What health and fitness has done for me (and it's NOT what you think!)

I'm literally sitting alone in my house in complete hot mess snotty tears. REALLY POWERFUL tears. Im not sad at all, it's just how I express any overwhelming sense of emotion. How I'm wired. Why? I just had a huge A-HA moment in my journey. Sometimes I just can't believe how buying a challenge pack LITERALLY changed my entire life - inside out and top to bottom. Not only did I lose 50 pounds, leave a career that wasn't working for me to truly live a life of passion, purpose and freedom, but MORE IMPORTANTLY than ALL of that, I became part of a family who helped me find my way back to God and my now-growing-daily faith after almost 20 years of being a non-believer.  I don't often talk about my faith bc I always feel uncomfortable - like its taboo, or non-pc...the typical side effects of a waspy white-girl suburban upbringing. It's icky, it makes my stomach wrench, and I was SO ANNOYED by my coach Micki and how she would post every day about God and scripture. I was like, come ON with all the GOD stuff already! Not everyone buys that shit! No seriously, that's where I was. I believed that since most Christian- based religions did not support the idea of gay people, and since I am bisexual, and am together with the love of my life who happens to be a woman, that there was no place for me in that world. That these people didn't believe that God loved me too, so fuck them. That's seriously where my head was at - and so the rest of me tried to follow suit. But you know, I always knew there was something wrong with that equation. My heart ALWAYS knew something didn't add up with that rationalization. And eventually watching Micki post about her faith all the time it started to sink in that maybe there was something I hadn't allowed myself to believe. That MAYBE, just maybe, there was something more to this than the simple rational black and white truths I had let run my life for so long. So I opened my mind and my heart and waited for a response. Almost immediately I found a church that accepted me with open arms and said "of COURSE God loves everyone - that's how he made you!" It started to shift for me - I started to pray. And I started to receive blessings. And I started to pay it forward. And I know in my heart that God is using me for something incredible - and the blessings are going to keep on coming. So my message to you is this - if you are in a place of turbulence or in a place of disbelief, take a tiny leap of faith and be willing to open yourself up to receiving a message. Any message. And ask for signs. I did and I got smacked upside the head with one! Most importantly - listen. Because you WILL feel it deep down in the heart of your gut. And trust that this is not rational. That was the hardest part for me. But it is the most beautiful thing to finally be able to accept myself as a child of God and know that no matter what, I am loved. I am worthy, and I am forgiven.  Amen!