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Getting Honest Enough to Admit…

Getting Honest Enough to Admit…

“Listen to my words, Lord, consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray. In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.” Psalm 5:1-3 

I rolled over and looked at the clock. Another day. Beyond all reason and rationality, I slid out of bed and stripped off everything that might weigh even the slightest ounce as I headed to the scale.

I thought, “Maybe today will be the day the scale will be my friend and not reveal my secrets. Maybe somehow overnight the molecular structure of my body shifted and today I will magically weigh less.” 

I yanked out my ponytail holder – hey, it’s gotta weigh something – and decided to try again. But the scale didn’t change its mind the second time. It was not my friend this day. 

Vowing to do better, eat healthier, and make good choices, I headed to the kitchen only to have my resolve melt like the icing on the cinnamon rolls my daughter just pulled from the oven. Oh, who cares what the scale says when this roll speaks such love and deliciousness.

Two and a half cinnamon rolls later, I decided tomorrow would be a much better day to keep my promises to eat healthier. But tomorrow wasn’t the day. Or the next. Or the next. 

I knew I needed to make changes. Because this wasn’t really about the scale or what clothing size I was; it was about this battle that raged in my heart. I thought about, craved, and arranged my life too much around food. So much so, I knew it was something God was challenging me to surrender to His control. Surrender to the point where I’d make changes for the sake of my spiritual health perhaps even more than my physical health.

I had to get honest enough to admit it: I relied on food more than I relied on God. I craved food more than I craved God. Food was my comfort. Food was my reward. Food was my joy. Food was what I turned to in times of stress, sadness, and even in times of happiness.

I knew this battle would be hard. But through it all I determined to make God, rather than food, my focus. Each time I craved something I knew wasn’t part of my healthy eating plan, I used that craving as a prompt to pray. I craved a lot. So, I found myself praying a lot.

Sometimes I wound up on the floor of my closet, praying with tears running down my face. And I gave myself permission to cry, just like the psalmist in Psalm 5:1-3, Listen to my words, Lord, consider my lament. Hear my cry for help, my King and my God,  for to you I pray. In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait expectantly.”  

And that is literally what I did each day. Laid my requests before God and waited in expectation. Moment by moment, week by week, month by month, I made the conscious (and many times, painful) choice to surrender my desires to the transformative power the Lord wanted to work in and through my life.  

Then, one morning, it finally happened. I got up and for the first time in a long while, I felt incredibly empowered. I still did the same crazy routine with the scale, no clothes, no ponytail holder. The numbers hadn’t changed much, but my heart had. One day of victory tasted better than any of that food I’d given up ever could. I had waited in expectation using prayer as my guide and I did it.

Have there still been hard moments after that victorious morning? Yes. Have there also been great signs of progress? Absolutely!

I can’t promise you there won’t be any more tears. There will. And I can’t promise the scale magically drops as quickly as you wish it would. It probably won’t. But it will be a start. A really good start.

Lysa TerKeurst is a #1 New York Times bestselling author and president of Proverbs 31 Ministries. Her latest book is I’ll Start Again Monday (January 2022). Lysa lives with her family in North Carolina. Connect with her at LysaTerKeurst.com or on social media @LysaTerKeurst.

What Are You Working For?

What Are You Working For?

Since the 2022 Winter Paralympics have just finished up, I thought this would be a great time to share a bit about my own Paralympic experience in Tokyo. For those of you who arent familiar with my little story, I swim for Team Canada and this past summer God fulfilled a dream that has taken 13 years and many miles of going back and forth in the pool to accomplish! But hey, we made it! Although, what most of the world and social media doesnt know, was that going to Tokyo and being at the Paralympics was at times really awful. Yup, you read that correctly.

Youd think that fulfilling a life long dream would go as smooth as the peanut butter I put on my toast this morning. Youd assume that if God was gifting you with a reward like this, that hed make sure there was 100% no drama and everything would be exactly how you dreamed it would beyeah, not so much. A girl can dream and I thought this dream was pretty valid. Have you ever wanted a dream to go smoothly? 

