Magnificent Whispers: The Right Thing

The coolest thing about God is how He weaves together meaning that is sometimes hard to detect but so exciting to find.

The really magnificent things are usually just whispers in your day.

For instance, I turn this morning, seemingly randomly, to a story entitled, "One Right Thing" in the new publication, Mysterious Ways, by Guideposts. It is about a guy that is not happy with himself because he keeps shirking responsibility in some small but significant ways. He's thinking about how his high school coach taught him that lesson long ago when he suddenly finds himself part of a dog rescue that requires of him that very responsible exertion that he's been avoiding. To whom does the dog belong? Yes, that high school coach.

Coincidence is simply God at His best--those are the magnificent whispers in our day.

My Bible reading for today included Malachi 3, and in the Message translation, I come to the end of the chapter where God is talking about those who honor Him:

Once more you'll see the difference it makes between being a person who does the right thing and one who doesn't, between serving God and not serving Him.

The phrase the right thing leaps out at me and stirs me. My friend who is a recovering alcoholic (years and years sober) speaks frequently that in AA they are taught to always do the next right thing.

I will hold those magnificent whispers close all day. Most likely another one will surface.

God never runs out of His magnificent weaving and whispers and can insert them anywhere but they seem to be found most often in the serving and honoring of the Living God.

Feeding my strength includes honoring and serving God, that I might detect yet another magnificent whisper.

Recovery Health: Beyond Food

Though transition to whole food plant-based eating is a huge component in recovering our health, we close this series with a look at two others.

You saw it coming: exercise.

I think the secret to sticking with exercise is to find the environment, activity, companion(s) and time of day that suit you best. Don't try to make your friend's exercise regimen work for you. It is another thing to put before God because He can find the ultimate match of those factors for you. When you are suited to the exercise, the chances are much greater that you will persevere with the action.

Let God help you find your way.

And of course, no search to recover your health would be complete without inserting into each day the most significant activity of all: a compilation of minutes either all at once or through the day when you focus your whole attention on God.

He built our bodies so He is the architect of our health. He knows how it is intended to work.

Though we've botched it beyond recognition at times, He is not only the restorer of our souls, but of our bodies as well. Time spent with God will strengthen both.

Only you can feed your strength. The caliber of your days depends on it.

Recover well.

Recovery Health: Transitions

If something in the last three blogs has resonated, and you need a next step, consider yourself in a transition stage.

A person whose health journey I respect told me there was stunning research about cancer prevention that never gets into the mainstream. He said that all of us develop cancer cells during our lifetime but our immune systems successfully destroy them. It is the weakening or hindrance of the immune system that allows cancer cell production to, at some point, gain ground. He went on to say that the digestion of meat after the evening meal competes with the same body processes that destroy cancer cells as we sleep.

Can I point you to the research? No. But for me, it was my transition into whole-food, plant-based eating. God somehow knew it was the message that would move me. I gave up animal protein at my evening meal--keeping everything else the same--and lost 10 pounds in just a few weeks. The weight loss and my husband's adjustment to my (still crazy from his view) food journey were unforeseen outcomes from this one step.

My friend Libby took her family (husband, young child) on an immersion transition. One day they were meat-eaters, the next they were not.

My friend Ellen tried the stop-and-start method over months and months, acclimating slowly but surely.

I told my doctor I had become a vegan and he said, "You're like my mother's friend--a social pain in the neck!" He's right--it has been quite a process to live this lifestyle in front of friends and family. I have encountered disdain, mockery, confusion, curiosity and interest.

But at the end of the day, it is up to me. I am responsible for my health choices and food is at the top of the list. The number of athletes, celebrities and others paving the social acceptance route grows daily.

Your transition step may be something outside of what you read here. If you have set your eating before God, He will make that step unique to you, your personality and willpower, and your circumstances.

Your transition is the leadership of another. Move forward boldly. Someone needs your courage to seek the best.

Recovery Health: When All Else Fails

Perhaps you've read the blogs from the last two days and lamented the content. Your heart is just not into lifestyle change that would walk you away from eating what you hold dear--even if it is killing you.

I was alive when it was okay to smoke. The research that proved it was killing us was on a distant horizon that I could ignore. To pick up a cigarette today, with the research in the mainstream, would be complete idiocy. I'm not talking about current smokers. You have a huge hurdle before you and I would just encourage you to battle that addiction any way you can. But to start smoking knowing what we know...

I think the same thing is true with our American/Western eating lifestyle. The research is clear, but it is on a distant horizon that is easy to ignore. Because the preponderance of our culture revolves around meat, eggs and dairy (restaurant commercials and menus, the hammering-into-our-heads that we need sufficient [animal] protein, and the cultural draw of grilling, sizzle, and sharing meals with friends that always include these items), it becomes a swimming-upstream proposition to read the research, ingest it and take steps to embrace it in a new lifestyle.

