There you are!

Have you ever watched the movie Hook?  I have and I have to admit it is one of my favorites.  It doesn't hurt that Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman are cast as Peter Pan and Captain Hook and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell.  Exceptional artists playing exceptional characters!  You may be wondering why I am talking about a movie, especially the movie, Hook.  Well the truth is a line from that movie just popped into my head over the weekend and I can't get it out of my head.  The line is simple enough and was spoken by one of the lost boys after looking very closely at Peter Pan's face trying to determine if he really was Peter Pan.  Finally, he gazed deeply into Peter Pan's eyes and said, "There you are Peter!"  Here is a short video clip from the movie so you can see and hear those words in context:

Why is, "There you are Peter!" hanging around in my brain, popping up again and again whispering softly to me, annoying me?  Saturday evening I realized why and it came from a most unusual place, another blogger.  My daughter sent me a link to a blog she thought I would enjoy reading but she also pointed out the current post was one she was certain I would like.  So I clicked on the link to Mrs.Thor and read the story of an amazing woman, Amy, who shared that she had now lost 100 pounds.  Amy said, "I'm still afraid to write about it, still afraid to talk about it, still afraid to put it down as a record, still afraid to show off the mind-boggling before and after photo of the last 50 pounds I have lost, for fear that maybe it will stop, or go away, or I will wake up tomorrow and it won't be real."  She continued on with a powerful post concluding with, "And now, here goes nothing.  It's real.  I will wake up tomorrow and it will still be real."

How do these two seemingly random things tie together in my brain?  What does "There you are Peter!" have to do with this?  Where am I going with this post?

You see I understand Amy's fear to put her words in writing and back them up with a picture showing the Amy before and the Amy now afraid that if she actually put them in print they would somehow not be real tomorrow.  I understand because I had similar concerns.  If I had lost 196.4 pounds who was I now and who was the 196.4 pounds that are now gone? One hundred ninety six pounds is a full grown adult man! Was I the same person that started the weight loss journey or did somehow I get lost in the weight that was gone; was I gone?  This was the same weight I said I hated. Had I somehow disappeared?   Who was buried under the enormity of that extra weight?  Who was I now?  Was I even recognizable?  "There you are Peter!"  I took a deep breath and looked in the mirror, really looked at myself from all possible angles.  I am older and my skin shows the age and the stretching it has endured but I realized I looked like me!  I thought for a while about how I felt about my body, my life in general, my friends and my family and I smiled.  I am content in this baggy skin I wear.  I am happy, really, really happy I am fulfilled and I am loved. "There you are Peter!"  There you are Lynn!  Can you feel me smiling?