7 project: more food

No more eating only seven foods for me.  Food week is officially over.  I ended it yesterday at sundown, and I was watching and waiting for that sunset like a little kid waiting for Christmas morning.  I was really ready to have the week finished and get to eat whatever I wanted.  It was so much tougher than I imagined!  I have given up things before for Lent, which is a lot longer time period, with a lot more ease.  I think the difficulty with this was the limiting myself to such few types of food when I know there is a huge variety out there available to me.  Plus, it's just plain boring to eat the same things over and over agian.  I should be thankful that I even have food to eat, but I found myself dissatisfied with what I had.  I feel like that statement about food is a window into my heart.  There are so many good things that the Lord has richly blessed me with. Instead of praising Him for those things, I want to look at the things He has not given me and dwell on those, or I begin to covet the things that He has given to others. 

At one point last week, I was standing in my kitchen trying to come up with yet another way to somehow come up with a different concoction using these same ingredients.  I'm here to tell you there are only so many things you can make using 7 ingredients for three meals a day for a whole week.  I was getting a little tired of this routine, and then I thought about the women who eat rice and beans every single day and are overjoyed that they have been provided with rice and beans every single day.  I felt selfish.  I felt ungrateful.  I felt spoiled. 

I learned that I don't like feeling constrained.  Well, I already knew that, but I definitely noticed it during "food week".  In the areas of self control and discipline I am severely lacking.  These areas are quickly revealed in a fast.  I do not like being told what to do.  I want to go my own way and do what pleases Lindsay.  I don't like rules, a list of "dos" and "don'ts", restrictions, or anything else resembling anything of that nature.  I'm a "rebel" at heart.  Jesus preferred the word "sinner".  Thankfully Jesus came to save the sinners.  Tax collectors, murderers, prostitutes, and people like me. 

7: an experimental mutiny against excess

"Jesus, may there be less of me and my junk and more of You and Your Kingdom."
                                                      ~Jen Hatmaker

next week: clothes