I'm a scrappy fighter

Knowing that I more than likely have a disease inside of me has been tough to deal with the last couple of days.  Of course I won't know for sure until I see a rheumotologist, but all the symptoms are pointing strongly in that direction.  I got up this morning and started really checking out R.A. on Webmd and some other sites that have pretty reliable medical information.  I just wanted to know what I'm facing if in fact this is what's going on.  It was pretty difficult to read, I must admit.  Part of me wants to say, No, this isn't me.  I don't fit the symptoms.  The other part of me, though, realizes I fit many of the symptoms.  R.A. can be devastating on the body and the medication used to deal with it has potentially horrible side affects as well, thinks like leukemia.  It's all pretty overwhelming to digest. 

Yet, this isn't the first time that I have had challenges in my life.  In fact, this isn't the first time I was faced with a chronic condition.  I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2000 and I remember having similar feelings of fear.  Yet, I am now no longer considered diabetic.  Since going on Optifast and losing all the weight that I have so far, I have been told by several doctors and other medical staff that while I'm not necessarily cured of diabetes, I am in remission because I no longer present with any of the symptoms.  That really is a miracle to me.  I said to myself, Fight, Kathy, fight!!  When my back is against the wall, I come out swinging and I fight, so this time would be no different.  I changed my clothes, laced up my shoes and decided now was a good a time as any to go outside and move my body. 

As I started walking, the pain was coursing through my legs so it was slow going at first.  Then, a couple of blocks into it, my fierce determination and will to persevere kicked in.  I picked up my speed, raised my head in defiance and walked briskly down the road.  I was reading that one of the things that helps with R.A. is exercise.  As I continued walking, the pain was lessening enough for me to make it through a 5K.  I felt so powerful and strong.  Yes, there was still pain there, but I think the endorphins of the moment helped me realize that I have the desire, determination and fighting spirit to walk through all of this.  I will fight because it's what I do.  I refuse to give in to the fear that tells me my life is never going to be the same again, that all of my hopes and dreams for myself will never be realized and that I should just give up.  No way!

By the time I got home, I was feeling so much better.  The pain in my legs was back when I stopped moving like I was, but that didn't matter in the moment.  What mattered was that I was not going to give up.  I am going to fight to be as healthy as I can.  I did not start this weight loss adventure only to be saddled with more medical challenges.  I don't believe that was my purpose in this whole thing.  I want to be healthy and I am committed to that, no matter what roadblocks stand in my way.  This is not easy, by any stretch of the imagination.  I was reminded of that fact when I got in the shower, stood under the water and sobbed in the corner.  That's the place I have always cried when I am alone and really honest with my feelings.  When I was diagnosed with cancer last year, when I was told I had diabetes, even when my ex-fiance broke my heart ... the shower was where I let out everything I was holding in.  But that's what I needed to do because, by the time I got out of the shower, I knew that I was not going to eat over this, I was not going to sink in the corner in a helpless state.  I knew that I was going to move forward in the most positive space I could be in, honoring my feelings but putting one foot in front of the other anyway.  God has given me His hand to hold, so I know I'm not walking through this alone.  I'm a scrappy fighter and so I will continue to fight, fight, fight.

God, please don't let me EVER forget

Quite an emotional day for me.  I was checking in with a friend at work today, letting her know how it's been going adding a meal back into my plan.  Eerily, there is a peace about me when it comes to the food.  I had such great fear swell up inside when I was abruptly told to add a meal of actual food and not just the Optifast 70 shakes.  Yet, I've been walking through the fear.  As I was telling her about this, she pulled out her cell phone and told me she wanted to show me something as she was sitting at her desk and I was standing on the other side of it.

She handed me the phone and there I was in a pic taken on my birthday last year, December 4th.  I'm posting it below, along with a pic taken just last week of what I look like now for comparison sake.  Take a look.

