Twinkie Showdown

If I turn on the television one more time or visit one more website that blasts an advertisement making wild claims of "fat will melt off" or "quick weight loss, no exercise needed" I am going to get sick on my chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. LOL.

Surely the majority of adults today know that there is NO EASY WAY TO LOSE WEIGHT. Please don't say I'm the only one who knows this.

There are extreme options such as gastric bypass and lap band surgery but to consider those as easy options to lose weight is just ludicrous.

Has anyone spent their life counting calories and thought that was an easy way to lose weight? I'm a pretty smart cookie (oh food thought again) but even my own math skills aren't up to par enough to constantly twist and turn through calorie counting for every bite that goes into my mouth.

Without exercise, workouts, etc the weight loss is limited even with the best of diets and these days my workouts consist of very little that we can actually call a workout.

The sad reality is that society spends billions on potions, lotions, surgeries, pills, contraptions all of which hail the claim of helping a person lose weight. However there remains a problem with weight and this problem has escalated to our children at a very young age. Living at an unhealthy weight is something that must be addressed in our lives but we must realize that in order to properly address the problem we must first face the realistic fact that even the best of plans to lose weight are not "easy" and there is no magic product we can buy that will really make it easy.

The sooner we quit trying to magically melt the fat off and at the same time cram a twinkie down our throat we may finally change our eating habits in a healthy way and begin to lose the weight we want to. This doesn't mean we must forever deprive ourselves of the food we love, just learn how to eat in moderation. I am the first person that needs to practice what I am preaching :)

Do I Get Angry?

I had someone recently ask me if I ever get angry because they felt I always seemed so cheerful. Yes, I certainly do. I get angry over different things at different times. However, anger is not an emotion I willingly allow to rule my actions. I naturally have a terrible temper and over the years I've had to learn to control it. As a youth I couldn't control my temper and when I'd really lose it I felt totally out of control and I don't like that feeling. So I've worked hard as I've grown up to control it. Little by little I guess I did change because now looking back I don't get angry over things nearly as easily as I used to. Now my tendencies toward anger are really more like frustrations. I get frustrated over circumstances but it takes a lot to truly get me angry now.

This is not to say that I don't have my moments of total out of control anger. I certainly do experience that on occasion. Usually it is after I've become overwhelmed with things and have reached a point where I can't take anything else. Although there are certain topics and issues that I take very serious and those things can spark anger in me rather quickly. I've also learned to take anger when I feel it and turn it into something positive by allowing it to fuel my determination to survive in this world, to not let things get the best of me and most of all my determination to not allow anything or anyone to cheat me out of the wonderful moments of my life. Yes I have bad moments and bad experiences but I refuse to allow those to take from me all the good moments too.

Enjoying a beautiful day with mild temperatures. Relaxing on my porch. Bristol Tennessee is a great place to live.

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Another Sleepless night

I have a serious problem with sleep. Perhaps you could say I am a chronic insomniac. This is a problem I've had for as long as I can remember. Many nights I will go to bed, feeling tired as if I could easily fall asleep. Once reaching the bed, I'll close my eyes, try to breath with rhythm so as to become relaxed. Then as if I have no control over it, my thoughts begin racing about and I feel as though I can't lay there a minute longer and the urge to get out of bed and do something else is almost too much to ignore. I force myself to lie there but my mind just keeps thinking, quickly moving from one thought to another. My eyes pop open and wander around the room, trying to focus on what there is to see amidst darkness. Through the window the street light outside beams a dim light across the room. I lay there making out the figures of objects in my room and wonder why my eyes are open when I feel so tired.

