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It’s a Workout Wednesday…

Hello World!!!

Before...my eyes always do weird things in pictures...

As I was getting ready to teach a class last night at the gym, it occurred to me that I should share how I went from the girl who always placed last in those awful and humiliating physical fitness tests I was forced to take each spring of my childhood to the woman who teaches weekly classses at the gym and looks forward to training for road races each summer…

Like many major decisions in my life, I was motivated by vanity 🙂 … The year was 1992.  I had graduated from high school earlier that year and was now a proud freshman at UGA (Go dawgs!) Although I was homesick, I had managed to find comfort in the dining hall…At home, my mother never really fed me and my brothers baked goods as that was not her specialty. But now that I was on my own and armed with a meal card, I indulged in cakes, cookies and pies galore particularly as one of the dining halls was next to my dorm….And since a vending machine was nearby my room, I often indulged in Baby Ruth candy bars with a can of Coke as a pick-me-up for those early morning classes…And for a mid-morning snack, I downed small bags of salt and vinegar chips from that same vending machine…My girls and I frequently devoured slices of pizza at midnight before, during and after late night study sessions…And after church on Sundays, my roommate and I got down at our local Ryan’s Family Steak House….

Three months later, I was 20 pounds heavier, and my father began calling me “Big Mama…” It was especially troubling as my roommate who ate along with me had not gained any weight…It must have been all of that exercise she was doing as a member of the Army Reserves…My other girl didn’t gain any weight either…she was just one of those naturally skinny chicks….(i was soo jealous…) But I continued to eat and gain weight anyway…

The summer before my junior year, I saw myself in one of those surveillance videos at a supermarket…Before I saw myself on the video, I thought I was looking hot…I had on one of those full-body, shaped linen dresses that were in style at the time…I just knew I was just looking voluptuous…but I had to face the truth when I saw the video…I was beyond voluptuous…I was fat…

So when I started school in my junior year, I had a plan…I had to take one P.E. class to graduate so I decided to go ahead and finally enroll in a class…all of the walking classes were full so I had to take a running class….Thankfully, UGA had a diet program similar to Weight Watchers. I decided to enroll in the program at the same time that I took the running class. In the diet program, we learned how to count calories and plan nutritious meals according to what was served at the dining halls…I learned that with moderate exercise combined with eating 1345 calories and 37 grams of fat each day, I would lose that 20 pounds or so that I gained…

I huffed and puffed in that running class, and I was sooo slow that sometimes the teacher had to run with me because I was sooo far behind the other members of the class…And I monitored each morsel that passed through my lips and tallied up all of my calories and fat grams for months….And it worked, by spring quarter, I was fine as wine…And I had a new found appreciation for exercise…Our teacher told us at the beginning of the class that he wanted to inspire us to continue to run and exercise for the rest of our lives…at the time, I never imagined that could happen for me, but it did…I have never stopped working out….And by the grace of God, I will be working out even when I’m old and gray….

Now, I’m not as skinny as I used to be…In fact, I’m not skinny at all…I have discovered since then that what you eat not how much you work out is the most important factor in long-term weight loss…but I still love working out…To celebrate 10 years of working out, I ran a marathon (26. 2 miles) in 2004…True to form, by the time I finished, the finish line had been packed up and most of the runners were gone…but I still did it…I trained with the Jeff Galloway Training Groups. I don’t know if I will ever do a marathon again, but I do manage to run a few road races each year….And each year, I run with a Jeff Galloway Training Group…I cannot describe how alive I feel as I run on those brisk Saturday summer mornings…

If you’re in Atlanta, the 10k training program starts on April 17! I’ll be there…will you?

After...again, my eyes always do weird things in pictures...

Any thoughts?

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Plan B aka the long winding road of life…

 

Hello World,

We’ve all heard this quote before….”Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” John Lennon…The older I get, the more I realize that is true…But for the Christian, we have to realize that that the plans we have for ourselves may  not necessarily be the plans that God has for us…a bitter pill to swallow sometimes when a cherished plan hangs in the balance, but something to be reckoned with all the same…I was talking with a friend last night about some of his current life circumstances, and I finally had to let him know that God speaks through closed doors in our lives as much as He does through open doors…And sometimes those doors seem to be closed due our own folly, yet He still allowed it to happen because of His plans for us…

