It’s a simple piece of equipment that the exercise physiologist gave my husband to strengthen his core and support his overly-aged back. Knowing my core was a bit on the flabby side, I decided to join him on his journey. Using the pressure monitor, we performed various core strengthening exercises that used muscles we didn’t know we had.
The instructions stated that we were not to move on to the next exercise until we had mastered doing the previous one with precise form. In only a few days we mastered exercise #1 and moved on to #2. Ken quickly progressed through exercises #3 and returned for more instruction, while I continued to feel like a newborn giraffe learning to walk.
When he arrived home, he began showing me the next exercises in my future, when suddenly I found myself feeling angry, hopeless, and wanting to give up.  “What the heck is going on?” I thought to myself. “There’s nothing wrong. Why am I feeling this way?” Within just a few short minutes, I felt ready to throw in the towel. “I’ll never get any better. I’m doomed to be fat and out-of-shape. Why even bother?” Luckily for me, I am well-rehearsed in A-B-C-D journaling so I grabbed my handy notebook and scriptures, and went out to the living room to process my emotions.
It didn’t take long to recognize some of the old thought distortions that had taken over my mind…old beliefs that I thought I had banished for good. As I recognized and challenged those old beliefs once again, I could see how I was comparing myself and my progress to someone else. I was expecting years of inactivity and poor choices to be reversed in a matter of days…or at least weeks!
Clearly seeing my distorted beliefs, I was now free to replace them once again with the truth: I am not competing with anyone else. Consistency compounds. Enjoy the journey! Already, I was feeling at peace once again.
Then I opened my scriptures. Would you be surprised if I told you that there on the page was a direct message from my Heavenly Father? Would you be even more surprised if I told you that He sent that message through His servant, Isaiah?
“Awake, awake, put on thy strength…Put on thy beautiful garments…for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. Shake thyself from the dust; arise, sit down…loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion.”
I was reminded once again that we are all daughters and sons of God. That makes us royalty. With the Lord, we are strong, even when we feel weak. Sometimes we find ourselves lying in the dust, chains about our neck, captive to the will of the flesh or the beliefs of the world.
Today is the perfect time to awake…to not allow unclean thoughts and beliefs to enter our minds any longer. It is time to stand up, shake off the dust, break the chains that have bound us, and take our place as rightful heirs to the blessings of God.
Because you’re human, I know that you have distorted beliefs about yourself. I know there are times when you believe you aren’t worth it…that you will never succeed…that all is hopeless. We all do. My hope for you is that you will learn how to recognize, challenge, and replace those thoughts. Awake! Don’t allow lies into your head any longer. Arise! Don’t wallow in the dust like captives to the beliefs of the world.  You are a child of God. Come. Arise, and take your proper place.

​Little Carson quickly piped up, “Not to talk!”
 
Sometimes, we can be surrounded by truth and still miss the message. I'm afraid that when it came to developing a healthy relationship with food, I spent years in the movie, but mistakenly thought the point was to learn to keep my mouth shut.
 
I had been on one diet or another for nearly 30 years, dieting my way UP 127 pounds, but still believed that happiness was just around the corner if I could just shut my mouth and stop using food like a drug. What I didn't realize is that I was missing the entire point of the movie.
 
Once I got a good coach, I began to understand that the point of this "movie" is not just to stop overeating or reach a certain size, but it is to recognize and change our weaknesses and false beliefs that caused the pain we have been numbing with food all of these years.
 
 
That was when I truly started to make progress. I began working to overcome my fears, my false beliefs, and replace them with truth. I began to recognize my worth, challenge my insecurities, and before long I was experiencing moments of peace that I had only dreamed about before.
 
Over time I developed greater consistency, and thus, greater results. I continue to work this day to overcome fears that arise, and I still have to challenge old beliefs when they pop up, but today, I look forward to it because I have developed greater faith in the process, faith in the Lord, and faith in myself.
 
The great thing is, once you learn to pay attention to the movie, you don't have to struggle not to talk through it anymore. You don't want to talk...you're too busy experiencing it...learning from it...being changed by it. Once you have been changed by it, you will want to invite others to the movie and help them be profoundly changed by it as well. After all, this one's a blockbuster!

Verse 35 teaches a principle that I have come to know for myself. The bruises on my forehead from years of wall-banging will attest to its truthfulness. It says,
 
“I know that God will give liberally to him that asketh. Yea, my God will give me if I ask not amiss…”
 
There are countless times that I have asked amiss, and then wondered why God wasn’t listening. Let me share with you just one example:
 
I received the title From Food to Faith in revelation over 20 years ago, in response to my prayers asking, “What book would you want me to write someday?” When this title came to me, I knew it was true that faith would be an important part of my recovery from overeating, but in all honesty, I wasn’t sure how.
 
I already believed in God, and in His Son, Jesus Christ. I loved them. I tried daily to follow them. But they didn’t seem to have the power to keep my hands off of a second serving of cheesecake. And I asked! Trust me, I really asked.
 
I prayed for self-control. I prayed for the right diet. I prayed for help in following the right diet. I even found myself at times thinking that if could just muster the courage of that stupid mustard seed, I could wake up in the morning completely, miraculously thin and healthy. You won’t be too surprised if I tell you that it didn’t happen, would you? In fact, none of it happened. Why? Duh. I was asking amiss.
 
There is nothing wrong with wanting to find or follow a healthy diet. There is nothing wrong with wanting to get back in my Levi 501s or wishing I could “walk and not be weary.” And there is certainly nothing wrong with wanting to overcome a destructive relationship with food. So why was God seeming to ignore my prayers?
 
I now know that I was not asking the right questions. I wanted God to get rid of the symptoms of the problems. But the true problem was much deeper, and more painful and scary than I was willing to deal with.
 
This was like going to a doctor with a foreign object in my body that is causing a raging infection, and begging the doctor to “pretty-please, treat my fever, but don’t even think about touching the problem, because it would be just too painful to deal with it.” And, like a wise doctor, the Lord could only sit back, and wait for me to be willing to allow Him to remove the source of the problem.
 
For years I continued to treat the fever. Sometimes I found the right combination of medications that would keep it at bay for a day, a week, or perhaps even a month. But in the end, the infection would increase, the fever returning with a vengeance.
 
Finally, I began to realize that weight was simply the fever of my problem. I began to realize that my dress-size was only a symptom, and it was time to gather all of my courage and allow the Lord...The Great Physician, to finally touch the source of my affliction.
 
It was painful…I’m not going to lie. But it was far less painful than the fever had ever been. When I began to let The Physician do His work, things began to turn around almost immediately. I began finding little moments of peace. My relationships began to change. My trust in myself, others, and God began to strengthen and I began feeling a strength and peace in my life that I hadn’t really known was possible before.
 
Sometimes, I still find myself neglecting the real source of my problems, thinking that perhaps I am done being healed. And when I do, my temperature can begin to rise. I am not completely healed. But I have come to rely on The Physician. And when He reminds me that it is time to work on the source of the problem, I strive to listen. And He answers, every single time. I have come to know that He will always answer, when I ask not amiss. ​