When Things Come Together

Several years ago, now, I formed an organization at my local church.  It was called, for want of a better name, the Crochet and Knitting Group.  However, I always wanted a name for it.  Somehow, having a name opens up doors.  We can feel more official if we aren’t just the Crochet and Knitting Group.

This past year, I really started to think about the problem in earnest – searching for possible names that we could use to refer to ourselves.  I wanted something that would bring in several different crafts – since we aren’t just knitter or crocheters.  We do both.  I also wanted something that would easily reference the fact that we are a mission group within our congregation.

A few weeks ago, I began crafting a scarf that was done with rows of cross-stitch (crossed double-crochets).  I looked through pages about knitting and there it was: the basket weave stitch – also called the Cross-stitch.  Of course, there is also the cross-stitch found in embroidery and its related crafts (which members of our group also do).

So, now I’m thrilled: after years of being the Crochet and Knitting Group, we’ll have a name.  Going forward, we can be the Cross Stitchers.  Now, we can make a little logo to put on our brochures for the Prayer Shawl Ministry and the cards we tag to our prayer shawls.  We can send off items to our various missions with notes saying our name!

Letting Go of the Failures of the Past

One of the hardest things I had to do when I decided to try to lose weight was to let go of the past.  When I was a little kid, I was consistently underweight.  I have a large bone structure, but when I graduated from high school, I weighed all of 116 pounds.  Taking off the 10-15 extra from my bones… you get 101-111 pounds and I looked it!  I was so skinny that I was bony and I looked unhealthy.

I went off to college with this still insane metabolism.  By the time I graduated with my bachelor’s degree, I’d achieved a weight of 130 pounds.  For my height (just over 5-foot-4), that’s still pretty slim.  I should be between 134 and 155 pounds.  So, I didn’t worry about what I was eating.

When I was going to graduate school was when things began to change.  Suddenly, I started gaining weight.  I went from a low 130 pounds to a healthy 140 pounds to a slightly heavy 150 pounds in a matter of years.  I was still pretty active, though, so the weight gain stopped at 150 pounds and it was a weight I could live with.  I was pretty comfortable there, actually.

Near the end of graduate school, I began working my current job and… suddenly, I was pretty sedentary.  I went up to nearly 170 pounds and was, simply put, horrified by how quickly I’d gone from a reasonably healthy weight to something that was actually unhealthy.  For the first time in my life, I was actually overweight and I was upset by that.

At the same time, my twin sister was super active and was cheerfully around 150 pounds.  That made me even more frustrated.  She was 20 pounds lighter than me!  It was like constantly looking at how I used to look and realizing that I didn’t look that way anymore.  It was painful and upsetting, so I decided: I’m going to lose this extra weight!

I started walking after lunch each day and I went on a “diet” – as close to a diet as I’d ever been on at that point.  I began eating 100 calorie yogurt for lunch – along with fruits and vegetables.  Breakfast was a cup of coffee – nothing else.  I didn’t snack and I ate what I felt was a sensible dinner – the same dinner I’d always eaten.  I gained 17 pounds… What?  I was eating less and still gaining weight?  Why?

I gave up on that diet and I held steady at 187 pounds.  I was unhappy, but I didn’t know what to do about it.  How was I going to lose this weight?  I couldn’t imagine what I’d done wrong the first time and I was scared to try again and gain more weight.

It took me a couple more years to let go of that past failure and just try again from scratch.  The first thing I did was start walking… a lot.  I walked on my morning break and at lunch time and on my afternoon break.  That was where it started a little over a year ago and I couldn’t be happier with the results.  I’m not where I actually want to be yet, but I’m confident that I can get there now.