Life is more than Food

When God speaks to me, He doesn’t do so in a loud thunderous voice with paragraphs and paragraphs of things for my brain to digest and chew. No, My Heavenly Father knows me very well. He knows how I learn. I learn in segments. I learn in pieces. I take as much time as I can on each piece until I know it well and then move on to the next one. Each one builds on top of the next one. It is the same way in Jiu Jitsu. I take each technique and focus on one aspect of it until I feel comfortable with it and then move on to the next aspect. For some people, they may consider this as slow learning. I have never been one to be a late-nighter, day-before-test-crammer, and succeed (though I admit, I am a day before test crammer). And so it is when the Father soeaks to me. He speaks in segments, phrases, small words or short verses. And then gives me time to mentally chew it and digest it, absorbing all of the spiritual nutrients I can from it. And then He’ll give me another one. He’ll lay another verse, phrase or word on my heart. The last time I walked through this experience, God gave me, over the course of several months, 5-6 verses that I believe He specifically wanted me to read and reflect upon. The end result was a paragraph of biblical truth that I needed to apply to my life.

I believe I wrote a post about how what has been on my heart lately was “Unsettle Me” and I wrote about how God was doing that in my life already. Here’s what He’s put on my heart since then and other things going on because of it.

Background: Back home, before I left for Hawai’i, I was going out to dinner with some ladies from church. I got there early and there was a Christian Book Store nearby and so I went in. As I was perusing around, I picked up a book called “Made to Crave Devotional”. As I picked it up and started reading, I was encouraged that someone had written a book documenting struggles that I have been going through for the last several years. I realized there was also a book called “Made to Crave” which had come out before the devotional. I went back and forth on which one I wanted and ended up with both of them. I had also bought a book called “It Starts with Food” and had been reading that.

 Let me preempt this background with the knowledge that I have always struggled with my weight and body image. I have been on the low side of the scale and the high side. I have done all forms of exercise, tried different kinds of diets, only to be frustrated and discouraged in the end when the results I was expecting didn’t come. I have seen more infomercials than I can count and wished countless times that I was on the other side of the screen in my skinny jeans holding my “too big now” pants, proclaiming the amount of weight and inches I had lost on this new miraculous diet. I have asked people if I look fat, only to have them tell me no and still in my mind not believe them. I have been in clothing stores, looking longingly at outfits that I can only dream of wearing. I could go on,  but you get the idea.

When I got to Hawai’I, I decided to include the books into my devotional i.e. read a chapter each time I read my bible and journal my thoughts and reflections. This is the book from which God used “Unsettle Me” From. The newest thing he laid on my heart was two fold:  1) Life is more than food, 2) you are more than enough.

Wow. What a revelation. Life. Is. More. Than. Food.

I had never thought of food in that context before. To me, food was good, bad, delicious, yummy, you name it. I never thought that food could be the source of a spiritual struggle. As I delved deeper into the book, the author describes her spiritual struggle with food. How when she gives into cravings, she’s giving into temptations and thereby letting Satan have control over this area in her life. I was dumbfounded. And then I turned the microscope on me – in what areas was I letting Satan have control over my life? You got it – my body image and my weight. The Bible says “There is no fear in love” and it also says that “God is Love”. Well, if every time I step on the scale, afraid of the number I’m about to see, how can that possibly be a God-honoring way to live? Living in fear of a scale? Living in fear of a number, a clothing size – no thank you! Even on the flip side – being AFRAID of a food because you think it will make you fat? I repeat – NO THANK YOU!

As I looked at my life and really examined some things in my life I struggled with, I pin pointed a single item which had me in bondage. Coffee.  But coffee is good for you, it has so many antioxidants, how can you not have coffee – could all be potential responses from people who don’t understand how this is rooted in spiritual struggles. I’ll outline mine for you:

1)      I always looked forward to my coffee i.e. I was beginning to feel that I couldn’t live without it. If someone had challenged me to live without coffee for a week, I’d look at you like you were crazy.

Coffee has no longer become something I can simply enjoy, but more of a necessity. I think of the verse “Man does not live by bread alone”. If I insert coffee, or any food for that matter, my outlook on coffee is in direct violation of that verse.

 Any time I have ventured on a diet, the coffee was one thing I couldn’t give up. I HAD to have my coffee. Living life with that kind of need, whether it be food or something else, is not healthy.

         2) Portion control, when it came to coffee, was a foreign concept to me. The author of the book has an excellent chapter on portion control and I can honestly say that portion control and I do not have a monogamous relationship. The temptation to eat more and more is so hard to overcome and most of the time, I end up losing that battle. With coffee, it was the size of my drink. I always love a big steaming mug of coffee in the mornings and love the cream when it makes the coffee the right color.

Let me just add that I am not singling coffee out. This is my struggle. For some people, that struggle may be sugar, or soda, bread, snack foods. You get the idea.

As I went through these chapters, I felt God calling me to give up this area of my life. I have tried so many times and failed. But this time it felt different and so I prayed. I prayed for God’s strength to get through this. I challenged myself for a week (7 days) of no coffee. (as I type, I’m on day 9). I was in the middle of a pretty nasty 4 day headache when I made this decision and then incurred 4 mouth ulcers (fever blisters) that were excruciatingly painful that hurt whenever I talked, ate, moved, etc. I firmly believe that it was a spiritual attack because of the nature of the headache and the blisters. I had a little relief from medicine but nothing which helped the swelling in my mouth go down or something which took away the throb of my head. I went to be with my dear sister Mandy and we spent a lot of time talking about the Lord and spent some time in prayer. While I was with her, I noticed an almost 100% difference in the swelling in my mouth and a decrease of pain in my head. I am convinced that last week’s pain was a direct result to my decision to not drink coffee, in obedience to what I felt the Lord was showing me in regards to my food choices.

***This is where I left off while I was typing. I'm picking up and it's now into week 3 of now coffee ;)***

And so this ends another post full of ramblings – God’s doing great things in my life. He’s addressing character flaws that I have and one by one, picking out the weeds. This journey’s going to be amazing – I just know it.  :)