I’m one of the tens of thousands struggling to learn how to eat healthily in this nutrient-deprived, toxin-laden world we live in. If you are too, then you already know exactly what I mean. If you’re not, then suffice it to say that the list of people I know who are struggling with health issues brought on by the combination of nutritional deficiencies and stress is now longer than the list of people I know who aren’t. I myself have discovered that I have to take a calcium/magnesium supplement if I want to be able to sleep well at night, and I have to take iodine if I want to keep a particular set of PMS symptoms away. I need herbs to keep colds and the flu away, and I need both iodine and fish oil supplements and to avoid sulfates in soaps to keep my skin from getting unbearably dry. I try to avoid soybean oil (which is in TONS of things) because more than just a tiny amount upsets my stomach, MSG and aspartame sometimes give me headaches, I’ve become convinced that high-fructose corn syrup is one of the worse things you can ingest (and it’s in even more things than soybean oil)… and basically, it is rather challenging in today’s world to stay healthy.
And even if you do “figure it out,” there’s the whole challenge of actually sticking with it.
Well, the other night, I woke up at 3am and my mind got going. That means I wasn’t able to go back to sleep. (It didn’t help that I haven’t been drinking enough water, which also affects my ability to sleep well.) So, in order to quiet my mind down, I did what I’ve started doing recently… I began meditating on the Psalms that I have memorized, line by line. I started with Psalm 23 which I’ve had memorized since I was a child.
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures.
He leads my beside quiet waters…
…and my mind was off thinking about various other issues that going on with much-loved ones. Eventually I realized I’d gotten distracted, and I dragged my mind back to Psalm 23.
He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
Lord, I prayed, thank You that You do this for Your own sake, because if it depended upon us being worthy, You wouldn’t do it. And off my mind went on various tracks for a few minutes before I dragged it back to the Psalm.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.
Your rod and Your staff comfort me…
…and this time my mind drifted off to health issues of loved ones again… meditating on the state of the world that is filled with toxins that constantly attack our bodies, while our foods no longer have the nutrients our bodies need to fight those toxic enemies. I found myself asking God if it’s even possible for my generation (not to mention my kids’ generation) to live to an old age without succumbing to some deficiency-caused disease.
But then I remembered my Psalm, and I dragged my mind back around to center again.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. My cup overflows.
And suddenly, at 3am in the morning, lying there in the dark, the Holy Spirit showed what was on that table! Nutrients! Everything my body needs to stay healthy.
When God prepares a table, it’s going to have all the nutrients my body needs! How could He possibly do any less?
And this Psalm says He does it even in the presences of all these enemy toxins that surround us!
I laid there in awe, for in 30+ years of knowing that Psalm, this has never occurred to me.
But like I said, it’s hard to eat right. Sooner or later, I fall off the wagon, and I struggle to eat right again… or to make whatever new adjustments I need to add. But I continued the Psalm.
Surely Your goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…
… and the Holy Spirit stopped me. “What is My goodness?” He asked. I knew the answer:
…the goodness of God leads you to repentance. (Rom. 2:4)
And repentance, of course, is the willingness and ability to change your path away from wrong choices and toward good choices. To change directions.
And mercy is Him forgiving and covering our mistakes.
So as I’m working through this life of learning to find and eat the nutrients my body needs and avoiding the toxins, His goodness and mercy are both following me, covering me when I fall off the wagon and enabling me to change course yet again. Wow!
And then I fell asleep. 🙂