Temple or Outhouse?

As a product of a parochial school education,  I often heard that "we should treat our bodies as temples."  This morning as I pushed a less than enthusiastic me outdoors for my Just 10 walk, I ran into a sobering fact.  I've been treating my body like an outhouse.  After several seconds of useless mental self-flagellation, I knew that my negative opinion of myself would only compound the problem.  Time for encouraging thoughts and a concrete plan.   Yet, I felt discouraged.  I've often come to this same realization.  My behavior has not radically changed.  I have watched an ample muffin top, replicate into a second and possibly third fold of  unwanted fat.  Why?

This simple, one-word question deserved some honest thought.  Lately,  I've watched so many friends and loved ones struggle with some difficult and often dark problems.  I've focused on them out of concern but also in an attempt to avoid my own dark corners.  It was often easy to see what others should do or what they were avoiding.  It was a lot easier to focus on them then it was to focus on what I could be doing.  This morning I left the house aware that I've been running from myself.  As much as I would have liked to lose my problems somewhere on that trail, I knew that this morning I had to walk toward them.

Conjuring up a good full-time job for my husband doesn't lie within my powers.  Making loved ones lives easier, their minds less troubled lies beyond my grasp.   The dance of avoidance has enthralled me.  It's winding down into a silly polka.    I've been bandaging my own hurts, my stress with food.  I'm a wad of sweet cream filling wrapped in a delicious, flaky butter crust.   Karma has kicked me in the keister.  I, who often quipped that many of my older female relatives were built like German beer steins.  How my physical shape resembles them now.   If I must resign myself to a beer-stein figure, I shall, but I need to make it the healthiest beer stein I can.  I've done a poor job.    Just this week, I inhaled little spiced gum drops as a medication for a day of frustration.  I can see the better choices I think others should make while being blind to my own.  This morning, I awoke with splinters of light shattering my self delusion.  The time  has come to tear down the outhouse and start building that temple.

This morning, almost home from my walk, my shoe came untied.  I avoided stooping, solidly planting my foot on the stone walls surrounding the neighborhood.    My fingers felt like fat sausages.  These weren't my hands.  These hands belonged to my mother or grandmother.  I watched as I fumbled with the laces, hands swollen, fingers slightly gnarled.  These can't be my hands, but they were.  They are.  I realized then that if I am to make positive changes in my own behavior, I must accept what I am, where I am and the whys of it without making excuses.   It's a lot easier to get lost in self-recrimination.  It becomes a smoke screen for not taking action.  Admitting the problem is an important first step but I'm stuck there.  Talking about change without doing the work to make change possible.  This was precisely, what I could see in the problems of others.  The obvious solutions to their dilemmas seemed clear to me.  I felt  frustrated for them.  Sometimes, I didn't always conceal this frustration.  (J. and N. my apologizes for not being the best listener.)     I was getting too close to a nerve. The harder it was to tolerate others struggles, the closer I was to realizing that I was ignoring my own problems, refusing to begin acting toward solution in the only arena in which my actions would have the greatest impact.  We humans are funny that way.  I'm funny that way.

The outhouse has to go.  It's time to start uncovering the temple.  Its rather old, rough around the edges, not as pretty as some but it's my temple.  The position of caretaker is open.  It's time I applied.