I bought a scale.

I am 38 years old and have never owned a scale. We didn't really have one in my house growing up. No, scratch that...my mom had one of those doctor scales in her room when I was growing up, but I never wanted to get on it.

In fact, as I got older, I feared that scale. Since it was JUST like the doctor's office ones, it reminded me of that dreaded event that I had to endure every year. The sentence my mom would utter to me that threw me into a cookie dough panic: it's time for your physical!

I don't remember a time that the scale didn't scare me. But the danger in that thing is that, the more you ignore it, the more power it gets. I mean, I can say all day that the scale doesn't define me, and that it's just a number, and that it's only about how your clothes fit. But clothes stretch, and belts have options, and Taco Bell is so good and before you know it...you're gaining back the weight you fought so hard to lose.

So I bought a scale. And Amazon delivered it. And the box sat, unopened, on my dining room table for a few days. But today I opened it, and I put the batteries in, and I took a deep breath, and I just stepped on it. The number appeared. And it's a sucky number, but it's my indicator. My reminder. My restarting point.

This scale thing is showing me how I let other things and other people and other opinions determine my worth. When I am lonely or struggling through an issue, I turn to my food friends for comfort. And it ultimately makes me more uncomfortable.

Most of you read this and think "Just eat healthy, damn!" To you I say "thank you, but you don't get it." And I would also say...whatever that big struggle has been your whole life - a person, an event, a place, an addiction - replace that with food and welcome to my world.

So I am going to be courageous and use that scale. And I am going to live well today and not worry about tomorrow. Crazy how God knows enough about me to put that in the bible as words to live by.

Hold on to the people that love you and pursue you. And let go of the ones that don't. Don't let people determine your worth. Don't worry, I'm working on it too.

Death to selfie

This morning I heard a really great sermon on narcissism. Defined as an excessive interest in one's self or one's appearance, narcissism has become an epidemic. 

Remember when we used to take pictures with a camera that had film in it? And you had to wait until they were developed to see how you looked? Polaroids were the closest things we had to Instagram. But now, the world is scarier. Instant everything. Excessive interest in ourselves and our appearance.

Instagram reports posting over a million selfies a day. Out of those, 36% admit to retouching their selfies, and 13% admit to retouching every selfie that they post.

Excessive interest in ourselves and our appearance.

I am the queen of narcissism. When you are single without kids and live three states away from your family, it's hard to not be selfish. I only really need to worry about myself. But this focus on me has taken me down many times. And then add that to an excessive interest in my appearance and my weight and before you know it - I am fighting a losing battle with narcissism.

The great news is that our pastor this morning not only highlighted the issue, he offered a solution. If you want to combat selfishness, walk in step with God. Focus on Jesus, not on yourself. Look outward, not inward, for wisdom and knowledge.

I don't know how to do this right. But I do know that I just have to try it. Every day. When I get out of step, I start over. Every day. And I also know that we need to go easy on ourselves. Look outward, not inward. Focus on Jesus, not myself.

And for God's sake, girls, quit making that kissy face. You look better when you just...smile.

Facebook will lie to you.

I had dinner with a friend tonight, a friend that I have known since she was a middle schooler. I love when you walk into a situation and you have no idea the depths of what you are about to experience. Our conversation, while I thought would just be us catching up on each other's lives, became about something far more important.

This particular friend of mine, we'll call her Sally, is in between jobs, school, life change, all of it. I asked Sally what she wants to do with her life. Sally said, in no uncertain terms "I am too screwed up to really know what I want."

I asked Sally what she meant and she began to tell me how she is more screwed up than anyone else she knows. That she has body image issues, is emotionally unstable, and the list went on and on.

You see, Sally is feeling how a lot of us feel. We have a rough day. We come home to an empty room because we are too tired to be social. We hop on social media and we look at photos and instagrams and tweets about how great someone looks, how much fun they are having, how clever they can be, how much...better they are than we are.

