Wellness by Degrees

Our annual “Wellness Expo” took place this week; vendors from all over the region were there, plying their products and their craft.  There were Zumba dancers, students from a nursing college offering free massages, and a battery sales booth, which we couldn’t exactly figure out.  Hearing aids and automatic blood pressure cuffs, perhaps.  Along with free blood glucose tests and posture screening and body mass calculations, we took advantage of a $20.00 blood panel, results forthcoming.

It was special to be there with perhaps the most “well” person at the event, in terms of lifestyle change.  Sister Ann of the Unfailing Persistence lost over eighty pounds in a little more than a year, and she did it in the very best Cor Unum manner.  She ate healthy foods, controlled her portions, and exercised twice a day as often as possible.  She tried to keep going for Jesus’ sake, not just to see the numbers change on her bathroom scales.  She had delivered seven babies in fifteen years, but she now looks like a teenager, and she’s stronger than most teens, no doubt, with a better BMI and blood pressure, too, than many half her age.

How did she do it?  What was her secret?  That’s what everyone wants to know.  Read: Where do I go to find the magic pill that you took?

Hers was a happy year of “Conversatio,” of adjusting her food intake down and her nutrition and exercise up.  When she hit a plateau, she put a small, do-able change into effect.  She is still making decisions that will insure that she never gains back the weight she lost or the health she has acquired.

Most of life travels at the speed of small, do-able changes.  From college freshman to PhD, from greenhorn salesman to CEO, from waitress to restauratrice, almost every success story on the planet has a volume of wise decisions and small adjustments behind it.  There are understudies to whom the big break comes, but in REAL LIFE, many of them are not prepared to step into the ruby slippers that will take them where they want to go.  Those, of course, are the stories we never hear about.

Because we do sometimes take a step back, here in Cor Unum we set out to take lots of steps forward.  We don’t plan on the backward direction, but we don’t let it keep us from the prize, either.  We know that if we keep putting one foot in front of the other, we will get where we’re going.  We have learned in this Kingdom and this cyber convent that the absence of forward motion is back-pedaling, because our God, as Jesus said, “Worketh always.” 

Here in Cor Unum we have a “Wellness Expo” within our walls, an ongoing opportunity to gain physical and spiritual health.  We will take a look tomorrow at the all-important benefit of genuine REST. 

Edamame beans . . . 

by Kanko, by permission