February 15, 2010

Have you ever felt like life is just spinning you around and around in circles, until all you can do is keep spinning around in your own little self-created rut?

Ok, ok... maybe its not all that bad, but this one thing is for sure: Life is a challenge.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, or as some refer to it, the ever-so-hideous-and-miserable "Single's Awareness Day". Now, when I was a teenager, or even in my more recent "twenty something" years, I may have had a problem with this day, but not so much anymore. I have no real problem with being single. I enjoy who I am, and I enjoy working on myself every day to ensure that I am a better person. Who has time to do that when you're in a relationship?

Recently I have decided that I would like to make a "lifestyle change", in that I would like to change the way I eat, exercise and live in order to lose some weight. Since January 7th I have given up eating meats, sugars and dairy. All I now consume are whole grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables and the occasional bean. It has been a challenge, but from Jan 7-Feb 7th I lost ten pounds! I was ecstatic, so I decided to go a little more hard core in that I will reduce my salt intake to little to none and I will drink at least two bottles of water with every meal (this has taken an interesting toll on the hours following lunch at work, but I will just leave that to your imagination ;) ).

Overall, I am very blessed. Even when days like yesterday try to challenge me, I just remember that Jesus is the only Valentine I need. I was in the car taking a load of teenagers to church yesterday morning, and I started silently conversing with God. I told Him Happy Valentines's Day. It made me smile a little inside and out. Shorty after that (5 minutes tops) I looked up through my car's sunroof and I saw in the fog of the glass a perfectly outlines cross with beams of light coming out of it. I pointed it out to the kids in the car and then the light turned green and we moved on. What the kids don't know, however, is that I have no idea where that came from. It probably seemed to them that maybe there used to be a sticker in that place and the sun just burnt the image into the glass, but I know better. I spent the better part of an hour tonight trying to fog up that glass and see the image again. I looked at it from every angle and with every sort of light possible, but there was no image. Before yesterday, I had never seen that cross on my car. Today, it is not there either. I don't know about you, but I think God sent me a Valentine.