I have a very hard time believing in the goodness of God. I don't mean believing in that concept. I mean deep down, at the heart level, where it transforms my life and heart. I absolutely can believe in His righteousness, and in the concept of His justice. It is easy for me to see Him as Lord, but hard to see Him as Father. I don't know if this is just my nature, partially my upbringing, or just because I am (shocking, I know!) human. I like to try to take control, earn my own way, make myself right in His eyes FIRST-and then come to Him. I like to work hard to make my life turn out the way I want it to be (or the way I think He wants it to be)-to control the details of timing, etc. I like to try to wash myself clean and make myself "presentable". It's hard for me to grasp that I have it backwards-that I have to let go of that control and come to Him, let Him change me from the heart out, and then my actions will reflect what is inside.
I am SO thankful to say that my Father, rather than getting impatient and throwing me in time out (which I think is what I as a parent would be tempted to do with such a recalcitrant child) has been gently and graciously teaching me about His goodness, and the value of release. Some examples:
I spent years agonizing over the fact that I wanted children, but "couldn't" have them right now. We weren't in a life situation where I could stay home with them, and therefore, it "wasn't time." We weren't ready. He encouraged us to stop trying to prevent and allow Him to decide the timing-and gave us a beautiful, wonderful, deeply treasured little boy. Is it hard being a working mother? Oh my heavens, yes. Harder than being a stay at home mom? I don't know. I think the struggles are different, so it may be hard to compare the two. Is it better to be a working mother than to not be one at all? Absolutely.
I spent years struggling to lose weight. And I mean that I tried everything. Diet, exercise, extreme forms of both-and the only thing that worked in nearly 5 years was the weeks of fasting imposed by my morning sickness. Weight struggles are so hard on an emotional and spiritual level as well as a physical one. After Ben was born, I dropped pretty quickly to about 3 pounds below my prepregnancy weight and then stayed there. I didn't really try to lose weight, honestly-I was scared, and didn't want to go back to the bondage and mental struggles that I had been dealing with prior to pregnancy. I spent a lot of time talking to my Father about this, and really felt Him asking me to let go, stop finding my worth in what *I* do or do not look like in this area, and allow Him to be good to me. In January, I did. Since then, I have lost 27 pounds-and without the ridiculous striving that characterized my life before (I am eating healthy and exercising-but in balance, not the extremes of exercising 2-3 hours/day and counting calories like a fiend). It feels like magic to me, because VERY extreme measures did not work before-and now I am just doing what "normal people" do to lose weight, and it is working! Even more significant to me, is that while I am enjoying the process of watching the scale creep down (and loving my "new" wardrobe of clothing that I haven't been able to wear in years!), I am not obssessing over my workout schedule, food, or the way I look as I have in the past. I still feel the freedom and joy I had in pregnancy-I am able to lose weight with a balanced mindset. I don't know that I have EVER been able to do that.
I have a dear friend who has deeply struggled with infertility. She and I have spent time praying about it together, and I have spent countless hours crying out on her behalf as well. She recently found out she is expecting!
Now, I absolutely AM NOT a health and wellness gospel believer. I do not believe that if God is happy with you, then all of your problems go away and you are magically this super happy and healthy person. I know there is a fine line to be walked there. The thing with that philosophy is that it is STILL dependent on you. Is YOUR FAITH strong enough, are YOU PRAYING well enough or in the right way, etc. And heaven knows there are still deep struggles in my day (finding the alertness to get through a work day after a sleepless night comes to mind!). But I am so grateful that my Father is teaching me how to walk with Him in a new way-a way that trusts Him and believes that He can be good to me. I don't always do well with it. Especially in the area of my weight, it is SO easy to turn it back into I, and me...to stress about whether I exercised enough that day, etc. I'm not perfect here by any means. But I do see His hand working in my life, gently and lovingly teaching Me that He is on my side (even if that doesn't always look the way I think it should look), and that is enough. He is enough.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
Happy 0.75!
This month, my sweet son turned 9 months old. Wow. I know that each month I say time flies by-but I mean it. If you are pregnant right now, or have a small baby-be warned. You are going to blink and your baby will be a big boy/girl! It is overwhelmingly exciting and wonderful to watch them grow, but slightly heartbreaking at the same time, and each stage has both challenges and wonderful joys!
This month more than any previous month, Ben has become very interactive. He has been smiling a lot and laughing, but now he is playing games with us. He loves to play peekaboo (he has liked this for a while, but now he is "hiding" and "finding" himself) and we just discovered a new game where he shakes his head back and forth ("no") and we tickle his tummy, he giggles, we stop, and he shakes his head again. He is DEFINITELY experimenting with cause and effect. If we do something in response to something he does (and he likes it) he is very likely to try again to see if hisperforming monkeys parents will do the same trick twice. It is so fun to play with him like this!
