Faith and My Spiritual Transformation

Lifestyle Coach Carol S. Batey www.artlifestylecoach.com copyright 2010
It been said that health is not a commodity to be bargained for; it has to earned. According to the dictionary, the word transform means change in form or appearance. Such has been my case for five years. In 1998, I filed for a divorce after 21 years of marriage. I feared the unknown; could I make it on my own by myself and what would be my destiny in this life? My faith was tested I gained a large amount of weight within those years. That ending of my life opened up a brand-new path for me to walk down. I gained 43 pounds afterwards. I weighed 184 pounds and had a body mass index of (BMI) of 35. I was also suffering from the autoimmune disease fibromyalgia, which cause me muscle stiffness and pain, fatigue, and sleep apnea which was made worse by weight. Not only that after my divorce I was stressed out more and was losing faith. Financial obligations and worrying about my five children (then ages 9 to 18) left me vulnerable and unhealthy in body, mind and spirit. I held on to negative thoughts and feeling and allowed myself to be overwhelmed by them.
Growing Stronger fighting Fibromyalgia
Not until I decided to change my thoughts to get healthy again was my new goals and renew my personal core values of what I wanted in my life did I become renewed. The meaning of faith is -meaning without proof. Many have asked me over the years and knowing that I battled fibromyalgia how I became transformed. I needed to clear the clutter from my life and focus on my health and take full responsibility. It took courage and discipline to achieve a personal transformation; others may have high demands on their personal and family lives that can be assessed only by them; or fear comes into play which has to be acknowledged and removed only by them.

I took the first step by joining the YMCA a gym in my near by area. My children swam and played basketball at the Y when they were young, but I had never gone there for myself. To start building I took a personal inventory of my inner strengths, talents, gifts, weaknesses and abilities of what I should do at the gym. Because of the fibromyalgia the Doctors told me I could not do any high impacted aerobics. Therefore, I started doing kickboxing and yoga.
I had already changed my diet at age 26. Our family has a long history of cancer. Since I was five years old, I can remember my grandmother's death of colon cancer and the rest of the family. I did not want to face this disease.
Being pretty ill with muscle pain and ragweed allergies I worked as a massage therapist some days with muscle stiffness, itchy eyes, stuffy nose, congestion, and very low spirits would come into play in my body. Kickboxing became my best friend. The movement along with my faith in myself challenged me to push my muscles where they haven't been, What a daily dose of spiritual practices, discipline, courage, and confidence I was able to walk out the door and get ,moving. I felt energized! Determination became my mantra. Determination means to decide with one's mind firmly made up. Yoga three times a week reduces the strains of my hectic life that left me with physical pain and disease. I held on to childhood, adulthood, and physical pain and suffering within the cell memory of my body. In order to lose weight, get healthy from fibromyalgia and change to a healthier lifestyle, we must gain control over our physical, emotional, mental, and negative thought patterns this takes a huge act of faith. It has been proven that when trying to eliminate a negative behavior, one must replace it with positive actions for least 30 days. This can only be done with faith one day at a time. I had to retrain my mind to love, and to convince myself to get out of bed and eliminate the excess baggage of negative emotions and fat cells. My spiritual practice of mediation, prayers, exercising that started at 5 a.m. and eating healthy for my overall out looked balanced me. Then learning to let go of anything in my life that didn't serve me any more, this really took faith and trust, cleaning out the clutter of my life, world and affairs.
Revitalizing My Spirits was the Key
The exercising, my spiritual practice and diet helped changed my mind-set and helped me to deal with the fibromyalgia daily. As I was going through this transformation I remembered my childhood dream to model and to write books.