Vitamins

I feel like I’m coming out of a fog that I’ve been in for the last four months. I was tired all the time. I’d go home from work and take a nap just to have enough energy to cook dinner. Or I would pick up fast food on the way home from work, eat, and go to bed to sleep for 10-12-14 hours only to wake up just as tired. Even when I was awake, I was too tired to do anything. I knew I was mildly depressed when my home started to look like Oscar Madison lived there. Then my neck and back issues began to limit me even more. Life just seemed to be gradually getting worse for no reason. I turned 48 last month and wondered if this was all part of getting older.

Then two weeks ago, I heard a vitamin commercial say that a very large majority of Americans don’t get all the nutrients they need from the food they eat. I used to take a daily mega-multivitamin until about six months ago. The company stopped making them and I had to choose another less mega-supplement to replace it. Well, I didn’t. Sometimes the first step to downslide is the choice to not make a decision. It’s usually followed by the second step of not putting action to a decision finally made. At first I didn’t know enough about the other brands to make a decision and then I found that there was nothing to really set them apart from each other enough to make a choice. Then after several weeks of indecision, I decided why waste money on them—clearly I was no worse off for not taking them. Finally, I just forgot about it. When I was reminded that I probably wasn’t getting all the vital nutrients my body needs, I wondered if that was why I was feeling so poorly and went right out and picked a multivitamin at random and started taking it. Two days later, I decided that my inactive couch potato lifestyle was probably adding to the lack of energy I was experiencing and I forced myself (bad back and all) to begin exercising again. It’s only been a week and already I’m feeling much better. I’m not overly exhausted anymore. My home looks like less like Oscar and more like Felix lives there. I’m not hurting as much and I am becoming more active in everything again.

Isn’t it funny how one seemingly insignificant decision can really be the game-changer in our overall health. When I think about some of the excuses I’ve made for not reading my bible, or putting aside time for prayer and devotion, or making it to worship on a Sunday morning, or not taking the time to reach out in love and grace to another human being, it’s kind of like the multivitamin thing. At first it just a little thing I don’t even notice—maybe even reasonably justifiable. I don’t have time. I’m not feeling well. There is so much else to do. I don’t know where to start. My inaction doesn’t seem to be affecting my spiritual health until one day I’m walking around in a fog wondering what happened because the lack of these vital nutrients to my spiritual well-being has taken its toll. And just like the vitamins, all I have to do is start somewhere—anywhere. I have to make a choice and put action to that decision, whatever it is…like taking 5 minutes in the morning to pray over the scripture of the day I find in my email inbox. And that decision might lead to another like reading a Christian living book. And then I can look up the Scriptures in sited in the book and dig into the commentaries gathering dust on my bookshelf to learn more that will bring up things to talk to God about. And then all of sudden I will notice that I God’s peace and joy are inside me pouring out again in today’s blog.