Made in the Image and Likeness

Welcome to my 3 part blog on looking deeper at some of the values I hold. This came out of a paper I wrote for a class I am currently taking at St Bernard’s School of Theology and Ministry. Hope you find it inspiring and fulfilling. I thought it was great time since we are currently in Lent. 

All my life people have reminded me that I am "made in the image of God." It's a nice thought, and probably one that at times I used to try to remind myself of my own value as a human being. However at times it has been one that I have had a hard time accepting. In reality, "Made in the image of God" is an audacious claim and carries some responsibility with it. We all know we are not gods, and at times I can think that I felt very far from being even close to this claim. However while it is true that I am not God throughout my life I have come to see how I am godlike.

It very hard for us to ignore that fact that we are like God, when you look at Genesis it talks about how God created man and women in his image and likeness (126-27). So in many ways in being human we are meant to fully reflect God through everything we are and do, from our intelligence to the relationships. While this is a powerful statement it’s is one that I have had a hard time fully allowing myself to believe through my life.

So, what does it mean to be created in God's image to me now? I view it as that we each are almost a snapshot of God. I have found the more I embrace that God loves me and that he created me in his imagine I am more able to following my own path to  fulfillment and what God desires for me. I feel the greatest pleasure and wholeness when who God made me to be is fully developed and expressed.

But in what ways have I come to see how I am made in the image of God? I come back to how I see God in myself that If I could take a snapshot of God, what would we see and what would it reveal about humans created in God's image?

First way I found how I was in the imagine and likeness of God was through dancing. We know that God is creative, he created everything on earth and every one of us. As humans we make things. Artists make things with paint. Poets, writers, philosophers and lawyers make things with ideas and the compelling use of words. Every human has the capacity to make things, to create, because we are all made in the image of a creative God.

 So for me I came to see this through dancing. I danced from the time I was five through my undergraduate degree. I still dance to this day but not at the same level I once did. It was an outlet but also became a place I created. I can remember choreographing the “dream” part of the dance of the gym in West Side Story. In it I moved around the stage making Tony and Maria get closer to each other. It was creative but after a number of people told me how moving it was. Later I was able to choreograph a number of liturgical dances for youth masses that Diocese of Buffalo put on, I began to see how I could use my gift to glorify God but more and more realized that my ability to create was given to me by God.

How I communicate I believe is another way I see how God has created me in his likeness, because God communicates. The human ability to think and reason, to use language, symbols and art, far surpasses the abilities of any animals. This gift was bestowed when the communicative God's image was imprinted on us.

One of the clearest examples of this in my life I can remember is when I was a sophomore in college I worked on a program called Young Christians at Work. The program took place during Holy Week and because I went to a state university I didn’t have time off from classes, but really felt called to working on the program. I worked with my teachers and got all my work done before hand to go and have to really talk my boss at work into letting me go. At the time I was working full time and didn’t have vacation time to use, so I worked two twelve hours days before leaving for the program. I really thought I was just going because I loved and enjoyed the program as a teen and wanted to still help out. However once I started to work at the program I realized I was there for a greater purpose. That year there was a very quiet girl that year who really broke down during an activity and as I tried to calm her down, I realized she recently lost her cousin during the war and felt so alone. I shared with her about losing my brother and how I knew they were still watching out for us and there when we needed them. I was able to connect and communicate with her on a level that helped her start healing. Later that year I received a letter from her thanking me again, something as simple as communicating help someone more through a very difficult situation.

The last way I found that I am made in the image and likeness of God is in my relationships. The phrase, "Let us make man in our image" reveals an "us-ness" in the very nature of God. The very essence of God is relational, and that essential quality has been imprinted on humans. This capacity for a relationship with God extends to humans, which is why the Genesis story declares that God created Eve for Adam because "it is not good for man to be alone." I have come to a deeper understanding of how I am made in the image of God through my relationship with others. Many times they have been the ones to see God in me when I am not able to. During the hardest and darkest parts of my depression and eating disorder, I didn’t see at all how I was made in the image and likeness of God. However is was those I was in relationship with, my friends and family who saw amazing qualities in me that God had been given me, even when I couldn’t. It was through relationship that I was first able to again see God in my life and in myself. 

