Beauty & Beast in one

Why women should weight lift!

- Reduce your risk of Alzheimer's, improve cognitive function in elderly women
 - Endorphins make you happen, happy people don't shoot their husbands
  - Smarten up, Southern state Uni research proved strength training is associated with higher GPAs
   -  Decrease injury risk
    - Decrease osteoporosis risk, denser bones, less fragile
     - Zzzz... better sleep
      - Calm down! Stress relief, reduce irritability, anxiety
       - Burn more calories
        - Banish belly fat, weight lifting burns more deep belly fat then just cardio alone
         - Diabetes proof, causing muscles to use more glucose for energy which lowers blood sugar
          - 12 weeks of training can lower systolic & diastolic blood pressure
           - Heart disease, no thanks!! Body will be leaner, less fat, less risk
            - Open your own pickle jar, improved handgrip is a marker of overall strength
             - Confidence boost, one of the most empowering things a women can do
              - Protect your back, reg. strength training helps ease lower chronic back pain
              - Relieve neck, strengthening neck and shoulders reduces pain
             - improve balance
            - lower cholesterol, boost good cholesterol which combats against bad cholesterol
           - Breathe easy, improve max capacity to transport and use oxygen while exercise
          - Run faster, improve 5K by 3%
         - Boost libido, increase testosterone which boosts sex drive in females
        - Curb cravings, lower ghrelin levels, a hunger stimulating hormone found in the gut
       - Hit cancer hard! protect body against oxidative stress, believed to contribute to cancer
      - Boost metabolism, muscles builds up your metabolism, burn more longer after workout
     - Look sexy, help yourself build and preserve lean muscle, creates tight and toned bod
    - rid yourself of cellulite, diminish it
   - Stand tall, improves posture
  - Body image
 - Explore, reason to venture out of land of steppers, spin class & treadmill & go into the weight room

Banana Butt

In a few weeks I will be leaving quite a bit to enter into the unknown.
University.
Brochures, pamphlets, emails, websites, phone calls were what I saw of Trent. The life there, trying to grasp how I will fit among the crowd of busy students, all trying to make a name for themselves. Now I'll be fully submerged in the coming season.
Its pathetically true, but the one thing, the one living, glorious creature I will miss most of all is my Labrador-retriever Jessie.

She has white and blond eyelashes, doe brown eyes, the biggest fan tail and a plethora of names to fit every mood we're in. My little banana butt. The apple of my eye. It's very hard for me not to believe that an animal can have a soul. I swear she does.
These past weeks, she been giving me more and more attitude, I suspect she's gathered that I'll be leaving her soon.
One thing I love to do with this 6 year old beauty is get her outside, photograph her, capture her character. My companion. My buddy.

Here are some that I hope will be inspiring, but also show off my Jessie-girl ...

What to expect?

as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

phil 1:20 

I remember a few years ago, looking at my friends, looking at magazines, filled with jealousy and envy. All I wanted was to look like those girls. I looked more like the boys, beefy, chubby, strong. Words like dainty, tiny, skinny, feather I wished could describe me, but that never happened. I thought there was something wrong with me. I'd ask my dad, "when will I start to look more feminine?" He'd smirk and say "just wait!" I boiled in disbelief.

 

I see myself differently now.

I'm tall and that worked to my advantage. I'm an upside down triangle, portioned to swim and run and lift heavy objects with joy and pleasure. Sixteen was my year for courage. To fold up self pity and tuck it away. I rolled up my sleeves and began a new shameless lifestyle. Belief in my body's power. Every temple is unique, some are made of limestone, marble, some are pointed, some are flat, inspire of Egyptians, Aztecs, Romans. Colorful, plain.

 

God desires our own acceptances for ourselves. We're critics of a perfect artist. We should be silent and admire and yet we degrade the art piece.

 

Challenge yourself to expect that God has given you this blueprint of your temple for a reason, for a gift to the world, for your eyes to behold and rejoice in.  

 

Many paths

Changing the name of this blog, my blog, little babe of a blog was difficult, but it now allows me to embrace a new direction it will be taking. I love many things. God, people, creation, empowerment, admiration for our beautiful temple-bodies, creativity and all other things I can put words to. I like words, letters forming words, sheers of gold, onto the lips to form speech. To read, to envision. To enjoy.

