Work It Out

Lately, I've been trying to lose the last 10lbs from my pregnancy with Audrey, it is not easy. I have my good days and bad. I can get really really motivated and tell myself to eat good and exercise more than normal and I go real hard, but I am easily distracted and then left with guilt and remorse and no change. For some reason I don't have much self discipline in that area, I never really thought about it either...until I had a baby. There are a couple of reasons I yearn to lose that 10lbs. One, to be back to my pre-pregnancy weight. Two, I set a goal and it would be an awesome feeling to accomplish it. Finally, when you are losing weight you tend to eat better and exercise more, which in turn makes you feel better all around. I want to one day be that health nut and hopefully will encourage my children to follow in good decisions as well. It just makes you happy when your body is healthy....of course I have to put a little Jesus in this...lol. This also relates to being in the Word. When you have that self-discipline and are on with reading the Bible you feel good and radiate a happiness that you can't get anywhere else. For me personally, when I am not in the word regularly or I'm 'distracted' I feel gross and far away from God. And like when you've stopped working out for a few weeks and come back, you kind-of have to start all over and work out some soreness (spiritual soreness) for a few sessions.
These past few weeks have been hard on my family. My father-in-law is in ICU on life support. It is strange coincidence that I wrote my last blog about rejoicing the Lord in the hard times and grieving the night before all this went down. My husband and his family have a perception that has touched my life forever. The trust that they have in Jesus is known and shown clearly and although this is the kind of situation that seems to test that trust and can be hard to really see and understand just how much Jesus loves them, still they rejoice because they love Him and know that whatever happens it is for the glory.
I said all that at the beginning because although I have been ministered to by watching my family, I had also been distracted. It has been a busy week with family in and juggling with 5 babies under 2 that I wasn't in the word. Not that I didn't pray, gee whiz, but in order to communicate to God you have to be in His word and I can tell when I am not. Much like taking care of your body, when you aren't working out your spiritual body you tend to feel bad and fall in a rut. Today was the first day back to church since the incident and I was rejuvinated and motivated(one reason why it is so important to go to church). I also believe that when your body is healthy it helps your spiritual walk (mind, body, spirit is all connected), but that too is another blog for another day. I find that with me, working out and reading my bible are alike in that, I have high goals to achieve with both, they require self-discipline, and they have great results!

Rejoice!

Some of what I have been trying to say in bits and pieces of my blogs I found in a perfect summary. I read this, and immediately wanted to share it! I was reading "Rejoice" by Karen Kingsbury and Gary Smalley (book 4 of the "Redemption Series") and the first three chapters made me so nauseous that I didn't want to read anymore. Even though these books have such a real grip on understanding the truth of God's love through real life scenarios, this one just got to me. If you know me, you know that I struggle with fear and worry. I have to constantly be on guard for satans attack on my mind. Anyway, I still wanted to read the book, but I had to know if everything worked out...so...I skipped to the end. When I was looking through the end notes to get back to the story I caught this...

"God understands grief. Jesus wept when he saw the crowd's response to Lazarus in the tomb. Death, illness, and painful trials were never God's intention for his people. Since the fall of man, it has been the way of the world. But even so, God gives us a way out of the misery.
Be joyful! Rejoice always!
This doesn't mean you'll never cry. To the contrary, if your heart is soft for God, you'll cry often. You'll weep when it's your turn to stand vigil at a hospital bed, or when you stand there on behalf of someone else. But if you make a decision to rejoice, then deep inside you will always have a reason to go on, a reason to get up in the morning. Your grief won't be that of a person without hope; rather you will grieve because pain and death and tragedy are sad. Very sad. But you will have hope because you believe the truths that go along with faith in Christ. God is in control...He has a plan for everyone who loves him...Death is merely a door for those who believe in him...And he will make good out of every situation.
See?
What other response could we have to that kind of God but joy?"
-Gary Smalley

This was at the back of the book as "A Word from Gary Smalley." It really spoke to me and it is the truth. This world is scary and bad things have been happening all over the place, but we 'Rejoice' because our God is King and for whatever reasons that we don't understand it is all apart of His perfect plan! But, that is why it is so important for us to 'relate' to one another to get through the 'hard' of life and to love one another....and why we need to be saved, so that we can be with that God for eternity because there will be one day soon that we won't grieve, be scared or worried or cry, but REJOICE and sing and dance and laugh in our new glorified bodies with hopefully our loved ones! He told us these things in the bible for a reason...so that we can rest.