Treasures of Darkness

My husband’s temp work ended unexpectedly today.   I know I should have been prepared for it, but It caught me by surprise.  I knew it was temporary, but there was also a slight chance of it being temp to hire.

For a whole month I didn’t need to worry about how to pay the bills, or where the grocery money was going to come from.  Though the break was nice.  I just really don’t feel like a month reprieve was long enough.  I hate living like this!

Started off pretty well yesterday, but I was foiled by the midday munchies.  I think that I am going to concentrate on cutting out one thing at a time. 

First thing?  What I call my gateway drug, Diet Coke.  In itself it has no calories, but when I drink it, I tend to eat junk, and I tend to eat more in general.  Plus, I know it can’t be good for me, when everytime I try to give it up, I get horrible physical withdrawl in the form of headaches and general body aches.  (I gave up caffeine several years ago, so it is not from lack of caffeine, just from the chemicals.)  I am also going to start tracking my food again.

Then after a week or so, I will cut out junk food and fast food.  Third, I will try to eat more fruits and vegetables, and finally add strength training back into my exercise routine.

I have decided that when I take off half of the weight I put back on (20 pounds), I will reward myself with my long desired hair cut (and color!).

I found this in my email.  It was part of a journal entry that I had written on 4/22/2004.  I was already starting to see and question inconsistencies, and yet it would be another 3 years before I was ready to leave. 

I had a new revelation this morning. That is really rather basic when you think about it, but still for me, it was quite amazing. This is what we are taught in the Apostolic church: If I think its ok for me to cut my hair, but my pastor believes the word teaches “uncut” than I am expected to submit to his conviction. However, if the roles were reversed, and the Pastor thought its was ok for ladies to cut their hair, but I felt a personal conviction that my hair should stay uncut. I would be told that I should “obey God rather than man” and follow my personal conviction. So my question is this: Why are we only allowed to follow God when he appears to be more strict than our pastor?!?

Last year I got tired of my unhealthy sedentary lifestyle and decided to change my ways.  I started eating healthy and sensibly, and started exercising daily.  What followed was that I lost 83 pounds in about 6 months, going from 280 pounds to 197.

But I found, that when you get off track, it’s very easy to revert to past patterns of behavior, and before you know it what starts as one little mistake has snowballed into packing on half of the weight that you lost.

The only good thing I can say in all this is that I have managed to keep exercising consistently.  An hour on my treadmill, every morning during the week (give or take a few minutes on the days I have to drag myself out of bed!).  The fact that I have managed to gain 40 pounds, while consistently exercising is both confusing and damn scary! 

This was all brought to a head yesterday when I was getting ready for work.  I have been making due for the past few months with wearing the same 3 outfits, as I absolutely refuse to buy bigger-sized clothes.  But yesterday, I realized that even those are getting too small.

What I really need to fight against, is the depression that comes with the failure of regaining so much weight.  As my usual reaction to that kind of failure is to turn to comfort food. 

I wish I could say that everything is going to change, and I am going to get back on track starting right now!  But I have said that almost everyday for the past 6 months, and it doesn‘t seem to be working.  So, do I have any answers?  Nope.  But since my “pastor” Nate is always encouraging me to write things down to work on some of my spiritual baggage, so I am hoping that just the very act of journaling my weight and food issues might accomplish something.

I was talking to my Mom last night, and she mentioned that her disability hearing is coming up, and she made a comment “You can pray for me, if you still believe in that kind of thing.”  It sounds kind of snarky when I type it out, but it really wasn’t.

I shared with her my thoughts about prayer, which are, as always conflicted.  On one hand, I just see prayer as communication with God, and that’s the kind I can believe in and practice.  But as with everything, I seem to have some sort of residual baggage from my fundamentalist days when it seemed that we treated God like a Genie who granted unlimited wishes, and if for some reason our wish wasn’t granted, well then, we must not be asking it right.

I have a hard time reconciling the sovereignty of God.  If God is sovereign, then he can do whatever he wants.  If he wants to heal, he will heal, if he wants to bless, then he will bless.  And I don’t see how it makes any difference if one person or 1000 ask him to do it.  I mean, is he going to refuse for the first 999, but give in for number 1000?  And ultimately, isn’t he just going to do whatever we wants to do anyway?  I mean, He’s GOD!

I have to believe that the purpose behind prayer is the relational intimacy that it fosters, it’s the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

Hosea 8:11 (NLT)

11 “Israel has built many altars to take away sin,
but these very altars became places for sinning!

Hosea 8:11 (CEV)

11Israel, you have built

many altars

where you offer

sacrifices for sin.

But these altars have become

places for sin.

