I Didn't Start Out With That Great Attitude

You may have caught this on my Quick Takes on Friday, but I’ve recently been diagnosed with a “condition." It not curable, but as far as I know, it is not fatal either. Have a look at that post, it kind of explains the condition.

When I wrote that post, I was contented with the new terms of my healthy existence, and even kind of excited about the diagnosis, but I didn’t start out that way.

No, I had received a voice mail from the doctors office at six on a Friday that we were on vacation, and on Monday I called back at 8AM and spent the morning and part of the afternoon tapping my foot and waiting for them to call back.

When they finally did, I think I scared the poor nurse. I was somewhere between nearly crying at her and yelling at her over the phone because of the sheer magnitude of the changes that they were telling me I “needed” to make. (In fact there were only two (no more gluten and no more dairy), but those two were REALLY big changes.)

For about the first three hours after she called, I laid on the couch with a “shock blankey” wrapped around my shoulders, and feeling sorry for myself.

This is about what I looked like...

except it was more pathetic and irritating, and less adorable.

This was before I realized that no gluten and no sugar do not mean the same thing, and when I still thought I could never drink alcohol again, and when I thought I couldn’t ever have potato chips again.

When I finally talked to Daniel about why I was so upset about something I couldn’t change, he asked what it was that I was upset about, and I burst into tears and shouted, “I don’t like soy milk!”

He laughed at me. I deserved it. It sounds like a ridiculous reason to be crying.

It was sometime after I got my head screwed back on straight and actually spent some time reading up on the disease and what you really have to do about it that I was calm enough to hear the small, still voice speaking to me. Mind that it had probably been talking all afternoon, but I was so distraught that I couldn’t hear it. It, of course, said the natural thing: “Offer it up.”

I suppose that even thought this is a treatment plan for a health problem that I have, and it will make me feel better in the long run, giving up the things that I enjoy (mostly milk and brownies) is a sacrifice of a kind, and so is the extra work that I am planning to do to make gluten-free, dairy-free bread. These can become a kind of redemptive suffering.

So: are you similarly situated?

Do you have a health problem that you really need to do something about? Physical Therapy that you’ve been neglecting? A weight problem that’s gotten a little out of hand? (That’s me, too) Is there something that your doctor has asked you to avoid because of your health?

Who do you know who could use some grace? Someone who doesn’t know the Lord? Someone who’s been having a hard time of things lately.

Offer up your treatment for them.