Horizons

I love that Facebook gives me memories from the past. It's fun to see what I posted on this day years ago.  Well...most of the time it's fun.

Today was interesting.

In 2010 I posted a link to a blog entry of a "poem" I had written back in 1995. I was in therapy trying to undo a lot of the knots of my childhood and this "poem" was exactly where I was--trying to get through this raging river of memory and mess to get to what I perceived would be a better place. I so clearly remember writing that "poem". I remember the feeling triumph over the fear of confronting all those past feelings and disappointments and hurts. I felt powerful and strong. I felt fearless. I felt hopeful for things to come.

Fast forward two years. I posted a link to a blog entry about a bike race I was entered in. It was all about about how terrified I was. Why was I so scared? I was going to have to ride my bike UP A HILL (gasp!). That sounds silly, but some fears really are a little silly. I'm going to say ALL irrational fears are silly. There is no SOLID basis in reality when dealing with irrational fears. They are usually a distortion or over generalization of some real thing; that honest fear has morphed into some new (silly) thing. In the case of this race, a fear of failure had given way to a fear of riding up a hill!!

For what it's worth, I did that race and I made it up that "gargantuan" climb. I don't even think of it as a major climb anymore. Not that I could even begin to go ride it today, but I don't think I'm scared of the thought of riding it. It's hard to know for sure since it's completely out of the question for me right now. It's hard to muster fear when there's no doubt the thing isn't going to come to pass!!

Fast forward another year. I posted a link to a blog entry about staying focused on where I'm currently at, honoring the present rather than looking back or looking ahead. It was 2013. I was battling a shoulder injury and wanting to begin training for my first Ironman that fall. I had so much pain in that shoulder. (It turned out that I had a torn bicep tendon that was cut out the following January--after I had completed IMLT.) I said in part:

It's too easy to get caught up in thinking about anything other than where I'm at on this journey RIGHT NOW, mainly because it's usually not where I WANT to be!!  But...man...that's a GREAT thing.  That edge of discontentment means I'm driven.  It means I want more than to stay put. ...The thing I'm coming to realize is I don't have to give up my drive and my desire to do better in order to appreciate where I'm at right now.  In fact, honoring this moment in time is part of the way I will be able to get better.  I look at what I'm doing now.  This day.  This workout.  This moment.  If I'm giving all I have to give to make the training session what it needs to be, I can say, "YES!!  That's great..."  When I can stay focused on the task at hand I am able to give it all I have.  If I'm distracted-thinking about anything else other than what I'm doing-I'm NOT giving all I have.  It's as simple as that.

It's easy to get caught up in what I want...to be too tightly entangled with what I think I'm working toward-the GOAL. When that happens, I lose track of the task at hand. I lose focus on where I'm currently at and what the current need truly is.

I see it with the athletes I coach all the time. They work hard and get a little "injury" that's not an injury, it's just a little "thing". They don't pay attention to that thing, but instead stay too tightly transfixed on the future GOAL. They don't take the necessary steps to care for that "thing" properly. That little thing that's not an injury becomes an injury and it stops them from reaching their goal.

A lot of people do this but in different ways. I had a friend whose wife became addicted to gambling. She literally lost everything they had-all their life savings, their house, and eventually their marriage. She kept thinking she would be able to win it all back if she could just hit well "one time". The father of another friend had never taken a real vacation from work. His plan was to retire and then travel. He worked hard EVERY DAY and saved a lot of money for his future. ...he died the week after he retired. We can get so ensnared by the goal, by the plan, that we lose track of where we are right now.

Allow me to tell you a story about someone we'll call Sally. Sally had fallen into a hole. She could see the light of the "outside world" but she was pretty far down below the surface. She wasn't shaken by this, she knew what she needed to do-just climb up and get out of that hole. But every time she tried to grab the wall of that hole, it just crumbled under her hand. Sally tried everything...she called for help, she looked for anything that could be used as a tool, she even tried meditation thinking she just needed to relax her way out of the hole. She took a little time trying to become more at home in the hole, but that was NOT going to happen, she knew that hole was NOT where she belonged. But every time she tried to climb up and out to get back to the surface, she stumbled. At times she even fell a little further from the surface. Other times it would rain and with every attempt to get out she made that hole bigger and bigger as she slid on the muddy prison walls. Some days she was so exhausted all she could do was to wait for rain to wet her mouth so she could try again.

