Ding Dang It!

Margaret2 Comments

Ding Dang Diets
I haven’t been counting my Weight Watchers points lately because I’ve grown weary with noting every morsel that goes into my pie-hole.  (And there’s been more than one Amish fried pie in there!)  Anyone watching me these days may well notice the evidence of my preference to eat rather than count as the smaller britches I bought late last summer are now my Maypops.  They may pop anytime.

Ding Dang Dawn of the Day
I gave myself a pep talk this morning at 4 a.m. when I was forced out of bed by a bladder begging for relief.  I looked into the bathroom mirror.  A 4 a.m. face is frightful!  “Do I really want to keep gaining weight?” I asked myself.  “Why, no! No, I don’t!” I answered.  I resolved to not start off my day with Jack’s yummy, buttery biscuits, a plan I’d made when I got into bed last night.  By the time I arrived at work, I had indeed eaten a Jack’s breakfast. Then, when I got to the office, a donut called my name…one of those Krispy Kreme fried devil biscuits, chocolate covered with sprinkles.  Yes, I did!   

Ding Dang Dining
As a side note…often at the Jack’s near my house, you order what you want, you pay for what you ordered, then you get what they give you.  Today, they did well.  But I digress.

Ding Dang, Ding Dang!
Now…it’s Thursday.  I can’t start a better way of eating on Friday!  It might be a law, I don’t know.  But I don’t want to binge all weekend, either.  Well, I do want to.  I just don’t want the consequences of it.

Ding Dang Choices! 
I have a tight relationship with bad choices…and it’s not just food…but those are stories for another day.

(I can’t “ding-dang” a devotional.  It’s too ding dang important.)
I should write seven-day devotional of sorts, covering personal choices, free will, and relationship with our Creator.  It would be about picking up and moving on toward a better life, no matter how many steps back you’ve (I’ve) taken. 

That’s the ding dang plan.  If I write the devotional, I’ll share it some day. 

Grief’s Ebb and Flow

Margaret2 Comments

Grief grabs me at unexpected times.  My mom left us 10 months and 7 days ago.  There are days, and even weeks that are just fine, when I think of her, it’s pleasant memories.  Maybe I’ll smile, or perhaps I’ll just get lost in thoughts of her…how she’d laugh, or how excited she’d be to share anything about Jesus.  

Other days, though. Those days sucker punch me.  I don’t see it coming, and suddenly, there it is…and I’m drowning in the loss of my mother. There is no rhyme or reason to grief.  The very same thing that happened yesterday with no emotion can happen today, and I’ll find myself in tears.  

A few weeks before Thanksgiving I was on vacation in the mountains.  There were beautiful fall and Thanksgiving decorations placed all around the Apple Barn and Cider Mill, where I was shopping. As I was enjoying the displays, I suddenly had a stark realization that Mom wouldn’t be around for Thanksgiving.  I left the store in tears, and it took several minutes to compose myself.  Yet on Thanksgiving day, no tears.  

Christmas is throwing me for a loop.  Some days are harder than I thought it would be. Sunday, as I was going through my Christmas decorations, I was so very aware that my mom is gone.  Gone.  She’s not coming back, and there will be no more Christmases with her.  No more of her specialties she enjoyed making for us, especially her chicken and dressing.  Because of covid, last Christmas was the first Christmas in my life that we all didn’t get together, my sisters and brothers and their families.  I’m am eternally grateful that I did get to spend last Christmas with her.  She was very sick, but still, she made us a small pan of her delicious dressing.  She asked me to help her, but then wouldn’t let me. So typically Mom.

How I wish I’d known that was my last Christmas with her.  I wish I’d known how terribly sick she really was…it would have helped me understand a few other things that were going on at the time.  I wish I’d known the really big hug she gave me in late November was the last real hug we’d have.  I miss her wisdom, her calming presence, her prayers.  Oh, how I miss her prayers.  They were like a warm security blanket, protecting me.  Yes, her prayers are still active, but it’s not always as easy to know that as when she was here.

Having said all of the above…I’m very happy for her, that she is in paradise with the One she has loved and served so faithfully these many years.  Not even for one minute would I bring her back to this earthly realm.  No, she paid her dues.  Never again will she have to feel the heaviness of a pain-ridden mortal body, or the sadness she couldn’t explain. She is now clothed in eternity with complete healing, and peace beyond our comprehension.  I may not have a full understanding of life after death before the return of Christ, but I do know that to be absent from this life is to be present with Him, and that is where she longed to be in her last few weeks with us.

How I miss her.  My Mommy.

My Own Words Bite Me

Margaret1 Comment

I’m at that place where the scales aren’t moving.  I’m stuck at 73 pounds.  I was stuck at 50 pounds a few months ago, but I knew why…I was pigging out on the weekends and behaving through the week.  Took a month off from restaurants and that took care of the hump.

