The daily-ness of food.

Loved the book. I'm also not editing and am not a grammar scholar so bear with me :).

I don't like eating. I enjoy good food. I love sitting down, drinking, laughing, talking, appetizers and desserts and the intimacy it brings is a welcome relief to the chaos of my days. However, the daily-ness of food makes me cray-cray (like the young kids say for crazy).

My first pregnancy in 2006 was a doozy for sure. Constant nausea. Throwing up in the trash can at my desk. Eating piles of oranges just so I didn't puke. Every morning I would get up and drink a huge protein shake, full knowing by 9 a.m. it would be in the trash can. And I think that is when my dislike for eating began.

After birthing and nursing a healthy 8lb. 7oz. baby boy, I was ravenous. I would eat all day. But, inevitably after eating I would get unbearable stomach pain. I had pinned certain foods that made me feel the worst and in the end was eating entire batches of oatmeal cookies since it was the only food that didn't make me sick. When Parker was 6 months old I found myself laying on his nursery floor with a fever, severe stomach pain, and mastitis. After months of pain I finally discovered it was my gallbladder. Because of the surgery I weaned him cold-turkey (another story for another day. OUCH...like boobs up to my collar bones.) I had my gallbladder removed. I was no longer hungry because I wasn't nursing. I was scared to eat because I feared having stomach pain again.

I ate to survive and no more. 

Two years later I began puking again. So for 9 months I puked and still managed to gain 40 pounds. One month before I gave birth to my 9 lb. baby boy, Owen, my first-born, Parker, was diagnosed with severe food allergies to dairy, egg and peanut. And not like "he might get a tummy ache if he eats these foods"…like "if he eats these foods he could go into anaphylactic shock and die."

Parker and I began eating to survive.

Nursing a 9 lb. baby boy is a full.time.job. When I wasn't nursing, I was eating oatmeal cookies made without dairy, nuts or eggs.

The days of exhaustion, stress and fear of food wore on. Food was always on my mind. WHAT AM I GOING TO FEED THEM!?!?! IS IT REALLY TIME TO EAT AGAIN!??!?!? And every night I would get the boys to bed and eat LARGE bags of peanut M&M's to make up for my lack of calories from the day.

I found new recipes. We began eating plain meats, fruits and vegetables. To this day, my kids eat anything. I vividly remember walking through the grocery store with an infant car-seat and 2-year-old in the basket crying and screaming "Why can't we buy brussel sprouts? You never buy me brussel sprouts." Yep. People looked at me like I was cray-cray (see definition above.)

Food was a means to an end.

In 2012 God saw fit to give me the daughter I never knew I always wanted, Olivia Kate. After 7 months of puking she came 2 months early, weighing 3lb. 14 oz. due to maternal complications with severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. She was fine. I was not. (Another story for another day. Think - emergency surgery, abdominal hematoma, 3 units of blood and blood pressures varying from 220/190 and 20/60)

After 10 days in the hospital, I came home with a hemoglobin of 6.5. My husband, Sean, would feed me handfuls of spinach and Ensure. Because Olivia couldn't tolerate my breast milk I was cutting EVERYTHING out of my diet. First no dairy. Then no soy. I ate raisin bran with almond milk and bananas. I drank Non-dairy Ensure shakes. And I ate handfuls of spinach.

There is no joy in eating handfuls of spinach. Food was fuel for my ailing body and nothing more.

After 8 weeks in the hospital, Olivia Kate came home to her 2 (hungry) big brothers. And so began the jigsaw puzzle of feeding my family.

I loved this book because it allowed me to think about my relationship with food. It forced me to stare down the enemy and say "NO MORE!" I will not be a slave to my fear of food. I refuse to allow Satan to steal the joy from my family gathering around the dinner table and eating food that feeds not only our bodies but souls.

The morning after I began reading this book, my son Owen woke me up. The first thing he asked me, "What are we having for supper tonight, Mom?" And I thought, "I don't know, but something GOOD!" And I made their favorite smoked salmon, asparagus, and couscous with extra mushrooms (just how they like it) and a big fruit salad…And it was wonderful. And we prayed, talked, laughed, asked questions, yelled, whined, and spilled. And as I was sweeping and vacuuming up a MILLION pieces of couscous that seemed to miss their mouths, I cried.

I cried for giving Satan victory without even seeing it. I cried for the days of hurrying through meals because it was just to survive. And I cried out to God to redeem what had been lost. And I yelled at Satan, and I felt like Joseph in Genesis 50:20 when he says to his brothers, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."

And I know God will. I just know it. Because, my friends, that is who He is.

And here is a sweet picture of my "eat-anything-constantly-hungry-growing-an-inch-a-night" children who LOVE to eat.

Please pray for me...that God will strengthen my feeble heart and give me the selfless desire to serve my family in a way that is so foreign and uncomfortable to me.

All glory to God, Jess