Getting Rid of the Baby Fat

Well, it's time to lose the baby fat. I've had four beautiful babies and I gained a little more permanent weight with each one, but the latest pounds have been the trickiest... The ones I gained after one of those babies got married... when my littlest girl got married. Wasn’t it yesterday that I was getting out of a 7pm movie with her dad? Could it have been 23 years ago that we wandered over to the DQ for a strawberry misty cooler, two weeks overdue with an appointment the next day with the dentist and an appointment for ANOTHER ultrasound ...when  I finally just looked at Andrew and said, “Take me to the hospital; I'm having this baby.” I had plunked my butt in that waiting room and wouldn't go home even though they said my contractions were just false labour and they had been stuck at 10 min apart for days... ‘til they finally called Dr White and she came in to see me and said a more patient doctor would send me home and wait but she wanted to see this baby so she was going to rupture my membranes so this little sweetheart could just slide on our into the world. And that's just what she did. Dr White broke my waters at midnight and Jessica was born 45 min later... that dear lady held that baby up and said she thought this one was 7 lbs 4 oz and that’s what she was. I held that little miracle and she grasped my finger and looked in my eyes and nursed right away and fell asleep and I called and cancelled my appointments with Dr Ingham 🦷 and with the ultrasound Dept 💕

How was this not just yesterday? 

I'm just thinking, when your youngest baby was born 18 years ago, baby weight is no longer a viable nor credible excuse...this extra 50 pounds I'm sporting, though lovely and matronly and curvy, is now officially a cookie baby, it's raising my blood pressure, decreasing my flexibility and endurance, hurting my feet, putting me at risk for type two diabetes or heart troubles; maybe even shortening my lifespan... Ain't nobody got time fo that. I love hanging out with my children and granddaughter, playing, swimming, hiking, getting smeared with ice cream at the annual Bayswater Beach Bash by them (angry face, Ted Beeler). 

So I've read Mark MacDonald's book Body Confidence and I've been listening to LIFE fitness cds in preparation for my new and forever approach to food. I've had results with diets before, they definitely have worked for me, but I'm not interested in doing this again, EVER, and I'm DEFINITELY not interested in what always has happens AFTER my diet results. Which has been for me to put it back on plus 10. No way. I'm doing this once. And the only way will be to change the way I think about food. That will change my habits, and that will give me the results I want.

My hero Lana did it: entered and PLACED in her first ever fitness competition. My bestie Catherine cheered me on with the words, "make the decision to do this once, Sonya" ( she has since placed second in a fitness competition too!) My best boo Marcia tied her weight loss and fitness goals to her effectiveness and transparency and consistency as a leader, lost her weight and inspired  her team...and that resonates with me deeply. 

If you ask me to list the top priorities of my life, I'll rattle 'em off: God, family, health... And yet I live my days in a way that doesn't reflect health as the third priority of my LIFE. Which means it's not a priority. Ouch. 

I've been listening to a teaching pack on finances and in one of the CDs, it says something that made me pause, brush midair, step off the ladder and rewind the cd back to hear it again. And what's funny is, I've heard him say it loads of times. I've even listened to that cd before many times. I've even SAID it to people. But like Lana says ALL the time, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." What I heard on the CD was this: most people don't have a financial problem; they have a wisdom problem." I immediately recalled what I heard said last week, "you don't fix money problems with more money. You fix money problems with better information. How you help a kid get from grade two to grade three is you teach him a whole bunch of new information."

I love that!

Andrew took me on a honeymoon...23 years delayed, mind you, but it was TOTALLY WICKED! After our FIRST daughter Gaëlle got back from the Disney Cruise she and Jordan went on for their honeymoon, she convinced her dad that we should be the next people we send on a honeymoon, so Andrew booked it and we counted down the days.

As the date drew closer we thought a lot about the bodies we WISHED we had for this trip, but instead of going on a crash diet to try to lose weight BEFORE the cruise, we started dreaming about
the kinds of food we'd be able to eat and the activities we'd have time to do WHILE we were cruising. So when we hit the buffet we were PSYCHED about the seafood and colourful fruit and
veggie choices... We ate all the best, most colourful foods and we made sure we ate a nice variety every three hours, finishing off the day with an elegant dinner with friends and a small delicious dessert we could share.

