health note May 31

I am working on losing weight and gaining strength as part of my journey back to childhood. So, to hold myself more accountable, I intend to post a few details.

December 15, 2008, we got a Wii Fit and I started tracking my weight. On that day I weighed 264.6 pounds. On March 4, 2010, after 15 months, my Wii status changed from "obese" to "overweight" at 233.7 pounds. I very seldom exercise, so that weight loss was from minor changes to what and how much I eat.

I have begun walking somewhat regularly and that has increased my metabolism a bit. I have tuned my diet up a little more, and I am much more careful about what I consume between dinner and going to bed. Believe me, I am still not very disciplined, but I am doing better a bit at a time. Yesterday I was 216.9, my lowest weight since getting the Wii.

This morning I was up half a pound to 217.4. I no longer even try to be down weight-wise on Mondays. We almost always have dinner guests Sunday afternoons, and we eat very well. Today I walked five miles with my wife. (Anybody who knows her has seen her metamorphosis, and I quite willingly acknowledge I am just trying to keep up with my "new" trophy wife.) I attempt to run a bit occasionally, but my right knee makes me wonder if that is wise; that knee was scoped a few years ago and it never completely recovered.

Food: I eat a lot more vegetables and a lot less meat than I used to. My primary staples are chili (I make my own with ground turkey and jalapeno peppers), brown rice, chopped spinach and romaine lettuce.

For breakfast I typically slice a banana and throw a handful of raisins in my bran flakes cereal. I use 2% milk; never really liked skim and have heard there are some benefits to a bit of milk fat. I recently began adding ground flax to the morning cereal.

For dinner I dress my dinner-size spinach and romaine salads with combinations of my chili, Pace Medium Salsa, mild taco sauce, and Johnny's Lite Ranch Dressing. The Johnny's has a lot of black pepper already in it, and I love pepper. I may add to the salad a few other fresh veggies, sliced olives, almond slices, grated cheese, or crumbled taco chips, but am pretty cautious with most of those. I often have a cup of brown rice with soy sauce and/or a cup of stir-fry veggies from some frozen mix that I cook in a small cast-iron skillet with Worcestershire or hot Thai or soy sauce.

If I'm away from the house for lunch, I love the Subway foot-long roast chicken breast on 9-grain honey oat bread. Add all the veggies including hot peppers, hold the mayo, then dress with Dijon mustard, black pepper and oregano. I have them cut and wrap the sandwich as two 6" subs so I can eat half for lunch, and the other half for dinner or lunch the next day. (Raise your eyebrows regarding refrigeration if you must. I'm alive and feeling just fine.)

We had a lot of fruit left from yesterday's family dinner, so for lunch today I used our ancient Osterizer (blender). A banana, some raisins, a few walnuts, a spoon of ground flax, 6-8 strawberries, some kiwi, cantaloupe, honeydew melon, milk, and finally, a spoon of ground cinnamon, and I truly think I could make a believer of any of you. It was awesome.

I have the advantage of being more than okay with "boring" repetition in my menu. I am not a cook, but there is nothing in this post that I don't cook and prepare for myself. I am too lazy to get very creative, and minor changes in seasonings or dressings can have radical effects on flavor. I am no longer afraid to experiment, and my wife's kitchen is well-stocked with things I am unfamiliar with.

Exercise: Other than walking a few miles a week, I don't do any. That needs to change. I'm losing weight, but I know I will look and feel better if I start toning my torso and upper body. I understand there is still a lot of excess fat wrapped around my vital organs. So exercise is next on my agenda of needed changes.

Future health notes should be much shorter now that I've covered the past 18 months.

Sleep

"For some of you reading this book, perhaps the single most spiritual thing you could do right now is to put it down and take a nap." - John Ortberg, "The Life You've Always Wanted: Spiritual Growth for Ordinary People"

God has been challenging ... correction ... convicting me regarding my sleep habits.

