**This is one devotional day from Honoring Your Temple Through the Holiday Challenge: Lose 5 lbs DURING the holidays. The challenge has been amazing with women losing weight.  If you want to be part of the next challenge starting in the New Year follow my Facebook Page.

I look around the table. 

Everyone is on at least their second piece of pizza.  

"Uh. This is not fair." I say this to myself as I stare at my salad, feeling deprived.

In the back of my mind, there is a lie fueling a lot of how I act: life should be fair. I should get what everyone else gets. It sounds so right. 

I mean, I hear it all the time from those around me.  

• "Make sure everyone gets their fair share." (common among parents, including myself, and teachers)
• "I should get a fair shot at the same job." (from a coworker with less experience)
• "Let's even the playing field" (just about every news story right now)

I find that I am bombarded with the message, "Life...

**This is one devotional day from Honoring Your Temple Through the Holiday Challenge: Lose 5 lbs and enjoy with confidence EVERY celebration. The challenge includes 21 days of devotionals, weekly focused challenges, and coaching zoom calls. We are in week two, but you can always join the challenge HERE and still be on your way to feeling amazing this holiday season!

My favorite is peanut butter and chocolate. (I'm drooling just writing this). Even though I like both of these individually, you put them together…oh, they are like magic on my tongue!

Just about every Christmas, my sister makes buckeyes. If you don't know, they are peanut butter and powdered sugar mixed together, rolled in a ball, and dipped in chocolate. They look so good and taste even better.

When I see them on the cookie platter, my eye is immediately drawn to them. My mind wants to fixate on having one of them. Often, I think, "They are just too good to pass up. They're one of my favorites! Go...

**This is one devotional day from Honoring Your Temple Through the Holiday Challenge. The challenge includes 21 days of devotionals, weekly focused challenges, and coaching zoom calls. YOU can join the challenge HERE if you’re interested in losing 5 pounds DURING the holidays!

“The Easiest Way to Lose That Stubborn Belly Fat!”

“Lose 5lbs Overnight!”

“10 ‘No Work’ Workouts”. 

We’ve all seen these types of headlines trying to lure us into the quick and painless.

Unless you’re the type of person that forgets about food, about eating, or about how much your body is working hard… weight loss probably won’t be “easy”.

The question is, does it have to be hard?

I had a client that wanted to get into a routine of eating a shake every day for lunch. The problem was, she hated shakes. Everything about them: yet, each day, she would blend one up, hoping she could “just...

**This is one devotional day from Honoring Your Temple Through the Holiday Challenge. The challenge includes 21 days of devotionals, weekly focused challenges, and coaching zoom calls. YOU can join the challenge HERE if you're interested in losing 5 pounds DURING the holidays!

I am a rotten pregnant momma! I mean it.

It was the most uncomfortable 27 months (9 mo. X 3 kiddos) of my life. That's the excuse I use.

Unfortunately, it's not a good excuse.

Why? 

Because discomfort is part of the deal of having the beautiful gift of children. If it's not while you are pregnant, it's during the birth. If it's not the birth, it breastfeeding. If it's not breastfeeding, it's toddler temper tantrums…

You get my drift. 

Parenting is a lot of discomfort at every stage.

Here is what I learned from discomfort; my most amazing, incredible, beautiful gifts having come after discomfort.

Obviously, my kids are an example. But think about all others like college...

"I'm fat."

That's what my five-year-old blurted after dressing up in full snow gear for the first time of the season.

"You are not fat! You have fat, you eat fat, but people are not fat! You can feel fat, but you should never call yourself or anyone else fat."

That's what came out of my mouth before I even realized it.

My son followed up with the age-old, "Why?"

I didn't answer him right away.  I'm so glad he asked me this question!  It really made me start to think...

Why shouldn't people call themselves fat?

 ***(I'm not going to dive into why we shouldn't call other people fat here.  I think we can all agree that is just malicious). 

Well, let's start with what people are trying to convey when they tell themselves, "I'm fat". 

I think they are trying to express an emotion, a feeling.

