How To Smell Like An Onion
I want to cry each time I work out. The whole process is like peeling a layer off of an onion. And that onion is me. After a good workout, I smell like an onion no matter how many essential oils I have slathered on my skin. And my {emotional} heart is raw and weepy.
I recently ran for the first time in years. I didn’t just jog . . . I ran. {Run, Forest, run!}
I R.A.N. folks, but not to Iran.
Which means, I pee’d. (Just keeping it real – cause that’s how I am. In a truly in a round-about way, I want to give you self-sacrificing mamas hope that it is possible to run . . . and one day it will be possible to run without needing to borrow your child’s diaper. You will have your body back in due time.)
You just have to want it bad enough to fight for it. I don’t think there is any easy way around the battle of the bulge.
My inability to cross my legs while running creates embarrassing situations. Can you imagine if I ran on the treadmill – or rather hopped criss-cross-applesauce with the rotating belt!? What a spectacular gym client I would be! Instead I arm myself with dark pants and a hoodie belted around my hips – that is, until my pelvic floor improves with Pilates Reformer. This Pilates Reformer — it seriously looks like a torture machine, except it’s not.
Inviting Change: Savoring the Smell of an Onion
Inviting change into your life is hard work. It is no simple task to commit to healthy thoughts, intentional moments, and a god-honoring physique.
The people who know their God will display strength and take action. Daniel 11:32
But as I read Sally Clarkson’s book, Own Your Life, I am inspired to keep slicing those thin layers of brownish decaying onion-like flesh off of my inner and outer self, which is dying to thrive.
Sally writes, “It’s not just possible to life a full, flourishing life; God actually designed you to live this way.”
There is nothing wrong with flourishing.
Do you realize this? This was like a jaw dropping revelation to me.
Quite honestly, I don’t know that I fully grasped that we are meant to thrive – to flourish. It reveals God’s glory. His power. It shows that the life He gave us is WORTH living. Worth fighting for. Until I tasted the labors of caramelizing the onion of my life – and finding sweetness and grace through this life altering concept, I had no idea what I was missing. No idea. I have missed so much.
So much fun.
How Has My Life Changed?
Flourishing has occurred through mental clarity – essentially allowing me to HEAR and understand what the Lord is sharing with me through His word.
Playing in a bounce house instead of being a bystander.
Going ice skating.
Fitting into old clothes that I haven’t seen in so long they feel like new ones.
Savoring that empowering feeling when I make healthy food choices or set my will for success and not listen to the old tapes of failure.
— the best part . . . I lost 4 pounds last week and 1% body fat. That was week 1 of the fitness challenge at my gym. Here I am after the weigh in on Tuesday. I was so happy it was hard to not cry.
I so want you to see and understand that you can be free, moms. You can flourish alongside your children. You can create heart palpitations in your husband yet.
Are you at a place in your life to commit to the labor and activity of truly thriving? I’d start with Sally Clarkson’s book, Own Your Life, quite honestly. It’s where I started. It’s how I’m learning to smell like an onion.
