Monday, April 22, 2013

Undeniable beats Unexplainable


So just a warning....this post is pretty long....but it is a big breakthrough for me. Not sure if it will even make sense to anyone else...but for me...it made a world of difference. 
Today (Sunday) I went to Athens Church with my family and man did the sermon impact me in a way I never thought. You see, this morning my weigh-in was…well…not what I hoped for. Weight seemed to jump a lb overnight and I was so sure it was going to be down. That God was going to show me what I had eaten the night before (tons of fear foods) was okay to eat. But that is not what the number said. I flipped out and went to church without eating b-fast because that seemed like the only solution. Then the sermon and hope hit me again.

You see deep inside there was a tiny voice of reason saying: “The number is up but not because of food. It’s because of water and poo, just like it has been every other time this happens. Stick with your meal plan like you have times before and you know that God will show the Truth. He won’t let anything go out of control…including your weight. He knows that matters to you, so it matters to Him to. He will take care of all your needs…including your weight.” But that didn’t make sense to me. The number made sense to me. The number could be explained by food…but by poo and water…no way. And only way to correct too much food was to eat less.

Then the sermon started and I won’t share it all but you can check it out here. But the jist was this. There are two thought paths to make a decision based on….the undeniable….or the unexplainable. The unexplainable is when we have seen something happen but we can’t explain why it happens and many times this causes us to not accept it as truth. The undeniable on the other hand is when you don’t have the facts to explain something…but you have seen/are seeing it happen and so you accept it as truth. 

And every day in life we take the undeniable over the unexplainable.
Example….if you drive. Do you know the exact mechanics behind the engine, gas, and all that hoopla that’s under the hood of a car…most likely, not (and if you are like me you don’t even know which of the thingy majigs is the engine anyway). But I bet at some point over this weekend you drove or rode in a car…..because you know it works. You don’t know how…but you have seen a car run, so you know it works and trust that. That is the undeniable fact..the car runs….even though you can’t explain how.

Yet so many times with God and our life experiences…we stick to the unexplainable. If it can’t be explained by our world view…then it can’t be true. For me..I still struggle with seeing God form the world view of a punisher…not of a God who cares. So for me…if I step on the scale or a bunch of bad things happen in my life…instead of drawing closer to God and knowing that He will see me through as He has so many times in the past (undeniable) I fit my circumstances into my worldview and determine God doesn’t care because I am such a screw up. Because in my world-view that is the only explanation that fits….but it’s not reality. Of course stubborn me doesn’t see that in the moment so I run away from God till I get worn down and exhausted and (like always) run back to Him and trust in Him because I have lost all else…and He comes through.

Now how does this apply to my weight. Well…that was clear to me all through the sermon though the sermon had nothing to do with the scale.  Here is where it all came in. So many times in recovery I ask God to take care of my weight, and every single time He does. My weight fluctuates and sometimes this means extreme fluctuations…but it all settles back down. This should prove the undeniable truth to me that my body can be trusted….but that doesn’t fit in my view of my body. I think my body can’t be trusted and that weight changes only reflect good/bad food and exercise decisions. So every weigh-in I make rationalizations about choices I made that have caused my weight to do whatever it did. Instead of accepting that my body can be trusted…I find explanations…but then…then the weigh-ins happen that are unexplainable.

This has been the case the past few days. Before this weigh-in I had been eating really scary foods really often and kicking butt at my portions….and all the sudden…my weight drastically plummeted. It made no sense. Not with my view of my body. I should be gaining….that’s all I could think. This weigh-in was unexplainable in my own view. That was of course…unless I admitted I was wrong…and saw what was undeniable. That my body could be trusted, God cared about my weight and can control it without my help, and…that maybe, just maybe, I needed more food. But again…that didn’t fit in my ideals…my beliefs of my body. So I kept saying: :This is a fluctuation…just wait till tomorrow…it’s just a fluctuation. Tomorrow would come and weight be down or lower…again showing me the undeniable..but I went with explanations.

Then today hit….the weight gain I kept telling myself to wait for. Then out the window went the undeniable…I clung to the facts I had. Weight was up so all the foods I had eaten were bad and I obviously needed less. I realized in the sermon how unfair this is. God give me weigh-in after weigh-in of the undeniable truth of needing more nutrients or being able to trust body and I wait and wait not accepting it….but then it takes one weigh-in….one uptick and I throw everything undeniable out and decide it was food that caused the “gain” and I need a decrease. It’s completely ludicrous.

But then there is that still small voice in me. The one today speaking the undeniable. That this weigh-in sure I could make up explanations for…but really it’s not explainable with food. I didn’t eat beyond my meal plan and the food I ate wasn’t higher cal enough to cause a lb of real gain. This had to be something other than food even though that doesn’t fit into the facts and truths in my head. Even though to me that makes it unexplainable and causes me to panic. But there is the undeniable…that these fluctuations have happened before….and guess what….wt has always gone back down. God has always shown me the Truth….and everything has been okay. That is undeniable. But before I could accept that this weigh-in wasn’t about food…I wanted the explanations as to what it was.

That’s when our pastor said that God sometimes shows us the explanations…but not until we accept the undeniable. It was in that moment I realized what I needed to do. I needed to throw aside the feeling of having to explain this weigh-in and trust in the undeniable. That I had been losing prior to this and that this was just a fluctuation…a normal fluctuation. I didn’t do anything to make it happen…it just happened. That God would show me everything would be okay. And the even bigger thing….that when weight does go down again…it’s gonna be undeniable that I need increase. Sure I can’t explain it because in my mind I can’t need more food, only less. I even have facts to support the undeniable when my weight is going down.

Just like the Pharisees in Luke 9 searched for any explanation other than Jesus being the Savior as to how the blind man saw….despite the blind man being right there seeing….I search for any explanation other than needing more food when weight down… anything I can that keeps me from making scary decision to increase. Same goes with weight fluctuations…I search for any reason other than there being no reason….for why my weight goes up. Despite having been proven time and time again that fluctuations happen and they go away.

But today….today I chose the undeniable. I chose to accept that this uptick was just a fluctuation. I went home and ate b-fast while planning out the rest of my full meal plan day. I refused to live in my world view….my ED view of myself and God. I have chosen to accept the undeniable truth that everything will be okay and I at least need this meal plan if not more. It’s not comfortable…but then again neither is accepting that I am ballooning when I know in my heart I am not. So today…today I believe the undeniable Truth of my God and His love and desire for peace for me. I accept that I don’t have all the answers and that only He does. I accept the time after time He has proven my beliefs about my weight and body wrong....and that this makes  the undeniable completely true and completely explainable. My body, food, and God can be trusted….that is undeniable…and for today…I chose to accept that and to admit that my beliefs are wrong. I chose to believe Him over me, to believe Truth over seemingly true lies, and to accept the undeniable instead of the unexplainable.  

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