A Celebration of Life

Hello Friends,

Success this week! I am 1 pound down. A pound is a pound. Weight Watchers encourages 0.5-2.0 pounds per week in weight loss as a healthy goal, so I'll take my pound, thank you very much!! :)

This is an important pound for me - I was stuck, hanging out on a plateau for several weeks. And I was becoming very frustrated. Very. In fact, my days on the plateau were the impetus to start this blog. Something had to change because I was becoming angry and discouraged. I could feel myself inching towards giving up, again. But something shifted inside of me, and I felt, I KNEW that things were going to be different this time, they HAD to be different if I was to live beyond the next few years.

For the first time, I chose to take a stand, face my frustration, and choose to use the energy of my anger to propel me forward instead of turning it back in on myself, yet again. I chose to no longer believe the "voices" and messages I have lived by for most of my life, messages taught through the words, actions, and inactions of those closest to me. The messages taught me that I was worthless, that everyone and everything else was far more important to me and to them than me. The messages bound me, like leather straps around my ankles and wrists, around my torso and my legs, around my head and around my neck. The messages told me that to be abused was normal. So, I abused myself.

To become this large took some doing. To become as big as I am required a ferocious commitment to not care - not care about myself, my world, or those around me. To become morbidly obese demanded that I override God-given bodily signals of when to stop eating and ignore the desires to get up and move around, to take care of myself.

The overwhelming energy of the rage and the anger, the hatred and the loathing I experienced I turned in on myself. And I ate. And I ate, and I ate, and I ate. And I stopped moving, stopped flowing, gliding through the air, enjoying the strength and the mobility with which I was blessed.

And I began to die, one bite, one sedentary minute at a time. For nearly 25 years I sat at death's door, letting my innate desire to live slip excruciatingly slowly through my fingers.

BUT! (and this is a BIG but), today I choose to grab hold of what God has given to me, my desire to live, to see, to breathe, to hear, to feel, to love deeply, laugh loudly, grieve intensely, grow intentionally. Today I choose life.

Today, weighing one pound less than I did a week ago, is one step closer to the life God has promised to me, an abundant life, a good life. I embrace my one pound, and I celebrate the life it represents.

Will you celebrate with me?

With Much Love and Blessings,

Erin

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (Deuteronomy 30: 19-20)