Discouraged

Three days after my last post, once my husband got home from his business trip, I hit bottom and had me a good old fashion emotional breakdown. It was ugly but got the attention of my husband and lead to good things. We decided that I needed to go off all my medications (an antidepressant and metformin for my insulin resistance), renew our gym membership and get back to working out, replace my medication with supplements, herbs and good nutrition, and ask for more help. God provided the membership by someone out of the blue offering to pay our membership for a year and a couple in our church who work in the supplement section of our local health food store have helped me get on my supplements.

As the new years starts I knew one goal for our family was going to be to eliminate all dairy from our diet. I have been reading articles that dairy is linked to bed wetting (one of our kids can't stop wetting the bed despite trying many things) and also acne and rashes which are two things that I can't seem to get rid of. So we have started that adventure. Part of our home school curriculum for this month is cooking and learning about good food and nutrition. I am really excited about teaching the kids these concepts. Being back at the gym has been good but also hard trying to find time to add it in to the daily schedule and still get school done but overall has been a huge blessing. Things seemed to be going well and headed in a positive direction. Then...

I stepped on the scaled yesterday morning to discover that I have gained 15 pounds over the last six months! I knew I had gained weight because hardly any of my clothes fit anymore. I instantly became depressed and defeated and down right mad. This came after the night before reflecting over the past year and all that I had accomplished. I was reflecting on how proud I am of myself for stepping up to the challenge and home schooling my kids. It is something that I never wanted to do let alone thought I could do and it has turned into a really great thing for our family. And I am really proud of that. But once I saw the 15 pounds, none of that mattered.

My journey towards health and weight has been a seven year process. It all started after I had our first child. It has been hard. The hardest and most trying thing I have ever gone through. After trying everything, and I mean everything, I decided a few years ago to focus more on my heart because like the bible says I do believe the heart is the well spring of life (Proverbs 4:23) and everything comes from the heart. So I spent my time, money and energy letting God transform my heart in hopes that good health would follow. He did amazing things and for the first time in my life I feel like I really experienced the power of God's healing. But only in my heart. But for a time being that was ok with me. And enough. Then my health started to go down hill again so I had people pray for healing and I myself began to claim the power of Christ in ways I had never done before and ask him to heal me. Then as I stood on the scale looking at the 15 pound weight gain with acne all over my face, a huge rash on my neck, and 2 months late on my period, I gave up. And felt defeated. Hopeless.

Feeling like I have put my hope in man and been let down, put my hope in myself and been let down, and put my hope in God and dare I say it, feel let down. I know God. I know who he says he is. I know what he can do, I've seen it. I know that he is my hope. My healer. My answer. Then why do I feel like I have no hope when I know the One who IS hope? These feelings caught me off guard and leave me in a place of not knowing what to do with these feelings.

Last night at church the word that God gave our pastor (who happens to be a very close friend) to share is that God is for you. God is FOR me! Despite all that is going on in your life and all that you feel, God is for you. And I believe it because that is what God says in his word (Romans 8:31) but right now I feel like God is not for me, helping me, healing me. The fact that I have 15 more pounds to lose after all I have been though seems like a slap in the face. Things are going in the wrong direction and I am lost. I have tried it all.

Giving up is not something that I usually do however. So with the help of my amazing husband, who is the only one who really knows me (my friends still seem distant and of little use. But whatever, I am not even dwelling on that), we have come up with a plan and are moving forward in faith asking that God will this time honor our cries and help me lose weight and heal my body and my heart.

Please, God, you are the only hope I have. Even though it is often a lonely process, I still chose to believe.