Bits for Sunday, October 28, 2007

Happy day before Hermit Day! Just glancing at my calendar, I see that tomorrow is Hermit Day. Don’t know what that means, but I can assure you that as I face an early alarm tomorrow after a week of vacation, I think it’s a day I just might need to observe!

The week of vacation gave me extra time to think – extra extra time since I was sick four of the five days I had off work! I realized the end of the year is rapidly approaching, and there are still a few of my covenants (the one-time sorts of commitments) that I still need to complete before the end of the year. Time to kick it into gear.

So to push me into action, here’s the second fifth of my commitments for the year – the area that was probably the most challenging of all.

Area Two: My Temple – My theme verse for this area was “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own…” 1 Corinthians 6:19. I always read that verse in a rather exasperated tone – as though Paul was saying “Hello! Get with the program, you idiot!” Thankfully, I think Paul was much nicer than that, and I think the tone was much more pleading and merciful – “Don’t you know? If not, let me be the one to tell you what a treasure you have…”

2007 became my year to wake up and realize that this body I have is something I only get one time. If I didn’t start taking a little bit better care of it – I could be in big trouble later. And if I couldn’t find it within me to take good care of it for my own sake, then I needed to do it for the sake of the Holy Spirit. So here were my commitments regarding the temple.

1. Exercise five days a week. What a shock to my poor body that had only seen about five days of exercise in life prior to this year. I have been a textbook case of resolving to exercise, doing well for a week, and then giving up. I tried my very best to think of all the reasons why I quit so I could be prepared to combat them. My commitment was to spend anywhere from ½ hour to 1 hour each time that I exercised, and I’m excited to say that so far, I’ve kept this commitment each week. I’ve done Tae Bo (a comical event, should any of you ever need a good laugh), I’ve walked (giving me a comical tan line at the ankle), I’ve worked out on the elliptical machine I invested in earlier in the year (unloading it piece by piece from my trunk was a comical workout in and of itself) and more recently, I’ve added one day a week at the gym, sweatin’ with the skinnies. While I worried that this was too ambitious a commitment, it’s worked out well. I take a day of rest from it every Sunday and then I’m allowed one other day a week to be too busy, too lazy, or too tired. Other than that – no excuses. Not even my spur of the moment trip to Kansas after the tornado or my week of sickness kept me off the schedule!

The verdict? I think this has sufficiently become a habit for me. It’s not going on next year’s list, but I don’t have any intentions of giving up in this department.

2. When offered food choices, choose the better choice. I hate diets. They don’t work for me, because I’m not willing to stay committed to them for life. So my goal was to employ the general principles I learned from Gwen Shamblin’s “Weigh Down” book that I read a few years ago. Everything is permissible…but exercise moderation. I tried to stop eating like six construction workers and start eating like a lady. I didn’t give up the things I loved, but I tried to have smaller portions or healthier versions. You’ll still find me in line for fru-fru coffee drinks, but you’ll find me ordering them with skim milk and sugar free whipped cream. I still love my bread – but I try to eat wheat now more than white. Four cookies instead of six. Cheerios instead of a bag of M&Ms. It’s worked well. Not a quick melt-away-the-pounds eating plan, but definitely one that keeps me from chewing on pens in between meals.

The verdict? Like the exercise, I think this one is an ingrained habit now. I don’t need to keep it on the list, but I plan to keep practicing it anyway.

3. No pop. Hands down, the hardest one on my entire list of twenty-five. They don’t make a patch to get you through carbonated beverage withdrawal. For a couple of years, I’ve given up pop for Lent, and for this year I did it simply because I wanted to do one thing out of the whole twenty five that represented a genuine “this might kill me” sacrifice. And for me, that sacrifice was the self-denial of pop. Going from drinking a 32 ounce full fledged (no diet, no caffeine free, no sugar free business) Coke every day to drinking water and iced tea every day – that was big. And try as I might to convince myself it was just a long Lent, 365 days is a far cry from 40 days. One time I even dreamed that I messed up and had a small glass of Coke. Boy was I relieved to wake up from that!

The verdict? Unsure. I don’t know if it’s best for me to keep this one or if I’m strong enough to just have a little taste now and then without falling back into the pop-drinking pit. I’m going to have to think on this for a while.

4. Find and apply verses of physical worth in God’s eyes. It’s hard to be a girl sometimes. Especially on the days of sweatin’ with the skinnies. It’s hard to look in the mirror and not immediately gravitate toward everything you hate, even if what you hate is something that no one else even notices. And I know I’m not alone in those thoughts. You’ve had them, even if you don’t want to admit it. So this year, I bought a little spiral bound set of index cards and every time I ran across verses that talked about how God views me, I wrote those verses on the cards. And then on the days when I feel like running around with a paper bag over my head, I carry those verses with me and I read them over and over to remind myself that no matter what I see or what the looks or words of others say that they see, it’s what God sees that’s important.

The verdict? I’ll probably turn it into a writing project.

5. Floss daily. You can stop laughing now. I know it’s a bit of a ridiculous thing to put on a covenant list. But you do not understand. My teeth are so close together, flossing requires not only the floss, but a hammer as well. It’s quite exhausting. I’ve never liked to floss and I’ve been sitting through the dentist’s lectures twice a year about how I need to do it or I’ll be sorry. Finally she flung at me the dreaded phrase of “gum disease” and told me I was in the beginning stages of it – and if I truly didn’t start flossing, I’d be losing my teeth eventually. I happen to like my teeth – and I’d really like to keep them for a good long time. So I broke down, bought some floss, and started flossing every single day.

The verdict? After a glowing report at the last dentist visit, I’ve decided to keep up this practice for the sake of the pearly whites.

I would say that of all five areas, this one has given me the greatest sense of accomplishment, because it was the biggest area of overhaul, and required the most lifestyle change. I wasn’t sure I could make it – but so far, I have!