He has started demonstrating excitement when he sees a parent, which is so fun. :-) When he comes to see me at lunch, the biggest smile breaks over his face! And the same when he sees his daddy (this boy is head over heels, crazy in love with his daddy-seriously, he thinks his daddy is the best person in the WORLD! It's the sweetest thing...). He also looks for people if he doesn't see them (and I can ask him "where is daddy" and he will look for him in the places he normally is-smarty pants!).
He has started reaching for us and showing anxiety when we walk away. However, we can walk away if we keep talking to him and reassuring him we are coming back (if I put him down to go to the bathroom or something like that).
He is signing a little bit-mostly to nurse. Josh is signing with him, so hopefully soon we will see some other signs.
He can scoot/army crawl a bit, but isn't really crawling on hands and knees yet. He is sitting and will transition from sitting to tummy (though that scares me a bit on our hardwood floor). He isn't really pulling up either. The kid definitely prefers to be held, though we can now put him down to play for a while depending on his mood. I'm okay with this-I figure he will be all over the place before we know it and for now, I don't mind knowing that he will be approximately where I put him down when I come back to get him.
He is eating a wider variety of food-still mostly fruits and veggies, but occasionally he will want to self feed some cheerios or something similar. He definitely prefers foods with flavor (he would way rather eat a cooked carrot out of my soup/stew versus a regular cooked carrot).
Happy 0.75, baby son! We are SO incredibly blessed to take care of you every day!
This month more than any previous month, Ben has become very interactive. He has been smiling a lot and laughing, but now he is playing games with us. He loves to play peekaboo (he has liked this for a while, but now he is "hiding" and "finding" himself) and we just discovered a new game where he shakes his head back and forth ("no") and we tickle his tummy, he giggles, we stop, and he shakes his head again. He is DEFINITELY experimenting with cause and effect. If we do something in response to something he does (and he likes it) he is very likely to try again to see if his
He has started demonstrating excitement when he sees a parent, which is so fun. :-) When he comes to see me at lunch, the biggest smile breaks over his face! And the same when he sees his daddy (this boy is head over heels, crazy in love with his daddy-seriously, he thinks his daddy is the best person in the WORLD! It's the sweetest thing...). He also looks for people if he doesn't see them (and I can ask him "where is daddy" and he will look for him in the places he normally is-smarty pants!).
He has started reaching for us and showing anxiety when we walk away. However, we can walk away if we keep talking to him and reassuring him we are coming back (if I put him down to go to the bathroom or something like that).
He is signing a little bit-mostly to nurse. Josh is signing with him, so hopefully soon we will see some other signs.
He can scoot/army crawl a bit, but isn't really crawling on hands and knees yet. He is sitting and will transition from sitting to tummy (though that scares me a bit on our hardwood floor). He isn't really pulling up either. The kid definitely prefers to be held, though we can now put him down to play for a while depending on his mood. I'm okay with this-I figure he will be all over the place before we know it and for now, I don't mind knowing that he will be approximately where I put him down when I come back to get him.
He is eating a wider variety of food-still mostly fruits and veggies, but occasionally he will want to self feed some cheerios or something similar. He definitely prefers foods with flavor (he would way rather eat a cooked carrot out of my soup/stew versus a regular cooked carrot).
Happy 0.75, baby son! We are SO incredibly blessed to take care of you every day!
Thursday, March 7, 2013
A Weighty Matter
Okay, so that's a bad pun. Take it back-that's an awful pun! My husband would be ashamed. However, this is my blog, not his, so too bad! Of note-I am happy for anyone who wants to read this blog to go ahead and read it-but if we are just casual acquaintances, you will probably find it boring. You have been warned!
So, some of you know this, some don't, but shortly before Josh and I got married, I made the worst medical mistake of my adult life-I took hormonal birth control. I thought that was just what you do-we are about to get married, not ready for kiddos yet, so this is the responsible adult thing to do. Well, to say it wreaked havoc on my body is to put it VERY mildly. The first one I was on made my hormones swing like crazy. Ask Josh-I literally spent an ENTIRE WEEKEND sobbing on the couch in his apartment-for no identifiable reason. I didn't even know it was possible for an adult to cry that long (or any human for that matter!) and I had no answer to the question of "what's wrong???" After that, we both agreed that I was changing pills. That was NOT an experience we wanted to repeat!
