Struggles

I feel like I have really struggled to write here, at all, in the last few months.  Its somewhat appropriate, if not ironic, that what is on my mind is struggles of a different sort that I have had the last couple months.

I've struggled with continuing my dedication to exercise and better eating.  I hit the big plateau of 50 pounds of weightloss, and have pretty much stopped.  I haven't gained any back, thankfully, but I have not continued to lose, which would be easy (I think) if I could remain focused on my goals.  But I have failed to work out consistently, consistently "slumping" to 2-3 days a week, and my eating habits have worsened.  I can't really pinpoint a reason for it, except to say that I assume that such struggles are inherent in such a process.  But understanding that it may be so does nothing to reduce my frustration towards my inability in this regard.

I've struggled with the past few months in trying to remain...positive, I guess would be the best way to say it.  Shortly after Jackie's miscarriage and everything that entailed, I wrote about trying to maintain hope in the face of severe disappointment.  That has been difficult.  I am already, by natural inclination, a more negative, critical, or cynical person; as such, I often find striving for hope and optimism to be an uphill climb in normal situations, let alone in a situation that causes deep pain.  Its a process...

Finally, I've struggled greatly in the last few months with faith and belief.  I do not doubt that the trigger for this period of struggle, as well as a significant contributor, was the pain caused by the miscarriage.  From a spiritual standpoint, particularly with the divine references in so many, if not all, the words of comfort and solace we received, makes it easy for me to delve into those issues and questions, and increasingly, with little answer.  As I continue my class at our local church studying the Bible, as much as I enjoy the people and getting to know them better, I find more and more ideas, beliefs, positions, stances, etc. that are impossible for me to accept, and many that I completely reject (at least right now).  While I know things change, and many things in life, particularly things of this nature, remain fluid, I feel a genuine flow in one direction at this point.  Its not the rejection of belief and faith couple with the acceptance of a definitive stance in the other direction, but it is an embrace of doubt and skepticism, with little hope of clarity.  This, probably more so than the others, weighs on me the most - for lack of better wording, there's seems no place to occupy with such opinions...

So it goes.  I suppose I will continue to strive for more consistency in my workouts and better choices with my eating habits; in some ways, that struggle is almost a relief from the other two, as I feel like there is something I can do - the others seem, for whatever reason, out of my control.

"to be nobody but yourself, in a word which is doing it's best, night and day, to make you every body else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting" - E. E. Cummings