On the Road Again

I've always been fat.

Let's not waste time qualifying it, OK? Or working on justifications or reassurances. Hands down, no lies. I have always been fat. I was always one of the bigger kids in the class in elementary school. Never the hugely obese kid, but the kid that was bigger than the popular girls. And when you're in elementary (middle, high) school, that's enough. It's enough to be different.

After high school, I got a little thinner. Or rather, I came into my own in adulthood and developed my own style, my own look. I passed as "healthy" if not "skinny." Except at home, where my finance shamed me regularly about my weight. Somehow, that didn't exactly make things any better.

Post-breakup, I found a lot of comfort in a lot of marijuana, alcohol and cookies. I just got fatter. But the time I graduated from college, I was 215 and not exactly thrilled about it.

So the weight loss journey began. In South Dakota, I joined Weight Watchers for the first time and lost 30 pounds in a year. I felt free. I felt in control. I felt sexy. I found confidence I didn't know I didn't have.

I got married.

And together, TJ and I settled into bliss and happily gained weight together.

Through the years, I've gone up and down. I've been on Weight Watchers (WW) and off. The constantly changing program and shifting rules led me to be not as successful as I was my first round. And somewhere on the road, I lost any motivation for what I was doing. As a happily married woman, did it matter anymore? What was I still trying to prove? And who was I trying to prove it to?

In pregnancy, I gained 70 pounds. That's one 9 pound, 3 ounce baby, a 10-pound placenta, like 5 extra pounds of blood, a ton of fluid and, yes, some new fat. On the other side of pregnancy, I dropped down to near my pre-pregnancy ( still fat) weight, but my body wasn't the same.

Nearly four years later, it's still not. My belly distends down in front like a third breast. Or a deflated balloon. My boobs will just never recover from 18 months of breastfeeding. My pelvic floor -- well, let's not talk about it.

But I knew I didn't want to go back to WW again. I'm tired of counting and obsessing and logging. I need something simpler. Also, I'm over 30 now, and food alone isn't going to cut it. I have to find a way to be FIT too.

So when my friend this summer invited people to join her in a 21-day fitness challenge, I said, "Yup. It's time." And hopped in. I'm in round 3 now, and that belly is starting to pull back up, and come in a little. I'm stronger. I feel more confident. And if nothing else, I've got 30 minutes a day that is time for me. Time that I spend sweating and grunting along with the TV and listening to the trainer reassure me that I'm getting stronger. That I'm getting better.

I've lost a whopping three pounds, but nearly five inches all around me -- an inch off each thigh, and an inch and a half from my hips. It's not over. But it's a start.

My fellow workers in our Facebook group ask each other what we're working for. What motivates us. And finally, what motivates me isn't to be skinny. It's not to be able to see my ex some day and be stunning. It's not to keep my man. It's not to prove my worth.

What motivates me is me. The idea that I am worth spending 30 minutes a day with myself. That I can be strong. That I control this body, it doesn't control me. That it's OK to be soft and have floppy bits and not be under 200 pounds. That it's OK to be one of the big girls. It's OK. I'm OK. But I finally found that piece inside that said, "You can change if you want to."

You CAN change -- if you want to. Not because you need to. Not because there is some bread-loving skinny chick inside you (thank you, Oprah), dying to get out. But because you are you the way you are and you have the strength to shape yourself. Your future. Your health. Your body.

So I'm on the road again. I don't know for how long. But for right now, I like this road. I like these moments of putting myself first. I like showing my son that it's worthwhile to take time for fitness. I like him seeing that his momma is strong.

I want him to know that all bodies are good bodies. Strong bodies. Fat bodies. Skinny bodies. It doesn't matter. What matters is those moments in which we make the choice we want to make that's best for us.

The Hard Things

Fall is always my most energizing time of year: The start of a new school year brings new hope and promise. I love school supplies. I love pumpkin spice lattes. I love crisp air and warm sweaters and sometimes having to turn on the heater.

As a new school year approaches and August trudges toward a steamy completion, this year I am unfortunately not looking forward to fall.

This year, fall is just One More Season of Waiting.

And I am so sick of waiting.

This month, our church is encouraging us to spend the rest of the year Doing Hard Things. Initially, I looked at the charitable campaign I'm supposed to be heading up in October as my "Hard Thing." But this Sunday I realized, that's not it. My hard thing is waiting.

At this point, I feel like I've spent the last six years waiting. When TJ and I got to Yakima, I thought we were all done. "Here it is," I thought. "Our 10-year-spot." That place we'd live in For A While, advancing our careers, settling our lives. We bought a house. We had a baby.

Then God brought along Something Else and now here we are in Moscow. "Here it is," I think. "Our 10-year-spot." And I happily settled in to our tiny apartment and waited for TJ to finish life in Ellensburg. And we waited for a job. So we could save and buy a house. And get going on this life God Brought Us Here For.

Of course, now we're a year and half in and no closer to that goal. TJ still lacks any sort of job security or promise of some. We don't know if the job he has now is what God really wants for him, or if He'll bring along another Something Else. Or for that matter, if it will just end one day when we aren't expecing it. We don't know if God even wants us to buy a house here.

This fall is the Waiting Fall. It's months -- who knows, maybe another year? -- of waiting to see God's plan unfold. Knowing there is a Plan is only mildly comforting. It just means that there isn't anything for me to DO in the meantime. Just wait. Be patient. Be faithful. Save the money in case there is a house -- or a Something Else -- in the future.

Trust that the Plan is better than I think it will be.

Trust that He still has my best interests at heart.

Know that it will be a Hard Thing, but that we are built to endure it.

2 a.m. Snowstorms

If you aren't a parent
it's quite likely that at 2 a.m.
you were asleep
and not shushing a small child,
who for no explainable reason decided
his own bed was too
small.
cold.
scary.
full of blankets.
not enough pillows.
to continue to sleep in by himself.

If you aren't a parent
at 2 a.m. you weren't tracking down juice
for a small child
and staring out the kitchen window
to see the sky white with snow
and witness the mid-March air fill with a
fluffy.
delicate.
silent.
mid-spring blizzard.
there in the darkness.
A reminder of nature's fickleness.

If you aren't a parent
you missed a moment of the world
at peace,
if a little unseasonably chilly,
but still beautiful,
and soft and delicate,
like a toddler in his bed —
small.
cold.
still.
a little frightening in its beauty
and complexity.
Even at 2 a.m. in the middle of March.

And Here We Go Again

Recently, I sat down with my employer and faced a long list of accusations:

I'm difficult to work with.

People across my job lodge complaints about me. Constantly.

I am combatant and have a terrible attitude.

The minute I saw where the conversation was going, my brain set into panic mode: Oh please no. Not again.

An Expanding Family

We adopted a new cat.

This is Binx. He's between 10 and 14 years old, solid black with some gray hairs and the friendliest damn thing you've ever met.

If he hadn't already come with a name, I maybe would have called him "Shadow", as that is what he is: A little black shadow following whoever is moving from room to room, hoping for a lap.

Clark was voting for "Darth Vader." And really, we would have let him rename him, but the instant we got him home from the Whitman County Animal Shelter in Pullman, Clark was running around the house calling, "hi Binx! Hi Binx!" And so the given name stuck.

Which is fine, because (whether the original honors intended it or not) it's an homage to Thackery Binx, the cat/boy from "Hocus Pocus." And having a creature named for a Halloween movie was just fine with TJ.