The next one I took was better from the hormone standpoint (at least the ones that make you crazy and emotional) so we thought we were good. We got married, came back to Texas, and I started clinical rotations. Then all of a sudden, I started gaining weight. Fast. And a lot of it. In fact, in the first 3 months we were married, I put on 50 lbs. Now, sometimes we are most blind when it comes to our own lives and bodies. I had heard and read of people "letting themselves go" after marriage, and figured maybe that was the problem. Never mind the fact that we were eating exactly the same and I had become MORE active (I went from sitting in a chair 8+ hours/day to standing, walking, running, and lifting that same amount of time), not less. Eventually, I realized that couldn't be it. Well, maybe I was stressed? I was in the clinical rotation from hell, after all. Nope...the gain did not end when the rotation did. So I started seeing doctors. The first one I tried was positive I had an eating disorder I was trying to hide (because people who are trying to hide conditions seek medical care). The second told me in words that are seared into my soul to this day, "I know you are just wanting to sit on the couch and eat chocolate all day, and I am not going to give you a medical excuse to do that." No one mentioned birth control as a possibility.
My sister in law got off of her birth control around that time and mentioned how much better she (eventually) felt. She had been having some of the same fatigue symptoms that I had been having, so I wondered if that would help me. So I got off of mine. It took about 5 months, but finally, FINALLY my weight gain stabilized and I stopped gaining (almost 80 lbs more than I had been at the beginning of all of this). However, no matter what I did, it would not come off.
You know how you watch those extreme weight loss shows and see a contestant who hasn't lost the right amount of weight...and then the trainer gets in their face and says, "Math doesn't lie! If you were doing xyz and only eating this many calories, you would have lost this much weight!" Well, I can't tell you for sure how it is for those people, but for me, the math lied. There were points in time where I was doing 2-3 2 hour workouts per day and eating 1400 calories or sometimes slightly more-and my weight did not budge. It didn't even really redistribute very much. I won't elaborate on the emotional struggles involved with this, but any of you who are women or who have spent any time talking to women, will know what I mean.
Finally, one of my parents' friends (a family practice physician) got involved. And I FINALLY, after over a year at this point, had answers. Apparently this is a fairly common side effect of birth control (about 5% of women who start birth control, especially at a point multiple years past puberty have this "side effect"-which I think is a high enough number to warrant a warning and/or recognition by the medical community!). It essentially can "turn off" your body's ability to process food-and instead it starts storing EVERYTHING you eat...the net impact is that even though you are gaining weight, your nutrition levels are similar to someone who is starving to death, because everything is being stored rather than used. Oh, and it doesn't really matter what you eat, healthiness, calories burned, etc.-it isn't going to come off and you will keep gaining.
So I got on medication-several medications, actually, which were intended to turn my metabolism back on and make my body start processing food correctly again. There were some side effects of those, but I was SLOWLY starting to lose weight. I was eating healthy, taking the meds, and doing P90X-and at the end of the 90 days, I had dropped about 10 pounds. Not much...just a drop in the bucket, really...but it was the first time I had been able to lose weight in almost 3 years.
Then I got pregnant. I was soooo happy, and weight was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I loved my body while I was pregnant. For the first time, I didn't feel like I had to constantly berate myself for my weight and I didn't feel like people were judging me (for the record, both of those are my issues, not due to anyone else!). However, when I got pregnant I almost immediately dropped 20 lbs despite the fact that I stopped exercising. I was quite ill and unable to eat much. I was okay with that, but really not worried about my body-I figured I'd start the whirlwind and craziness again once the baby came.
I gained a total of 12 pounds during my pregnancy (over my prepregnancy weight). In fact, I walked out of the hospital weighing only 3 lbs more than I did before I got pregnant. People had mentioned the possibility of pregnancy hormones "resetting" my metabolism, which made sense since I had gained the weight hormonally, but I didn't hope for it. However, the weight continued to slowly come off, even though I wasn't trying (there was a lot going on postpartum). 2 months ago, I was FINALLY cleared to exercise, and then the weight started coming off more quickly. It was like magic!
The math is finally working. It's crazy.
I am so thankful-it is so freeing to actually have things work the way they are supposed to! As of today, I weigh 21 pounds less than I did before I got pregnant, and in the last month I've been dropping an average of 2 pounds per week. I definitely feel a lot better, and I can fit in clothes that didn't even fit before I was pregnant! I'm not sure if it will continue doing this (part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop) but I am so thankful to the Lord for giving me this gift.
So, some of you know this, some don't, but shortly before Josh and I got married, I made the worst medical mistake of my adult life-I took hormonal birth control. I thought that was just what you do-we are about to get married, not ready for kiddos yet, so this is the responsible adult thing to do. Well, to say it wreaked havoc on my body is to put it VERY mildly. The first one I was on made my hormones swing like crazy. Ask Josh-I literally spent an ENTIRE WEEKEND sobbing on the couch in his apartment-for no identifiable reason. I didn't even know it was possible for an adult to cry that long (or any human for that matter!) and I had no answer to the question of "what's wrong???" After that, we both agreed that I was changing pills. That was NOT an experience we wanted to repeat!
