A few years ago, I strolled down the street of Puebla City, Mexico. Smelling the sweet aroma of TACOS, I couldn’t resist! These weren’t your American beef, lettuce, and ketchup kind of tacos. No, these were those heaven-sent, spicy pork, street tacos cooked with a love for food and years of experience!
Two minutes.
That’s how long it took me to consume ’em.
Little did I know what I was actually consuming. In the bed of meat, lay parasite one. Parasite two sneaked itself into the water of which felt incredibly refreshing in the Puebla summer heat, not to mention safe; it was bottled! … either that or swimming on the lettuce.
Two months of tests,
Six months on a quinoa+spinach diet
Eight months of pills,
And now a lifetime without dairy or gluten,
Led me to wonder:
How often do we think something to be SO GREAT to then get slapped with the realization that one aspect of that great thing, isn’t so good for us after all?
Next thing we know, We need fixing. We need someone who knows what they are doing And we need that help, like Yesterday.
I am telling you, this time of ridding of parasites was the hardest thing I’d experienced up to this point in my life. Maybe ya’ll would have handled it better, but considering I ate more food in a week than you could fit in three grocery carts – okay, maybe one grocery cart if we are talking COVID-19 timeframe –
I was miserable.
Just think of the starvation I endured as a young college student who only knew how to heat up a potato and cook spaghetti from a bottle. When I was told I couldn’t eat cheese, apples, gluten, beef, potatoes, milk, soy, bread – even ramen noodles were out the question. Sandwiches were a no go. I literally ate quinoa, lettuce, and eventually chicken. I lost weight I didn’t have to lose, which made me too tired to do much. I was hAngry 24/7. Everything was affected by my terrible new diet;
Life was ROUGH!
During this same hardship in life, I had a great job, I loved school! I made some of the best friends, I’ll ever have. I fulfilled a lifelong desire to learn how to cook, and through the pains of indigestion, I prayed – I prayed a lot.
Two years of living this life,
Six trillion attempts at finding gluten-free bread,
Eighty wishes that I could devour Cool ranch Doritos,
And a lifetime ahead of me,
Led me to wonder:
How often do we think something to be SO TERRIBLE to then get slapped with the realization that all aspects of that one thing weren’t so bad after all?
Next thing we know, We see the joy in fixing. We see, in ourselves, someone who knows what they are doing, And we see that help was given yesterday.
Mexico changed my life forever–No, wait. Tacos changed my–no wait. The parasites changed my life fo–No. No. It was God. I definitely gotta give God the credit.
He showed me that there are extreme ways to look at life: One is to view everything as “good” and pretend there isn’t any wrong or danger, the other is to view everything as “bad” and simply miss out on the greatest joys in life.
But when we realize that most of life has both good and bad, we can better handle the hurt that crouches behind the seemingly good; we can also be genuinely happy despite the hardships that come our way.
Just as the Savior offers peace that “passeth all understanding,”12 He also offers an intensity, depth, and breadth of joy that defy human logic or mortal comprehension. For example, it doesn’t seem possible to feel joy when your child suffers with an incurable illness or when you lose your job or when your spouse betrays you. Yet that is precisely the joy the Savior offers.”
Joy and Spiritual Survival by President Russell M. Nelson
I can honestly say that my life is good because of Christ… well Christ and gluten-free, dairy-free tacos.
Hope you have a great week full of good times, glad times, and I-guess-that-wasn’t-so-bad times.
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