I'm going to start by sharing something very important....something as weird as I am. Something extremely on topic. Prepare yourself.
God uses every bit of our story. I was thinking about that as I opened up my new box of pots and pans I had to buy because of my hubby's nickel allergy. I was thinking about how so many of my people, my tribe, have allergies and insensitive to food. I have a loved one who has struggled for years with symptoms that multiple doctors couldn't figure out and it was apparently as simple (I use that word ironically for those of us with allergies and unexplained symptoms) as cutting lactose out of her diet. Gluten, dairy, nickel, nuts, onions, ginger, I have friends and family who all live in this awkward state of having to carefully pick what we can eat, where we can go and how pretentious we're going to sound when we get there. I didn't seek out people of intolerance, but I am so proud to do life with them. They work as hard to avoid our allergies as we do for theirs. Part of the reason our friends work so hard to avoid their allergy foods is always individual and usually filled with people along the way that thought they just don't like the food they are avoiding and seem to think its a choice that can be trained out of us. Sometimes the road to discovering what had been causing all those weird symptoms that the doctors couldn't figure out was a hard one. We learn to live without those things but we miss them and every encounter that reintroduces those food items holds a vast array of consequences.
As I was thinking about food intolerance God whispered something beautiful to me. The care that my tribe puts into caring for our allergies is a very direct working out of 1 Corinthians 8:13 and Romans 14:19-21.
1 Corinthians 8:13 Therefore, if food makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, lest I make my brother stumble. Romans 14:19-21 Therefore let us not pass judgement on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother. Do not, for the sake of food, destroy the work of God. Everything is indeed clean, but it is wrong for anyone to make another stumble by what he eats. It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble
My tribe adjusting our meals for community times of breaking bread (metaphorically speaking, I can't have bread) is an act of love. We delight in serving each other in that way. It isn't a burden that we resent, it is one we gladly share because we understand how difficult it is. The same should be true of our intolerance, our fears and, our weaknesses in life. They shouldn't be treated as an inconvenience that we must suffer through because someone else can't police themselves. They should be loads that we share because we have intolerance, fears and weaknesses too and we should understand better than anyone.
Concluding our discussion on Comparison last week leaves me the perfect transition into this weeks blog post on health. In my own life I don't think there is any subject where I compare myself negatively with others more frequently than health. Our newest bump on the road of my families health is causing a great deal of stress for me because it involves such a steep learning curve. Or at least, it feels steep. My spouse has been dealing with a skin rash/eczema for the last couple of years that doctors and dermatologists have been unable to diagnose or treat. It was itchy, bubbly, red and caused hair to fall out (most notably on his eyebrows). Spots would randomly flare up or spread and so I finally decided to make an appointment with an allergy clinic. They concluded right away it was a nickel allergy and ordered my spouse to adopt a low nickel diet.
Can you guess what foods have nickel? If you thought none, you would be incorrect. If you thought all of them, ding ding ding, you are pretty close. Nickel is in the ground, therefore, things that grow from the ground or eat things grown from the ground are going to have some nickel. The trick seems to be choosing those foods that are lowest in nickel to avoid having an allergic response. Here's the part that has been stressing me out. All the lists I have found so far either contradict each other or only feel comfortable sharing the foods you can't eat. Few will tell you what foods you can eat without doing some research. I want to emphasize the fact that I am not a medical professional. I'm just trying to figure things out and thought it might help some people. For me, I needed to figure out what I could feed my family in a practical sense. I will also say that this is only the first step in figuring out how to live with a nickel allergy this severe. I have personally found a great deal of information and encouragement from Christy Cushing. Allergies are always a complex issue and my spouse apparently has quite a few. Figuring out what will cause a reaction will require a lot of trial and error. So to organize the information into a format that would be useful to me, I made a spreadsheet.
The problem with the above list is three fold.
One
it's not exhaustive. I have no idea if quinoa is allowed yet. I don't know what other vegetables, like jicama or other root vegetables, we can eat.
Two
the nickel quantity in any given food is dependent on the soil it's grown in. Manufacturing can introduce nickel into foods as well as pots and pans in some cases. Identifying which items have nickel apart from the food equation is a whole other kettle of fish (which we really can't eat now) and so I won't go into it at this time.