 

I saw the pic on her cell phone and immediately my eyes welled with tears, and then her eyes welled with tears and, before you knew it, we were both gone.  She showed it to me so that I could be reminded where I came from.  Sadly, my weight would get higher than what you see in the top picture.  Lord help me, but I never, ever want to forget the pain of living in that body.  Not only physically, but emotionally as well.  Look at that picture, beyond the smile on my face ... I mean really look at me.  There was such misery and despair there. 

 

Eating regular food again has brought up so many emotions, but the most important one is that I'm really getting to see how strong a person I am.  I am handling the food just fine.  More than fine actually.  I'm weighing and measuring my amounts and feeling awesome about the choices I'm making.  I made the most delish salmon, steamed broccoli and salad for dinner tonight.  It was beautiful and tasted amazing.  Oh how I've missed the fish, especially salmon.  I put Mrs. Dash and salt substitute on it and it was probably the best tasting salmon I think I've ever had. 

 

I'm sitting here typing on my laptop in just utter amazement at the work God has done in me.  Some would say I did all the work, and they're perfectly entitled to their opinion on that.  My opinion is that God has carried me through this, given me amazing power every single step of the way, and I know He will continue to do so.  I have been given strength to move mountains and each day I come back asking for more.  There is so much hope and opportunity sitting in front of me.  That feels completely awesome.

Stepping out of the comfort zone

I have discovered that the best way to find out why I was overeating was to put down the food and the causes would become abundantly clear.  Now that I have done that, the reasons seem to attack at me from several different directions and it is my job to actually deal with them instead of constantly running.  Otherwise, I will inevitably run right back to food.  As a child, I felt very unsafe.  I was living with a mother who physically abused me for years and then I was sexually traumatized by someone I trusted.  That led to going to a very safe place ... food.  That was my drug of choice to numb the pain, express my anger, punish myself and keep people at a very comfortable distance from me.  I did not trust people and, as a consequence, I had an extremely difficult time forming intimate relationships.  I do not want these events in my life to be what defines me.  Yes, there is tragedy and heartbreak there but I have a fighting spirit.  While events of the past are in the past, they still can affect the present if they are not dealt with.  There are times, however, that I feel like a fish out of water as I attempt to find healing.  One such thing is the issue of confrontation.

For most of my life, I avoided confrontation.  I certainly did that with my mother because the few times that I was brave enough to tell her she was hurting me, she would only hurt me more.  If other kids were making fun of me for being large, I wouldn't confront them because they would only ridicule me more.  So I learned rather quickly that to avoid those feelings, I just simply would not confront anyone.  Confrontation is a part of life, though.  If someone is stealing from you, you must confront them to recover what belongs to you.  If someone is hurting your children, you definitely will be a bear and confront them.  And for me, if someone is treating me in a way less than I deserve, I must confront them as well.  Today I was given the challenge of confronting someone.  I must admit, in the moments leading up to having the discussion with this person, I was feeling the anxiety inside that normally would have been soothed by some ice cream, chips, cookies and other forms of toxicity that would convince me to just not say anything.  When that little voice started going on in my head before making the phone call I had to make today to deal with this other person, I had to tell myself, "Kathy, you have to deal with this.  Just stay calm and know you will be very proud of yourself for being as strong as you know you are." 

Okay, yes, I was talking to myself.  But you know what?  It made all the difference in the world.  I had the conversation I didn't want to have, yet it turned out much better than I could have imagined.  My voice was not shaky, I was not letting the other person off the hook and I did it with peace inside.  It helped me remember that as human beings, we are more than what we appear to be on the surface.  Have you ever been at the beach, swimming in the waves and been out so far that you could no longer touch the bottom?  Below us is a vast sea that is so grand in size and contains such depth that a glacier is much larger than it ever appears.  The Mariana Trench is over 36,000 feet below the surface (never realized my high school oceanography course would come in handy here!).  There is more depth to me than a person who ate too much in her life.  How do you cope with not only the trauma of certain events in your life, but the residual affects such as lack of trust of other people, even those with good intentions?  It was just easier to not deal with things, to go to the food and put on a smile, hoping and praying I could just shut the door to feelings.  That doesn't work.  Who knew that when I decided to embark on this journey of improving my health that the true healing would not come in just the physical transformation but something much deeper.

