True confessions

My clothes no longer fit.

I loathe exercise.

I want to quit trying to lose weight because it's far more fun to put weight on than take it off.

I hate the way my body looks.

My blood sugars are totally out of whack.

I feel guilty for all of the above.

Okay, now that I've gotten that off my shoulders here's what I'm doing about it. First off I'm doing the tried and true lessening what I eat and exercising more. This has been a huge inner struggle because I haven't eaten like I'd like to in months and yet I've lost nothing. I’ve gained weight in fact.

So God being God and loving me even when I pout brought to the forefront an even bigger problem than my weight issues. The growing attitude of entitlement that's weighing me down far more than the numbers on my scale.

By entitlement I mean the attitude that someone owes me something. Here’s how it looked in my home over the weekend...

The three-year-old version: "All toys are my toys and everybody should let me do whatever I want when I want it."

The six-year-old version: "My opinion deserves to be heard and everyone should listen."

The nine-year-old version: "I can take all the time I want to do whatever I want and no one should tell me otherwise."

The thirty-something-year-old version: "I want to eat and do whatever I want and I shouldn't ever gain weight."

In all these things there was an underlying belief that someone owes us something. There’s a “right” each of us were holding onto that brought us into conflict with each other or ourselves.

And God saw fit to give me this object lesson through my kids and my weight issues so I wouldn’t miss the message.

Again, God being God, He didn’t leave me to stew in my attitude with no hope of release or direction. In giving my girls a “talking to” about the issues of rights and how ultimately God owns all we have and our time, talents, and journeys belong to Him as well, I saw my problem far more clearly than I wanted to.

I felt like God owed it to me to make one issue in my life easier and I’d chosen my weight as the thing He “should” be fixing. After all, I was doing “good stuff” and “trying hard” especially in the area of eating healthy and exercising.

Then this morning I read in 2 Peter 1:3 “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.”

Here’s a true confession of what went through my mind when I read this verse: So if I have everything I need for life and godliness, why is my health as a whole such a wreck??? Why do I feel like I’m failing far more than I’m succeeding in any given area? AND why does it feel like God’s not giving me what I need to even get out of bed let alone live a godly life?

Not only had I been upset with God over not making my weight issue easy to fix, I realized I had fallen back on demanding God be my genie in a bottle.

I ask. He answers, “As you wish.” Life is good.

Ouch.

So I went back to this verse and in repentance prayed, “Lord help me see that You are what I need and it’s in knowing You and allowing You to permeate every area of my life that true Christlikeness shines through. Godliness and life are about being in relationship with You. Change me to seek You simply for You.”

As I’ve pondered all this today I’ve come to realize something else. My “true confession” that matters the most is this…

God is God and I’m His beautiful daughter.

That truth is not dependent on a scale’s smaller numbers or my mirror’s approval. It’s not dependent on whether I feel like it’s true or not.

It is simply the truth.

And the more I confess the truth, the more I learn about God just by hanging out with Him, the more like Him I become.

That’s what truly matters. To know Him and enjoy Him. To let His power and His plan be lived out through us.

Please pray for me! And let me know how I can pray for you. Together let’s remind each other to praise and trust and hang on.

God is good all the time. And all the time He is good.