Bible Tuesday – Revelation Part 39

I saw Heaven and earth new-created. Gone the first Heaven, gone the first earth, gone the sea.

I saw Holy Jerusalem, new-created, descending resplendent out of Heaven, as ready for God as a bride for her husband.

I heard a voice thunder from the Throne: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women!

 

Let’s just stop right here for a minute.  Have you ever read a more delicious piece of scripture?  God has moved into the neighborhood.  I mean can I just have a moment?!?!  Can you even imagine anyone choosing to live among us?  And God has chosen to do so twice!

They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone.”

Revelation 21:3-5

This is the very heart of the book of Revelation.  Most people immediately think of destruction and horror when they contemplate this book. I know there is a bunch of stuff here that is hard to understand or contextualize.  But this passage could not be more accessible.  All people in all times know pain and tears and death.  And God reveals here that the time for these things will be soon over.  Seriously, will you take 30 seconds and just try to imagine that?

No pain.

No death.

And not just no tears.  God will wipe every tear from our eyes.  God himself.  Every tear.

My goal in writing is not primarily to convert anyone.  But you can study world religions for the rest of your dang life.  You can round up every deity worshiped by every person ever in the history of the world.  But you will never  find another God who will wipe away your tears.

 

The Goal – Week 40

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One of the hardest things about this journey has been identifying my ‘triggers’.

That set of things, situations and experiences that send me spiraling into addictive behaviors.

And you know why it’s hard?

Because there are so dang many of them.  Now that I am looking for them, I can’t stop finding them.

Some are pretty obvious.  Like Halloween.  6 weeks of facing bags of candy everywhere I go.

But others are a bit more insidious.  In fact, at first glance, some of my triggers disguise themselves as tools.  The worst one by far?

The scale.

It’s a cliche to hate the scale, isn’t it?  But hate isn’t the right word to describe how I feel about this item.  Good Lord it’s so much more than hate.

We have a beautiful glass scale in our bathroom.  My husband jumps on it at least 5 times a week.  Morning, evening, fully clothed.  It makes no difference to him.  Early in our marriage (in a moment of horribleness on my part) I snarled “Why don’t you just sing out “Still thin!” every time you get on that thing?  It’s a running joke now and I genuinely find it amusing.  You see my husband is thin.  His weight fluctuates about ten pounds one way or the other no matter what he eats.  If he is out of town for a long while eating all the crap food provided to him he may end up toward the top of his zone.  Once he is home, that weight literally disappears after a few days of eating the (I’m trying!) decent meals I make for him.  The man has never gone more than 3 days without ice cream.  He wears workout clothes a few times a week but rarely actually works out.  He is ripped with muscles from head to toe.  He has huge biceps and glutes and calves that look like he does squats for 3 hours a day.

You know what he doesn’t do?

He doesn’t think about food very often.  He eats.  He seems to enjoy food.  He really does love ice cream.  But food is just food to him.  When he jumps on the scale, the number he sees does not define him.  He is a data junkie.  The scale just provides him with more information about himself.

But for me the scale represents decades of joy and pain.  I have chained so much memory onto that stupid piece of machinery.  There was one in my elementary school gym.  We all had to get on it every year.  If you were over a certain number, your parents got a letter.  My parents got a letter five years in a row.   In middle school I escaped the scale because their was no PE class for band kids.  (Is it any wonder I am still desperately in love with band?)  In high school, after my miraculous 800 calorie a day diet, I weighed every day.  I mostly liked the number I saw in those years.  Then I went to college and gained the freshman 50 or maybe it was 75.  That led to Nutri System.  You only had to weigh once a week there.  If you lost, it was a celebration and all the credit went to their program.  If you gained?  Well, you must have been cheating.  Hormonal changes, water retention, nope!  Those were just excuses.  After that other programs followed.

So many…

I once knew a group of women who had ‘weighing’ outfits for Weight Watchers.  Their success for the week was determined by the thinness of their clothing.  I’m happy to admit I wasn’t one of them.  By that time, I had wised up a little bit.

And here I am now.  I know so much more about body chemistry and metabolism and so many other things.  I know that scale is the least accurate measurement of real progress.  And yet I keep getting on it.  And stepping on it is still enough to send me head first into a bag of fun sized Snickers.  Is it any wonder this process is taking so long?

 

Bible Tuesday – Revelation Part 38

I saw a Great White Throne and the One Enthroned. Nothing could stand before or against the Presence, nothing in Heaven, nothing on earth. And then I saw all the dead, great and small, standing there—before the Throne! And books were opened. Then another book was opened: the Book of Life. The dead were judged by what was written in the books, by the way they had lived. Sea released its dead, Death and Hell turned in their dead. Each man and woman was judged by the way he or she had lived. Then Death and Hell were hurled into Lake Fire. This is the second death—Lake Fire. Anyone whose name was not found inscribed in the Book of Life was hurled into Lake Fire.

Revelation 20:11-15

All of us will stand before God and be judged.

All of us.

Every atheist.

Every believer.

Every hypocrite.

Every martyr.

Every murderer.

Every adulterer.

Every King, Queen, Prince and Princess

Every President, Chancellor, Prime Minister and Leader.

