Have you looked up 7 yet? You should! Or check out Jen Hatmaker's blog. The book intro is pretty funny. (It is a little like having a conversation with my good friend Barbara Burks: upfront, completely honest, not alone, and leaves you wishing you had the boldness to say more things out loud.) The blog and book together are leaving me more and more uncomfortable with how I spend, wish, live, etc.
Tomorrow starts a week of this "experiment" where I am supposed to come up with some sort of food-related fast. This will be difficult for me for lots of reasons:
I love food.
I have never turned food down.
I am currently cooking for a husband, a picky 2 year old, and nursing a baby and I simply do not think I can function while cooking 3 sets of every meal for a week.
Yesterday I tried to sit down and make a list of the foods I thought my entire family could survive on. Things like " if I list tomatoes, can I include tomato sauce?" ran through my mind. (Perhaps this misses the point of a fast.) My smoke detector started going off during nap time (it's overly sensitive and goes off every other time I use the iron; I wish this could explain why my family looks wrinkled on a regular basis but it doesn't). The alarm startled both of my semi-sleeping girls, causing about twenty minutes of frantic screaming from both at the same time, and leading to an hour of the baby only not crying if I was holding her (very unlike her). I had a nap-time list of things to do about a mile long, so by the time I got everyone settled down I was stressed out and hungry and still trying to think of foods I could live on for a week. What did I do to calm down? Quickly devoured 4 oatmeal raisin cookies. Seriously. (Did I mention that I don't turn food down? They were asking to be eaten!) I then proceeded to make three successive mistakes on an evite that I sent out, spilled the crayons I was trying to clean up, made a mess on my up-to-that-point clean white kitchen floor, and remembered that I had laundry in the washer quickly molding. I was completely at a loss and thought to myself "there is NO WAY I am going to get through this week without candy!" Then I tossed back some M&Ms to make it till dinner. (Its a wonder I am not diabetic.)
In all seriousness, I am interested in this fast thing. It's something I've never done, and I'm excited about what the Lord has to show me. I have been praying that I don't turn this study/experiment into a list of "to dos" to check off - as the obsessive compulsive side of me has a tendency to do - and instead allow it to be an opportunity for less of me and my stuff, and more of God. The sections of this "experiment" are:
Food
Clothes
Possessions
Media
Waste
Spending
Stress
Aren't we all in need of down-sizing in at least a few of these areas? Besides the sugar addiction, food is not really something I struggle with, but I regularly have to repent of coveting others' clothes and stuff. I am on Facebook WAY too much, and I'm sure Brad can't wait for me to go through the spending part of this. I am pretty sure I'll have to give Brad up during the stress week though, as he is typically what stresses me out. (Just kidding... a little.) So if this turns into something more than a few weeks of time set aside for prayer, and becomes a life of a little less Maile out there, I am absolutely positive it's for the best.
So here it is, the 13 foods I think I'm going to live on for a week:
Oatmeal
Eggs
Apples
Bananas
Oranges
Tomatoes/tomato sauce
Broccoli
Carrots
Cheese/milk products
Whole wheat bread
Whole wheat pasta
Chicken
Beef
To keep my sanity, I may be forced to make adjustments along the way. Please note: zero caffeine and zero sweets. Ugh. Wish me luck!
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