Sally is believing the lie that we all believe. That Facebook sells to us.

This is the lie: everyone else is doing great. You're the only one that is this messed up.

See, this lie cripples most of us. I have believed it for years. In my loneliness, recently, I have reached out to some friends with open hands and got nothing in return. I thought that the depths of my pain would be received by people that knew me the best. But the truth was, some of us are so afraid to open our fists to grab on to each other because we aren't willing to be rejected. And that fear of being who we really are isolates us and before we know it, we are alone. In a room. Believing the Facebook lie.

Here's the truth: I'm not doing that great. But tonight I got to connect with an old friend and tell her that, and that took away the power that isolation had on her, even for a moment. Can we be strong enough to admit that we are weak? Can we be brave enough to say that we're scared?

Some people will receive from you and some won't. I have been surprised both negatively and positively by that this week. But the friends that haven't grabbed my open hands can't be my focus. I have to fight for those that are willing to fight with me.

Don't let Facebook lie to you anymore. Let someone in so you can hear the truth: you are not the only one that's messed up. Welcome to our messy neighborhood.

What I learned from the ALS ice bucket challenge.

A few weeks ago, it started to show up on my Facebook newsfeed. And then it flooded my Facebook news feed. And then the thing happened that always happens when things get popular:

The backlash.

I thought I would make it through without having to be a part of this.

Wrong. Here's a sampling of what I saw on social media this week:

"Am I the only one who is totally tired of the ice bucket challenge ? Save the time and water and write a check people." (as of this post, 53 people "liked" this)

if you do the #IceBucketChallenge but don't actually explain ALS, I don't know if it counts as raising awareness..." via my twitter news feed

And this one, which is truly one of the most tasteless jokes I've seen in a long, long time:

"Robin Williams died doing what he loved, the ice bucket challenge." Posted by a friend of mine that I won't embarrass now by identifying.

And me...my internal monologue while seeing this: "UGH. No one better make me do this. I don't even get how this will raise money. This is dumb. People don't even know what ALS is." And on and on and on.

Ok, so here's the thing: does it matter? Does it matter why people are trying to do good? Does it matter how accurate and how educated and how perfectly responsible a good deed is? Why can't we just see people trying to do good things and support it, instead of making jokes, judging, critiquing, or grading them from the other side of an anonymous computer monitor?

Sometimes I am shocked at how judgmental I can be. And this time it moved me enough to confess it publicly, and to call it out. Side note: this stupid little social media experiment worked. Really, really well.

Whenever you try to change the world, you will have haters. In fact, I would say that if you don't have haters, you're not doing it right.

Play on, players.

Retweet this to your followers? Yes. Yes I think I will.

Make "how are you" a question instead of a greeting.

What do you do when the thing that relieves you is the thing that causes you pain?

I am recovering from neck surgery, which was on July 31st. My mom came down to visit, THANK GOD, and took amazing care of me.

What they took out, and what they
put in. This is the best operation room
photo they would take for me.

She left on Saturday and since then, I have been in a dark place, honestly. When you have someone here that loves you so much, and they are caring for you, and are around you all the time, and then they leave...it leaves a noticeable hole that you try to fill with other things.

Does anyone want to guess how I tried to fill that hole? Well, in the same ways I have been trying to fill voids my entire life...food.

Food is the thing that relieves me. Food is the thing that causes me pain.

So in the midst of loneliness and depression, historically, I have turned to food. And with the move to a new town, those emotions have been knocking on my door, and I have let them in by turning to food. Food is the acceptable drug of choice in our country. No kidding, there are over 20 fast food spots within 5 miles of my house. For a food addict like me, that's like having a bar on every corner, or a dealer that lives in the house across the street.

Everywhere. Temptation to withdrawal further.

I wish I could say that I have found the answer to all this after two years of openly working through it. But I haven't. The closest answer I have found is this: to let people know me, and to make myself available to know others. The more I practice this specifically, the more I see the dark clouds of depression lifting.

