As many of you know I have two blogs, this one and The Sisterhood of Beautiful Warriors. “Warriors” is an outgrowth of “Real Hope.” You see, when God heals you and you hope again, you join all who went before you and all who you stand with now. You no longer are victims but victors.
Victory in Christ. Do I hear an AMEN?!
So I’ve decided to integrate them. Once or twice a week you’ll see the Warrior graphic. It’s your reminder to get dressed to battle and do battle with God against evil. Join me.
I turned my backside toward the bathroom mirror and peeked over my shoulder. Dimples? Ugh.
My middle child told me the other day, “I’m not pretty.” She is drop-dead gorgeous. Gray eyes that sometimes turn blue or green. Lashes that go on forever. In jest (but in all seriousness!), I say,
“Stop lying or I’ll have to put you over my knee.”
“You wouldn’t mom, would you?”
“Just try me.”
I smile big. She smiles big.
My eldest is 20 and, of course, gorgeous. Chocolate brown eyes, perfect eye brows, thick hair that she used to hate because it wasn’t stick straight. She doesn’t like how she looks in a swim suit. What woman does?
In my counseling, so many, many women say they’re ugly. They have a warped mirror. What about you? Do you embrace yourself, your shape, size, color, your uniqueness?
Please watch this short music video and listen carefully to the last verse. It’ll touch you deep. Turn down my music player first and leave a comment if you have a moment. Thanks.
Remember, You Are Beautiful because You Are in Christ!
Would you like my free eReport “You Are Beautiful, Seeing Yourself As Jesus Does”? Simply send me a message here and write You Are Beautiful in the subject line.
Ain’t this the truth: Before marriage the devil tries everything to get you in bed with a guy, and once married, he tries everything to keep you out.
Sex before you tie the knot, but no sex or bad sex or arguments about sex after marriage, and you’re all tied up and angry or hurt.
Now, before I write another word, this post is for all my readers: married, single or single again (through divorce or death). Why? God made us sexual beings. Our gender and how we think and feel about sex touches every relationship.
Our sexual identities begin at the beginning: conception then birth, pink for girls, blue for boys. Many summers ago, my son, then 9, helped a friend capture a frog at our neighborhood park. They carried the frog to the friend’s house, he got a butter knife and together they cut of the poor from back legs. The frog then invented the front-legged hop, and so my son told me, all jacked up and ready to find another amphibian.
I called the hubby and related the story.
“Steve, should I worry that our son is becoming a psychopath or is this a normal boy thing?”
“A normal boy thing,” he replied.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep. Gotta get back to work.”
While I preferred tree climbing to hopscotch and jeans to dresses, I never ever would have amputated a frog’s legs in my girlhood. It would never had crossed my budding feminist mind. These were the early Seventies, baby: “I am woman, hear me roar.”
Like girls may age, I bought into the modern notion that “as long as you love the guy, sex is alright.” I knew a lot of high school girls who were “doing it.” I just had not yet fallen in love. The prevailing post-modern notion my daughters and son hear is much different: “If it feels good, do it. Just pick a hot one and tell your friends all about it the next day in the school hallways.”
A teacher friend subbed for a year at an affluent suburban junior high. She couldn’t believe the hallway talk. She said the girls were worse than the guys, along the lines of “I hooked up with him and him last weekend. This weekend I’m gonna hook up with that guy.” Keep in mind: These are seventh- and eighth grade girls talking sex with no limits. A game. A dangerous game.
Before marriage the devil tries everything to get you — and your daughters, granddaughters and neices — into bed with a guy.
I heard that the #1 dance song hit a couple of years ago was:
You and me baby, we ain’t nothing but mammals
So let’s do it like they do on the discovery channel
According to the Guttmacher Institute, only a small percentage of children under 15 years old have had sexual intercourse. (I wonder the number if oral sex were included.) However, by age 20, 75 percent of teens had had sex outside marriage, with the number for men and women nearly even.
You may have slept with your boyfriend before marriage. You didn’t “keep the devil out of bed” and now your current relationships — your husband, your children, even God — are affected.
How are they affected? So what can you do? What do you do with the guilt and shame you may feel?
This is the third of three posts on food addictions. Got a moment? Leave a comment. Thanks so much.
