Getting off track....

This week was the second of three big TAKS testing weeks. I am the TAKS coordinator for our campus. I have to say it is quite stressful. Getting all the TAKS tests ready for each student and teacher. Making sure each teacher has everything they need. Arranging for all the extra staff we need for testing and monitoring. It's a big job. Another part of it is if there is a problem, I have to take care of it. One teacher let me know of a potential problem. A student in her class realized that he had gotten off track when he was marking his answers. When he realized it, he went back and erased ALL of his answers (he was already finished). He then colored in the bubbles on his answer document correctly. The problem was that after he got back on track and filled in the correct bubbles, there were eraser marks left on his answer document. Lots of them. Where he had erased, there were still shades of gray. This made the answer document unusable.

I struggled this week. I made not-so-good choices with my eating. I was stressed and by the time I got home, I had no willpower at all. When I began thinking about this, God showed me a connection between the unusable answer document and me. The student got off track, erased and started over. Even though he did, there were marks left on his paper. I got off track, erased (repented) and started over but there were marks left on my paper. The marks for me were guilt, condemnation, discouragement, and added weight. Even though I got back on track, I still have the marks that I have to deal with. I felt as though I was unusable now, too. But God showed me that wasn't true. He can use me and He will use me, hopefully to help others see His never-ending love and faithfulness.

I still have some marks left. But God has a really good eraser!

Romans 8:28 - God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purpose for them.

Here I go again.....

Here I go again....around the same mountain, round and round and round. The mountain is, still, food. But you know, the more I think about it, it is more than just the food. I can't seem to get it through my thick head that the scale isn't a measure of victory for me. It isn't about making the food behave (low fat, sugar free, low number of points). Even though the food is "behaving", I am not. I am still overeating, dwelling on it, wanting it, being discouraged....round and round and round. It's a cycle. Weigh in, spend the week consumed with it, anxiously waiting for weigh day, hoping for low numbers, sometimes disappointed,sometimes happy...round and round and round. Yes, I have seen the scale move in the right direction. Yes, I have lost weight. This issue is, for me, a huge mountain that I can't seem to get over. I just keep going round and round and round. Not making progress. Still held captive.

"When we were at Mount Sinai, the Lord our God said to us, ‘You have stayed at this mountain long enough. It is time to break camp and move on." Deut. 1:6-7.

Once again, I am amazed at God and how He speaks to me through His Word. God is telling me that I've struggled with this long enough. He wants me to "break camp and move on". I have never been mountain climbing before. I think I am ready to give it a try.