To explain, this is a Roman Catholic diet. You're either hooked by the starter kit of holy water, St. Ignatius beads, a Rosary ring and assorted prayer books, or you're not. You're either intrigued by the idea of sacrificing food for the sins and misery of others, or your not. I, for one, bought into the $140 starter kit as easily as Eve bought into the apple. At the first meeting I attended, six souls and myself answered the ad posted in our church bulletin to meet at one of our deanery churches for an information night. We watched a video by the founder of a program called Light Weigh. A woman by the name of Suzanne Fowler, projected charisma on the screen like a female Billy Graham. I wanted to stand up and cry, Alleluia, I can do this! Suzanne says in the name of Jesus, we can fight the temptations of food. With Novenas, Rosaries, and prayers to St. Theresa and the Mother of God, we can loose the weight. And what the heck, even if we don't, we can save souls!
Her ideas all seemed sound enough to me. So I drove home and gave myself a few days to think about it (before making any big purchases, I like to ponder them for awhile). Do I really need the product or do I just desire it? This was a hard decision to rationalize. Would I be buying into another weight loss fad like Richard Simmons, Weight Watchers, or Jenny Craig? Maybe so, but I concluded that I both wanted to lose weight and needed it. Yes, and even if I don't lose weight, who can't benefit from growing closer to God? The diet is a win, win opportunity!
After the second meeting on September 12, I wasn't certain I had made the right decision. Our group had grown from the previous week. In our little meeting room, we crammed in 10 souls in front of the small television set to watch Week One of Suzanne's video, "Conforming Your Will to God's Will." I was tired and bloated from eating a huge bowl of chili and leftover kettle corn before I arrived. The air in the room was stale and the lighting hung like fog, pale and heavy. I was in no mood to hear our video host, the chipper Sarah Palin reformer, carry on about how Our Lady of Guadalupe and Our Lady of Good Remedy will help us get started. I felt defeated before I opened up the 342 page manual.
I tossed the Light Weigh starter kit on the kitchen counter when I arrived home like an armful of junk mail. It wasn't until morning and a clearer frame of mind that I approached the intimidating workload. After all, I had just spent $140 on my Visa credit card for the kit, I at least better give it a whirl. Tuesday, September 14, I opened up my Bible for the scripture readings of the week. This is where my journey really begins...
Read Psalm 91:1-16 and you will want to start the Light Weigh program by singing it from the mountain tops, the verses are a perfect prelude for beginning, beginning anything, and especially beginning a diet plan, "...for he will give His angels charge of you, on their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone." These verses bestow on me the power over temptation, an army of protection over evil. This simple psalm as well as several others returned my faith in Light Weigh.
In reading John 1:15, it points out that the light shines in the darkness. I now understand that as long as I believe in the light, the temptations associated with food can be overcome through Him who is the Light, Jesus. With the angels and now the Light giving me the will power to learn healthier eating habits, I am beginning to see how Suzanne's plan may actually work, but it's only day 2.
My daily devotional, God Calling, one I have been reading for many years now, confirmed the scriptural readings of Light Weigh and that is when the whole program started to take on an unearthly nature of its own. For the September 13 devotion, God said, "My name is the power that turns evil aside, that summons all good to your aid. Spirits of evil flee at the sound of "Jesus." Like Psalm 91: 1-16 and John 1:15, my daily devotion repeated the same core message: I have the army of "Jesus" to support me, no obstacle is too great that He and His army cannot overcome.
Eerily, the supernatural message continued to today's daily devotional. In God Calling, our Lord says in the September 14 reading, that with each step toward increased belief, the more we recognize our own human weakness, our lack of trust in Him. When we fall short, our souls grow. In the effort to reach Him, we cry for the faith to overcome all unbelief. This tells me that even though I may fail at times on Light Weigh, I can still grow closer to God through my failure and still continue to have faith in the fact that He will help me reach my diet goal.
It wasn't until tonight that I realized the heavenly magnitude of Light Weigh. Before I began this blog this evening, I tried something that was suggested by our Light Weigh coach. She said if we wanted to read our own scriptures, we could simply open up the Bible and read whatever page fell open. In the effort to decide on a name for this blog, I thought, why not close my eyes, open the Bible, and let God pick a title. My hands gently opened the fragile pages of my husband's childhood Bible and my fingertips settled on this scripture:
"Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." But he answered, It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God' Matthew 4: 1-4.
I don't believe Matthew 4 was a coincidence, nothing is. This scripture was meant for me to read, tonight, as I begin to flounder through the first days of the Light Weigh plan. The words are truly divine, of the Holy Spirit, and they are just as meant for you as they are for me if you are reading this blog. I invite you to stay with me through the days and weeks ahead to learn what other experiences with the heavenly realms await me on this journey toward the Living Bread.
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