a me update

Since one of the themes of this blog is change, I thought I should probably update you all as to some of the changes in my life.

External/Physical Changes

When I got preggers with Nathaniel, I was 145 lbs. By the time I gave birth, I was 169.5 lbs. Today, I am 129 lbs (with an ultimate goal of 120-125) and my size 2 pants are a weeny bit too small. Earlier this week I met a new friend, and thought to myself--holy cow, she's skinny! And then I discovered she wears larger pants than I do; we are the same height. And it hit me--holy cow, I am kind of skinny! Or maybe I'm just plain skinny! It's weird to think about. I personally still don't see it but I think it just might be true. I do know for sure that this is the smallest I have been in my adult life.

I did it the healthy way: cutting out processed foods, exercising more. I'm sure nursing helped, but I will say that it didn't help at all for the first 7 months--I weighed about the same during the entire first 7 months Nathaniel was alive. I know it was because I was still eating like I was pregnant. Now that I treat my body better, the weight has come off.

Still on the physical section, we've all been eating a lot better. I make our bread from scratch; we eat home-cooked meals every night but Friday (Fridays are for Chipotle!); I've been buying milk without RBST or whatever that hormone is and shopping for food almost exclusively at the farmer's market.

I bought a dehydrator after weeks of it nagging at me. Since then, I've decided it may have been a spiritual prompting, and I just didn't see that at the time because it didn't make sense that the Spirit would tell me to buy a dehydrator. But anyway, I did it, and I have been buying cheap, local, fresh, organic produce and dehydrating it like crazy for long-term storage. In the past few days, reading coverage of the drought this year is what made me realize that maybe there is more going on here than just me feeling like I wanted a dehydrator really badly.

Internal Changes

I think the biggest internal changes have all come from one big thing recently: more frequent scripture study. Carl and I started studying our scriptures together daily as a couple, using some church lesson books as kind of a guide.

Just this past week, I started using theology books to guide my personal scripture study, and I've been taking copious notes in the margins of my scriptures. It has been SO enlightening. I have found myself hungering for the scriptures--the more I read of them, the more I want to read more of them. I've read all the scriptures, with the possible exception of some of the later books in the Old Testament, and some scriptures, like the Book of Mormon, I've read cover to cover over and over and over again. But now that I'm starting to search them instead of just read them, it's like my mind is expanding or something. Yesterday, I learned a trove of new information from 1 Nephi--and can I tell you how many times I have read 1 Nephi? Oh, like maybe 25 times. But suddenly I see that there is so much in the scriptures hidden under the surface: little treasures you have to dig for that expand your mind and your perspective.

Last night, Carl and I agreed that the best kept secret of the Church is the scriptures. If we all understood how incredible they are, things would be very different.

Anyway. Once we started reading the scriptures more, we decided that one of us should go to the temple every week. We were really good at that for a while, and then it's been like a month since either of us went--because then we started letting things get in the way, but conveniently it turned out the temple was closed for cleaning anyway, so we don't have to feel TOO guilty, I guess. More frequent temple worship has been spiritually uplifting.

Overall, in the past few weeks and months, as Carl and I have worked on this spiritual transition, I feel that things have started to change for the better. For a long time I've felt kind of stagnant, as though I were just treading water, instead of swimming to anywhere in particular.

As I've become more and more spiritually in tune, though, I've noticed a number of new things happening. It's like all that stagnation came from me not taking my scriptures seriously enough. And now that I'm taking them more seriously (note, not necessarily seriously ENOUGH but more seriously), I'm starting to see the hand of the Lord more and more in my life and the lives of those around me. In just the past week I've had more feelings of being led by the Spirit than I have in probably months.

I'm not where I want to be just yet, internally or externally--but we're getting closer. I can finally look at myself and be truly pleased with how far I've come.