Day 33----Make Love, Not War

Yesterday after mine and Larry’s devotion, I noticed he was “zoned out”. I asked him what he was thinking and he said, “I am preaching in my mind”. So when I asked him what was his sermon about and he said, “The most important word in the Bible”. He went through a list of all the words that people might say were the most important words, but he said the most important one was LOVE. And after studying about sugar spikes, I have to agree. So how have I learned to make love and not war? I’ll be honest, it has not been a road easily traveled. But first, some background.

Just like when you eat too many carbohydrates or too much of anything (Blog 32), your blood glucose rises when you are under stress and your body secretes high levels of stress hormones, (adrenaline or cortisol), into the blood stream. It can be triggered by physiological stress—illness, pain, infection, injury or it can be emotional stress—fear, anxiety, anger, excitement, tension. All of these cause the release of stress hormones. And just like when eating foods that causes your blood sugar rises, it will also later crash and you will get hungry. So what is the answer, because all of these stresses are a part of life, some of which you can control and others that you can’t control.  And you are right if you think this process is designed by God to benefit you. If it were not for this God designed process, there are times when you would perish. The stress hormone of adrenaline can be lifesaving. One day when Papa (my father-in-law) was working on his car, whatever he was doing required that he remove a tire.  He used a jack, of course, to hold the car up so he could get under it to work on whatever. The jack gave way, and the car fell on his head. Adrenalin kicked in and he lifted the car high enough to slide out.  It broke his jaw and cut off his ear. He went to the hospital, ear in hand, had his jaw wired together and got his ear sewed back on. After a few months he was as good as new, with no visible damage.  I’m sure at this point he was not concerned with a sugar spike, he was just glad to be alive. So it is like everything else. There is the good and the bad. The bad is when we allow those stresses of life to consume our bodies and minds and even our spirit, because that is when it affects our health.  If you are pre-diabetic or have type 2 diabetes, of course you are at a greater risk with sugar spikes than someone who is does not have “sugar” issues. Although I do not think my physiological or emotional stresses were life threating, I know it definitely affected my life.  So on to my journey to take stresses out of my life. I will tell you how I worked on this by creating “love not war”.

 I hate debates in general because I am not by nature a confrontational person---unless I am pushed into a corner by my emotions, then I can come out like a tiger.  I know debates can be good if you get into one to learn. I can debate health issues. I have studied countless hours on some universal principles on which most experts agree. I have tried some things that are very controversial, and at that point I sometimes make the decision to do it anyway. Larry and I are not afraid to try some odd things. But if you question some of my practices, I will listen. I have actually on this journey changed some of my positions when they were questioned and I went back to the drawing board and found out that person had a better way. I simply had not done enough research. I often say on my blog. “let me know what you think”. As long as this is the way it goes, then let’s debate all day. There are really no strong emotions involved and we have stayed relatively calm. It comes down to--- this is what I think, what do you think?  Then at the end of the conversation we could both say, “You know, you have some valid points. I don’t agree with you on every point, but you have given me something to think about. At that point I have a choice, change my mind or stay with what I believe. But if I sense that you “know it all” and are not willing to listen to any conversation about a subject, I will back off, change the subject and let you think you are right. (Then behind your back I might call you an idiot.) By the way, I do not endorse this behavior. But if I take you on MY journey, I have to be honest. Faking it is such hard work. Now part of the backing off comes from the fact that I am a people pleaser. But I will say that it has sometimes kept me from letting the tiger out of the cage and that is a good thing. When he comes out, I say things that I later regret, because I can’t take words back, and both parties suffer. I have been guilty of that too, along my road. As I said, I have certainly changed my mind about health over the years and I owe it to people who are passionate about what they know. I have developed this passion myself. Sometimes it consumes me and I can think of nothing else. I have to be careful that I don’t talk about it 24/7 with everyone I meet, because I don’t want to have people say, “Here comes Dereatha, the health nut”.  I justify my actions by saying that I love people enough to help them on their journey, and their suffering bothers me. I just want to help so badly.  I talked to a lady yesterday who was telling that she had no energy. She said she knew she needed to get on the treadmill, but when she got home from work she just found herself on the sofa until she went to bed. All the while this conversation was going on she was eating a candy bar. Oh, the things I wanted to say. Lord, just shut my mouth!!!!!  On the other hand, I can’t tell you how thrilled I get when someone says. “Thanks to your blog, I have lost 30, 14, 12, 10 pounds. And an even greater thrill when someone says, “I am down to ½ of a blood pressure pill.” I just want to stand up and shout!   A man came up to me this week and said, “Did you notice I do not have my walker today?  I have been learning about those supplements and I feel like I am turning back the clock.” He is in his 80’s. I hugged him and wanted to SHOUT!!  I think I may have missed my calling. I should have been a health coach from the very first. But of course I know the answer to that---in order to be a great coach of anything, you have to know the game. I learned the game by going on the journey---a little late in life.  But it was the passion or debate--- if that’s what you want to call it--- that changed my ideas about diet. I believed “calories in, calories out”, and beat myself up because I could not control the calories. And as I have said in previous blogs, you have to know the right foods that make up the calories that you need.  So when are debates bad? They are bad for me when my emotions get out of control and I headed for the “comfort food”.

