Archive for the The Journey Category

I know my blog is boring…no cool recipes…no cool workout tips. Just me and my thoughts. I don’t have cool pictures or action and when I look at other blogs I feel, well, a little flat. When I read through past posts I realize what you are all thinking…Margaret is neurotic. Well, yes. Yes I am.

But here’s the deal, I’m just living life. It’s hard most of the time. I’m busy and I don’t have time to design and develop and spend untold hours making everything shiny. I always hope that someone picks up some hard earned worldly wisdom from me but if they don’t, that’s okay because most of the time writing here helps me work out how to move forward, warts and all.

Some realizations I’ve come to over the past couple of weeks…

• No matter how much I think I’ve got this healthy thing down, I will find some way to screw it up. There is nothing like going to the massage therapist and having him say, “Have you put on some weight?”

• There is no law that says, “Thou shalt not gain weight.” I am glad my husband loves me no matter what size I am.

• I love Jesus. What I mean by that is not, “I’m so holy-look at me roll!” It’s more like, I’m so glad I’ve got this best friend who just accepts me for who I am and nudges me to keep trying to improve and totally gets why I’m a total jerk to Him and forgives me and then says “Learn from this.” What a mouthful, but true.

• I’m a terrible parent. My poor kids. I feel so bad to be their role model in life. I hope they don’t marry crazy hormone riddled women like me. I am worried they are doomed…

• I don’t care how much it costs. I’m buying cherries. They are only ripe and tasty in the summer. Same goes for peaches.

• Life is precious and fragile and beautiful no matter how I am feeling at any given moment.

When I first began my journey to better health I realized I needed to learn discipline. I know now I will always be fighting my carnal nature to eat and eat and eat for no other reason than I want to because it makes me feel good for a minute. I worship food, which makes me sad. Last night I put double the amount of lasagna on my plate that I needed to eat. I stood there and stared at it. And I realized that I should put half of it back. But I didn’t because I thought that emotionally, I would not make it through the evening without 2 pieces of lasagna. What a crock. And then I ate ice cream.

And this morning I felt all the regret I always do when I eat too much and step on the scale. So I ran further and harder than I should have and blew my hip. Good job, Margaret!

But my pastor gave this sermon a long time ago and said, “You are a child of the King.” And that resonates with me. “Child” implies I am loved no matter how foolish and rebellious I am. But “King” implies that as a princess I am held to a higher standard. I want to be the perfect healthy, inspirational gal but I’m just a human being. And all I can really do is learn from my mistakes and try to do better. People that think Christians are perfect or should be perfect are sadly mistaken. We are fallible. And any Christian who pretends to be perfect is, well, I won’t go into that here…

Today I have peace with who I am. I know my weaknesses and I refuse to give up. That speaks to the fact that I have good, strong character. My family knows I love them, even when I am crabby. I have peace with the fact that I don’t have the perfect body or the perfect blog. I have peace with the fact that I am not wealthy or poor. Basically, I just have peace. To me, that is the essence of being a follower of Jesus. Even when my world is crumbling, I’m off my feed, or just plain goofy, I have peace in my soul.

What more can anyone ask for?

I write frequently about doing what is difficult to maintain my health. But it is never so real as when my body rebels against me. For the past two weeks I’ve been dealing with a pretty severe bout of depression. Depression makes me tired and unable to cope with the most mundane decisions of life. It frustrates me to no end. Period.

I have made a habit of pushing through when my body isn’t “feeling it.” My routine is to get up, work out and go to work. I am like a robot on autopilot. So even when I don’t feel like it, which has been just about every day of the past two weeks, I did it anyway. Walking, cycling, strength training. That’s my rotation. I normally enjoy my workouts but lately I feel like a dead man walking. No doubt about it, this has been really tough.

Yesterday I was jogging a bit and I literally thought, “I just don’t want to do this anymore. I feel bad.” But I had to keep walking because I was 2 miles from home. That’s one way to ensure you finish your workout! I ran past The Ferguson Farmer’s Market and encountered a woman walking to her car with fresh produce. She hollered at me, “Hey, you’re the girl that writes that column(Ferguson by Foot).” I nodded yes and said, “Have a great day!” Which is what I always say to people I meet in my neighborhood. And her smile was so big and so wide that it was infectious. And I caught it. And I began to smile too. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad anymore. She gave me the best gift.