Three
We have to set aside the "healthy" diet/lifestyle we were pursuing and start completely from scratch. I can't follow Whole 30 or Paleo because a good portion of what we eat under those plans are now not allowed. Are we going to get enough nutrients on a low nickel diet? What is healthy now?
It's been easy to get overwhelmed with all the effort that is going into learning right now. Learning about a low nickel diet, learning what has nickel in it, learning about all the other things I'm pursuing right now. More than any of those, I'm learning to humble myself. I hate feeling dumb. I hate feeling like I don't know what I'm doing. I absolutely hate feeling like I'm doing something wrong. And right now I feel all those things. It requires humility to set aside my need to "have it all together" and be a student. It requires humility to give our silent struggle to God instead of holding onto it so we can compare how much harder we have it than anyone else. What things are you struggling to set aside to be a student? What does being a student mean to you? Does it immediately conjure up images of youth, ignorance or weakness? Whether you're struggling with comparing yourself to the seemingly healthy masses and wondering why you, or whether you are struggling to humble yourself as you learn to do better, you can do this. One step at a time, in the chunks you can handle with God's help. Linkups:
A few weeks back I talked about waiting for the other shoe to drop and this week I found myself on that spectrum of thought again. When I was younger, I had a pastor that I considered my first "real" pastor. He was during my teenage years so mostly it's because I remember him. The only part of his sermons over the years that has remained with me was a story he would tell on occasion. Pastor Randy was allergic to chocolate. Pastor Randy loved chocolate. Every once in a while, especially around Easter, when all the little bit sized chocolates where in abundance, he would sneak a little chocolate egg. He told himself it wasn't a lot and probably wouldn't be a big deal. Sure enough, by the end of the day he would have a big old scaly rash around his mouth. It was an allergic reaction that made it clear to everyone that he had done something he shouldn't. I was thinking about that this week as I was suffering day two of a migraine. I knew exactly why I had a migraine. My wonderful mother made a salmon in puffed pastry for Sunday lunch. My husband painstakingly took his salmon out of the puffed pastry pocket, but not me. I thought, it's not a lot. I'm sure it will be fine. It is not fine. I'm learning the depth of nuh-uh my body has in reaction to grains and gluten. I should have been even more strict with what I'm consuming this week because of travel, which is especially hard on my body, but my temporary pleasure has led to days worth of pain. It has me thinking, what do I do with totally legit consequences? We know that suffering for Christ's sake has a whole lot of encouragement that goes along with it, but what does God's Word have to say about dealing with consequences we brought on ourselves?
Galatians 6:7-8English Standard Version (ESV)
7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Jeremiah 17:9-10English Standard Version (ESV)
9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the Lord search the heart and test the mind,[a] to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
Hebrews 12:11English Standard Version (ESV)
11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
but we also have precedence for coming back to God and admitting our fault and asking for His help. We're all familiar with the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15). When he came to his senses he determined to apologize in hopes of at least being a servant in his father's household. Sampson has a similar story of getting himself in big trouble by disobeying and being remembered by God again (Judges 16).
No matter what mess we've gotten ourselves into, we don't have to wallow with the pigs. God may not take away the consequences any sooner (or at all) but there's a big heart difference between being right with God and not being right. So I went to God and thanked Him for the consequences. I thanked Him for the reminder that He's brought me some miraculous changes over the last year, one of them being the suffering of less migraines and headaches (praise the Lord). Then I asked Him to heal it quickly if it was His will and to help me through it either way. I haven't been healed but I sure got a lot done today despite the pain and I walked it with joy. I haven't gotten as much done on some of the days I was feeling fine! Are you dealing with the consequences of your own willful/sinful/wrong-for-you actions? Do you use those consequences to flagellate yourself? Do you bemoan the consequences as unfair? Do you stoically trudge on? Or do you return, hat in hand, to your loving Father to confess, hoping that you can start building trust again slowly and instead are surprised by the depth of compassion you find there? I have to admit that I've been the stoically trudge kind of girl. I have been missing out on the treasures buried just beneath the surface of dealing properly with my wrong doing. How about you? Linkups:
