Branching Out

F E A R July 2, 2008

Two thoughts are flowing from my head right now, fear/lack of trust and letting go/lack of trust. Ok maybe the root of everything is lack of trust which reduces down to fear.

I have a very close and dear friend who was (maybe still is) in a relationship with a man who has a hard time trusting women. While she has been all in love and considering marrying this man, she broke down into tears one night after attending one of her college classes. The teacher was talking about stress. Somewhere the sub-topic of relationships came up and the teacher bluntly put it, “If there is no trust, there is no relationship.” It amazes and boggles me that a fear of something in the past and a fear of the unknown can thwart the outcomes of the future. Not everyone in the world is bad and not everyone in the world is good. So why not trust a woman who has been truthful, faithful, loving, caring, and always there??? What’s the worst that could happen? Even if it did, deal with it! Living in the world of make-believe always awaiting for your moment to say, “I told you so,” seems not only childish but no fun, not adventurous, and not very exciting.

Not letting go/ lack of trust: topic number two. I’ve known for quite some time that eating sugary items (cookies, cakes, candy, etc.) is not healthy for me. Outside of the normal public propaganda on the subject of health, eating sugar weakens my heart. If I truly loved myself and honored myself, I would forgo the sugar (cookies, cakes, candy, brownies, honey, pudding, jello, chocolate, undiluted juice, ice cream, frozen yogurt, etc.) and live a Pro-Me life. Yet even with a medical doctor advising me not to eat sugar and the lows associated with a sugar rush, I still bought into the, I’m gonna eat it cause I like it and I want to, mantra.

My body crying for some assistance and receiving none, has begun to rebel against me causing confections to leave me completely unsatisfied a short while later.

About two weeks ago I gave up most of the refined and processed foods for raw, healthy, all I could eat fresh, live, fruits and veggies until 6pm. I enjoyed a generous salad at lunch and found a great restaurant because of this trial lifestyle. This week I tried to eat a casserole for dinner, I couldn’t take more than two bites. There wasn’t that life I tasted when eating raw fresh fruits and veggies the weeks before. In complete denial and disbelief, I’ve tried to eat a bite of cake, pumpkin pie, ice cream, caramel kettle corn that week, yet the same result each and every time, yuck, blah, lifeless, consumption that is leaving a putrid taste in my mouth.

Why couldn’t I just let go, and honor my body, be Pro-Me and show God that I am truly thankful for this body and treat it as the temple it was designed to be? Could my lack of honor and humility be ignorance thinking I know better than God? It’s so easy to eat healthy, and so much easier to say, “Yes, I wold like this confection you are offering…”

You should know that your body is a temple for the Holy Spirit who is in you. You have received the Holy Spirit from God. So you do not belong to yourselves,

1 Corinthians 6:19 (New Century Version) found at biblegateway.com