Taking a leap...or a baby step

I did something crazy today.  Well crazy for me anyway.  You see I am not all that crazy about change…or new things…or anything really that is going to cause me that nervous, stomach going to explode feeling. 

I like routine. I like consistency. I like things to stay pretty much the same most of the time.  

I realize this is extremely boring for some of you. But my Type A personality just doesn’t thrive too well under new…under different.

Especially if that “new” means I am going to have to talk to people that I don’t know, at a place that I don’t know, under circumstances that make me want to cry.  Not usually my thing.

But today I for a plethora of reasons I did that very thing. 

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I joined Curves. 

Yes you read that right.  I joined that “old ladies gym” as my girls lovingly called it.  That gym run my women and made for women.  

I almost puked in the car before I actually went inside, though.  It was not some climatic, cue the beautiful music, kind of moment.  I was sick over it.  I didn’t want to do it. I was mad that I even was doing it, but something inside of me propelled me to get out of my car and walk inside the building.  

Deep down (and excuse my honesty here but I just gotta say it like it is)…deep down I was hoping to find a whole bunch of middle-aged, seriously overweight women.  Somehow I felt like if the gym was filled with them, then I would feel better about myself and be the young, athletic one.   

[This is painful for me to be this honest but I think it is important to purge all this so I can get to the good stuff.]

Unfortunately, no matter how cute my little workout outfit was (because yes I did try to look cute to go workout…don’t judge, you know you have done it too), I was still the fat girl there today.  I saw lots of ladies coming and going as I was being weighed and measured and being talked to about my health goals and most of those ladies really didn’t look like they needed to be there.  For the most part, they were all pretty fit and healthy.  Oh and they weren’t all middle-aged…there were lots of young ones in there too.  Of course in the middle of this realization, I am also being told how much I weigh…which let’s just say was like almost 15 lbs more than what I thought I weighed. 

 

I felt pretty devastated guys.  I was the fat girl in the middle of the supposed “old ladies gym.” Awesome. 

It felt like a slap in the face in the midst of all this trying to find myself beautiful saga.  I was taking like 20 steps backward when I had already worked so hard just to take a few baby steps forward.  

But I am not a quitter so even though I actually did cry when my new trainer told me how much I weighed and how many inches I needed to lose to get to my goal, I stayed.  I knew that even though I felt ridiculous and even though everything inside of me told me to just run and get out there, to go back to what I already know and have been doing, I stayed.  I signed the contract and even signed up for the nutrition part of it (good thing I ate my homemade Red Velvet cake for breakfast both Saturday and Sunday because that is all over now folks!).  

I didn’t want to be there.  I didn’t want to be doing that.  But I HAD to.  I knew that deep down this struggle with my weight and really my overall health is seeping into other areas of my life. 

Yesterday I read this verse in proverbs: “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.” –Proverbs 17:3

Now why in the world would the Lord put the word crucible (meaning a vessel used for melting materials at high temperatures) and the word furnace (one definition of this word is just a very hot place) in the same sentence as “the Lord tests hearts” if these concepts weren’t somehow related?  I don’t think He would have.  They are related.  Because many times when the Lord tests our hearts, it feels like walking through a fire.

God has been stretching me in huge ways lately.  He has been testing the way I think, the way I see things, the way I understand the world and even the very foundation of my faith in big ways.  It’s almost like everything I thought I knew, I don’t know anymore.  If that even makes sense.  He is asking me to trust…even though I don’t know why or what for.  

I don’t really understand what is going on. I don’t understand what He is doing.  But, I do feel like He is preparing me and the rest of my family too for something big. 

I want to be ready. 

And for the first time in my life, I really understand why Paul used so many times in his letters the comparison of our physical bodies being prepared and disciplined to our spiritual bodies being that way.  You either are a disciplined person or you aren’t.  There really isn’t a middle ground. 

For so many years I have just teeter-tottered between the two.  I try to be disciplined but inevitably fail.  I make resolutions or goals but eventually get bored.  I try and work out and eat right but end up eating Red Velvet cake for breakfast and skipping my workout. I start the bible study but don’t finish it.  I am going to read the Bible in a year but stop half way through.  In every area of my life, I can see all my good intentions but no real, clear cut results.  

I don’t really want to live like that anymore. 

I don’t want to walk the fine line between two things.  I am either all in or all out.  I want to experience something in its fullness not just taste a bite of it. 

Life in abundance.  It means abounding…overflowing…not just a drip.

I want to be all in.

So today I took a baby step.  I am going in. No more teeter-tottering.  No more half way or half done.  Not this time.

It’s a little scary. 

But when I look around the world, I can see clearly that it is filled with half-wayers.  Folks filled with a ton of great intentions and great ideas but no real follow through. 

Change doesn’t happen that way friends.  We must do. We must act.  No more waiting.  No more next times.  No more.

It’s now.  The time is now.