Personal Monday: What's on Your Shelf?

So, this is a few minutes later after Monday and it is now Tuesday, but I started writing this on Monday so it still stands.

I think a better name for this blog would have to be “On the Shelf.” My life has tons of stuff on the shelf. Books, music, movies, and such are not the only things on my shelves. In truth, we all have our problems that we tend to put away on some sort of shelf. For me the main things I tend to put on my shelves are my eating habits. I’m fat, plain and simple. I don’t rejoice at it and I don’t take pride in it. I try not to let it keep me from living my life out, but I admit I need to lose weight by eating healthier and exercising more often. My doctor tells me I’m very unhealthy. I have high blood pressure and cholesterol. She says she hates to see someone as young as me have such a high heart attack risk. In case you were wondering, I’m only 19. On top of all this, I have other health problems. For example, tomorrow I am having some moles on my back removed that could become cancerous. I joked around to my parents that at least one thing gone wrong with me does not have to do with my weight, but really it’s not that funny. I am unhealthy. I need to get healthy. I need to take things off my shelf and deal with them. It’s spring cleaning time for the rest of my life and I plan to blog every Monday on my progress. Please join me on this journey. I have started weight journals before, but this time I need to get serious. I started this blog because I wanted to comment on various things, but also because I wanted to take a stand. Obesity is a huge problem today. Let’s take a stand against it. I’ve bought a calorie counter book and a journal for logging what I eat and I’m using it.

A week ago I went to the doctor’s office to get a whooping cough shot. Lucky me, I got a small infection from it and for the last week have had a fever ranging from 99.0 to 102.8. I had headaches, I was light-headed, and my whole body was sore. It finally went away yesterday. Still, I’m weak from it. Nevertheless, when a handicap friend of the family called and asked for my help with her shopping, I could not say no. I love this woman and she needs all the company she can get. She has been surrounded by the worst of people and gone through the worst of pains. Today, specifically, her back and her elbows were in a lot of pain. She’s paralyzed from the waist down and goes around in a wheelchair. She needed me to push the grocery cart around and take the groceries into her apartment for her. I’ve done this once or twice before and always have a great time doing it. She’s a great lady to be around, plus it gets me out of the house. My arm was still bothering me from the shot and I playfully teased her about it and my fever. The conversation quickly became a deep talk about the pains of life. This woman finds herself overweight with a broken wheelchair and almost completely broken-down car. She has her own obesity problems, plus she’s almost deaf. I can’t believe how selfish I’ve been lately with my little fever! She plans to get a surgery done on her stomach to help her lose weight. She can’t exercise much because she can’t walk. She can’t even get her own groceries or fill up a tank of gas without help, and here I am complaining about a simple surgery I’m getting done on the moles on my back tomorrow. I think we all need to start taking better care of ourselves and those around us. I am very thankful for what I have in life and I shouldn’t start counting my blessings too soon. You never know what can happen. I’m already unhealthy as it is. It’s about time that I started to take care of what has been given to me, namely my body. Maybe I can take better care of family friends and others if I’m in better shape to do so. It took me about 7 trips to bring in all my friend’s groceries, and she didn’t buy much! I'm tellin' you, I didn't feel much like bringing those groceries in, but I did it anyway. There will always be times in life when we don't feel like doing things. Sometimes we're lazy. Sometimes we're tired. Sometimes we just need a vacation or just need to be able to do something without any extra luggage to carry (in my case it was groceries). Thinking about it, however, I now see that although we may not always feel like doing something, sometimes it just needs to be done. I don't feel like making an effort to lose weight, but I need to. I often won't feel like being a good witness to others. I sometimes don't feel like discussing doctrine. But I need to get over my own feelings. Life will be life. We have purpose in our life and we should not push it aside for personal comfort.