Destination Discipline

Resilience: the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity

Resolve: to decide firmly on a course of action.

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” – Jesus, (via the writing of Matthew 7:13-14)

Stress is a trigger for many people, not the least of which is those who struggle with overeating. If food is the bullet and hunger the gun, stress is that mechanism we unintentionally trip over on the downward spiral to obesity. Stress is unavoidable, but our response to it is not. And so we must formulate a strategy to combat this nasty little byproduct of living in our all-you-can-eat buffet culture.

I was outside staring at the moon-eclipsed sun yesterday when a friend began to describe my weight-loss journey to a co-worker. She talked about how inspiring I am, even though I tried to stop her. I’m not special. I’m just Margaret. The focus of her admiration was that I manage to keep the weight off.

Friend: “Margaret lost 140 pounds.”

Co-worker: “You lost 140 pounds?!”

Me: “Yes, but I don’t consider losing 140 lbs any different than losing 10lbs. Achieving both requires the same amount of dedication and discipline.”

Friend: “Come on! Losing that much weight requires a much different level of self-control.”

Me: “Not really. You just need to learn how to eat healthy food.”

Now one must understand that I was very interested in what was happening in the sky at that moment in time and so the conversation kind-of died off after that, but as I think about our conversation through the lens of what happened after the eclipse, the subject matter take a much more complex turn.

BANG!

I was under a tight deadline to get a project done at work and finished just under the wire. I sighed deeply as I walked out at the end of the day and climbed into my vehicle. The clouds were threatening and storms were rolling across the city as I drove home. For context, my car has recently manifested a nasty case of manufacturing defect in the form of degenerative rust, and my right rear wheel is preparing to detach at any given moment. Therefore, I drove home with a white knuckle grip on the steering wheel and a thousand prayers on my lips as I navigated each bump and jostle. Every bump presents the catastrophic opportunity for the rear end of my vehicle to either break or bend or just generally fall off in the middle of the road. Yes, I know I shouldn’t be driving it, but some commitments are not so easily broken (like going to work).

After surviving the stressful ride home, I navigated another trip out with my child for an important visit to the doctor. During the 45 minute appointment I aged several years and lost a handful of hair due to the antics of said child, but I did at least get a good chuckle as my 8 year old described to another patron how he is not actually a boy who attends school, but rather a 20 year old warlock who lives under a bridge with a diamond tipped staff and menaces the nice citizens who dare pass overhead. The point is this, stress is unavoidable, but my response to it matters and laughter certainly helps.

“Mom, I think you burned the spaghetti.”

My son stuck his fork into dinner and pulled out a blackened noodle. You may ask how that happens. Well, I’ll tell you. It happens when your youngest is racing around the house like he’s being chased by a bee(but he is decidedly not), and a friend is texting with time sensitive information and needs a response right away, and Mom is frying hamburgers and zuchinni in two separate pans, and boiling noodles, and chopping salad and trying not to trip over the dog, who keeps laying down right next to her feet.

“The burnt pasta is the best part.” I said. “It’s crispy AND chewy. Anybody can make squishy pasta. It takes a special kind of cook to burn it to perfection.”

“Shut up and Eat.”

My husband told me I should have ordered “Hot and Ready” from Little Ceasar’s Pizza but I recoil at the idea of filling my children’s bodies with that garbage (and spending money I don’t have). Some people tell me I do too much, but I’m taking care of my family the best way I know how and nutrition is important to me. That is why we had salad with our pasta and hamburgers. I know I am failing as a parent and that’s okay. That is why when my special needs child kept screaming “breakfast” for no particular reason other than he liked the way it sounded, I hollered back, “Onomatopoeia!” I don’t know why, but when I reach the end of my rope that’s just what comes out sometimes. I must be a literary minded.

“Mom, you’re annoying me!”

Finally, he gets it! Saying the same word over and over again IS annoying. And maybe that is why I found his statement so incredibly hilarious. So I did what any mother at the end of her rope would do, I attacked him with the jiggly belly. This involves lifting my shirt a few inches, jiggling my previously fat–now not as fat–highly stretch-marked–flabby and will never be sexy in a bikini–belly. And when he ran screaming from the room—highly traumatized by the sight of his mother—I chased after him squealing, “Jiggly belly! Jiggly belly!”

Sometimes resilience looks like a jiggly belly.

And if the night had ended there, this blog would have a happy ending and all would walk away from their screens with the idea that laughter really is the best medicine and every bad or stressful situation calls for the crack of a joke and group hugs. Except that it doesn’t always.

