I can see it now…my side business is going to take off. It’s now all about patience, though. There is a reason why God didn’t let it happen before. It was because I wasn’t ready for it; and, looking back, I know I wasn’t ready. This time, I am being patient and ready for whatever comes my way.
And no worries…If it doesn’t happen this time, I’m not going to give up.
Here is a picture of my fiancee in front of the Chicago Bean.
Here’s a posting I ran into that hit me today. It really had an impact on releasing this tension inside me.
With God-confidence, we know we are loved and accepted by God; we know we are created and shaped by God; we know we have talents and skills given to us by God, and by understanding our true position in Christ, we can be confident that God is with us always, even unto the ends of the earth, even when we open our mouths to speak.
In faith, we can be confident, knowing God’s power is there, trusting God makes it possible for us to do “all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13, NASB)
What does this mean?
· Transfer your confidence to God – Believe he is “working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.” (Philippians 2:13, NLT) Compare your track record to God’s and see which of you has proved to be more trustworthy. If you believe your confidence should still remain with you, ask God to help you dig deep to uncover why you believe that way. He is never upset or surprised by such honesty.
· Trust God’s Spirit is working within you – Ask God to develop within you a confidence that his Spirit will give you a supernatural power to preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and to release prisoners from the darkness. (Adapted from Isaiah 61:1-3)
· Why God-confidence is important to you – You may be thinking, “There’s something I’d really like to do, but I don’t think that I can do it.” This kind of thinking may keep you from even trying, but if you’re confident in God – and what he can do through your life – then there’s every reason to move forward, and no good reason to stand still.
· If you had God-confidence, how would the next few days of your life be different?
So, we have made progress at this weight loss thing until we got into about mid summer when we hit a stopping point. We seemed to of stumbled out of the summer, lets skip the workout and go bbq season; right into the fall- lets stay in from the cold and eat something nice, good, and warm season. We are trying to break ourselves of this slump we are in. Yes, we agree that we still want the good food, lets pig out weekend every now and then, but we don’t want that to trickle into our tummies during the week when we are back to work.
So, our solution was to find a new program. Something to get our minds actively thinking about what we are putting into our bodies. Something that will snap at us when we picking up that great, delicious, juicy t-bone…(snap)..sorry about that. Anyway, I think we found it with weight watchers. Jackie has signed up for it online, and I am going to work mostly in and off hers. I’ll mostly track mine on a sheet on this website. She gets 22 points for each day and I get 30 points for each day. We’ll see how we do…I think it just might work and finally get me down to 190 like my driver licence says I weigh.
Wish us luck,
You have heard of the saying don’t do drugs, and how bad “real” drugs can be. Well, the drugs I am talking about are the every day drugs most of our population drinks every day. You see, for years I have been drinking coffee, energy drinks that are supposed to give you amazing highs, and taking fat burning energy pills on top of it all.
Coffee kept me going at work, so I thought. It was a had-to-have-it thing for work in the mornings, and afternoons, and…ok, sometimes I had a 3rd cup, and mind you these were big cups. A lot of these times I did have coffee and it didn’t do anything for me, that’s how jam-packed my mind and body was.
The energy drinks…ahhhh, don’t they taste good and keep you excited. They were a good “push” after a long week of work. Going out on the town with the guys on a Friday night staying up til 2 in the morning. They kept me going, most of the time. They were also slowly doing to me what “Real” drugs can do to a person.
Those energy pills “hydroxicut” and “xenadrine” were my favorite. I thought they were great for me, they gave me great high energy workouts at times. For years I was addicted to them, all to find out they were slowly taking away my mind, my senses, my memory, and more. They were in fact preventing me from losing weight…They kept me hungry a lot of the time. They had me so tense, so tight; I believe they kept the fat trapped inside of me. I was steadily going up in weight.
Again, I share my stories with you in hopes that it will prevent someone else making the same mistake. Let’s face it, drugs are “drugs”.
Well, after all there is going to be a 10 yr class reunion for me this year. (friday)
I am wondering how’s it going to be. How have people changed? How is everyone doing? Are my old friends going to embrace me? Are my old enemies going to still be old enemies? Are people going to notice the new me? I like to think there is a new me. I have changed a lot in this last year alone. I am now living a wonderful life.
10 years ago hmmm… what was I like 10 years ago? I would say overall I did have a good time in high school and I do look back on the “good times”. But, I have to admit that I struggled. I felt like I was a kid that some of the kids around school didn’t want to see succeed, I felt like I was a target. I would try my best to fit in and be cool and what I would get back was teasing and who knows what. It came in the classrooms, it even came at football practice with my so called teammates. As it came, I would always tense up and fill my mind with this negative energy I talk about. They didn’t know it was hurting me, but it was. I was trying to teach myself better, but it was tough.