Every preacher, teacher, priest and saint.

And from Henry VIII to me, Just Rachel, one thing will be true.

Every knee will bow.

We will all acknowledge Jesus.

And those of us who have placed our trust in Him?  Those whose names are written in the book of life.  Will we be filled with self righteous “I told you so’s”?   No.  We will be more aware than ever that we are completely unworthy of such amazing grace.

 

 

 

The Goal – Week 39

The Goal – Week 39

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I just assumed I would die.

I imagined a small blurb in our local paper that would read “Local blogger mom drops dead near Lebanon Rd.  High school band needs help with the concession stand this Friday night.”

It was a beautiful autumn morning.  The air was crisp and cool.  As  I headed into the gym, a friend stopped her car, rolled down the window and gave me ‘that’ look. “We’re outside some today”, she said.  Let me give you a piece of advice here.  If your friend (who does the same exact class as you in an earlier hour) stops their car, rolls down their window and gives you ‘that’ look just get back in your car and go home. Pretend you sprained your ankle.  Post some sad pictures on Facebook.  SAVE YOURSELF!

But I chose to go inside anyway.

Wanna know why?

Because I’m a moron.

That’s why.

As we started our warm up, I began to envision what this ‘outside’ adventure might entail.  Let me just say that had I walked out the back of the gym to find a semi truck attached to a large rope with Jen standing beside it telling me to ‘pull’, I would not have been surprised.  Also, I would have at least attempted to do it.  Because I’m a sheep in the gym.  I have given over all control of my physical fitness to Jen.  I do what she says and , while I may complain, I don’t question (out loud).

When the time to exit the building came, we were instructed to run around the building.  Which, compared to pulling a big truck, seemed almost too easy.

In case I haven’t mentioned it before here’s a rundown of stuff I hate.

1.  Mean people.

2. Jumping up and down

3.  Running

Here’s why.  Running is a humbling experience for a overweight person for lots of reasons. I’m not saying its not helpful. I’m not even saying we shouldn’t do it. But you do feel every pound of your body weight every time you foot hits the pavement.  And there is just a lot of stuff bouncing around.  I don’t know a delicate way to address that.  We are a jiggly people.  Gravity is a pain.

Nevertheless I ran.

(Ok I jog/walked)

I was quite humbled by two things.  The first was my inability to catch my breath.  I really felt like a year of working out had put me in better condition.  And it has… but I’m still carrying around a lot that is excess. You try running around a building carrying 3 toddlers on your back and see how your pulmonary system reacts.  As we entered the second round of this I began to believe that if God really loved me even half as much as He claimed to in his word that an oxygen mask would fall down from the sky to save me.  It wasn’t just that I was breathing really hard. It was that no one else in my group seem to be winded in the least.  I now hate all of them just so you know.  The second thing was the fact that I finished a full 30 seconds (ok 2 minutes) behind all the others.  And have I mentioned that they are lovely people?  They all smiled encouragingly at me as I plodded my way to the finish line.  I felt like I was competing in the chubby Olympics.  

So three rounds later, it was over.  I actually needed the cool down portion of class because my face had to have been approximately the color of a tomato engulfed in flames. Jen said “Good Job ladies!!  and I said “I hate your kale eating face.”  Ok I said that silently because I was trying hard not to cry.  And I really do love Jen.  But sometimes the sweat and tears answer before I do.

Was this my worst ever day at the gym?

Ya’ll it didn’t even crack the top 10. 

If you know me then you know I have a somewhat difficult relationship with my two oldest step-children.  And when I say ‘somewhat’,  I mean ridiculously challenging, overwhelming ,want to scream and sometimes take a hostage. God is using them to teach me something but I haven’t figured it out yet. And very often I claim defeat in those relationships.  

I brought that defeat with me to the gym. You see I woke up that morning at the end of my proverbial rope. I was feeling like a complete failure as a  stepmom and as a wife . So when I found myself huffing and puffing as I ran around that parking lot, all that fail got wrapped into my inability to run fast and not breathe hard.

Both literally and metaphorically the only way past all these challenges is to put one foot in front of the other.

 

 

 

 

 

The Goal – Week 38

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No one cares whether I work out but me.  (ok, me plus my trainer.)

And this should be an obvious thing but for some reason I just didn’t get it until now.

I don’t mean that my friends and family aren’t supportive of my goals.  They totally are and I could not appreciate it more.

But when it comes down to it, my workout time is not their highest priority.  And that’s ok…now that I get it.

I have lots of responsibilities in my life.  I say ‘yes” to many things.  And I mostly regret nothing.  I am blessed with groups of  people and organizations that I enjoy working with and for.  I’m not one of those people that declares “I must focus on me!”  and assume that means I can focus on no one else.  But I admit I have had a difficult time asserting myself over the last few months.  Ok, who am I kidding?  My whole dang life!  It’s hard for me to say “No I can’t do that important thing because it conflicts with my workout time.”  It’s hard because it feels selfish and I hate selfishness more than pickled okra.

But surely there is a sweet spot somewhere between rampant narcissism and self flagellating martyr?  If so, I hope to find it.  Because I don’t know how to put myself first but I’m trying hard not to put myself last.