Just some thoughts

I must honestly tell you that writing is kind of a passion for me and yet I always feel the need to pay attention to what I write with the audience in mind; however for this post I truly just want to write what I am feeling without a thought of anything but getting what I am feeling on the inside down on paper. I have been a single mom off and on since my children were 3 and 5 years old, they are now 15 and 17 years old. My first bout of single mom-ness happened when their father and my husband of 5 years, passed away suddenly. At the time of his death I was 27 and I had been the bread winner of our family, I had worked 70-80 hour work weeks and my children had been mainly in daycare and now I was responsible for taking care of these two fragile human beings who were grieving the death of their father. At 3 and 5 they still didn't truly grasp the knowledge of what had happened to their father they just knew he was never coming home, on my good days where I could get out from the covers and focus on their beautiful little lives one of them would come to me and tell me they wanted their daddy back. I will tell you vehemently that while moving back in with my parents was hard it was also essential for my recovery, I made some bad choices while living with them but I think the bad choices would have been worse if I hadn't moved back home when my husband died. 2 years into this journey of single motherhood I would fall in love and marry my second husband. I had a (in my opinion) a fairy tale wedding and for a few months what seemed to be a fairy tale marriage, within a year of our wedding we would move from California to Florida, it would be a move that would truly be a test for me. I didn't know anyone there and wasn't sure how we were going to make it and yet today as I write this blog I am still living in Florida almost 9 years from the move and almost 5 years since my divorce.

God is faithful even when we don't make the best decisions, 5 years into our marriage (exactly 2 days from our 5th wedding anniversary) I left my husband and took my children and moved in to another house across town and begun my second stint as a single mom. My children were now 10 and 12 and they were now older children grieving in a different way. While there are many things I feel need to be said I don't feel details of my marriage or divorce serve a purpose to helping anything heal, I know what took place and the reasons I felt it necessary to leave. I have held on for many years the guilt of those years and how they affected my children, however we have now been on our own for almost as many years as I was married, and it is now my responsibility for how my kids are being raised. I love them and I love the fact that they know their mother made hard decisions even if it meant I would have to raise them on my own, however sometimes the difficulty of our lives together seems almost too hard and I don't want to do it anymore. I want sometimes to have the ability to just turn decisions about money the kids health and so on to someone else from time to time. Not that I don't love being in my children's lives I just sometimes need a break from being the only go to person in their world. I have friends that have in my opinion beautiful marriages and I honestly go through a period of regret for not listening and waiting on God for a spouse and now trying to date almost seems impossible. I just carry too much for some, I have to constantly be willing to state the blessings in my life or else I will become overwhelmed with responsibility and guilt over the things I didn't do right.

Two weeks from tomorrow I will graduate from college with my Bachelors in Psychology, I will walk across the stage with my diploma with the ability to know that I have come so far and accomplished so much and now I am ready for a new phase in my life. I am ready to fall in love and get married and spend the rest of my life knowing what it is like to love and be loved by someone who wants to be with me. The difference is that this time I will wait on God and allow Him to make the difference in my life and not try and do it on my own. Life is hard but it gets better as I trust God more, I don't always understand what comes next, I get frustrated because I'm not sure how to do the next thing or where I'm supposed to do it and so on and so forth but as long as I keep turning to God for the answers, I will never go wrong. This time of my life is all about walking day by day and step by step and sometimes I will make a misstep but in the end I will keep trusting God to move me and trust that He will never leave me regardless of my mood that day...