The next one I took was better from the hormone standpoint (at least the ones that make you crazy and emotional) so we thought we were good. We got married, came back to Texas, and I started clinical rotations. Then all of a sudden, I started gaining weight. Fast. And a lot of it. In fact, in the first 3 months we were married, I put on 50 lbs. Now, sometimes we are most blind when it comes to our own lives and bodies. I had heard and read of people "letting themselves go" after marriage, and figured maybe that was the problem. Never mind the fact that we were eating exactly the same and I had become MORE active (I went from sitting in a chair 8+ hours/day to standing, walking, running, and lifting that same amount of time), not less. Eventually, I realized that couldn't be it. Well, maybe I was stressed? I was in the clinical rotation from hell, after all. Nope...the gain did not end when the rotation did. So I started seeing doctors. The first one I tried was positive I had an eating disorder I was trying to hide (because people who are trying to hide conditions seek medical care). The second told me in words that are seared into my soul to this day, "I know you are just wanting to sit on the couch and eat chocolate all day, and I am not going to give you a medical excuse to do that." No one mentioned birth control as a possibility.
My sister in law got off of her birth control around that time and mentioned how much better she (eventually) felt. She had been having some of the same fatigue symptoms that I had been having, so I wondered if that would help me. So I got off of mine. It took about 5 months, but finally, FINALLY my weight gain stabilized and I stopped gaining (almost 80 lbs more than I had been at the beginning of all of this). However, no matter what I did, it would not come off.
You know how you watch those extreme weight loss shows and see a contestant who hasn't lost the right amount of weight...and then the trainer gets in their face and says, "Math doesn't lie! If you were doing xyz and only eating this many calories, you would have lost this much weight!" Well, I can't tell you for sure how it is for those people, but for me, the math lied. There were points in time where I was doing 2-3 2 hour workouts per day and eating 1400 calories or sometimes slightly more-and my weight did not budge. It didn't even really redistribute very much. I won't elaborate on the emotional struggles involved with this, but any of you who are women or who have spent any time talking to women, will know what I mean.
Finally, one of my parents' friends (a family practice physician) got involved. And I FINALLY, after over a year at this point, had answers. Apparently this is a fairly common side effect of birth control (about 5% of women who start birth control, especially at a point multiple years past puberty have this "side effect"-which I think is a high enough number to warrant a warning and/or recognition by the medical community!). It essentially can "turn off" your body's ability to process food-and instead it starts storing EVERYTHING you eat...the net impact is that even though you are gaining weight, your nutrition levels are similar to someone who is starving to death, because everything is being stored rather than used. Oh, and it doesn't really matter what you eat, healthiness, calories burned, etc.-it isn't going to come off and you will keep gaining.
So I got on medication-several medications, actually, which were intended to turn my metabolism back on and make my body start processing food correctly again. There were some side effects of those, but I was SLOWLY starting to lose weight. I was eating healthy, taking the meds, and doing P90X-and at the end of the 90 days, I had dropped about 10 pounds. Not much...just a drop in the bucket, really...but it was the first time I had been able to lose weight in almost 3 years.
Then I got pregnant. I was soooo happy, and weight was the last thing on my mind. In fact, I loved my body while I was pregnant. For the first time, I didn't feel like I had to constantly berate myself for my weight and I didn't feel like people were judging me (for the record, both of those are my issues, not due to anyone else!). However, when I got pregnant I almost immediately dropped 20 lbs despite the fact that I stopped exercising. I was quite ill and unable to eat much. I was okay with that, but really not worried about my body-I figured I'd start the whirlwind and craziness again once the baby came.
I gained a total of 12 pounds during my pregnancy (over my prepregnancy weight). In fact, I walked out of the hospital weighing only 3 lbs more than I did before I got pregnant. People had mentioned the possibility of pregnancy hormones "resetting" my metabolism, which made sense since I had gained the weight hormonally, but I didn't hope for it. However, the weight continued to slowly come off, even though I wasn't trying (there was a lot going on postpartum). 2 months ago, I was FINALLY cleared to exercise, and then the weight started coming off more quickly. It was like magic!
The math is finally working. It's crazy.
I am so thankful-it is so freeing to actually have things work the way they are supposed to! As of today, I weigh 21 pounds less than I did before I got pregnant, and in the last month I've been dropping an average of 2 pounds per week. I definitely feel a lot better, and I can fit in clothes that didn't even fit before I was pregnant! I'm not sure if it will continue doing this (part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop) but I am so thankful to the Lord for giving me this gift.
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