One day Sally decided that she was going to change the goal. Up until then the goal was to GET OUT OF THE HOLE and get BACK TO THE SURFACE. She decided while that was a really good long-term goal, the short term had to be something else because she wasn't seeing any progress being made. (Truth be told, she was actually getting further from her goal every day.) It also couldn't be about making "interim goals" because if she was being brutally honest with herself, she knew she might not ever make it to the surface.) She decided to make the goal all about what she was doing in the moment to move TOWARD that goal. Those actions might not produce the result of getting her closer to the surface, but that wasn't going to be the metric of success anymore. The metric was going to be "am I doing something that I think will move me closer, even if it doesn't?".

Sally had realized that she didn't have control of the hole. She knew she was not content to stay there, but she didn't know if she'd ever actually see the surface ever again. If the metric of success was about meeting that long term goal of being out, she might not ever make it. She might become very frustrated and give up on that goal. But if the metric became making attempts to move toward that goal, then ANY attempt was a win, even if it didn't actually produce measurable progress. She might move up a few feet, only to be knocked back down but she knew she would never stop trying to get out of that hole.

When we are looking ahead, we might have this vast expanse in front of us-we can see for MILES and MILES. It's an open road just begging to be traveled. But there are other times when we are trapped by circumstance. We always have a choice. Do we focus on the horizon, or do we focus on where we are in the moment? Both perspectives have advantages and are necessary for different reasons. But I believe you need the ability to do both. More that than, you need the wisdom to know which one will serve you best in the moment.

Because, we don't have the advantage of being all knowing.

Thanks for stopping in and for sticking around.

The State of Me Address--Part Two--Some of the Losses

In Part One, I lamented over the weight I've gained. I'm beginning to come to terms with it. Not because I've accepted it, but because I think I've about leveled out. (And NOT because I've been able to stick to Whole30... 'nuff said about that...) Not only has the gain leveled out, I have seen some hope with my own eyes. I saw a friend recently who has been on oral steroids for about a year (a different autoimmune thing). He initially gained some weight but as he has tapered down in steroid dosage, he has lost most (all?) of what he put on. THAT was incredibly encouraging to me. It's one thing to read about people who dropped the extra pounds after treatment is done, quite another to behold it in person.

I've lost some things along the way in addition to the weight I've gained.

I've lost pretty much all of my fitness. I can not seem to run AT ALL. I can't lift anything heavy. I have a VERY hard time even opening water bottles! I was able to resume teaching Spin class back in August and I haven't passed out (yet), so it's not like I'm bed-ridden. I don't actually know if the "inability" to run is the loss of fitness or the extra pounds or a product of the treatments. (Probably a combination.)

I've also lost A LOT of hair! (Yes, that's really a very gross picture of hair I lost one day in the shower. That was AFTER I had brushed and brushed it to try to get most of it out so as to not clog the drain!) Thyroid issues will cause hair to fall out, but from what I've read, steroids can cause that side effect as well. Lovely. My hair has always been super thin and fine so I didn't really have much to lose in the first place. For most of the last 10 years I've let my hair grow long. My husband ADORES my long hair (I wonder if he's blind sometimes) and he lavishly pours on the praise daily so the "work" involved in having longer hair has been worth it to me (well...to him). Although it seems that I've stopped actually losing hair, what I have is in HORRIBLE shape-dry, damaged, easily tangled and generally unhealthy. So, for the last three months I've been talking about cutting it all off. He cried the first time I mentioned it but the more I whined about the state of my locks the more "comfortable" he became with the idea. Yesterday I pulled the trigger and chopped it all off! It's not exactly what I want, but it's a good start for now. He RAVED about it when he saw it. ...a little too much actually... He might really hate it, but he knows it would add salt to the wound if he made any negative comments so he smiled brightness right into me. I choose to believe he at least doesn't hate it. :D

I also feel like I've lost a lot of time. This has been going on for a year. It feels a lot like my shoulder issue did. Well...except for the fact that I trained for and completed a very tough Iron Man while dealing with that shoulder. I've been putting off making a decision about if I will have a kids triathlon training team/program in 2017 until I know if this treatment protocol is going to work. I haven't been able to train or race. I haven't been able to do some of the things I really love (riding my bike, trail running). I'm doing MUCH better, but for a long time I wasn't even able to engage in meaningful discussion! THAT is one of the worst things I lost along the way that has (thankfully, for the most part) returned.

