keeper's menu ...

When given a restaurant’s menu, you discover what your experience at this place will be. From the appetizer to the main course to the drink that washes it down and oh yes, you cannot forget the dessert to top off great dining, you order up whatever you so wish to enjoy. You also will know if the restaurant requires shoes, a shirt or if they are a bit stuffier and require ‘the jacket’ in order to be served. I would like to purpose making a menu of sorts for your own personhood. By having a menu it allows you to bring yourself as equal partner into all your experiences no matter if they are professional or personal. It is making sure that your backbone is intact and able to be tenderly strong!

Coming out from my 600lb fat suit and all the other layers, I want to lay out my new wardrobe (rudie nudie) and diet (core values & personality). I no longer wish to live in the gray zone waffling between what my heart and soul says and what attention I wish for from others. No more secondhand stress overload. I want to see my real 8 year old girl-self. I don’t care if you like me because I must like me.

Here is Keeper’s Menu:

Appetizer – my surface
My surface needs to be in balance with my depth. If I am all shy, I will never be able to show my depth in all its richness. My surface is the warmth and joy that allows my depth to better empathize and connect with you. It allows you to see me the 8 year old.

Joy has been a huge epiphany for me. It has enabled me to move to what I can control instead of drowning in what I cannot. At the time JOY crashed into my world I was at a standstill and I desire to move. Joy became my positive action. I want to be a sunny face to others around me. It is like having a roaring fire in the hearth on a blistery cold day with a mug of blueberry tea warming my hands. It just makes me feel good. My monster smile is real and pleasurable.

Main Course – my depth
My depth needs to be in balance with my surface. If I am all bubbly, I would have no substance after all the bubbles burst. My depth is my core- full of strength and weaknesses but ever growing and passionate. It is my place of hunger and contentment. It is my energy field.

My heartbeat? ‘Be tender, be brave, and be me’. My standard? ‘Joyful, healthy, and strong wings’. Always embracing what is important. No more hiding out in my 600lb fat suit. Wanting to bring clarity to whom I strive to be, allowing expression of my fullness, a way to conduct myself with integrity.

Here I will hold to my core feelings and needs:
1)Joy completes me.
I will celebrating. I will Delight & Savor. I will trade in the chaos for the simple.
2)Balance / healthy
I will be full & be hungry. I will be content yet hungry to grow more Christlike.
Gives me enormous energy
3)Attention / Value (inflow)
I will be good to myself and myself will be good to others.
‘I will be were I am wanted & won’t be were I am not wanted’
No excuses. No grey. I will read only black & white.
True Love will not desert me.
4)Honor & Blessing (empathy)(outflow)
‘where my treasure is, there my heart will be’
I refuse to trade in the permanent for the immediate. Eternity is always my focus.
5)Engage Life (love)
I will not limit or isolate.
I will keep my hands off the wheel so as not to control my life but allow God to control.
I will move to what I can control like delighting, savoring, and declaring His Attributes.
6)Growth / Learning (invitation for God’s Touch on my life)
more not less, better not bitter
making my top 100 – no regrets plan
making yearly themes
7)Wings (inflow)
I will own my passions, my dreams, my gifts, my creativity, my painting, my writing
8)Want (outflow)
I will do what is important to me. I will hunger to be my fullest.
‘Movement is medicine.’
10)Tenacity
I am a fighter & nurturer for those people I love & their dreams.
I will be the flame not the moth.
come along side (enduring encourager)

This is the main course of where my feelings and needs lie. What I want for myself, I must be willing to give out. No more excuses for you or for me. I am bringing this to the table in all my professional and personal relationships. No more hiding my authentic me and no more simulating myself to others in hopes they see it differently. Making out my personal menu allows me to a space and confidence to make my rudie nudie dash.

Drink – my delight
My delight is the how I engage with God and with those around me. It hydrates my heart and soul to be the complete. It is the service of love. Delight surrounds my surface and my depth like a bubble.

Dessert – my fullness
My fullness is what I will enjoy. After working out the menu, I get to set back and enjoy the fullness of my being. Nothing is missing or fragmented. It is pure satisfaction.

So here is Keeper’s Menu.

If I fail to uphold these self-truths, my course of action is to peel off the 600lb fat suit by going back over the meal and ordering up the missing parts of my diet.

Note1: As I was writing this menu out, I kept having to backspace all the ‘I want you’s …’ and make this from what I want because (!!!!) it is not about you but about me! I must remember.

Note2: Gary Smalley suggests making a marriage constitution/ menu and a family constitution / menu to bring unity, clarity to what is important, and a standard for behavior. What a great idea! All the participants get involved in the making and even the discipline. (The discipline works so much better when the children are involved with how they should be disciplined because they are harder on themselves!)

From his suggestion I saw a great way to keep the fat suit off! I had to make this personal. I now have the right diet to make my rudie nudie dash.

from fat suit to rudie nudie