Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

 “Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.” (Proverbs 18:13 NLT)

During a couple of seasons in my life, people would compliment me on how great I looked, and they would ask me what I was doing to lose weight. That would make me feel good, right? Wrong. That would make me feel awkward, because I would reply, “Um, I lost my job, so I can’t afford to eat like I used to.” I don’t recommend poverty as a weight-loss method. 

Those people were very kind and well intentioned, and I am grateful that they were making an effort to pay me a compliment. But I am reminded of an interaction with someone who was perhaps not so kind or well intentioned.

Several years ago, between periods of unemployment, I sang on a worship team that was hosting a guest worship artist. A few of us team members were hanging out in the women’s dressing room, and I think one of them was asking me what I like to eat or drink, or maybe I was being asked about my job. I was working at a company that provided lots of snacks and beverages for its employees (I wish they had spent their money on salaries instead, but whatevs), and I remarked how awesome it was to have access to all the free Cokes I wanted. Yes, in hindsight, all that free sugar was probably making me chunky.

The guest worship artist (who possibly noticed my chunkiness) was listening to our conversation and rudely interrupted. She piped up that she was praying that God would remove my desire for such unhealthy beverages. For real? She was using a judgmental prayer to manipulate me into not wanting to enjoy drinking Coke? And she had the nerve to actually tell me—in front of everybody in the dressing room?

For the record, you can pray whatever you want to God. But if you pray for me something that is so judgmental and manipulative, and you are rude enough to share that with me, I won’t want to have any kind of relationship with you. I don’t care how Christian your music is.

That guest worship artist didn’t last long on our team, and thankfully I have never felt that slimed in the dressing room again. But I think her prayer kind of worked. About a year later, I lost that job that had the free snacks and Cokes, and it ruined me financially. And yes, I lost a ton of weight again due to poverty.

Maybe I can’t pin my financial ruin on that one guest worship artist’s judgmental prayer, but unfortunately I have once again been on the receiving end of a similar judgmental attitude.

Nearly two months ago, I was officially diagnosed with diabetes. That news was disheartening. I thought my friends and community would support me, and to a degree they have. But I was shocked that a handful of Christian friends on social media were actually judging me for being diabetic. 

Seriously? Let me show you what kind of foods and beverages I was typically consuming when I received the diagnosis.

BREAKFAST

• Bowl of shredded wheat (not the frosted kind) to which I would add cinnamon and raisins
• Decaf coffee to which I would add zero-sugar sweetener

MID-MORNING SNACK

• Crackers or nuts

LUNCH

• Turkey sandwich on wheat bread with mustard, lowfat mayo, and spinach (no cheese)
• Baby carrots
• Grapes
• Tapwater to drink

MID-AFTERNOON SNACK

• Oikos Triple Zero Greek yogurt, which has zero added sugar, zero artificial sweeteners, zero fat, and 15g of protein
• Maybe crackers or nuts if I was still hungry

DINNER

• Chicken or fish stir-fry (or soup during colder weather)
• Maybe a side salad
• Very small piece of 90% cacao dark chocolate
• Tapwater to drink

MID-EVENING SNACK

• Apple
• Maybe some fiesta snack mix or grapes if I was still hungry
• Small glass of lowfat milk before bed

Does all of that sound like a diabetic’s diet to you? Does it look like I was making unhealthy food choices?

And yes, if someone would bring cookies or doughnuts to work, I would enjoy one or two. In fact, the day before I took the blood test that prompted the diabetes diagnosis, I ate a doughnut. Maybe that was a mistake. 

And my schedule had been so crazy that I didn’t really have time to work out. If you worked full time, volunteered at church, and were finishing up a master’s degree, you probably wouldn’t have time to work out, either. Not to mention, I read somewhere that sleep deprivation can cause type 2 diabetes. During the last semester of my master’s, I was running on about 5 hours of sleep per night, sometimes less. (Except for Saturdays, when I sleep in.)

Plus, diabetes is in my gene pool. My great-grandmother was diabetic, and my mom at one point had high blood sugar. Man, of all the things I could have inherited from my mother—her good looks, her knack for hospitality, her sense of fashion—it had to be the diabetes.

