That title doesn’t look nor sound likes anything special in itself, right?

However, for me, it is!

I’ve already mentioned my sister in a few posts here. She really is the skinny type, with a slim body, long legs, a lean face… Everything in her is slim. I won’t say that she has NO weight problems, because at some point in her life, during puberty, she gained some, but her ‘highest weight ever’ was approximatively what, until recently, has been MY ‘lowest weight ever’–about 62-63 kgs. So I can’t say that she’s been fat, it didn’t last long enough for her to get into the fat mindset and the likes, nor for her to really buy tons of clothes at such sizes.

This is why, when my sister gave me clothes this past week-end, it was no small achievement for me, since it openly meant I had lost enough in terms of weight and clothing sizes. And those aren’t her ‘fat clothes’ either (her fat clothes are too big for me, mind you)!

Granted, I wasn’t sure at first if said clothes would fit. (Isn’t it annoying, by the way? It seems like that particular thought will never leave me now, used like I am to always have to ask for a bigger size when I try on something in a store. I hope that someday, I’ll be at goal and in maintenance mode with enough confidence to know what size I am for sure.) Anyway, I wasn’t sure. I shouldn’t have worried about it, though. They fit. They even fit so well that I couldn’t believe it at first. Goodness, those are clothes I remember seeing on my sis at a period when I thought and knew that she was thin! She is a few centimeters taller than I, alright–but this isn’t enough to make me look like an elephant compared to her either.

And I’m glad. I’m happy about it, even. This is the kind of apparently insignificant event that means a whole world to someone like me. My body is far from being perfect and I’m not at goal yet, but the hell with that–I fit in NORMAL clothes that have been worn by a person generally considered as THIN! And it’s not an illusion, or me trying to squeeze rolls of fat into a pair of trousers that is clearly too small for me!

Not to mention the fact that it’s a life saver, and that I now have a couple more items to wear instead of having to do with two pairs of jeans, two skirts and three T-shirts. /rolls her eyes.

As a side note, I am also now the proud owner of a short black skirt with braces (straps? suspenders?) and leggings with horizontal stripes. Yep its horizontal. The very kind of pattern I’ve been told to never wear “because you’re fat”. Now I don’t care if I still have thick legs.

I’m ecstatic. In spite of the ongoing struggles, I am.

It was the other day that I was reading through a Psalm– I’m not quite sure which one– that the history behind it was that it was probably written around the time of David’s confrontation with Goliath. The commentary gave the usual background, but what I found interesting was that the author mentioned something that I had not thought of before– mainly, Saul’s stature.

If you remember correctly from I Samuel, Saul was chosen as king and one of his attributes was that he was head and shoulders above most Israelites. This man had some stature. Now, fast forward to the battle with Goliath. Here is a tall man, arguably taller than Saul, but Saul was no small man either. Yet here comes a child– David– who volunteers to fight Goliath. Saul offers his armor– but of course it wouldn’t fit. Perhaps Saul thought it may have made him look bigger.

Why didn’t Saul fight? Why did he let David? We can hypothesize all night and probably still not come up with the answer, and yet we seem to have the same thing happen to us daily– and sometimes there’s no David to pick up our slack.

What do I mean? Well, there are people that you are in contact with every day that you would be the best person to witness to them, and yet you let that opportunity slide by or try to give that opportunity to another. We allow ourselves to be persuaded that its someone else’s job, or someone else would be the better person to share, but, in reality, we ourselves should be that one sharing.

So, we need to take this opportunity to reevaluate where we are and where we are being like Saul, and step up to the challenge that is laid before us that we are best equipped to face!

Well, it’s finally beautiful outside. It’s been quite a weekend temperature wise, and it’s finally nice to be outside. It seems this year that we are either way below the normal temperature or way above. The other day on the weather it talked about it being fall!

So many of life’s events that we celebrate with a ceremony all at once. Where are you going with all this? That life is shorter than we think. That those things we think we have a lot of time for we don’t. It’s just caused me to reflect where I am as an adult and what my life’s been about what will remain should I pass on as well.

Take a moment after you read this to think through where you are, what you are doing, and what you could be doing for the Lord. If necessary, make changes because you don’t want to get to the end and have to answer to Him for a life not lived for Him.

One of the things my pastor says always gets young couples into trouble is trying to have in their house what it took their parents a life time to get.  So, those things– paintings, figurines, etc that you have no need of but look nice tend to be something couple prioritize.  They lead to clutter all along your house– clutter that must be maintained.

The right clutter needs to be displayed, be it whichever holiday you’re currently around.  The clutter needs to be dusted and taken care of.  Collections continue to be added to until they get unwieldy.

This is where Amy’s advice comes into play.  In answering some questions, she gives advice about what her family does in terms of getting more time by having less clutter.

What do you have in your home that is taking time away from what you should be doing for the Lord?

 

Respect is a quickly diminishing character quality without which a society can not effectively function. It is behind and understood to be part of every authority structure of all time. It goes hand in hand with self discipline, humility, and self denial. Yet, it is this area that is under attack.

I was recently attending a class in which this was made very plain and clear to me. One student, perhaps supported by others, decided that the teacher should let us out exactly on time and give us a break (for it was a three hour class) when he wanted. So, in the middle of the teacher’s discussion of a point, the student interrupts with “can we take our break now?” The teacher acquiesces to the student.

These students further demonstrated my point by talking all during the lecture. The teacher did stop to correct it, and since it did surprise and maybe embarrass them briefly, they stopped for the rest of the lecture. Near the end, the students tried to get out when they wanted, by saying that the class was supposed to end at 9:15pm. The sad thing was that the teacher interpreted the request as someone needed to leave at that time, though when I saw no hands raise when he asked if there was a need to leave right on time.

The point is that we have gotten to a stage in our society that we are so worried about quality and not hurting the person’s self-image that we have the selfish people ruling the day. There has been a movement to erase the difference between teens and adults in an effort to try to make the teens feel that they can talk to the adults, or that they are the same.