We found out that three laps of the ship was a mile so we were excited about how many laps we could do each day and how much we improved over the course of our eight day visit. We went on hiking tours and went swimming several times a day and  ONLY took the stairs, planning our day around ensuring we had to walk the farthest and do the most stairs. We came home  lighter, fitter and thinking completely differently about the way we  feed and  care for our bodies. I'm a little over halfway to my goal to lose fifty pounds and I'm so excited and pleased about how much more energy I have and how much stronger I feel. My blood pressure is consistently excellent and I don't seem to need naps to get me through the afternoons! But the best result has been by far how much more I believe in my own ability to change and grow and keep the promises I make to myself. I feel like a champion every day.

Now that little Jessica, born just yesterday but somehow a full grown married lady now, is an incredibly disciplined, fit encourager and has agreed to coach me into shape! Here we go, Jess! Let the adventure begin!!!

"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have 
received from God? You are not your own;" 1 Corinthians 6:19

Out of Nowhere

It can come out of nowhere. 

We were in a meeting at the firehall, bunch of us learning and soaking up some courage from Phil and Catherine Wall. Andrew and I were excited to be there together with our friends, since we so often don't seem to be able to go to these meetings together; schedules so full we're pulled in different directions. 

I was carrying a little sadness in my heart for a former neighbour who had passed away that morning after a very sudden, short battle with cancer. There really wasn't a battle. It blew in like a maritime storm and dragged her out to sea. So I was more than a little introspective, and very conscious of the brevity of this life.

My phone buzzed with the message, 

I texted back, that no one had, thinking he and Brittany might be expecting again, or wondering if he'd been hurt in some way, or that maybe it was about something he was going to sing….I'd just had a nice afternoon with the Fletchers and their dear baby girl a few weeks earlier so I hoped this news was that it was another baby on the way, even if it WAS soon...They made such a great family and I'd loved hanging out with them that day at Adam and Carito's. 

So at the first break, I dashed outside with my phone to call Heather.

Like I said, it can come out of nowhere.

It can take you to your knees.

Heather told me she had bad news; that Jonathan Fletcher was gone. He had died. A brain aneurism during or before or after he was onstage at his morning worship service, singing. 

Jonathan Fletcher was always singing. He was wonderful at it. Whether it was a praise song or a perfect rendition of Ursula the sea witch’s “Poor Unfortunate Souls”… he was brilliant… And he was 31. He couldn't NOT be. Heather  must have got it wrong  somehow. I cried alone in my car for a half hour until Andrew came out to find me. I somehow choked this terrible news to him. He was stunned, thinking, as I had, that Heather had somehow got it wrong. 

Even now, I can't really talk about it, and my eyes are too blurred with tears to keep typing…

I've so often heard people say, "It's never too late," and I just want to shake them and look in their eyes and somehow convey to them that that is simply not true. Terrible news can come out of nowhere, bringing with it a too late. Chris Brady is FAMOUS for saying, "There IS a too late," but I've known it to be true since the day my mom died thirty years ago from cancer and the three grueling years of on and off again chemotherapy that went with it… that same morning while we waited for mom to slip into eternity, I’d been brought to my knees by another “ too late” as I numbly scanned the newspaper and found that my high school friend Jill Punch had just died at age 18. I knew it when our best friend Ted died at age 20 of a brain tumour; when Jackie Lewis, in her early thirties, died suddenly after a trip down south; when Andrew told me that my friend Catherine’s beautiful daughter Jennifer had been killed suddenly on the highway a few miles from our home at Christmas time; when Jordan's uncle was lost suddenly in a fatal accident last month...

And I was to get another call the week following Jonathan's death, as my brother in law died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving my nieces lost and heartbroken.

It just came out of nowhere. 

So when I got a call last week from my stepmumm, I dropped to my knees when I heard the words," I have some bad news."

It WAS bad news, but, dear friends, though I cried for a solid hour on the phone with Deb, I was filled with this inexplicable thankfulness. 

Dad has cancer. And it's bad. But it's not too late. This is not our too late. I still have my dad and we still have time. Time to talk and laugh and cry and hug and look at each other and learn from each other. We'll talk about life and love and we'll talk about family and friends and art and nature and faith. We’ll talk about good news.  

Bad news.

It can come of nowhere.

I'm so glad we still have time

To talk about good news.