Thinking

Sometimes thinking is good and sometimes thinking is not so good.

#1:  I am still working on losing a few pounds.  I have been reading a chapter a night of the book Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire With God, Not Food by Lysa TerKeurst to help motivate me.  So far I've been taken with the passage Matthew 19:16-30 from the introduction.

  

Someone came to Jesus with this question: “Teacher, what good deed must I do to 

have eternal life?”

“Why ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. But 

to answer your question—if you want to receive eternal life, keep the commandments.”

“Which ones?” the man asked.

            And Jesus replied: “‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not 

            steal. You must not testify falsely. Honor your father and mother. Love your neighbor as 

            yourself.’”

“I’ve obeyed all these commandments,” the young man replied. “What else must I do?”

Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the 

money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

But when the young man heard this, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is very hard for a rich person to 

enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  I’ll say it again—it is easier for a camel to go through the 

eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”

The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked.

Jesus looked at them intently and said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with 

God everything is possible.”

Then Peter said to him, “We’ve given up everything to follow you. What will we get?”

Jesus replied, “I assure you that when the world is made new and the Son of Man sits 

upon his glorious throne, you who have been my followers will also sit on twelve thrones, 

judging the twelve tribes of Israel.  And everyone who has given up houses or brothers 

or sisters or father or mother or children or property, for my sake, will receive a hundred 

times as much in return and will inherit eternal life. But many who are the greatest now 

will be least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the 

greatest then.”

It didn't make too much sense reading it at first, so I googled for a devotional on the verses and then it made much more sense to me in the context of the book.  Food can be a crutch, it can be our riches that we do not want to give up.  With each chapter that I maneuver, I see how faith in God can help with the motivation and endurance needed to make real change in my eating habits (or at times reasons behind the eating habitats like stress, grief, boredom, etc...).  I have a long way to go, but hopefully one of these days I will reach my healthier goal that I set back in November.

#2:  I've been thinking a lot about mom lately.  Somedays are better than others, then some days are still rough at times.  I know that I still have yet to heal and that it will take a long time.  It is not like you can just throw a switch and everything will be alright again.  Sometimes I wonder about what mom would think about the kids.  Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to ask mom's advice about something.  Sometimes I wonder why she did not go to the doctor sooner.  Sometimes I just wonder what life would be like if she was still here.  Sometimes my thoughts are happy and sometimes my thoughts bring tears.  

#3:  When I think about mom, then I worry about dad and what will happen when his day comes.  He is my only parent left and I know that he will lose his battle to cancer too.  I know that that day will come sooner than I like.  I wish that there was a cure for his cancer.  I so wish that cancer just did not exist.  I need to try to get across town more often to visit him.  Sometimes it is hard though to get over there without the kids and they have a tendency to make his anxiety levels go sky high.  I hope that he is around long enough to teach the kids some cool grandpa things. . . like fishing, playing the guitar, cooking a pizza on the grill, making tomato burgers, and the Super Chicken song.

#4:  I'm so exhausted from thinking at times that I just don't want to think.  I just want to zone out . . . lose myself in a book . . . lose myself in a movie. I get tired of feeling responsible for myself, my kids, my hubby, my grandma A, my grandma R, my dad, and sometimes even my baby sister.  No wonder I zone out and stuff my face with food at times.  

#5:  I think I need to probably get off the computer now and find something to clean in this disaster of a house.   The chaos seems to multiple, have babies, then spreads through the whole house.  I probably could clean for weeks and still not catch up.  Hmmmm. . . guess I need to focus and get something accomplished.  I got it, I'll make slips of paper with different rooms in the house of where I should start, draw a slip, and then . . . go to sleep.  Tomorrow is another day and I can start cleaning then.