The Voices sound like Jelly Beans

So I have been pondering food lately…okay not really pondering maybe obsessing, certainly eating! To start with you probably need to know my history. I was ten when I first started to gain weight. My mom was overweight (yes you could and should say obese, but this is my mom, so be nice.) I actually have a weird recollection of recognizing that she was overweight and wanting to be like her. I have the same weird recollection about wearing glasses. My mom and sister both wore glasses and I didn’t. I’d sit and squint, until I think I squished my eyes into near-sightedness. Maybe I would have gotten there anyway but hours of squinting probably didn’t help. Anyway, the fat didn’t affect my eyes…so I’ll go back to talking about weight. By my teens I was definitely overweight which continued into my twenties. Then the dieting – up, down, up, down, up, down. I should have just done push ups (up down up down up down) and it might have been more effective. I don’t even remember all the random diets.

Twice I’ve lost a substantial amount of weight, once on a liquid fast….hmmmm…now that I think about it, I think both times were on a liquid fast. Lost 100 lbs or so…then happily or unhappily ate my way back to the beginning. If you read diet or self-help books, you learn that food addiction is about control…or lack of control…or self-image…or lack of self-image….or rebellion….or deprivation. Dr, Phil says it is all about internal dialog telling yourself that you are not a good person. I think Dr. Phil might be tuned to the wrong channel. My dialogue goes nothing like that. I’ve read all the diet/self help books and I’ve never had that AH HA, the part that explains what goes on in my head. I think there is a definite battle that goes on between the ears. One little voice says "I will not eat that cookie," then the other voice answers, "Oh, but it will be so good and you deserve it.” Back and forth and back and forth….

So in 2006, as I crested 300 pounds, I took a giant leap and had gastric bypass…to be exact a Roux-en-Y where the stomach is separated and a small pouch is created and connected directly to the intestine. From there I lost 150 pounds. I won’t go into all the details, hands down the single hardest thing I have ever done – it certainly is not the easy way out.

So now I am analyzing and brain debating addiction. They say it take 20 days to change a habit – wrong! Two years and I can slip into the same old eating patterns without a thought. Put a jar of jelly beans in my vicinity and all thought of restraint is gone. It is amazing to think that with just a small pouch and no stomach access that we can still gain weight, but check any magazine or ask around and everyone knows someone who gained it all back. You actually have to beat the odds, bypass the bypass so to speak. So what makes it worth it? Are jelly beans that good? Are you kidding me?

According to wikipedia: “Addiction is characterized by the compulsive use of substances or engagement of behaviors despite clear evidence to the user of consequent morbidity and/or other harmful effects.” Yup, makes total sense.

So what has to happen is to make a life-long change in my relationship with food. You’d think after gastric bypass and all the life changes it created, that this would come naturally, but no. I keep thinking it is going to take some shift in consciousness – like a switch. I hear the right thing, read the right thing and walla – switch shuts off (or turns on) and I have new perspective in controlling my food intake. In the meantime, every day is a battle of will with myself.

We create powerful obsessions with food by trying not to eat certain foods. The more we try, the worse it gets. Eventually, the only thing filling our minds will be the thought of that thing we are trying not to eat. The jelly beans are calling to me. I hear voices and they sound just like jelly beans….or oatmeal cookies…..or wheat thins…….or

As kids, we ate when hungry and stopped when satisfied. But as adults, we morphed into pleasure-centered food addicts. Why is it so hard? Why is it so difficult to eat a little less? After all, we desperately want to eat right. It is our heart's desire. We want to be thin, healthy, full of life, looking great and living life to its fullest. But instead we throw it away for 20 seconds of taste-bud pleasure. Sick.

So I have no answers and continue to seek while each day fighting to not go back to where I have been. Can you relate?

