Day Fifteen

I want to pass along something I learned in church on Sunday. I take my kids to church because I think it's important for us to use our spiritual "muscles" just as we use our intellectual ones at school and as we use our physical ones while we run and play. I believe we are multi-layered human beings composed of mind, body and spirit and I don't want to get all unbalanced with like, huge quads and a scrawny soul, you know?

I don't agree with everything that they preach in the Christian church I attend, but I feel welcomed and safe there, and it works. They know what I believe and how I feel and nobody has ever tried to jam anything down my throat, and growing up in surroundings where I was inundated with Christianity, unforced faith is something that I certainly appreciate.

The guy who spoke talked about what we take in from our environment, that whatever we predominantly focus on will have an affect on us. It was sort of a reality check in regards to priorities, making me think about what I need to have at the top of the list and what I do not. Whatever we feed, will grow. If my kids truly are higher of a priority than running, then I better be damn sure that my leg muscles aren't stronger than the strength of the bond between me and my children.

I don't watch TV and I'm not on Facebook but he used those as examples of what time-suckers might be like, soaking up our energy so that we are depleted for the things and people that are truly meaningful. Facebook and TV aren't "bad", but they can be toxic if ingested beyond our capacity.

My dad has a million sayings and one of them is: "I am addicted to anything that there is more than one of." And he laughs. He laughs because a) it's true and b) because he's strong enough to admit it.

Church guy used the illustration of peanut butter, where he said that even though it may be overdone once in a while, peanut butter itself isn't "bad" if ingested, and while it may be okay for some people to eat, it can be lethal for others. And so it's a personal thing, a relational exchange between humans and God (if they choose), that they come to understand that most things are healthy in moderation, but at the end of it all, it's still a personal thing.

I loved the peanut butter illustration. Recovering alcoholics can't have a glass of wine with dinner just as people who have anaphylactic reactions to nuts can't have a tablespoon of peanut butter on their toast.

What did I get out of all this? That I need to sit down and play with my kids more. That I need to invest in the relationships of the people who are closest to me. That I need to feed the things in my life that make my time on this earth more meaningful, not more empty. And that I am hungry for peanut butter toast.