[Look After You, The Fray]

I've been uber busy- Monday night I babysat (Jason and I think date nights are of utmost importance and I am blessed to do that for the family I nanny for so they can have a date!  Keep the romance alive!) and didn't get home until almost 10:30.  Then last night was the inaugural meeting for our new Community Group (it was awesome!) but I didn't get home again until about 10.  I've been battling the back pain which has made a lot of things really difficult.

It's a rather tumultuous relationship I have with food and exercise, and I realize that when I'm in pain it just makes obedience so, so much more difficult.  Case in point: I had my first real slip-up last night.  I brought dinner home for Jason from CG and I was going to take one bite-- had I taken one and put it in the fridge all would have been well.  But instead I sat down in front of the computer with it, and the next thing I knew it was 2/3 of the way gone and I very clearly felt the Holy Spirit say, "This is sin.  STOP."  But I didn't.  I ate with my fingers, until I guiltily left 2 bites for Jason. 

After praying to Christ and asking my husband for forgiveness I know I'm clean.  I don't have to set up camp in the land of the sin. But it's hard; the initial, "My life is different!" is wearing off and it's turning into the daily work.  I hate the daily work.  I love the initial stage, the starting something new, where everything feels good and it's exciting to count calories.  I hate the maintenance phase where I have to do it even when it's monotonous. 

That said, last night's incident was a wake-up call- today I am writing down calories again and I will update the Foode Log later today.  Also, after a few wishy washy days I had a solid quiet time with Jesus this morning and I am really working on keeping thoughts of Jesus at the forefront of my mind, praying throughout the day, so that when I am facing temptation I'm that much more prone to hear His voice and respond as opposed to when I shut Him out and He feels far away.

I'm glad that I found the Mary Pickford quote, because my tendency after one mini-binge like last night would be to keep eating because, well, I've already screwed the pooch so I might as well punish myself iwth more food.  But I don't have to stay down, and I won't.

One issue is my back- I legitimately could not have worked out Monday or even gone to church Sunday.  The pain was too much.  But I would appreciate prayer for my back: my prayer is that if the Lord wills then He would heal it.  If it's not His timing or His will to heal my back then my prayer is that I will rely on Him and rest in His will and not get depressed.  I know that part of my funk for the last few days was that my back was hurting and I just felt depressed about it, which led to destructive choices like the food binge because my eyes were set on me and not God. 

Lastly, I've touched on it a lot in Spiritual Foode, but I had a sweet time in prayer with the Lord this morning.  He reminded me that He is a God of compassion, grace, and mercy, that He loves me with a jealous love that desires my whole heart, and that when I sin His discipline is to restore me to Him, not to punish me.  He is good and so faithful and I pray that I would rest in Jesus, to see Him as my loving Father and not an emotionally distant authority figure waiting to smack me down.

Remember my post on Peter's and Paul's?  I realized this weekend that I get far too caught up in Peter's weaker moments, like impulsively promising to follow Jesus to the end of the earth and then denying Him three times to a teenage girl.  I forget that Peter has one of the most amazing moments in the entire Bible, in John 21, when he sees the resurrected Jesus on the shore and thus dives into the water to get to his Lord as quickly as possible.  He wasn't going to sit in the boat and wait around- he was so excited to be back in the presence of Christ that he literally went all in, no chips left on the table.  Yeah, he still flubbed up with Judaizers stuff later, but Peter loved Jesus Christ.  And Jesus was faithful to remind Peter to be about the fear of God and not the fear of man, gently rebuking him in love for the three-pronged denial before the crucifixion.  Jesus forgave and restored Peter and eventually the main who denied Christ to a teenage girl, when facing his own crucifixion for following Jesus, asked to be crucified upside down because he was not worthy of dying in the same manner as his Lord. 

Someday when I meet Peter in heaven I am going to thank him, because his testimony in the Bible will continue to encourage me to live for Jesus my entire life, no matter how many times I make foolish choices. Until them I am going to keep letting the Lord restore me and help me back up when I stumble and sin.