Just some thoughts

Almost a month ago my 21 year old nephew went to be with Jesus, in the course of time since his death I have done a lot of thinking about my life. Where I am and where I am headed, why I make the decisions I do and why I sit lazily around and allow life to sometimes just take me by surprise. Right after his death I discovered some issues with my foot and gave myself permission to not run as often or as long, and now I have had some other leg issues and I wonder if the feelings I have are affecting my running. I have to be free, I have to be able to find joy in running or its just work for me. my weight has gone up again. I keep going back and forth, I find myself eating things I know will damage my successes and I can't honestly admit that I have made efforts to be successful I sabotage my own success. I was down to 186.5 and I was running a 11 mm and I was doing 10 mile long runs. I was wearing a size 10 pair of dress pants and I was only 11.5 pounds from my goal weight. At this point  I am 212, I am back in a size 14 and I am running about a 13 mm and my longest distance is 3 miles. I am angry and I am frustrated because I can't really decide what it is I want. Everything is coming to its end, for example once I get to my weight goal then what? where do I go from there, when I run a marathon what do I do next. I have spent my WHOLE life in the midst of a battle, a struggle and a lot of fight to prove I was something more than how I feel. I spent my life around mean, belittling people who let me know on a consistent basis I had no value and no worth. I lived in a world of having to defend my ability to be more than the words they spoke, I was always in a drama filled world and now those people are all gone. I now live in a world that I am not picked on, no one uses the words of negative tongue that I had experienced, now I hear words like Amazing, wonderful, beautiful, smart and so many other nice things and honestly there are days I just feel like such a fraud. I want to scream out ....Please stop, I am non of those things, all those people that told me I was worthless, ugly and stupid they must have been right to an extent, I recognize being a child of the King means I have more  value than I could ever have on my own, but some days that just doesn't feel like enough.

I feel like a disappointment to some of those people around me, people who have stayed by my side for all these years while I keep fighting for a weight loss goal that never seems attainable. I get it weight loss and anything else in this life if I am trying to get there for others I will never get there. It is time for me to decide what I really want. I need to admit out loud, I like attention (the good kind) and yet I don't want to be a burden or a person who needs constant attention. I want to get to my goal weight this year and earn the right to be the State Queen in TOPS with a chance for International Queen and yet I have felt bad for wanting that. If being a Queen will be the thing that keeps me motivated for a while than at least I can start there. So for today there are two things I am sure of, I want to be a teacher and I want to the be a Queen or at least a Queen runner up! I have no clue about the rest or when this will transpire but I will not give up. So tonight I go to bed knowing I ran and I ate my best today!

Sometimes

I get overwhelmed by emotions, and I get overwhelmed by the state of the world I live in.  Even in my studies of education I discover how selfish we can be. I am so often put in a tail spin of emotions because I think someone has dismissed me, is uninterested in my life or has forgotten me, that I get into this poor me attitude. The truth is I have found something that is so Amazing, so wonderful, I have found a compassionate, loving, grace-giving, mercy-offered, Savior and that should be something that consistently floods my mind. I have a new mantra (it may seem silly) that I am learning to use in moments of distress and selfishness, first the human side of the mantra, I will not analyze, project or predict every situation in my life, and then the Christ side of my world is to focus on praying for someone like me. I know that I am not the only one out there that gets preoccupied in their own feelings that they lose sight of the importance of life. I know people that spend their days trying to help someone else, that wake up each morning looking forward to what the day holds for them.

I don't want to be selfish or self-serving I want to be more like Christ, I want to be able to seek out ways in which I can honor Christ in the way I live each day. I want to change my focus from the external to the ETERNAL side of life.

This is who I want to be...

Embraced by Grace and Humbled by Mercy!
Stephanie Stephan

Choices

It all comes down to choices, I have to choose everyday how I want to live. I have to choose if I want to do what God has called me to be or if I want to stay under the covers and pretend that this life is all about me. I have freedom in Christ before I was enslaved to sin and the world that my sin belonged to. I am under the blood and redeemed at the cost of death on a cross, I am anticipating something so much greater than what this earth can offer. With that said the goal is to bring as many people to Christ as possible, and how do I do that? I do that by living for Him in a way that sets me a part, that makes people take notice and maybe every once in awhile say "why are you loving, forgiving, encouraging", why do you show grace when others are angry and condemning, because I was once lost and now I'm found. I want like any person that is found to be grateful for being found, for being loved, for being wanted. Today when my alarm clock goes off I have a choice whether I will get up and shout His praises or whether I will stay in bed or in my pity, or in my own selfish ways, because I am not able to bring others to Christ under my covers, I have to live out of the covers I have to be out showing love, grace and mercy to others. I have to spend my days with my children, with my friends, with family and with others loving them in such a way that Christ gets glory and I am a witness to the God that gives me grace who loved me first so that I could love others.

