Great God...

Great is thy faithfulness, oh God my Father.

There is no shadow of turning with thee.

Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not.

As thou hast been, thou forever will be.

Great is thy faithfulness, Great is thy faithfulness,

morning by morning, new mercies I see,

All I have needed, thy hands hath provided,

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord unto me.

<3 <3 <3 <3

Visiting Orphans

There's an organization that I've just learned about called Visiting Orphans. They organize mission trips to go do just what their name says: visit orphans.

CAN WE SAY WHITNEY ALMOST SIGNED UP FOR ALL OF THEM?

I'm definitely praying about going on one of the trips.

Pretend time.

I have a theory. When the fat leaves my body, it'll look like this. and go to wherever the Doctor sends it to.

Little sisters and dieting

Please, bloggy-world, meet 2 pieces of my heart.

Now, that being said, day 2 of the diet=I'm feeling mehhh right now.
Bran muffins (yes, I am a 70-year-old grandma. I knit as well) are my saving grace right now (bran keeps you fuller, longer, come to find out. thank you my mother for introducing me to that little fact). Bran muffin in the morning for breakfast, apple/orange for snack, whatever low-calorie thing I can find for lunch, almonds (unsalted...yeah I had the same reaction) and tonight, steak for supper. Since I was starving and I still had over 1000 calories before my 'limit' was met, I got to have 2 servings of steak (a serving size of steak is 3 ounces, about the size o

f a deck of cards...thus my excitement that I'd get to eat more than the food required to feed an elf) and some potatoes (that awkward moment where you're cooking something that you know is gonna be delicious, but then you remember that you've put yourself on a diet...). Had a bran muffin and a glass of milk for evening snack, which leaves me at...

1837 calories. my 'limit' is 2034. So I'm still good (another class of milk, anyone?)

anyways, it did show on the scale today that I gained 3 pounds (I managed not to cry), but then I read that sometimes when diets are started kind of out of the blue (like mine was, haha), that it can send your body into starvation mode and you gain a few pounds. As long as they go off.

weight-loss journey

1, I have a new boyfriend. He's great.

2, we've challenged each other: whoever loses the most weight in 2 months wins.

3, don't know what the prize is gonna be.

anyways, I'm on the journey of, as I told one of my youth kids, not being at risk for having a heart attack by the time I'm 40. I'm not doing a specific diet plan. Just doing portion control, subbing fruit for Little Debbies, exercising, etc.

Start weight: 213 (hold your EEEKKKS, I did my own).

Goal weight: 190 (goal for now)

other goal: survive combat fitness (more on that later)

actually, i'd settle for under 200 for a weight at this point.
mind you, I'm a fairly big-boned girl. my hips are set wide, and i'm not sure if I'd ever see a jeans size under a 10 or a 12, just because of how my hips are set. But it's not about being in a smaller jeans size (although if my current jeans would fit a little better, i'd be content). It's about being kind to my body, being healthy, and moreover, respecting my body as the temple of God that it is.

this morning's breakfast: 1 serving oatmeal and an orange.

exercise this morning: 30 minutes on the Wii Fit.

afternoon plan: run/walk 2 miles.

Putting down the net.

So I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day (Y-Chomosome Bearing Version of Myself in case you were wondering). Y-Chromosome me has this unique ability to speak utter amounts of peace into my life (and for some reason I tend to listen to dude voices better than I listen to girl voices. No offense to the females in my life, but I feel like it's because I think God's voice is manly). So I was sharing with him that I have a desire to do a certain thing. Being the patient, kind friend that he is, he listened to my dilemma, my concerns, and my confusion without saying much. Then, of course, I said, 'What do you think?'

"Matthew 4."

"Que?" (i turn Hispanic when I'm confused sometimes)

'Go read Matthew 4'

'Oh. Okay.'

*Whitney goes and reads the portion of Matthew 4 that YCM was talking about, verses 18-22*

¹⁸ While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.¹⁹And he said to them, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men."²⁰Immediately they left their nets and followed him. ²¹And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. ²²Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

See, Jesus called the disciples when they were working. When they were taking care of their lives, their families, etc. But when Jesus called, they left it all aside. I'm kind of sad we don't get the backstory here, because I'd like to know how Zebedee reacted when James and John left. I'd kind of like to know how Peter's wife (they mention him having a mother-in-law in other accounts of Jesus's miracles, so I'm assuming there was a Mrs. Peter somewhere along the line) took him running off with a crazy person. But the fact of the matter is this: they left their boats and followed him. They put down their nets and followed him.

Why DON'T we do that? I'm just as guilty of it as well. 'Well, Jesus, I know that you called me to do this...but see there's this boy that I kinda want to marry, and yeah...sorry. it' ain't happening right now.' or 'So Jesus, know you've asked this of me, but I can't leave my job!' or 'Jesus, school is kinda important right now, I know you've asked me to do this, but don't you want me to finish my education?' What kind of crap do we give Jesus?

Here's the thing. When Jesus calls you, he doesn't want to hear your excuses. What we'll call our 'NETS'. He wants us to surrender all of it to Him. We're to SURRENDER. Just say YES. We spend so much time saying no to things that we forget how to say YES to Jesus. He doesn't want our crap reasons. Don't get me wrong, he cares about them. He really does. But HE CAN HANDLE IT. Surrender means we have to surrender it all to Him. Our fears, our futures, our families, our cares, our relationships, everything. We have to surrender it to Him. And He's completely sovereign and can handle our issues. We just screw it up when we try to take control.

So, if there's any encouragement I have to anyone...put down the net. Let Jesus handle it. Unashamedly and unabashedly follow your Savior with all your heart.

While you're at it, pray that I can do the same.

God Just Loves You! :-)

SO, one day, probably 2 weeks ago now, I was walking back to the BCM, wrapped up in my own little world and my own little problems. Until I passed a most curious man.

'HI' the man said with a little dance.
'Oh...um, hi!' said an unexpected me. Not unexpected because he popped out of nowhere, but slightly unexpected because he said hello, and people on sidewalks don't typically speak.
'God...He just loves you!' he said with a smile.

So, let's talk about all the things right with this completely random exchange. I've learned that while it's VERY easy to say 'GOD LOVES ME' that it's sometimes hard to live life like we believe it. I mean, honestly, sickness, heartache, confusion, depression, all of these things strike. It's very easy to feel unloved by God when you think about it. Natural human intuition says that someone who loves you does not, or does there best not to allow bad things to happen to you.

But that's the cool thing about God. He allows things to happen to us so we'll lean closer to Him. He allows things to happen.
But often times, we forget that. And then we get wrapped up in our own personal feelings. Feelings of worthlessness, feelings of being unlovable, feelings of not being worthy of anything.

So God, since He is totally crazy about us, sends us reminders.

For me, it was a bald man who reminded me that God just loves me.

I ran into him 3 days in a row. The 2nd and 3rd time, we shared a smile and a nod, like we both knew what he was saying.

So thank you, random man, for reminding me of something I needed to remember.

and if you've happened to stumble upon this silly little blog, let me remind you of something.

God...He just loves you!