Getting Started

Have you given up on weight loss? I had. Then I found the path. I hope to lead you in your search for it. Consider Matthew 19:26.

Mrs. Kinnon lived across the street, down at the end of the block when I was growing up. She firmly believed in cleaning out her whole house before leaving for any trip, down to the drawers, so nobody would come in and find anything out of order. She had whiskers that stabbed little girls when she hugged them, and she did and they did. And every single Monday she started a diet. She'd ended it by Monday evening, or maybe even Tuesday, but the next Monday, she started a diet. Again.

I started dieting when I was thirteen and Mother took me to Dr. Brooks to get a prescription for weight control pills. I didn't know I was fat until then, though after that I remembered Mother had been reminding me of that for a while. From that day until last December, something in the neighborhood of forty-six years, I was on a diet. Probably like Mrs. Kinnon, most of those days you couldn't tell it, but I was. Or I was feeling guilty, one or the other. Forty-six years, one day at a time, is 16,808 days, give or take a day because of leap years in between. If I was following the diet a seventh of the time, like Mrs. Kinnon, I felt righteous about twenty-four hundred days. I felt guilty and miserable something like fourteen thousand, four hundred days.

Since December 17th, 2006, I've felt guilty about my food darned close to zero days, though I haven't had perfect abstinence from overeating since then. But the guilt, the burden, the shame is gone. It's time you, too, lay aside your guilt, shame, and burden and rely on Jesus' words, "My burden is easy and my yoke is light." I believed them because Jesus said them those 46 years. I didn't live them until December 17. What's today? Write it down. You can find that kind of peace, that kind of freedom from guilt and shame. His burden really is easy, his yoke light. I know, because I got it from my head to my heart. With God's help, I'll walk you through leaning how to move it from your head to your heart as well, no matter where you start.

Write down the date. Relax. Make yourself a sign and put it on your mirror--or make it into you computer wall paper. Put it where you'll see it. Write, "Jesus promises a light burden and an easy yoke. I want to find them."