These are mostly inconsequential things that I lost... When this all hit I lost the ability to THINK and to SPEAK. Now, it's not like I couldn't think or speak AT ALL. I had many acquaintances tell me they really didn't see a very big difference. My close friends and family saw it. More that that, I felt it. You know that feeling you get when you walk into a room and you can't remember why you are there? Or you go to the store and you can't remember what you were supposed to buy? That feeling is (usually) fairly fleeting for most people. Imagine feeling that way about 90% of the day. You know the mental acrobatics you go through in order to find your misplaced keys? Imagine going through them to figure out how to put your hands on the computer keyboard, or to figure out how to hold your hair dryer. I "could" do those things, but they didn't come naturally.  One really good example I have used is that of learning to type or to speak a foreign language. When you are first learning, those things are very unnatural and take a lot of mental energy. When you have learned and they are second nature, you don't have to concentrate to remember how to say "bathroom" or to remember where the "T" is on the keyboard. Imagine going through your day trying to remember mundane things as if they were fairly new. Thankfully the progression of my disease wasn't NEARLY as advanced as it gets for some people. I was extremely fortunate to have found a doctor who knew what it was and knew how to get me started in the right direction with treatment.

I'm not trying to be overly dramatic. It wasn't NEARLY as bad as it "could have" been. But for me to recognize, and grieve, the losses associated with this disease is an important part of moving forward. I'm not lamenting (much). I'm not wallowing (for long). I'm not angry about it (anymore). I'm just acknowledging, documenting, FEELING the appropriate emotions, and (soon), I'll be moving on.

One issue I've battled with in my life (believe it or not), is embracing and feeling what I consider to be negative emotions. I can get/have gotten angry fairly easily. But anger is a POWERFUL emotion. Grief feels very vulnerable. Sadness over loss feels ungrateful in some ways to me. I have lived a good bit of my life trying to stay focused on the flip side...what I have to be thankful for. But I believe you can't suppress one emotion without all of them taking a hit. I believe to do so just fuels one thing-anger. Anger is the defender emotion. The protector. When I'm not able to express ALL emotion I get either very angry or very "dead" (apathetic). Hurting feelings hurt. They aren't pleasant...to feel or to witness. When someone is hurting a lot of people want to soothe and comfort. That's all well and good, but the best thing you can do for a hurting person is not to take the pain away, but to enter into it with with them. By reading this you have done that very thing and for that I truly thank you.

Thank you for stopping by and sticking around...We won't be here long.

Part 1a...Beyond Flesh

I have an adoptive brother. My parents didn't adopt him, I did. It's a long story how it came about but suffice it to say he's the best brother by another mother I could have ever dreamed up. He's a deep thinker like myself. Much like a personal trainer will push your physical limits sometimes, he challenges my thought process, sometimes in very uncomfortable ways.

After my last post he asked me two questions:

1) Who are you? (I ask this question ALL THE TIME in my Spin classes...thanks for throwing that back in my face buddy! :D)
2) Why does your current amount of flesh bother you.

If you choose to keep reading, here's the only warning I'm going to give...this is about to get very deep, very fast. I'm also going to talk about some Bible verses, but you don't have to be a Christian to appreciate Biblical truth. So buckle up and hang on...

I'm going to back up a bit to something that happened a while back first.

A couple of my friends shared a blog post on Facebook several months ago that was written by a "larger" woman. I don't know anything about her, but this post was talking about how some reasons people gain weight are "socially acceptable" but generally people are judgmental regarding weight gain. She mentioned having dinner with a friend who tried to gently inquire about the blogger's recent "substantial" increase in size. She also mentioned in a round-about way that she was eating her feelings instead of feeling them because they were painful. She ended by essentially saying her weight and her state of health were no one's business but her own. She sounded very angry and defensive when she proclaimed love for her large body. My friends, and their friends, were all praising this woman's courage.

...uh...I'm sorry...that's not what courage looks like to ME. Courage, to me, is the ability to be transparent and honest. Courage, to me, is the vulnerability to experience all feelings, even (especially) the painful ones. Courage, to me, is the ability to do the hard things in life when you don't feel like it. Courage, to me, is the willingness to live in COMMUNITY with other people, even (especially) those who don't think/believe what you do. Courage, to me, is to speak (your) truth in the face of opposition. Courage, to me, is to really dig to FIND truth, not just expressing what feels good or what's easy or what you think other people want to hear from you.

In all fairness, my friends, and their friends, probably read all of that in this woman's blog. They read it through the filters of their own eyes. I read it through the filter of my own experiences and my own place in life and my own beliefs of what is "best", of what it means to "love oneself".