I think back to when I first decided to live a Christian life for real just after graduating from college…With God on my side, I just knew that I would get a good job at a magazine or newspaper….It would  only be a matter of sending off my resume and cover letter…But that was not the case….It took me THREE years to get a decent job in my field…and the economy was good back then….It really freaked me out at the time…Let me brag for a minute…I had graduated from one of the notable journalism schools in the country, and I had skipped the entrance exam to get into j-school due to my SAT score…I had journalism scholarships…I had good grades particularly within my major…I had four journalism internships on my resume…and I had ambition…but I just couldn’t get a job in my field…

I couldn’t figure out why AFTER I turned my life over to Jesus Christ, my life got worse instead of better…After so many closed doors, I wondered if God really intended for me to be a working journalist after all…In fact, I ended up working in public relations for a minute…Looking back, I realize that I was going through God’s boot camp so to speak…It kind of reminds of what happened to Jesus after He was baptized…he was sent to the desert to be tempted by the devil for 40 days before He officially started His ministry…In my case, I believe my period of testing happened so I could get to know God…I prayed and cried a lot during that time…As most people know, it’s during the bad times of our lives that we learn the most…And sometimes that includes making a plan B…

Thankfully, today I am a working journalist…My plan A is still God’s plan A for me…but I was (am) willing to go a different way if that is what God wanted…I’m reminded that God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son on an altar although Isaac was God’s cherished gift to him…and God told Abraham that would be the father of many generations to come…I’m sure that Abraham wondered how this was going to happen if he murdered his only son…but he was willing to do what God asked…and just as Abraham was about to commit the deed, God showed up with a ram in the bush for him to sacrifice instead…God wants us to be willing to sacrifice anything for Him…even our plan A….

Still, I am encouraged by the many verses in the Bible that clearly show that God always has our good in mind even when we are going through the bad…

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Jeremiah 29:11

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

Any thoughts?

P.S. This Yolanda Adams song really encouraged me when I was “going through…”

P.P.S. Lil Wayne ain’ gon’ work when you’re “going through…” 🙂

 

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Dream a little dream…(R.I.P. Corey Haim)

Hello World!!!

I’m writing this post an hour later than I usually do…I wonder why… 🙂

Anywho, when I was in high school and was blessed to have a boyfriend (wish didn’t happen very often), I knew that that the death knell of the relationship had rung when I dreamt of them…I don’t know why this happened but it did without fail…looking backing I wonder if this was God’s way of preparing me for the sad inevitable or maybe it was just something my subconscious mind picked up on before my conscious mind did…

Still, I do know that dreams are one of the ways that God chooses to speak to us…It happens over and over again in His Word…God uses dreams all thoughout the story of the birth of Jesus Christ….

But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.  Matthew 1: 20-21

And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they (the Magi) returned to their country by another route.  Matthew 2:12

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”  Matthew 2:13

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”  Matthew 2:19-20

My father, who also believes in the power of dreams, and I have had numerous discussions dreams, and he has given me tips on how to decode dreams. I have also attended a seminar about dreams in 2004 which was moderated by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat, a clinical psychologist who has conducted dreamwork seminars for over 25 years in the U.S., Europe and Asia.  I was blessed to have him interpret an important dream of mine in front of the whole class. I cannot share it here, but I thank God for using that dream to showing me a bit of my future…I have also read some literature on dreams and have Googled numerous dream interpretation Web sites…

Everyone dreams….but every once in a while, we dream something that stays with us…These are the dreams that we are meant to seriously consider because God may be trying tell us something…Most experts suggest a few tips for dream interpretation…

1. Keep a journal next to your bed. In the morning or in the middle of the night, as soon as you wake up, write the dream down…You don’t want to forget important details that help you decode your dream…

2. The language of dreams is typically symbols….For instance, if you dream of a toilet, you may be flushing someone or something toxic out of your life…Consider what symbols mean to you personally and what they may mean in literature…I love to Google dream Web sites to figure what symbols mean….

3. Consider the events of your life at that moment…I typically have dreams at stressful times of my life, and my dreams often tell me truths that I need to know and act on….

4. And of course, pray and ask God for illumination…

Any thoughts?

P.S. Check out this song, “Dream a Little Dream” by the the great Louis Armstrong…listening to his songs always make me think of episodes of  “Tom and Jerry.” Guess it’s because they used to play those kind of songs in the background…Probably had to be born in the ’70s to remember that… 🙂