For example, this afternoon I rode the spin bike for the first time since surgery and my friend Allison came to work out too. She went out of her way to pull a bike over to me and I was honest about how lonely I've been feeling in this new town. And she received me. And we made plans to work out together more consistently. And she invited me to dinner. And I invited myself to her son's t-ball games. And she checked in with me about church. But most important...we took time to be real with each other.

When my mom was here, she mentioned the concept of "How are you?" and how it has become a greeting, not a question. If I ask you how you are, do I really want to know the answer? "How are you? No, really. How are you? I want to know. And I have time to sit and listen, because I have a feeling you need that. Because I'm not doing so great either."

Surgery selfie. And hopefully the only
selfie I'll ever take.

I'm willing to blow up this blog with some real stuff if you're willing to get on this ship with me. I don't know about you, but I'm getting exhausted by small talk. Can we make "how are you" a question instead of a greeting?

Let pain be your guide.

On Thursday, I am going back to visit crazy Nurse Martha. And while I love a good reunion, this isn't one I was planning on.

I have to have disc fusion surgery in my neck. While it sounds grosser than it is, they basically open up my throat, put a bone spacer between two of my vertebrae, and then screw in a titanium plate to keep everything in place. Ok, it is pretty gross. 

Having two disc surgeries in one year is a bummer. And as I am mentally preparing for Thursday while recounting last December, it's amazing how different life is for me now. God has found a way to help me work through a lot of emotional pain and helped me to forgive myself and quit being so hard on myself.

They are going to put this on my
insides. Titanium. X-Men here I come.

I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but: do you ever find that you beat yourself up WAY more than you should? I think of it this way: I would NEVER let someone treat a friend the way I treat myself. 

I think we live in a place where it is expected to beat yourself up. It is frowned upon to be ok with who you are and where you are. Especially in Christian circles. We are the worst about this. We compare, we measure, we criticize, and we convince ourselves that we are not good enough. Never satisfied and never happy.

So what if we were able to accept ourselves no matter what? No matter what grade we got? No matter what someone says about us? No matter what weight we are?

I am dreading recovery because, I don't know how long it will be. "Let pain be your guide" is what my doctor says. I wish I could take this more seriously. If I let pain be my guide, maybe I would stop beating myself up after that open wound I create. If I let pain be my guide, I would be patient with myself when the timeline is not what I had planned. If I let pain be my guide, I would forgive myself as I forgive others.

What would you do differently if you let pain be your guide?

We miss your smile.

The other day I was having... a day. You know the one. Where you just want to stay in bed all day and conversations are an effort and you are an emotional ball of extremes.

And then this happened.

I was walking past our indoor pool at the Y. There is a wall of glass outside of my office where you can look directly into the pool complex. At this particular time of day, our camp high hopes kids were swimming and that's always chaos. Laughing, splashing, yelling, general pool fun.

No one was paying attention to me as I surveyed the scene. Except for her. While everyone around her was going nuts and having a big time, she took the time to pause and smile. And it wasn't just one of those fleeting, courtesy smiles...it was genuinely long enough for me to quickly snap a photo on my phone.

I have been thinking about the smiling girl ever since.

You know when you are walking down the hallway and say "Hey how you doing?" to someone, but you rarely mean it? What would I really do if someone told me how they are REALLY doing. Would I be ready to stop my day to listen to what they are struggling with? I wish I could say yes emphatically. But typically I am doing that courtesy ask. That courtesy smile. That courtesy "how are you?"

So I am trying something new. I am trying to be the girl in the photo. In the midst of my daily chaos. And you know what? It's working. People need my smile. People need your smile. They miss it. There was a time in your life that everyone got to see it, and they need it back as much as you do.

Let's make a pact to value people over experiences. I don't know about you, but I hope that at the end of my life, I am remembered for the people I impacted and not the things I've done or the places I've been. And plus, I don't know if you've seen my dimples when I smile, but they are INCREDIBLE.

-Liz