Lessons Learned

 

Our son an I at the state park just outside our town.

                                                                            

While I was unplugged, I learned several things about life and about God. For the next  few posts, I will share these thoughts with you.

I had a doctor’s appointment where I found out that my recurring physical problem was caused by yet another auto-immune disease. I think  have had this condition off and on all my life. Because of this disorder I am on a restrictive diet plus I take a probiotic.

The first Sunday of each month is Communion Sunday at our church. That day this month struggled to get up and get going. I had my shower and washed my hair. I went to get dressed and found myself praying to God—“God, I can’t do this by myself.”

I shared information about this diagnosis with some friends. My Sunday school teacher shared my news with the class that this disorder could be controlled as a praise note.

During the Worship service, when Pastor John gave the bread element to the communion servers and said, “If any of you need gluten free bread, raise your hand and we will get it to you. I wrote out a pew card to him telling him, “thank you.” and that “I had never felt so loved in my life.”

I raised my hand. My friend, who sat on my right in the pew, follows the same diet. She raised her hand, also. One of the communion servers brought a plate with chunks of gluten free bread on it and passed it to us. Nothing else was said about the special bread.

I called that friend that afternoon, she told me they had gluten-free bread at the previous Communion service; this action makes me feel very well loved.    

We are committed to find things that I can eat. Our son has asked some important questions when we talked on the phone.

I talked to a lady from church who was in the hospital earlier. I shared my news from my doctor. She told me of someone she knows that had a severe case of Celiac disease. The lady shared with my friend that she lost 57 pounds so far.

The next day, I cleaned out some papers and magazines from my ‘stash place.’ I ran across a special issue of one a magazine. I looked through it and found a special article. I called another church friend and told her about the story. She asked me to save it for her. Then she told me how touched she was about my testimony in church. We talked about how touched I was about the gluten-free communion bread.

I learned that others will not belittle me because of this diet or this disease. I have received positive feedback from many different sources. While our son was home, he went with me to a Pulled Pork Dinner at church. The meal was a pork sandwich (buns are not on my diet.) baked beans and coleslaw. I might have ruffled someone’s feathers when she had already made up a sandwich, but I’m sure she got beyond that. The dessert table was laden with pieces of pies and cakes along with cookies. There was a chess pie-(combination of custard and sugar cream.)* A piece of this one crust pie made it to my table. I decided I would eat the filling and leave the crust. This may come in handy over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays.

The next day, I had two scrambled eggs with a purple pepper chopped into it. I have not always liked eggs but this was good.

My favorite spot in the enitre park.

• I had to ask what this pie was. I didn’t know.