Change Already!

WARNING!!! This post might be a little fuzzy as my brain is still on some heavy pain killers due to surgery, but I wanted to post about something about my foot since that’s what’s on my mind these days.   

In order to do that, let me back up a bit and say a little something about the history of my foot.

In short: It hurts.

Actually, it’s been hurting for about 3 years now.  One of the bones was slightly twisted thanks to all these babies and some poorly supportive shoes, and it made it uncomfortable to walk normally.  For a variety of reasons I have been both eager to have it fixed and also unable to move forward with the surgery.  Recently, that all changed. 

Surgery got planned, I got excited.  Yay! I’m finally going to have this problem fixed.  No more painful foot!  And I won’t limp anymore, and I will be able to exercise again, and….on an on with all the visions of the new and improved foot.

Enter surgery day: Go into surgery, get foot repaired. Wake up.  First Reaction: “Wait! I changed my mind! I don’t want to have this done! It hurts! A whole bunch- like, WAY more than I thought it would!”  “Maybe I’ll just stick with the problem I had. It wasn’t so bad…”

Now fortunately for me, with this issue it’s just “tough noogies”!  There’s no real going back.  I suppose the doctor could put things back in the broken state, but that wouldn’t make the pain go away at this point.  My only choice is to move forward through the pain to recovery and the opportunity that things will be better than before. I’m sort of forced to improve here.

That’s not the way a lot of life is however, and that’s what I’ve been thinking about.  How often do I say, “I want to lose weight,” but then when I actually have to avoid my late-night crackers and cheese, I change my tune.  The pain of change is uncomfortable.  If I want to have something different in my life it comes with setting down what is comfortable and normal and taking up something different, weird, or uncomfortable and dealing with it until it’s familiar.

I do this with food, with schedules, with my responses to my children…lots of things.  I want to get better.  REALLY!  But change makes me feel vulnerable, naked, like I’m floundering, unsure, and quite often involves pain.  Am I willing to go through that to get what I want?  It’s really the only way.

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going."
ESV, Hebrews 11:8

God had some big things in store for Abraham, but he had to chose to go without knowing completely what was going on.  That must have been naturally unsettling. Yet, the end result was so much blessing that Abraham would have chosen to follow if he had known.  Of course this doesn’t take into account that Abraham was willing to obey God even if it didn’t turn out wonderful, but that’s another story.  The point is, relocating his entire family without clear direction was harder than staying where he was.  But he did it anyway.

With my foot, I don’t really have a choice right now, the deal has been struck and there is no going back.  But I go back all the time on other things like over eating and yelling…I want to say yes to the pain on those things too.

How about you? Any areas that jump out at you to say yes to the pain of change?

You are What you Eat...or Are you?

Recently I’ve been considering the topic of food. I don’t know about you but I often find myself wishing that I were rich so I could just buy “healthy” food  -you know: raw milk, organic produce, grass-fed beef, more nuts and less grains, etc.  We do make an effort to purchase food that is good for us.  Over the past several years we’ve cut down on lots of boxed foods and increased our consumption of fresh ingredients.  Honestly I can’t remember the last time we had Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in our house.

The facts are, however, that we can’t seem to figure out how to afford a food snob completely healthy diet.  We get dairy, some extra produce and then I get to the meat section and think, “Well, I can have the store brand or sell a kid.”

 While the latter would be cost effective in the long term, it’s not really what I would consider an option. 

So, we still have things in our house like dry cereal (the cheapest ones), candy, mostly un-organic produce, and even get some of that pink slime they call ground beef occasionally.  Many days it’s easy to see what other people are choosing to eat and think that I’m pretty much just making my family sick. We are destined to have health problems forever because I can’t afford the best.

It wasn’t long ago while I was feeling defeated in this area that Brandon reminded me that we ask Jesus to bless our food, which, in turn, reminded me of a verse in the Bible:

1 Timothy 4:4-5 “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”

Yay! A magic potion! Ok, maybe not really, but sort of.  While I don’t think this is license to just eat junk food all day,

I do think that there is something real and effective about taking the time to thank Jesus for our food and ask for his blessing over it. 

 I believe that change does take place. 

He takes our efforts to make healthy choices and then makes them what it needs to be for us.  I mean, if the food is already completely good for us anyway, why bother asking for God’s help? We need him- even if we eat the absolute finest ingredients in the world!

So I know most of you are in a similar boat. 

You have a set budget for food that doesn’t seem to quite stretch to get what you would like.  Here’s good news!  God knows!  We can thank him for what he supplies us with and believe that He makes it everything we need it to be.

Trust you have some blessed, yummy food that God provides today and don’t forget to thank him for it.