In His Image!!!

Happy Monday friends!

I wanted to take a minute and tell you all that have stuck with me through my quiet periods how much I appreciate all of you!

Life with 3 teenagers is so busy, hectic, and crazy.  I felt like making time to blog was becoming a chore.  So I decided to just take a short break.  I am back now and have a brain full of ideas and thoughts I want to share with all of you!

I have also really been thinking about “why” I wanted to blog and how my “why” has changed over the past few years.  When I started, I was dead focused on weight-loss and dieting.  I was excited to share those weekly numbers with all of you.  I still think that is important, but my primary focus shifted when I started gaining some weight back and realized a very important fact; I HATED myself!  Like not just a little bit, but in every way imaginable.  I had lost over 100 pounds and I still did not like who I was.  Maybe weight loss was not only what I needed to feel better about myself.  Now, I know it is important to eat right and move more in order to be physically healthy and I am still working on that.  But what would be the point of losing the 288 pounds I want to lose and still not like who I am, still not want to leave my house, and still wait on something else to make me feel good?

So this blog is going to be morphing alongside my changing “why.”  I think it is so important to learn to love ourselves so that we can take care of ourselves.  I will tell you right now that I do not have all or even a few of the answers to this, but I want to share what I am discovering along the way.

During the month of September, I had the privilege of teaching the 3^rd-6^th graders in out KidZone on Sunday mornings.  So much of the material we covered was so relevant to what I was working on.  It was definitely a God thing!

Our verse this month was from Psalms 139: 13-16 (MSG):

Oh yes, you shaped me first inside, then out;
    you formed me in my mother’s womb.
I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking!
    Body and soul, I am marvelously made!
    I worship in adoration—what a creation!
You know me inside and out,
    you know every bone in my body;
You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit,
    how I was sculpted from nothing into something.
Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth;
    all the stages of my life were spread out before you,
The days of my life all prepared
    before I’d even lived one day.

What powerful words.  Knowing that I was formed together piece by piece by God makes a huge impact on how I view myself.

Yesterday, we were discussing how God created man in His own image.  We were put on Earth for a specific purpose.  And the end of that passage it says that:

God looked over everything he had made;
        it was so good, so very good! Genesis 1:31 (MSG)

He made me, He made you and HE SAID THAT IT WAS GOOD! If God says it is good, then how can I say I don’t like myself, something He created in His image?

We were not created by some random chance, some flipping of a coin.  It is time that we learn to love the person God created us to be!

I hope you all have an amazing week!

Sending you love and healthy wishes!

Keep Losing,

Kari