One.One.Zero

One. One. Zero.

One hundred ten.

Contemplate that number for a moment. It's the percent of effort we give (110%!). It's the speed we'd like to drive in our parents' mustang when we're 18. It's two large and one small bags of dog food. Twenty-two bags of sugar. Four-hundred-forty sticks of butter.

Now, picture that amount, gone. Can you imagine the size of the hole if you were to dig out 110 pounds of dirt from your garden?

Now, picture me. Only, picture me one-hundred-ten pounds lighter.

That's the second time I've ever written that number about myself, and it is just as surreal the second time around as it was the first. I'm actually a little light-headed right now, not in a celebratory way, just in a "whooooa" kinda way.

And I'm almost home. Less than five pounds, actually. And oh the things the Lord has taught me and is teaching me through this journey! And the most magnificent lesson is this:

Jesus has set me FREE!

I cannot explain (yet) all that this means. I will keep trying, maybe all my life. This journey wasn't ultimately about weight-loss; it was about the changes God wanted to create in me. How good and gracious is our God? There are no lengths to which He will not go to show Himself mighty! And how mighty He is! I. AM. FREE!

This is all the more poignant when you know this truth: Several years before I began this journey, I had a dreadful realization one day. If your TRUE theology (what you believe about God) is demonstrated in how you live (and it IS), then I did not believe that God could set me free from my addiction to food. I would have said I believed that God could free anyone from anything. ("Of course He can! He's God!") But my life made it very clear that at the most basic levels, I did not believe this to be true. Otherwise, why was I living life hand-to-mouth, literally?

So today, when I say I am free, know that part of what God has done is change my theology. He has played His hand...and as it turns out, He CAN set ANYONE FREE!!

Celebrating HIS GREATNESS,
-J

...Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace... But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. --Romans 6:11-14, 17-18, NIV

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. --Romans 8:1-3, NIV

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen. --Revelation 1:6, NIV

(c) 2009