There were some days in the athletes village where the only thing that got me through the day, was reminding myself that I was currently sitting in a gift. I was literally standing in the middle of an answered prayer, but why was it nothing like I imagined? Why did it feel so overwhelming and heavy? Now dont get me wrong, competing for Canada at that level was one of the most incredible experiences of my life! I loved every second of my race, walking out to the blocks, soaking it all in, feeling completely at peace and no pressure to perform. Knowing that I wasnt there to perform for the world but there because God takes pleasure in watching me swim, that hits different.

That one moment was everything and more. I became a Paralympian on August 28th, 2021, the day God intended.

But other than that, the whole experience was super difficult. Emotions where high, performances and medals were top priority. Have you noticed how people lose themselves when they are put in a high stress environment? My teammates who I thought had my back, just didnt. Everyone was on edge, emotions were driving peoples assumptions, lack of leadership made for a chaotic atmosphere and to top it all off, being thousands of miles away from your friends and family was harder than I thought. 

I left Tokyo feeling like my gift came with a price. And in all honesty, I felt like God made me pay for it myself.

Yes, I was given what I always wanted, but in the theme of full transparency, all the work I had done felt like it should have produced a more comfortable reward. If youve ever felt this way about something that youve worked for, a dream that youve had, or an opportunity that you earned, I am right there with you. Its not a fun place to be in yet in all honesty its a human place. But the good news is that I believe God can handle getting us out of it!

My friends, does life ever go exactly how wed like it to? (Let me know if it has for you because Id love to meet you one day and find out your secret!) Although for now I think we can agree that most often life does not go as wed like. For example, relationships face their reality checks when the person youre with shows you that even they are human too. Even the most handsome boy in school isnt perfect. Our jobs seem great on paper, but good grief if Karen from accounting sends me one more email! Even dreams dont always play out in the way we thought they would or in our ideal time frame for that matter (anyone getting Joseph vibes?). We dream of having kids, and one day they make decisions that we definitely told God we didnt want them to make. We commit to a company and we know the work weve done is worth a raise, but that raise and recognition never comes. The bottom line is that sometimes what we work for doesnt end up how we thought it would. 

In that case, if were ever going to figure out how to make it through our time on earth, let alone make it through our time well, I believe we need to find an answer to one simple question: 

What are you working for?

Its no question that human beings have always worked. In fact, the act of working and the concept of work itself is seen in the beginning of the Bible. Genesis 2:15 says, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.” Working is biblical, and God has designed us with an ability to work.  

Writer Annie Dillard famously said, How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.In fact, a simple google search will tell you that the average person spends about 90,000 hours at work over their lifetime — we are no strangers to work. John Mark Comer raised an interesting point in his book, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, saying that to be seen as successful in todays world, is to be busy. If you are constantly working then you are living your life well, or at least thats what we have started to think. If this is the case, what we are working for should matter, shouldnt it? If we are to spend 90,000 hours of life at work, then whatever we are working for should add up to something. But what if it doesnt? What happens when we have worked for something and it leaves us exhausted with unmet expectations? What happens when we get what we wanted, but theres still an emptiness thats lingering? What happens when the answered prayer comes with a little more heaviness than we anticipated?  

If this is the case, then it is becoming more important than ever to answer the question. 1 Corinthians 15:58 is the framework for us to find this answer:So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. 

Now, the word immovable can be defined as something thats not changed in purpose; unshaken; firm. To be immovable is to be rooted in the purpose of God, to be strong in who He says He is, and to stand firm when life throws its best punches at you. To be immovable in your work is to be unwavering in the knowledge that your work, whatever it may be, is for the glory of God and God alone. We partake in the Kingdom of God by doing the work that He has assigned for each of us, and that work (and level of worldly success) is going to be different for everyone.

Now the next part of the verse, Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, is a little tougher. You might be saying to yourself, Doesnt God know that my work isnt always easy? Has he not seen the stress Im under?Now these are valid feelings and God definitely sees you and understands what youre going through, but what this verse is telling us is not that we should work enthusiastically for the title, the dream, the money, the fame etc., but that we are to work enthusiastically for the Lord.

