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Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Peace be with you

I know my blog is boring…no cool recipes…no cool workout tips. Just me and my thoughts. I don't have cool pictures or action and when I look at other blogs I feel, well, a little flat. When I read through past posts I realize what you are all thinking…Margaret is neurotic. Well, yes. Yes I am.

But here's the deal, I’m just living life. It's hard most of the time. I'm busy and I don't have time to design and develop and spend untold hours making everything shiny. I always hope that someone picks up some hard earned worldly wisdom from me but if they don't, that's okay because most of the time writing here helps me work out how to move forward, warts and all.

Some realizations I've come to over the past couple of weeks…

• No matter how much I think I've got this healthy thing down, I will find some way to screw it up. There is nothing like going to the massage therapist and having him say, "Have you put on some weight?"

• There is no law that says, "Thou shalt not gain weight." I am glad my husband loves me no matter what size I am.

• I love Jesus. What I mean by that is not, "I'm so holy-look at me roll!" It's more like, I'm so glad I've got this best friend who just accepts me for who I am and nudges me to keep trying to improve and totally gets why I’m a total jerk to Him and forgives me and then says "Learn from this." What a mouthful, but true.

• I'm a terrible parent. My poor kids. I feel so bad to be their role model in life. I hope they don't marry crazy hormone riddled women like me. I am worried they are doomed…

• I don't care how much it costs. I'm buying cherries. They are only ripe and tasty in the summer. Same goes for peaches.

• Life is precious and fragile and beautiful no matter how I am feeling at any given moment.

When I first began my journey to better health I realized I needed to learn discipline. I know now I will always be fighting my carnal nature to eat and eat and eat for no other reason than I want to because it makes me feel good for a minute. I worship food, which makes me sad. Last night I put double the amount of lasagna on my plate that I needed to eat. I stood there and stared at it. And I realized that I should put half of it back. But I didn't because I thought that emotionally, I would not make it through the evening without 2 pieces of lasagna. What a crock. And then I ate ice cream.

And this morning I felt all the regret I always do when I eat too much and step on the scale. So I ran further and harder than I should have and blew my hip. Good job, Margaret!

But my pastor gave this sermon a long time ago and said, "You are a child of the King." And that resonates with me. "Child" implies I am loved no matter how foolish and rebellious I am. But "King" implies that as a princess I am held to a higher standard. I want to be the perfect healthy, inspirational gal but I'm just a human being. And all I can really do is learn from my mistakes and try to do better. People that think Christians are perfect or should be perfect are sadly mistaken. We are fallible. And any Christian who pretends to be perfect is, well, I won't go into that here…

Today I have peace with who I am. I know my weaknesses and I refuse to give up. That speaks to the fact that I have good, strong character. My family knows I love them, even when I am crabby. I have peace with the fact that I don't have the perfect body or the perfect blog. I have peace with the fact that I am not wealthy or poor. Basically, I just have peace. To me, that is the essence of being a follower of Jesus. Even when my world is crumbling, I'm off my feed, or just plain goofy, I have peace in my soul.

What more can anyone ask for?

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