Saturday, August 2, 2014

The Mutiny: Month 1 Day 1

Today is the first day…not just of the rest of my life either.

Nor is it the best day. (Insert music break...you might be thinking "It's too early for a music break" but trust me, it's not; plus it's my blog so there.)


Today my Hope Group (the name for Small Groups or Home Groups at our church) begins our delve into “7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess”.

This is based on a book written by Jen Hatmaker. Here’s a link to it on Amazon, so you can get more info, should you so desire. I get no monetary compensation for routing you there…I just felt as though it was a decent summary of what this book entails.

But frankly, this book is so much more.

And I’m not going to try to summarize it for you because, well, I just linked you up all nice and pretty to a summary.

So there. Yeah, I’m like that.

As I’m certain you read in the summary, the first month of “7” is “Food”. We each got to choose seven foods for the month.

Yeah, you read that correctly.

Seven.foods.for.the.month.

True…we can eat as much of them as we want, but only those seven.

I’m certain that you want to know which seven foods. Well let me tell you:
  • Eggs
  • Spinach
  • Yogurt (plain)
  • Chicken
  • Quinoa
  • Black beans
  • Berries (which is slightly a cheat…we are allowing any kind of berry: straw, rasp, black, blue; not definitely CrunchBerry, as Mr. AR was lobbying for)…don’t judge.

And Mr. AR added one additional food for himself: bread. He does take his lunch every day so this was kind of something he needed to do. I totally get that. And while I don’t eat much bread, that chicken sandwich he had for lunch today was already looking good.

In addition, we are allowing ourselves water (all the water we can drink…wahoo!), salt, pepper and olive oil.

And we also gave ourselves coffee. Black. Straight up. Which is actually how I already drink it; he takes his with cream and sugar. He managed to get it down this morning, but it was more of a chore than usual.

So I’m about mid-day of Month 1: Day 1. Thus far, I have had a cup of black coffee, two boiled eggs (with salt and pepper), a few bites of roast chicken, and about 10 glasses of water.

Not surprisingly, I’m already slightly cranky. I won’t lie to you, my lovely, loyal readership. I am anticipating a massive sugar withdrawal…because did you see much sugar on this list? 

Nope…only the fruit. Which is good for the body…the natural sugars and all that.

But I am talking my sugar addition to processed, granulated white sugar. Yeah. It’s kind of bad. I’ve known for a long time that it’s a problem, so I’m using this as my catalyst to break away from it.

The potential healthiness of this “fast” as we are calling it is not the basis for the experiment; but it is a side benefit. The motivation is that we have SO MUCH EXCESS in our lives and we don’t even realize it.

We (as a people group in this country, but also we ourselves in our household) always compare our lives to the neighbors, our friends, our co-workers. And it always seems like we don’t have enough.

To paraphrase Jen (I can call her that b/c I know we would totally be friends if we met IRL…that is In Real Life), if we make $35,000/year, we are in the top %4 of the wealthiest people in the world; $50,000 puts us into the top %1.

So yeah…we are wealthy. I'm going to go out on a limb and say almost all of us reading this are wealthy. 

By limiting our food intake this month (and mind you, this is only month one…we have six other months to go, each of which entail other sacrifices/life-style changes), we hope to draw closer to God, give thanks for all He is and all He has given, be reminded daily of the excess we have, and ask God how he would have us better use it.

I welcome your thoughts, prayers, questions and encouragements. And even better…feel free to join us in this mutiny!

As an aside, lest you were wondering, I do not PLAN for every post for the next 7 months (well, 10 months really, as we will take a 2-week break between “months”) to be solely about “7”. As you well-know, my life it full to the brim with interesting anecdotes I must share with my adoring public. But just don’t expect too many recipes from me, at least during this first month.
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6 comments:

  1. If I were to do this, the only posts I would write would be I'M HUNGRY AND SICK AND TIRED OF CHICKEN! Of course, if I were to do this, cookies or cake or candy would be one of my seven things.
    Wish I could help you with the eggs, but alas...
    Good luck and I hope you get lots of things from it. Are the kids doing it, too?

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    1. Yes, this was not my original list...that one had way more sugar and salt. But alas, this one is much healthier. :)

      No, the kids are not really doing it, at least not the food month...thanks for asking. I'll address that in another post. :)

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  2. This is completely fascinating - thanks for the link to the info.
    And yes, isn't it kind of sobering to realize that,, like you said, most of us live in what is considered the scope of "wealthy." Kind of puts things into perspective, doesn't it? As my Grandfather always said, "there is always someone worse off than you are." To think that as much as we might imagine we don't have, so many live with so much less. Great post!

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    1. Thanks for the encouragement, Lisa! And you are most welcome for the link...I hope it (and my blogging as we go through this) help you out! :)

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  3. I find this very interesting and wish you luck - I agree we are quite the excessive group and I am always gladly shedding something yet I should be more aggressive cleaning things out of the house giving things away that are no longer being and not adding or replacing- i try to say to myself "take what you need" Good luck and I will look into this book. :)

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    1. Thanks so much...I hope you find it as helpful and encouraging as I have! :)

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