reChurched: Aware

deChurched to reChurched is a series on about how God brought me back to the church after 15 years of disappointment, frustration and stubbornness. Other posts in this series to read first are: Part 1: Adrift and Part 2: Ajar.

Excuses gone, I had nothing to hide under anymore…

My righteous indignation of all the wrongs of the church had been squelched.

And now sitting in the very place I had claimed to have hoped for, it was my turn to do something.

To my credit, I had been showing up…

But really, all that angst for all those years and now I am just going to “show up”… that is the best I can do?

I was enjoying church, but I wasn’t pursing God.

I wasn’t praying, like I should.

I wasn’t reading His word… I had tried and failed miserably at the One Year Bible.

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When I was a young child, I had a lot of issues with my kidneys. Dangerously high fevers and hospitalizations eventually gave way to the just the inconvenience of having an “accident” here and there—sometimes at school, other times at night.

Accidents at 4 or even 5 are excusable, but accidents at 7,8,9 and 10 are fodder for the playground. And, sleepovers even up to the age of 15 were filled with the preoccupation of whether or not my “problem” was going to occur that night.

Looking back, I have often said that my unbelievably close tie to God at such a young age and throughout my teen years can be attributed –at least partly—to the fact that I had to fully rely on Him to get me through those years.  After all, I had no idea when the next episode would occur, so getting in good with the Big guy was the closest thing to control of the situation.

My relationship with God was so much more than that, but it isn’t lost on me that He used this “condition” to draw me close and I have always said that I was thankful for that condition because of it.

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I have been overweight my entire adult life. And, obese for most of it.

Strangely enough, I started packing on the pounds around the same time I started packing all my church baggage around with me.

I have lost 50 lbs here… 90 lbs there and even maintained a 60 lb weight loss for a good 3 years.

But I keep finding it.

I can tell you the best eating regime and fitness routine that will let me drop the pounds the fastest.

If weight loss and gain were a job, I would be the professional to call.

I have been reading a lot of blogs and books on weight loss, habits, etc. lately.

And, it has occurred to me that my “How To” in the weight department is not the problem- I can make the scale go up and down.

It is my “Why” that has been tripping me up.

Why do I consume food when I do not feel physically hungry?

Logically it makes absolutely NO SENSE.

I sweat for hours a week on the elliptical to get rid of excess calories, why for HEAVENS SAKE would I consume something when I was not physically hungry?!?

One book called for me to experiment: “Eat when you are hungry. Stop when you are full. And, feel  the feeling when you aren’t hungry.”

As silly and simplistic as that sounds, one week of that strategy revealed to me a lot.

I will go more in depth on the realizations about how I approach food and even fitness at a later time… but what caught me off guard is that my WHY was God.

It never occurred to me that I could be feeding a spiritual hunger with physical food… but when I took the food away that helped me escape and forced myself to feel what was making me want to reach for crackers when there was no physical hunger present, it was glaringly obvious.

I missed God.

His peace.

His warmth.

His companionship.

His guidance.

His wisdom.

Then it occurred to me that this weight… this burden… not unlike my kidney issues, could be God’s path for me back to Him.

So I grabbed my journal—dusty from months of nothingness.

I started praying when I was prompted by a hunger that was not physical.

But would He hear my prayers after all these years?

To be continued…

deChurched to reChurched is a series on about how God brought me back to the church after 15 years of disappointment, frustration and stubbornness. The  posts in this series are: Part 1: Adrift,  Part 2: Ajar,  Part 3: Aware, Part 4: Alive.