Your work is the means by which you get to serve God. We are called to work enthusiastically for the Lord because He is the one who created us to work for him in the first place! Remember Genesis 2:15? God has placed us in our unique spheres of influence to work for him, not for the things of the earth. Yes, there are many things we will achieve while we work and likewise, many dreams will be accomplished while we commit to working for them. But what I want to remind us of today, is that if we are working for anything other than God, as good as the gift might be, it will never be enough. 

Then lastly, why is it okay to work enthusiastically for the Lord? Because Nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless. I realized that I was in Tokyo for something greater than my own comfort and personal achievements. God had given me a dream, and after years of work he was kind enough to make it happen. He will never waste what He ordained for purpose. 

When you choose to work for the Lord, nothing you do will ever be useless. When your dreams arent met, or when they turn out a little different than expected, by the power of the Holy Spirit, you can choose to be immovable and stand firm, because your work is not only for you, but instead for the glory of God. When we work enthusiastically for the Lord, I have a feeling that we will begin to see our dreams as a means to draw closer to God, and not as a way to gain the world. 

My name is Dee, I’m a born and raised Canadian, and I swim for Team Canada! I recently competed at the Tokyo 2021 Paralympic Games, and I have a passion for encouraging people to embrace their unique differences. I’ve got a youtube channel called This Little Light, and you can usually find me drinking an iced coffee and making short jokes. We’ve all got a unique light inside of us to shine, and I think it would be fun to shine them together! 

Five Practices To Embrace Joy

Five Practices To Embrace Joy

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of celebrating terrified me. Like so many others I had known—clients I had seen in my therapy practice, friends, family members—who had experienced prolonged seasons of hurt and disappointment, I had become highly suspicious of joy, afraid to hold God’s good gifts for fear that they would be snatched away. I was sure that celebration always came with a catch, so I became practiced in praying for the miracle while preparing to mourn. But I was beginning to understand this perspective was costly. I realized that much of the loss I had experienced in my life was not only the grief and disappointment itself, but also the joy I overlooked because I was too afraid to embrace it.  

You understand. You know what it feels like to take a blow that makes it difficult to rise to the delight in our days. You know what it feels like to wonder if hope is a good idea. But listen close. I don’t want us to miss out on our beautiful God-given lives because we are busy preparing for the worst.

We often think of celebration as a reward sitting on the far side of a dream realized, a goal achieved, or a shift in circumstances we are hoping to see. But what happens when the outcome isn’t the result we hoped for? How do we celebrate when we don’t feel that we’ve been given a reason to do so? What does it look like to celebrate the life you have? Joy doesn’t merely come with a transition. It’s cultivated through a transformation of the heart. Celebration, and its best, is a rhythm of remembering God’s goodness, and not merely a reward we enjoy in the wake of breakthrough or good news. Here’s how we practice the celebration we long to enjoy in are everyday lives: 

Savor – Savoring celebrates the ordinary, expanding our awareness of what is good and deepening our connection to our present joy. Our brains are efficient and will readily dismiss memories it considers insignificant unless we savor them. Take this very moment or select a picture from the archives of your memory. Next, ask all five of your traditional senses what they are going to remember about this moment. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? What do you feel? In savoring the ordinary moments, you celebrate your life. 

Thanksgiving – We often talk about gratitude’s impact on joy. And the research is clear that the practice of gratitude does indeed increase our joy as it helps us notice and name what is good, shaping our perspective and putting language to what we feel. But what we don’t often discuss is that the practice of thanksgiving—expressing the gratitude we feel—doubles our joy. Thanksgiving is the avenue we’ve been given to celebrate the gift with the giver. Joy multiplies when it’s shared. This is true of our prayers too. Through thanksgiving, we can celebrate our gifts with God. 

Remember – Our tendency is to think of celebration as a reward instead of a discipline. But when we look at the celebrations of the Bible, we see that each festival occurred not because God’s people felt that they had earned the feast or because they were in the mood to celebrate but because it was time to do so. Even the weekly celebration of sabbath didn’t come as a reward for the week’s accomplishments. A day of rest wasn’t simply the result of exhaustion from the past week. It was, and continues to be, a structure of celebration that invites us to release our grip on control and step into God’s rhythms of grace. Maybe it’s a special meal once a week. Or perhaps it’s the same walk every morning. Whatever the ritual, the rhythm helps us remember God’s goodness. And sometimes, especially in seasons of suffering, celebration looks like remembering Who is good in all circumstances. 

