In a previous article, “God Please Make Me Skinny”, I talked briefly about changes made because of situations I found myself in as well as highlighted a couple gifts such as time and change. Since then, I’ve embarked on a couple new adventures, learned a little bit more about myself and have moved on to new found victories.
First, I started a new diet. I know, “diet” is such an ugly word or at least it can have a bad connotation. It is, it can be, but I was pretty excited to make some more changes. Wanting to know how to recover from burn out and chronic fatigue syndrome, I started to research what changes I needed to make. Another reason to change my diet is to lose weight so what is being done at the chiropractor isn’t counterproductive.
Seemed to me a choice needed to be made: to invest or not. And since I am an investment, it only seemed fitting to proceed as so. About now, I’m going to a chiropractor a couple times a week and a counselor once a week. I’ve changed my workload and schedule, sleep schedule and exercise routine. Embarking on my next change, I didn’t know what to expect.
Okay, that’s not entirely true because on some level you know what to expect. I guess what I’m getting at are the little surprises and what you learn about yourself. What I found out about myself was surprising. First, I couldn’t figure out why I was always craving sweets. I didn’t want them, didn’t need them but there was something deep inside me that sure did want them. Trying my best to muster up every ounce of self-control, I kept pressing on.
About three weeks into the diet, I had a profound revelation and gained some much needed insight. Maybe you can relate or this might be something you’ve only heard about. The need for sweets, the emptiness like a black hole to never neverland that was somewhere in the depths of my inmost being, seemed to have my attention in a very real way.
The relationship dynamics in a family are powerful and have an incredible amount of influence throughout a person’s life. However, there is nothing like the individual relationships a child has with their parents. As for me, it was my relationship with my dad that had a greater effect on my than I realized.
So here is the revelation: my craving for sweets was a way to cope with life, stress or to sum it up, just about anything and everything. The love hate relationship is true. I would go through or experience something and didn’t possess the tools to appropriately process through the situation in a healthy way. The comfort I felt numbed the rejection, abandonment, fear, etc. that I felt. Unfortunately, this isn’t what God wants and it isn’t what we really want.
What I started to do when I feel a craving is pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help me identify why I have a craving and to fill the emptiness I feel. I dialogue through what I’m feeling, identify where it is coming from and how it’s all related. I’m a believer that there is a link between patterns, habits and patterns that are either healthy or unhealthy.
My goal is to identify the unhealthy and replace it with the healthy. This is definitely something I can’t do on my own. I’m in need God’s help. Some wisdom that a mentor gave me, and this isn’t just for this particular situation, but for the rest of my life, and I share it with you: God is found in our weaknesses. In your weakness there is His power and strength. Get to know your weaknesses because that is where God will be found.
More to come and for those wondering about how my relationship with my dad fits into all this, that article is on its way. Stay tuned for more!
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