Hitting the hard part of transformation

When I started this great idea of personal growth and started to map out what I was going to do and when, I felt excited, energized and in control. However one thing I forgot is that personal growth is messy and doesn’t always go the way we plan.

I forgot that I have things to work through and many times it takes longer than my timeline would allow. One area for me is with my eating. I been really enjoying my new lifestyle of eating healthy and trying to focus on how food reacts to my body. However I also must admit that I also effect what food I put in my body. I am an emotional eater, and it goes way back to my childhood. I guess that I could try to come up with a number of reasons why I eat the way I do however in truth most of them are just excuses and half-truths.

So here I am about a month into this whole transformation and we are at the point where I need to take a look at the work I have done and figure out what to do next. So what have I done?

While first I have some much needed personal time and time to celebrate my amazing friends and their personal successes. I have been getting workouts in and reconnecting with my body. However I have also fallen off my eating and not listen to my food voice like I should be. So the scale is back where it was when I started however I am not giving up.

One thing about me is that I am a survivor in truth all humans are. We are meant to change, grow and deal with challenges.  Sometimes they can get overwhelming and we can end up in Pity City (this is where I go and eat really bad!) but we need to drive out of Pity City and enter the land of our creation.

What do you want to create? I am sick of living life the way people tell me to and want to start living a life of my design. That can be scary, I love rules and following them so making my own seems crazy. But how do you ever get to the next level without challenge what is and how things are done?

So where am I: tired, overworked and trying to find a new way. What I know is that getting past how I am feeling and to a new reality is going to take work, saying no to some stuff and saying yes to new stuff.  What I keep telling myself is that its ok to put myself first and to focus on me a little bit. If I am not whole, then I have nothing to give but junk. 

We are 11 days in!

Wow it’s hard to believe how much life has changed over the past couple weeks. A quote I love is that in life you are either finishing a crisis, in the middle of one or about to start crisis. That is very true for me, a couple weeks ago I never would have thought I would be moving and rearranging my life. However sometimes there are bigger plans then the ones we have for ourselves.

 I knew with my move that I wanted to live in a healthy way of my own design. I wanted to use this time to dedicate to myself, my health, my happiness and to my future. Finding balance is something I have always struggled with in my life. I say Yes more than No, even when I want to say no.  And while I know I have unlimited potential, sometimes I over esteem what I can all do at one time.

Focusing on me seems really selfish at times to me still but I am working on that as much as I can. I was lucky to have a holiday weekend to start up with transformation and allow me to settle into my new place, do touches to make it feel like home and figure out what a perfect day for me looked like.

So what does it look like? It starts with breakfast in the morning follow by weight training and getting ready for the day. Lunch is usually still a busy time but making sure I have good options that fill me and I enjoy finally nighttime is when I do a little yoga, journaling and reading. I am trying to keep work at work and home at home. Living alone at times has been hard; it’s hard not having someone to come home to or to talk about my day with. I have found the journaling is really helping me process my feelings and move through this change in my life.

I can’t really totally tell the changes in my body so far, I know that I feel better eating the way I have been, with very limited meat protein, no dairy or gluten.  I have been really focused on my water intake and trying to get 8-10 glasses in every day.

Helping in all of this has been an amazing book by Bethenny Frankel called Naturally Thin. Bethenny wrote the book awhile back, I believe it’s her first book she released. In the book she talks about not dieting but instead using common sense rules that will help you move through life being in touch with what she calls your “food voice”. Your food voice helps to tap into what you want to eat, when you want to eat it, and how much of it you want to eat. The book then goes into more details on these rules.

 So how have I used the book? First the idea that your diet is your bank account and they you have to treat it that way, you want to end every day feeling like you have a balance bank account…and if you don’t then you have to adjust the next day. It’s about your overall picture not the calories.

