Time and Money

Couldn't every problem you ever had be solved with more time and money? Ok..not every problem. But, when you remove time and money from many equations the cloud clears and solutions seem clear! But friends, sometimes we're not gonna get more of either one and yet God has solutions. OUR solution is to avoid things that cost money and avoid like the plague the things that might mean more of our time. And healthy eating requires both doesn't it? And I hear women justifying poor health choices for the lack of time and money. And boy do I get it. Money ain't growin' on trees over here at the Hutsell homestead. And time is eaten up here sixfold by the little (and not so little) offspring running around.

I could line up excuses all day long but the Bible says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." (Matt. 6:21) That's it. Period. And I treasure what God is teaching me about healthy food. And believe me, I never treasured it before. Truth is, I never knew of it before. I wasn't raised with it. AT ALL. But, for years I have wanted to do better. I mean, even when I had no idea what better was...I knew it existed. And God, in His time chose this season of my life. He could have chosen the season before I had kids (oh how I wish He had). He could have chosen the season AFTER I raised my kids. But He didn't. He chose the most tiring, most financially strapped time of our lives to teach me about healthy living. So, I don't offer up excuses. I have the same 24 hours you do. Sure, I have 6 kids. Sure, I have a missionary's salary. Sure, I homeschool. But none of that is on God's condition list for why I can or cannot be obedient. (bummer :)

SO that leads me to this. A lot of this nutritional mess we are in started with our grandmothers' generation. (Sorry Grams...but it's true.) My Grams was born in 1924. She survived the depression. She was poor as most everyone was at the time. And when things like white bread, processed foods, TV dinners, and homogenized milks hit the shelves...she was THA-RILLED! She never did like being in the kitchen. She could clean a house like nobody's business (I got her genes:) but cooking? Fuh-get about it. Her idea of eating happiness was first of all eating out. Since that wasn't always possible...her next best idea was a frozen meal. Frozen lasagna was a treat. And a frozen pie? You bet! I remember powdered milk, canned fruits and veggies, and boxed everything. And here is the thing...her generation loved being saved the time and money of meal prep but they did that under the misguided belief that all of those choices were as good as, if not BETTER THAN, homemade. The food industry assured them that white bread (which was soft, and delicious and lasted a long time on the shelf) was a healthy choice with all of its "enriched" vitamins. And so they felt great serving their families all of this ready made food. And it left her generation with time to pursue "more worthy" interests. Thus feminism takes a great hold of the home. Oh don't get me started on feminism...

Well, here we are today. And slowly..oh so stinkin' slowly... we are learning that white, processed, chemically laden foods are NOT in fact good for us. And we see the price we are paying for our choices...obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc. I mean, the food industry wants you to believe that fats are to blame for all of this but ever since we began eating margarine and sugar by the pound and skimming our milk down to water we see more and more of these diseases taking hold. Think about it. And undoing bad choices is a whole lot more work than making the right ones to begin with. So here we are trying to undo the mess.

But here is the GREAT thing. We now live in a generation where we can make our own bread...but with an electric grinder and a heavy duty mixing machine. Sure, it is more time than buying a loaf at the store...but it is a lot less time than what our grandmothers had to take making their own by hand. I mean, who can blame our grandmothers for being relieved to not make bread when they were also doing everything else by hand. But ladies, we are NOT doing everything else by hand. We are doing nearly NOTHING by hand anymore. We don't wash by hand, we don't sew by hand, we don't bake by hand. Nothing. Unless we decide it is worth it. And there it is...we have to decide it is worth it. And to decide it is worth it we have to be educated. We have to understand what it is we feed our families. We have to decide if obesity, diabetes, heart disease, etc are worth avoiding. Yeah, we can say there is no time but could you at least be more honest and say, "I don't care to make the time?"

Ladies, we are blessed. We see that God's original design for food is STILL the best plan. But now we have more tools, more options. We have electronic appliances, we have buying co-ops, we have local farmers, and lots of Internet support. We CAN return to doing more things by hand if we want to and we don't have to spend all day doing it. Yep...we have to change our habits. We have to change our taste buds. But, I feel it is worth it. I want you to feel it is too. But, please, if you don't feel it is worth it...at least don't tell me you don't have the time. I ain't buyin' it! I still love you....but I ain't buying it. M.