Nashville Zoo

I did screw up a weekend a few weeks back.  I think most people trying to lose weight can relate to this:  I spend three weeks losing 4 pounds, binged on the weekend, and gained back the 4 pounds in two days!  Took me two weeks to lose those pounds again.  Vicious cycle.

I don’t know why our bodies will do that…hang on to every pound for dear life, and grab two pounds just by smelling the Krispy Kremes. 

My first 50 pounds were easy.  Melted right off without much struggle, and with no exercise.  For the last month, I have been walking.  I am now doing 50,000 – 70000 steps per week.  It’s not always easy, but it’s doable. 

Nashville Zoo

Here’s were my words are slapping me around.  I’ve been losing and gaining weight my entire adult life.  And now I’m 57 years old and feel as if I can advise with some tiny bit of knowledge learned from my years of experience.  So, I say about losing weight:

  • Find a way to eat that you can live with and do that.
  • Don’t engage in extreme exercise if you’ve never done it and don’t like it you won’t stick to it.   Find the way to exercise that you can live with…and do that. 
  • After the initial quick weight loss of a new diet, it’s going to be slow.  Very slow.  Very slow is better than not at all or gaining.

Slow is not an option,
but the rule.

But I find myself at the point where I’d rather eat than get on the scales after a week of walking over 10,000 steps each day, eating according to my chosen plan (Weight Watchers) and seeing a 2-ounce loss.  Two. Ounces.   I know my plan works, and I know that slow is not an option but the rule, and I am frustrated.  I still have 88 pounds to lose.  And I cannot use my upcoming vacation, Thanksgiving, and Christmas as reasons to quit or gain.  And if I do gain, I must not quit.

To show my hypocritical thinking…I’m going on vacation next week.  I do not plan to count points.  Why commit to something I probably won’t do because it will be such a hassle?  The best I can promise myself is to make wiser decisions.  It will be a test, no doubt.  

My Back Yard

A Very Monday Tuesday

Margaret2 Comments
Sea Oats (Fort Walton Beach, Florida)

Today begins a month-long commitment of no restaurant food.  (Lord Jesus, please help!)   I’d also like to commit to a beginner’s walking routine (notice my loop holes “I’d like to” and “beginner’s”).  Obviously, I am not as resolute to walking as I am to staying out of restaurants. 

Why no restaurants?   I’m glad you were wondering because I wanted to talk about it!  Aside from the whole “it’s not all that healthy for me,” there’s the truth:  I tend to reward myself for acting like a normal human with a normal appetite through the week by eating out on the weekend.  No matter how well-intentioned my plans are, I make the choice to overeat every weekend.   Maybe not in the first restaurant, but certainly by the second or third one. 

Oh.  I didn’t mention that I like to eat out a lot?   That is one of the reasons I say, “Lord Jesus, help!”  After all the bad choices in the restaurants, I then do something really senseless, I think, “Well, as long as I’ve already overeaten, I may as well have some…”  And everything that follows that line of thinking truly is always a choice.

Let me back up.   After a tumble in a mountainside creek (and issues getting up) last October, I started Weight Watchers.  By February, I’d lost 50 pounds.  Then unexpectedly, my mom died and I got on a 10 pound roller coaster losing and regaining the same 5-10 pounds…repeatedly.  While my precious mother’s death is the best excuse I’ve ever had to overeat, it is ultimately still just an excuse for my choices.

Let me back up even further.   Over the years, I begged God for freedom not realizing that as a child of God, I always had that freedom.  But I also had a free will.  Then there’s that whole reaping and sowing thing, and it all makes a full circle back to choices.   Yes, indeedy-doody.  Choices.  Reaping and sowing.   If I choose to eat an abundance of sugar-laden food, then I’m going to face some pretty intense cravings that nothing will satisfy.   If I choose the food, I chose the cravings.  If I keep eating, you guessed it…that is still a choice.   Hard as it may be to not give into it, that blood bought choice is undeniably mine. 

Did you know that as long as you believe you are a slave to sin (gluttony, that is) you just cannot walk in the freedom purchased by blood on a gruesome cross so many years ago?  Until you (by you, I mean me) take full responsibility for your (my) choices, we remain on that not so merry merry-go-round.   You know what happens when you go round and round too many times?   You get a little sick, don’t you?   

So, there we have it, it’s those ding dang choices!  I don’t always like responsibility, and making better choices for myself is definitely my responsibility.  I favor the path of least resistance, but I made the choice for the month of June to remove a weekend obstacle and get past this 50 pound marker where I have been stalled since February 7.    

That is all.  Carry on with your own healthy choices!