After almost a week fasting with the seven foods on the list, I've realized that while at first I was consumed with planning and figuring out what to eat each meal, I've become convicted that this process of reflecting on what do we really need, what is enough is more valuable than the list of foods that I created.
Like Heather after the initial cravings for high processed, sugary, carb-laden foods subsided I enjoyed eating whole, healthy foods. The simple breakfast of eggs and a cup of coffee was enjoyable. Drinking water not only made me feel healthier, it led to a total four pound weight loss in the last four days. The daily lunch and dinner meal of a simple spinach and chicken salad was fulfilling and the preparation for it not only blessed me, but it blessed my daughter too who wanted to get up early to make a salad for me because she thought cutting and chopping was fun and later she told me she wanted to help me with my goal. That was both gratifying and convicting.
Once I settled into a routine of enjoyment I realized that when I wasn't thinking about what to cook or where we were going to go eat I had time to think, to reflect. It wasn't about what I was eating it was about what I was thinking about. Instead of living to eat, I was eating to live and to grow closer to Christ.
In Hatmaker's 7, she reflected on these three questions:
1.) What in my life, if taken away, would alter my value or identify?
2.) What causes an unhealthy change of attitude, personality, or focus when "it" becomes threatened?
3.) What is the thing outside of God that you put everything else on hold for?
In having time this summer as a teacher to reflect, to read, and to carve out more space for self-assessment I realized that I put entirely too much focus on who I am as an educator. I define myself as a teacher and many times my service to students, to teachers and well let's face the hardest truth, my self-worth of being an effective one is egotistical and is an idol and it needs to be slain and overcome so that my identity as a believer, as a Christ-follower, as a wife, and as a mother can grow, can come first, can be enough. That was hard to admit but I have a feeling that there are other women out there who feel the same way. Who feel that many times they are too much and at the same time not enough the way God made them and are searching for validation, for self-worth in other outlets that are very much praised in today's American culture.
Don't get me wrong, I love my profession. It is what I am called to do and how I serve and I am thankful for the opportunity to make more than a living, but make a life out of what I do but it has become more than that and it shouldn't. It wasn't intended to. Boundaries are needed and I am thankful that the Holy Spirit used 7 little whole foods and the time of self-reflection to help me realize this. Praying for less of me, and more of Him.
Sincerely,
Dawn
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