Receive Affirmation — It might require some nerve to stare into the extent of our brokenness. But many of us underestimate the courage that is required to gaze into the expanse of our belovedness. Often, we reject praise and refuse to celebrate ourselves because the kindness feels foreign to the lies we’ve claimed—the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what makes us worthy. It will be difficult to celebrate when these are the stories written in ink on our hearts. The truth about your value will always feel like it’s true for someone else, but not for you. The celebration will always sit on the other side of accomplishment, a mirage of satisfaction. You will decide that joy was possible until you made that mistake—that mistake that invited shame to move into your heart. What if allowing our souls to feel their worth was a cornerstone of the courage to celebrate? One place to start celebrating your belovedness is to pay attention to your response toward affirmation. Do you qualify others’ kindness? Do you diminish the truth in someone’s compliment or deflect the affirmation with sarcasm? I have a policy of sorts for myself that I can only say some version of, “Thank you, I receive that.” In response to affirmation. Can I encourage you to celebrate by adopting this policy too? 

Play — Fun is not frivolous, but a homemade gift from God and one of our best defenses against burnout. Often, we consider celebration to be superfluous, and not essential to the Christian life. Sometimes we are hesitant to celebrate in this way because we fear it’s a merely numbing the pain—an unhealthy reaction to life’s hardship. But celebration is not a means of escaping the reality that our hearts are brutally bruised, but rather keeps us grounded in the truth that both our heartache and our hope are true. God takes pleasure in our pleasure!   

Perhaps you too have allowed fear to govern too many of your years. That fear has made you comfortable in the dark and hypervigilant in the light. Right now, you might be tempted to ask yourself questions like, What if I’m foolish to hope? What if I try and fail? What if I pursue connection and am rejected? But this is the truth I want to press into your palms: you—just as you are in this moment—are celebrated. And you are a celebrator made in the image of a celebratory God, who is present in both our pain and joy. And a life lived with God is a life worth celebrating.  

Nicole Zasowski is a licensed marriage and family therapist and author of the new book, What If It’s Wonderful? As an old soul who wears her heart proudly on her sleeve, she enjoys writing and speaking on topics that merge her professional knowledge, faith, and personal experience. Nicole lives in Connecticut with her husband and three young children. 

Courageously Expecting

Courageously Expecting

[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_column_text]During my pregnancy, there was no shortage of concerns to try and make sense of through the use Google. There was my very first OB appointment in which we couldn’t hear the heartbeat. There was the cervix scare. There was bed rest. There was amniotic sludge. There was conflicting information from my providers. And later on, there was a concern over a possible heart defect (which was monitored until eventually resolving itself).   

I googled most of those things obsessively, searching for articles I had not yet uncovered, for answers I had not yet found. I was constantly seeking that one piece of information that would give me peace by way of certainty that my baby would be born healthy and alive. 

But that never happened.  

Instead of peace, I mostly felt panic as I clicked and typed and scrolled. Because it turns out, Google couldn’t give me the comfort I needed, no matter how much I searched. In fact, the only time I did feel peace, at least temporarily, was when I tuned out the whirling noise inside my head and turned off the noise of my internet browser. It was then that I could still my mind and pray, truly seeking God while remembering the goodness he had lavished on me, even when I couldn’t see or feel it. It was then that I was reminded of the hard places he’d already led me through and could at last focus on what I knew to be true: I was still carrying my baby and God was still carrying me.   

Now, the internet isn’t all bad when it comes to pregnancy after loss. Sometimes it’s a healthy source of information and can provide useful facts. And I haven’t forgotten the few select support groups and nonprofit organizations that were an ongoing source of hope and solidarity. There’s nothing like connecting with others who truly feel your pain and understand the depth of your concerns during pregnancy after loss in a community where the lingering grief and ongoing angst are validated. Where you are surrounded by other people who share similarly difficult circumstances. That’s all good and healthy.  

