finding my Want To.....

So yesterday I left off with finding my want to. Sounds kinda silly actually, makes me think it would be somthing Jeff Foxworthy would use with his comedy - you know when he talks about words southern folks use that aren't really words.... anyhow.....

As God woke me up this morning around 3:30 - that is something He and I need to discuss, I laid there thinking a lot about my Want to. I have the How to, it is the want to that is in need of some tweaking. Bear with me as I take a walk down memory lane.

My Want to, for as far back as I can remember has all been superficial. See, those of you who have known me know that I have always been "fat" - call it what you will, pleasantly plump, chubby, overweight, undertall, one of my personal favorites "fluffy" if it looks like a duck, it's a duck.

My memories from childhood are generally related to weight. I can remember very vividly being at Deis Hill for Brownie/Girl Scout day camp and we were building a human pyramid. Now usuallyin these the older girls are on the bottom as they are generally the bigger ones. I can remember going over to be on the 2nd row and the girl saying something to the effect of that fat girl isn't going to get on me. Now my Mom was our troops Brownie leader so I went running as fast as my fat little legs would take me over to Mom sobbing and told her what that girl said. Well, now being a protective mother, my Mom marched on over there and had what I have come to know from living in the south as a "come to Jesus meeting" with not only that girl - but all the girls standing there. Now I don't remember if we ever made the blasted pyramid or not, but I do know that my Mom stood up for me, they had hurt her "little" girl.

I remember being outside in the neighborhood playing - because if you were awake and it was nice out you were outside. I remember being called fatty fatty 2x4 can't get through the kitchen door, which is ironic because obviously to be that size I could get through the door to the food. I can remember being "mooed"at "oinked" at always being chosen last for everything because who wants the fat girl who can't do anything. I remember liking a boy in 6th grade (even remember) who it was and wanting to "go with him" - like we would go anywhere, but I digress - and he said no, she is too fat.

I can remember being at family gatherings and the men drinking and they would start in on me. Mom was always there for me and would try to make it better, but she couldn't.

Anyway is it any wonder my want to has always been for acceptance, to want people to like me? I have always - even this last time when I lost the weight 7 years ago, equated thin to being liked or accepted. A friend had put on her FB post a while back that at times she still felt like she was in high school and wanted to be friends with the popular kids but she never fit in. Oh how I know that feeling.

Every time have lost the weight (before 9th grade, before I graduated high school, after graduated OU in 1994, and then in 2004) I thought that being thin was going to change my life and you know what - it didn't. I changed, and not for the better. When I would lose weight (after high school) I would turn to negative things - partying, drinking, hanging out with people who had lives that I thought I wanted. But all the negative choices left me feeing hollow and even more alone and empty so I would turn back to my friend, the one who I was never an imposition on, never draining on them, food.

This is really hard for me and to be honest I don't know that I will hit publish post - I hope I do, but I don't know.

I have finally come to a place in my life here I realize that my size doesn't matter to my true friends - outside of health concerns for me. The only one I truly need to be accepted by is God. I need to take care of this "temple" he has given me for the Spirit to dwell in. He has entrusted its care to me and I haven't been doing a very good job.

Several passages are really standing out to me right now:

1 Corinthians 6:12-13 (NIV) "Everything is permissible for me - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible for me - I will not be mastered by anything. Food for the stomach and stomach for the food - but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

1 Corinthians 10:23 (NIV) "Everything is permissible - but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible - but not everything is constructive"

2 Corinthians 12: 9-10 (NIV) "But he said to me 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Chit's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficultes. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

So it has taken me at least 26 years (started first weight loss doctor at 13) to realize why I have been going through all this. This wasn't an obvious stronghold to me, after all it is not like alcoholism, an alcoholic can never have a drink again - which I am in no way minimizing the impact that alcoholism has over a person, their life and family, but we don't have to eat in order to survive. We have to have nourishment in order to survive - we have to eat, even Jesus only went 40 days without food (did I really but ONLY in front of 40????).

Anyway, all that to say my Want To is to be able to honor God, to turn to him for my strength and support, for encouragement when I am down and feeling lonely (which is more often than I care to admit, but that is another tale) and I need to take care of this body as he has entrusted me with it. I no longer want to loose weight to look good, to get a guy, to be happy - that isn't the key to any of that and if it is to the guy, he isn't worth it anyway.

That is my Want to - what is yours????