katie beard guest post: you are worth it

lindsay3 Comments
While I’m in Colorado this week, I’ve asked a few friends to guest post for me. They are great friends of mine and their words have a huge influence on my life. Hope you enjoy!
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For most of my life I have been a slave to fear. Fear paralyzes. And sometimes it physically paralyzes. A year ago I weighed 20% more than what I do now. It isn’t by some crazy miracle that I have lost weight, it is simply by deciding that I wasn’t going to be paralyzed by fear and I wasn’t going to let fear paralyze me from all the fun that I want to have for the rest of my life.

In a book entitled “She” there is a quote that says, “She decided she was worth it.”

You see, for years I didn’t really think I was worth anything. I have incredible friends, an amazing church family, and a family that loves me, but I never believed I was worth fighting for. So I didn’t. I believed a lie and that lie began to paralyze me.

But one morning in November I awakened and made a decision. I was worth it. I was worth the cost of a gym membership and not just some gym, I was going to go to a great gym. As my friends refer to it, “the really fancy” Lifetime Athletic in City Centre in Houston. I went for a visit and before I even toured the place I told the guy, I am getting a membership here, so don’t think you have to sell to hard to get the quota. He did take me on a tour and I was more and more impressed … there was an indoor soccer field, basketball courts, spin studio, fitness classrooms … and all of that was on the third floor!! I was blown away. I grew up an athlete, so those were things that brought pleasure. The pools are resort-like. The locker room was nothing like the high school gym, much more like my visit to the Houstonian Country Club. I was grinning from ear to ear, but I knew inside that I had to believe that I was worth it to make this happen.

It is the second floor of the gym that I have deemed my second home since November 21st. I spend at least 7 hours there each week and it is rarely grueling though it is exhausting. I have learned to like watching TV when I work out, but mostly I like people watching and wondering what they are thinking. It is here, on the second floor that I meet with my trainer, Wayne. He is full of life, laughter, and Jesus and he loves working with me. When I say “I can’t” he makes sure that “I can” even if it means modifying something. Wayne makes sure I work every muscle and I think he sees my body as art, he is trying to fix, mold and sculpt, but I have to do all the work. By investing time and money with Wayne, I began to believe I was worth it. I show up at the gym and do work throughout the week and I meet with Wayne one-on-one as well as for his Wayne-Sanity class (it’s Insanity class plus some, and no, I never believed that I could even do that). And through all this work, my body began to change, and the results made me realize I was worth it.

But one thing that Wayne insisted early on is that I see the dietician at the gym. Fear entered in.

I knew I wasn’t worth it.

I knew that she would have lots of terrible things to say about my eating habits. I envisioned some really cranky person who was kind of like the principal in elementary school. Thankfully that has not been the case. Amanda is funny, knows her stuff, and offers tough love. She made a plan for me and I have been following it for 7 months. I just eat a whole lot of vegetables and protein and get creative when that gets boring. The best thing that Amanda did, though, was make me text her a picture of everything I ate. EVERYTHING. It’s a little annoying, but the reality is, she wanted to help and I had to be honest. I sent texts 5-6 times a day. Common responses, “great job!” or “try to get a little more protein” or “where is your healthy fat”. What I feared was being known, seen, and corrected; it turned out to be the one thing that is the game changer. You see, you can work out all you want, but if you eat garbage your body will still respond to that garbage. Eating vegetables and protein makes me feel good and my body loves it. Amanda is someone I consider a friend and she is definitely not the mean principal. With the way I feel and the things I have learned how to cook and enjoy,  I know I am worth it.

And you, my friend, you are worth it, but you have to decide you are worth it. Your journey may look really different than mine and it may not be the physical that fear is paralyzing. Maybe it is a wound from the past or relationship struggles or self confidence or just everyday life stress. You have to find a way to realize you are worth it. Fear will do anything to attack that which is good. As a follower of Christ, I believe Satan loves to wrap us in fear because we are weak and paralyzed. It is in running to Him, allowing Him to be your strength, that you can humbly walk in and get help. Maybe the place you need to start is with friends who can hold you accountable, like Amanda has held me accountable. Take a picture of how you are spending your Friday night and text it to a friend; just make sure that friend will redirect you when you need it. Or maybe you need someone like Wayne who shows up, beats the hell out of you, and hugs you when you are done. Fear isn’t going away, you have to have a plan to fight it. It’s worth a celebration when you see that you have overcome something big in your life.

