12 “Please test your servants for ten days, and let us be given some vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then let our appearance be [a]observed in your presence and the appearance of the youths who are eating the king’s choice food; and deal with your servants according to what you see.”
14 So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of ten days their appearance seemed better and [b]they were fatter than all the youths who had been eating the king’s choice food. 16 So the overseer continued to [c]withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink, and kept giving them vegetables. Daniel 1: 12-16
At the end of my, week I attended a men's conference at our church. As usual, it was as though God had swung open a window letting the fresh crisp cool ocean breeze into my soul. The speaker touched on the stages leading to spiritual growth. One of the steps was about how life will be filled with pain and that we must learn how to trust God in the midst of our pain and being patient that he will bring us through our pain ( my paraphrase minus my notes).At the very end of the first evenings conference I, as usual, was one of the last to leave enjoying instead the many conversations of others in the room.
In one group of guys I overheard them discuss a recent loss of a 21-year-old daughter of people they knew. One dad said the service was tomorrow at a church in Wayzata, MN. Then he said that it was going to be one of the hardest services he and his wife have been to in a while. As he spoke those heart felt words my mind drifted back to June 2007 when our own 10 1/2-year-old daughter passed away, without warning, the first night home from the hospital after a 1-week stay from successful orthopedic surgery.
Where once we were riding the waves of God's faithfulness of helping improve the quality of Maria's life now we were riding the waves of profound grief and sorrow. Everyone who has ever suffered the loss of a child will tell you that life comes to a screeching halt as though the fast moving treadmill slows down to a crawl while everyone else continues life at the same speed you once did.
It is the grief and sorrow that begins a pattern of unhealthy eating. We are so burdened by just trying to get through our pain that we forget the importance of eating less starch filled meals and snacks with lots of processed sugars. It is in our pain we do drive throughs at different fast food restaurants and it is in our pain we have family nights at the pizza and pie places because in our subconscious mind we think ir will make us feel better. At least, that is the lie that we choose to believe. A lie that does nothing more than pack on the pounds and increase our body size.
In October 2015 I got the opportunity to sign up for a program that would help me undo the damage caused by my unhealthy eating from that period of forlorn grief. preventnow.com was the program I truly needed. The recent health crisis of my younger brother reinforced for all of our family the importance of radicalizing our diets and instill in me the reason why I started this program. It was the reason why the vision for soaringonwingsofeagles.org became a reality. It is the reason why I keep writing these blogs.
Grief, I've learned, takes a lot of hard work. Recovery from this period of sadness and pain will be made easier with eating less of the simple starches (peas and corn), fewer process sugars, reading the labels on the boxes of processed foods, and continuing to feed our soul with weekly attendance of a worship service. We must learn to trust God that he knows what he is doing with our pain and that he alone will bring you through the pain in his perfect timing.
God, I've learned, never disappoints. Just as he did for me he will bring you through this pain a stronger and more resilient than when you first began your grief journey.
God truly never disappoints!
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