The Worship of Obedience

 Many of you know that I am overweight. Pudgy. Chubby. I am large. I have struggled with my weight since I was a pre-teen. Struggle might be the wrong word. I have occasionally dieted, only to see my weight remain fairly constant and my diet go up in flames. Weight wins. I've tried them all. Jenny Craig. Weight Watchers. Atkins. Most of them work for a little while, and I might lose ten or fifteen pounds, but then real life worms its way in and I fail. Again.

A few years ago my body attacked me in a new way. I was diagnosed as diabetic. This felt like a huge failure to me, and so I was determined to get it under control and keep it under control through sheer self discipline. I attended the food class and learned to watch carbs instead of sugar. I learned to test my blood sugar regularly and to understand which foods affected my sugar levels and which didn't. For the past seven years I have fairly strictly adhered to a diet that limits sugar and carbs and increases protein. I also added exercise to my routine, seeing what an immediate affect it had on my sugar levels. I was less successful with exercise than with diet.

I don't like to sweat. I think that's what it largely comes down to. Sweat is icky. When I sweat I feel the need to immediately shower. This takes my exercise routine from half an hour to an hour and a half, by the time I blow my hair dry and all that. It wasn't like my exercise routine was ambitious. I planned to walk for a half hour every day. No big deal, right? It turns out I don't like to be wet in my clothes. That means not only do I not like to sweat, I don't like to walk in the rain. This doesn't seem like that big a deal, except that I live in Washington State, where it rains ten months or so out of the year. As a result, my exercise program was hit and miss. I'd do pretty well in the summer, but as soon as the rains started in October or September I was done. Sweat and rain weren't the only issues. I was busy. I didn't like to walk alone. My feet hurt. Shall I go on?

And then I read this:

You were bought with a price. Honor God with your body.

This is from I Corinthians 6:20, and while it is taken out of context, it hit me right between my eyes. God wants me. All of me. I am more than a spiritual being, or a personality, or a mind. I am a body, and God wants it too.

I could rationalize not exercising. I could brush exercise away with the knowledge that my blood sugar was stable and my A1C's were good and my eyes were healthy and not showing any sign of diabetes. But I couldn't rationalize away the fact that God wanted me to honor him with my body.

I began my exercise program again. I committed to walking for one half hour a day, five days per week. This is not huge, but it is a place to start. This act of obedience would be an act of worship. Although there would be health benefits to my exercise plan, spiritual discipline was the real goal. I was going to undertake this goal because I knew God wanted it. I needed to walk out of obedience to God. My goal was not weight loss, nor was it less pain in my feet nor stable blood sugar. My goal was to experience greater joy in my relationship of submission to God through obedience. I didn't set any hard and fast rules, I just wanted to get in my 30 minutes at some point in the day. Every day. I was also hoping to focus my attention during those 30 minutes on God.

This sound easy, right? Just get out and walk. Week 1 was rainy and cold. I hate walking in the rain. I don't have rain gear. I don't have rain boots. I could go on, but you don't need to hear any more of the whining. On Wednesday, I hit on a idea. Nobody said I had to walk outside. I called my son who met me at the mall, and we walked, non-stop, and then rewarded ourselves with sushi. This was fun for us both, and he got me try sushi for the first time. Week 2 I remembered that I have a recumbent exercise bike. You'd have thought I would have remembered it earlier, as it sits in the middle of my living room. I stack my school books on it. Hang sweaters on it. Pile my shoes under it. I unearthed it, and got on it. It was also a terrific alternative to walking in the rain, except that it was created by Satan for my torture and I hate it. But I do use it. This same week I also remembered bowling. I love to bowl. I went with my kids, and my behind and thighs hurt for the next three days. It was a good hurt. I did pretty well that week. Six days! Then week 3 came, and BOOM! I got hit with the flu. All I wanted to do was sleep, all week long. I cut myself some slack the two days I could hardly lift my head off the pillow, and still managed to get in four days.

The exercise bike proved to be a viable alternative to walking. The only problem is that there is no way to make it an act of worship, except for the fact that the obedience alone is worship. I underestimated my loathing of exercise, of sweating, and of my conviction that the exercise bike is indeed a creation of Satan himself. Plus, where would I put my books? I was a colossal failure at this part of the discipline. I could exercise regularly, but only if I could lose myself in something so completely that for at least part of the thirty minutes I forgot what I was doing. This meant television, and even then it had to be a story, something that occupied my brain. CNN wouldn't do it, not even after the Boston marathon bombing. Cooking shows (my personal favorite) didn't do it, even though I really wanted them to work, just for the irony of watching food shows while working out. Variety shows didn't do it. It had to be a story, usually Castle or NCIS. Worship certainly didn't do it. By the end of the thirty minutes I wanted terrorists to break into my apartment and take me hostage. Any thing to get me off that bike. As a result, I backed off the spiritual aspect of my goal and decided that obedience through exercise had to be enough. I get worship and spiritual focus in other aspects of my life.

I am on week 27. Those of you who know me know I am still fat. I have lost a little weight, but that's not the issue. The issue is obedience. This will be a lifelong discipline, and I imagine I will be a failure as often as I have success. The good thing is that I am dealing with it now, addressing my physicality instead of ignoring it. It no longer lurks in the corner like a monster waiting to consume me at some unknown time. The light has exposed it for the ugly thing it is, and while it is ugly, its not nearly as scary as it is when I'm ignoring it. It's like the monster that hid under the bed when my kids were little; horrible and frightening until the light exposed it for the pile of dirty laundry that it was.

As a side note, I have found a new place to keep my books, other than piled on the exercise bike. Turns out, I have a book case!