Quoting from _Women, Food and God_

"At some point, it becomes about the weight. When you can't live the rest of your life with ease, the weight itself needs to be addressed. Not so that you can become super-model thin. Not so that you can look like an image in your mind that has nothing to do with your body, your age, your life. You need to address the weight because without addressing it, you don't actually live. You schlep yourself from place to place, out of breath. Sitting is painful. Flying is torturous. Going to the movies is challenging. You become so burdened with the problems you've created that your life becomes small and your focus becomes narrow. Life becomes about your limitations. How ashamed you are of yourself. You close down your senses, you leave the world of sounds of color, of laughter in favor of a reality you've created yourself. If you keep using food as a drug, if your life becomes about your weight, you miss everything that is not related to your weight problem. You die without ever having lived."

This is the most amazing book I have ever read, with the most incredible insights into what it's really like to be an overeater, and why and how we get there. Thank you, Geneen Roth.

...Bitch.

That's What You Do

A tough girl in middle school wanted to fight me for the right to accompany my best friend (and wow...both their names escape me, now...) on the Magic Mountain field trip.

I thought Amy (I remembered!) would find this ridiculous and tell me that of course she would go with me. She didn't. Apparently she wanted to be fought over.

My father said to tell the tough girl that "ladies don't settle their arguments rolling around in the dirt." Good one, dad.

We met just inside the school gate, and a crowd gathered. For reasons that don't make sense to me now, we thought we should go outside the fence to fight -- like we'd get in trouble if we fought on school grounds. I just stood there. A crowd gathered. That's all I remember -- the crowd, some of them yelling stuff, and me staring at my shoes and waiting. I waited until the crowd finally left, and then Cindy (I remembered!) finally left, too.

Then I walked home. I thought I'd handled it pretty wisely, but I was devastated. Amy pulled up on her bike, and all she said was, "I thought you were my friend."

Amy and I stayed friends after that. We talked it through and stayed friends, because that's what you do. And that's what I've continued to do. I've only left one relationship and that was my first boyfriend, a really painful situation that I actually left the state to get away from.

The ex and I are Facebook friends, now. Because that's what you do.

Acting, Not Reacting

I just had a "moment" that could have ended very badly.

I'm at the neighborhood coffee shop. Worked late last night, got up late this morning, no time for breakfast. So I grab a coffee just before a stressful meeting with my boss. She leaves, I look around for a place to plug in my laptop and work. Can't find one. I flop into an arm chair and return my mom's call. She does all the mailing for the ministry I work for, and some of letters I sent her last night didn't print correctly. Too many letters to resend them all, and the only way to figure it out is to pay for a car share for a couple of hours, go over there and sort it out. I REALLY can't afford to pay for a car today.

Just as I tell Mom that I'll think about it and call her back, I realize I'm flopped in a very unflattering position, and two girls at the counter (who look like they just came from a yoga class) are giving me the "can-you-believe-how-big-that-woman-is" stank eye.

If you're addicted to anything, you know how I felt at that moment. The swirly, helpless, overwhelmed, grasping, quitting feeling you get just before you reach for whatever's familiar and apparently helped you find your balance at some point in the past, whether it works now or not. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about.

A thought was forming that started with the words, "Oh, I'll just..." I'll just...what? Get the car all day and deal with the cost later? Eat something sugary and get a buzz going? Skip swimming today to deal with the effed up work situation?

Then something different happened. I realized that this was the worst possible time to make a decision. Any decision. I didn't need to do *anything*, at this moment, but deal with this feeling. Then I could make decisions for the rest of the day, or even for the next five minutes.

So I sat up in the arm chair, closed my eyes, said a quick prayer and breathed. I realized that I was hungry and thirsty and needed to take care of myself before I took care of anything else. I pushed the table on which I had put my computer over to another chair (closer to the yoga girls, which took a little courage), and plugged in (using a bit *more* courage to ask the cooler-than-cool guy on the couch to thread the cord behind his legs. I walked to the counter and bought a tofu-scramble whole-wheat breakfast burrito and a banana. Then I went back to my little table and let the yoga girls watch me eat. That's right, yoga girls -- fat chicks eat.

Within ten minutes, I was able to think clearly. Checked email, texted my boss with a great idea I'd forgotten during our meeting, checked into the car share, called Mom back. It will only cost five dollars to extend my car share an hour and go over to her place after my workout this afternoon.

Writing this blog was the next priority -- sharing epiphanies is important, too. Done and done. Time to go swimming, and tonight I'll be at my desk working -- but maybe not so late.

Hello, Future Me!

An open email to myself,
five years in the future.

To make sure I get it, I'm also
sending it out at FutureMe.org.

