that I am “new." It’s there, inside me, because He’s inside me. There are so many times that I think a thought or go back to past behavior and He reminds me, “You’re not that way. That’s not who you are."
     I need to be more like Paul, “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching for those things which are before, I press on…" (Philippians 3:13). I press on. I press on.