Yikes!  I don’t know about you but my holiday weekend celebrating our great country’s birthday was filled with a lot of good food…that wasn’t very good for me!  We had an awesome cookout Saturday with great friends.  We had so much fun and the food was amazing…bacon cheeseburgers, salads, potatoes, homemade macaroni and cheese, strawberry shortcake and to top it all off…oooey-gooey s’mores around a fire.  The next day was filled with leftovers and after a long afternoon of Max and Ema learning to ride 2-wheelers without training wheels it was a pizza pie to the rescue.  Yesterday was Daddy’s famous pancakes, leftovers for lunch and a fabulous pork tenderloin dinner at Nathan’s parents with more fruits and veggies than I’ve seen in a long time.   That was the most healthy I ate all weekend…it tasted great and I wasn’t stuffed, but pleasantly satisfied afterward.  This morning I woke up and the Lord not only nudged me to get out of bed and onto the Pilates mat but He also strongly convicted me to think about what HE thinks about what I put into my body.

What is “good” food?  I recently read a book that totally changed my view of “good”…from what merely tastes good to what is actually good for us.  Ten Keys that Cure by Dr. Don VerHulst clearly outlines Biblical truths to being healthy.  He uses Jesus as our perfect model for while we are in our “earth suits”.  I so appreciated his point of view as a medical doctor and as a Christian.  Natural God-made food and water is what our bodies crave…not chicken nuggets, french fries, chips, cookies, candy, cakes, pies and my favorite…Diet Coke.  I once thought I could live on the caffeine-laced, artificially sweetened “poison” as my husband calls it…but what’s in it and what it does to us is REALLY scary! 

In his book Dr. Don really put into words so many things that the Lord has over the course of time laid upon my heart.  Everything from releasing stress by casting our cares upon the Lord (Philippians 4:6), to getting enough rest, to exercise and what we put into our bodies.  While the Lord hasn’t convicted me in every single specific food Dr. Don talks about I do have a better understanding about what God thinks about what I put into my body.  I am to honor Him with my whole self…body, soul and mind.  If I continue to ignore what He says in His Word and go about eating whatever I want than what I am really doing is not believing that He..my Creator and Sustainer…knows what is best for me.

It isn’t going to be easy to give up my Diet Coke and my second favorite…coffee with hazelnut cream.  It could be harder than giving up the drugs I took for so long.  After all something on the grocery store shelf can’t be that bad for us, right?  Uh, wrong.  Our bodies were not meant for all of these man-made substances…and we wonder why we are so unhealthy!  So…my rule of thumb now is to stay as close to the farm as possible…and away from the drive thru…even if it’s just for a zero calorie ginormous $1 Diet Coke.  If I am what I eat, even just $1 is too much to pay to be artificial…and unhealthy!