So, diabetes isn’t my fault. Do I make perfect health choices all the time? No, I crave a Whataburger as much as the next red-blooded native Texan. But as noted above, I do my best to maintain a mostly healthy lifestyle—or at least one that hopefully won’t kill me.

I’ve kind of been forced to make healthy diet changes during the past several years so that I can hopefully live longer. And I recently decided to make another change for my emotional and mental health.

I will no longer share my health journey on social media. If you would like me to share my journey with you in person (or via text, etc.), I’ll be happy to. But I won’t post about it on Facebook anymore, and I won’t write about it here on my blog. Yes, I’ll make an exception if I’m hospitalized or something and want prayer. But I won’t cast my pearls before swine anymore. 

I gotta say, I was appalled at the judgmental response I received from one or more people on Facebook when I shared my diabetes diagnosis. It took me a couple of months to calm down enough to write about it, but I think I’m still a bit angry. After I spent a year and a half changing my diet so I wouldn’t get diabetes, I ended up getting diabetes anyway, and one or more of you rubbed my nose in it. How dare you add insult to injury.

The Church at large has no idea what to do with me. 1) I’ve never been married, and I’ve stopped wanting a husband. 2) I don’t have kids, and I’ve stopped wanting children. 3) I’m pursuing a doctorate, and I’m going further into student debt for it. 4) And now I have a chronic disease. Come on, admit it. You have no idea what my life feels like. And in some of your eyes, I am an ungodly slob.

Well, too bad, so sad. I’m sorry that my life isn’t as perfect as yours. 1) I won’t sign up for online dating, because I’m not desperate for sex or companionship. 2) I won’t adopt kids, because I don’t want to raise children by myself, and I can barely take care of myself and my cat. 3) I’m furthering my education because God said to, and He opened the door wide open for it. 4) I’m staying alive as best I can.

If you aren’t able to handle any of the above, I don’t know what else to tell you. It is what it is.

But for those of you who are still very kind and well intentioned, I thank you in advance for your friendship.

Bitter Plus Sweet Equals Different

As I mentioned on a Facebook post at the beginning of the year, my words for 2025 are “Different” and “Why not?” With a full-time job, hopefully a new PhD program coming up in August, and a change in church campuses, my life looks and will look different than it did last year. Not better. Not worse. Just different. Hopefully in a good way.

My church always begins the new year with a 21-day fast. This year, I fasted from sugar. Not sweets—sugar, specifically any sugar that’s been added to foods or drinks. Since my sugar-free coffee creamer actually has a tiny bit of sugar in it (according to what’s printed on the carton), I drank my morning decaf coffee black during this fast. Eating fruits with natural sweetness was OK, but eating any kind of food with added sugars was something that I avoided for the fast. This was hard to do because, as my constant consulting of nutrition labels showed, sugar is added to nearly everything, not just desserts—ketchup, peanut butter, soy sauce, even sliced bread. But God impressed on me that there were some added-sugar foods that I wouldn’t be able to avoid (such as economically priced bread for my sandwiches), so it was OK to eat those during the fast.

As per usual, my fast wasn’t about the food or the action of not eating something; God intended my fast to be symbolic. (Although, as you may notice, it wasn’t an exact metaphor.) When I would wash down my breakfast with a cup of bitter coffee, God impressed on me that He wanted to be the One to add sweetness to my bitterness. So, every morning during the fast while I was dreading chugging that awful stuff down, I would ask God to add some sweetness to the bitterness in my life. As the 21 days progressed, I got used to the taste.

God also reminded me that not every bitter situation is my fault, and not all of them can be avoided (which was symbolized in my fast by me not being able to avoid all of the added sugar in my foods). If you find yourself in abusive environments, but you don’t know any better, you can’t always help it. Or if you’re stuck in a horrible job that you’re having trouble leaving, because you gotta pay rent, you can’t always avoid the unfair treatment you’ll receive or the insults you’ll experience.

Here’s one example of God needing to add some sweetness to some bitterness. If you followed my blog about 11 or 12 years ago, you might remember me complaining about my job at the time. (I tried to look for another job but couldn’t find a suitable replacement until about 6 months after I was terminated.) I wasn’t just being a baby; I was legitimately miserable there. To give you an idea of how I was treated, I’ll give you a little glimpse into my time there.

