Foodie

My journey started a little over two years ago now I guess... It didn't look like much in the beginning- a revelation I wasn't ready to face. Let me take you back a bit further to when I was at a women's conference. It was there that Priscilla Shirer's Gideon study captivated my attention. Well, it was the cover art really, but it was the subtitle... "Your Weakness, God's Strength" that moved this tightwad to invest in herself. And that study has been life altering in more ways than I can recount here.

So in one particular study in that first week, Priscilla breaks down the negative affects of partial obedience, which in reality is disobedience. Case in point, she talks about how a generation before Gideon's time, the Jewish people only partially obeyed and conquered the Promised Land they were given, leaving the tribes with iron chariots not easily conquerable. As a result, those nations rose later causing hardships (such as the Midianites.) Then she self reflects asking if there is anything in our lives that we or generations before were called to conquer and didn't that as a result are causing hardships. 

There it was... The revelation. 

Diabetes runs on both sides of my family, and my eating, especially sweets was so wildly out of control. But I just wasn't ready.

About a year later when I returned to the study and came to that same question again, the answer I did not write down on paper was still clearly written on my heart. One night standing in the still quiet by my kitchen sink in guilt at the two packages of HoHos I had just shamefully shoved in my mouth, (which I don't even like but ate out of desperation for something sweet) I felt a still small voice. "If an alcoholic can't handle alcohol, they have no business enjoying a glass of wine.... if you can't handle sugar, you need to reevaluate what you are putting in your mouth." We need to know our limits...

With that I invested in a book/program that most people would consider a "drastic" measure; and I set out to cut out sugar as completely as possible for me. Looking back at the course of that year I was able to see all that God had put in to place to prepare me. God's gracious gentleness and patience is really overwhelming, He doesn't call you to something that He will not give you the strength for.

It's been about a few years now, and I have been up and I have been down, but I am further along the road then where I started out and I will do my best to keep moving forward. 

This journey has taught me so much in the kitchen, but it has also awakened in me the passion for cooking. I love finding new guilt-free treats I can enjoy, discovering vegetables I've never heard of and intriguing flavor-combinations while trying to nourish my body and learning to honor God with it out of obedience. Meal planning is fueled by a return to the simplicity of real ingredients and the he-art of cooking!

I guess if I can leave anyone who might stumble upon this with one encouraging thought it would be that I was that girl who wasn't happy with herself but found it easiest to complain yet too trapped to ever break free from that bondage. We aren't called to break those chains alone, we simply need to reach out to the One who will give us strength for the journey and walk beside us. And for myself, two things I must continuously remember is 1. the I Quit Sugar mantra, "Be gentle, be kind" and 2. Progress not perfection; a very hard lesson for me. 

The pendulum of society often swings from one side to another, easily seen in America's obesity epidemic to the now growing fitness trend that has people glorifying their bodies as they seek extreme figures. This journey must be about balance and health.

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