Have a Seat; Let's Talk...

An update, for those of you who may have joined your prayers with mine for the sad woman in the prior post. God answered in a big way. He granted her sleep that night, at a critical point in such a way that she KNEW (although I believe she has not yet met God as her friend yet...), she recognized the hand of God and knew that it was an answer to the prayers of those who were praying for her that night. ((Edit: Please look at the comments. I was wrong in my assumption.))

Please continue to pray for her. The crisis is not over...merely in abeyance for the moment.

As for me; as for where to take this post...I'm in a state of confusion about both of those issues.
I've still been enjoying some relative relief from pain due to my epidural injection. Although it is slowly creeping back. And yet, I'm hurting from the bad situation in my cervical spine, which they were not able to treat with injection...not without ceasing my breathing with the anesthesia.

Still, it is nice to have half the pain rather than the full 150% !

I was reviewing my goals and setting some new ones for 2011. I won't share them all with you...but largely I took care to pay attention to all three components of my being: Spirit, mind and body. My desire and my focus in the past several years is to find a place of balance among these three...because wholeness is an area that God has impressed on me...We are comprised of all of these and he cares about one AS MUCH AS THE OTHER...as long as our first priority is to LOVE HIM WITH THE TOTALITY OF EACH OF THEM.

As he said in the Shema: "Love the Lord your God with your entire heart, mind and strength (or physical being)." and Jesus added in the New Testament that this is the first (of primary importance) and the greatest command given to us by God.

So I wanted to shape my goals with that in mind. I wrote those three areas out and then categorized my goals so that they were listed under the appropriate heading.

Some of my goals (I won't list them all) are:

• To find an accountability partner for spiritual advice and confession ... and to give honest feedback to me... I'm not sure who that will be because there's no one in my life who is around me enough to be able to do that...save maybe one...I will have to pray about that.
• To reach my goal weight in my ongoing program to get to a healthy weight. I've lost 50 pounds thus far and ideally would like to lose another 30-40 pounds.
• To continue to exercise as I have been doing and to seek other means of remaining active even when not "exercising."
• To continue to read and to maintain a list of the books I'll have read in this year.
• To begin and to complete the online distance learning program in Integrative Nutrition and to get my certification as a Health Coach. Part of this depends on whether or not my funding goes through...but that will have to be a matter of prayer.

And the others involve mostly either a new discipline or a continuing practice of a familiar one.

I hate the term "resolutions" as I've probably mentioned in the past. Mostly because they have become either a joke or a means of a desperate attempt to rescue something gone horribly out of control. And while all recoveries begin with a decision....I think it unlikely that many of them were "New Years' Resolutions."

Last year, early in the year, (whether it was New Years or not, I do not recall) I decided to get a handle on my eating and to begin to attempt to pursue a healthy lifestyle...and while that decision took several months before it really gelled into a determination....it stuck...and I've done and am doing that. Granted I still struggle with disordered thinking due to my eating disorder (ED) and this is a battle I will fight probably for the rest of my life. But it's one worth winning, so therefore it's worth fighting.

Well, time to gulp my coffee and get downstairs and get moving with my cardio workout. It's been nice chatting with you this morning.
Blessings.