So yesterday I was talking about being a vegetarian. Here is why the specifically has made me grateful. Let me start with the Word of Wisdom. There is a promise at the end of it:
"And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones;
"And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;"And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint."
Pretty straightforward, right? Basically you'll be blessed both body and mind. This story is how I realized some of that being fulfilled. My family came to visit in February, and my Grandma's (we call her Gran, which I will use from now on) favorite thing that she ate while she here was Steak & Shake. If you don't already know, it's basically a chain restaurant. It's kind of a diner place, so it falls somewhere between Wendy's and Olive Garden in price and quality. Probably closer to the Wendy's end of the spectrum.
Gran is a very generous person, and I am her favorite grandchild (due to singing at her retirement community almost every month for a couple of years). She was incredibly kind and gave Bonnie and me some money to go out to Steak & Shake (since I hadn't been able to go because of rehearsal I think) to celebrate the anniversary of our engagement in March. We hadn't gotten the chance to go yet, but decided to go on Friday night.
Since she had specified how we were to use the gift, we decided to suspend our vegetarian restrictions and just eat meat for the meal. I think we were both excited to have some meat, since it had been a few weeks, and we both agreed that the food tasted really great. It was amazing while we were eating it, but as soon as we got most of the way through the meal, we both realized that we had stopped enjoying it quite so much.
Here's the problem: when you're eating vegetarian, most everything is really light. For some reason you don't feel compelled to have these out-of-control proportions. In addition, you just feel really good. I can't explain it, but it just feels like everything is working well in your body. You don't feel heavy. After that meal though, both of us felt really heavy sluggish. You might say that it's because our bodies weren't used to having much meat anymore, but we both distinctly remembered the feeling we were having. It was the feeling we used to use to gauge when to stop eating. We used to eat with that feeling as a goal. Now it had just become unpleasant. It's not that we don't like meat anymore, it's just that we've learned how to control ourselves, and more importantly we understand why it's important to eat meat "sparingly."
Before I go on too much about this, I do want to say one more time how much I appreciate the gift that Gran gave to me and Bonnie. She went and really enjoyed herself and wanted us to have the same great experience. To be honest we did have a great time going out to eat together and having a date. I don't want to take anything away from the gift we were given. I'm not critiquing the gift. I just wanted to share something about the realizations that Bonnie and I had while we were out to eat. I could have just as easily have happened at a backyard barbecue or a pizza party, it just happened to occur here. Now back to the meat of the post.
I'm sitting here writing this on Friday at 1:00 am (so I guess it's actually Saturday). I ate hours ago and I still feel like there is a great brick sitting inside me. Eating vegetarian actually makes you feel better. So, for this whole weekend I'm grateful for hidden treasures of knowledge. Had I not felt inspired to try cutting meat out of my diet while the weather is warm, I would never have known how good you can feel by eating more healthy and by following the Word of Wisdom more closely.
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