Additionally, another cord was POUNDED on with me in this post. She had dinner with a FRIEND who expressed CONCERN for her. It felt very much like she (and my friends and their friends) were saying "my life is NO ONE'S business by my own". That is a very surface life in my opinion. That's FINE if that's the experience you want in life. Keep yourself sheltered from potential pain. But guess what, in doing so you also keep yourself sheltered from deep love. You can't push people away and expect them to be there when you need comfort.

The two points I desperately tried to make were:

1) When we love someone, we ask them hard questions and we come alongside them in life, we are CONCERNED about them. Sure, we have to be invited in, but...let me be clear, if you invite me to have dinner with you (or accept my invitation to break bread) I am NOT the kind of person who will leave things at a surface level for long. But if you know me, you knew that already! :D

2) She sounded VERY defensive so I didn't buy this "I love myself" line she was tossing out. She said she was anxious and she was eating painful feelings. She was defensive with this friend. She sounded VERY angry. My friends (and their friends) were saying that she was angry because society places norms on people and people are judgmental and hateful. My argument is that the only time judgment will hurt you is if you are already buying into it within yourself. Something can only hurt if it hits a nerve. That nerve is in YOU. Sure the outside world might have "created" that nerve but you watered it, fed it, and have protected it with barriers. How about you do the work of making that nerve not hurt by HEALING it??

This brings me back to my brother's questions.

I conveniently skipped the first one. I said I wanted to think on it. But I answered the second one like this (edited to correct Siri dictation misinterpretations)

I do not like the way that flesh jiggles! It jiggles when I walk when I move when I do anything! The only time I have ever had really jiggly fat was after my children were born. Although that brings up really good memories, I do not have an infant to show for all the jiggly fat! I also do not like the way my clothes fit. I have never liked my pear/gourd shaped body. But with this new addition of a Buddha belly, I am very unhappy! I also do not like the feeling of being completely out of control with food. Yes, I hear how that sounds, and I have decided to be OK with that! If you can imagine an alcoholic who is drinking… you would not have to ask why that is a problem. Everyone has to eat. But we do not have to eat the whole container of Oreos at one time. We do not have to eat highly palatable processed junk food at all. I feel like at this point I need to be giving my body what is the healthiest for it. You would never consider feeding a dog you love chocolate for every meal. Because chocolate is very unhealthy, even fatal, for dogs. You would not feed your self dog food! This gets a little bit trickier when we're talking about Oreos! But, it's really very close to the same thing…sort of! It's not really the fat I dislike the most. It is what that represents. I have been completely out of control and unhealthy. Out of control and unhealthy has created the fat. If I could take a magic pill, or get liposuction, in order to get rid of the fat, that would not solve the real issues. 

So he came back and said (in part)

There is a danger of letting circumstances determine who you are*. That is not a good thing....Now, take the next step, should you be worried about these things? Based on WHO YOU ARE, are there more valuable ways to spend your time?  maybe yes, maybe no, I don't know.  But, make sure you know.  

(*This has been a big thing I've talked about in Spin class as well... Maybe this is my clue to just stop talking in Spin!! :D  ...as if THAT ever could happen.)

Last warning...if you thought that was the "deep" part, you were wrong, that was just scratching the surface. (If you want to, you can skip to the last part of the last paragraph...I bolded it.)

Here we go...

My answer (edited...this isn't an exactly what I said in the email...)

So....really it's less about body image than it is about being out of control. Control isn't important to me, it's the MAIN THING!! But, "self control" is a fruit of the Spirit. Looking in the Amplified version, it's only actually mentioned 25 times as "self control" so maybe it's not as big of a deal as I make it out to be...and I am POSITIVE it's not supposed to be something I try to muster up on my own. But there is a measure of responsibility on my part. 

Out of control with food represents 2 things TO ME gluttony (over indulgence of food) and idolizing (the immediate taste of) food over (the health and vitality of) my body. The fat in my mind is the product of being out of control. The problem is that now I'm not completely sure about that idea because, from what I understand the fat is going to be there no matter what because of the steroids. That takes the external measure off the table (possibly). OR it means I have to be all the more vigilant to maintain self control because the big "reward" (the body image I associate with being in hyper control) is not going to come. 

THIS is the dilemma. I feel there's a disconnect between control and reward. BUT...(and THANK YOU SO MUCH for FORCING me to think about this)...the reward IS the self control....and self control brings perseverance (2Peter 1). But before self control there is diligence, moral excellence and knowledge.  I've been focused on the wrong reward. 