I'll strain trying to hold my eye lids shut. My mind just keeps going over the days events, then skips back to yesterdays and from there something that happened leaps my memory into action concerning something else. I turn from one side to the other, beginning to feel as if I could scream. Sort of like it is when you have a sound driving you mad, like a drippy faucet. You just have to finally get up and tend to it before you rip the thing right out of the sink. It is that kind of feeling with nothing to yank out other than wanting to pull out a hammer and bonk yourself on the head to make you go to sleep <grin>

You lay there interrupting your constant thoughts with repetitive words such as "I have to get some sleep". I then try to count, I've even tried to focus on just one thought such as perhaps a happy event, writing something and go over that one thing again and again hoping to bore myself to sleep. Sometimes it works and I drift off to sleep. Other times it is fruitless. There are times that the things I try to do repetitively in my mind bring laughter. I'll say nursery rhymes thinking I'd get bored but I end up not being able to remember one and then my thoughts get active at trying to remember. Then I begin to giggle at myself.

Turning on the television seems to work for some people in providing a steady noise which makes it easier for them to fall asleep. For me it just provides something to become interested in and give me an excuse to not go to sleep. I just have to continue the struggle with silence in the room and laying there and battling the long night's fight for sleep. Sometimes the sun is peaking through the windows before I manage to wonder off in restful sleep. Hopefully there will come a day where I can remain in bed way into the morning...

Prayer for those with an illness

Read John 11:4
"When Jesus heard that. he said, This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby."

Let us pray...

Dear our Father in heaven, please use our illness as a tool to glorify your heavenly name, to spread the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Please allow the illness to humble our hearts and make us more conscious of the type of love you behold for us. Lord please allow this illness to draw us closer to you, to make us more aware of how much we must depend on you for strength, courage and ability to get through difficult periods in our life. Lord we hope that our trials will bring great praise to your name and our difficulties in life will lead us to bring glory to you. We hope that the way we respond to our situation will show others that our strength to endure comes from the most high, our wonderful God in heaven. I pray that our actions show that we are walking the path through this life along side our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and it is he who carries us when we are weary. Lord, I thank you for the medical doctors that have been given the ability to research this disease and ask that you be with them to open their eyes even more. Lord I thank you for the answered prayers we have seen time and time again. We thank you for all of the prayer warriors that day after day continue to pray for us. We give you all the honor and the glory for the wonderful results of those prayers. Lord, we ask you to be with those that are going through sad and difficult times. Lay your hand on them and give them the peace they need. Lord just wrap them in your arms and hold them close so they can feel your presence and glorify you by giving their situation over to you and relying on you to give them the strength they need to get through it. Please continue to use our situation to draw others closer to you Lord and to draw ourselves closer to you. Without you in our hearts, without you in our lives we wouldn't get through any of this. So thank you Lord for never forsaking us and always being along side us. We turn our lives over to you Lord, you know the reasons behind what we are experiencing, you know the greater scheme and meaning of our lives. Give us the patience to endure whatever we must, the courage to face whatever life gives us, the strength to hope for a brighter tomorrow and the love to share with others the blessings you have given to us. We ask all of this in the precious name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. -amen

Todays Weather

So far today in eastern tennessee the weather is warm and sunny beaming bright onto the porch. Some rain is building to our west and may bring a few sprinkles this evening.

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Tonight's thought to ponder

Agree to disagree: Respect Diversity

"Just because others think differently about an issue than we do ourselves, does that mean they're right and we're wrong or vice versa?

I believe that we all are different and in many ways we each operate in our own reality. No one sees the world the same way as I do and the reason for that is that no one shares my own unique perspective on life and the world around me. Due to each persons own perspective I cannot expect other people to ever completely see things in the same way as I do. I have to accept this as fact and once I do that then I am better able to understand others and learn from them.

I shouldn't ever waste my time trying to make others see things the way I do. It isn't productive to argue with someone because they see something different then I do. I need to agree to disagree and respect their right to have a different opinion. I try to learn from the person and take note of what they feel about an issue and see if there is something I can learn from it. I've accepted that no one will be exactly like me, no one will think exactly like I think and no one will always agree completely with me. I wouldn't want to live in a world like that anyway. It would be so boring to live where no one had their own individual personality and thoughts. This is a diverse world and if we respect each other and look for the good in everyone then no matter how different we all are and how different we all think, we can always come together and be of support to one another.