Tag: personal growth

Too Much of a Good Thing

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This week has… not been so great. I’ve been over-committed and exhausted, and the worst part is, it’s all of my own doing! I’m generally pretty good at saying no to outside commitments, but it turns out, I can’t seem to say it to myself.

I’ve been giving this quite a bit of thought, and I think the cause of it is I’ve allowed my goals to get out of sync with my priorities. This is a bit embarrassing to admit – in my previous career, I was a corporate trainer who got paid to teach people how to set goals properly! So how is it still sometimes so difficult?

This past year has been a pretty unprecedented season of personal change for me. I’ve lost a significant amount of weight, which itself came after a time of some pretty deep emotional issues. I’ve craved simplicity like it was chocolate, and I’ve purged and organized all the closets and cabinets I can get my hands on. We’ve taken on a major financial project with the goal of being debt free, and while that’s just starting, I’ve been trying to keep my spending as limited as possible. So when the weightloss sparked several dropped clothing sizes, I’ve spent countless hours sorting old clothes, some to donate and some to sell (which takes way more steaming/steaming/photographing/listing time than I imagined!). Oh, and I changed roles again at my job a little over a year ago, and due to the nature of the work, much of it is still new to me.

So I find myself surrounded in self-improvement projects, and although I have more physical energy, my mental energy has drained rapidly the past few weeks. The mess of clothes in the guest room makes me twitch (oh, and we just went through our semi-annual kid’s consignment sorting and tagging extravaganza with Peapod’s stuff). I have blog ideas pinging around my brain but it takes time to document some of my projects with my camera as I’m working through them. I am trying to learn Instagram and other tools to build a cohesive media presence that might one day create a second income stream for my family. My husband’s schedule has gone out of sync with mine so preschool pickups are complicated and I can’t always get to my workout classes. And, the most frustrating thing of all is my weightloss has started to stall out!Busy mind

Is it possible to take on too much of good things? Heck yeah! What’s too much? Who knows! But here’s what I do know: when it all starts to go sideways, the only place to go is back to the basics. My time with God has to come back to the top of my daily to do list. Next are my family’s care and my physical well-being. I’m not entirely sure why I’m struggling so much lately to track and follow my eating plan, but it’s the only thing that works. I have had great success, but I’m nowhere near my final goal, and I don’t want to give up now! If I’m real honest, it’s only partly fatigue from doing this for so many months and more so the stress of my life whispering to me that food will take the edge off. It’s time to remember that I’m doing this to improve my life to be able to better deal with stress! As for the rest… I need to slow my roll.

That’s where the prioritizing gets a little tougher, I think. With my discarded clothes, I have felt like it was the fiscally responsible thing to try to get some of the value back to put towards other purchases. And that’s not a bad thing, but in my case, it may not be that good of a thing either. The key to that decision is, what is the opportunity cost to my time? It’s possible its time to let practicality trump dollars, donate them to a good cause, and enjoy the room to breathe.

With my blog writing and organizing projects and thoughts and how-tos…. it’s easy to get lost in analysis of what would get more views, widen my exposure, capitalize on a trend. But I believe God gave me the words to write the truth and insights from my life to be useful to someone else. And that’s how I’ll approach it going forward – I want to write my heart. And sometimes that might be how to cut a pineapple and sometimes it might be a meditation on a scripture. I want to connect with people and encourage them, more than I want a certain number of views or likes on Instagram.

Some of you may be the Type A to my Type B, and you may not struggle with this kind of thing at all. That is great! This is no condemnation of self-improvement. It’s just an acknowledgement that at some point in any of our lives, we can “good idea” ourselves right into some not-so-good moments. Let’s pay attention. We only have one life on this earth – let it be something lovely!

Inside Out

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I’ve always been some degree of overweight as an adult. To be honest, sometimes it bothered me and sometimes it didn’t. When those degrees notched up a bit I’d try some diet or another, lose maybe 15 pounds and then get bored or overwhelmed and give up. But in 2013, I was catapulted into the most difficult time of my life, and everything took on new shape and form, including myself.

Completely and totally overwhelmed by becoming a new mom at 41, my husband’s job loss, the devastation of our finances, and the stress that accompanied a job change of my own, I turned to food. I was too embarrassed by the turmoil in my life, by my own lack of perfection to reach out for help for a very long time. Over those months I ate my stress, my sorrow, my embarrassment, and my confusion. I knew I was gaining weight but I just didn’t have any emotional resources left to deal with it. I was outraged at how hard my life was and instead of turning to Jesus as I knew to do, I feared what He might show me about my own weaknesses so I gave in to my anger instead and used food to try to numb it. I gained somewhere around 70 pounds in a little more than a year.

Weight is such a complex subject, perhaps especially for women. For me, it was a barrier between my private hell and the world I was sure was judging me; a literal insulation from activities and people around me. It was also a punishment I inflicted on myself for being so angry and having such ugly thoughts.

Once we started doing the hard work of restoring the right order of our lives (a story of grace for another day), I made a decision I hadn’t anticipated. I gave myself permission to stay fat while I dealt with the state of my heart first. I don’t believe there’s a diet plan in the world that would have worked for me until I could forgive myself for my failings. This was a challenging line to walk. I was becoming lighter and freer on the inside and painfully aware my outside did not match. Although no one said anything unkind to me, I imagined a thousand unspoken comments from those around me of, “poor Heidi, if she could just get a grip on her weight.” I did my best to hold my head up and carry on, wanting desperately to shout from the rooftops that these pounds weren’t the real me, that people had no idea of what I’d been through, what I’d almost lost,  what kind of miracles were going on in my spirit and my home. And that I wasn’t undisciplined or out of control as they may have believed.

Finally, last Spring, I knew I was ready to physically take care of myself like I’d been doing emotionally and spiritually. I signed up for Weight Watchers as a 45th birthday present to myself and the pounds started falling off. Eventually, people started to notice, and the compliments started coming. I am thankful for them. They are flattering, and sincere, and appreciated. But sometimes I hear “You look great, you must feel so much better now” and it stops me in my tracks.

They are not wrong. I do, in fact, feel better. I’m stronger, and faster, and lighter. But I can’t help wishing they knew that what makes me feel better is the lightness of heart, the joy, the peace in my home that came before the pounds started to go. That I was ok before I looked like it on the surface. That I was worth complimenting for honoring my marriage vows, for choosing a forgiving spirit, for simply living my life and not giving up. But I can’t ask from people what I haven’t done well myself.

So I think I’m finding my voice now to say this: I was worth it. God says if He cares for even the sparrows my worth is infinitely greater. Who was I to pour hatred over myself and suffocate myself in the walls I thought were shutting everyone else out. And you are worth it too. If you struggle with extra weight, you might choose to lose it, and I will cheer you on.

But first I’ll tell you that you are a priceless treasure. That we are all an amalgamation of strengths and weaknesses, and no one kind is more valuable than the other. I told myself for so long that my capacity to gain weight made me worthless, diminished my value in this world, was a character flaw. I was wrong. The flaws were the destructive attitudes I chose, and as I constantly tell my preschooler, you can choose a new attitude any time. I believe this for me, and I will believe it for you, until you can choose to believe it for yourself.