Walking tall

After years of treating my body with minimal respect, things are finally changing. I've always known I can't lose weight and I haven't the discipline to exercise, and of course, I was right. But feeling myself starting to descend the slippery slope into depression, and not wanting to go to that horrible place I was two years ago, I had to make a change before it was too late. I don't know why depression should be such a widespread problem in these wonderful days in this wonderful (if imperfect) country but from what I'm hearing, it certainly is. I've fought it with varying degrees of success--perhaps my best effort involved the putting together of a "blessings" journal, which, to this day I continue to fill (along the lines that if we counted ALL our blessings, we wouldn't have time for anything else). It directs my thoughts to better things and is so chock full of fun, gratitude, people I love, and lessons learned that even just holding it makes me feel good. But it seems that even so, attacks of depression come, and this past summer was one of them.

THIS time I concentrated on reading scriptures and exercise. One thing leads to another, and starting an upward spiral isn't much harder than slipping onto a downward slope. It took me one and a half months to get started on the challenge to read the Book of Mormon over the summer, but just the same, I almost did it. Just finishing the remnants now. And a place that was hungry in me is being fed and I am grateful.

But other types of feasting may not be as positive, so the other thing I did is join the "biggest looser" group at my workplace. I didn't care that much about winning, although I can be a real competetive person, I just didn't like the way I looked, and since depression always reduces my eating anyways, why not? But just starving myself wasn't very effective, so I started walking to work. Then exercising. Then finding sneaky ways to exercise while sitting at my computer at work. My weight seems to have plateaued but my clothes fit better and I'm sore. SOMETHING is happening. It does help that there's group support though weight loss certainly isn't an absorbing topic of conversation. And sore though I am (it's abating now), my posture has improved. And my attitude. And my outlook. And my house is cleaner. Not sure that measurements would show anything, but I feel taller.

Speaking of respecting Mother nature....

This was the beach we found at our former favorite cliff jumping spot. Compare to the two pictures below and see one small sample of what a spring flood can do. This is only sand. There were places along the Cowlitz river where whole bars of boulders had been moved from one side of the river to another. Trees had been uprooted. The bridge crossing the river was cracked clear through (probably by an uprooted tree? Boulder?) causing the road leading to the bridge to be closed.