Happy New Year!
I hope you all had a happy and healthy holiday season.
So, here we are in 2022. What does it look like for you?
I am not into NY resolutions. I feel that we make these huge sweeping promises to ourselves about exercising and eating healthy and when we don’t achieve them, we end up feeling defeated, hopeless, and overwhelmed. Ultimately worse than before we made them. We assume we are just weak and feel helpless to make lasting changes in our lives. We feel doomed to repeat the same cycles of defeat that we’ve experienced in the past, so we search for happiness at the bottom of a bowl or three of moose tracks ice cream.
What’s the point of trying to do better?
If you relate to this mind set at all, you are my people! This is your tribe. If not, that’s totally fine, I respect you and hope you respect where I and others are too. Continue to thrive my friend!!!
I grew tired of this cycle of defeat so at the beginning of 2021 I set out to make some lasting changes in my life. My autoimmune mixed-connective-tissue (MCTD) disease was flaring in all sorts of not-so wonderful ways, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and my gray hairs and aching bones (due to weight gain) were testament to the fact that I wasn’t getting any younger. It was time to get serious about my health. I thought it was just my physical health but quickly learned that my physical health was also connected to my spiritual and emotional health.
In 2003 my 13 yr old son was admitted into Bronson Hospital’s Pediatric ICU and diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. I knew NOTHING about blood sugar or the effects of sugar and carbohydrates. I was given a crash course in the hospital and sent home with syringes, two different insulins and a big book explaining it all to me. That’s when my journey to understand what metabolic health was, and how the foods we eat affect us.
In January 2021 I knew that my dependence/addiction to sugar & flour were causing my blood sugar to spike and fall leaving me in a vicious cycle of cravings & fatigue. I knew better and had quit eating all things sugar several times over the years. I would lose the weight and then fall right back into my old habits instead of creating new ones and I would gain it all back and at least 5 more pounds each time. I didn't understand what was driving my cravings and didn't do a good job of moderating how much I ate. It was all or nothing.
I set my heart to figure out how to lose weight and maintain it this time! While nurturing my emotional and spiritual health too. This is the journey I will continue the rest of my life. I will mess up and I will make mistakes, but I will forgive myself and adjust accordingly while I remember to crave peace with God, myself, and food.
If this resonates with you and you want to join me on this journey of peace, here is an exercise to work on:
· Get a cheap spiral notebook (not a fancy journal- you will need to have freedom to scribble, cross things off, re-write, etc. and if you are anything like me, this will bring you stress if you're using a fancy one!) and write PEACE on the front of it, then on the first several pages write a one-word title of an area you want to create peace in your life.
Some examples:
Body, Emotional Health, Work, Marriage, Family, Faith Life, etc.
Then start taking notes on each page about the current non-peaceful situation and next to each concern, list a goal and then a short prayer asking God for His guidance and help in this area.
Example:
On a page titled Emotional Health you could put, “I often feel angry without good reason.” Then make a goal to take a deep breath and exhale slowly each time you feel that anger rise, and then say a prayer (out loud or in your head), “Lord, help me understand where this anger comes from and how to have peace instead.”
As you do this, God will start showing you areas that he wants to bring peace, comfort, and healing to you. It may not sound like much, maybe even sounds silly, but as you do this, your eyes will start opening to ideas and insights you had never thought about. God is so wonderful like that. He’s just waiting for us to ask and lean into Him for answers.
This may take some time. Don’t do it all at once, you may only do one page a day. If we want true peace in our lives, we cannot sprint through this process. We didn’t get here overnight and there’s no shortcut to lasting peace, so keep craving more each and every day!
More to come on Craving Peace!
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