I was a staff writer at a place that was magical and appreciated my creativity, but then they got bought out by a bigger company that brought some corporate toxins into the workplace. My work was edited with Microsoft Word comments. I would read those comments, but I wish I hadn’t, because the editors would have conversations with each other in the comments about how bad my writing was, as if I couldn’t read what they were saying about me. I felt like it was unprofessional. Our manager, being the corporate-America person that she was, asked us during a team meeting how they could improve the team, or something like that. Y’all know me; I’m a witty leader. Instead of keeping my mouth shut, which in retrospect I probably should have, I said that it would be great if the editors would be more professional with their comments on our writing, instead of writing something like [my paraphrase] “What was Tirzah thinking?”

Fast-forward to my performance review sometime later—the review that put me on probation. My manager cheerfully read my review, which included the statement, “Tirzah doesn’t think before she writes,” which I believed to be taking my witty meeting comments out of context. Those words burned into my soul and have haunted me ever since. Years later, I mentioned this to a professor who assured me that I actually do put a lot of thought into my writing.

Fast-forward to several months ago to when I was applying to PhD programs. I took a Friday off to apply and write a required essay. I was working emotionally through something, I don’t remember what it was, but I felt angry and was discouraged because anger wasn’t the right mindset to write a college admissions essay. But God encouraged me to use that anger and passionately write my essay, anyway. I did, and the dean read my story and told the admissions department to admit me. Mental note: sometimes God takes bad situations away, but other times He wants you to use them so that He can turn them into something good, Romans 8:28-style.

Fast-forward to a couple of recent weekends when I sat down to write my master’s thesis. For some reason, I’ve struggled this semester with thesis writing, but I haven’t really struggled with any kind of writing since I left that job I described above. Why? It’s basically just a giant research paper, right? But it’s been like a weird fear thing. I’ve been psyching myself up and rearranging my homework routine so I can have some extended times to write, but I’ve been doubting myself and my ability to write an entire thesis in one semester with everything else I have on my plate. I had written only a few pages over the span of a few weeks, so I was concerned.

But God has been encouraging me, and He reminded me that I write well when I write with passion. So, I remembered that “Tirzah doesn’t think before she writes” comment one Sunday, and I thought about writing it on a piece of paper and taping it in my living room where I could easily see it. Then I didn’t like the idea of that comment staring at me in the face when it was already burning in my soul. So, I let it light a fire under me. Oh, yeah? You don’t think I think before I write? You just watch. I’ve been thinking up a storm. So, I wrote up a storm that day. Boom, sweet progress, and I haven’t looked back.

So, that’s one example of God adding sweetness to the bitterness in my life. I look forward to seeing Him do more stuff like that this year, whether it’s suddenly or whether it’s a longer process.

“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!” (Matthew 5:43–44 NLT)

I wonder if maybe the above teaching was one of Jesus’ ways of weaving some sweetness into bitter situations. Someone hates you? Pray for them. Someone persecutes you unfairly? Pray for them and ask God to give them favor in everything they do. Someone is just a jerk to you in general all the time? Pray that God would bless them, their marriage, their family, and their finances. Then move on with your life as best you can, and allow God to keep healing you whenever the memories are brought to mind. And don’t forget to embrace the people who love you all the more closely.

Praying for someone who disses you is like adding sweetener to a bitter cup of coffee—or maybe like God adding a tree or a piece of wood to the bitter waters of Marah (see Exodus 15:22–25a). It helps you bear a bitter situation without you yourself becoming an unbearably bitter person. 

And, of course, prayer isn’t a simple cure or formula to every situation. Sometimes you just need to stay close to God, pour out your heart to Him (especially when you’re miserable), and trust Him to sweeten the bitter parts of your life. Whether you’re mistreated by an employer, or whether you’re insulted by a professor during an admissions interview, or whether society just won’t shut up about your being single during a holiday that was designed for couples—as if you needed a man to validate your very existence—God can make it different by adding some sweetness to it. Why not?