Think about the example of saying, "I'm sad."

You aren't the emotion sad.

You feel sad.

There is a big difference. Stick with...

** This post was originally published in 2019.  I brought it back due to the popularity and the good reminders ;) 

Halloween is not a holiday.

I may ruffle some feathers today. Ultimately though, this post IS NOT about Halloween, so stick with me. 

We haven't celebrated Halloween at our house for years. My kids don't dress up. They don't go trick or treating. We don't have creepy decorations. And we DO NOT watch scary movies. 

We DO have a family fun night on the 31st, though. (So don't worry, my kids are not deprived)

And, none of this is because I stand on some morally high ground and oppose the "holiday". 

(Side note: I don't understand why we call this a holiday. Holidays shouldn't include ghosts, scary monsters, and skeletons. Plus, I know most of you have never seen a dead body with its structure coming out. Because if you did, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't want to use it as decoration….just speaking from...

I have an awful weed spreading furiously over the rock landscaping around our house.

The rock has landscape fabric underneath so there can’t be that much dirt between the stones for this weed to get a hold of. 

Really, it should be a piece of cake to pull out.

But it’s not.

The roots aren’t that impressive, but every time I try to pull it by the leaves, they tear off, leaving the root behind and allow the plant to keep spreading.

It drives me NUTS!

Yes, I can tear off all the leaves and make the rocks look nicer for about two days, but after that, the weed is back AND with a vengeance.

This weed is a lot like weight loss.

Sure, we can lose weight. 

We look better for a short time. 

Then we fall back into old patterns and habits. Pretty soon, the weight we lost (and usually more) is back. Along with the weight, our commitment, our resolve, or our belief in God’s good plan for our life has significantly diminished.

...

It's 3:30 pm. I just got all the kids back home after school. 

They rush to the kitchen for a snack, asking me to cut up apples, toast bagels, open the package of Oreos, and so on. 

After scarfing down a few morsels, they are on to their next endeavor leaving bits behind, messes to clean up, and packages to be put away.

As I pick up the Oreos, I think to myself…

"One won't hurt. Just have one and put it away. It's no big deal."

Ah, yes. The little lie, one won't hurt.

This deception is tricky because there is some truth to it.

Sometimes we have to take a step back from our situation and look at it from another perspective.

Today, let's look at it from the perspective of an alcoholic.

Why can't an alcoholic have just one?

Well, their brain has been misprogrammed.  For a period of time, alcoholics have trained their brain to think that the first drink is just one of many.  So, when they want to release the tension of...

My attention is diverted from the onion I was chopping.

(Insert eye roll) “Here we go again,” I thought.

Garrett is crying, overtired from the school day, and Rory is staring at him in disgust.

Then he shouts, “I want that book! It’s my turn!” His eyes are fixated on the drawing book that Rory is using to make a frog.

I tell him he’ll get his turn after his sister finishes up.  

He then proceeds to go into hysterics, in which I calmly prompt him to have in his room. In and out he walks from his room only to sit back at the table, obsessing over that book.

Let’s be honest. The drawing book is fun, but not super impressive. It doesn’t even tell a story. It just shows you how to draw simple animals. Yet, the little guy is howling like a possessed coyote.

But how often do I focus, magnify, lust after what I want?  

“You want that. If you don’t get it now, you’ll just want it more. Don’t...

"Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness." Matthew 23:27

I don't know about you, but the people pleaser in me wants to fly past the hard truth, so I don't have to feel uncomfortable.

My current motto, though:
"Discomfort is the price of love, joy, peace, patients, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and SELF-CONTROL."

That means I need to get uncomfortable and really take the time to look at verses such as this one in Matthew.

I was recently listening to a podcast in which the presenter used the metaphor of "whitewashed tomb".

Instantly, my mind went to, "That's what it was like to lose weight without God!"

I had to look up if a whitewashed tomb is used elsewhere in the Bible. It is, and when it is used, it all refers to hypocrisy (funny that is the exact word used at the beginning of the verse ;).

So, the researcher in me had to...