What's the big deal? There's no commandment like "Thou shalt not be awake more than sixteen hours before sleeping. Sixteen hours thou shalt be awake, and eight hours thou shalt sleep." Is there? Besides, my back hurts if I lay down more than a few hours at a time. I'm a morning person, and a night person. Why can't I be both?

I have been told, and I have told one or more of my children nothing good happens after midnight. Looking back I would say not much good happens after 8PM. Seriously, what worthwhile thing am I usually doing late evenings that I couldn't have done earlier if I hadn't procrastinated?

Typical late evening activities: watch tv (more recently streaming Netflix), read email (follow random rabbit trails), check facebook (follow more random rabbit trails), check the news (tv, web, newspaper), online chat, online games, surf the web (often inspired by and followed by more randomness), read (Bible, devotional books, other books, blogs, newspaper), shop (groceries, clothes, online).

I am being made aware that the later I stay up, the stronger the temptations to read, watch, do, things that Jesus has already told me not to do. The longer I stay awake, the more tired I am, the weaker I am. So why stay up? Because it's tempting, and easy to rationalize, and not necessarily "evil", a few seconds at a time, no big decisions, almost imperceptible drifting.

What are the consequences of staying up too late? Guilt, for one. I know better, but I don't do better, and I am convicted when I finally succumb to sleep, and again when I wake up or am awakened by the alarm. Misery. I don't feel great. In fact I often feel a lot like someone suffering from a hangover. Danger. I'm not as alert as I could be when I'm cutting vegetables or driving. Drowsiness is one of the primary causes of fatal accidents, so others are endangered by me. Sickness. How many cold or flu viruses could my body have warded off if it weren't exhausted? Weight gain. I've lost a lot of weight over the last 18 months, but when I'm up late I'm much more likely to snack so will probably gain weight.

Once in a while I actually do go to bed "early", which for me means before midnight. What good usually follows? I wake up without an alarm clock. I have a more relaxed morning as I prepare to go to work. Nothing is rushed. I'm not [as] cranky. I feel better. I'm more alert.

What happens on the rare occasions when I go to bed before 10PM? If I was exhausted from staying up too late the previous nights, my body gets a chance to recover. If I wasn't in a recovery cycle, I will actually wake up early enough to have time to spend time with my Bible before I go to work.

I'm writing this the Saturday morning after a recovery night. I stayed up too late Thursday night, so fell in bed exhausted between 10 and 11PM Friday night after a pretty miserable day. I woke up this morning about 6AM feeling pretty good. I must have slept almost seven hours. That's unusually long for me to sleep. It's Saturday, so I didn't have to get ready for work. I've had time to make coffee, weigh in, read scripture, eat breakfast, and now work on this blog post I've been putting off for a few weeks.

I want to wake up spontaneously around 5AM. That's not a stretch for me; I often awaken around that time if I'm not recovering. I want the relaxed devotional time to start the day. I want the enjoyable productive days that follow a good night's sleep. The simple math is that in order to get eight hours sleep before 5AM, I must go to bed by 9PM. Yikes! I'll never get everything done if I go to bed that early. But the reality is I don't get much done of any value after 9PM.

The message is simple. I need to discipline myself to go to bed by 9PM on a regular basis. Going to bed at midnight needs to become the rare exception, not the norm. My expectation is that you will see more regular posts about other positive things Jesus is teaching me if I am obedient in the area of sleep. Children of the Father need their sleep.

Praying without ceasing

"Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." [1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (New International Version)]

Pray continually. Or as I was taught, pray without ceasing. As a little boy growing up in a parsonage, I would try to imagine myself in that never-ending prayer meeting, on my knees, going over and over my list of prayer concerns. I could barely stay awake for thirty minutes of those old-time Wednesday night sessions. I figured that scripture must be just for old people like most of the ladies that were kneeling in the pews around me.

As a teenager I of course got much smarter and assigned the whole passage to the category of allegory, figurative, impossible. It was just not reasonable that anyone could be joyful ALWAYS, pray CONTINUALLY, give thanks in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. There was just so much more to life than joyfully saying prayers of thanks. Like bicycles and bruises, crushes and heartaches, playing and fighting with siblings and parents. Like having a life.

