How To Have A Vision For Your Health
Hope is an anchor. It doesn’t keep you down against your will rather, it is the steady and constant state of mind that holds a promise. We need a hope; an anchor to build our everyday choices around. We need a hope because we need our choices to have meaning.
We need to have a vision of what we desire our immediate and long term health to look like. Let us have a “vision” rather than a “goal” as we want this to be a calm journey. Calm like water lightly passing over rocks and soil where there is a beautiful, large waterfall nearby. Our waterfall is nearby, that beautiful, picturesque water billowing from a rocky cliff. So our journey may be a bit rocky, that doesn’t make it any less beautiful or essential. In fact, every bit of rock is necessary to make us into strong, dependable, lovable human beings. Our vision has no definite end, only the end of this earthly life that brings us to our eternal home. Our vision leads us onto an unruffled striving towards what we are looking forward to. This helps us direct our choices. We then want to make choices that will aid that vision, will bring that vision closer to attainability. To get an idea, here is my current vision statement for my health:
“I believe my life is in God’s hands. I do not know the number of my days, but I do know that I can make every day that I do have count, and the health of my spirit, soul, mind, and body is important to God and therefore to me. I believe, despite things I cannot control, God has given me a reason to take care of the temple HE has created me with. No one else is going to take care of it for me. I know that what I put into my spirit, my mind, and my body has a large impact on how I feel and what I may become and what I am able to do in the days ahead as well as how it effects the people around me. Therefore, I choose to remember that every choice I make in life is either going to aid my good health and wellbeing or it is going to harm it in some way”
For example, my vision is simply:
To spend quality time with God so our relationship grows in fields of intimacy, reverence and honor.
To meditate on the words of God in order to mold and strengthen my heart.
Listen, think, say, and see only that which will provide nourishment to the kind of heart and mind I am striving to have.
To exercise my body to rid itself entirely of all the fat I have accumulated over the years of indulgence in foods that were not cleansing and healing to my body, so that I can enjoy my true shape and outward beauty without the consequences of bad choices.
To abstain from the foods that I know to be harmful to my health and wellbeing on a daily basis.
To be gracious and honest with myself and allow foods that are not that good for me in small amounts when with friends and family.
To be, above all, thankful to my Creator for any foods available to me, even if it isn’t the ideal, knowing that He has provided it and will bless it to my body through my worship and gratefulness to Him.
I encourage us to make a vision statement and look it over every now and then, changing it if need be. Let us first think about the things that are important to us. Maybe it is to be closer to God, to lose weight, to be mentally stronger, to be more disciplined, or simply to feel better. Let us write this short vision statement for our health, listing some concrete visions we have for the long term. And as the fiery heat melts metal, may the good choices we do make today melt our inconsistencies
On this journey together,
Kari