You know how you read those weight-loss success stories and often times you’ll see them say “one day something just clicked”? The story usually goes on to reveal that’s the moment when they were able to finally travel the path of success and reach their goal.
I can kind of relate, but I have a more layered perspective for myself. Yes, I do believe within this past year “something clicked” for me, and I know that “click” was God opening my eyes.
God has opened my eyes to see how I was using food as comfort, and how the enemy was fueling this sin cycle. Often, I was leaning on my feelings to dictate whether or not I’d continue on the path to success. Of course, I didn’t fully realize that at the time. I also wasn’t asking God to help me in this area. Unconsciously, I thought that since I got myself in this mess, it was all on me to get out of it.
I’m sure if I were to talk to my younger self I would agree that I have always used food as comfort, but there’s a different kind of “knowing” when God opens your eyes and convicts you. There’s a different kind of progress that happens when you’re partnered with God, moving forward together toward a goal. I’m certainly not perfect at this but I think that’s also the point. There’s a certain level of grace needed.
In my youth, a lot of my reasoning or desire to lose weight was for vanity. It was not all of the reason, but most. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time.
Around the time that this all “clicked” for me (when God opened my eyes), my core reasoning for wanting to lose weight was and is more to preserve my mobility as I age; so I can keep pressing on in the race. This desire reminds me of Hebrews 12.
Hebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
I want to be able to run the race set before me. I don’t want to hold myself back physically. I want to keep my eyes on Jesus.
My motivation also comes from my desire to preserve my health and be a good steward of the gift, this body, that God has given me.
There has been a perspective shift that did not exactly happen overnight, but it did “click” when God opened my eyes and allowed me to see all of this for what it is and for what it has been.
That’s not to say that “this is the year” and the past 15 years were for nothing, because God used all of the things that I’ve learned and experienced in those 15+ years of trying to lose weight. He used it all to show me where to go from here.
