Break Me Out

My 60,097 steps this week have contributed toward a total of 615,703 steps since Memorial Day.  I’m to the point where I really should be counting down from 760,000 rather than adding up to it.  Either way, I’m getting close to the goal.

As I walked today, I thought about how much fun our family vacation will be, a couple of weeks from now. Every other year for the past several years, my siblings have rented cottages up north, usually somewhere in the Upper Peninsula. We spend the week fishing, reading, and sitting around campfires at night, telling old stories. The fishing I can do without. But the stories? I’m all up in it.

I mused about how one of my nieces jokes that us girls tend to go in two-year cycles with our weight. In talking with her mother one year before a visit, she predicted whether this would be the family’s “heavy” or “light” year. I thought, Well, if this is my “light,” that will make next year my….

Before I could finish my thought, I tripped. I did more than trip. I sprawled toward the ground, skinning my knees, bruising my elbows, and grinding sand onto the side of my face and into my hairline.

Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve fallen? It got my attention.

As I brushed myself off and looked around to make sure I didn’t have any witnesses, I started thinking about the word repent.

As a Christian, I became familiar with the word forever ago. We use repent to describe how we should turn from sin so that we might dedicate ourselves to a life that is pleasing to God. Could it also be related to the issue of weight?

Is weight a spiritual issue?

For me, I think it is.

I am tired of working my butt off to literally work my butt off, only to become frustrated with the results and slide back into old habits. I am tired of the hold food can have over me, tired of relying on it to feel accepted, to feel calm, to feel whole. God has not designed me to have this dependence on food but on Him.

I have a prayer I want to share with you. I can’t take credit for writing it, nor can I give credit to anyone else since there was no author’s name indicated when I came across it.

I doubt it was written about food.  In fact, you may not even struggle with a dependence on food.

But surely you struggle with something, don't you?

In either case, I hope it speaks to you like it spoke to me:

Send Your Spirit of Freedom and Break Me Out

I have trapped myself in a box that I can’t even recognize, Lord. You are the one who sets prisoners free. Release me. I am ready to leave the box of my normal thinking, willing to destroy it in the process, if that is what it takes. I must find the opportunity that lies disguised in this problem. Show me the truth that will set me free.

I am a prisoner of my old ways of thinking. My assumptions blind me to new possibilities that you have for me. What I think I know keeps me from knowing what I cannot yet think. I see people’s weaknesses; you see the strengths you gave them. I see what they have done so far; you see what they could do. I see why we can’t do it; you see how we can. I see the limits of our visible resources; you see the potential of our unlimited resources. I see the problem; you see the solution. Break me out.

Do you need to move me to a new place for a different view? Am I protecting something or someone? Am I protecting myself? What am I afraid of in this situation? Have I surrounded myself with people who think too much alike? Too much like me?

You created this universe from nothing, lacing all of its expanding and self-renewing intricacies together in absolute perfection. You anticipated that we humans would sin and separate ourselves from you and your creation, so you created the perfect solution for our hopeless mess in Jesus Christ. You are the Father of all creativity.

I am your child. You made me in your image so I, too, love to create. I love to think new thoughts and bring them into existence. I love to create solutions to messes people get into. I want to be creative like you, Father. I want to enjoy all kinds of people. Give me the creative freedom of your Spirit. Silence my censors, and awaken the slumbering artist within. Give me a new song to sing, a new story to write.

I tried to be creative, and I worked myself into this dungeon. Send your Spirit of freedom, and break me out.

Enjoy your day. Enjoy this blog.