Who is Betraying Who?

This morning I was reminded of Jesus saying, "The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak."

This morning I was thinking of it in terms of the physical ailments that I'm currently trying to work through.  There is something wrong with my stomach, perhaps an ulcer, that is making cardio nearly impossible for me.

But I want to be out running and walking so bad.

It is frustrating, even depressing if I'm not careful with my thoughts.  When I fell into a depression at the end of last year and started binge eating again, I think I helped that ulcer along with a ton of soda.  So much acid.  I'm surprised I have a stomach left.  I was also nursing a hurt shoulder, so I wasn't even going out to lift weights for a while there.

Of course, becoming a sedentary recluse reduces one's fitness level to jell-o.

The temptation is to blame my body, like its "other" or somehow totally separate from me.  Like it left me at home to go out partying over Christmas and came back wrecked.  "Sorry bro, here's the keys back!"

No.  This is rooted in a spiritual problem.  I had the keys, I was behind the wheel.  I was feeding tar into the oil intake, pouring bourbon into the gas tank.  I blew the engine by filling it with crap.

There are any number of factors at play when I got depressed.  The first is that I suffer from depression.  I'm prone to it, to melancholy, to the gears grinding to a halt.  The other factors are things everybody is worried about: being unemployed, paying bills, managing my health without insurance, being a good husband in the context of those circumstances.  Christian culture places an ungodly, perhaps unbiblical premium on the working husband who provides everything for his family.  Its a pressure I grapple with constantly given our current situation.  My health limits my options somewhat, and there's not a lot of work in my field around here.

It is easy to spiral if I'm not vigilant.

And I wasn't.

The truth is, my body didn't betray me.  I betrayed it, and after doing so well for most of last year.  Its such a little thing to just get that one soda, that one candy bar, that one bag of chips.  And in your mind, that's all it is, right?  And that's all the next one is, too.  And the next, and the next.

For those of us who manage stress with food, we dimly chip away at the cliff we're standing on until it gives way totally, forgetting the whole picture in favor of what's right in front of us.  Sometimes we survive by getting sick, or injured, or scarred.  Some of us don't get away unscathed.  Its the massive heart attack we didn't see coming.

We must manage it differently.

We must become more intimate with Christ.  We don't need to pray, "better."  We should pray at all.  Truly bring him in, voice our fears, cast our cares, be willing to accept his provision and Lordship.

If we do not make Christ lord of our fears, our fears will become Lords over us.