Some see an electric pole, I see a cross
2 Sam. 22:40 “For thou hast girded me with strength to battle: them that rose up against me hast thou subdued under me.”
The Realization
Well, I think I’ve discovered the reason for my ‘grumbles’ as some call it. It’s the realization that this is my new life and it isn’t going anywhere soon. Let me ask you, when you walk into a food store what’s the first thing you see? Food, right? Now look at the food, all of it and think, I can’t have any. That is my new life. This is the source of my grumbles.
My new life consists of expensive foods that I probably shouldn’t even be eating. I’m cautious with every bite and every single purchase and hubby is always on the lookout for something I ‘might’ be able to eat. If it’s a fruit or vegetable, yippee, that’s me, but I’m human, I don’t like every fruit and vegetable on the market. But I'm willing to try those once disliked veggies.
I can’t eat processed food so the majority of boxed, canned and frozen foods are out of the question. The brown eggs hubby buys me are four dollars a dozen (sometimes on sale) and I go through a dozen a week. I go through two bags of seven-dollars-a bag of grapes a week, and strawberries I eat a lot of whether in season or out of season.
This is my reality. This is the realization that if I want to live, I cannot visit a fast food restaurant ever again. I can’t go to the new Dunkin Donuts that just opened up. Visiting a movie house would be as torturous as going food shopping, the aroma alone will eat me alive. Not that we visited any of these places often, but we had a choice. Now, my only choice is live or die. I look at every item on the shelf and painstakingly have to look at the ingredients. No soy, no wheat, that just about leaves me meat and dairy which is not allowed either, so yeah, that leaves cruciferous veggies, fruit (not all), and berries.
If you’re on a diet, you have a choice. You can cheat, you can go off your diet at any time, and honestly, you can look forward to your diet ending and going back to eating all the food you want. I myself, don’t have that choice. Again, my only choice in the matter is live or die! If I cheat, I am cheating myself of life and my willpower is too strong for that. I choose life, plain and simple.
I am not complaining, I am not grumbling, I’m letting you in on the realization that THIS is my new way of life. I do have a choice, I could live or I could die, quite simple choice, no? I choose life. Why grumble, why whine? Because the realization hits you in the face, that THIS is your new way of life! Let’s say you’re driving down the road and a Mack truck is heading straight for you, in that instant, you swerve to miss the head on collision. You chose to live, you chose to live with the realization of what plummeting into the ditch will cause.
I’m out here in the middle of nowhere building my strength. I go to the food store to see just how strong I am and I’m getting better! The first time I went food shopping, I left bawling my eyes out, the second and third time were a little better, but last time we left the food store we had to stop and get gas. Tears overflowed my eyes in silence. The pictures on the outside of the gas station were images of donuts. We sat next to a Buffalo Wild Wings, another new business I never had the chance to try.
Surrounding me was a Burger King, an Applebee's restaurant where we had our wedding day meal, and then there was Wendy’s where I had my last meal from the outside world. The images and memories just poured in and my eyes reacted, my heart hurt and I cried. This is all a part of my healing too as I see how strong I am each day and just how much this little lady can take.
Then there were the people hurrying out of the surrounding places with either a drink or food in their hand or lighting a cigarette. There were big people and little people, short people and tall people all with the same choice as me, to live or die, and my crazy mind is thinking that they are choosing a slow death over life. I can sit here and say it’s their life and I don’t care what they do but in all honesty, I DO care. I care very much whether people live or die. I can’t change their choices but I can hear their voices, and not one of them are saying, I WANT TO LIVE!
You can say that this is me judging people but I say it is me observing people. I do care whether people live or die but it is not my CHOICE on what they choose in life. I, a little late in life, choose to live and this is the realization of my new way of living.
2 Sam. 22:33 “God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.”
