temptation

Temptation is a thing on my mind alot these past few weeks as I try to change my lifestyle (repent) by not eating. I use an intermittent fasting timer app that tells me when eating is forbidden, and honestly, I can feel it effecting my bodily wants. Like now, I ought to be rejoicing with food, but I ate a bit and am full and honestly do not even want anymore. I think this will be a change for the healthier. The real struggle is not when I can eat, cause then I do not feel like it, but the struggle is the temptation to just taste things. And this has been my real struggle,not a physi al one at all, but my need to depend on my spiritual strength a great deal more,  well that, and my son who always tells me, no. Do not eat it, mom, you will be unhappy.

OK, so back to temptations, my greatest enemy is my thoughts, they can rationalize Anything and make great arguments for just sampling a bit, at one point one of my kids was  even trying to show love by giving me a teensy peice of a thing I really love. I was reminded of Jesus Christ and how he was tempted several times and I want to be like Jesus, right. Ofcourse I do! So, I tell myself things I would tell him to help strengthen him, and it works. Putting things in that perspective makes me so strong....it is like our Sunday School teacher mentioned in her assessment of why Miriam was plagued with leprosy when Aarron wasn't, she thought it was alot like the way we feel about our loved ones when they suffer, it is so much harder to watch them suffer than to actually take the suffering on ourselves.

So, since temptation was on my mind, I applied it to another popular occurrence where women feel so impowered and as standersby we cheer it on... really? So, I am woman, hear me roar. I am good enough to deserve the best, and no one ought to stand in way. Hmmmm. It just seemed to me like Satan was winning that consciousness over. As he usually does, by mixing a teensy element of dishonesty with mostly truth. As we are all dazzled by the truth we allow a foot in the door, and before you know it, motherhood is abandoned. Now, no mother would ever purposefully choose themselves over their children, but that is what is allowed to happen because they are tempted in ways they were not expecting. 

I think of Jesus being tempted to turn stones into bread. Bread is good. Our bodies need it! It's not like he was tempted to steal a Loaf of bread from a starving child, it was a stone...no one would be hurt, right? I love what Jesus said in reply, he just side stepped that whole issue and reminded Satan that man does not live by bread, alone.

I wonder if that sort of thing happens far too often. I recall a friend trying to get me to smoke a cigarette and she promised me that no one else would ever know or be harmed by my choice. Regarding the success driven woman, it is perhaps an issue not of if anyone would be hurt or know so our Savior still side stepped the whole issue by reminding us that, "No success can compensate for failure in the home." (Harold B. Lee, on an old phone book cover in Ellijay, GA)