Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

hunger

Putting money where my mouth is

It’s time for a change.

I’ve been stuck in a rut for a couple of months now, weight-loss wise, and this weekend I found myself back to square one. Any weight I’ve lost in the last year is back on my body, and I’m supremely frustrated and ticked off at myself.

Sometimes, it’s a matter of not getting to the gym often enough and being too sedentary. Summer, after all, is not my ideal time to be outside in the heat and humidity. But that shouldn’t stop me.

© Jay Crihfield | Dreamstime.com

The bigger issue than exercise — because I actually like to exercise — is food, which I also like. Too much.

I have little to no control over how much I eat. Or, more accurately, I don’t exercise control over how much I eat.

Late-night snack craving? How ’bout some ice cream followed by some chips?

Kids making me crazy? I’ll just pop some chocolate in my mouth and everything will be fine.

I’m not extremely disciplined for my own sake, so while wondering how I might change this set of circumstances, I was presented with a reality that I cannot ignore.

Photo taken by Lalrosiem Songate, general director of the EC Church of India, on a visit to Liberia

It is this: Every 30 minutes, 1,000 people die from starvation. Probably that number is higher. I think the statistic might be outdated. Even so, while we sat in our Sunday School class yesterday, eating cheese puffs, cookies and bagels with cream cheese, people somewhere else in the world died because they don’t have enough food to eat. It was enough to make me want to vomit.

These two events have led me to a personal challenge, and I’m asking you to join me in some way over the next 6 months.

Here is the challenge:

Photos by Lalrosiem Songate. These are children in Liberia. I don't know if they are orphans, but they stir my heart.

For the next six months, I will pledge $5 for every pound I lose to help care for widows and orphans in Liberia through the EC Church’s micro-enterprise program. (Click here for more information. It’s No. 8 in the Giving Catalog.)

I will weigh in on Tuesday, July 5 to determine my official starting weight, and I will aim to post weekly about my journey, including what I learn about hunger and poverty in the process. You can follow the posts under the category “my loss their gain challenge.”

I’m making this public because I need accountability. I need your emotional support, and I need to hear your experiences with weight loss and overeating and, let’s face it, food addiction.

Beyond that, I’m asking you to take the journey with me. Do you have weight you want to lose but just can’t seem to take it off? Pick a cause close to your heart and make the same pledge. Or, if you want to live vicariously through me, make a pledge for my weight loss, too. At the end of the year, I’ll be making my donation based on the number of pounds I’ve lost. You can do the same at that time.

Excited. Nervous. Scared. Intimidated. Hopeful. I am these things and more.

And ready for a great adventure.

It’s what’s for dinner

We enjoy watching “Iron Chef America” when we get the chance. Not so much when kitchen stadium visits our kitchen and Battle: Dinner ensues.

Isabelle wouldn’t eat her dinner tonight, even though it contained one of her favorite vegetables in the whole world, peas. She ate a few peas and proclaimed dinner over. This also could have been because she was in the middle of a “Dora the Explorer” episode and we were not eating in the kitchen because we were in the middle of a severe thunderstorm and I wanted to keep within earshot of the local news.

An hour later, after Dora and thunderstorm had passed, she began her requests to fulfill the hunger she now had.

“I want something else,” she calmly stated while looking at the shelves where the fruit snacks, cereal and snack cakes often find a home.

I told her she needed to eat her dinner.

“But I want something else,” she said a little more forcefully this time.

Again, “no.”

She took matters into her own hands, pulling a chair to the shelves, as if to illustrate that what she wanted was on one of these shelves and she could show me what she wanted if I didn’t understand her.

I told her if she pulled anything off the shelves, she was going to time out.

She reached for a box of Life cereal and proceeded to land herself in time out where she kicked and screamed and cried and lamented, “But I want something else.”

I dished up a bowl of the pasta salad I’d made and set her in front of it with a fork when time out was done. She continued to cry, “But I want something else.”

I ignored her pleas and fed Corban green beans. In the midst of her tears, she picked up her fork and began to eat. Tears subsided. And as she took bite after bite, she even said, “Thank you, Mommy” as she ate. The next time she left the table, her bowl was three-quarters empty.

I tell you this, not to brag, but because I feel like lately I’ve been telling God, “But I want something else.” Calmly. Rationally. Then hysterically, as if I’m sure He can’t hear me or understand what I’m asking for. Doesn’t He know I’m hungry, so to speak, and that I need Him to provide?

Yes, of course He does. But what He’s given me is what’s for “dinner” for the moment and I can take it and walk away fed or leave it and continue to be hungry.

I think I’m ready to eat what God’s serving for dinner, and I might even thank Him for it.