Sandi Patty - The Edge of the Divine: Where Possibility Meets Gods Faithfulness

The Edge
of the Divine

Other Books by Sandi Patty

Merry Christmas with Love
Sams Rainbow
Broken on the Back Row
Life in the Blender
Falling Forward
Layers

The Edge
of the Divine

WHERE POSSIBILITY MEETS
Gods Faithfulness

SANDI PATTY

2010 by Sandi Patty

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Thomas Nelson, Inc., titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ ThomasNelson.com.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture references are taken from The Message by Eugene H. Peterson. 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NIV are taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked KJV are taken from THE KING JAMES VERSION of the Bible.

Scripture references marked NKJV are taken from THE NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Edited by Sue Ann Jones.

Some incidents first mentioned in Broken in the Back Row by Sandi Patty. Copyright 2005 Sandi Patty. Used by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Patty, Sandi, 1956
The edge of the divine : where possibility meets Gods faithfulness / Sandi Patty.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4002-0280-5
1. Patty, Sandi, 1956 2. Christian women--Religious life. 3. Overweight women--Religious life. 4.
ObesitySurgeryPatientsReligious life. 5. Weight lossReligious aspectsChristianity. I. Title.
BV4527.P3863 2010
248.86196398dc22

2010009218

Printed in the United States of America
10 11 12 13 14 WCF 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

five Seeking the Lost, Cherishing
Whats Found, Releasing the Excess

Questions for Discussion
and Individual Reflection

Indeed these are the mere edges of His ways,
And how small a whisper we hear of Him!

JOB 26:14 NKJV

ONE
The Edge Between
Despair and the Divine

Im on the edge of losing itthe pain in my gut
keeps burning. Im ready to tell my story of failure.

PSALM 38:19

T he doctors waiting room was nearly full, but painfully quiet. No one spoke. No one made eye contact. We pretended to be engrossed in outdated magazines or busily clicked our smart-phones to check e-mail and text messages. Anything but acknowledge where we were and why.

The door opened, and another woman entered and checked in at the desk, turning in the same sheaf of forms and papers that had taken me nearly an hour to complete. As I had done, she glanced around the room with a tight, selfconscious smile. Perhaps, as I had done, she quickly realized that all the chairs in the waiting room were oversized.

Eventually there were ten of us, as I recallseven women, three menand I suspect that the others were feeling the same painful emotions I was. We were embarrassed and ashamed, tormented by the unspoken question: Howcould I have let this happen?

The silence continued, broken only by our phone clicking or page turning. Maybe, as I did, the others stole quick looks around the room, comparing sizes. Well, at least Imnot as big as he is. About half of them were around my size, I guessed. The rest were larger.

I was relieved to see I wasnt the biggest person there.

But it didnt matter, really. Wed all met one terrible requirement that qualified us to sit in that waiting room: we were all at least a hundred pounds overweight.

Later I would laugh, thinking that our size was the painfully obvious elephant in the room. But at that moment there was no laughter. In fact, if someone had asked me so much as, How are you today? I probably would have burst out sobbing.

Wed been encouraged to bring along a friend or loved one, but no one did. If the others felt like I did, they couldnt bear the thought of it. We were ashamed to be there, and although the room was full, we felt totally, agonizingly alone. We didnt want our loved ones to share our humiliation as we were forced to acknowledge, in public, how bad the situation really was.

Finally, mercifully, a woman wearing hospital scrubs stepped through an office door. She flashed a warm smile; shed seen hundreds of us guilty, shame-soaked people sitting silently in those oversized chairs, and she knew what was coming next. She invited us to follow her down the hallway.

After a few steps, we turned into a door leading to the conference room. At the time, I saw no symbolism in that simple movement, passing through a doorway. Now I realize I was crossing an important threshold, stepping over an edge into the unknown.

EDGES EVERYWHERE

The journey Ive been on since that spring day in 2008 in the bariatric surgeons office has been life changing, not only because of the physical changes that have occurred in my body but also because of the enhanced spiritual awareness that journey has given me. A dictionary defines the word edge in several ways, but my favorite is the point at which something is likely to begin. Now when I think about the door of that conference room, thats what I see: an edge where something remarkable began.

Although the doorway seems now, in my memory, like the edge of a cliff, I didnt fall over it accidentally. I deliberately chose to step off, not knowing what would happen but trusting God to work it all out for my good, just like Romans 8:28 promises.

I hope you wont think Im trivializing my relationship with the Savior by telling you in this book how, during the last two years, I lost a lot of weight and gained a lot of spiritual insight. Thats truly what happened, and its simply too amazing not to want to share the story.

Im encouraged by what Oswald Chambers called the unexpected sacredness of circumstances. The November 7 essay in his classic devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, says, God by His providence brings you into circumstances that you cant understand at all, but the Spirit of God understands. God brings you to places, among people, and into certain conditions to accomplish a definite purpose through the intercession of the Spirit in you.

Chambers said that God, through the Holy Spirit interceding within us, uses everyday circumstances to touch the whole world with His saints.

My hope in sharing the story of my weight loss is that youll be inspired to look for the unexpected sacredness of your everyday circumstances, too, and that youll find in that sacredness the same closer relationship to the Creator that Ive found.

During this weight-loss journey, Ive learned that, throughout each day, we encounter points at which something is likely to begin. Edges. My experience, which has included prayer, spiritual meditation, and psychological counseling, has helped me recognize those edges and make better choiceschoices that reflect my priorities not only in what I eat but also in so many other things I do.