When the Lane was born I was completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for a HUMAN.
Overwhelmed in a good way! I was excited don't get me wrong....but I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best.
There were ridiculous amounts of what I thought were life or death decisions to make.
I would go online to try to find information about how to best care for my baby and I would end up walking away from the computer without a lick of useful information due to the overwhelming-ness of it all. A simple Google search brought me tons of articles about GMO's, the ever-evolving conversation about carbs are bad vs. good, why diapers could cause cancer, how Johnson and Johnson corporation is run by the devil himself, why breastfeeding and making homemade baby food is the ONLY WAY, photos of kids happily guzzling green smoothies, and detailed horrific videos about where our grocery-store meat and milk actually come from.
The pressure these ‘voices’ put on me to do the perfect right thing for my kid can be a very large burden in life.
And let's just say it is not letting up. The world is always coming up with all the bad don't have, don't eat, don't use anymore... and it can be overwhelming!
{[Especially after a fast of eating whole foods and feeling great then eating everything inside for a week just because you can.]}
I feel like if God was in the flesh right now He would put his hands on my shoulders and say this,
“Laurel. You do the best you can to eat a balanced diet, feed your kids the best they will eat in the moment and then you trust that when you pray before a meal – He hears it. He is in control. He loves you. The end.”
My father's words (in my head) opened my eyes to an aspect of faith and trust in Him that I have let go of in my quest of what I perceived to be the ‘perfect’ mom, wife, and homemaker.
God will not say to us when we get to heaven, “Did you grind wheat for your child’s sandwich bread?”
God cares about the condition of our hearts.
When my heart gets filled up with fear about things like the pesticides and refined flours in this world, I am no longer trusting Him.
Most of the time, we cannot afford to buy organic. So I buy the regular kind, prepare it faithfully and lovingly for my sweet family, and then when we sit around the table and pray that God will have the final say on how that food is processed in our bodies.
Now, hear me out. I am NOT saying you should just scrap everything, buy KFC every night and think that grace will cover all the blocked arteries you have coming in about 10 years.
No, we still need to be responsible. We need to make good decisions for our families and feed them the best we know how. We need to strive for balance in our eating. We can learn to listen to His voice if we think He is calling us to try something new (like making bread from scratch, cutting back on processed foods, exploring Paleo, or the Mediterranean Diet, or finding the best menu options for an ill child’s struggling digestive system like a gluten intolerance etc....)
But we cannot get into the idol of thinking that WE carry the burden of our loved one’s or our own health for the rest of life on this earth.
Because what happens when you see Or hear of a bunch of people who were enjoying some spinach (SPINACH, for crying out loud) and ended up with E. Coli?
Or what happens when you take all-natural pre-natal vitamins and have no caffeine during your whole pregnancy and your child is born with life-threatening health issue and has to have major surgery.
Are we going to shake our fist at God and get angry at Him because we thought we were doing everything ‘right’???
Our world is BROKEN, dear ones.
BROKEN.
The point is, eating (like driving a car, getting on an airplane, and pretty much everything else) is an act of faith. We could eat as ‘clean’ as we possibly could and there would STILL be disease and sickness.
At the end of the day, our job is just to do our best to be good stewards of the body Christ has given us (and those of our children) – the bodies that Christ died for – and then we allow GRACE to fill in the gaps.
Remember, whenever Jesus sat down to eat, He gave thanks to His Father.
He acknowledged the Giver of ‘daily bread.’
How awful would it have been if the people on the hillside said to Jesus as He passed out miraculously multiplied loaves of bread and fish, “Does that bread have gluten in it?” or “Does that fish have mercury contamination?”
Instead, they were thankful.
So when you sit down as a family to eat peanut butter sandwiches on store bought bread, don’t forget to bow your heads, close your eyes and truly give thanks.
He’s got this.
Be wise...be grateful...have self control...and remember to celebrate!
The whole baking your own bread works for some super amazing people.
But this mama prefers to buy hers at the store and spend my time baking cookies instead for my four cookie monsters!
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