Be Gentle With You

When your mom is your friend, you get to have sleepovers with her. Mine came yesterday to help me clean the house and prepare for the dinner party. We stayed up late putting the kitchen back together and chatting with my daughter when she got home from work. Then, we got up this morning to work in the yard. We trimmed and trimmed and trimmed bushes and hedges. Then, we planted three plants I had in pots for far too long.

I think it is super cool that planted in the soil around my home, I have flowers and herbs that members of my congregation have snipped from the flowers and herbs in the soil around their homes to share with me. I have Lenten Roses right outside my door (from one friend), and now next to them, I have lemon thyme and rosemary (from another friend). My brother brought a clump of chives from my parents’ place when they lived in Maine several years ago, and last year he gave me a pot of them for planting in my yard. It only took me a year to get them in the ground!

What does any of this have to do with Whole 30? Well, the herbs that are right outside my front door, I regularly pick/clip to use in Whole 30 ranch dressing and other recipes. And I also think it is fantastic that on Day 27, I have hardly anything to say about Whole 30. It’s just the way I’m eating. I am simply not deprived. I eat exquisite foods. It was not hard to throw a dinner party while staying Whole 30 compliant. My mother and I had this lunch (pictured) today. Steak from last night’s dinner, asparagus, pineapple, and those weird fruits in the bowl with the pineapple are lychees (peeled and pitted). They are some of my favorite fruit in the world.

Now, don’t freak out that there’s more fruit than veggies on my plate. Last night, I had loads of veggies. I’ll do so again this evening for dinner. But, when you cut up a pineapple, and it is as sweet as any pineapple you have ever had, you eat it. You savor and enjoy it. That is the very stuff that makes life full! And when you have access to lychees, you eat them because abundant life is the goal. God has designed me to have a deep and wide affinity for lychees, partly because they are simply delicious – and partly because they make me think of my childhood in Madagascar, picking the prickly fruit from the tree, peeling it, popping it in my mouth, nibbling around the pit with my teeth and tongue, then spitting out the pit…and reaching up to pick the next one. If I make it to Day 27 of eliminating all grains, dairy, sugar, legume, alcohol, and chemicals, and you try to make me feel guilty for eating two servings of fruit…you will fail.