An uphill battle

The clichés exist for a reason. 

Every good fight is an uphill battle.

Progress is marked not by the times you fall, but the times you get up again.

I chose the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.

This is what it's like to be a perpetually dieting obese person.  Dieting is hard for anyone, and dieting alone will never lead to long term success.  Real life change involves a change in diet coupled by a change of life style, a change of self image, and often a change in someone's entire surroundings (from what's in their pantry to who they hang out with). 

But when you weigh three times what you're supposed to, there is real and constant work to everyday living.  Rising from a horizontal to vertical position is a workout, and that's how you start every day.  My sister phrased it best last Winter when I was in the hospital for breathing and they thought I had a pulmonary embolism.  She asked me if I was tired of waking every morning to a nightmare. 

When you suffer from depression of any kind, it doesn't really matter how many blessings you're surrounded with.  They actually seem to mock you and increase your sense of guilt. What's wrong with you that you can't appreciate the gifts God has given you?  All of the light the world sees about you is realized in a fraction of its real luminosity and vibrance.  The best we can do is flex our spiritual muscles and gather all those hints of light into a dimly glowing pinprick on which we can place all of our focus.  That light is the truth in the darkness of our own mental image, our painful realities, our uphill battles. 

Take my year long weight loss progress chart. Until my current weight is less than my starting weight, I cannot help but feel the sensations of failure.  

This also reminds me that you're never as fat as you could be, and today is always the best day to start and not stop. I'm sure I felt just as overwhelmed at 369 as I do at 391.  This Heidi scoffs at last year's Heidi.  And gets angry at every earlier version of Heidi she can recall. 

The pinprick of light is that this chart's trajectory has changed.  And just yesterday it showed no weight loss - actually had been parked at 396 for four days and I refused to document it - and the very next day (when all I've done is sleep since then) I weigh 391.  What further proof need I supply that God is real and the devil will not win me over to his lies? 

Keep on fighting! I will praise you in this storm Lord. 

Onwards.