Sometimes the child with special needs won’t be calm or still and the jiggly belly is not enough to salve the suffering. Sometimes tempers flare because noses are stuffy from crying, and sleep is elusive, and hives have resurged, and daddy can’t take it anymore because his back is hurty and mommy has to stand and hold the door so the walls don’t come crashing down around our tear-stained faces. This is life, my friends, and real life doesn’t have a perfect script to follow. No matter what the psychologists and psychiatrists and well-meaning Christian friends with perfect children who don’t understand mood-disordered adolescents say.

He is enough.

A friend at work recently reminded me that in the deepest trenches, in the darkest holes, in cancer, in grief, in deadly despair, in the aftermath of divorce, Christ is enough. He is always enough. Sometimes I just forget because my emotions are so big and my heart is so heavy.

“This is the message we have heard from him(Jesus) and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5

God is not malicious or malignant. There is nothing in him that strives to harm me. He does not always answer my prayers the way I want him to because his ways are not my ways. I cannot possibly understand how pain could be for my good but He is a magician that way; he allows bad things so that my heart will be healed. My body may hurt, but it’s my heart he’s most concerned with. He loves me so much that he dresses the most painful and tender wounds I have, and that’s never convenient or comfortable. But he knows it’s the only way to cure me once and for all. And importantly, when I ask the question, “Why”, he doesn’t shoo me away or disdain to answer. He simply says, “I love you. Won’t you trust me?”

This love is a mystery. It befuddles the senses. We reject it because we don’t understand it and therefore fear it. We point at the darkness and shout, “It’s your fault, God!” And He lovingly tries to cure us while we flail around and smack at his hands. But sometimes if we are really lucky, we run out of energy and lay there gasping for relief. And then He very gently leans over and touches the real wound—the unbelieving heart—and shows us just how very much He does care.

Resolve, not just a carpet cleaner!

I opened the refrigerator door and stared at my options: death by chocolate, ice cream or cookies. Sure, I know none of those are healthy options, but they will help my heart feel better after the day I’ve had. I know I shouldn’t eat them. After all, my pants will be unhappy with me and who wants to look bulgy all day while people are silently judging me?

But then I remember what I have resolved to do. I remember that food doesn’t fill the empty places in my heart—the frayed places—the hurting places. Only God can do that. And so I close the refrigerator door. God loves me. He knows where it hurts. He is present in my pain and He will not abandon me in pursuit of the prettier, more perfect child who never flashed the jiggly belly when her mind reached the end of its tether. (And believe me when I say that’s just one of the nicer examples of the ugliness that happens sometimes when my patience runs out).

We are all trying desperately to anesthetize our suffering and we are eager to pull the trigger. Whether it is food or alcohol or drugs or porn or shoe-shopping, we hold the gun and we choose which way to aim it. Our culture says, “Choose your weapon wisely”. Christ says, “I love you. Lay your weapon down and just be held.”

“It feels good to rage.” My friend said. She expressed to me just how good it feels to hang onto grudges and if at possible punish those who have wronged her. Her gripes are legitimate. Ill treatment by peers at work, sibling rivalry, and a general malaise about the government contribute to a common human ailment; bitterness. We are all affected by inequality. We are tainted by injustice. But if we don’t confront our anger and find a way to manage it, our lives bear witness to the havoc it can wreak.

Injustice brings out the worst in us. It exposes our bias, our insecurities, our helplessness and our feelings of lostness. I consider death the greatest injustice of all. Once the body dies there is nothing left to be done. But even while we live, we sometimes exist in a state of deadness that makes us feel terribly lost.

Our newspapers and screens abound with injustice and death. I was recently affected by a story in my hometown newspaper about Keith Galloway. He lost the most precious possession he owned this week, his life, at the hands of a thief. I did not know Keith, but I do know he did not deserve to die because someone coveted something that didn’t belong to them. His family will forever be haunted by the gunshots and the image of their loved one bleeding to death in the street. It may feel like this crime is far removed from me but it is not. Keith was my neighbor.

I met another neighbor today. Ray grew up in El Salvador and moved to the United States in 1989 during the civil war there. He described to me how disturbed he is by what is happening in our country. “There is so much hate,” he said. “People are filled with such greed. They are selfish. They abuse each other with racism. I don’t understand it.” He described to me what it was like to grow up in a country of great diversity and poverty. He described the hatred that fueled war. He spoke of people killing each other to get revenge for another killing. And so killing bred more killing. He told me he is afraid America will turn into the kind of place he fled from. And then he described the two years he spent fighting in the army in El Salvador—how he saw things he can never unsee. And then this large, strong man began to cry. And all he could say was, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” As he wiped the tears away.

Sometimes it feels like all we can do is weep for what is happening around us. We feel paralyzed with fear. Or worse, we respond with anger and add our rage to the conversation. We hold grudges because we have been hurt and it feels good to hang onto our pain. While it is right to long for justice, we will never heal the wounds without peace. And peace cannot be found without love.

