Figuring It Out, 35 Years Later

Slowly but surely I am figuring out just who I am.

This may sound silly, but for the majority of my life time I have wished to be someone else.  Someone thinner, someone richer, someone tan, someone shorter, someone taller, someone blond or brunette, someone from a nuclear family where mom and dad live happily ever after, someone quieter, someone more disciplined,  someone...anyone but me.

Now that my life is likely 1/3 or more over it's time I start being content with me. 

This may sound alien to some, but I believe we all go through phases of "finding oneself."  This is not a new topic to me.  I was pondering on this very thing just last January.

My new epiphany has so much more to do with who I am and what I want for this life. 

First of all I am officially done with my obsession with food.  It's a process but I am determined to live like a naturally narrow individual.  I have been reading a book called Women, Food, and God.  While there was a lot to take in and it was life changing, she's a heretic.  She's not a Christian writer as I was lead to believe.  She uses foul language and claims we are all God, but....She does speak some truths and I have come to recognize that when we are open God can speak to us through any medium.  So my new way of living is to follow my natural full and hunger signals.  I will eat only when I am hungry and I will stop when I'm satisfied.  No more diets, no more restricting.  My goal when I started this weight loss process was freedom.  As I wrote a few days ago, I am still in bondage.

Well, no more!  I will trust myself because it has been 10 years since I lost the weight.  10 years of adjusting my diet, my exercise, my way of life.  I am an adult and I have proven over 10 years of maintenance that I can in fact, be trusted with brownies and not gain 100 lbs.

Happiness and contentment cannot be found at the scale.  I've been there, super thin and still miserable. I've been super heavy and miserable.  Now it's time to just be.  I am confident that the Lord would really like me to spend my emotional energies elsewhere. 

Oh, and I hate running long distances.  Short runs I can tolerate, long runs I despise.

I do not like to sew either.

I do love to sleep in.

I love to spend the the day in my PJ's with my kids.

I really like to vacuum.

I'm madly in love with my husband and one of my very favorite things to do is sit with him on the couch and watch TV.

I'm obsessed with coffee.

I do not have to be a size 6 to have value as a human being.

I was designed to be a mom, a wife, a friend.  There are times I think that these things aren't enough.  That I need to, I must accomplish more.  I must do more in order to earn the space I inhabit. 

One thing I learned in that book is that I have "The Voice" that tells me daily that I'm really not worth anything.  That nit picky, rude, unloving voice browbeating me into compliance.  Well, she's been fired and from now on the only voice I'll listen to is that of a loving God, and a precious loving husband.