Restoration

Take a good look at this picture.  Have you ever felt like this before? Do you feel like this now. Here you are looking firm, sturdy and in good shape....Even kind of shiny! Feeling good! Oh yeah, you've weathered the storms, fought the good fight and you've made it to your destination. You are ready for your purpose......

But have you ever thought of the journey to get there? To reach those goals? Maybe you are in the midst of your journey ~ you are in process...You are on your way....

Just like this fine desk. Before it was a desk it was once a tree. Can you even imagine what the effort it took to get to the finished product? Well first, we need some dirt, then a seed, then water and sunshine and time....plenty of time and patience. Do you suppose there might be some perseverance and some grit to weather the storms? How about being frozen, scorched, parched, lived in, rubbed up against and maybe even pooped on. Have you ever felt like that?

Well then after a lot of time, the tree is ready for harvest. The once majestic, is drastically cut down, hauled off in a truck to the mill, where it is debarked, cut up and whatever else they do to make a tree into lumber.

Then our once tree, now lumber, is off to the carpenter who crafts the raw material into a fine school desk.

Now look at the picture again. It is a really fine desk. Pretty cool!!

But not only did this desk have to go through the PROCESS of going from a tree, to lumber before becoming a desk. Once it was done....it had to survive the batterings of life. I mean this ole desk was battered!!! Not only by the numerous amounts of kids who used it....but this desk was found, in November, by my Friend, who found it under a mound of rubble, in a destroyed school. This school is located in Haiti and this desk has been under the rubble since the earthquake.

My Friend said he was helping remove rubble from a building, where he found this now fine piece of furniture in pieces. At first he did not know what it was, but he kept finding more and more of the desk, and after a lot of searching and time and patience, he was able to recognize what it was and he decided to REBUILD the desk and RESTORE it to it's original state.

Can you imagine? That something that was almost beyond recognition has been restored!?!?!

You might be wondering what does an old desk that was reconstructed in Haiti have to do with weight loss and fitness?  

I not really sure either, but something is niggling at me....That old desk is like many of us. We were born and we grew into something beautiful, just like the desk. And just like the desk, we've weathered the storms of life, we've been battered, shook up,  and some of us, even destroyed!!! Look at some of our bodies. They are broken and misshaped just like the desk. Some of us are beyond repair, because of the choices that are made, the excuses that are used and the lies that are listened to. Others of us are in the PROCESS of being recreated, reconstructed....RESTORED!!

Just like that ole desk, it's taken time, love, care and patience for its journey from wholeness, to brokenness, to restoration....just like it's going to take time, love, care and patience for our weight loss and fitness journey. But if we are diligent.....we will make it....if we keep our focus on the goal and keep pushing forward no matter what.....we will reach our goals!!! We too will be strong, solid, beautiful, purposeful....RESTORED!!

We get to make the choice!

Keep focused