This morning I laid in bed with that same heavy feeling in my body but my youngest beastlet was intent that I should get up RIGHT NOW and feed him. And since my routine is to work out, I put on my cycling clothes, after he was fed, and hopped on my bike. The first mile was tough but I changed my routine by taking the scenic route and felt the fog lift from my brain. I knew the hill was coming, the totally terrible hill that leads up into the UMSL campus. I love that hill for the mere fact that once upon a time I couldn’t walk up it, much less ride a bike up it. As I climbed(standing up and grinding the pedals to move forward) I crossed under the Metrolink bridge and met a flock of Canadian geese. They flew over my head in this great cloud of feathers and took my breath away. I don’t know what it is about birds in flight, but they always amaze me. Not long after that I encountered 4 sparrows who were dusting themselves off in the street. They were rolling about when I startled them and they took to the air in perfect formation. They reminded me of the Blue Angels, rocketing off in different directions.

When I grow up, I want to be a bird. I want to run and jump and soar. Obviously this desire to fly is what led us to create airplanes. I never cease to be amazed at air travel. Every time I fly I can’t help but gaze out the window and dream. It blows my mind.

Near the end of my ride a large hawk flew a few feet over my head and then flew next to me, on my left, as I coasted down a large hill. He landed on a street light near the bottom and watched me continue on my journey. He was spectacular. When we drove to church 30 minutes later I noticed he was still there, waiting for the perfect varmint to scurry by. I was so inspired by his grace and majesty. That feeling(joy) roused in my chest and radiated from my skin. And I wondered, what if I chose not to get up and ride my bike? What if I had stayed in bed and wallowed in my suffering?

Sometimes moving is a challenge. Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes keeping my appetite in check is impossible. Sometimes it’s not. This is life. But no matter the challenges of the day, I refuse to give up or give in. And I don’t say that to be trite. I don’t have a “Golly, gee whiz, Beaver!” attitude. But I have to remember who I am. I know what my identity is. I am a child of the King. He enables me, sometimes through sheer force of will, to keep going. And sometimes He gives me these moments of grace that are so profound and sweet…that all I can do is weep. I know what my day will look like if I skip my morning workout. I will feel just like I did when I woke up. But if I get up…if I venture outside…if I go on an adventure…maybe, and probably, I will experience something I wouldn’t have otherwise. Be it a smiling neighbor or a hawk in flight, I want to experience life.

Today, if you are fighting something, be it mental, spiritual or physical, I implore you…push through it. Don’t let yourself get caught in the quagmire. I have to believe tomorrow will be better. And while I am used to getting slapped upside the head by reality, keeping a positive attitude is beneficial.

In other words, “Don’t worry! Be happy!” Life is too precious and short to waste marinating in your sorrows. Yes, they will come, but my advice is, to the best of your ability, be a duck and let them roll off your back and just keeping swimming(or flying)!

I’m not having a very good day. In fact, I haven’t had a good day in about 6 days. There are adjectives that describe days like today, colorful words that ladies don’t ever say. Not ever(or at least not when children or small animals are around).

I arrived home tonight and sat in the driveway for 10 minutes. I did this because I know that when I get out of the car and walk through the front door I am going to encounter this.

I was really good today. I wanted to eat many bad things but instead I waited until I was hungry to eat lunch and ate cabbage salad. There are many good things about cabbage salad. It is crunchy. It is good for your body. It does not taste like chocolate chip cookies. It does not taste like pizza. It does not taste like French fries. Oops. You see, my brain made my arms lift the fork to my mouth and made my mouth eat the cabbage salad, but my brain could not shut off the craving for everything BUT cabbage salad. My boss told me he was hungry about 3:00pm and I said, “I have cabbage salad. Would you like some?” And he rolled his eyes and walked away. Today, I felt like that too but instead of rolling my eyes I ate it. Why? Because obviously I had not endured enough torture and really wanted to push myself over the edge.

My boss said, “Do you have any chocolate?” And I gave him the candy bar he has been slowly chipping away at for the past week. That I keep in my desk. That I don’t allow myself to eat. Because I am strange. I mean really, who does that?

I know what I need. I need a bunny. I need a fluffy bunny that craves love and affection as much as I do. He should be black and have floppy ears and he should get angry when I stop petting him. Oh, look! I found one!

I will hug him and squeeze him and call him Laddie–because that’s his name.

Tomorrow is a new day. It should be better than today. It may not be, but it should be. So I’m going to eat some sugar free something(last night it was sugar free peach pie, sugar free muffins and sugar free chocolate–because if it is sugar free, it is calorie free, right?) And I am not going to weigh myself because I won’t like what I see. And I will find something good and glorious to be happy about.

Right now I need to chase away the cute and cuddly ground hog that is hanging out in my neighbors yard because even though I told my youngest beastlet to stay away from it “It will gnaw your face off!” He just really wants to pet it. And it’s almost as big as he is and I don’t want to end this *insert expletive of your choice* day at the hospital explaining why my child was trying to cuddle with a wild and vicious animal even though we have plenty of domesticated animals to cuddle with in the house.