Don’t get me wrong, I had a good childhood and wouldn’t change anything. I had my escapes, I had my working out, football, hangin with the few real friends I actually did have, and the weekend trips down to the lake. I was always looking for these escapes. But, I can say at times it was tough, and looking back on it now…I wish I could tell myself to just relax.
The same kind of depression and pain followed me through college and into my career. I do not want to go on about all the pain and depression I had over the years. I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I’m glad it happened, I am better now, it makes me a better person now, and I am appreciating life more. I do want anyone who reads this to take a valuable lesson from it. There are mental disorders developing out there in our youth, I know from experience that it took a lot to break these energies up. It took the relief of peace in my mind and body, a stable job, a great fiancée, family, friends, and God to be able to relieve myself of this disorder.
As I mentioned before, I can still feel the energy releasing from my mind and body as I sit and type this now. I didn’t know it at the time, but this energy was brought on by years of tensing up whenever I had pain, or teasing as some people may call it.
I am currently going on 9 months of releasing this energy I talk of. In these 9 months, I have taken the most amazing trip of my life, got into what I call the best shape of my life, brought back amazing friends in my life, renewed my faith in Christ, and fell in love and proposed to my fiancée.
I’m not saying it’s the same for others, and also not saying you shouldn’t have fun with others, but please think about this and how words may affect others, especially for our youth. You might just be saving someone’s life.
Thanks for reading…
cj
Yes for all of you who doesn’t know what that means, it means that I did a century on my road bike. It was a battle all the way from 25 miles into it, until I got back to the finish line. My body was constantly saying that it’s do it, but my mind said that it aught to. Battleing 95 degree heat from St. Paul, through Lake St. Louis, out to Wright city, up to (going off the trail) Troy, Moscow mills, Lunch, Wentzville (No rest stops for 38 miles), and back. It was defnetly a test of endurance, which I think I passed.
So I have been debating, if I am ready and want to do the century yet or not. For those who do not know, I am riding in the Tour de Cure this saturday and have been thinking about really pushing myself to do the 100 miles for the first time. I have been looking at the weather.
Seems like it’s going to be a beautiful day, but just a tad hot (but I like it hot). I also have to keep in mind that we will be biking along the river, and I heard the river usually brings along a lot of wind with it. That will mean head wind, I know there aren’t many hills on this ride, but riding into a head wind, can sometimes seem like riding up a hill. So…what should I do?
I know afterwards I can cool off, because we will have free admission into raging rivers. hmmmm….
Sweet…It will be right at my birthday.. July 23rd (It will always be the last full week of July)
For all of you that don’t know…I am making plans of doing this RAGBRAI in 2010 for my 30th birthday.
It’s a bike ride across Iowa (470 miles). It’s kinda of one of those over the hill things…actually for this ride it’s going to be lots of climbing up hills(Iowa’s not flat) << to give you an idea, the amount of hills you climb during the trip is about 23,000 feet of climbing- equivilant to 4 miles stright up.
Should be fun and a great accomplishment. I have a few friends that are interested in going and should be one heck of a party for my 21st!!! (OK…30th). Anyone else is welcome…
To the old biking man who passed me yesterday,
Hi, I would like to join you in congratulating yourself on passing me and my gf yesterday. I am sure it made you feel real good about yourself. The fact that we are young cyclists in our late 20’s and going as fast as we wanted to on a beautiful day, should not stop you in obtaining your goal of getting a good workout in and prolonging your happy life.
On a side note, I do want to thank you for passing me yesterday. It got me thinking, thinking that this guy has got to have at least 30 years on me. Oh, my gosh, I thought…what can happen in thirty years. I still have my whole life ahead of me, there are hundreds of miles I can still bike in my life. Some rides just started popping in my head. By this time, you were way up there. I thought, I couldn’t let him just get away. So, I dug in and sped to get up to you.
I snapped a picture of you and that’s when I noticed you were wearing a RAGBRAI jersey. That got me real pumped up, cause I was thinking about doing the RAGBRAI(ride across Iowa) next year, and now there is no excuse good enough not to go ride 470 miles.
After that ride, I will do another, and another…until I am that old biking man that still has it.
This, I can tell is the beginning of a long happy journey. So Thank You Mr biking man.
Sincerely,
Biking for Sushi,
