little foxes

I was pondering this weekend while on vacation and I began thinking about how I ended up SO overweight? It's easy to say, "Well, I've been this way my whole life..." but the more I pondered it I realized, "No Mesha, you didn't start off this weight." A more honest statement would be, "I've been overweight my whole life, however, I gradually made my way to the record number I reached."

It's a slow fade (listen to that song on my music player below - GREAT SONG!)

It's crazy how things slowly progress and you don't recognize what's beginning to happen in your life until it's gone WAY too far. I remember when I was satisfied at Taco Bell with 2 crunchy tacos and a medium drink. It somehow went from there to a chicken border bowl, 2 crunchy tacos, a beef & cheese mexi melt AND a LARGE Dr. Pepper. If you were to ask me, I wouldn't have even recognized that my eating habits had changed so drastically, yet my order slowly kept increasing over the years.

The same thing is true about clothing. Just think for a moment, it normally started with going to your favorite clothing store and picking out that pair of jeans you just couldn't live without. Well, you pick out you "current" size and while in the fitting room you discover, "Wait, these are a little too snug for comfort. It must just be the brand, every one makes them a little different." <-- If that isn't the biggest deception in weight gaining, I don't know what is. You casually grab the next size up, afterall, these jeans are SO CUTE! (Or as Shauna would say, "Sassy!") Now you've got a little extra room for comfort and to grow. This trend continues throughout the years without much thought until it hits you....

'HOW DID I LET THIS HAPPEN!'

As usual, this all to common scenerio has a spiritual lesson to be learned as well. Just how weight gain slowly creeps up on you, sometimes completely unnoticed - so does sin. It may start with grabbing that celebrity gossip magazine that has the latest pics of the hottest stars. Then you start watching sitcoms that may display a little more passion and lust than you would have watched before. Then you "accidentally" stumble across that website on the internet that has some risky pictures, but you only peek, you don't "meditate" on it. Before you know it you are eaten up with lust and bound to pornography and have NO clue how it went this far. You are now out of control and a life of freedom from whatever the addiction may be seems absolutely foreign. There is a scripture that says, "it's the little foxes that spoil the vines." Something small can turn out disasterous to your well-being because as the small fox destroy the root and spoils the entire vine, addiction does the same thing. It eats at the desire (or root) and slowly destroys that area of freedom when not addressed.

Song of Solomon 2:15 Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.

One of my favorite quotes is:

"Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you wanna
stay and cost you more than you wanna pay."

It's so true for sin AND weight gain though. You don't just wake up one day obese, you continue on a path that leads there which in the end leaves you miserable, unhealthy and working hard to recover. *sigh*

Verse of the Day:

3 John 1:2 (NIV)
2Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well