I believe it was George Santayana who said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Therefore, I believe that it is important to understand how I arrived at this point in my life. As follower of Jesus Christ, I believe that He desires to be Lord of our lives. This means everything, not just the few hours a week that we attend church.
Too many times we compartmentalize our lives into segments. As believers I think that we often separate our lives into secular and sacred. However, God desires to be Lord of all areas of our lives. That means He should be the Lord of our souls, our intellect, our emotions, our businesses, our families, and even our physical bodies. For me, allowing God to be the Lord of my physical body is one of the hardest things for me to do. Especially, when it comes to food.
My wife and I have been married for a little over 13 years. However, I can still remember our first fight as a married couple.The reason I remember the fight is not because I am bitter, but because it was over food. My wife had come home from work, and we decided to make sandwiches for dinner. First, I opened a can of soda and then poured it over a cup of ice. Well, as you know, when soda is poured into a cup of ice it foams up quite dramatically. As soon as this happened I picked up the cup and drank all the foam before it disappeared. The end result was that I had very little soda left to drink and I needed a second soda.
My wife thought I was crazy. However, I picked up my soda foam drinking habit as a child. When Dad came home after work he would always pour himself a soda and let my sister and I drink the foam before it disappeared. So to this day I am still addicted to soda foam.
Next as we made the sandwiches my wife just slapped hers together in a couple of seconds. I, on the other hand, took 5 minutes to make a ham and cheese sandwich. I took my bread and spread mayo on one slice and mustard on the other. (When doing this it is extremely important that you spread the condiment over every part of the bread so that there is not a dry bite.) I then placed the ham and cheese on the bread in such a way that none of it overflowed past the edge of the bread. The end result is a sandwich that has meat, cheese, mayo, and mustard in every single bite. The way a sandwich should be!
Even though it may be weird none of this is what caused the fight. What caused the fight was that while I took 5 minutes to make the sandwich I only took 5 seconds to eat it. On the other hand, my wife made her sandwich in 5 seconds and took 5 minutes to eat. She asked me, "when eating that fast how can you even taste your food? I responded, "quickly."
You see for my wife she eats to live, but I live to eat. The fight was actually over different values that we have regarding food. For her, food is a necessity to live. For me, I live for food. The experience of preparing and eating food is to be enjoyed and remembered. Many of the greatest memories I have from childhood involve food. Eating a seafood meal in Paris, France and eating Gouda Cheese in Gouda, Holland and going on volksmarches (hikes) in Germany with my dad and eating a bratwurst and brochen (a German roll) at every check point.
One of the reason I enjoy food so much is because it has become a source of comfort and entertainment for me. I've come to realize that I need to stop using food as a coping mechanism for dealing with stress. I also need to stop associating good times with food. While I believe this will continue to happen, one of the things I can start doing is looking for other ways to be entertained. Instead of going out for a meal, maybe I can do a game night so that an activity other than food is the focus. More importantly, I need to rely on God for comfort and peace, not food. If I need a change of scenery to relax when I'm stressed, maybe I can work on my Mustang or play my guitar. Maybe if I start to be deliberate on how I approach food I can begin to have more discipline in this area of my life.
I know that God is faithful and with his strength I can overcome.
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