Dealing With the (Overweight) Elephant in the Room

God Is the Elephant

Sometimes we even blame God for our problem. We cry out to Him to fix our problem. We tell Him to make us not so hungry, to help us magically lose 250 pounds, to strike vengeance on those who wronged us. We feel if He would just do these things everything would be fine.

It’s His fault for making us this way. He needs to fix us. Then all will be well with the world. We can continue eating the foods we love and be healthy if God only weren’t so stubborn.

The Herd Is the Elephant

In essence, it feels as if we have not one elephant in our room, but a whole herd of elephants.

That brings us to the crux of the matter. The elephant in the room is really a complex conundrum of a set of issues that involve our physical body, our physical environment, our reactions to situations and people, our emotions and our spiritual life.

When we understand how complex we are and how we have eaten ourselves to elephant size, we begin to believe there is no simple solution. We have eaten ourselves into a conundrum, an intricate and difficult problem.

We are like Paul in that we want to do good. We want to lose weight. We want to live and be healthy. We just can’t figure out the answer.

We keep trying to get rid of the herd of elephants that seems to eat what is the equivalent of their weight. All we have to do is look down and understand the truth of this.

I tried pushing the elephants out of my life. Do you know how hard it is to push an elephant? They won’t budge.

In order to solve the problem I had to embrace my elephants. I had to own the herd that is me.

Yes, I am the problem. Yes, others have wronged me. Yes, food is an issue for me. Yes, I am an emotional mess. Yes, I’m mad at God.

Admitting each one freed me to focus on the first step. For me, ownership of my issue meant I using the key God had shown me for years, if I want to live and I certainly did want to live to fulfill God’s calling on my life, to use the gifts He gave me, to see my children grow up, to meet my future grandchildren, to love my husband.

I stopped looking for easy fixes and owned the fact that I am a sugar addict. That is where I started. This was the turn-around point for me.