This love is not the “feel-good” emotion perpetuated in romantic comedies. It is not the love we feel after we’ve had a few beers and profess our undying affection for our friends. The kind of love needed to heal our broken hearts is something entirely different. It is patient and kind. It does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. This kind of wonderful love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. This love never ends and it is only found in the person of Jesus Christ. (I Corinthians 13 paraphrased)

I may have lost some folks here and that’s okay. Not everyone is ready for this kind of love. They prefer to hang onto their idea of love. But I have to ask the question, how does the idea of the “feel-good” or romantic kind of love combat such terrible hatred? It sounds nice in theory to say, “I’m going to fight hatred with love,” but what happened to Keith Galloway cannot be conquered with that kind of love. The empty, aching void that now exists in the hearts of those who loved him cannot be filled with that. But it could be filled with Jesus and the family could find peace.

Some will scoff at this. They will tell me I’m crazy, or worse, stupid. But I experience this love every day and I want my friends to know the peace and joy of loving and being loved by Jesus. It’s the only solace I have when everything in the world goes wonky. The Bible describes him as the Prince of Peace and he is what this world needs now more than ever.

As I consider the headlines; the sadness, the anger and woundedness of our broken world, the only answer I have is the one who came and laid his life down so that we might possess His peace. Isaiah describes him hundreds of years before he was born.

“He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:2-5)

As tears ran down Ray’s face in the park, I could think of no other thing to do than to ask if I could pray for him. When he said yes, I asked God to give him peace. And after that, when I was feeling self-conscious and weird, Ray said to me, “We need more people to be sincere like you.”

I have known anger over injustice and I have been tempted toward bitterness. I have even raged. But raging never cured the ache. It never salved my wounds. In the person of Jesus I find true and lasting peace. Maybe today, dear reader, you will find it too.

This is the invitation Jesus gives, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; and I will make with you an everlasting covenant, my steadfast, sure love for David. Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” (Isaiah 55:1-3, 6-7)

Isaiah 26:3-4 “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.”

I grew up with little understanding about the importance of good nutrition. Not because my mother was delinquent, but rather because I did not care. There was a question I asked most every day around 4:00pm, “Mom, what are we having for dinner?” If the answer was pizza or stroganoff or tacos, I was content. If the answer was Borscht or liver or Chow Mein, I cringed. I had the good fortune to have a mother who worked at home (the common term back then was Housewife) and therefore she was usually present to guide my food choices. We ate salad with dinner, enjoyed homemade applesauce and homemade salt-rising bread. My mother sewed clothes, crocheted blankets and sweaters, and did most of the yard work. My dad worked at the airport fixing planes. I write all of that because most people reading this did not have the luxury of a mom who was around in that regard. I remember her encouraging us to eat fruit and vegetables but still providing plenty of sugary desserts. In fact, she was fairly prolific with the cookies, cakes and fudge—especially around the holidays.

It was widely understood, however, that genetics were against us. Our family tree was loaded with people who were not particularly thin. I grew up with the impression that there was nothing I could do about this genetic glitch. I always felt like I was on the chunky side growing up (I was a size 14 when I started 9th grade and weighed around 150 pounds). I ate foods determined most acceptable by my taste buds, paying little attention to what I put into my mouth unless it was fried or sweet. On the odd occasion my mother made something truly detestable, (like broiled fish with bones in it and canned spinach), I was forced to “clean my plate” upon forfeiture of dessert. Consuming the “nasty” dinner was not an option. It was either eat it, or eat nothing.

Once I moved out on my own and was given full freedom for my food choices, of course I chose fast food for nearly every meal. When not eating out I shopped at Aldi and my haul was a stack of frozen pizzas, maybe some hamburger, and ramen noodles. I never even thought about eating fruit or vegetables unless they came in a can. When I made the decision to lose weight after my first child was born in 1997, I exercised every morning and ate small portions. I was hungry most of the time and lived in a constant state of what felt like torture. Still, I lost about 125 pounds and thought I had the food thing figured out. After a boy broke my heart, I buried my head in food and quickly regained all the weight by returning to my old emotional food habits.

I recently read a blog entry by the “esteemed”, Dr. Mark Hyman titled, “Why Overeating Doesn’t Make you Fat (and what does)”. It was posted on Facebook by a blogger I respect and included a picture of potato chips. Dr. Hyman uses the letters MD behind his name so I assumed he had street cred. He also has a lot of endorsements, including cool people like Bill Clinton. He also is a ten-time #1 New York Times Bestselling author. Needless to say, if you are fat, he seems to be a fairly credentialed source of nutritional information with a vested interest in making your fat disappear. So you can imagine my “surprise” when I read the following:

“Why would we be designed to overeat and grow fat? It all comes down to the oldest and most primitive part of our brain, our limbic, or “lizard,” brain. This is the part of your brain that evolved first, and it’s like a reptile’s brain. It governs your survival behaviors, creating certain chemical responses that you have no conscious control over. While you might think you are in complete control of your mind, the truth is that you have very little control over the unconscious choices you make when you are surrounded by food.”