A Bottomless Pit

So where does God fit in a marriage? Do I put God first or my hubby first? Of course occasionally my hubby wants to feel like a God, master of his domain etc. etc, but that aside is there room in a marriage for three? Him, me and God. In some ways, it may be easier to focus on God when you are single...channel that energy towards God, towards service, time for pray, time for reading, just time. I once had a friend tell me I spent way too much time in my own head. It think that was a subtle way of saying I spend too much time thinking about myself. He thought I should adopt a child so I would have someone else to think about. Instead I just got a new friend – seemed easier.... Anyway, now that I am married (again) seems I have very little time to think about myself. Of course I am heavily involved in ministry now, so I guess my outside focus is much more active than my inside focus. I also notice my Christian walk...my God Walk....is much more enhanced now. I need God more than I did before I was married. The struggle of living with another human day-in and day-out deepens my need for God. By personality type I struggle enough living day-to-day with the people around me (work, family, friends), but then to marry one....holy cow, that is an entirely different story.

When I was in my teens or twenties and wandering thru the dating world, my mother once told me that I was like a bottomless pit...I had high expectations that could never be fulfilled. I’ve thought about that for years. She may have been right (somewhat cruel sounding at the time, but ultimately right). I dated a lot...no one ever fulfilled me...most fell short, very short. I eventually married, nothing fulfilling there. Went back to single life...this is of course when I spent way too much time inward focused (isn’t that called narcissistic?). And then I met Mick, by far the closest anyone has ever come to meeting my expectations, to being truly fulfilling. It is so much the marriage, the man, the relationship that I have looked for, maybe even longed for my entire life. Bummer we didn’t meet until I was 45...would have been nice to add a few more years on the front end. Of course maybe we will live until we are 100 and then be truly sick of each other...who knows.

But I digress... so even with a man who really does fit almost perfectly, who meets so many of my expectations...who dare I say it...completes me (yuck!)...does God still come first? As I really ponder it, I believe it is probably not Mick that fulfills me or completes me. I think it is God working thru Mick, working in our marriage, our lives, our work. It is God filling that bottomless pit, bringing me up to a level that I can stand eye to eye with Mick and love him as he loves me, but both of us under the umbrella of God’s love – that is what truly binds up together. It is God that completes, that fulfills, that brings contentment and peace. God meets my needs. It is only when I forget this and think that I need to get all my needs, expectations and dreams met thru Mick, my husband that I’m truly disappointed. And what an unfair demand on Mick. I am asking him to do what only God can really do.

The chicken is leaking

So you get home after a 13 hour day, change to jammies, settle in front of the computer (yes it is possible to work in front of a computer all day and relax in front of one at night – yes it is an obsession, no I do not know of any meeting that will cure you or me). Anyway so I am home comfy and settled, the phone rings and I’m told the chicken is overflowing. Oh bummer…do I go or do I stay….alright the backstory.

Each year at North Coast we put on a Seder dinner. The word Seder is a Hebrew word that literally means “order.” Although the word has a number of uses, it is most commonly used to refer to the Passover Seder, a Jewish holiday. During the Passover Seder, Jewish history is relived through the reading of the Haggadah and consumption of traditional foods and drinks. During the Seder, the enslavement of the Jewish people and their exodus from Ancient Egypt is remembered. Seders are generally performed in one’s home and are considered to be a family ritual. That said, it is pretty cool that North Coast chooses to put on this “family” event for 200!

So planning and putting this event on falls under my department. Previous years we had the event catered, but me being me, I thought we should cook. Last year we had Boston Market – while it is good food, it not exactly Passover fare…and we served corn bread – a pretty big Passover no-no.

So we searched the web and came up with some amazing Passover-friendly dishes, including Apricot Marinated Chicken, Potato Kugel, Red Cabbage Salad, Grill Asparagus and Green Salad. After church Sunday, we quickly shopped, shopped, shopped then returned to church to cook, cook, cook. After 6 or so hours we had all the prep work done, everything in trays and in the frig for the night…….headed home. So when you stack metal tray on metal tray filled with slightly frozen marinated chicken – what happens? Well the chicken defrosts, the trays sink into each other and the marinade rises and rises right out of the pans…flowing thru the refrigerator, streaming out the door and onto the floor. Apricot/Mayonnaise glazy marinade in mass creeping slowly across the floor. But I am in my jammies, so do I stay or do I go……I stayed. Figured it would be just as big a mess the next day – the chicken was till marinating so whatever!

Well, the event went off on Monday night without a hitch – great time had by all – the food was pretty darn good. A little (okay a lot) of mopping of the floor and scooping mass marinade from inside the refrigerator, all is good and ready for the military wives breakfast this next weekend.