the better way...

13 days. That’s how long it took for me to look at a fast food restaurant and not want to eat the sign.

The past two days have been, I think, my hardest yet. I wasn’t juicing enough and my blood sugar levels were making themselves known. I was tired and weak and just didn’t feel great overall. All I wanted to do was go to bed.

But nooooo. I had to go to woooork. All day yesterday I just wanted to go home. I had a negative attitude, my body was hurting, I was starving and the chick who sits across from me got Philly cheese steaks from this new place around the corner and proceeded to eat them and talk about them for at least an hour.

Now, we have cubicles here at work but they’re these short stupid things that we can see and talk to each other over (see picture to the right.) This makes being on a juice fast difficult. SO needless to say, I so wanted to go home.

But I didn’t. Mostly because I couldn’t.

But I was getting on my nerves.

You see, I’d changed my focus and it was hurting me, literally. I took my eyes off the real reason I’m doing this. I changed my focus from my desire to be obedient and get closer to God, to focusing on the things I couldn’t eat, the places I couldn’t go and the funky, boring juice I’d been drinking for 12 days straight.

I didn’t come to this conclusion on my own. Nope. I went to CPR class (which was creepy and hilarious all at the same time - see picture to the left) and I got certified. I went to the grocery store with the lovely Mrs. Bear and stocked up on essentials. I went home, put the cold stuff away and went to bed.

I caught up on my “With Friends” games, spent some time on Facebook and gave myself 10 minutes to look at Pinterest before I spent some time with God. 45 minutes later my phone rang. I was lying in bed, hungry & tired and having a raging pity party but I answered it anyway.

I didn’t want to answer the phone for 2 reasons. 1) I was grumpy & 2) I knew that my BFF would ask me how I was doing and she would weasel out of me the truth (as she always does) and make me talk about what I didn’t want to talk about.

And she did.

She’s good at that. We’ve been friends for oh 8ish years and no matter how many miles are between us, she always manages to look me in my face and find out what I’m not telling her.

So we talked. She shared things going on in her life, we prayed a little and I tried to wrap up the conversation with no avail. She caught me. She reminded me why I am really doing this, gave me some insight, made me shed a few tears & gave me  a couple of God inspired passages to check out for encouragement.

By the end, I was excited again. I remembered why I went to the grocery store and came home with only fresh produce (see picture on right). She reminded me that Jesus was tempted, and He did not falter. She reminded me what the Holy Spirit had been screaming at me all day but I couldn’t hear b/c I was complaining way to loud.

If that wasn’t enough, during the course of that phone call I got messages from two other close confidants checking in on me, letting me know they’re there for me and encouraging me through this. As I look back, yesterday was chock FULL of encouragement from friends and family near and far.

All of this together plus His strength renewed every morning led to this morning’s revelation.

I watched a car pull up to the Golden Arches this morning and my first thought, my VERY 1^st thought was, “No! There’s a better way!”

My second thought was “What the what?! Did I just say that? I don’t want a bacon egg & cheese biscuit? Woah.”

And then I cried.

I cried with joy thanking and praising God for this seemingly small yet GIGANTIC breakthrough. I am (thanks to some lovely math by my personal coach through all this) over 20% of the way thorough this fast. I am 13 days in, ready for more and about to down a spinach-apple-carrot-strawberry juice and loving it.

Love. love. love.