And that is when I stopped reading and commented on my friends post, “This is hogwash! Dr. Hyman is a lizard brain.”

My friend defended Dr. Hyman by saying he is an esteemed member of the medical community, but after scrolling through to the bottom of his webpage I came to see that really he’s what I consider another marketeer—meaning, he’s selling something. He’s one of those ear ticklers who tells people what they want to hear so they’ll hand over their hard earned cash. Sadly, many people fall for his lies, including people who subscribe to the New York Times. Folks, just because someone is popular, that doesn’t mean they are honest and forthright. It only means that the majority of the fish are swimming in his direction, especially if they just really want to believe what he’s peddling.

What I consider most insidious about Dr. Hyman is his mixed messages. He says we can’t help how we eat but then goes on to talk about how we should not eat processed foods. I’m sorry. Which way is it? If we can’t control our lizard brain, how are we supposed to stop eating Taco Bell? Especially if we have no control over our minds? Wait, I’m sorry. You need to read his book to find out. Maybe he will teach you how to control your lizard brain.

I like number 5 on the list best (not really, it’s hogwash too):

“Become aware of trigger foods. For some of us, that one little soda can set us on a downward spiral to overeating and all of the negative health consequences that come with it. It isn’t just the processed, sugary foods and drinks that become triggers. But even healthy foods, if you have a tendency to binge on them, can quickly become unhealthy. A handful of almonds are perfectly healthy, but if you eat half the jar, they quickly become unhealthy.”

I could pick this apart every which way from Sunday. Step 1: Don’t drink soda. It’s a can full of noxious chemicals no matter what fancy marketing Coke and Pepsi throw at us. (I tried to find the chemical contents of Coke and instead found pages of nonsense to sort through. Don’t believe me? Go here)

And when he says consuming too many healthy foods will make us fat? Look, I am living proof that overeating fruits and vegetables does not make one fat. And I’m sorry but, duh, nuts are high in fat and calories. But what about carrots? Zucchinni? Blueberries? Show me the person who got fat eating berries.

But maybe you think I am being too hard on Dr. Hyman. After all, he is a doctor. He must know what he’s talking about. Okay, I’ll bite. (It’s one thing I’m really, really good at.)

Doctors don’t know everything.

Is that it, Margaret? Is that your argument?

Well, I’ve also met a lot of jerks who are doctors. I also know a lot of doctors selling weight loss programs that have not produced lasting results. I also have a child with Juvenile diabetes who has yet to find a cure, and a friend with brain cancer, for which there is also no cure and doctors have spent a lot of time trying to figure those diseases out. Doctors are humans and humans are fallible. But I am especially wary of doctors who are selling something. Because if they aren’t satisfied with their doctor’s salary and feel the need to feed the gluttonous diet industry machine, I think they probably don’t have my best interests at heart. I am very distrustful of people who want to sell me something. Maybe it’s because I’m unusually cynical or maybe it’s because for years I tried pills and supplements and diets and they did not fix my fundamental problem—mainly, that I lacked discipline.

Which is probably why Dr. Hyman’s article really rubbed me the wrong way. He basically contradicts every single principle I’ve come to understand about living a healthy lifestyle. Namely, that learning to exercise self-control is important. That learning the nutritional content of our food is integral to maintaining a healthy balance. The entire article (which I have refused to link to but if you want to read it you can google it) posits that we are merely products of happenstance.

Now just imagine we are talking about child molesters and not people who eat too much… Maybe they just need to buy a book… That will fix their fundamental problem, right?

The things we put into our bodies matter. Ask those people who grew up near Cold Water Creek in St. Louis, Missouri. The truth is the foods we eat are absorbed into our cells. They are then processed and eliminated. And yes, the nutritional content of food is important, but more important is the content of the human heart. Dr. Hyman wants to sell you something. He needs your money. He has to come up with a lot of mumbo jumbo about lizard brains and genetics and “you don’t need willpower” to cajole you into buying his products. But let me remind you of an old adage that often proves true; if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Sorry, Dr. Hyman. I am living proof that discipline and will-power do work. I’ve kept the weight off for 5 years now even though I really like to eat. And what we eat DOES matter, and we can make a choice to refuse to pollute our bodies. We are not powerless against our desires.