It is all about Freedom!!!

Tonight I went to my regular Tuesday night bible study. We just wrapped up the Beth Moore study called Living Beyond Yourself. Session 10 was all about the fruit of the spirit that is self-control. How appropriate a topic is that for someone on a weightloss/healthy living journey?!?!!? All I can say is WOW.

It was great. I came home just wanting to pour out everything she talked about right here on this blog.

She discussed that on one side of the spectrum there is neglect. When we "let ourselves go" or when we have given up for awhile and need a jump start again. We are not respecting ourselves.

The other end is obsession. Obsession with fitness, obsession with calories, obsession with food in general.

She suggested we need to find a balance and that balance is RESPECT. Respect for ourselves. To quote her study guide "Deeply absorbing a biblical perspective of our physical bodies would free us from the horrific stress our culture has placed on us." "Therefore honor God with your body." (or in other words...Respect Yourself) I'm not meaning to preach here, but this stuff really spoke to me. In our media and culture today we are bombarded with images that make us feel bad about ourselves. We are wonderful people that deserve to be happy and respected. And if we don't respect ourselves we are telling the rest of the world they don't need to respect us either.

She was saying that we need to find a place of freedom and that is some place between neglect and obsession. We should be attentive to the point of respect and work on "recapturing the lost art of moderation." We can be attentive by paying attention to what we eat and how much exercise we get, but not to the point that it becomes all consuming.

Chubby Chick has a great post today on something very similar to this topic. She mentions being free several times. When we find this balance we will be free to play with our kids without being winded or tired. We will be free to go to any store and shop. We will be free to go to any restaurant and sit in any booth or chair they take us too. We will have freedom.

Your freedom and mine might be two different things. Your freedom might be a size two, while my freedom might be a size ten (I took that from Beth's lesson too.) We need to find a place were we use moderation as our guide.

Victory happens one day at a time. So go out there and find your freedom....you deserve it!!!