Balance On a Grey Winter Day

Where I live, it's The Ugly Time of Year. Never let your first visit to Buffalo be in the winter or you'll fly home feeling sad for us, well, unless you love grey skies, bare trees, dirty patches of snow, fallen branches in the streets, slick-iced sidewalks and Christmas-light wires dangling from tired old houses.

But I stepped out into the greyness in that obstacle course anyway for a walk because Tom and I have a little Who Can Lose the Most Weight By March? contest going and walking's my favorite form of exercise. Friday I weighed myself probably for the first time since the Bush administration and gasped and felt horrified. Just plain horrified. Looks like my other favorite sport--melting into the red couch while watching tv or reading--certainly caught up with me. Gah.

Yet I know better than to go all Condemnation City on myself. Obeying conviction is productive, but condemnation is paralyzing (all that heavy sabotage of, "You'll never change!"). God speaks by way of conviction--and His ways are remarkable--and both satan and my own tendency toward attempting perfection use condemnation--and our ways are pathetic. (See my sidebar for more posts about those.)

So here's a new chapter in my life, losing these sorry pounds, but don't worry--I'll not be sharing that wordy chapter here, for this isn't a diet blog, but rather, a lifestyle one (of sorts), one I hope represents variety and balance.

I so love balance. It stops me from digging ruts for myself to slog into and keeps Life fresher and more hour-by-hour interesting because of the variety of actions it requires to stay, well, uhm, balanced as opposed to lop-sided and forever behind in some ways because one area took all my time.

And so it goes.... With God, there's always something new happening (or becoming) and that's one of the things I like about Him best.


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The nifty thing, though, is the ice flow (in this super blurry photo--sorry) in the river at the end of our street. Always, it reminds me of Alaska. (Though the folks who live near there aren't in love with the ice jams and threat of flooding.)

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"There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."   ... Romans 8:1


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We're at 34 degrees--Springtime feels near! :)