This morning Elias and Bella were getting in a drawer and messing with the stapler and note paper and envelopes. I asked them to leave them alone and to go play. Elias kept pulling paper and assorted sized envelopes out of the drawer and saying, "Can I staple this one?". Finally, I told him, "Why do you focus on the one thing you can't do, instead of going and doing all the things you can do?".
That simple statement to him reiterated something I had just been reading in Romans 8. Lately, I have been really struggling with my eating. I am a food addict and find with this I am often battling, sometimes hardly at all and other times to the point of frustration. I know that my battle isn't about will power or calories or healthy food verses junk food - to summarize Romans 8, it is about the battle that is within me to gratify my human nature and not what the Spirit of God within me instructs. In essence, I focus on the one thing I want, but don't really need, instead of all the things that I can have and God wants for me. When in college, I lost a lot of weight, but gained a Godly perspective on how gluttony really does damage my relationship with God and others. But, oh, I so often forget...or chose to ignore...the truths I already know. And the sin of indulging in what the body wants, instead of what the body needs is like gravity. The more I indulge, the more I get pulled in by the enticement and its control. The more I take my focus off of it and deny my human desires when it comes to food, the less control it has over me. I know my battle is not against the food, but in my desire to have control...Just like my battle with Elias wasn't simply over using the stapler, but who was going to gain control in the situation and get what they wanted.
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