Hosea 8:11 (HCSB)

11 When Ephraim multiplied his altars for sin,
they became his altars for sinning.

I ran across this verse a few years ago and was immediately struck by it. I copied it onto a piece of paper, and stuck it into my Bible. Occasionally, I would take it out and look at it. Always with the feeling that this verse was amazingly profound, and yet never really having an understanding of it.

This morning as I was mindlessly doing housework, this verse popped into my head of its own volition, and to my amazement I realized that it had application to my life. In fact, it had applied all along, though I wasn’t in a place where I could see it.

During my 7 years in the UPC, I both learned and imposed on others numerous rules, laws, and standards for living. There was a rule for every situation . All intended to keep us from sin, most especially in the forms of carnality and worldliness. So on and on they built their altars, altars of prayer, of fasting, and of separation. Thinking that if they could just build more altars, they could eradicate sin altogether.

But eventually their altars which they meant to bring freedom, became a prison of inescapable crushing burdens as the altars became mirrors of judgement, instead of reflecting the Love of God. And so, the more altars they built, the more steeped in sin they (and I) became.

I somehow stumbled across this blog entry

 http://escapedmentalpatient.wordpress.com/2007/08/24/why-are-religious-people-so-stupid/

 I especially like how he blames religion for all the problems and hate and evil people in the universe.  My question for him would be, “How then sir, do you explain yourself?”

Woke up this morning feeling kind of whimsical.  I know that I am supposed to be releasing all my angst and frustration, but today it seems to be hiding.

I’ve been thinking alot about my appearance lately.  Am I the only one who is ever shocked when they look in the mirror?  Somehow in my mind I am thin, young and pretty.

 And yet when I look in the mirror, I see this fat homely person who looks like a spinster librarian.

The fat part I have been working on (struggling with) for over a year.  I lost 80 pounds, and gained back 35.  The homely part, well I’ll just have to try and do the best with what God gave me.

 Which leaves me with the Spinster Librarian look.  It’s funny, because for 7 years, that look was equated with holiness in my mind.  Long shirts, and uber-modest shirts, long un-cut hair, and no makeup or jewelry.  I gloried in that look, I had a lot of pride in looking plain.

Now with the holiness factor removed, It just looks frumpy.  But change doesn’t come easy.  After 7 years, skirts are just comfortable, and though I occasionally wear capri’s, I tend to equate such attire with yardwork, or cleaning the house.  The biggest obstacle is the hair.  Though I have long since cut it numerous times, it is still long, at just a few inches above my waist.  I honestly would like to cut it much shorter, but my husband has repeatedly ask me not to.

And so, I end up wearing my hair up in 1 of 5 bun variations everyday, between that and my glasses, there seems little hope in escaping the spinster librarian persona.

But today, in the spirit of rebellion, I put my hair up in what I will call pigtail buns (think princess Leia, but higher up).  When I stopped for breakfast I got a couple of double takes, to which I grinned in return.

1. I don’t know if the Bible is true. Not just parts of it. Any of it. As a whole I tend to think of it as having value. But often the individual parts lead me to frustration.

2. I hate church. I have come to equate it with a type of inhuman torture. If there is a hell, I believe it will be fundamentalist church services for eons and eons.

3. I cringe when traditional Christians mention anything religious. It makes me want to beat my head against a rock. I especially struggle when they imply that they have all the answers to life, the universe & everything.

4. Once upon a time I had very strict convictions that controlled my every thought and action. Now, I have zero. None, zip, zilch. It kind of scares me, but I really struggle with what were once the most basic concepts of wrong and right. Is divorce a sin? What about pre-marital sex? Homosexuality? I mean, I was so used to the “correct” answers being prepared for me, along with appropriate Bible texts. It’s sad when its so difficult to think for yourself.

5. I’m never quite sure if God is good, and if I should trust Him. There’s so much fear of hell baggage, not to mention my tendancy to get on the performance treadmill.

These are my biggest concerns now, whereas I used to have questions about when the rapture was going to happen, or if a true Christian should forgo a Christmas tree based on its pagan roots. The only part of my faith that has never waivered is the belief that Jesus is God. I am building on that, and hopefully will find answers to the rest, though to be honest, #5 is the only one that gives me a great amount of concern.

This feels like my theme song today.  I am always conflicted about the need for people in my life.  I often feel so alone and isolated and that I strongly desire to be more connected with others, and yet I recognize the connections of the past as being the cause of much of my suffering. 

“By Myself”

[x2]
Don’t you know
I can’t tell you how to make it go
No matter what I do, how hard I try
I can’t seem to convince myself why
I’m stuck on the outside