But obsessively searching for answers online to all of our what-ifs? Reading every heartbreaking story of loss or pregnancy after loss? It will never give us what we need. Because the answers to most, if not all, of our most pressing questions don’t exist this side of heaven. When googling only leaves you paralyzed with fear, it’s time to seek God instead.  

When we enter the presence of God, truth is revealed. And the truth is that our safety is found in God alone.

He will cover you with his feathers, 

and under his wings you will find refuge; 

his faithfulness will be your shield and 

rampart. (Psalm 91:4) 

Google is unreliable. God is not. Google tends to amplify all the hard things we already have too much of: fear, anxiety, hopelessness, unrest. God is a refuge from those things. Google is heavy on speculation and light on truth. God is truth.  

Look, I know you’re not going to promise to stop googling all the things about this much-anticipated but most uncertain pregnancy. I wouldn’t ask you to. But I want you to remember this: Google in moderation, God in excess. Before you get tangled up in the sticky World Wide Web, go to God. He’s listening. In fact, he invites us to come to him when burdens overwhelm us and our hearts are weary. No, he may not reveal to you all of the answers you seek, but he is the only one who actually knows those answers.  

No matter how many times you type “chances of baby surviving after loss” into your search bar, you’re not going to get a good answer because Google doesn’t know you (although the argument can be made that it just might if, like me, you’ve noticed that it seems to be uncomfortably familiar with your life). But you can be certain you are known and loved by a good God. Take your hurt to him. Hand your fear to him. He promises peace and rest. He’s got all the answers—and even if they aren’t the ones you’re hoping for, you can be sure that, in time, he will reveal all you could ever want to know. But until then, you can trust him to hold your weary heart, to speak only truth, and to provide rest. 

God, I am desperate for answers to all my whys and what-ifs. 

I’m desperate for certainty that my pregnancy will have the outcome 

I desire. I’m in such a hard place, and I’ve been seeking 

instant comfort through information available at my fingertips. 

Not surprisingly, it has failed to satisfy my unquenchable mind. 

Today, I don’t know how this chapter of my story will end. I 

don’t know the number of my baby’s days. But I do know I’m 

still carrying my baby and that my baby is deeply loved. In this 

moment, help me to find peace in the knowledge that you have 

the answers I so desperately seek. That you have a plan for my 

life and the life of my baby. Help me to find the comfort I seek 

in you rather than the internet. God, remind me that Google 

doesn’t fix the problems of this life—you do.

Taken from Courageously Expecting by Jenny Albers Copyright ©2022 by Jenny Albers. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. https://www.thomasnelson.com/p/courageously-expecting/ 

Jenny Albers is passionate about sharing her own experience with pregnancy loss and life after to encourage other women during their own difficult journey of loss and pregnancy after loss. She is a contributor for Pregnancy After Loss Support, where she writes about these topics. She also contributes to Her View from Home, a site focused on motherhood, marriage, faith, and grief. She calls South Dakota home, where she lives with her husband and two living children.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” column_element_spacing=”default” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” bg_image_animation=”none” border_type=”simple” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid”][vc_raw_html]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[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Healthy Healing: Body Image

Healthy Healing: Body Image

It did not start out so severe. In high school I used to go weeks where I would set goals about what I would not eat. I was a competitive cheerleader and it always seemed to fall right before a competition where I would have to wear a cropped uniform. “These next two weeks I am not eating sugar at all.” Then I would last about a day or two then eat one thing with sugar in it and feel guilty and end up giving up my “goal.” This began my bad relationship with food.

I believed that if I wanted my body to look good in a uniform I needed to restrict myself. That restriction continued as I became a college cheerleader at Navarro. Not only did I practice everyday in a sports bra but now there were cameras on us at all times. I wanted to be skinny and no matter how much I weighed, I always desired to be skinnier. I began to think that I just needed to not eat any food to look good. I would restrict myself throughout the day, weighing myself frequently, and then when night came around I would be so hungry that I began to binge eat. I would eat so much, stuffing my face until I felt sick. I had no self control because I restricted myself so badly. After some time of this cycle I began to force myself to throw up the food. After dinner, the bathroom was always the next place I went.

