Weight and Wait

Weight and Wait are two words in my vocabulary I could do without. They both have such a stronghold on me. Each word holds such depth in my life. I will start with weight. I have been over weight all my life. In kindergarten, I was called “fat” to my face by a classmate. That marked the course for my low self image and set my feet on a path of discouragement in this area. Why have I had weight issues all my life? Partially I can blame bad eating habits and wrong food choices. But mainly I have a weight problem because I have a wait problem. This concept is new to me and in writing this out I am trying to flush out some of the core junk in my heart. God brought this to my mind several weeks ago and it has just been circling and I need to give it clarity.
In the book study that I am involved with currently, Becoming More than a Good Bible Study Girl by Lysa Terkeurst, she addresses how as women we tend to be consumed with labels, rules of religion and measuring up. These 3 elements are strong pillars in my life. I was labeled in kindergarten as “fat”, I grew up in a conservative Mennonite home where “laws” were so important and therein lays my conflict with weight and wait. I believed the feeling of not measuring up, not being good enough, striving to be the good Christian girl; I just couldn’t reach the bar that was set. So I started waiting or desiring for better things. They had to be out there. I was waiting for a boy friend, waiting for the chance that maybe I would be good enough to play sports, waiting for approval of my peers, waiting to be in the cool crowd and even after getting married I waited for my husband to accept me for who I was. And as I waited for these things, my weight continued to increase because I ate to feel the “wait void.”
Over the years I have yo-yo dieted, lost 30 gained it back, lost 40 gained it back and then had 3 children and gained and gained weight. I remember sitting in my whirlpool tub about 5 years ago and God told me that I didn’t have to wait until I was at the ideal weight before I could serve Him and accept and love myself. This started my journey to where I am today. I started believing I was worth something and it had nothing to do with measuring up to the belief that the world says I need to weigh 136 pounds. It has been a long journey and now I feel again like I am in the wait. In 2008 I successfully lost 40 pounds, because I believed in myself and had the confidence that I could succeed. It was done in waiting. It wasn’t one of these fast off diets that usually plunge you further into the weight issue later. It was a slow time of waiting for the pounds to come off. I am still not close to the 136 pounds of the world standards and I believe I need to continue to work on my weight so that I can be totally used by Him. Maybe that sounds confusing, but as I am talking about weight and wait, I am believing that I need to submit my weight and my idol of eating to my Master so that I am totally submitted to HIS plan and not my plans or the world’s ideals.
God gave me a dream for a ministry in January of this year and my writing is one of the ways that I am starting to fulfill this dream. My heart is filled full of passion, desire and excitement for what I know God can do in me, but I am “waiting” for HIS perfect timing and it is hard. I don’t wait well!! Lysa Terkeurst in another one of these chapters spoke to me with her words for the story of David. After David was anointed to be King, he wasn’t taken directly to the king’s court for training and immediately shown all the plans that God had in store, no he was sent back out to the fields to continue his sheparding roles. I was humbled because just the day before I was muttering to myself that all my mundane chores of laundry, errands, grocery shopping, cooking just didn’t seem important in the realm of my dream and vision. But as Lysa expounded on, David continued to build up the characteristics he would need as king while he was working in the fields. I too need to continue to build up my character as I am in this time of waiting.
I want to challenge myself to work on my weight as I WAIT for when God will reveal His awesome plans for my life in the timing that HE has orchestrated for me. As I will serve HIM while I am waiting.
Lamentations 3:25 – The LORD is good to those who depend on him,
to those who search for him. Waiting for God’s timing brings great rewards.
Romans 8:25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)