Blow Out

In the last few months I've heard from a number of you that are reading my blog or watching my progress on facebook.  I appreciate your encouragement and support as well as the accountability of knowing there is a group of people watching to see what happens.  Some of you have shared how my journey or at least my sharing my journey publicly like this has encouraged and/or inspired you.  I am happy to be able to do that.  It is how I want to live my life.  However, I also want you to know that not every step of my journey gets shared on a daily basis.  I have a support team that gets the detail and to the general public I share more of the success and the things I'm learning.

John Maxwell wrote a book a while back called Failing Forward.  I actually received my copy of this book as a gift from a person who had not always been overly supportive of me.  However, the intent of the gift and of the book was to encourage an approach to life that recognizes "failure" as a part of life's teaching plan.

So, today I want to tell you about my last 10 days.  I often take time around my birthday to reflect on my life and take stock of what I have and what I've done.  In many ways I know this is a relatively futile exercise because how do I know the "success" I may have or not have had?  The only real measuring tools available to me are the world's tools but that's not the right way to measure success in God's economy.  Combine in the same weekend that sort of processing and mother's day which this year at least served to remind me of how I often felt I didn't measure up to my mom's expectations.  I don't believe this was true - it's just how I felt.  Putting those two things together while away from home and the healthy food at my house and I reverted back to old ways of dealing with emotions I didn't want to deal with - I ate.

I still tracked my calories and two of three days was under my calorie burn slightly - 200 or 300 calories under instead of my usual 2000+.  The deadly ingredient on that particular weekend was sodium.  My doctor has suggested that I try to be under 2000mg of sodium per day.  While I certainly don't hit that every day I'm usually relatively close.  However, the weekend of May 6-8 I was over 10,000 mg a day.  For those that don't know, high levels of sodium cause the body to retain water and that adds on weight. 

On Friday, the morning of my birthday, I was able to celebrate because I had reached the 70 pound mark of weight lost.  By the next Monday I had gained 14 back.  Now, I knew that most, if not all that weight was water weight based on what I had eaten and I have learned how to take off weight - especially water weight.  There are a few important things but one of the most important is sweat!  So I did.  God also blessed me by allowing my car not to start for a few days which increased my activity level considerably as I walked back and forth to work.  In addition to that eating the right things again including a low sodium intake and drinking lots of water combined with sweating salt away and the pounds came off.  One week later I'm back to 70 pounds off again. 

So, for those of you watching to see how I do, and how I handle it when I don't do so well - here was a potential setback.  I was disappointed in myself and I could have eaten more.  I was down a few days but was eating what I had after I got home - and what I had was healthy.  I do have to point out here that it is my support team who helped pick me up in this moment even by pointing out decisions made along the way and how they had prepared me for this time.

In January and February as I was beginning this process I put together a support team that I share my victories and losses with.  One of them pointed out to me that I had planned (unknowingly) for this setback moment months earlier by putting a team around me who will ask how I'm doing if they don't hear for a day or two.  They will encourage and support and cheer me on, even when I take a step back.  Another one pointed out the potential lesson of God's grace in this time.  Gaining 14 pounds in a weekend offset several weeks of hard work and I knew it had the potential to be devastating for my journey.  But God was gracious to have surrounded me with such a great cloud of witnesses that are here to run the race with me.  God was gracious in that He created my body to respond quickly and correctly when the healthy habits took over the bad ones again.  He was gracious to maybe knock off a few pounds (or sweat off) that I didn't earn calorie wise this week and allow me to be back on track after only a week rather than needing weeks to correct the mistake.

I was driving a 15 passenger van this evening and hit a pothole.  Afterwards I heard a rattle and wondered if I had blown out a tire.  But I've had a lot of driving experience and good teachers and the van didn't react as one would if there had been a blowout.  We have blowout's in life too and I had one just over a week ago.  But as I've learned how to both recognize and handle a blowout of a tire on a vehicle, I've also learned to recognize blowouts in life and am learning how to handle them.  God is in the middle of those times saying I'm here.  God is in the middle of those blowouts to help us control the vehicle and sometimes to take the controls himself and get us back on track.  God uses people and situations in our life to help make that happen.  God is in the friendships and community He has put us in.  God is extending grace in the middle of those blowouts that could end up a major accident and helping us to experience only a slight delay.

Today I wanted to share a moment of weakness lest you think I have it all together.  And I want to be clear that if you are seeing strength in me and my journey you are seeing the God who gives me strength in my weakness.  You are seeing the God who is my higher power, my redeemer, my healer, and my friend.  You are seeing the Jesus who lives inside of me.  And my desire for this journey and for the rest of my life is that you will see...

Less of me, more of Him.

Eric