Overcoming Molehills
Have you ever had one of those weeks where you just feel like giving up on your resolutions? Like one of those all-I-want-to-do-is-quit-and-eat-a-tub-of-ice-cream kinds of weeks? That was my week.
Since middle school, I’ve struggled with my weight. I hit a point in college where I made a decision to take better care of myself, which resulted in a significant weight loss.
My resolve was tested two years ago and I failed that test like a last-minute geography exam! I was beginning a new career and living on my own for the first time. The stress of this new chapter led to an uncomfortable weight gain.
This year, I decided that I was going to take my life back again, starting with my weight. The problem is – old habits die hard. I have a pretty bad habit – in times of stress – for putting things on the backburner. Taking care of myself is usually the first to go.
In a moment of weakness, I ended up gaining back some of the weight I had just spent the last month and a half losing. It was a domino effect after that. Not only did I fall off the wagon, but I could see the horse galloping away with the wagon in tow! All of my other resolutions collapsed in on themselves because the sense of defeat was overwhelming.
I had to make a choice to either push forward or give up entirely. I remembered, though, that I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I would press on in the face of defeat. I told myself that I would “Be Kind to Myself.”
Here’s what this week made me realize:
- Change is hard… but you DO have to be kind to yourself. There is no “easy” change. When I have bad days, I can feel defeated and weak. I know I need to be accountable when I mess up, but that doesn’t often manifest into tough love. It’s more tough and less love. We’re all human and we all make mistakes. The important part is how you choose to move forward after that mistake.
- Sometimes, you need to re-adjust your expectations. When I start a new year, I always have very specific resolutions. When I get into a rhythm, though, I realize that those resolutions look a lot different. Different isn’t always bad. Sometimes, you can achieve the same result you wanted, but in a different way than you had planned. Have I lost every pound I set out to lose? Of course not. But I did adopt a regular habit of eating better meals and making healthier choices. That counts!
- Every day is a new day! That sounds like a total cliché, but it’s surprisingly true. When I stumble, I tend to punish myself by resolving to give up. What’s the point in continuing when I’ve already failed? It’s good to keep that failure in context. Messing up isn’t the end of the world and it isn’t an excuse to quit. One moment of weakness doesn’t negate the days, weeks, and sometimes months of hard work.
My mom always tells me, “Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.” When I slip up, I tend to look at those molehills through the lens of an ant. They look outrageously humongous and impossible to overcome. It can feel more like a mountain than a molehill.
In Matthew 17:20, Jesus tells us that “[…] If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
That’s pretty incredible. God has given us a faith to move mountains – both big and small!
When you’re struggling or when you’ve failed, you have two choices – you can sit down and resign yourself to a nice life on this side of the molehill. Or, you can remember that you were created to stand in front of a mountain and tell it to move.
Keep going, because you can move mountains… and molehills.