Journey of a thousand miles

As I was doing some reading this morning, I was reminded of the saying, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step".  When I started Optifast, I knew it would be a journey for me because I didn't have just 40 pounds to lose.  I knew it was going to be significant.  As the weight started dropping off, though, I got in this mindset that I should be losing a minimum of double digits every week.  A little insane?  Definitely!  As my friend Melissa blogged about, it is a process.  I have been fortunate to have lost more than the average person almost every week.  I mean, when I think about it, I lost 45 pounds in the first month alone.  Now that is crazy.  Granted, I started off needing to lose a lot but I never expected to shed so much in 30 days.

As time marches on, it's now been five months that I have been on product.  And it will likely be almost as long until I reach goal weight.  That little girl inside of me, who is super impatient, is loudly stomping her feet in the corner screaming about how unfair that is.  Ten months of no food, not even healthy food, let alone the stuff that got me here.  That's a long time.  Women conceive children, deliver them and take them home in a shorter amount of time.  While I don't have desire for food, I do think about how I have been able to do it so long already and how I will be in the second half of this.

The truth is that I don't have some magic source of willpower.  I don't have this resolve inside that says I am just going to do this!  If I did, trust me, I would not be doing a medically supervised liquid program.  I have people that contact me and flat out ask me how I am doing this, especially when it seems to come so easily to me.  I don't know.  When I came to the Optifast doors, I knew I had to follow directions and not try to say "Yeah, but" at every opportunity.  I needed to give up the fight and let go of all the notions I had about how to lose weight.  I was desperate enough to shut up about it and put that one foot in front of the other.  No one can appreciate the true challenges that come along with this type of program, not only the physical ones but moreso the emotional ones, until they have done it themselves.  This program is unique in that it does take off the weight, but it does not end there.  In fact, for most people who've already been through the program, they say this phase was the easier part.  The hard part is maintaining it and living regular life.  I can well imagine that's true. 

My daily journey right now as I face more weight to lose is to focus not on how long it is going to take me to get to a satisfying place, but to focus on where I am right here and now.  That road of a thousand miles is one foot in front of the other that, for me, must be done with peace.  I can't spend the time doing mathematical formulas as to how many calories I'm burning every day, looking at my carbohydrate ratios, trying to get away with eating foods that are "free", obsessing about how long it takes me to walk while I'm exercising or any of the other things that sometimes plagues people when they are losing weight.  Instead, I need to celebrate my daily successes.  I can honor the journey I have already been on and feel the power of that.  And each day that I arise, I can remember that all I have is that one day to be present in, not the past and certainly not the future.  There is beautiful peace in that, a peace I would rather live in humbly and by the grace of God.  So if you see me exercising, I am not timing how long it takes me to walk a mile.  And if I cry on the way home from one of my weekly Optifast meetings, it is not because I did something wrong ... it is because I am in a place where it feels like the weight is just being taken from me, but with love and encouragement.  I feel this miracle in my life so deeply and if there is ever a time where I take it for granted and think I should have lost ten pounds during the week, God reminds me where I have been by a person I meet, an old picture of me at my heaviest, the look of shock on someone's face when they haven't seen me in a long time, the happy smile on my face when I look in my own mirror or even just the gentle breeze I feel when I am outside putting that one foot in front of the other.  I get to celebrate all of that every day.

