AngelaBenson.com

I hope things are well with you because they’re pretty well with me. I want to report some progress in the weight loss arena for me. In a way, I don’t like to talk about it since it’s a lifestyle change kind of thing, rather than a diet. Anyway, it’s going well and I’m losing weight. I’m not going to post frequently about it but I will let you know as I hit major milestones. How’s that?

Otherwise, life is good. I read an article recently about people who had weight loss surgery who ended up trading one obsession for another. This probably happens most with emotional eaters. Since they can no longer turn to food to manage the obsession, they now turn to drugs, sex, gambling, shopping, anything else to give the “high” or the “relief” that food gave. Here are a couple of links about it:

Other compulsive behaviors replace overeating

Gastric bypass patients trade eating for shopping

Now isn’t that amazing? It is to me because it makes clear that for many of us, food is not the problem; food masks the problem. If you take away the food, we just find something else to mask the problem. And the God that we serve allows no masks. That’s just the way He is.

Have you ever felt like you keep going through the same thing over and over, as though God is trying to teach you something that you don’t seem to be able to grasp? I think it’s like this with those of us who wrestle with eating issues. We must learn the lesson or we’ll continue to wrestle. Forget shortcuts. We’ll still end up back in the same cycle, trying to learn the same thing.

The God of “no shortcuts.” That’s the God we serve. You gotta love it and Him.

Be blessed as you learn the lessons He puts before you. I pray we all learn much faster.

Have a great week!

Something happened to me recently that caught me by surprise. Someone misinterpreted something that I did and attributed it to “evil intentions” on my part. The words, “evil intentions,” were not spoken, so that’s my attribution. Anyway, the incident left me feeling a bit hurt even though I learned a long time ago to let God fight my battles.

Now I could have gone to the person and explained that I didn’t have “evil intentions,” but I didn’t; I left that one to the Lord. Over time, I pray, that as the person gets to know me better, they’ll begin to give me the benefit of the doubt. That’s why I always try to gove others that same benefit. When things happen, my first thought is not, “they’re against me” or “they’re out to get me,” rather it’s “why is this happening?”

In this case, I figured out that the person’s reaction was not even about me; it was about the situation and their trying to exert some measure of control over a situation that they thought was getting out of control. So, since it wasn’t about me, I couldn’t take offense. Life happens. I just have to trust God. If He opens the door at some point, I’ll bring it up to the person so we can talk about but I don’t feel any rush to do so.

Sometimes the lessons of the Bible are deep, but most times they’re very simple. I’ll leave you with 1 Corinthians 13:4-7.

Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Now tell me about your blessings, because I count this as one of mine.

I think I’ve finally gotten the upper hand with SPAM, but it wasn’t an easy task. Well, maybe it was. Here’s the story:

I have a free gmail account that I haven’t really been using. Well, I noticed that gmail seemed to handle SPAM very well. While browsing around recently, I found out that you can have gmail poll your other email accounts and have all your mail stored on gmail. Now this works for me because gmail has 2GB of storage for mail and mail on gmail is always accessible via the web.

Back to the SPAM. Well, I had gmail poll all my accounts. It had probably been a day or so since I’d downloaded mail. Well, gmail identified about 5000 SPAM messages and moved them automatically to the SPAM mailbox. A couple of pieces still got through but my mailbox wasn’t deluged with the garbage. I could actually read my messages! What a novel concept!

Anyway, I feel like I have a new lease on life.