I have come to realize that this journey will be harder than I thought.  I am not discouraged or anything, but I don’t want my posts to all be about the positive experiences.  There are always going to be struggles, and I understand that.  I just went through a few pretty rough days, but I have learned some really incredible things about myself.  Some of this is kinda deep, but I hope you can understand what I am talking about because realizing this has helped me to look at my life from a whole different perspective.  So, here it is.

Since I started this journey, I realized that being over weight is not about the food.  I knew that, but I did not truly understand that until this week.  The food is not the reason that I am over weight.  It goes much deeper than that.  It is on a much more emotional and spiritual level.  My large body is a result of a lack of spiritual understanding in my life.  This situation is way too big for me to handle on my own.  I have an addiction to food, and it will take nothing less than divine intervention to help me overcome it and maintain it. 

Something really interesting happened to me this week.  While I was at work, I was walking to my classroom.   I walked past a reflective window and I got a good look at myself.  Here is the interesting thing.  I saw my torso in the window, but I saw a glimpse of myself with a small torso.  I was shocked!  I actually saw myself  as a smaller person.  We won’t talk about how that happened, but miraculously, it did.  I think this is a way that the Lord is trying to help me to get to the root of my over eating.  That brief vision of myself was amazing.  I have never seen myself look small before.  It was an incredible feeling!   At that moment, I was really happy.  I had a visualization of what I was going to look like when I got smaller, and I liked what I saw.  Before that happened, I set a goal of going to Busch Gardens and riding a roller coaster.  All of this positive stuff lead way to something unexpected.

The very next day after seeing myself small, I set aside all of those feelings, and I went and purchased a bag of jelly beans.  The following day, I bought another one, and I ate some of my mom’s cake and ice cream from her birthday party.  Don’t get me wrong; eating cake and ice cream from time to time is not necessarily a bad thing, but for me at that time, I was right in the middle of a period of binging.  When I sat down to reflect on the past two days, I realized what had just happened.  My subconscious was trying to prevent me from losing the weight.  It was like I went into protection mode.  I have been reading a book that a close friend gave me, and this very thing is described in the book.  There are two parts to my consciousness.  There is “a thin me and a not thin me”.  To explain this in a way that I understand it best, there is Rechel and there is Kyeni (pronounced Chainy).  The name Kyeni was given to me by my husband when we were married.  It is a name that is of the Kikamba language in Kenya.  It means:  “light.”  Isn’t that interesting?  Rechel is the not thin girl that has suffered much pain, sorrow and disappointment in her life.  She is the one that has been engulfed by darkness, hurt and fear.  She keeps the weight on to protect Kyeni from being hurt and abused by others.  Kyeni is the thin girl that is waiting to come out.  She is full of life.  She is the one that loves roller coasters.  She is vibrant and happy, caring and loving.  She lives in the light. 

When I realized the dycotomy that is going on inside my head, I started to think about all of the times that I have tried to lose weight.  When I pondered that, I realized that when I would get down to a certain point, I would some how sabotage my progress, and put the weight back on.  There was some sort of anxiety attached to it.  So, now I asked myself again:  “Why did I get that vision of myself being small?” 

I think I  understand it now.  Rechel is in protection mode all of the time.  She was summoned to protect Kyeni from abuse, and emotional trauma when she was a child.  Although Rechel and Kyeni are safe, Rechel never learned how to stop living in protection mode.  When Rechel is taught to love herself, Kyeni will be set free, and will become the dominant personality.  That now is truly my goal.  I want to move out of the darkness as Rechel Kyeni to living wholly and completely in the light as Kyeni Rechel. 

Rechel is the constant force between both aspects of my consciousness, but through God’s help, Rechel will learn to love herself, and by so doing, she will allow Kyeni to come out.

Rechel