Please pass the celery

Celery is a delicious vegetable!  It's green and good for you, it's crunchy and helps keep the plaque off your teeth, and it's versatile.  It can be eaten raw alone, raw with peanut butter filling its little trough, raw with sour cream, chopped up raw in salad, sauted with fennel and onions, a great addition to a stir-fry concoction, a necessary ingredient in vegetable soup and an interesting basis for a creamy soup.  The problem is that I rarely CRAVE celery. I eat it and enjoy its flavor and various applications.  But it's not chips and salsa or salty potato chips.

Without a doubt, my mother fed me lots of celery when I was young.  She wanted me to love it so that my taste buds would accept it as the snack of choice.  While I did enjoy eating it from time to time as a child, I never asked for it if there was a ghost of a chance at getting something REALLY tasty like chips. Or cookies. Or cake. Need I go on?

Lysa TerKeurst addresses this issue head-on in Made to Crave, along about chapter 15.  Until that point in her challenging volume, I was not quite so convicted to rethink my desires for foods that are not quite as beneficial to the human body as celery.  In this important chapter, she introduces the idea of "parking her mind" in a place that does not call up saliva that would drool down the chin in eager anticipation of partaking of the not-so-good-for-you snack choices.

"I had to stop thinking about what I shouldn't have and park my mind on thoughts of being thankful for what I could have." (Lysa, chapter 15)

So today I purchased a ready-to-eat package of celery sticks.  A big one. No trimming needed, no waste, no cutting to the right size for the snack bags.  It couldn't be easier to make the healthy choice.  I'm counting big time on God's still small voice to remind me often the next few days that celery is good for me in every way. 

On my own, I cannot make myself crave celery.  But I am learning to turn to the One who created all the vegetation that we have in abundance to call me to the High Road.  When I'm tired and feel I "deserve" a handful of chips, I pray He steers my thoughts toward Him... and the benefits of ignoring the chips and heading toward the celery bag instead.

Some day I will taste chips again.  I will not live my life without ever tasting those treats for which there is no substitute.  But for now, while I'm still getting accustomed to making healthier choices, I am too fragile to consider veering off that path.  I have only just begun this journey. 

Lysa suggests focusing on 3-5 foods for which I am most grateful.  Notice she did not say which I most desire.  This evening I am most grateful for eggs, fresh tomatoes from the garden, cottage cheese, and, you guessed it: celery.

The journey continues to a healthier me. But the real benefit is learning to lean on GOD.  He is my hope.

"To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive."  --Robert Louis Stevenson