Year-Long Countdown Begins!

Yesterday was my 49th birthday. I am on a quest to see how healthy and fit I can get to celebrate turning 50, so today is day #364 and counting.

I am definitely on my way. To celebrate, my kids (sorta) graciously allowed me to drag them on a "junking" foray. (I love treasure hunting at thrift stores.) We forgot to take my crutches and I was surprised that I could pretty easily stand up from my wheelchair in order to transfer to the car without them! Already a vast improvement in strength. Best of all, my lovely daughter, whom I hadn't seen for a week or so, commented that I was looking really good. "You have a lap again, Mom!" "Indeed I do, Kelly, indeed I do!" When I told her that I'm working towards a goal for next summer when she graduates high school,she said, "Mom, you could take me and my friends on our Senior trip to the beach!" Yep, this quest is definitely a good thing.

We went out to dinner to celebrate. I ate half of a delicious steak and a lovely green salad, and stayed 100% on plan for the day's eating. No birthday cake for this girl this year, but I was A-OK with that. Effortlessly buttoning my favorite jeans and having them almost fall off later in the day... WAAAAAYYYY better than cake.

To recap:
Compliments from teenage critic
Standing up without crutches
Pants almost falling down

This is the best gift I've ever given myself, and it's about darn time! Happy Birthday, me.

Love or Hate?

I believe that two people can take identical actions based on entirely different motives.

Consider the following women:

Overweight Woman #1 chooses to diet motivated from guilt, shame and fear, under girded by the beliefs that 1) she is unlovely and that her body is repulsive and 2)the only way to have a happy life is to lose x amount of fat. Her body is the enemy. The scales are the gauge of success. Contentment and Self-Acceptance are completely bound to body size. Life will be lived in the future when she's finally thin. Her self-talk is self-denigrating.

Overweight woman #2 chooses to eat fewer calories and to exercise motivated from love and hope, under girded by the beliefs that 1)she already is beautiful and valuable beyond imagining and her body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and 2)she will be healthier and thus happier each day she takes care of her body. Her body is her beloved friend. The scales are simply a gauge of her size, and not an indicator of her success or worth. Contentment and Self-Acceptance are freed from the tyranny of only being good enough if her butt isn't big and her skin doesn't sag. Life is lived fully each precious day and she is free to offer herself in love to the world just as she is, believing that loving other people makes her lovely. Her self-talk is full of love and compassion.

I admit that both women live inside of me. As my faith has grown over the years, the strident voice of #1 has grown quieter, and the melodic voice of #2 rings out in my soul. I have never experienced lasting change when fear/shame was in control. I grow quietly and steadily more assured each day that love/hope are powerful catalysts for slow, steady and enduring change.

As you believe, so you are.

(Day #5 on Medifast... Much BETTER! I'm peaceful and not hungry. Jeff, it's safe to come out of your room, now.)

Trying a New Direction

I'm sitting here waiting for something witty, deep or interesting to strike. Nada. I wonder if that's because my brain is glucose deprived? I started Medifast 4 days ago, and after three days or so, the body is supposed to convert into a fat-burning engine in a process called ketosis.

The literature states that when the body shifts from burning glucose to fat, hunger is supposed to abate. I'm no chemist (oh, wait, I sorta am a chemist), but I don't think my body is cooperating. I'm freakin' starving. And Jeffrey has a big, cheesy brocolli casserole in the oven. (Mothers have booted their kids out the door for MUCH MUCH LESS, JEFF!) I have one more Medifast "meal" to eat today. (Come on people! You call a 100 calorie packet of ground soybean protein a meal? A MEAL is a steak, baked potato, salad, rolls, and New York cheesecake. You ain't foolin' me. No sirree, not this chemist!)

Some of the food is pretty palatable, but holy cow! do I ever look forward to sinking my teeth into real food once a day. (The Lean and Green meal consists of 5-7 ounces of meat and about 2 cups of vegetables. Did you know that spinach has 10 calories per two cups? I wonder if 3 cups would be cheating?)

Can you tell that I am a wee bit edgy?

Despite my complaining, I'm excited to have taken this step. Weight loss is almost guaranteed-- I'm hoping for the lower end of their stated 2-5 pounds/week.