Coming next: Sex Solutions for the unSexy.: )
Two hundred seventy-pounds and determined, my mom marched into her first Weight Watchers meeting. She wanted to shake her food addiction. A year later, she weighed 105 pounds less, the size of a whole person.
Her enemy – not her body or her fat cells or her husband but the father of lies (John 8:44) – had tricked her everytime she turned to food for comfort: To have value and meaning and beauty, a woman must be a perfect size 8 or 6 or 4 or 2.
LIE!
Jesus Christ defines your value. It doesn’t increase or decrease according to a bathroom scale, your income level or the numbers of friends you have on Facebook. In Him you possess inner beauty, the kind that really matters. It is everlasting and true. You are precious because God says so.
I didn’t get it back then. Now I do.
Back then I had a huge body image problem and a food addiction. Like a kid at a carnival, I peered into the fun house mirror and saw someone ugly.
Me.
Thunder thighs topped by a head the size of a golf ball.
Like my mom, I had “fat” thinking and counted calories every day, several times a day. . .in search of the perfect body.
The truth: The perfect body forever eludes me, you, everyone. Thirty pounds overweight or ten or three or 105 (plus 25) – it makes little difference . Even super models are air-brushed.
So what’s a woman to do? Here are the seven secrets to rid yourself of food addictions:
Did you notice that I placed “eat well” last? This makes little sense to sometime with food problems but is completely in line with God’s Word. God’s purposes never fail, so you won’t fail as long as. . .
. . .you think-speak-rest-drink-dress-and-move well you WILL eat well and experience victory.
You Are Loved, Lucy
P.S. For only $7, you can get my 60-page e-book detailing how to lose weight permanently and dump food addictions of any type. It’s titled Love Yourself Thin, Discover the 7 Secrets to Slim, God’s Way. This is a lifetime investment. You’re worth it! If you don’t like the e-book, I will refund your money. No questions. Go to http://lucyannmoll.com/store.htm
Got food issues? This is the second of three posts on food addiction. Let’s face it together.
The licorice lie: Food makes me happy.
Yeah, right. Food makes me happy for, like, ten minutes.
The truffle truth: God gave us food to enjoy.
Say what? I enjoy food too much. Too much chocolate, too many chocolate-chip bagels. I’m too depressed NOT to eat because at least for a few minutes I don’t have to feel. I’m sick of feeling hurt. I’m sick of feeling lonely. I’m sick of sick. I’m sick of me.
Does this sound familiar?
You may have swallowed licorice lies whole. Now they are worming their sticky sweetness into your thoughts and emotions. Not pretty.
Elyse Fitzpatrick writes in Idols of the Heart, “Let’s face it: we’re glutted on the joys and pleasures of the world, and our minds remain unconvinced that the joy of the Master is all that much better. ‘The attractions of this world and the delights of wealth, and the search for success and lure of nice things’ (Mark 4:19 TLB) crowd out love for God.”
So how do you become convinced to put food in its proper place?
1. Pray. Heart-humbling, Spirit-led and regular confession and repentance are the only weapons that weaken the stronghold of idolatrous thoughts and desires. When you or I confess our neediness and sin, God gives us grace. It’s a promise. The apostle Peter wrote, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (1 Peter 5:5)
Follow your confession with repentance. Think of repentance as a U-turn. You’ve been going in one direction, dangerously close to the edge of ice cream mountain. Now you’ve realized your error and confessed it. You turn the opposite direction and follow God into the spiritual Promised Land of abundant joy. Here you desire what God desires, and what he desires is your obedience because he knows what you need: Him.
2.Put to death your food idol. By the power of the Holy Spirit – you won’t be able to do it on your own – determine to honor God in your thoughts and actions.
An example: You catch your reflection in the mirror and begin to trash-talk (i.e., “you’re so ugly” or “you won’t succeed at loving yourself thin”). Say to yourself, “This is a lie. I am made in the image of God. I have beauty and value.” And, “With God’s help, I will succeed and love myself well. And if I slim down, great.”
Another example: After a stressful workday, you don’t feel like eating well. You want to pick up a carton of ice cream, turn on the TV and tune out. Though tempted, you can choose a route home that steers you clear of grocery stores. Once home, you can pop an easy meal into the microwave and enjoy it, guiltlessly.
3. Put on praise. Let me illustrate with another example. Julie ate when she felt lonely. The lonelier she felt, the more she turned to food for comfort. The comfort lasted a moment, then she felt mortified and desired more comfort from more food.
