Grace for the Gray

alternately titled Making the Food Behave

It must have been a decade ago….seems like last week…that my friend and I were sitting in her apartment discussing the idea of gluttony, particularly in regard to food.  I can’t say if we read it somewhere or if we were just geniuses in our own right…I do recall we were reading about a program called Weigh Down, but regardless…we were aiding each other in owning the truth that you can’t “Make the Food Behave.” 

Westerners, it seems, have this idea that as long as we remove the calories, eat non-food chemicals, and strip the fats from foods replacing them with sugar, or worse yet, artificial sweeteners and fillers (whatever those are ???), that somehow our bodies will shed pounds and snap into shape all while we indulge as much as we’d like…and it’s not the truth. Plain and simple, you cannot make the food behave…that’s our job, so to speak…it’s called moderation.

Still open to learning, I’ve come to believe if you give your body exactly what it needs and nourish it (and I don't always), a moderate amount of most things will not cause harm.  The injury comes when we have a set of external ‘rules’ we try to apply in order to combat an internal problem.  Do you follow?

So it occurs to me today, while making my bed of all things, that the most recent years of my life have been overshadowed by people who, for one reason or another, have challenged my beliefs, my paradigms, my existence…and it hits me…the very thing I KNOW I am supposed to be learning and applying is that you can’t "make the people behave.”  The complexity and diversity of mankind and the historical dealings of the Creator with his creation demand that there be grace for the gray areas;  that there are and will always be people, circumstances, lives and stories that I do not, will not and cannot control, orchestrate, moderate or subdue.  I simply don’t have the understanding….what I understand, in very small part, is me … and that’s about it. 

The stories of the people that cross my path are not my story…and to try to make them so is a form of gluttony.  As C.S. Lewis penned through the voice of Aslan in The Horse and His Boy, (my favorite of the Narnia tales), “That is not your story.  Gathering all the unique lives that cross my path to fit them onto my plate of relevance and understanding doesn’t work any better than shoveling non-food items onto my plate in order to feel better about my indulgence.  It doesn’t satisfy…at the end, there’s a bloated, nutrient-stripped soul wondering what went wrong.

I am not called to change anyone….or even to understand or explain them.  God asks me to love him and love others as myself…that’s pretty much the sum of it.  I don’t get to ‘fill-up’ on people that make me feel better about my own way of life.  I get to rub up against people who feel a lot like eating beets to me (if you know me, that’s a sacrifice).  Hearing them, seeing them, loving them is a lot like a trip to the salad bar some days….maybe not my first choice, but I’m better for it.  Living life among other messy lives…because mine is certainly messy…is UNCOMFORTABLE…but necessary to effect change in me.  I am healthier, more dynamic, vibrant and relevant when I choose to love rather than to fix. 

It’s tough…most days, I’d rather grab the nearest clone and hunker down…but at the end, I’m left malnourished and weak.  Whether I’m trying to understand the lives of the impoverished, the wealthy, the addicted, the abused, it’s all a lot like choosing nutrient-dense foods over my sugar-free frenzy…it’s more effort, more preparation, more forethought…it’s also more satisfying.  In a gluttonous season, I can collect a whole pantry of friends and acquaintances who are stroking the ego of all the idols I’ve erected and making me feel that the “people are behaving” and “look how good life is”…but it isn’t real.  What I need are authentic lives sharpening my life and making me think and feel and grow.  I need grace for the gray.  The people, like the food, won’t behave…that’s my job…

“Treat others just as you want to be treated.”  --Luke 6:31