A side benefit of Medifast is that I happily jumped back on White Lightnin' last night and pedalled away. I'll do anything to speed up this process to lose weight so I don't have to eat Medifast "oatmeal" any longer than absolutely necessary. I eat it as penance for all the food I should not have eaten over the years. I'm not worried about regaining the weight once I lose it. The "oatmeal" threat will haunt me until I die. (As in, if you gain the weight again, Lynna, you can always lose it again eating "oatmeal". NOOOOOOO! Pass the celery!!!)

Can you tell that I'm a wee bit testy?

Come ON KETOSIS! KICK IN. Speaking of kicking, I want to drop-kick my son across the kitchen!

I think I'll go ride my Nustep for five hours instead.

Lovely but Deadly

Although I started this as a blog intended to be primarily about the physical aspects of wellness, I grow increasingly aware that physical wellness is intimately intertwined with spiritual and emotional wellness, too.

I've been attending to spiritual and emotional healing in recent weeks, and haven't been paying as much attention to the physical. Actually, I've been zapped by the spiritual/emotional work I've been doing, and perhaps that's why I've cut back on exercise for the past week or so. (Just haven't had the "oomph" to do it. I don't know if that's an excuse and maybe I should have pushed through, or if this is an intelligent act of self-care. I do know that if it results in a permanent slide away from an intentional focus on physical wellness, then this hiatus hasn't been for the better. Time will tell...)

What have I been paying attention to, you ask? Little things like wrestling against a desire to seek revenge, questioning God why my life seems to be trashed when I was truly trying to serve faithfully and lovingly, and, the biggie... letting go and moving forward.

Seeds of bitterness were beginning to sprout in my soul, and I was beginning to water them. Who am I kidding, I wasn't just watering them, I was dousing them with freaking Miracle Grow! I would gaze at those tantalizing seedlings and attend to them with diligent care. (Unlike my poor herbs that have languished on my back porch, growing brown and dry in the blazing summer heat.) Such wonderfully responsive seedlings, and, oh how easily and satisfyingly they flourished under my care. Mesmerizingly so.

I was reminded again this past week how desperately Christians need other Christians to help them live faithfully. I had loving friends tell me, in essence, that I needed to rip that plant out of my soul, and that I needed to forgive.

Rip it out???? How could I do that when it was beginning to show such promise of flowering so beautifully? (The bitterness/revenge plant is insidiously attractive.) How does a gardener rip something out of the ground that promises to be so spectacular... like blue-ribbon, state fair quality spectacular? I'm telling you, it aint easy!

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, said a prayer for help, reached out and tugged that plant out of the soil and tossed it onto the ground where it could wither in the sun. oh how hard it has been to resist the urge to grab it up and tamp it back into the loamy fertile soil where it could be revived. (I suspect this plant is alot like kudzu and will never truly die... it always has the potential, no matter how dry and dormant it might appear, to become verdant with life if I choose to nurture it.)

For today, though, I am glad to see that bitterness plant so brown and dry. As it withers on the pile where I toss the weeds, other sprouts are beginning to appear in my soul's garden where they previously had no space to grow and nobody to tend to them. Sprouts of creativity and laughter, hope and opportunity. It almost feels like that bitterness plant had me under a spell... as though it produced chemicals that anesthetized and numbed my soul.

Better go. I have some lovely herbs (not metaphorical ones!) on my back porch that I need to water (poor little neglected babies) and a day ripe with opportunities for productivity and adventure. I think it even includes an hour or two of exercise. I'm awake and alive and ready to embrace the possibilities.

One last thing, rip those bitterness seedlings out of your soul. You'll be glad you did!

Don't tell Mrs Smith!

Is there some magical recipe that leads to overall wellness and does each person have their own tailor-made cookbook designed by God?

Maybe my recipe for wellness includes a liberal dash of suffering (disability?), seasoned with some angst and alone time. Maybe it includes a marinade of weakness, loneliness, anger, and forgiveness to tenderize me. Is God like a Master Chef, knowing the ingredients, proportions and timing necessary to create a masterpiece out of my life?

The ingredients He has put together haven't seemed very appealing. My favorite entree of all time is Chicken Tarragon. My life recently has seemed like I was being offered raw eggs, a stick of butter, raw chicken, bitter tarragon, and stale bread. Ummm...Thank you, very much, but I'm not really hungry. Taken and eaten separately, they are all nauseating.

