Getting Past Oreo Cookie Living

I remember as a child when mom would get us Oreo cookies and milk for Saturday afternoon snacks, the most fun we had was either twisting the outer cookie and eating the white fluff in the middle or else dunking the cookies (I preferred the vanilla flavored Oreos best) in milk, sucking out the liquid and smushing the softened part in our mouths and then re-dunking the rest of the cookie. What a treat it was to eat those cookies. The only bad part was if we'd twisted the cookie apart it was no fun to eat the hard cookie portion because the best part had been licked off and we wound up throwing it away. The reason I bring up the childhood memory is because I've been feeling a little like the outer hard crust lately. Monday and Friday's are usually pretty quiet at the office gym, which normally I don't mind, but lately it's felt like others come during the middle of the week only to say they've been to the gym that week and have smushed out the best part of the week by being there on Tuesday through Thursday. So I'm learning to consume the whole "cookie gym time" on Monday's and Friday's. Delving into exercise machines that I normally would avoid (the dark cookie part) has become quite enlightening and satisfying. And that new weight machine, well, someone needs to educate me how best to use it, but I've used some of the easier to use parts of it and it's been quite revealing as well. There is so much more to this human "cookie" than I realized. Staying on the treadmill is fine but I'm learning that strengthening and toning the muscles on other machines expands my exercise discipline and I'm learning to enjoy that aspect of exercising. I want to consume not only what the gym "cookie" has to offer but to venture out into my neighborhood and take in the sights, sounds and beauty that can also enrich my exercise "diet." There is so much more to consume, mentally, spiritually, emotionally and yes, even physically. I want it all. Yes, I want to do another 5K, but what about learning other disciplines that will draw me closer to my Lord. My husband and I just finished a bible study in our new church, "Read the Bible through in 90 days." Wow, now that took discipline, and I'm embarrassed to say my husband did much better than I did. But, all is not lost, I still have my bible and each time I bite off a chapter or book of it I grow even more. I'm typing this at a beautiful library in our city and as I look around I see books I would never have thought of looking at before. It's time to expand other areas of my mind, to learn, expand and enrich my mind in the areas the Lord leads me to grow in. Just consuming the fluff of the books I've read before or areas of reading that I've always stayed in doesn't help me grow closer to Him. Oh, the possibilities! Can you see it yet? Why, I even went to a store at a local mall before I came here and purchased a tortilla press. I want to make my own quinoa tortillas. What a thrill that will be! Too much time has been wasted on living in the past and limiting my horizons. It's time to let the past stay in the past, learn from it and move on to where the Lord is leading me, leading you, leading anyone who wants to fulfill His purposes in their lives. Let's do it! Buy a smoothie maker at a second hand store and make healthy smoothies, eat some kale just for the thrill of it, or put the kale into the smoothie, dunk the rest of the "cookie" the Lord has given you into the Water of Life and LIVE!