Weight gain is insidious. It creeps up with such stealth and subtly that the person gaining the weight doesn’t notice until – seemingly overnight – their clothes won’t fit. Or, at least, that’s what happens to me.

 For years now, I have refused to buy the next size up in jeans no matter how tight the old ones get. When the old ones get too tight, I start running again. But UK sizes are different that US sizes and when my old jeans wore out – I couldn’t find my size. Instead, I got the next size up. They were loose. They didn’t stay loose. I filled them. It was only after they became tight that I realized I had a problem.

 Another indicator was my blood pressure. It’s always been perfect. One day I took it and was so shocked by the numbers that I decided the cuff wasn’t working. I hid it. For the next two days, I surreptitiously checked my blood pressure without telling Alan. If he had known, he would have sent me to a doctor. I don’t do doctors or pharmaceuticals. So I started running again. Thankfully, my blood pressure is normal again and I’ve gone down two jean sizes.

Let’s get this straight. I don’t like running. I’d rather sit and write. I run because I have to run to maintain my weight without changing my diet. I try to eat healthy foods – but I’m not fanatical. I love chocolate milk. I drink a carton a day. There are two things I do enjoy about running; I love being outside viewing the scenery as I run past (I run very slowly, so I get a good look at it!) and I love the writing ideas that the Lord gives me. Most of my blogs follow a run!

We are in charge of our health and the size clothes we wear. Some people have legit health problems that make exercise impossible. But to a large extent, the lifestyle choices we make grow us into the people we become mentally, physically, and spiritually. Don’t want to be an alcoholic and die young of liver disease? Don’t drink. Don’t want to become a drug addict and wind up homeless with HIV? Don’t take drugs. Don’t want to get lung cancer? Don’t smoke. Don’t want to get obese? Don’t overeat. Do exercise. Want to keep our minds so pure that we don’t mind Jesus taking a peek? Don’t fill them with profanity, pornography, hate or violence.

Grow Right. Even when the entire rest of the world seems to be taking a different direction, go right. Let Jesus, not the multitude, influence what you say, think and do. Every time I see a tree with two forks or roads branching off in different directions, it reminds me that God wants us to go right and grow right.

 “Awake to righteousness, and sin not.” I Co. 15:34

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