The Sweet Side of Discipline & Obedience

I have to give a huge thank you to my friends who have approached me over the past few weeks with encouragement and praise for the progress I’ve made in improving my health. In my head, I wanted to be much farther along in May than I am. It’s probably a good thing that I’m still not tempted in anyway to buy a two piece bathing suit any time soon, probably ever! Regardless, I decided to share via photos where I am and where I am heading. I hope that it is encouraging to others, and frankly it is a level of accountability for me.

I’ve also shared with you this is not merely a lesson in healthy living for me. At a deep and painful level, it was a spiritual lesson and weak mindset I had to break. Ya’ll, this is hard to share, but I have been awake since early morning thinking about it and how I got to this point.

If knowledge and desire were enough, I would have lost weight and maintained a healthy fitness a long time ago. Even a casual follower of my posts knows I like books, a LOT. I read constantly. I know stuff. On many subjects, because I’m also extremely curious. Often, I would get so frustrated in conversations about weight or health when someone would share a concept or information with me. I knew it. I usually knew more about it than they did. It had nothing to do with what I did or didn’t know.

It was also not a matter of mere desire. I shed many tears and frustrated moments over my weight. I had brief and not so brief impassioned efforts to become healthy. For 15 years, I road a rollercoaster of hope and despair over my weight and appearance. The ride ended a few years ago with a disappointing rest. I resolved to be comfortable in my skin, regardless of what condition that skin was in. This was necessary for my journey too. My desire for weight-loss was based on my image of myself. My identity as an overweight person was humiliating. At some point, I let go of that as my identity. It was a condition, a very real condition with very real (and eventually deadly) consequences but it wasn’t and isn’t my identity. It was after a period of time resting in this place, when my desire began to change. Health and weight was less about identity (let’s face it I’m human, I am aware of what others think of me so it’s not down to 0%) and became more about how it was limiting me in my real identity. I could not live fully in the gifts and dreams I had been given when I was tired, sluggish and slow. Ouch. That frankly hurt. I had to spend some time absorbing that reality of where I had positioned myself.

Staring me in the face were two words that are not popular in 2017. Discipline and obedience. I had the knowledge, I had the desire. You all know I have faith and prayer too. Not one thing was going to change until I stopped viewing my health as one passionate burst after the other, and settled into a long view disciplined approach to the life I wanted to live to be the person I am. Discipline isn’t built overnight. It’s also not a one time decision. It is a constant series of decisions to implement what I know, to continue to grow in knowledge and immediately put that knowledge back into action.

Which brings me to obedience. Something has got to change. An action has to take place. I have to decide and follow through to do something that I’ve learned I need to do. I can read all the books in the world on fitness, but until I get up and do just one thing in those books — it’s frankly useless to me. I may be able to share it with others and help them obey!! Meanwhile, my lack of movement is set in at a deeper and deeper level. Which makes it harder the next day to make a decision to move again.

I had to face I was just as overweight in my spiritual life as well. There were things I have read, taken classes on, written about, taught my kids. I was feeding at the calorie rich table of deep biblical truth. Far too often, I was continuing to sit at that table and eat instead of get up and move.

To be very clear, I knew I was saved. For other reasons, mostly my early life in a legalistic version of Christianity, I spent a lot of time in discipline and obedience working extremely hard to be a “saveable” person. I knew what discipline and obedience was, I had lived it for years. So, I know intimately the dangers of going too far in this direction as well. God had to teach me that discipline and obedience did not earn me anything toward my salvation. I had gotten that message loud and clear.

I was looking in the mirror and facing the painful picture of is being saved enough? I was saved, but I was slowly becoming bedridden and on life-support — not stronger and more active. Ultimately, it was desperately unsatisfying. I was solely focused on my eternal hide, and had no stamina or strength to help anyone else find salvation. Even more painfully, it was a pitifully weak way to say thank you to the One who saved me.

Everyday I sit at this place of deciding to incorporate more discipline and practicing obedience. I know this is going to be an area I will continue to grow in for the rest of my life. No longer will those words be absent from my vocabulary. They are too precious to me now. I see how and why God has given us beautiful disciplines like prayer, fasting and meditation that are not immediately full of joy, but build stamina and strength. I don’t always enjoy obedience, and taking something I just learned out on the street of real life. I am aware that I’m awkward and unpracticed, only consistent obedience will bring the ease that I desire. Sometimes others notice my toddler like steps, and I have to decide that being obedient is more important than being cool. One day I will walk with grace in those areas, but only after many days of falls, bruises and lurching. The quicker I get to it, the faster the ease will come!

I do not reveal this out of shame, guilt or self-loathing. I have carried all three in huge loads in the past. Maybe that is why I couldn’t move, I had to shed all three and God has given me that through grace. Consequently, I do not want in ANY way this post to cause shame, guilt or self-loathing in reading it. It was a process. God had to undo a lot of hurt and bad teaching for me to get to this point. After he did that, I had to make a decision to do something about it. Just as I’ve showed you my “before” and “during” weight picture, I’m sharing with you my “during” spiritual picture. I’m a work-in-progress. By God’s grace, I will always be a work-in-progress until the very last breath I take.