The best of me is ready to begin...

I'm home sick today--feeling generally cruddy, despite starting probiotics and a multi-vitamin today. Guess you have to flush out the bad first, right?

So I dropped the kids off, came home and started sipping some coffee on the couch. I'm way behind on the DVR, so I turned on an episode of Losing It With Jillian. If you missed the show this summer, you should go to nbc.com and see if they have back episodes. It is really a great program!

Something that Jillian Michaels said on this particular episode struck a chord with me, so much so that I had to rewind and listen to the sentence again. She told the woman that she was helping that returning to yoga, which she had previously enjoyed, would be a great choice. It would be returning to something that is "the best of you." That phrase clicked off something in my head.

The best of you...

This thought has been traveling around with me all throughout these summer months-more often phrased as "the most accurate version of me." Looking around my house today, I am struck by how little my life and habits measure up to these phrases...

I am amazed at the excess we live in, and it's obvious as soon as you walk in the door: clutter, stuff we've outgrown, stuff we don't have a place for, new stuff never opened, food that's not good for us or our kids. And the biggest issue, our weight...or rather, "weights" that display themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Yet at the same time, there are so many things that are lacking, or in disrepair. We need to paint pretty much everywhere, the backyard is a mess, the front is untended. We don't sleep enough, play enough, relax enough, practice enough. How and why is it that we have so much excess in one area and yet other areas are so obviously lacking???

Is this anywhere CLOSE to the best of me?? What really IS the best of me? What is the best of my husband, my kids, our family? Where do we find it? How do we achieve it?

Jillian asked the woman, who was a smoker, if she loved her cigarettes more than her kids. As I was sipping my coffee, a long-time addiction even though it enhances my candida among other things, I was slapped in the face with the power of that question. YES I love my kids more than coffee, more than shopping, more than the foods I am allergic to. Why for so long has that not been enough? What am I looking for?

I haven't lost a lot of weight on this challenge yet, but finally the scale is starting to move a bit. But I'm realizing that these 90 days are about even more than numbers, even more than feeding other people. For so long, I have not been feeding myself...maybe because I decide others are more important, maybe because I decide I'm not worth the effort, maybe because I'm hiding. This is a new revelation to me...almost like I'm not even the one typing it.

As I enter my thirties, I so badly want to figure all this out. If I don't start feeding myself-in the ways my body and spirit need, not what I think I want-I will not be able to help others. I will not give my kids the example they need, the best one I can be. I will not achieve my goals of singing and teaching. I will not be the whole person that God has intended me to be.

What is the best of me?? Off to find out...