A Warning and A Challenge

Tonight I stumbled across some pictures taken this past winter and early spring. My first thought was shock at how much thinner I was then. I decided to keep a stash of these pictures handy for when I need inspiration to make myself go exercise or to have one of my frequent RDT's with Pasta.

Honestly, I find it rather hard to look at these and not feel a pretty strong sense of frustration at my current condition and the seemingly impossible task of working back down to the weight I was at the time of these pictures. But as I sat here scrolling through the pictures and thinking, a deep sense of gratefulness and a lingering warning began to emerge as well. 

I believe it is apparent to more than my eyes that something more than sausage biscuits and fettucini alfredo is missing from my face in these pictures. A sort of fierceness or obsession, a consistant weariness, a little fear, and just a general darkness seems to pervade the expression in my eyes from this period. Yes, I was finally thin. But my priorities were very wrong and I was deeply unhappy. And, ironically, it was at this time more than any other that I tended most to indulge in a desperately dissatisfied but ultimately narcissistic outlook. Being thin and relatively fit, pursued as an end, did not answer the hunger it promised to fill. Rather, like any other pursuit which has become an end in itself, its demands increased with little corresponding recompense. 

So much has happened and, by the abundant grace of God, changed since these pictures. But the same selfish tendencies, the same ever-hungering but never satisfied heart still exists and rears its head frequently. Like Israel of old, I so easily "forsake [God], the fountain of living waters and dig for [myself] cracked cisterns which can hold no water at all." So I covet your prayers as I seek to live each day, drinking deeply from this Everlasting Fountain and finding there the fullness that all these hungers seek.