When I decided to revive this poor, neglected log, I had no idea that it has been almost four years exactly since my last post. A quick glance reveals that my life-change at that time was my almost all-consuming task of regaining my health and fitness. I wasn’t dying. I was morbidly obese.
That’s still tough to write, but it is true. Both of those words, morbidly and obese, are quite disconcerting.
So it’s been four years. That’s a long time, and sometimes I get quite discouraged, but I must remember that I didn’t put on all of that extra weight over night so it’s not coming off over night either. Having a strong commitment to changing my life to one with healthy eating habits and a strong sense of nurturing and strengthening my God-given body has been a slow, deliberate, and often gut-wrenching journey.
This has all been more mentally challenging than I could have imagined. There has been so much to consider, wrestle with, and rethink. Even writing the phrase above, “nurturing and strengthening my God-given body,” took some extra pause. I had so compartmentalized my life that I was convinced that the body was just something there, needful, of course, but not particularly to be bothered with. My mind was important, and deserved great attention. My soul was important, without a doubt, and claimed all I could give. But in my own mind, I had so separated the body, the body which I knew God gave me, that I was convinced that it just really didn’t matter.
Should a Christian really care about the body? I would have assented to caring about basic health. That matters. But what about carefully considering how we nourish and strengthen the body throughout our life, in our various callings? I was fine with making arguments for the nourishment of the mind and soul. Even when I titled this blog, the nourishment of the body was simply great food.
But my thoughts have deepened.