Romans 12:

Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life--and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out.

Maybe God is saying He understands the seduction and power of culture, even when it presents untruths. According to Romans 12, we can place our eating before Him, fix our attention on Him and see where it leads.

In my twenties, my husband-to-be gave an ultimatum: choose him or the cigarettes. Choosing the latter would have probably killed me and I would have missed out on my three exquisite children. God knew that when all else failed, the ultimatum would move me.

If something is resonating deeply inside you about these food remarks--but the opposition rises hugely within you--do not be alarmed.

When all else fails, put your eating before God and let Him lead you to safety.

Recovery Health: Addictions, Labels and Mindsets

Is eating a form of worship?

We hear often that everything belongs to God and we are the stewards. Tithing our earnings, for instance, is good stewardship and thus could be considered a form of worship. God tells us that when we fail to bring our tithes into His storehouse, we are robbing God. That doesn't sound good.

By the same token, He designed and put our bodies into motion so we are stewards of our physical selves. Perhaps the most critical path to good stewardship of our bodies would be through our food choices. Can we be seduced into wrongful worship of God by a course of eating that robs Him of our best energy and service, causing disease and hardship that are virtually preventable?

We all have a set of belief systems, one of them being what we hold dear about food. Whatever truth exists about food and what it does to us or for us, we may or may not hear it because we are blocked by food addictions, labels that we don't want to be a part of (food snobs, vegan/vegetarian) and mindsets (food choice is not related to disease).

Can you, just for the next few days, plug your belief system about food into a new outlet? That means looking at research that you don't want to hear, believe or implement.

I am galvanizing a ten-year search into a few sentences, but know these sentences are data-driven and lifesaving.

Though sources abound, let me set you on a course if you are willing. Dr. Neal Barnard (M.D.) is the president and founder of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He writes in Breaking the Food Seduction:

In Western countries, people become habituated to diets rich in cheese, meat, sugar and fat as easily as they might to tobacco, alcohol or drugs...Dr. Dean Ornish's program for reversing heart disease [came through his patients having] broken their addictions to unhealthy foods, and their bodies healed on their own. The same is true with diabetes. The condition is rare among Asians who continue traditional plant-based diets, and similarly rare among vegetarians. But, once Asians move to Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago or Atlanta, and trade traditional rice and vegetables for Western fare, diabetes rates climb 400 percent.

Here's the kicker, again from Dr Barnard's book:

Heroin, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, and, in fact, all recreational drugs work on the brain's pleasure center, triggering a greatly exaggerated dopamine response. [In fact], dopamine is what powers the brain's pleasure center...chocolate bars, wedges of cheese, cookies and doughnuts...are capable of stimulating precisely the same part of the brain that responds to heroin. And that is why they can be addicting...it turns out that meat stimulates a surprisingly strong release of insulin, just as a cookie or bread does. In turn, insulin is involved in the release of dopamine.

That crunches a crazy amount of information into a few sentences. Let it digest.

Bottom line: we are hooked--with drug-like reason--on meat, cheese, sugar and fat. We've heard the sugar and fat thing long enough to look the other way...yada, yada, yada.

But we can no longer ignore the truth about animal protein--meat, cheese, eggs and dairy.

I know...it's like a death in the family.

So for today--measure your resistance. Are you willing to read about, ponder, let go of ill-fated worship of God through foods that slowly deteriorate our bodies, our vessel?

You can shoot the messenger...or listen to Jonah 2:8:

Those who worship hollow gods, god-frauds, walk away from their only true love.

Recovery Health: The Learning Curve

We embark on a five-day journey to recover our health. America has lost it along the way.

We have become virtually cemented into long-standing habits that are killing us.

It's not even the "killing us" that bothers me--once dead, no problem.

It is the compromising of our energy, our spirit, and our physical body that we need until we are dead--all reversible, all preventable, all achievable by changing our learning curve.

That cement is our lure into these untruths:

1. The American/Western lifestyle is not the problem.

2. Western diseases (cancer, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes) are not food-related.

3. The medical model of get sick first, treat with drugs second is inevitable.

Perhaps you are in your twenties or thirties--you feel healthy and strong. Your cement--your learning curve--may be the toughest to crack. But I am sure of two things: (1) if you don't die, you will age, and (2) everyone can age with more mobility, less pain and less disease than is understood by our culture.

Today, I am simply asking you to gauge your curiosity to know more--for yourself, your family or a friend. Perhaps you know someone whose health is deteriorating.

The commitment is to read the next four days with an open mind--to look at data that is compelling yet distressing, hopeful yet disconcerting, easy to embrace yet hard at the same time.

If you don't need to recover your health or that of someone for whom you care deeply, see you Saturday.

Otherwise, get ready for a rugged and happy adventure.