Over the past 75 days, a lot of things have changed in my life. My youngest daughter turned 1, my oldest daughter turned 5, Janel has passed me in the weight loss challenge (she has lost nearly 80 pounds), and I have lost 40 pounds (which puts me under 200 pounds for the first time since I moved to the land where everything is fried and/or covered in a cream sauce known to the rest of the world as New Orleans).
There are lots of benefits to having lost this much weight. I am sleeping better (imagine Janel sarcastically saying "You had trouble sleeping ever in life?"), I do not snore as bad - as indicated by the healing of the bruises on my ribs from my wife trying to get me to stop in the middle of the night, clothes are fitting better, and I can play on the floor with my children without needing a forklift to get up after. One of the benefits that has me giddy (yeah, you read that correctly) happened over the weekend. I was getting dressed to get to my friends wedding on Saturday, and I noticed that I had to redo my tie several times. I had to keep adjusting the tie SHORTER. Before I started losing weight, the only reason I would wear a tie was to hide the fact that my belly was stretching the buttons on my shirt, and therefore would have to make the tie very long to reach over my stomach and touch my belt buckle (which is the proper length for ties). But on Saturday, I noticed that I had to shorten the ties because they were hanging too low. This was one of the great accomplishments of the journey so far.
I know that is kind of a silly thing to be happy or excited about, but it was important to a guy who wears ties as part of his occupation (which, ironically, I promised my mother I would never do because I use to hate when she would make me wear a tie on the holidays). It got me thinking about how things fit. My clothes are fitting better - no long ties, stretching buttons, bulging pockets, or using the last hole on a belt because I am eating and exercising correctly and taking care of my body. As people created in the image of God, we fit better when we are living harmony with his will.
I see people everyday both in ministry settings and at Starbucks (which is also a ministry setting) that do a lot of "covering up" to make themselves appear to be happy and put on the facade that they think everyone wants to see. When in reality, their lives are in shambles, their marriages stink, they are unhappy in their jobs,etc because the manner in which they are living is in complete discord with what God has for their lives. Whenever I see someone that is giving in to some kind of addiction - drinking, shopping, drugs, whatever vice you can think of - I always wonder what they are trying to hide from everyone seeing.
This world is full of so much hurt, pain, and "long ties" because WE are trying to live OUR lives, not the life that reflects that image of God in us. If we could start living in accordance to what the Bible show us as right, we could have a lot of shorter ties in the world
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