Something else that I have been trying to do as much as possible is not doing anything else while eating, trying not to be doing homework, watching TV, checking emails while eating. That way I can really focus, taking my time and listen for when my body is telling me it’s had enough. How many times do we eat and don’t remember what the food tasted like?

These have been big shifts in my thinking and I continue to make naturally thin changes as I am going along, did I magically drop 10 pounds?  Well, no (duh) but I feel more in touch with my body then I have in the past for sure.

So what is next? This weekend I am off to cheer on an amazing young woman as she competes for the title of Miss America. I will get to spend time with some of my favorite pageant people, see Atlantic City and recharge my batteries a bit. Biggest challenge will be that I won’t be on my perfect schedule or be cooking my meals. I am really going to have to put some of Bethenny’s ideas to the test and I will let you know how I do.

My updated workout pictures can be found on the Facebookpage!

Day Four

While I survived the move, which was all done over the course of a week in 89-90 degree temperatures and trying to guess when it might rain. It was defiantly hard and at times so exhausting I just wanted to throw my hands up and give up. However I am so blessed to have some many people encouraging me and helping along with it that every time I felt like giving up, I got right back up and keep on moving.  One of my very good friends sent me an amazing message right after the break up happen, reminding me that I am one of the strongest people she knows and that if anyone can get through this I can. If that doesn’t keep you moving I don’t know what will.

I am official moved into my first place where I am leaving completely by myself, it’s a studio apartment that is five minutes away where I work and central located to get pretty much anywhere in Rochester. I have crazy about finding creative storage ideas online and also figuring out what I want this new space to look like (colors will be blue and yellow with gray, cream and dark wood to accent).  I am planning on changing it around as I start to discover the new me.

I started back working out and I been really focus on being good to my body and taking care of me. It’s just a refreshing change. How often do we pour into others without pouring into ourselves? It happens so much and I feel very liberated for allowing myself time to myself.

I start every morning with weight training or cardio. I am currently using the Supreme 90 Day system and I will keep you updated on my progress as I go along. I haven’t found a review of the system where the person is completely at the end of the 90 day period. So we will see how I look after. I finish every night with yoga and journaling. It really has helped to get me on a better sleep schedule. I am trying to keep to getting eight hours of sleep whenever possible and also am very big on getting my 8-10 glasses of water in a day.

I am currently reading Naturally Thin by Bethenny Frankel and I can tell you I am loving it! It’s really changing the way I look at food and how I feed myself. Look for my full review of it coming early next week

.

How do you treat yourself during a stressful time? Through this process I am really learning to love myself through the process and try to keep a positive attitude on life and on what is coming next.  That doesn’t mean that at times I haven’t felt like a failure or so distort I am not sure what to feel  but I try to move out of “pity city” as I like to call it quickly and focus on all the amazing things that I can do now to get ready for what is next.

I know that true happiness comes from taking care of and knowing yourself first so that is where I am at. Remember to like our page on Facebook to get pictures, ideas, inspirations and check my progress!

Journey of a Thousand Miles

When I came up with the idea for this new blog looking at transformation, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what this next stage of my life was going to look like. I was going to take 90 days to prep my body, mind and soul for this new adventure. However sometimes journeys are not what they appear on the surface.

Two weeks ago, after much prayer, thought and deep soul searching, my engagement and relationship of three years broke up.  I don’t intend to get into the details of it all here out of respect to the other party and also to the respect of the relationship that while ended was a huge important part of my life for so long. I will however say that while you might know what is happening is the best thing for everyone, it doesn’t make it hurt any less or be any harder.

I do fully thank God for giving me such an amazing support system. From my family who have open their arms so lovingly to me and been such a rock through this. To my amazing extend family of friends, who have let me have space but check in, reminded me of my strength and reminded me that my future is so much more then my past. This support system is and will continue to help me talk, cry, laugh or scream my way through this process.

