Through My Eyes: A Journal

By Liz Root

Contact Liz by emailing her at liz@vagrantcafe.com

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1/16/2002
continuing thoughts from yesterday.

/do not conform any longer to the pattern of the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds./

it seems in this renewing of my mind, this overall decision to make good choices, a transformation has already begun. i have lost a little weight. this is day two of not biting my nails. (and for anyone who knows me personally, knows this is just short of divine intervention.) i'm taking better care of my skin, and it's showing. i've been going to bed before midnight and getting up around 8 a.m. my conversations with people have become more pure. my spirit is at rest. my clothes get washed and my room stays clean. a friend in idaho and i sometimes discuss a thing we like to call, "the fountain of motivation." i think we've been searching for the wrong thing. what i've stumbled upon is being freedom from the desire for distraction.

freedom from the desire for distraction. freedom from the need for immediacy.


- liz r. - 1/16/2002

1/15/2002
day five. so far, so good.

i've been thinking a lot about consistency. consistency is the one thing i lack most in life. except maybe being consistently inconsistent. so i'm taking steps. small ones it might seem, but you have to start somewhere. first, it was this journal. i've kept it up for a few months now, which is pretty good. and now i've been cleaning my room every day, making my bed, putting all the shoes in the closet, clothes in the basket, etc. then the diet. it's day five...almost a week. this is significant. food has a huge hold on me, and it's nice to have a hold on it for a change. i am the only one who controls what goes in and out of my mouth, so i thought i'd take a stab at it. seems to be working so far. i don't have a scale...i don't like to weigh myself, but my jeans aren't tight like they were. it's not much...but it's something.

kind of related: making choices. every day we make choices. many choices. most of them seem to be small choices. what i've been thinking about...is that maybe it's the small choices that influence our big ones. we will all make many more small choices than big ones in life, so it seems we can develop a pattern or mindset to how we decide things. i want to be in the pattern of good decision making because i know it will affect my larger decisions.

where this all comes into play is watching people i know. i see them make what seems like a small decision, but a bad one. it has not immediate effect on anything, so it seems to come without consequences. however, it just seems like a dulling of the sword. their sharpness is gone, their ability to cut through life's stuff is much more difficult. and they probably won't know that it's because of seemingly insignificant choices they made. and then i see these people fall and fall hard. they can't see how they got into their mess or how to get out of it. so they might straighten up for awhile, but inevitably they will fall again because 1. they think they can do it on their own, and 2. they haven't developed the ability to make good choices.

i feel like overall, i make more good choices than bad, although it's not like a 90-10 ratio or anything. probably more like 60-40. however...lately all the bad ones i've been making come to mind. this is where i have to start. "but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what [is] that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God." romans 12:2 the renewing of my mind. people can't change what they do until they change how they think. i can't change what i eat until i change what i think about the way i eat. i can't change how i treat my body until i change the way i think about how i treat my body. whether that be through exercise or just deciding to wash my face every night.

so i guess what i (we) really need is this renewing of our minds. that is what will transform us. change us. make us into who we are supposed to be. and it all starts in our mind.


- liz r. - 1/15/2002