everything's for a reason

Today was to say the least a very stressful day. One social worker with forty beds is really too much to handle sometimes. Dealing with insurance companies, then dealing with patients that have no insurance and no money and need everything under the sun and then dealing with the patients who are just down right hateful and rude, it takes a lot of a person. So today as I was dealing with my stress, I was really letting it take over. I was letting my frustrations and feelings of bitterness take over. I'll be honest, on my way to lunch I stopped in my break room and grabbed a handful of brownies! I was so overwhelmed by that point that I could have easily eaten the whole pan. But luckily I didn't. All I wanted to do was drown my sorrows in food. In my mind- my old way of thinking was really pushing me and making me believe that if I ate all the sweet crap in the office, i would feel so much better. However my new lifestyle stepped in and knew better. I ended the day with a good cry in the office with my supervisor asking for help.

Now as I look back on my day I see so many signs that should have told me what I was doing was wrong. No wonder I sat there and drowned in bitterness, anger and despair. It's funny how little things throughout the day happen that should point you in the right direction- those little signs from God telling you to either slow down or turn the other way, however sometimes you get so caught up in your old ways you ignore what you should be seeing. I sat there and in my head asked for something to happen all day, and now that I look back, I see that it was right in front of me all the time. How crazy.

After lunch- and my brownie episode- I made a random phone call to schedule an appointment with the wound healing center for a patient. As I always do, I said, "hey, its Amanda in Social work" and started talking about what I needed. As I was about to hang up, the receptionist asked my how I was doing with my Dr. Oz challenge and that her mom follows my blog. It completely put a smile on my face did make me take a step back, however I kept pushing through everything by myself without paying any attention to what had happened. I just thought, oh wow that was very cool, but random. Then again when I called the operator to have a Dr. paged, the operator asked me how much weight I had lost and how I was doing. Then I really thought, wow this is crazy and cool, but just kept on going about my day. My final sign which completely made my day a little better for a few minutes was when a friend from the past called me at work and asked me to come and do life skill classes about nutrition and goal setting for a program with homeless families/single parents. I was so excited and still really am. I completely want to start doing things like this and start doing some motivational speaking. So this is a great way for me to start giving back. These three things randomly happened today and honestly should have made me realize that someone higher up was wanting me to step back and take a look at what I was doing. What have I been saying lately- I need to ask for help! I have to let things go that I have no control over or else I will start eating a cake pan of brownies at a time again! I can't please everyone! Why couldn't I have seen this when it happened today.

Everything really does happen for a reason. Now that I take a step back and look at the day, I know that all of these things happened for a reason today. God puts people and events in our lives to make us examine what we are doing and what paths we are going down. When random people started asking me how I was doing with my challenge- it should have been a clue that ya overall I'm doing great, but today sucks! - what can I do differently! I really have to change my attitude tomorrow and start asking for help- or else no one will want to work with me! I did ask for help for tomorrow and luckily I am getting help. Although I'm sure I will think that I can do it better- I'm not going to be a perfectionist anymore! I am going to gladly accept help that is given! I mean hey, if I hadn't of accepted the help so far, I would still be almost 300lbs and gaining!

~Amanda