Upcoming road trips

During July, I will be going on two fabulous road trips.  The first one is with one of my very good friends.  We'll be traveling from San Diego, where we live, up the California coast.  We'll be heading to Santa Barbara, San Simeon and Monterey.  Along the way, we will be staying in lovely hotels that we have decided to splurge at.  I would normally never spend the sort of money on a hotel room that we are during our trip, but, hey, I'm on vacay!  They offer killer views of the ocean, luxurious pools and even massages if we so desire.  When we booked them, we made sure they had fridges and gyms so that we can still take care of our needs.  For me, I will, of course, be on Optifast product and she is doing a special program as well.  So the fridges are for keeping our supplies on hand.  The gyms are to ensure we're keeping healthy.  I'm sure we'll be doing lots of walking on our excursions, but we want to not leave anything to chance.  The difficulty I am encountering is my feelings about being on the product while staying in places that offer great dining and wine tasting.  While I didn't get sad about it, I did tell her I will miss not eating while on our trip.  Don't worry ... I'm not thinking of going off product.  I am committed to my success in this program, as well as afterward.  I know that food will be in my future again and that I can keep the focus on great experiences and the company of my friend.  I was just being honest about how I was feeling.  She told me she understood.  While she is not on Optifast, she will have restrictions as well, so at least we can be there to look out for each other.

Towards the end of July, I will be traveling with my mother from San Diego to Vegas to visit my brother and sister-in-law.  My mother is Filipino and I learned how to make delicous Filipino food from her, like chicken adobo, lumpia, pancet, etc.  Whenever we visit my brother, he always begs my mom to make classic Filipino fare because his wife doesn't like making that kind of food and doesn't make it near as well as my family does (I think you might have to have Filipino DNA coursing in your body to make excellent lumpia).  Normally it is like a feeding frenzy at his house when my mom makes the food, with a bunch of his friends there and everyone absolutely gorging on the food.  My mom does not know moderation so she makes enough food to feed an army, or two.  To take care of myself, I think I am not going to join them the afternoon she makes all that food.  Instead, I'll go to the pool at our hotel, pictured to the left.  Looks scrumptious, doesn't it?  It's not as though I am trying to separate myself from all of them and not having time with my family, but I have got to protect my program as much as possible.  I am sure they will understand because they are super supportive of what I am doing.  The truth is that life still happens, whether or not we are on our fasts.  I am fully aware of that.  While I am feeling strong that I won't "cheat" on my program since I haven't done so already, I also don't need to test myself either.

Round two

Monday night was the end of my 20th week of weigh-ins and a new crop of people came into our group at the Kaiser clinic.  For those that will be continuing in the fasting phase, we stay in the class and new people join us who are just starting their journeys.  About 11 of us are continuing on from the first class, but it was so great to see the eagerness and excitement of the new people.  Our group now has 25 people in it, pretty big for us since the 11 of us were the ones who made it through to the end of the first group.  It was hard to see people dropping out since our group originally started with about 20, but it is what it is.  We are a tight 11, so supportive of each other, and I know we will also be that way with the new people.

Our counselor welcomed them and gave them some highlights of successful stories.  One of our 11, for example, has lost 172 pounds.  Pretty impressive, but she was quick to point out that she has done it over the course of several years with some weight gain in the middle.  Then, he turns to me and says, "Kathy, if you don't mind sharing, can you tell the group how much weight you've lost in the last 20 weeks?"  I just knew he was going to call me out!  He is always so thrilled to see me each week because my rate of loss is pretty astonishing (by his admission, not mine).  He's told me that in the 30 years that he has been a counselor at the clinic, no woman, and very few men, have lost as much weight faster than I have.  So, I addressed the group and told them that as of that night, I had lost 135.5 pounds in the last 20 weeks.  That was followed by a round of applause, coupled with oooh's and aaaah's.  People were asking me if it was all just Optifast or if I was doing something different, almost as if I had the secret to eternal life.  If only!  I described that, no, I just do the Optifast 70 program, but I do exercise a lot now, although that isn't a requirement of the program, just something I enjoy doing now.  When I think about it, it took me about 5 or 6 weeks before I started doing any exercise at all and now I'm up to at least 3 miles each and every day.