The worst part was this was normal. The people that knew I threw up were either also struggling with an eating disorder or though it was normal. I remember one time telling a friend that I was struggling and wanted to stop the cycle and they said “everyone has an eating disorder.” So I began to believe that it was just a part of life. Let me get something clear before going on. Having an eating disorder is not normal. AT ALL. God did not create our bodies for us to despise them. And He definitely did not create our bodies for us to torture them.

Fast forward to a couple months later, I went with a teammate to pick up some dinner to take back to the dorms. I vividly remember ordering a kids corn dog meal. We were eating and I expressed that I wanted to be skinnier and was scared of what I was going to look like in a uniform. “Well maybe you should eat healthier then,” they said. A sucker punch to the gut. The toxic thoughts began, “well if my friend said that then I must be fat.” “I should not have even ordered anything.” Followed by tears and running to the bathroom. I remember crying the silent, gut wrenching, sob as I threw up my dinner. I sat there feeling completely worthless, crying out to God. I prayed that this would be the last time I made myself throw up. It was. The next day I woke up, stopped saying the lies of the devil and started calling them out for what they are. Lies.

Just because I have not forced myself to throw up after this does not mean I haven’t had bad days. In order to believe the truth of who God created me to be I knew I had to choose that every single day. I had to choose to pick up my Bible to fight off the lies. I had to choose to reach out to someone on hard days for prayer or encouragement. I had to choose to be vulnerable in order to heal.

When the thoughts in my head began about my weight or look I would proclaim truth over myself. God created me beautifully and wonderfully. I wrote Godly affirmations on my mirror every morning and repeated them to myself so I filled my mind with the truth.

There were 3 main aspects of my healing…

1. The Bible and Prayer

The Bible is a book that holds the truth of who you are. Reading the Bible fills you with truth that you can use to overcome the lies of the devil. For me reading the Bible every morning sets me up to overcome the lies each day. Consistently reading the Bible is key in every battle you are facing. Time in the Word of God is vital but so is time in prayer. Pray big prayers. When I felt tempted to go back to the eating disorder I simply ran to God. I had a conversation with Him expressing how I felt. This is so comforting knowing the Lord is always waiting with arms wide for you to run to Him.

2. The People and Environment

I walked away from being a college cheerleader and moved home to heal. That was one of the hardest decisions but I knew I needed to be with my family. I knew that in order to heal I needed to seek out a christian counselor who helped me work through it all. I sought out a mentor who I zoomed with every single week. I surrounded myself with friends who encouraged me and prayed for me. Your environment is made up of the people around you. If you are in a place where you constantly feel discouraged or beaten up, search for people who will build you up. A small group at your church is a great place to start.

3. My Beliefs about Food and Exercise

In 1 Corinthians 6:20 we are called to glorify God with our bodies. Our bodies are a gift, a true blessing. Our bodies carry us throughout our days. Instead of torturing my body and fighting against it I started nourishing it. It is time to take the labels off food. There is no good or bad food. Food was given to us to nourish our bodies. Obviously there are more nutrients in vegetables than ice cream or cookies but that does not mean ice cream is a bad food. I am a huge sweets person so instead of telling myself I can not have any sweets I just make sure I get a good balanced meal first. I do not go to bed one night without some type of dessert because I simply enjoy them. Restriction led me to guilt so I stopped restricting myself from certain foods. I used to exercise for hours on hours to simply lose weight. I changed my mindset. Working out is a way to honor God by moving the bodies He gave us. I am not a personal trainer where I encourage others to workout for the right reason. To honor Him. To move and take care of our bodies.

As you see through my testimony it started as one small toxic thought the devil put in my head and it went into a vicious, downward spiral. One lie of the devil can lead to a downward spiral if you let it. Choose to believe THE truth. You are fearfully and wonderfully made (psalm 139:14). You are beautiful. You are worthy. You are so dang loved.

If you are struggling with an eating disorder, please seek professional help. You are so worthy of being healed. Praying for your friend.

Kassidy a personal trainer and owns her own online training business called total transformation fitness where her fiancé and her encourage their clients both physically and spiritually. She gets married in may! She loves trying new food and moving her body is her favorite part of her day! 