So what is next for me? I have a new chapter really opening, over the course of the majority of my “adult” life, I have never been single. I can remember a couple months here and there but for the most part I have always been in a committed relationship. So here I am single, living in a studio apartment alone, working, going to school and still wanting to work on the same goals I did prior to this happening but with a new focus.

So what is my new journey about? It’s about claiming who I am as an individual, being a strong, motivate individual that loves me for me. It’s about finding out about the person I am as designed by the creator and being happen with who I am in this skin.

A tall task right? Yes but I think a very important one, one that I am finally giving myself permission to take. Self-growth isn’t always easy but it’s a worthy process for those who chose to take it. 

Timing is Everything

I know what I need to do to take care of myself, I mean especially when it comes to taking care of my physical body. Every week on some talk show, they talk about the need to work out and eat right to stay in shape and healthy. However knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things.

For me one of the biggest challenges is making the time for it. I am trying to really get my career going, also trying to stay in touch with my friends and family and on top of it all I am also trying to plan a wedding. That makes my free time almost nonexistent. But really we all have the same time, it is how we prioritize and use it that really matters. For me it meant really looking at what is important and why, because if I want to change my life I need to change the way I look at everything in my life.

This is where my major issue lies, looking at my schedule stuff for other people have taken over and leave little time for me, and the time I did have I was so exhausted that I couldn't do anything if I wanted to. So I realized that I needed to start making rules about what I put into my life. When looking at my weekly plan sheet, the first thing that I had to put in (for lack of a better word) was when I needed to be at my office, and trying to make sure it is a total of 35 hours only. I need to work to make money to live however I don’t need to drive myself in the ground. Then I needed to put to put in some me time, time for the gym, cooking, planning meals. Yes that means that I will be taking away time from other things but to get where I want to get with my own personal growth I need to put it before other things. Also if I am not taking care of myself, what use will I be to others? After that I needed to put in prayer time and personal growth time. If you look at my current two weeks (see below) you will notice I don’t have a lot of that. I am working towards it however!

Finally making sure I put in time for friends and family. That’s been a little hard, however really this is trying to get to the ideal and it might sometimes fall short. I needed to make a way to really look at what I am planning and why, filling out the sheet for the next two weeks really help me have a reality check on what I am doing with my time. It was a good lesson going forward.

Meal planning is another area that I have really committee myself too. Just like with my weekly plan sheet I also plan out meals for two weeks. One so when I go to the store I know what I need, also so I know if I have a big meal plan for the next day, I will start prepping my food the night before. I made a big deal out of this for another reason also, I saw when I didn't plan what to eat I am much more likely to grab for something fast and also normally very bad for me.

Another reason is that I have been really trying to switch to a more plant based diet, where I limit my gluten, dairy and meat intake. This comes from a area of really wanted to only put the best I can into my body and to also limit the amount of chemically I put in my body also. It is a lot easy to stick to this when I am planning ahead. This has also helped me get really creative with me meals also, trying to eat this way have made me really thing about what I am eating and also how what I eat affects my mood.

One of the major questions looking at my plan sheets is the fact that I really haven’t plotted out time for my two other areas, my real focus is on getting on track with my physically health. I decided to prioritize this first is because for me it was an emergency to start with. Because I am not in a healthy place and I need to really get better. However there is another reason, for me physically taking care of myself always puts me in a better place mentally also. I get energy, and a better mood. It’s not surprise but what we eat and what we do really effects are mood. So I know by focusing here, I will also get farther in my other goals also without even focusing on it. 

Day One

Alright we are here at day one of the transformation! Yesterday, I talked a bit about why I choice to do this over 90 days. One of the reasons was because I had a couple of areas of my life I wanted to work on, and I knew that I wouldn’t able to give them all the focus all at once. I am not someone who believes in multitasking however I also believe very strongly in mapping out as much as possible ahead of time so that you are able to fit in all the pieces of your life.