What's funny is I talk about that all the time (mainly in Spin) and I've missed it. THAT is the THING!! I believe God will bring me back again and again to a lesson He is trying to get through my thick skull. When I find myself struggling with the same thing over and over again I try to figure out what is the reason...what is He trying to teach me. I haven't ever figured it out with this "food" (any "addiction") thing. 

"Daisy" and I have had MANY discussions on what she has learned from her year with Lyme disease and every time I think "but I have no idea why God is taking me through this brain disease thing"...and I stop pushing because 1) I know He will get through to me at some point and I don't have to manufacture it on my own (because I'm usually wrong) and 2) I start to think that sometimes things just happen because we live in a fallen world with disease.  But I have trouble with number two because God is NOT random AT ALL. I think it's like higher level math (that I don't even begin to TRY to understand). Dwayne says it "looks" random but there's no way it is because math is logical and makes sense, we just don't have the capacity to understand all of it (yet). 

Funny because I was thinking about this for a long time after you asked..."who am I". My first thought was "an athlete...well, a wife...well, a mother, well, a follower of Christ...yes, that is ultimately who I am because that's my foundation"....but I wouldn't have ever connected those answers in this way if you hadn't said what you did and made me "reverse engineer it" in this way. THIS is an ah-ha moment!!! 

I wrote most of the following before I wrote the above... but I moved it to the bottom because it felt like a break from what I was saying... now I understand this better. The reward I have been connecting to with controlling food has been body image, then it was fueling, then it was body health....but ultimately it comes all the way back to diligence, moral excellence and knowledge.... 

I've been doing a lot of "research" on dopamine and how it can push you to do things the brain sees as rewarding. The brain really only responds to IMMEDIATE rewarding. Food, the rush of gambling, shopping, gaming. One thing that can be done is to REALLY focus on what the long term reward will feel like. That's one reason I like it when I tell people in Spin to think about the goal and to put yourself THERE in that moment, focusing on every aspect of the goal...the mind doesn't know the difference between reality and fantasy. ((I think this is why Jesus says if you sin in your heart, you have sinned even if you haven't committed the act...and why He was so concerned with our heart over actions.)) So in the moment of WANT, putting yourself as fully in the moment of the long term goal as you possibly can will help the moment of temptation pass. However, one thing dopamine does is spur us to action. This is why I like to connect the goal to what we are doing in the moment ("rewind the tape in your mind's eye and connect it to the work you are doing RIGHT NOW...").  

Interesting thing....when you look at the fruits of the Spirit they are written in this order: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control... (Gal 5:22-23a). I heard a sermon a long time ago, as a new Christian, that they are in reverse order...that self control is the foundation, when you have that it produces gentleness, which produces faithfulness....and so on. That has always bothered me because I think God knows the order He wanted His words to be in. Again, I don't think the Bible (God) is random and disordered. But then when you go to the verse in Peter He puts it in this order: "Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith moral knowledge and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love." Interesting. 

I'm still chewing on it (pun intended) but one thought I have is that the fruit produces the tree which grows the fruit. So the fruit of the Spirt is LOVE (and so forth), and when that seed is planted inside of us (through the Spirit), and we tend to that seed with diligence and supply moral excellence, knowledge...so on...we get to LOVE. I don't know if that's right or not but I do find it interesting the idea of "loving the skin I'm in" has been a BIG thing for me lately. If my "reward" ends with my skin (well, just a bit deeper if it ends with the flesh) then I haven't gone deep enough with that love. Not going deep enough with that love means I keep focused on the flesh. God has forced my hand a bit with the idea of can I love this vessel He has given me even IF it's fat and there's nothing I can do about it??

The thing is I KNOW this already...know it in my mind anyway. I have said OVER AND OVER that it's not about the body...it's about the "self", the "soul". That was the whole theme of a Spin class one time--"loving the skin you're in doesn't mean loving your skin or what you look like...it's about loving WHO you are". ((Don't you want to come to my Spin class (5:30am Monday and Friday at the Southeast Y.)) The problem I have is the "there's nothing I can do about it" part. I think I still have to do MY part of caring for my body in the best way I know how even if I don't get the "reward" I think it will lead to (ie body image, better fueled exercise or better health). Maybe the reward is one of diligence...which will lead to LOVE in the end??

From: http://artilin.deviantart.com/art/deep-thoughts-321908490; Isn't it BEAUTIFUL? I wish I could figure out how to purchase this. Not sure where I'd put it, but it's lovely.

Okay...deep thoughts are over, you can come up for air now!

If you stuck with me, or even if you didn't and you just skipped to the end...thanks for stopping by and for sticking around.
:D