Guarding our hearts

I've been stressed out the last couple of days. There are just so many things going on at work, not bad things, just a lot of things, and it's got me worked up. I had the same amount of projects last week and the week before, so my being stressed out can only be caused by one thing...ladies, I don't think I need to explain any further.

I'm glad to say, that being stressed out didn't send me into an eating frenzy. Well...not completely. Instead of pigging out, I went home, because I couldn't find a jazz club to go to, and created my own jazz club experience. I plugged in the ipod, and let Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Robert Gasper fill the air and set the mood. When I got hungry, I ate appetizer style with a glass of red wine.

Yesterday evening was a different story though. I was starving and stressed, so I decided on a salad. I should know better than to eat salads, because it gives me a false sense of indulgence. I think, because it's a salad I can eat more of it. Oh how wrong, how wrong. More is more, no matter what it is. If your heart wants more of something God is not calling you to have, then it's greed...it's gluttony... it's sin! And guess what, my body made me pay for it, both yesterday evening and still this morning.

So on my drive in to work this morning, I started meditating on Proverbs 4:23 - Guard your heart, for it affects everything you do (NLT). Before today, I thought that verse had more to do with guarding your heart against people, but I realized this morning, that we need to guard our hearts from anything that will hurt us, because that thing will affect everything else in our lives. So to put this in perspective, not guarding our hearts from the greed of food, can, will, or has caused health issues, created anxiety filled clothes shopping experiences, affected our ability to do certain jobs, or get a job for that matter, and has even affected our relationships.

I have been asked by some, why I'm not working out right now. Because like salads, working out gives me a false sense of accomplishment. I can certainly spend at least an hour at the gym everyday because I love strength training, but when I workout it falsely gives me the "right" to overeat. Because again, just like eating salads, my thoughts say, "well, since you worked out, you can eat more." So until I learn to guard my heart against the greed for food, which is at the heart of my problem, I will stay away from both salads and the gym. Well, maybe not salads. I'll just learn to eat less of it.