Happiness of Pursuit

Happiness of Pursuit

How many decisions would you guess you make in a typical day? A dozen? One hundred? Does one thousand sound a little closer? Get this. Each of us makes about thirty-five thousand decisions every day. More if you spend an hour in a candy store. Some decisions are mundane, and some are major. We decide where we will live, if we will marry and who we will marry, the job we will accept and the one we will quit. The car we will buy or the bus we will take. The cake or veggies we will eat. (Go with the cake for the win.) Who we will believe and who we won’t, where we will go and how long we will stay, the faith we will embrace or ignore, and countless other decisions.

Here’s a surprising thing though: Most of us never decide to be happy. I bet most of us think “happy” is a result of other choices, but that’s not all of it. Sure, circumstances can be truly awful, but feeling happy is a choice just like any other. It’s not that we don’t want to be happy; we just get distracted by so many unhappy things that we never get back around to happiness. Perhaps we think we need an invitation or permission to be happy. And what if we want happy feelings to transition into a deep and abiding joy with a longer shelf life?

Consider this. In stark contrast to our complicated decision tree, a child makes less than 10 percent of the decisions adults make each day. Maybe one of the benefits of the childlike faith Jesus said we need is that there are fewer decisions to make, and hence, fewer distractions to manage. Have you seen a kid with a pile of Legos? It’s like the rest of the world doesn’t even exist. They are lost in the beautiful singularity of creative joy and purpose they find in their play. They don’t care if they are early or late for the next thing. They are fully present and completely undistracted. All the while, heaven dances and celebrates the simple beauty of a child at play and invites us to do the same. Perhaps we should take a lesson or two from the children around us: get fully engrossed in something lasting we care about, eliminate some of the decisions we make, and find our joy again.

Most people hope they’ll find happiness at home, but the hard truth is, they aren’t around long enough to experience what’s already waiting for them there. Simple and complicated distractions take us away from the people we love. When this occurs, the result is both subtle and toxic. We start to settle for proximity rather than presence with each other. Know what I mean? You will know this is happening to you if you only listen for the highlights in our loved one’s conversations without taking note of the emotions and body language that are also present in the room. These distractions are masked in familiar disguises like career, appointments, and promotions. They invade our homes and come dressed as extracurricular activities, sports, and electronic screens. They look like business calls and video games and Zoom conferences and television shows and committees and meetings and sometimes even churches. If we want to live more undistracted lives, we need to get real and admit that busyness is actually hijacking our joy. Here’s the good news: We can fix all this just as easily as we messed it up. Get a couple of baseball gloves and talk to your loved ones about your day as you throw the ball around. If you answer your cell phone while playing catch, you’ll lose teeth. This is what it looks like to really get some skin in the game. Get some wood and light a fire. Find some chairs and fill them with people you haven’t connected with in a while, then watch the flames dance. Go ahead and get some smoke on you, and the next day your clothes will smell like a dozen great conversations.

Do this with some urgency too. You don’t have as much time as you think you have. Take it from a guy who’s been around for a while. There’s a saying that I have found to be generally true: The days are long, but the years are short. If you fill your days with trivial stuff, you will look up one day and a year or a decade or a half-century will have passed. Don’t wait until you are old to ask yourself: What have I done with all that time? Why not ask yourself right now? What am I going to do with all the time ahead of me? What do you want your answer to be? Once you decide what you want the future to look like, make a couple of moves like your life is actually yours to live—because it is. Quit the job, call the friend, make the apology, launch the dream, take the shot . . . Heaven is just hoping we will.

Disneyland office resident. Recovering Lawyer. New York Times-bestselling author. Nonprofit founder. Mr. Chief Balloon Inflator. Motivational speaker. These are all titles that can describe Bob Goff, who’s also known for printing his real cell phone number in his first published book turned NYT bestseller, LOVE DOES which sold over two million copies. And, he gave all the money away. A recognized lawyer for over 25 years, he left it behind to become the Hon. Consul to Uganda and founded Love Does in 2001, an international nonprofit that pursues justice for children in high-conflict areas such as Uganda, Somalia, Afghanistan, Nepal, and India. More on that here.

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