Beauty From Ashes

So I as I sit in front of my computer today, I am completely distracted. My heart is filled with sadness, sadness for a friend who lost her father this morning. My heart is just breaking for her and her mom and her sister and all those who loved her dad. I find myself fighting off the tears and just thinking a lot about life and death and heaven. And I keep wondering how my friend is doing and wondering what I should be doing as her friend and can’t help but feel totally helpless in this situation. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a parent, but I can imagine that it’s one of the worst feelings I will experience in my lifetime. I keep thinking about dying and I imagine my own death some day and wonder what people will say about me when I go. If I were to die tomorrow, would I leave this world having left any kind of mark? Who would come to my funeral? What would be my legacy? Would the fact that I have lived for thirty-three years on this earth really even matter? I don’t know. I k

I have really been in a struggle lately. Struggling not in loving myself, but in tolerating myself. I feel like I'm going backward. I worked so hard to get where I was and in a matter of eight months, I undid what it took me two YEARS to do. How does that happen? I'm not really sure. I know it started with feeling stuck. I had hit a plateau with my weight, the same plateau I always hit when I have lost weight in the past. And I got really frustrated with busting my ass at the gym and denying myself foods I really wanted to eat and not seeing any results. Couple that with stress at work, quitting my half-marathon training and being disappointed in myself, and losing my best friend and biggest supporter for no known reason. All of that lead to me giving up on myself. Allowing myself to choose sleep over the gym. Eat Taco Bell instead of a salad for dinner. Sit on the couch in my pajamas instead of going for a run. And now I am 24 pounds heavier than I was at the start of 2011. I