Now I what to make sure that you understand this about me. Ideas and knowledge are always up for debate. Wisdom (looking at life from God’s point of view) is never debatable. I have core values that I would never change--- for which I would die.  God never changes: His Word never changes, therefore I stand firm on that truth. When I started on this journey eating God’s way, I realized though that foods are debatable.  That is true because He does not list what we should eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He provides the food----we get the choice.  Now under the Law in the Old Testament, he gave specific laws about eating---no catfish, no pork, etc., and the Jews had to abide by those laws to get God’s blessing.  By God’s grace we no longer live under the law. So we are free to select the foods we want and still have God’s grace. It is up to us to figure out the “eating part”. I will add that most true health experts tell us that pork and catfish is very unhealthy. So I am not debating at this point whether it is wise or not. Do your research and decide. You are on your own journey.  Yes, on MY journey I have greatly limited both, mostly because I crave so many good things like raw vegetables and fruits, good healthy fats like avocados and nuts, fruit and vegetables that you use to make smoothies, etc., and I want to get their healing powers in my body to stay healthy. So I have cut down on large portions of meat and can almost go with eating none. I just don’t crave it like I did pre-journey. I mostly eat it because it is easier to stay in ketosis when you eat protein. But none of these guidelines in my life are convictions---I would not die before I ate a catfish or a pork chop. Cook some up----I’ll be right over. Now just writing about my passion for health almost illustrates the point of this blog ------STRONG EMOTIONS CAUSE YOUR SUGAR TO SPIKE, and here is how.

When I was under stress I would head for the candy machine, which caused a sugar spike which would make me head back to the candy machine and the cycle would start. I have had three stressful jobs in my life. As I look back, most of the stress was self-induced, brought on by my strong work ethic and my perfectionist attitude. Some call it OCD. I confess!!!!  and although there are some good qualities surrounding that condition, there is also the bad. That and the fact that I am a people pleaser created the perfect stress storm. This was my choice. If I had my life to live over, I would not change those occupations, but I would handle them totally different. I would lighten up. I would rearrange my priorities. I would have been more in control of the job and the foods that I allowed myself to eat.

Now there is a part of this journey that I will not change, I will just alter it.  Because you see, it is not just stress that causes the emotions that cause sugar spikes, it is also extreme joy. That is a very strong emotion.  My family knows that when any of us  got any recognition in life---good grades, certificates, promotions, winning ballgames ---anything, I would say, “Let’s go eat out and celebrate.”  And I wasn’t looking for healthy food, if you know what I mean. So a lot of times it would bring on a sugar spike and then the crash, and I would regret how much and what I ate----all in the name of celebrating.  Now at the time I did not know what was happening. I remember after Christmas, with all the excitement that brings, and of course all the sweets and just the amount of food in general, I would crash and almost feel depressed when it was all over. Just as a side note, there are more suicides in December than any other months of the year. Hummmm. Now all this being said, there is a real concern for me right now in the time we are living.