Go. Fight evil and grow glory. You will see the results and know that YOU ARE WORTH IT.

Katie and her trainer, Wayne after a workout.
Katie and her trainer, Wayne after a workout.
*Katie Beard is a wonderful friend, volunteer Young Life leader, 5th grade science teacher and student at Dallas Theological Seminary. Basically, she is awesome and if you ever get the chance to be around her, soak up every minute. 

peggy ray guest post: story

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While I’m in Colorado this week, I’ve asked a few friends to guest post for me. They are great friends of mine and their words have a huge influence on my life. Hope you enjoy!

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The past few years I have been enthralled by the importance of “story” in society. I’m less and less moved by ideas and arguments and more and more by stories. Because of this I have practiced listening to the life-stories of my friends and family. It’s so beautiful to hear the story of someone you’ve never met and sit in wonder at how his or her life has come together. It is sometimes even more awe-inspiring to hear the story of someone you know very deeply. My best friend and I have known each other since 7th grade but our senior year of college we sat down and narrated our lives to one-another. It was incredible to unite my experience of her life with her own.

Another journey I have been on is one to understand the Bible. I have been reading this book just about every day since I learned to read and yet I haven’t read all of it. One reason for this is my lack of discipline. While on one hand I have read the Harry Potter 7 book series multiple times (at least the first 5 books), this one book I could never master. The other reason is that I just had difficulty reading and understanding the Bible. It all seemed so random and irrelevant to me. But in recent years I have begun to see the story of the Bible bleeding through each line. The interesting thing is the storyline of the Bible is something I have been taught from a young age, but I never saw it as a story. As I have studied and read the different stories I have seen the hundreds of characters, places and happenings weave themselves into one overarching narrative that tells the story of God and his creation.

The themes of creation, rebellion, redemption and restoration intertwine to form the narrative of Scripture using a myriad of other stories. I love getting to know God through stories rather than simply lists of his attributes, which have never really moved me. So many times I have heard someone list off how good God is: he is good, great, he is loving, he is kind, he is wonderful, mighty, tender… All this is great but it never gave me the goosebumps I felt I was expected to have. Slowly getting acquainted with God through reading about his dealings with people since the beginning of time is far more satisfying to me. There is a simplicity to it that shows itself to be genuine.

The story the Bible tells is true. It is the true rendition of the world and the God who made it. But I must admit there are many days when I look around or search my own heart and the story of a loving God who made me and died for me seems irrelevant and disconnected from reality. But this is where our faith comes in. Though sometimes the most beautiful story of all time, the gospel, doesn’t seem to jive with reality; it is in fact more real than reality.

I think of it like the movie Big Fish. The whole movie the father is telling these elaborate stories the son can’t stand because they are not real. We, the audience can see these beautiful fairy tales happening before our eyes and we fall in love with the father as he tells the story of his life. At the very end of the movie they are at the father’s deathbed and he asks his son to tell him how it happens, “Tell me how I’ll go,” he says. The son slowly but surely begins to tell his father the end of his life, the finale of his story. You can see it in his eyes that for the first time he believes the story of his father’s life is true. As the son tells his father’s story you see that he finally believes what his father always knew; that the story is more real than reality.  The story of God is hard to believe, it is so other than our reality and yet it truly is more real than reality. God is real and he loves us. His story is written in the Bible, begging for us to read and take part in the grand theater of life.

*Peggy currently lives in St. Louis where she attends Covenant Theological Seminary. You can see that she loves story. She also loves music. It’s the way to her heart, so if you’d like to get to know Peggy visit her music blog Arbitrary Passions.