When you're starting new in program, they give you a binder full of information, assignments and other things you'll need along the way in the journey, as well as a book called Maximize Your Body Potential.  You are told you will need to bring these two items to class, so I saw all the new people had these things in their hands or under their seats.  I leaned over to one of the 11 and asked her if she had been reading the book or if she was doing the assignments.  She confessed that she hadn't even opened the book.  After a couple of weeks of the classes, we weren't bringing those items in any longer because our support group was not about the topics discussed in the pages but things the counselor would do with us.  I did start reading the book but I had put it down since we weren't going through it.  It sort of felt like homework to me and I figured that when the time came where we were supposed to start reading it, our counselor would let us know.  We both committed to each other that we would, at the very least, start reading the book.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they gave me the book and the notebook with assignments or other reading for a reason.  Now that I am in the second round of this phase, I feel I am prepared to really start digging in.

Now that I'm in the book, I can't put it down!  There are sections in there about weight loss, but it is more about being successful in your weight management journey for life.  There is going to come a time when I will be re-introduced to food again and I have to make appropriate choices if I hope to be successful.  It also talks about a very important component that perhaps gets glossed over far too easily ... the emotional and psychological component of weight loss.  How do we deal with thinner bodies?  How do our families and friends deal with us in thinner bodies?  Losing weight is all about us, but it does not just affect us.  I took out a highlighter and really started marking some important components for me, such as:

• A major part of successful weight management is learning to identify and change underlying beliefs that don't serve you, to find new ways of understanding events, to replace negative self-talk with more adaptive thinking, and to cope more effectively with negative emotions.
• Weight reduction is a self-centered activity.  To be successful you must give it top priority.
• You  need to constantly bring your focus back to what you expect to get by losing weight and the costs you will pay for not losing weight.
• Involving others in your weight management efforts in a way that is nonthreatening to them is important if you are going to achieve and stay at your best weight.
• In order to speak up for your needs, you may need to challenge and change old ideas.

There were so many more fantastic gems, but really it is all about being successful in managing weight for the rest of my life.  My character trait/defect of being stubborn is going to come in handy here.  I refuse to become a statistic, one of those poor souls who loses a huge amount of weight only to gain it back.  I have already done that with 100 pounds before and I'm not willing to go through that again.  I am already in a place where I'm in a foreign land ... a smaller body, able to do things I couldn't do before, off of all of my diabetes medication and insulin, with so much more energy.  There is no way on God's green earth I am going to give that up, no freakin way!!  I have too many people who love and support me to let that happen.  And, really, I refuse to let that happen to myself.  Unless you've been where I have been - morbidly obese - you can't understand how painful a place that is.  There is obvious physical pain, yes, but I mean more the emotional hurt deep down inside.  It's a place so painful that I hardly could ever talk about it out loud to other people because then I would have to sit in those feelings and I know I would constantly have tears in my eyes.  Instead, I'd just put on a great smile and perhaps joke things away.  I have used humor far too many times to mask pain.  Dammit, I am worthy of so much more than being less than my authentic self.

I have also opened that notebook and taken a look at some of the writing assignments.  I will start working on those, too.  As much as opening the door to the past is very difficult to do, I must walk through that door to get to the other side.  Avoiding doing so got me to 417 pounds.  No more.  I am taking my life back and telling that horrid voice in my head that screams I'm not good enough to take a flying leap off the cliff.  So there!

Letting go

Even though I still have quite a journey ahead of me as I continue on Optifast, a lot of feelings and emotions have been coming up for me lately.  I'm doing my absolute best to not push them away, but to honor them as where I am in the present moment.  First of all, I am the smallest I have ever been in my life probably since the age of 13.  Actually, probably younger than that.  Who knows when you purposely stop looking in the mirror and try to ignore the increasing number on the tags of your clothes.  That's not to say I'm quite in the category of "small" but for me, yes, I am there.  And yet, I'm not stopping.  My body continues to get smaller as I continue on Optifast and exercising.  So, naturally, now feelings of why the weight came on in the first place are really flooding my consciousness and I am having to deal with feelings of myself and my self-worth.