Have you ever seen as many negative emotions being played out than any other time in history? Have you ever seen so much hatred displayed in the news? It is not just a matter anymore of “I disagree with you”, it is now “If you do not agree with me you are STUPID. The hatred displayed on facebook alone is enough to make me cringe. I was watching the royal wedding live on my phone and some of the comments were so full of hate. The political war that is going on is disgusting to me. We all have our opinion. I certainly have mine, but I decided early on that I would not get involved in the trashing of people on either side. Was it because I was righteous and holy? No, it was because my emotions got out of control and I would get so upset I would have a stomach ache. And if that was all, that would have not been so bad. But I began a love/hate relationship with those that disagreed with me. This included my family members and my friends. I made a comment once that I thought was totally innocent, but one of my friends called me on it and it hurt my feelings. So I began to find fault with her life and thought less of her. Real Christian, right? Yes, I deleted a few friends: yes, I acted childish. Yes, I comforted myself with food. There had to be a better way. So I made my decision to read the headlines from the articles that I knew I disagreed with and not the article. This worked for a while. During this time I realized that I would never convince anyone to believe what I believed by criticizing what they believe. This facebook war was futile. Their posts certainly did not change my mind, it fact it worked just the opposite. It strengthened my belief that they were idiots.  Saying it in a nicer way—I thought they just did not know the real facts and if they did, they would agree with me. This saddened me because all of a sudden reading facebook and finding out all the special facts like celebrating births, marriages, grandchildren, renewing old acquaintances, etc----turned into me cringing every time I turned it on. I would get mad, sad, depressed---all the negative emotions that would have never been in my life if I had not opened facebook. I blocked a few of the overly obnoxious friends and felt bad about that.  I really did not know what to do, until I was reminded in my spirit that Jesus never blocked anyone. He loved everyone. But I also was reminded that in Proverbs 22:24 it said not to make friendship with an angry man, not to go with a furious man. So how was I going to reconcile these two thoughts? This is what I decided to do. Most people use the same sources for their ‘fake news”---that exists on both sides of the political battle. So I learned to go to the source and delete that source without deleting the person. That helped in most cases. But then there were those who made up their own posts using foul language and spitting out their own hate. For them, I just hid their posts. Then I would occasionally bring them back to see if things had changed and when I would see that they had calmed down and began posting about proms, graduations, and things about family members, I would bring them back.  Now I know some of you probably think this is ridiculous and trivial. To you I say, “Be thankful that you are in full control of your emotions”. I am not!!

On my journey, I am determined to control the things that affect my health and share my successes with you. And this inner turmoil real for me---I headed for “comfort” food way too often. Could this be part of the problem in our nation where one out of three adults is overweight, 2 out of 3 are overweight or obese, and one out of every thirteen is extremely obese?  Are we an angry generation?  I cannot speak to these facts. I just do not want to be an angry person. If my sugar spikes, I want it to be because I chose to eat a sugary, unhealthy food that I thoroughly enjoyed, not because someone riled me over something for which I or they could not control. So, on my journey I have made two changes that had previously created stress in my life---limit activities on facebook and quit watching the news on TV. I get alerts on my phone about newsworthy events and I can choose to open that news, or “let it go”. I can’t tell you how it has changed my life for the better. I have more love and understanding for people than I have ever had in my life. I have realized that they are on a journey, too. And if I should want to influence their lives, how better can I do it? Did not Jesus say that the whole Bible can be summed up in two phrases---love the Lord God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself? So we have three people to love. God, creator of all: people, whom He loved and created: ourselves, whom He created and gave us to power to choose to love ourselves. I personally did not love myself enough to do what was right for me. I thought it was a selfish attitude. It was only as I started loving myself enough to treat my body like a temple (as talked about in 1 Corinthians 3:16) that I began to have success. God does not reside in a church. We are the church. He resides in my body. If my body is unkept, unhealthy, full of destructive emotions, will I be a good testimony for the God of love who has provided everything for us to be healthy? I think not. I want to be able to honestly say that I love everyone without regard for race or status in life. God made them just like he made me.  They are His children and He wants them to trust in Him and follow his nutritional ways that He designed because he loves.  How can I tell of His love if I do not have true love and all I do is make  war---within my body, and in my life.  So what can we do to fight this war that rages in our lives?   Well, that is the next blog.