Forgiven by Grace,
Stephanie Stephan

07/31/2012

Two weeks from today I will have finished my college degree in Psychology and will have returned to work at the elementary school that I work for and will be preparing to get my temporary teaching certificate. WOW! That's the only word I know to say, I am amazed at the journey I am on. However here is the point I must bring out. I love Ho Ho's, I love pancakes, I love anything with the word cake, chocolate or cream in it however what I want more than anything is to finish this year at my goal weight of 160-170, that would actually make it way more worth it to say I gave up cakes, chocolates and creams because there was something that was so much greater to me. I know if you know me long enough you know that this goal has been there for awhile, but for the first time I really understand what it means, I understand what it means to not get there, what it means to get so close and what it means to utterly fail and gain back 44 pounds, so here I sit with 30 or less pounds to lose and its my choice now how I let this play out. I can choose to make it matter, I can make my life something more than just what food I can eat next to how can I utilize this new day, this new creation that is my life be lived in a way that is more productive and gives God the glory that He and He alone deserves.

My life, my weight loss, my running is all about giving God glory for turning my life inside out and making it new, making it worthwhile. I am valuable to God, the world may not see me that way but GOD DOES!

Mirror Mirror

Mirror mirror on the wall what do you see? 4 years ago, I looked at the mirror and asked that question, and while my mirror didn't talk back to me like Snow White's evil stepmothers did, I recognized I didn't like what I was looking at. I saw a woman that was sad, angry and frustrated with who she was, I was 370 pounds, divorced raising two kids on my own and completely lost. I lived to go to work, eat and sleep, that was my life in March 2008 before I began my journey to a better me. That day everything changed for me, I didn't like the story the mirror showed me. I had overcome being a widow, living through an abusive marriage and taking care of myself and my kids financially on my own, I had moved into my own place and was taking care of the necessities of life but it wasn't enough. It was time for me to make more changes, I needed to make health a priority, I had to become more than just an existence but to really live. So that day I made some huge changes I became part of a 12 step group for food addiction, found a sponsor and made a determination to do things differently, I surrendered to God, I decided He had to know better than me. Nothing and I mean nothing has been the same since that day 4 years ago.

Mirror Mirror on the wall what do you see? I see a woman who has lost 200 pounds, who has run 3 half marathons, who regularly exercises and runs, who is 4 weeks away from a college degree, 4 weeks away from a 2nd year at an elementary school, I see a woman who has believed that God is all she needs and is the strength to get her through any situation. I see a woman that is for the first time willing to face her fears one by one, a woman to do challenging things including training for a full marathon right before she turns 40 years old. I see a woman that truly believes what Ephesians 3:20 says, that God truly does things that are more than we ever expected.

In 4 years my entire world looks different, I am not only not the same size but the inside is filled with joy, hope and anticipation of what God has next. The journey isn't always easy, but how would I ever know how strong my God is if it was always easy. I have embraced challenges and in the process discovered a woman that I am proud to look in the mirror and see. Because I no longer see me, but Christ who lives in me.

Mirror mirror on the wall, I hope you always see the Stephanie God wants me to be, no less!

Just a 7 mile run

I recognize that for many people running 7 miles whether it's all running or a combination of running and walking, cannot fathom doing so if they haven't done it in a long time. Well my friend found out through a status update that I posted that I was going to be doing a 7 mile run and she volunteered to come out with me. When she came with me the next morning my trainer asked if she had done it before she said no but that she was up for it, when we went out she did great, however at one point to stick to my training routine I had to leave her behind, but I said I will just go up and come back, well on my way up I realized I would have to cross this major street, so instead I made a left instead of crossing over the major intersection. I never looked back to see where she was, if I had I may have realized she was coming up on me faster than I knew, anyway I thought of her for a second and thought oh I can do this quick enough that I won't miss her. I turned around and came back when I had the right amount of distance to  give me the 7 miles. I didn't see her, and as more distance passed going back to where I started I became more nervous about her having gone and crossed the street. I had decided I would just go back to my car as quick as I could to get her. Eventually as I was running back I could hear her come up from behind me. She did exactly what I was afraid of, she went over the major intersection and kept going for a while until she realized that there was no way I was that far ahead of her, so she turned around. For both of us we recognized we lost our partner and while we both just did what was the important thing to do, go back to where we started so we could look for the other, it was a scary moment to realize you don't know where your partner is. This is important in the Christian race I run too, it is important to know where my brothers and sisters are, is there ways to keep them on the path, to stay beside them, however if I need to go ahead for awhile to know where the other is, but most important to run back to the source Jesus, who will help locate and reconcile those to him that get lost. I learned a valuable lesson out there that day and I truly didn't like that feeling.