Sunday, March 23, 2014

Day-19: I Have Not Eaten Food In 19-Days!

If you were not aware, I gave up sold foods for Lent. I'm not starving. I get plenty of calories, vitamins and minerals, they just all come in the liquid form. But 19 days without food is not fun.

Today I passed on the following:
  • Toast
  • Church cookies 
  • Beef Roast, Mashed Potatoes and Gravy, Warm Bread, Roasted Beansprouts, Cauliflower and Salad
  • Oreo Brownies with M&M topping and Ice Cream
  • Cheez Its and apple slices
  • Avocado chunks  
  • Baked Ham Sandwich
  • FRESH BAKED BANANA BREAD!
 Instead I had the following:
  • Slim fast with chia seed
  • Cup of Coffee
  • V8
  • Pureed split pea soup
  • Diet Coke
  • A Miller Lite  
  • Pureed Chili 
  • A Killian's
Not exactly a fair trade, but I won't starve to death. I have another 27 days to go before I'll eat solids again and I am literally counting down the days. I have not started to think about what I'll eat for my first meal (other than Holy Communion) but I have been thinking about foods I'll want to eat in the first few days and they all have texture and none are tomato based. 

This will be my 4th post of the day. The other three lacked depth. Beth told me that next time I miss a day to not worry about it and just post when I have time, which I like the sound of. But I'm afraid that if allow myself to skip posts that my routine will get shot and my posts will become less and less frequent, until I'm only posting once a week. So post #4 of the day continues.

Daniel said to me today: "Dad, wouldn't it be cool if because you believed in God bad things couldn't hurt you? Like you could touch poison and not have the poison make you hurt? Or if you were hurt, you were healed right away? Wouldn't it be cool if he did that? That's why I believe in God dad, because it'd be cool if he could do that to me."

I didn't think I could answer him without crying, so I just smiled and kept making dinner.

Daniel is only 6 and knows that he had open heart surgery when he was only 3-days-old, but he is far too young to understand the magnitude of that situation. He's far too young to understand that when he was in utero he was diagnosed with HLHS - a heat defect that kills more than 1/3 of all children who are born with it, but after he was delivered doctors discovered that heart defect was less severe than expected. Someday Daniel will understand the impact that his birth has had on my faith, but not it isn't today - if it were, he would not have needed to ask me those questions.

Daniel's question was the preamble as to why, at 6-years-old, he believes in God. If you're wondering why I believe in God - it's because I just do. I'm not articulate enough to write why and I probably wouldn't do the answer justice - but I believe in God and I believe that Jesus Christ in my Lord and Savior.

There are times when I feel disconnected with God. There are times when I am angry at God and question "why?" There are times when I look at my faith from an analytical point of view or with cynicism.
  • How do I know my God is the correct God?
  • If I know so little about Hinduism, Muslim, Spiritualism, Judaism, Scientology, why is my Christianity correct? 
  • If my God is great then why is there so much wrong with the world today? 
Frankly, I don't have the answers for my cynical self and I don't need them. There is a difference between "why" and "what's great about him."

"Why do I believe in God?" is a question that I answer with - "I just do." But the question "what's great about God?" - is a question I could answer in depth.

How do I know I love Beth - I just do, I just know.  I could list dozens of things that I love about my wife, but as to the question "Do you love your wife" there is no proof needed, it is just something that I know. I know that I love Beth and I know that I believe in God.

I love when one of my children asks me a harmless question and it stops me in my tracks. I'm glad that this question got to be record, because they don't always get to be.

Started the day at 197 lbs.




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