Sometimes I Forget to Eat

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Sometimes I forget to eat.  It’s not that I don’t like to eat.  I love food.  I mean, really, love it.  But the day starts, then keeps going.  A phone call here, an email there, and a bunch of just-need-to-get-this-one-thing-done moments.  You know, like checking my Facebook status and making sure I haven’t missed anything new on Instagram.  Important things.

I don’t just love food itself.  I love the experience of food.  I am not a fancy cook and my taste buds aren’t overly cultured, but my favorite food is one I get to enjoy.  I hate eating on the go.  No time to savor.  I have a pre-planned “last bite” with every meal:  the bite to end all bites.   The grand finale.  The taste that the rest of the meal has been working up towards.  Even if the meal is a bean and cheese burrito, I strategize to make sure that the last bite has just the right blend of bean, cheese, and tortilla.  I’m not making this up.

So sometimes I forget to eat.  Or better said, I keep pushing it back because the setting isn’t ideal.  Because I don’t have room to savor.  There are days that I end up not eating at all until dinner.  And everyone knows what a hungry woman is like.  I get cranky, and fidgety, and annoyed.  I have no margin.  Forget savoring, the carnivore must be fed.

My husband gets after me about this, mainly because he is the one the monster lashes out at in moments of extreme hunger.  He believes in preventive plans of attack:  He tells co-workers to make sure I take a lunch break, and will regularly text to see if I remembered breakfast.  I’ve gotten better.  Truly.  I have given in to eating breakfast bars and other on-the-go items out of necessity.  And I admit, it makes me a much nicer person.

Funny that someone can love food so much but still forget to eat it.

Well I forget to feed my soul, too.  I love Jesus.  I love His Word.  I love His creation.  But I wait for ideal moments to sit down and savor, and sometimes, I forget to “eat.”  I forget how much it matters to see the ocean.  I forget how much it matters to be still.  I forget how much it matters to read Scripture.  I forget how much it matters to write and process in my journal.  I forget how much it matters to get outside for fresh air and fun.

When I forget, I get cranky and lethargic and altogether restless.  It’s my soul’s way of saying “I’m hungry, feed me.”

So it’s time to eat.  Even if it’s on-the-go.  Yesterday I took one simple hour at the beach.  Today I dug into God’s Word again.  In a few minutes I’ll head outside for a late morning walk and take in the colorful trees and lawn decorations that adorn my cute town.  Oh, but first I need to eat breakfast …

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The Season of Impossible

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We have one of those messy refrigerators.  Inside and out. You know the kind.  The one with endless notes and random pictures posted on the front.  That’s ours.  The one with a cacophony of food tossed haphazardly in airtight containers on the inside.  That’s ours.

Organized refrigerators are a thing of mystery to me.

Among the disorganized chaos that adorns our fridge hides a quote:  That which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable.” – Aristotle

Last night I overheard my husband and a young man trying to come up with what it could mean.

I know what it means.

You see, I’m a dreamer.  I come up with the impossible, and then I think of ways to make it probable.

I’ve lived a lot of dreams and have breathed deep of the impossible.

But I’ve also tasted the bitterness of the improbable becoming possible.

I’ve sat at the deathbed of a cherished friend taking her last cancer-weakened-breath.  Improbable, but possible.

I’ve held the hands of a friend who has lost five babies to miscarriage or still-birth.  Five.  Improbable, but possible.

I navigated am navigating five years of my own unexplained infertility.  Improbable, but possible.

Just this week, my husband’s days have been filled with visits to the hospital bed of a twenty-three year old suddenly struck with a severe auto-immune disease.  Improbable, but possible.

It gets harder and harder to believe in the impossible when you’ve stared into the face of the improbable.

Yet here in this season of Advent, I can’t escape it.

A baby born to save the world.  Impossible.

Death overcome.  Impossible.

Addictions conquered.  Diseases cured.  Marriages restored.  Impossible.

“Family” meaning more than bloodline and skin color.  Impossible.

Being healed by being broken.  Impossible.

Life coming out of death.  Impossible.

God with us.  Impossible.

Yet probable.  Because of a promise. His promise.  THE promise.

That’s what Advent is.  Looking forward to the impossible future because of what happened in the impossible past.  Celebrating the promise that made it all probable.  The promise kept.  The promise yet to be kept.

So this Advent, I’m choosing to let myself dream about the impossible again.  I don’t know if any of my impossibles will become probable.

But ‘tis the season of the impossible.  What’s yours?

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