Returning to Health

Something else happened the Thursday of my last post. As I was walking up the stairs to bed, something occurred to me. I can be happy. So simple, but it was a sudden revelation. It was a surprise to me. Can I? Can I really be happy? Cool! As I settled into bed that night, another thought came to me and that was the need for me to focus on my health, particularly exercise plus proper eating and sleeping. That returned to me very forcefully several days later.

Compared to how I’d been the previous two weeks, I was doing much better. The attitude change I described in "A New Way of Thinking" (and which had occured the day or two before), was the catalyst for that but I realized that in the large scheme of things, the improvement was a small one. What I mean is that while I was doing much better, I realized that I was (and still am) a long way from being in good, solid, emotional and mental health.

I got thinking this way because I was trying to figure out how to tell my husband and others how, exactly, I was doing. The stress hadn’t left and it probably wouldn’t take much to put me back where I was. As I was doing some shopping the day before, I realized that my standard for my own personal mental/emotional health has been very low. As long as I’m not falling apart, I’ve been satisfied. It occurred to me that it’s no longer good enough. I want COMPLETE health, not just a fraction of it and not just a pretense of it. It was a powerful revelation. I’ve never thought this way before.

And so, for the first time, I've started pushing towards better health—-not physical health as much as mental/emotional, though they’re probably tightly connected. I’ve already been working on my eating with an online course called “Lord’s Table” for the past several months which deals with the spiritual aspects of overeating but now I want to also focus on things like proper nutrition, daily exercise, etc. I’m really excited about the possibility of returning to good health.