I've gained ten pounds this year. It was composed of cupcakes, lattes, pizza, and whatever else entered my piehole. I've been running and working out like normal, but the weight still has decided to camp out on my body.

I think every person in the world that has tried to lose a pound, has had the trying experience of getting one little number to change on the scale, and finally seeing it move, and then after eating an extra fry, ta-da! It's back!

Weightloss seems simple. Eat less. Move more. Get skinny. But it excludes things like break-ups, make-ups, job functions, birthday parties, holidays, emergency fast-food, red cups, movies, gelato, aging, etc. Food is fun and tasty. I don't want to not enjoy life, but I also miss my pants fitting.

Since my Roku arrived, I have added being a TV junkie to my list of reasons why pounds seem to be clinging right now. I can't stop watching episodes of 30 Rock. I literally say to myself, "Okay...just one more hit..." I have an addiction.

In the second season, Jenna, one of the show's stars, gained a large amount of weight over the summer. She debates plastic surgery, until she realizes that her accidental quote of the phrase, "Me want food!" makes her a media maven. She realizes that she has to stay fat in order to capitalize on the new found fame. People love her fat.

Since watching that show, I've decided to embrace a chunkier me for awhile. I even quoted, "Me want food!" to myself once today. But this is also a plea of help out there to any local peeps who see me growing too quickly before their eyes. If I get to the point I need an intervention, I give you the right to make it happen.



Perhaps God is wanting me to hear a message. Or wants me to live out or absorb a story. In the last two months, I've heard the same biblical story at a retreat, a training session, a podcast, and now will hear a sermon series, all on the same story.

Maybe you need to hear the story, too, so I'm posting below. I'll try to remember to do a follow-up to things God has put on my heart through this story. I know one main lesson is to be purposeful with conversations and being aware of people that God places around me.

My pastor once mentioned that people are either seen as ministry, machinery, or ministry. I love that statement, because it hits my heart. It wakes me up to realizing how sometimes I become so "me" focused, I forget the other living and breathing souls in my midst. And their need for Jesus--and living water.


John 4(New International Version)
Jesus Talks With a Samaritan Woman
1 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon.

7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” 8 (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.[a])

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.”


I've been thinking about the things that come out of my mouth. Do good, encouraging things come out of me? Or do I whine and complain and tell stories--although entertaining--that I probably should not? I'm trying to let God work on this in me. It's been difficult. I've never been a cusser, but I would assume it's like trying to stop cussing.

I kind of wish my body could be wired that when I said a sweet thing, I had a sweet taste in my mouth. And when I said bad things, a bad taste would form--like charcoal or something. It could be like a training tool until I just was sweet automatically.

But honestly, I really don't need a training tool, since the after effects are there. I feel so much better when I'm in a positive flow. I don't really need to berate that crazy lady honking at me at the light. Or comment about how someone else was rude--because then I am rude. After a day of dealing with things like that, I feel weighted down.

The correct flow is this: healed heart sealed by God flows thoughts to the mind which then produce words from the mouth. Somewhere in that process I get a kink from time to time, and have to ask God to do a maintenance check.

I am a work in progress.

Psalm 119:103 (New International Version) 103 How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!