If I wrote the recipe for my life, what vital ingredients would I leave out?(Is anything needed other than chocolate, after all!) What proportions would I get wrong? (My preparation would be sickeningly sweet.) Would my technique ruin the dish? (I'd bake it at a nice gentle 200 degrees and eat it semi-raw, not wanting to turn up the heat.)

I sometimes think God is a little nuts. Like some kind of crazed chef tossing flour into the air and dumping ingredients helter skelter into a bowl while cackling maniacally. Me: "It doesn't make sense! Stop beating me with a mallet! That's too bitter! How about folding that in gently instead of whipping it! Geez! Slow down! Speed up! You are SO NOT adding Brussels sprouts!!! I am supposed to be a Chocolate Tort!"

And, I am reminded of Scripture: What right does the dish have to say to the Chef what form it will take?

If my life were a kitchen, it would look like a horror-scene on Mother's Day morning
after the kids attempt to cook mom breakfast. And, yet, in the midst of spilled, broken, dirty chaos, the smell coming from the oven is divine. "What's that? You don't say, God! A new concoction? One of a kind? You might enter it in a bake-off? Get OUT! You are naming it " Weird Lynna Wellness Pie"? I have to hand it to you Chef God, that combination of chicken, tarragon, Brussels sprouts and chocolate sounds nauseating, and definitely NOT what I'd choose, but, judging by the smell wafting from the oven, you might just know your way around the kitchen. Now, who is going to clean up this MESS?!"

Sweet June

I had intended to write this post as a six month update chronicling the events of my life and wellness journey during this past month. (Get it... June? duh) But, almost instantly as I typed the title, I realized the post was being hijacked for unplanned destinations. So, I'll just let my fingers take over and see where this goes.

Sweet June... maybe in another post, I'll write what I had originally intended, but or now I want to remember my sweet June, the woman who gave me hope during a particularly desperate time in my life when I was on the brink of giving up. (Not giving up as in suicide, but just plain ol' giving up where the body goes through the motions while serving as a tomb for a decaying, lifeless soul.) June was an unlikely source of hope. She was a frail, extraordinarily ill, home bound member of my church. Every morning one of us would call her, always dreading the possibility that our day on the rotation might be the one when the call would go unanswered.

June asked me to be one of her callers. We had never met. I didn't even know she was out there. But somehow she knew me. She knew that I was a new Christian and she knew (how?) that I was struggling in a desperate wrestling match with God over my disability, alternating between fervent pleas for healing and pounding my fists at heaven's door demanding answers for my pain. "You are all powerful. You say you desire good things for your children. Why in the hell won't you heal my legs!"

It was a time of anguish and uncertainty. Just who was this God who had entered my life like a ... this is going to sound cliche but it is the only description that comes remotely close... like a consuming fire?

Once a month, I would call June. We would talk for five minutes or so. (She was too ill to talk much longer than that.) Well, really, she would talk and I would weep. She would express her delight that I was the one calling her that day. (I suspect she was equally delighted with each caller, but she made me feel like I was special.) She would then ask me how her precious Lynna was doing. She would tell me how much I was loved, how special I was. For five minutes each month, I soaked up her love like a magic healing elixir. At the end of the conversations, she never failed to extract a promise from me to take care of her precious Lynna. Between sobs and blowing my nose, I told her I would do my best.

I only had about a year with June before she died. In total, we talked no more than about sixty minutes. One hour given, one life transformed. Those brief moments reside powerfully in my soul as a healing touch from the living Christ. It is good to remember June, and to remember the powerful lesson I learned through that experience with her that God can and does use unlikely people as ministers of his grace, and that as long as there is breath there are opportunities to love others and to be used to change the world.

I wish I could say I always remember that; but, too much of the time, especially of late, I'm prone to mourn my lost ability to serve in my former capacity in my job at the church. I've felt cast aside by God... used up, broken down, and replaced with others more whole of body. I need to repent of that attitude and to joyfully seek and embrace opportunities, even five minutes here and there, to cast seeds of love and healing grace. I KNOW firsthand that five minutes can change a life.

If June were here right now, I would give her a bright smile and tell her that I AM taking care of me. I would thank her for instilling in me the fledgling belief that I am worthy of that care, and for helping me to believe in love.

Sweet June. I'm so blessed to have known you.