I’m still experimenting with different subtitles for this blog.

I started out with “Losing Weight without Pills, Surgery or Other Gimmicks.”  Then I tweaked it a little and came up with “An Interactive Journal of a Weight Loss Journey without Pills, Surgery or Other Gimmicks.”  Then I reinvented it as “An Ex-Pastor Rediscovers the Connection between Physical and Spiritual Health.”  Now it just says “Rediscovering the Connection between Physical and Spiritual Health.”

I’ll probably keep experimenting with it.

One of the reasons for the changes in my subtitles is that as I continue to write about my journey of the past seven months I’m developing a better understanding of how the transformation I’m still experiencing is not just about losing weight, even as important as that is.

I think about this every time I get out and throw the football with my two boys or go on a 25k bike ride.  I’d been wanting to do these things but my ability to do them was buried under 110 lbs. of excess fat.  My morbid obesity negatively affected my ability to be the kind of father and husband I knew I should have been.

But there were many, many other areas in my life where there was a relationship of negative reciprocity between those areas and my obesity.  That’s why I’m talking a lot about my spiritual life on this blog.  Your experience may be different, but for me, my problems with my weight were rooted in the disconnected nature of my relationship with God.

I’m one of those people who believes that if you don’t have your relationship with God right then everything else is out of whack.  I could write a book about how and why my spiritual life went off in the ditch, but the easiest way to sum up is for me to say I was mad at God.

Actually, mad isn’t a strong enough word.  I was deeply bitter.

If you’ve ever read the Bible, especially the Psalms, you know there are plenty of places in scripture where David and others expressed anger and bewilderment toward God’s perceived silence and inaction. 

The writer of Psalm 22 starts out saying “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  But before he puts down his pen he declares “I will praise you in the great assembly.  I will fulfill my vows in the presence of those who worship you.”  There are several of these Psalms of lament, but nearly all of them (Psalm 88 is one exception that comes to mind) end with a resolution of the writer’s anger toward God.  They pass through the dark night of the soul but manage to find joy in the morning.

But I was stuck in Psalm 88.  For longer than I care to remember.

I believe God understands there are times when we will have doubts about his goodness, that we will shake our fist in the air and yell toward heaven, “How long?”  I’ll go further than that.

I believe it is a sign of authentic faith to have moments, even seasons, of doubt – to express frustration with God.  Walter Brueggemann says it like this, “covenant (relationship with God) minus lament is finally a practice of denial, cover-up and pretense, which sanctions social control.”  Constant celebration is the worst kind of silence.

God understands the frailty of our faith but still loves us.  But there is no allowance, no dispensation made for bitterness.  No matter how hard you kick the darkness it will never bleed daylight.  Sooner or later you’ve got to get over it and go on.

With God.

After spending 20 years doing various kinds of ministry – Sunday School teacher, camp counselor, youth pastor, associate pastor, senior pastor – I left the ministry in June 1999.  I entertained the idea of starting a church but I knew I had nothing left.  I was burned out, fed up and very, very disappointed with God.  And that’s where I stayed while I piled on the pounds.

Bitterness will kill you.  It’s a poison that warps your soul, robs you of your joy and skews your perspective on life.  It’s a spiritual virus that infects every relationship in your life.

After 7 months and 18 days I’ve lost 110 lbs. of excess weight.  I’ve got 75 lbs. to go in order to reach my goal.

But I’ve also been losing my bitterness.  I’m not there yet, but I’m a lot closer than I was on March 5.

Tim Adams

Tim@timadams.net