I’ll start with a confession: I gossiped.
No one had to tell me I was gossiping or confront me on it. The Holy Spirit took care of that part.
When we live our lives living the Jesus way–you know, that whole “love God, love your neighbor” thing–we tend to be more liberated to live full, authentic lives. It seems like we’re doing more. After all, loving people is hard sometimes. Yet, when we are so focused on living lives of love then we aren’t so worried about our own sins or “attacks by the devil” or any of the other myriad things that turn our attention onto ourselves and off of God and others.
This same particular weekend, I had committed another indiscretion, this one dietary. For over five months, our family has been following the Mediterranean diet lifestyle, and it is a lifestyle, not just a fast way to lose weight. It’s been good. The food is delicious and healthy, we’ve been surprised at how our thinking has changed, and as the mom-person, I’ve been pleased that my girls are cleaning their plates (not something that happened all the time when we were eating more processed junk). Eating clean changes the body and those foods that make the tastebuds tango and the pleasure neurons fire don’t necessarily make the gut so happy.
It was the last Saturday of soccer season for my tween, and as is customary, the league provided locally made donuts for the players. As her game was the last one, they invited the parents to take one, too. Deep-fried cinnamon-sugar coated goodness… Surely it won’t make that much of a difference? WRONG! My stomach wasn’t happy. I’d already promised my daughter we’d hit up a new local ice cream parlor for cones on the way home. Yeah… Neither of us was feeling so hot by bedtime. Even though our tongues enjoyed the flavors and textures of all this yummy goodness, the bodies we’d so faithfully kept clean protested the junk.
My spirit reacted the same way to the gossip. It was informative finding out what was going on (it meant a dangerous person was no longer living in our neighborhood), but my spirit felt “off” for listening and discussing the events in the life of the family he left behind. What was pleasurable at first bite didn’t settle in the body well.
Spiritual cleanliness, like nutritional cleanliness, leaves us more vulnerable to rather loud nudges when we do something to sully our clean spirits (or bodies). Those things that used to bring us pleasure or joy no longer will as we fill our lives with better activities that result in even more joy.
