Don’t give up, give yourself over.
A possibility for living.
It seems to me that as soon as you get on a path that is right for you, or the way you want to go, you feel more peaceful and its not that you’ve given up or surrendered, its that you’ve given yourself over to the process. Given over to the thing that you’ve been praying for, asking for, searching for, thinking about and turning over in your mind and in my case, for some length of time.
I’ve given myself over to getting stronger. After a year in lockdown at 65, my body has little condition and the weight had gone up. Inactivity and lots of comfort baking will do that, but it got us through the year. The problem was when I noticed that if I got down on my knees I’d have to get my husband to help me up. I was stranded like a whale and no strength to lift myself up. Once you notice something like that, you can’t not notice it.
But where to start and what to do. The year before when I wanted to get out of debt, I read books about debt, money, finance and investment. I looked for podcasts, I found Dave Ramsey and watched video upon video, from debt free screams to listening to some of the most sage advice about life, relationships and money. The biggest thing I learnt was that it is never too late to get on track with your desires. I immersed myself in that world and then followed a plan. In a year, I’m debt free and we own a bit of dirt that’s all ours. But I digress, this year 2021 had to be about getting strong.
But the messages about diet and exercise are multitudinous and overwhelming, from pills, to programs, to whatever. If like me, as I suspect many women are, I’ve tried and tested many, many options over too many years than I want to count, only to experience that I was once again sucked into the marketing hype and with little to show for the financial outlay.
There had to be a better way, so just like with being debt free, I immersed myself. I read books, I found some new diets, but I was starting to go down the same tracks of what I had done before. It was starting to look like a rerun but not of my favorite show. I needed to do something different. You’ll have heard the saying, “madness is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result” and that was how it felt, I was in madness land. Going crazy over what was right to eat, what was low carb, low fat, high protein blah, blah, blah. I felt like I was out of control trying to find a solution.
Until I got to what did I really want? Not what the constant messages said I wanted but what I really wanted and what I wanted was to be at home in my body, feel happy in my clothes, eat food that made me feel good and to sleep better than I had in years, and of course, not forgetting that I wanted to lift my own body weight at least from the knees up. I stopped trying to figure it out and I gave myself over to discovering what I needed. I began by deleting as much extraneous noise, as possible on my social media. I started to create the questions that would take me in the right direction. I wanted to understand about sleep and the difference it made to the quality of my life. In all, I started to not jump on the the first train that came along. I started to watch and listen and when I had the answers I began to move and now I am moving in the direction where I am supported, with a sage who knows his way and a group of female cheerleaders who I’ve never met, but who everyday show up to cheer each other on.
My sage advice, take the time to research the options, read, digest, pray and even try a few things out but you’ll get there if it is a deep need that has been calling for attention. I know there is something miraculous on the other side of this giving over.