______________________________

Dear Future Me:

I can see you today, when I close my eyes. You're driving a blue pickup truck on an open highway. All I can see is the part that shows through the window, but you have that long braid down your back -- the one I've been trying FOREVER to grow -- your shoulders are narrower, your face more defined and prettier, and there's a lot more room between you and the steering wheel than I have now.

You're on your way to the next city, to set up another After School Club, or maybe a Cottage School, for homeless kids. The first fledgling program, at Joshua Station, starts in a couple of weeks (my time) -- but by the time you read this there may be a dozen or more. When you get to the city, you'll make connections; you'll speak and write and meet and do whatever it takes to gather a community around the cause of education for homeless children. You'll work with those new friends to create something beautiful. Again. And again at the next place. And again and again.

Behind the truck you're towing a tiny house, with a bicycle on the porch. God only knows (and I look forward to finding out) what's inside the house: a guitar, a djembe, a spinning wheel? A telescope, maybe some canvases and paint? It's going to be fun to see what stays, what goes and what is added as I pursue and define the lovely, simple, mobile life I long for.

There will always be resistance, and it may never get easy, but from here your life looks so sweet. Here at the beginning of the story, there's mostly paralyzing fear. Fear of failure, fear of hard work, fear of being alone in the hard work and also failing alone. Fear of the thing I've never been, however beautiful it might claim to be. What if I heard God wrong? Fear that when I get to heaven he'll shake his head and say something like "What were you thinking?"

The smile on your face today says you fought through it. You're doing what you were born to do, and you know it. If it's possible that it works this way (and some of my friends who are WAY into physics think it might be), please pray for me. No one but you and God knows what it's going to take to get from here to there, but it's do-able, and it's worth it. This much even *I* know.

Some "inciting incidents" were put into motion recently, before I even knew what an "inciting incident" was. The Shrink-A-Thon is probably the most obvious, public one -- 400 of my family and friends are watching via Facebook as I lose this weight, and a bunch of them are actually pledging money per pound to benefit the After School Club at Joshua Station. Yikes. At the very least, it's keeping me from quitting on the good food and exercise. And having other people's money flowing toward the education program means that quitting on that isn't an option, either.

Future Lori, if you're still struggling, please don't give up. You do *not* want to end up back where I am now. If you're ever tempted to turn around, think about Griselda's face when she read her first whole sentence, or Marco's laughter when he realized he could actually *do* addition. Or you can think about any of the (hundreds?) of kids you've worked with in the time since I wrote this.

And, dear one, remember Dad's story. There were some great scenes...the children's home, the tutoring, the way he encouraged us to see our lives as blank slates on which anything could be written...but his last chapter was long and boring and all about sickness and death. And his death was long and boring and stupid and tragic. I can say that because I know he's okay now, and if he can see what I'm writing he agrees.

I'm standing at a crossroads, with a choice between your story and Dad's. I choose your story, Future Lori -- I choose Beautiful You.

The doctors all say that my diabetes is reversible, so you probably don't even have it. You're healthy and active and you get down on the floor with the kids. You say "yes" when friends invite you for hikes and on trips, you can go on the rides at amusement parks, and you explore the cities you visit on foot and on your bike. You have time and energy to sew the clothes you've always wanted to wear. You have space on your lap for the children you love.

And there's so much more to come -- eye has not seen.

I'm going to go and copy this off to you at FutureMe, but before I do I want to tell you two more things:

1) I'm sorry it's taken me so long to make the choices that will bring you into being.
2) You're welcome.

-- Lori, 2010

P.S. When we meet, let's write an email to Old Lady Us. You can probably see her a little more clearly than I can. All I can make out is a long, gray braid down her back, her bicycle, and her smile.

_____________________________

Last year Don Miller came through Denver, talking about his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. He pretty much gave away the store in his talk, inspiring us all to "live a better story," and it hit me hard. I really got it. I thought I probably wouldn't need to read the book.

Since then I've stayed stuck in the same depressing story, so last week I bought the book anyway, and I read it in one sitting. I haven't done that since I was nine years old and the book was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Here's a hint: if the table of contents makes you cry, you need to read the book. A Million Miles in A Thousand Years provides language to talk about what we all really want to do -- live a GREAT story -- and courage to get up and do it.

In September Don is hosting a conference called "Live A Better Story," and I'm not making the same mistake again -- if there's more to soak up, call me Spongebob. I'm especially interested in taking some focused time to come up with specific action steps.

This post is my entry in a contest to win a trip to Portland for the conference!

Here's a link to information on the conference: Living a Better Story Conference

And here's Don himself to tell you all about it:

Living a Better Story Seminar from All Things Converge Podcast on Vimeo.