A Christian, she confessed her sin of turning to an idol (food) instead of God, who promises to be with her always. Then she did a U-turn and walked away from the pantry. Recognizing that she is not alone, even though she often feels lonely, she sang praise choruses.
While these three steps sound easy – a child can learn them – follow-through is tough. Old patterns hang on like stubborn stains. Satan tempts you where you are weakest. Your sin nature still wants its food NOW.
So what’s a girl to do?
Pray. Put to death your food idol. Put on praise.
As. Long. As. It. Takes.
In the end, this is the question you must ask: Whom do I love most? When you continually believe that God loves you and wants your very best, you will choose him over anything. . .even chocolate.
You Are Loved, Lucy
P.S. Do you need a very affordable guide to help you overcome your food addiction? Consider Love Yourself Thin, Discover the 7 Secrets Slimming Down, God’s Way. It’s only $7 and it works. Get it at my webstore.
P.S.S. Please subscribe to this blog if you are among the many Christian women who could use some encouragement. While you’re at it, put your sweet smile in the Google Friend Connect box. Easy, fast.
Got food issues? This is the first of three posts on food addiction. Let’s face it together.
My college survival kit: wheat thins, pizza and Diet Coke.
And more Diet Coke.
I do not recommend my college survival kit. I managed to get decent grades — even was graduated with honors — but at a price. I felt frazzled and fat.
My weight was fine. However, I all but starved myself by day for gut-buster pizzat night. Once or twice my pizza bloat led to nasty thoughts — you fatso, you idiot, you idiotic fatso —and a stop by the women’s dorm potty. I pressed my fingers to the back of my throat, while praying to the porcelain god, and gagged.
Failure, failure, failure. I couldn’t even vomit. Flipping and flopping like a fish, I fell asleep to self-condemning thoughts and Diet Coke dreams.
FAST FORWARD A DECADE.
I finally got a handle on my eating or so I thought. I plugged the pop and went vegetarian.
Words like couscous, tempeh and Rice Dream freckled my conversations, like
“Ooh, you musttry teriyaki tempeh over couscous. . .leave room followed by Rice Dream.” I know booooring. But it was my thing back then. Now it’s Starbucks. No froo-froo drinks. Only tea so strong it could grow hair on your chest. Well, my chest.
Almost daily a box talks to me: “Welcome to Starbucks. May I take your order?”
My always answer: Black iced tea, no sugar, no water.” That’s right. . .I drink tea leaves. Not.
I drink the Starbucks iced tea with no extra water. I think I’m addicted. Wait. I know I’m addicted.
“My name is Lucy and I’m a tea-aholic.”
Did you know you can be addicted to almost anything? Shopping, pornography (yep, even us girls), Facebook, bunco, gossip, work, Twitter, romance novels, perfectionism. And, of course, food.
Food addictions are among the worst to have. You can’t not eat.
Addiction is idolatry. Instead of putting God first, someone in danger of a food addiction sneaks snack cakes from the pantry and rearranges the boxes and cans so on one will notice. In fact, deceit is a hallmark of addiction.
A former coworker used to bake a cake for dessert, then in her weakness, slice big wedges, smash them between her teeth, and fearing her husband would find out, bake a second identical cake. What happened to the first cake?
Plop plop fizz fizz.
She ate it and felt horrible. Worst than her stomach ache, she lost self-respect. The lies, the deception, the realization that she couldn’t help herself until. . .
Watch for tomorrow’s post: Licorice Lies, Truffle Truth
You Are Loved, Lucy
P.S. I invite you to subscribe to Real Hurts, Real Hope, my blog that comes out three times a week. It’s for Christian women who could use some encouragement. While you’re at it, why not add your sweet smile to the photos on this blog’s Google Friend Connect? Thanks.
P.S.S. As always I ask you to send me your prayer requests and I’ll pray for you. It remains confidential.
Two hundred seventy-pounds and determined, my mom marched into her first Weight Watchers meeting. She wanted to shake her food addiction. A year later, she weighed 105 pounds less, the size of a whole person.
The truth: The perfect body forever eludes me, you, everyone. Thirty pounds overweight or ten or three or 105 (plus 25) – it makes little difference . Even super models are air-brushed.
The licorice lie: Food makes me happy.
My college survival kit: wheat thins, pizza and Diet Coke.
