The past few days have been challenging for our family as we navigated the critical illness of my husband’s beloved aunt and potty training of my 3 year old daughter, Ava. Obviously, these are two very different and unrelated experiences but these two individuals have done their share of educating “Carla” over the course of the past week.
Ava is a very smart and precocious child. She has known her shapes and colors for more than two years, her alphabet and numbers for about 1 ½ years, and her language skills are coming along very nicely; however, when it comes to potty training, she is just not interested in the entire ordeal. My husband Mike and I decided to take the “tough” approach and enter Ava into our version of potty boot camp. We sat with her in the bathroom for hours as we hoped that her bladder would eventually give into the urge to use the potty. As we spent our quality time in the bathroom, she would shout cries of “but I don’t want to go potty.” My response would always be “You have to. Sometimes we have to do things that we don’t like to do because they are good for us.” There it was. My awful truth about my relationship with exercise was staring me in the face. I realized within this potty training exercise that I am acting like my 3 year old in my philosophy about exercise. Even though I know it is good for me, I do not want to do it, all the same. Much like Ava, I need to make my own mind up about my determination in doing what is good for me.
I have realized over the course of these past few days that I have much to learn about my approach to a lot of things in order to prepare myself to better survive my food addiction and really make a new life free from my obsession and enjoying the beauty that life has to offer. We brought Ava to see her first fireworks display last night. I will never forget the look of wonder in her eyes when she saw the amazing fireworks displays. As each sequence topped the last, she sat in awe saying things like, “Wow, so many, Mommy.” or, “Look how beautiful.”
There is no food in the world that will substitute for those moments. Since food and lack of exercise could prevent me from experiencing as many of those moments as possible, I need to get it under control. Yesterday, I was very intentional about getting some movement into the course of my day. I played Bocce Ball in my backyard and walked intentionally last night around the firework grounds. My plan is to continue to increase my physical activity every day in addition to putting exercise as an appointment on my calendar.
This week’s other life lesson came from my husband’s aunt, Aunt Jo, who was on a ventilator due to complications from a surgery several weeks ago. She is 83 years old, had pneumonia, was in septic shock, had a heart condition that could not be ignored, and was having difficulty breathing. The doctors gave her a minimal chance of survival and as a family we were convinced that we were going to lose our beloved aunt. We gathered around her as she fought for her life and, slowly, over those first 72 critical hours, Aunt Jo fought her way back. God granted her a miracle and today she will be starting regular food after over a week on IV provided nutrition. She is anticipating being released from the hospital’s intensive care unit soon to begin rehabilitation. Lesson learned: “All things are possible to those who believe.” So, I will continue in my belief that I can finally conquer this addiction for the last time. I will lose an entire person in whatever time that it takes and I will learn to live life as God intended – free of addiction. I am also very happy to report that Friday’s scale showed 296.7, which means that I have lost 10.3 lbs in two weeks. More importantly, I have broken the 300 mark and I am never going to return!
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