Hi Christy,
i wanted to reply to you by quoting your entire post rather than only like or love it.
Yours is an example of quite a number of responses on these forums where i have noticed that many of the individuals here have physical and/or mental tribulations in life that cause them to lean heavily on the shoulders of God. I thought it would be appropriate to quote the following poem, one of the most beautful pieces of writing i think i have ever read…
Footprints in the Sand (author disputed but i think likely written around 1936-39 by Mary Stevenson)
One night I dreamed a dream.
As I was walking along the beach with my Lord.
Across the dark sky flashed scenes from my life.
For each scene, I noticed two sets of footprints in the sand,
One belonging to me and one to my Lord.
After the last scene of my life flashed before me,
I looked back at the footprints in the sand.
I noticed that at many times along the path of my life,
especially at the very lowest and saddest times,
there was only one set of footprints.
This really troubled me, so I asked the Lord about it.
“Lord, you said once I decided to follow you,
You’d walk with me all the way.
But I noticed that during the saddest and most troublesome times of my life,
there was only one set of footprints.
I don’t understand why, when I needed You the most, You would leave me.”
He whispered, “My precious child, I love you and will never leave you
Never, ever, during your trials and testings.
When you saw only one set of footprints,
It was then that I carried you.”
this is a good point,
my wife gets a bit upset about exactly this idea…she has for the last 20 years lived a healthy life by most standards. She is vegetarian, does not drink any alcohol or smoke, for at least 10 years has also been vegan and for the last year gone jogging almost every day…and yet, here we are with her illness. Its hard to understand to be honest.
it might sound a bit redneck like, however, perhaps there is more truth than we realise in the biblical statement in Exodus 34:7
maintaining loving devotion to a thousand generations,a
forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin.
Yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished;
He will visit the iniquity of the fathers
on their children and grandchildren
to the third and fourth generations.”
perhaps the world in not improving as some say, but rather getting worse due to sin and more than ever individuals are feeling the consequences of this.
in any case, our health and wellbeing is obviously a product of our environment of that there is no doubt.
I think everyone is just doing their best to make sense of calamity. I imagine she is quite angry over it. I’ve also been someone who only eats plants and mushrooms, no animal products or byproducts for close to 13 or 14 years now. I enjoy hiking and hike normally 20+ miles a week with a weighted vest and another several miles just to explore nature.
It does suck when you try your best to do everything right and still have something go wrong. It makes far less sense than when the morbidly obese alcoholic smoker gets heart disease or something. It’s easy to imagine the diet playing a significant role.
Many vegans often get hit with brain cancers due to under eating enough fats I’ve heard. I eat walnuts and stuff every few days.
This system is also perhaps a bit redneck but the way I do it is that I’ll buy fruits, leafy greens, and vegetables each week along with some veggie burgers and so on. Tofu.
When I’m getting fruit I’ll try to get fruits that are more yellow and orange one week and the vegetables will be like red and purple. So I’ll get bananas, oranges and yellow raisins along with red beets, radishes and red tomatoes and then the typical stock of broccoli and asparagus.
Then the next week I’ll get apples, blueberries and cherries along with carrots, squash, pumpkin rainbow chard.
I flip the colors around and try to not get the same thing every other week. Plus I always go with what’s in season as much as possible.
I’ll buy yellow figs and walnuts one week and the next week I’ll get dates and almonds and the next purple figs with pecans and so on.
In this one I even went with season candy as part of my
dessert.