Note I said believe, practically I will admit that this hasn’t been something I am very strong at. I let my commitments take over my life and then find very little energy or desire to put the effort into other areas of my life, the biggest area this is true for…Exercise! This is the first thing I push off my plate when times get busy and like anyone who has done their research about stress, those are the times I really need it the most. So I thought this might be one of the best places to start on my journey.

First, because it’s an area I have already started to try and focus on in my life. As I stated before, I have gained a good amount of weight over the last couple months and battling my weight is not all that new to me. It has been something that I started to struggle with in middle school. For me personally, many times the weight starts to come on without me even paying attention to it. I can remember not even realizing it in middle school until I developed (yes this was back before digital cameras!) a roll of film of myself and found a picture of me sitting on my couch at home with what look like a tire wrapped around my stomach. To say I was shocked, embarrassed and upset is an understatement.  

This time around I had a bit of a better idea, mostly because my clothes started to fit rather tightly and I couldn’t fit into some of my smaller sized clothing. The most upsetting part of me was when I attempted to fit into a dress I bought for Seminar (more on that in later post) and wasn’t able to wear it or any other gown in my closet.

Starting this journey I knew how important it would be to create goals for myself. My preferred method for goal setting is called setting a SMART goal. For those that haven’t heard about it, it’s a little way to not only set a goal but make sure you are able to reach and achieve it. It goes as such. For today I will use it to focus on my physical goals.

Specific. Instead of setting a general goal like wanting to lose weight, I wanted to take a real look at what my needs were in this area. Was it really to lose weight? Well no. My goal was to create a lifestyle change that would be healthier for me. Now it would be impossible for me to expect myself to work out 4 hours a day, eat nothing but a paleo diet and devote my every waking moment to creating a lifestyle. So I need to really look at what I wanted to accomplish over the 90 days and what my resources are. For me, it’s to lose the weight I have put on over the past couple months and to integrate a more balanced diet by following the guidelines of the 24 day challenge.

Measurable. My weight is a very easy thing to measure, because I have access to a scale. I also will follow my measurements and I am looking into finding someone to do my body fat percentage. My measurements and weight I have already started to track. As far as the diet goes, every day it’s looking at my fitness pal app and seeing if I am eating and following what I said I would.  I highly recommend this app because it gives you one place to store all your information.

Attainable. Can I really reach this goal? This also means looking at the time and energy I have to devote to it and see if it’s something that I can do. For me it wouldn’t be attainable to run a 5k in a month because I never have ran before really in my life. However it is attainable for me to lose 20lbs in 90 days and to expect myself to work out at least 4 times a week.

Realistic. Again, is this something that I can do in the timeframe I gave myself, that doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be hard. It will be it means really honoring this commitment to myself and to my health and to also realize that it means giving up some stuff also. There is no sense in lying to yourself by setting the bar too high or impossible.

Timely. I have built in timing however it’s also important to set smaller goals that will lead to this bigger goal. For me I am lucky I had a check in at day 10 of the challenge and will have another one on day 24. I will then make my own check in points and set smaller goals. So for example my goal for the first ten days was to lose 10 pounds. Guess what, it didn’t happen, I only lost eight but that just means I have to work harder to meet my goal of losing a total of 15 by the end of day 24.  Meaning that you should try aiming for a certain target at different points, it also helps the goal to see less overwhelming.

So there is my first SMART goal for my physical transformation, now it’s about using that for my personal motivation in my daily life. And with this goal that means scheduling and planning ahead of time.

So that is major personal task for today, to map out and plan the next two weeks in a way that I can truly stick to and while being honest but still challenging myself of what I am capable of doing.  This also means fitting in this planning between two major projects at work right now, I am prepping for our Summer Junior High Intensive Program for faith formation which will run August 12^th-16^th and getting all the final paper work into the diocese for NCYC in November. All this while going to a conference this weekend, and cheering on my friends as they run their first official Miss America local pageant Saturday…oh and did I forget to mention that I leave for Dallas on Sunday! Super excited but it means that I am super tight on time also. 

But life and personal growth isn’t always easy but it’s worth it and if we don’t start today we might never!