Saturday, October 1, 2011

Somebody Else's Clothes

I have officially crossed the 40 pounds lost mark!!!

While I’m excited about the progress I’m making, the interesting thing is that when I look in the mirror, I don’t really see that much of a difference yet.  I know that I’m losing well and consistently, and at a healthy rate, but I’m having a hard time visualizing it.  Where I am realizing the change, however, is in my clothes!  Everything that was tight 3 months ago, is now loose, and everything that fit well three months ago has gotten way too big.  While digging through my closet this week, I ran across a couple of shirts with the tags still on them that I bought on clearance at the end of the fall season last year and put away for this year.  They’re so big on me now that I will not be wearing them this year after all!  I think I see a trip to the consignment shop in my near future!

While my husband and I were talking about all of this last night, I told him that my clothes are getting so big on me, that I feel like I’m walking around in someone else’s clothes!  These things just don’t fit the new me!  The more I’ve thought about that, I’ve found that it bears a striking resemblance to certain aspects of a healthy, growing, spiritual walk in Christ.  Let me explain…

It’s like those areas in your life where God has spoken to you about change.  When you follow His leading, little by little, He begins to change the shape of your thoughts, dreams, and ideas.  At some point down the road, you realize that the mindsets you had before - the attitudes and actions that were comfortable like a pair of well-worn pair of jeans - just don’t fit who you are anymore.  God is helping you learn to become sharper, more focused, and more purposeful in your calling, and you may not even realize it until one day you are faced with a situation where you can either respond as the person you WERE or the person God is helping you BECOME.  To react with your old nature would be like me wearing my pants that are now too big…my hands are trying to hold them up at the waist, while they’re hanging so long I’m tripping over the hems and I’m rendered clumsy and ineffective.  To act from your new, changed place, however, is like wearing a custom-tailored garment.  It was made just for you!

“…take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you…” - Ephesians 4:22-24, The Message

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