Week 2: Sophmore Slump

Sometimes, musical artists put all of their creative energy into one album that is incredibly awesome. Almost every song is a chart topper, destined to be on their future "Greatest Hits" album. As they are busy promoting their first album, they start putting together a second album to ride the fame wave. They hope the second album will ride on the coattails of the first, but they either don't take the time they did for the first album or they don't have the same creative juices flowing and the second album is a dud at best and sometimes is truly awfull. It happens enough that the music industry has created the term "sophmore slump" to describe a bad follow-up to a very successful album. This week, I had a slump that brought me back to the starting point.

The result for this week: up 2 pounds, 40 to go.

It was very painful and incredibly humbling to type that last line. The only good thing about last week was that I continued to exercise five days a week. Mother's Day started a bad four days, even though I stayed under 2000 calories on that day. I haven't even logged in my food for the last two days because I know the lines of calories consumed and burned would cross. However, at the risk of sounding like Bob the Tomato, I have to step back and ask myself the question, "What have I learned this week?" I learned that I can't do this on my own and that this is truly a heart issue, not a weight issue. I was carried the first week on the novelty, which wears off pretty fast in my heart. This week, I was grumbling, thinking how hard it was to have the gentle gnawing in my belly at the end of every meal, whereas, the first week, I was enjoying it. However, to really get serious, I need to turn away from food and find joy and comfort in the One who truly satisfies--the God, the Lord of the Universe, who loves me whether I am putting out the hits or in a sophmore slump. He sacrificed his son, Jesus so that my sins could be washed away even if the pounds sometimes remain. He knit me in my mother's womb and knows when I will get up and when I will lie down (Psalm 139). He gives me power to be able to persevere based on the following verses:

2 Corinthians 4:7
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

2 Corinthians 10:4
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.

Ephesians 1:18-20
I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms...

Ephesians 3:16-21
I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

So, even though I am tempted to give up already and say "I can't do it! I don't have what it takes to go the distance!" I will choose to believe that I can do all things through Him who gives me strength (Phillipians 4:13).