I definitely am not a child any longer and have really lived a life with lots of experiences, so my image of myself today is nowhere as low as it used to be.  I wouldn't even say I think "low" of myself, but I also have challenges that I have to be honest about and work through if I ever hope of keeping the weight off in the future.  As I have shared on this blog before, I was abused and raped when I was a kid.  Those are not easy things to survive, but you live through them and just try to forget somehow.  I tried my best, but I always felt tainted somehow and even, I have to admit, like I deserved it.  I know, I know ... you're shaking your head at how ridiculous a statement that is.  No one deserves any of that, but I was convinced I did.

I would always look in the mirror and just hate myself.  I always thought of myself as ugly, from my earliest memories.  I was always tall and I never felt like I fit in, having had a Filipino mother and Caucasian father.  I mean, what group could I really identify with?  My look, while some people classified it as "exotic," to me was just plain ugly.  My last boyfriend always told me how beautiful he thought I was and I just never believed him, couldn't believe him, didn't want to believe him.  He had to work overtime to convince me that I was wonderful, worthy and lovely... things I would never believe.  I wanted to, but I just couldn't.  As I was judging myself, I ate to cover up the feelings and always put on a jovial smile for the world to see, not only when I was in the relationship with him but, really, for my entire life.  So when I was teased for being fat, I wasn't surprised and fed into that, resigned to the fact that I would feel that way forever.  I felt people were embarrassed to be seen with me and, hey, I didn't blame them one iota.  The sadness that I felt about myself inside was also showing on the outside.  If you look at some of my "before" pictures on my Pics of Progress page, you can see that sadness on my face, even when I was smiling and trying to cover it up.

So, now that the food has been put down and I'm losing a truckload of weight, here I am, back with those dreaded feelings.  But they're different now.  I have people calling me beautiful all the time, which is a different dynamic for me. I'm not saying that because of vanity, but really it is because I am not fighting with them, trying to convince them that they're wrong about me, that they must have me mixed up with some other person.  As I look in the mirror now, I don't look away or even avoid looking in the mirror in the first place.  I don't regard my reflection with hidden shame.  I am facing the image that stares back at me, realizing that I am exuding something altogether different these days.  I am not punishing myself for being abused and raped.  Those are horrible things to live through, but I did live through them.  I am here, alive, thank you God for getting me through.  Time to let go of the past.  I don't need to repeat patterns that were self-destructive for me and my well-being.

There is so much wonderful healing that has happened.  Maybe that beauty is shining through because I finally get the fact that love includes loving ourselves just as much as loving other people.  I can think of hardly any other more loving act towards myself than that of taking care of my health ... physically as well as emotionally and spiritually.  There is power that comes from self-care.  I am not abusing my body in self-destructive ways any longer.  In the process, I am finding joy and happiness.  Those are things I do not need to fear, as if they are going to be taken away from me at any moment.  If I am smiling, maybe, just maybe it is because that is what I am feeling inside.  I do not need to revert to old defense mechanisms, which were standard things I did when I was treated less than I should be.

Those that claim losing weight through Optifast is taking the easy way out frankly just don't have a clue.  When you don't have the food to give you a sense of ease and comfort, it's as if you are left out in the cold, feeling naked and incredibly vulnerable.  I would submit that, actually, a weight loss program involving food is actually the easier route.  This is damn hard!  Yet, I know in my situation, I had gotten to a place that nothing other than some sort of drastic program was going to help me get healthier.  As I continue in my work of letting go, I also get to embrace the beauty of life and all the possibilities that are laid out before me.  Gone are the days where I convince myself I am unworthy of anything good.  I deserve so much better than that, we all do. 

Cheating while on the program

Whenever someone leaves a comment for me on a post from my blog, it comes to my e-mail address.  Someone did that today and I have not been able to find their original post to reply to, so I'm just going to address the question in a new post completely.  The question was whether or not I have cheated while on the program and what are the risks if I do.

