Heartburn

I have been set all day to sit down here and share a little piece of my mind with you. About $10 and how far it will go for all of us and how far it won't go for so many and how we ought to be kick the dust off our lazy selves and so forth.

And then I got heartburn.

I have heartburn from over-indulging all ding-dong day long. Here is what has topped my belly off today: Breakfast- early cup of decaf coffee mixed with dark chocolate almond milk and a sneaked in scone (just to make sure the new flavor I made was really as good as I remembered from trying them the night before at 10 pm), a banana and seasoned, buttery scrambled eggs. Later on AM- a pile of fresh fruit: fresh pineapple, strawberries and blueberries and another cup of coffee, this time caffeinated because that's all they offer at women's Bible study. Lunch: a very convenient parking spot close to both Great Plains Pizza Co where a hearty single topping slice is only $2 and to Chocolaterie Stam, where somehow I must have been sucked into because soon I was buying a 4 oz serving of coffee crunch gelato. Snack- Before dropping off some containers that served fruit to the women's Bible study this morning, I opened one of them to find a lone strawberry and some wandering blueberries, which I promptly rescued into a safe spot- namely my belly. Feeling full from such rich fare, I only consumed one hard-boiled egg before heading off to ball practice with the boys. Supper- Returning home, I heated a full bowl of chili, generously layered it with cheddar cheese and consumed it with corn chips (my chip kryptonite).

And that's how I got heartburn.

And now with humbleness I will tell you that just yesterday I spent the afternoon with a girl who admitted to me that she doesn't have a problem going without food for two or three days except that now she's pregnant. I will tell you we walked the grocery aisles together, picking out very specifically what exactly she was allowed to get with her slips of paper. We carefully measured and weighed out a bag of grapes and another bag of Cutie mandarin oranges because that's all that we could get for $10 of produce and if you go over, you have to go and put something back. And even with all our careful shopping, we still messed up something and found ourselves at the cash register without the right juice. If you don't go back and try to get the right item, you're choosing to go without it because you don't get to keep that slip and fill in the missing items later. And how can you go without it when you're eating for two, one, well, you're supposed to be eating now?

And now I have heartburn.

I will tell you that those grapes weren't a good deal. I bought the same ones at a different store today and they were almost a buck cheaper. And I didn't weigh my bag out. I stuck in in my cart, wedging it between the off season plums and strawberries. I cruised through the store picking up a few items here and there that topped off my grocery list for the week including fixings for the newest mac and cheese recipe I found that is supposed to taste just like that one restaurant's.

I did. I bought two kinds of expensive cheese. I also have three different kinds of milk in my refrigerator.
She got one gallon of milk and I'm not sure how long that is supposed to last. 

I make myself sick.

Lord,
This heartburn, what grace it is to me. To open my eyes, because apparently one glorious afternoon walking alongside my friend was not enough to make me see. I pressed full ahead with my self-indulging ways today and was ready to lambast my readers with righteous indignation. Forgive me for my hypocritical heart.
The Psalms declare you are just; you are steadfast and true. Thank you. I cannot imagine if you left that up to us, to me.
Wherein does the balance lie between having and not having? That I do not know. But I know that you give both food for the stomach and food that does not spoil- eternal life. Give us both.