So I will be writing about my dreams, about powerlifting, about limits and trying to overcome them, about scripture, photographs, recipes, school. Every entry, different and messy.

//Here we go//

Fear-FULL Hope

I was thinking a lot about the book of Hosea, how it's collected a lot of dust in my life, so I opened it up and found hope.
 
6: 1-3 Hosea
 
^ I will write it out in a bit. The book had many curses & blessings. From what I gathered, God is telling the people of Israel through Hosea (Joshua) that another nation will destroy them. And after the fact, God will be able to bless Israel again. The beginning of their end happened when Israel was introduced to other gods as they fought with different nations. As kings came & went, Israel became smaller and broke their covenant with God.

Brokenness was poured into Israel. Humility sprouted. Faith was desired again.

God tells His people that He will bring them health, but first Israel must try to 'know' God.

Even though this book is old testament, I am humbled by it's story. I didn't live in the mid-8th century... Jesus has come, has died for me and so there isn't some guy telling my home town that God is going to punish us. Makes me wonder how beautiful the community could be if we lived as though that could be a reality. Not living in fear of God, but living fearfully in God. Get the difference? Sometimes I wonder if having Jesus thrown into the mix makes God's Might and judgment diminish.

Now there' s a question of why I found hope in this book, because if I'm living in 2015 and don't need to worry about God's wrath being unleased why would I relate to this?

" Come, let us return to the Lord;
for He has torn us, that He may heal us;
He has struck us down, and He will bind us up.
After two days he will revive us;
on the third day he will raise us up,
that we may live before him. "

Hope because we all leave. We get torn. We get struck down! Except it's not God doing it to us now. It's this wide world, it's broken like Israel was. But when people return to God, they are healed and bound together again. He is telling me through this passage that he is the reviver of our lives. He is powerful enough to raise us up out of the mud of this world when it becomes too thick. He just wants us to keep coming back.

Living fearfully allows us to remain in hope. Israel lost that fear. People today, lose that fear.

" Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord,
his going out is sure as the dawn;
he will come to us as the showers,
as the spring rains that water the earth. "

Consistent faith, like the sun rising and setting. Not being doubtful if the rain doesn't come for a while, it'll just stop all together. Faith that knowing God more, learning He comes in his time. He has a master plan to bless our lives. We just need to return to him. To fear.
 
Hosea reminds me of a verse I recently came across in Isaiah and I think it ties into what I am trying to say.

" I will not cause pain without allowing something new to be born, says the Lord. "(66:9)

In these moments when we leave God's path & are struck, the pain we may find in our lives doesn't go without serving a purpose. God uses them to create something new for us. Just like God allowed Israel to be destroyed so that a new Israel could be born and blessed. A God fearing land. A beautiful nation. Just as we can live as God fearing people. Learning it's importance from this story. And finding hope in the power of God.

I hope this made sense. I really like Hosea.

Fill my cup to overflow.

another summer at camp. another season of service there.
this time was different, even with the understanding that nothing can occur the same twice, this summer at camp was particularly different. this was my first summer as a full-time staff member with all its great stresses, joys and responsibilities. on top of that i was solo leading which becomes tricky when you are taking care of 6 thirteen year old girls, not to mention the other girls that are in activities that you are leading. many times i lost my campers or "misplaced them" as i put it, but we always seemed to find each other again. up in the pioneer circle i stayed and took up home there for the next two weeks after arriving at the beginning of august. in those weeks i learnt so much from Holy Spirit. about Him and about His word and about our relationship together. and about service. i felt many times Him calling me into His presence for Him to be able to work in me and through me to both campers and other staff. the craziest experiences.

i think one of the major things ive learnt was about the verse from Matthew,

"The first shall be last and the last shall be first"[20:16].

that is what i am focusing on in this post.
i always looked at that message as a direct instruction to all of God's people, telling us that if we want to serve and be filled by Holy Spirit, we need to be last ALWAYS and allow others to be first before us. so that is how i had started to work this summer, forcing myself to be last in order to serve God and others in the [best] way.

