Healthy Weight Loss plus Nouwen/Love/Loneliness

So I've lost about 10 lbs now, using the The Daily Plate. I'm amazed at how easy it has been for me to do, just because it's very convenient being at a computer all day. This is the graph of my progress (but because I'm a lady, I'm not going to publish the numbers that correspond ;-p). Weekends I usually don't log stuff in, and you can tell by the graph because it'll be the lowest weight I've ever been and then on Monday it goes up. Also a lot of the net calories on Fridays are weird, because I usually didn't finish off the day. But so far the process has really worked out overall as a balance between watching what I eat, and yet still being able to eat cookies ^_^. It's cool to see that a decrease in net calories (either eating less or exercising some off) really leads to a decrease in weight. Also, there's that huge loss on March 6th only because I finally got a weigh scale from craigslist and started to weigh myself every weekday.


Started reading "Reaching Out" by Henri Nouwen. Some really convicting quotes:

"Friendship and love cannot develop in the form of an anxious clinging to each other. They ask for gentle fearless space in which we can move to and from each other. As long as our loneliness brings us together with the hope that together we no longer will be alone, we castigate each other with our unfulfilled and unrealistic desires for oneness, inner tranquility and the uninterrupted experience of communion."

"But real oppenness to each other also means a real closedness, because only he who can hold a secret can safely share his knowledge...An inimate relationship between people not only asks for mutual openness but also for mutual respectful protection of each other's uniqueness."

"There is a false form of honesty that suggests that nothing should remain hidden and that everything should be said, expressed and communicated. This honesty can be very harmful, and if it does not harm, it at least makes relationship flat, superficial, empty and often very boring."

GAH! I am just utterly struck by my need for the Gospel to be true, otherwise I collapse into nothingness. Otherwise, I demand intimacy from other people, and suck them dry. Well, lets hope I grew out of that somewhat, but at the end of the day, I still struggle with knowing what is appropriate to find in community and what to ultimately find in God.

One of the women in our Fellowship Group is currently pregnant and might give birth any day now. She was remarking on how weird it is that as an adult, she has experienced all kinds of love (parents, sibling, friendship, husband) and then you have a baby, and that's a completely new kind of love. I'm only 23, and have not experienced all the kinds she has, and I think the more love I experience from people, the more wisdom I must have in knowing how to deal with that. Like everytime I start loving another person or start loving a person more, I realize that it just means I need to love God all the more. It doesn't necessarily mean I demote the person in my life, it means I must place God higher than even that. I think that's how the Church of Christ is built up to become more and more like God. That's really hard to figure out, especially with a heart that's so selfish and sinful. You start to realize how high, wide and deep God's love is, and his capacity to love is infinitely greater than I'll ever get to. It's kind of like looking at my grandparents and knowing how much they gave up for their children and grandchildren, and thinking..man, could I do that?..but times infinity.

I didn't grow up with any deep friendships. And I think that has a lot to do with what God thought was best for my maturity. Things like that aren't just throwaway facts of a terrible childhood, but crafted by God to be that way for His own glory.

This idea brings hope and comfort, but it doesn't make the pain of the process go away. That's what makes counseling so necessary. And as Nouwen points out: "The real spiritual guide is the one who, instead of advising us what to do or whom to go offers us a chance to stay alone and take the risk of entering into our own experience." Basically, don't waste your sorrows and ultimately deal with loneliness by entering into it with just you and God, and use the opportunity to see more of God and His glory and love. It's surprising how faithfully God shows up when we truly ask Him to.