I am still learning that the meaning I assign to words is often different from what the author and/or translator intended. I understood prayer to be how we asked God to do stuff for us: forgive us; heal our grandmothers; protect the missionaries; make someone love us; help us get a better car, job, or house.

An earlier verse in 1 Thessalonians actually gives an example of how Paul practiced the art of praying continually. "We always thank God for all of you, mentioning you in our prayers. We continually remember before our God and Father your work ...." [1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 (New International Version)] Look at those words, then look again at the words at the beginning of this post. There is a lot of similarity and overlap.

I believe praying continually is simply including God in all our conversation, whether we are mumbling to ourselves, joking with a friend, crying with a confidant, or spending some face-time with Jesus. How will your conversation change if you include God in all your jokes, gripes, wahoos, and OMG's.

Pray without ceasing. Try it. He's already listening, hanging on every word, every thought, 24/7, just waiting for you to include him. Talk about a BFF.

Wrestling with God

"Great is Your faithfulness, oh God; You wrestle with the sinner's restless heart." This is the first line of Matt Maher's "Your Grace Is Enough" as recorded on his "Empty and Beautiful" album. Yes, Tomlin recorded the song first, but Maher (pronounced mar like car) wrote it, and his recording bears his heartprint.

I have long been fascinated by the double entendre (two meanings), in the English translation anyway, of the name Israel, which is translated as "wrestles with God." I don't know if Maher was thinking of Jacob the heel-grabber being renamed Israel the wrestler with God, but my heart immediately goes there when I hear the song.

You ask, "What double entendre?" It is my impression that Jacob enters the match wrestling with God, trying not to lose, and ends up with a new name, a new limp, and a new wrestling partner. Wrestling with GOD, Jacob vs. God, becomes wrestling WITH God, Israel and God vs. the enemy.

Genesis 32 is a beautiful story of someone who has already set his heart to do the right thing, but is scared to death by what he fears will be the result of his obedience. He knows his own history well enough to have good reason to fear for his life.

Today I am looking at a $1,600 tax due bill and a savings account of $300. My natural inclination is to let fear overtake me and begin fighting with God over things like tithing and trusting. But God assures me He is on my side, and nothing is too great for him. He might allow me to have to pay some penalties and interest, but that isn't the end of the world. There are other things on which He wants me to spend my energy. Worrying about this financial crisis is not on God's to-do list for me.

I wrestled against God for over forty years. I am so glad He adopted me and made me a part of Israel, one who wrestles with Him against my true enemy, the deceiver.

Oh, and what about the "sinner's restless heart" that Maher sings about. Is that my heart? In my simplest understanding, a sinner is anyone who misses the mark. When I see where my arrow landed, and I see the bullseye of God's will for me, my heart grows restless. I get angry at myself, or I get angry at God, or I get angry at the world. But God in His love wraps me tightly in His arms like a colicky newborn, sings me a  soothing lullaby, and lets me look deep into His eternal eyes. What was I kicking against? What was I afraid of? Yes, Jesus, I trust you. Your faithfulness, oh God, is indeed great.

Trust

"Do you trust me?" That is the question Jesus asked me September 29, 1999, when the smoke and mirrors of my life crashed around me. He still asks me that question on a regular basis. My response was, and still is what Simon Peter answered in John 6:68, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

When Jesus' disciples started jockeying for positions of power in their skewed view of His coming kingdom, he stopped them in their tracks and said, "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Check out Matthew 18:1-10.

Change. Or don't. Live. Or die. Change how? Become like a child. What does that mean? "Do you trust me?" Watch a toddler with her father. Dad can throw her in the air, and she will laugh as she flies, knowing dad will catch her. Stupid, dangerous trust. But only stupid and dangerous if you don't really trust.

What stupid, dangerous thing has Jesus asked you to do? Do you trust Him?

This seems silly, but I think He asked me to start a blog. Good grief. Who's going to read it? "You are. And I Am. If anybody else does, blame me." Okay. I trust you.