i realized about 6 days into the first session that i was not filled enough myself to then serve others and fill them up. my own cup had not been filled to overflow. during a staff bible study, the directors mother, who lead the study, brought up this verse in her teaching and the imagery she exposed us to changed how i interpreted that passage. she told us to imagine a ladder, like many things that God does, He works in seasons, and so, like a cycle, or circle or servant hood, He calls us to be last at times [at the bottom of the ladder] so that we can serve others as our cups have been filled to overflow and we can use that fullness within us to uplift others [that strength]. then she told us that God also calls us into times of being first [at the top of the ladder], to allow others who are overflowing to uplift us and for us to be filled more and sustained by others and their service. then when we are filled we return to the bottom knowing that we may have to go back to the top again. this repeats. and that can look different to everyone. from this bible study i recognized that God was calling me to serve myself, to become first so that i could be filled by others who had received God through them to speak words of truth to me. i still served at the camp, but i allowed others to help me more then i had before in the session.

God uses us to fill each other until we overflow. until Holy Spirit spills over the lips of our cups, until we are quenched.

opinion.

So recently a rainbow stripe of road (crosswalks) have been painted down a main street in Toronto (Church st.). Some say for pride or awareness of the LGBT community but I believe it is doing two things only. Producing Toronto with more tourists and making a public spectacle out of LGBT. We as a community have taken this issue, a once anti-gay society and have become more respectful, understanding, kind and have provided a safer environment, but we’ve also taken this issue, this one thing and publicized it to such an extreme that it has lost its once powerful meaning to me. Why must we parade around Toronto, calling it a pride parade, wasting tax dollars to put on such a pseud and using even more money to paint a rainbow up a street? How does that make sense? But that has become the norm now with this ONE topic.

What if we did that with all our issues in history? All the ones that have been overcome, just like this one? What would our cities look like now? For slavery, if we hung nooses from lamp posts and trees as a constant reminder of where we’ve come, or if we plastered the streets with posters professing women’s rights and we had a separate booth for women to vote in during elections as a reminder… because that is what this rainbow road is, a reminder, a permanent reminder, but why is it necessary and why is it more important than all the other issues in history? It isn’t necessary to any degree, our day to day lives are the reminders of where we have come from. Every time we see a person apart of LGBT voting or parenting an adopted child or with a marriage license, those are all reminders enough! We have come very far as a people, just like when I see my black neighbours put up their Ghana flag and no one defaces their property, or my black friends and classmates who are able to sit next to me and not get beaten or harassed or how my mum was able to vote this past election OR my two close friends who are lesbian and bi-sexual were able to attend prom together without being kicked out, separated or alienated. None of these people have to continue to perform extreme acts to show that they have rights, they just go on with their day and that is enough.

After saying all of that I am not suggesting that gaining these rights was done so easily by just going on with your day. In history, drastic things were often the only way to gain respect and power, but now being 2014, already succeeding in providing a better space for everyone we still feel it’s necessary to paint on a rainbow! It’s overkill. It’s not an action for gaining acceptance, it’s just a symbol after the fact.

Now for those who are reading this and are questioning my part in all of it, freeze for a second and let me finish. I believe we as a unit of different orientations, races, religions, cultures, social classes, etc, are all ONE and that is an important fact for anyone to remember, and as for me, a heterosexual female, white, Christian, I am a constant ally to many varieties of people who are at all opposite to me, which doesn’t mean beneath, or undervalued, just opposite… like a Homosexual, male, Nepali, Muslim. However, going back to the rainbow road, it should not have been done. The rights of the LGBT were already fulfilled so this in no way was a form of protest, to try to accomplish something, it was just an act that wasted funds, an impulse. LGBT have rights! They can get married, have pensions and benefits, can adopt and are protected by the government from any anti-gay propaganda in Canada, etc.

As an ally I used my voice to explain to people how the LGBT need to be treated as equals that was the whole point! Now, as an ally I feel like a hypocrite to the LGBT. I say over and over “equal”, being “equal”, “equality is important”, but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore. They have parades and flags and rainbow roads. How are all these extra things allowing the LGBT to be treated equally? I’ve asked some of my peers who are a part of the LGBT, what they think about the parades and the road. They say that they are more embarrassed NOW to say they are LGBT because they don’t want to associate their personal orientation and life choices with such unserious gimmicks. They said it is taking their “rights” too far. Being straight, if there was a parade for that, it would probably be seen as unneeded, stupid and laughable. Well… in an “equal” way, so would a gay pride parade and so would a rainbow road! If it isn’t looked at as that, are these two varieties of people really equal?!