Maybe a week ago I heard a guy speak and really what I mean is that I felt the Lord speak to me through that message that I am really not living the fasted lifestyle that I mean to or that He means me to.
I have never liked artificial sweeteners. I did a speech about it in college, how much better it was to eat real sugar rather than a chemically synthesized substitute. But in the last several months I have taken in more artificial sweeteners than I have in my entire life, times 10. And from my experience, I would say they are just as addictive (making a slave of me) as the real thing. And they are really probably worse for me.
With caffeine, I have not had a real cup of actual coffee with caffeine in a while, but I have had decaf, which we all know has caffeine, chai, which also has caffeine, and chocolate (artificially or naturally sweetened), which also has caffeine.
None of those was what I wanted, but they were a substitute.
So here I am, living a fasted lifestyle, not having (real) sugar or (much) caffeine, calling myself a Nazirite, and really I'm just periodically binging on stuff that might give me cancer and definitely gives me the jitters and diarrhea.
A fasted lifestyle is, to quote Lou Engle, "foregoing legitimate earthly pleasures for the sake of heavenly treasures", or something like that. I've been denying myself legitimate earthly pleasures and indulging in different, less healthy and less satisfying earthly pleasures.
So I have started over, I suppose. I haven't had artificial sweeteners this week. It's been a tough week. And I'm out of fruit. But I'm less of a slave to my appetite. I've still had some white flour things, which are technically not part of the fast, but they do make my craving motor run. And just now, I'm eating too much of my daughter's banana almond blueberry bread, also not something I'm fasting, but not something I should eat too much of.
But I'm celebrating. Celebrating my 33 week doctor visit, having gained only 3 pounds for my entire pregnancy and with my blood pressure still in the very healthy range. Celebrating making it through the week in a more faithful, more devoted, more healthy manner. Celebrating the faithfulness of God to bring me through tough days.
Speaking of tough days, here's one. Not exaggerating. I came downstairs to a severe lack of milk in the house and a couple of crabby babies. So I took daughter #2 to the grocery store and did a mid sized trip. When we got home and were putting groceries away, all my sons who can talk were playing an old, stupid game wherein they try to get one kid to say the word "what". I remember my brother playing it when we were kids. I hated it then and hate it now. It drove me bonkers. So finally I got done with groceries and away from the game and at that moment, my husband, who was working from home, called me upstairs with that tone in his voice.
The Littles had been loose in my room, for quite some time apparently. An entire bottle of vitamin E oil had been emptied on my chair, my dresser, and my baby boy. There was calamine lotion in the carpet. Nothing had a lid on it. Liquid foundation in daughter #5's new dress. Little baby dissolvable teething tablets were everywhere, as was my entire box of recently organized recipe cards. It was a disaster. I spent the next 45 minutes cleaning it up.
When I came downstairs, youngest daughter had a bowl of yogurt. All over her. All over the table and the chair. I cleaned it up and fed her the rest.
Right when that ended, eldest son called my name in that same tone, and at this point I was honestly thinking of running away. He was carrying youngest son by the trunk, sans diaper. The diaper I could see, poop filled, a couple yards away. Baby boy had poop everywhere. No, really, everywhere. He was covered with it down to his toes, hands, arms, legs.
Now this kid is in the phase requiring what I like to call Greco-Roman diaper changing. Where you have to put them in a wrestling hold, pinning one leg against your body with your armpit, one hand against his body with your elbow, holding his other hand and a foot with your hand and doing all the operational stuff with your free hand in order to get the diaper changed. However, none of that carefully developed strategy works when the kid is completely covered in a layer of his own excrement.
So it went like this: wipe his hand, wipe my hand, wipe his foot, wipe my hand, wipe his hand again because he grabbed his stuff again, wipe my hand again, wipe his butt, wipe my hand, wipe his leg . . . you get the picture. I sent eldest son to clean up the mess. He assured me he did, but the dog's breath smelled really wrong later, and I'm not sure who actually did the cleaning up.
It's also been fun this week because my two oldest daughters got their ears pierced last weekend. Nightmare. One has an outgrown nickel allergy so we spent the big bucks on her. The other didn't, so we got the cheap ones for her. Regretting the whole operation at this point. How do people do this with smaller people??
But really, I think the hard-ness of the week is about me learning to lean on Jesus more and my kids playing too much on the computer. Which is another subject, and this post is long enough already.
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