It's been a while since my last post. A long, painful month with what's being treated as an ulcer.
I've spent most of my life feeling like I'm not normal, or like there's something wrong with me. Ugly, undesirable, etc.
So I cling to the familiar. I cling hard to it.
An ulcer means at least a temporary change in diet, and likely some lifelong changes if I wish to avoid future dealings with it. In one way, I was already moving towards healthier eating, but in other ways it is deeply frustrating for me to have to further rewire my brain. I mostly want to be left alone to enjoy the things that the people around me enjoy on a regular basis. I adore tomato based foods, for instance. But it riles up my stomach, can give me amazing acid reflux to the point that I've awoken in the night and needed to vomit acid and barely digested food back up.
Red meat, a lot of favorite fast foods. I have to be careful with citrus. So fruits I was just discovering are now a bit dangerous to me.
I just want to be normal. This is the thing in my mind and heart I must learn to recognize and resist. I'm certainly not the only person with sudden dietary restrictions in my life, and there are some who will get it worse. So I'm trying to not write this with a spirit of complaining. Just as I am trying to enter into this new phase of life with thankfulness to God, instead of with frustration.
Food, of course, has nothing to do with whether or not I am normal. It is just familiar to continue eating what I want to eat. And familiar things are comfortable things. Things that taste good are fun things! Not being an inconvenience to others when we hang out is comfortable.
I am loathe to give those things up.
But underneath all this, I am coming to believe that this ulcer episode is a gift. It is corrective, yes, and I am reaping something I have sown through the use of painkillers and bad diet choices. But it is forcing me to eat better, to reevaluate my diet on the whole, and to think through the purpose of food and eating.
Oh, Lord.
Help me to be thankful and deliberate.