Personally, I have not cheated with food while I have been on Optifast.  Except for one time, I have not been even tempted to do so.  When I decided to do the program in the first place, I had hit a bottom and a low in my weight and health I couldn't ever imagine I would experience.  I was willing to do absolutely everything I was told to do.  If the clinic told me that I can only have shakes and no food, then by God that was what I was going to do.  I didn't want to die and that's really the direction I found myself facing.

Sometimes people do cheat while on Optifast.  We are human beings, not perfect by any means.  For me, one of the biggest deterrents from doing this was because then my body would have been knocked out of ketosis and I, for one, did not want to go through those two rough weeks again until I was back in ketosis.  I was so incredibly hungry, lightheaded and irritable during that time.  Some people can go into ketosis in just a few days, but it took me a full two weeks.  No thank you!

Something has definitely come over me in this program.  The things I am doing and have been willing to do were things I tried and failed at many, many times when trying other methods to lose weight.  Something different has happened to me here.  It's actually rather puzzling, but I certainly am not going to question it in the slightest.  I put one foot in front of the other and walk forward ... that's the absolute best I can do.

Strength and courage

Last year at this time, I was diagnosed with melanoma, a very deadly form of skin cancer.  Almost nothing brings your world to a screeching hold as does the diagnosis of cancer.  I went through surgery, lots of recovery and was left with a scar from the bottom of my shoulder blade to almost my waist on my back as well as a small scar under my left arm when the doctor checked to ensure the cancer hadn't spread to my lymph nodes.  Thankfully they were able to successfully remove the cancer.  Every three months, I am required to see my dermatologist for follow-up appointments.  I had one such appointment today.

I was thrilled to share with him my Optifast journey and he was utterly amazed at the weight loss, especially with how fast it was.  It was nice to reflect on something so positive.  During these visits, he does a full body scan to see if I have any new spots or moles that are irregular in shape, the wrong kind of color, etc.  I pointed out a new mole I have on my chest that wasn't there during my last visit.  Since it was new and it was white in color, he was concerned the more he looked at it.  To be safe, he wanted to do a biopsy on it.

The word "biopsy" used to scare me to no end.  In my mind, that word was the doorway to cancer.  However, since last year, this is my fourth biopsy.  Yes, it told me I had cancer before but I've also had two other times where the news was benign.  Hopefully this time will also be the same result. Upon visual inspection of what he was removing, he said it looks like an innocent cyst but, of course, he would be sending it to the lab to have the necessary tests performed.  I laid there in silence as he did what he needed to do.  He did warn me that there would be a small scar on my chest.  There are certain times in your life where a scar is the last thing you want.  Then there are other times when you would happily take that scar, almost as a badge of courage. 

I have thought a lot today about fear and courage.  There is some fear that the cancer has returned.  You are never safely out of the woods once you have cancer in the first place and there are times when people have had melanoma return.  Yet, I know that there is a lot of courage in me because I didn't just wish this away.  I was the one that pointed out the spot to the doctor and ultimately the one to make the decision to have the biopsy done.  There is pain in my chest as I type this because of how deeply he had to cut to remove the spot, but I am being present and facing this fear.  God gives me that strength.  I pray for His healing touch and I know other people are praying as well. 

Strength and courage are both something that is not necessarily easy to come by.  I think that they are required in life more than just waiting for the results of a biopsy.  It takes tremendous strength and courage to love ourselves enough to want a better life, such as the journey we go on with Optifast.  There is such tremendous change out in the horizon and it takes an incredible amount of courage to be willing to unearth the rocks that have stood in our way and to break down the iron walls in front of us to a new life full of peace and love.  We find strength from within that will allow us to do things like move mountains if that was the task we are given.  Losing weight, especially when there is a significant amount to lose or excess weight has been with us for a long time, is incredibly difficult.  Emotions come up that sometimes are very unexpected and hard to deal with.  Yet, here we are, putting one foot in front of the other.  I feel like a very brave person in this moment, feeling fear but picking up my sword anyway.  Thank you, God, for that.