Gluten Free for the Holidays?

I'm getting nervous about the upcoming holidays.  I was diagnosed with gluten sensitivity early in 2011.  Easter was shortly after my diagnosis, and I felt loved and cared for when most of the menu at our family gathering was naturally gluten free.

But somehow an Easter menu seems more flexible than the traditional Thanksgiving and Christmas foods.  What will be safe for me to eat at family gatherings this season?  Normally meat, fruits and vegetables are my go-to parts of the meal ... but as the article 10 Ways to Accidentally Gluten Yourself at Thanksgiving reminded me, the "richer" and more "decadent" preparations of meat, fruits and vegetables at these fall and winter holiday meals often include wheat flour as a thickening agent or barley malt as a flavoring agent.

In a way, this blog is me grieving in advance that I won't be able to eat traditional foods prepared in traditional ways.  I have to recognize the reality of the loss before I can process it and move on to solutions.

I found another blog that puts some of those feelings of loss into words very well, if a little melodramatically:

What is it about going gluten-free that is so hard? 

Answer: it’s everywhere.

And not just at restaurants and potlucks and school cafeterias.  It’s not just in innocent invitations to lunch or grabbing a beer after work.  It’s not just in the business traveler’s trip to a conference at a hotel that might not be accommodating.  No…gluten is not just in your present physical environment.  Gluten is firmly embedded in your soul, your memories, and your connections to the past that you had hoped to connect to your future.

Gluten is the smell of Grandma’s bread, Mom’s pie, and those rolls in a tube that you have every Thanksgiving.  Gluten is the tradition of hot dogs at a ball game, funnel cakes at the state fair, pizza and a beer for the Super Bowl.  Gluten is not just a highly addictive grain that civilization has cultivated and consumed for thousands of years; it is not “just one” of many foods.  It’s not about the food, never has been, and never will be.  There are plenty of other foods to eat, that’s not the point. 

Gluten is part of your soul, and every time you smell fried chicken or baked bread, every time you find yourself at an event with gluten as an ingredient in a traditional meal, every time you have to decline an invitation or move heaven and earth to participate, you are giving up part of your soul.  You are reminded that not only is the current world not designed for you, but that so much of your fondly remembered past was not designed for you either.  And then you become overwhelmed considering a future as an alien, a stranger in the world without anchor or reprieve…

Some may wonder, "What's the big deal? Why not cheat for just this one (or two) day(s)?"

The problem is, that at this point I'm not just putting my own health at risk.  I'll be 10 weeks pregnant on Sunday.  The second trimester starts at the end of November.  There have been studies that connect gluten consumption in the sensitive/celiac to neural tube defects and other birth defects, low birth weight and increased rates of miscarriage and stillbirth.  I don't know exactly how sensitive I am, but it is not a gamble I am willing to make.

So I need to find another solution.

One I've thought of is to volunteer to do more of the cooking so I can make sure there are enough "safe" dishes on the table that I can relax and enjoy the family gatherings without feeling deprived or left out.  Another solution could be to just prepare special food for myself, but I think the fellowship and shared experience that comes from sharing the same (or most of the same) food is important.

Faithful in the Small Things

In the women's Bible study we are going through the life of David.  Recently the topic was David's sins of lust and adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Bathsheba's husband Uriah. 

THE STORY
The interesting thing about David's sin is that it all started when he wasn't where he should have been.  Instead of going out to battle with his men, he decided to stay home.  Such a little thing.  No harm in taking a break every once in a while, but then again, there is a time for everything. 

Then he took an afternoon nap on his roof and when he woke up, caught the glimpse of Bathsheba he wasn't meant to have.  He then made a choice to prolong the look or continue to keep it in his minds' eye.  Such little things.  One look, one thought, one fantasy ... no big deal, right?

Except he kept thinking about her, and decided he had to know who she was.

Even when he was told she was married to Uriah, one of his most loyal men, he disregarded that information and ordered her to be brought to him.  He slept with her, and when they found out she was pregnant, he tried to cover up by bringing Uriah home from the battle.  When Uriah's sense of duty kept at the palace and away from his wife, David got him drunk and tried again.  When that didn't work, David sent him on his way with orders to his commander to send Uriah and others on an unnecessarily dangerous mission, one that meant almost certain death for the whole squad.  

How different things might have been if David had only gone to battle!  Or, if he had chosen to avert his eyes and put the image of Bathsheba out of his mind the moment he accidentally saw her.  Temptation to sin is best avoided all together.  If it is unavoidable or one simply hasn't effectively avoided it in a given instance, the next best thing is to "flee" either literally or mentally.  

APPLICATION
Likewise for me.  How often does a simple decision to put something off, to procrastinate, to rest a little now, lead to unneded stress later, stress that causes me to become irritable and feel annoyed with or resentful of my husband and daughter?  

And once the irritation is upon me, it really is up to me to choose what to do with those thoughts and feelings.  I can either fan the spark of irritation until it becomes anger and rage and unkind words and actions, or I can stamp out the spark as soon as I see it and replace it with the loving kind and gentle thoughts words and actions.

My choice to be faithful to the small things I have to do blesses my family and myself.  This simple idea of being faithful in the small things has energized me this week and given me courage to tackle some tasks that sometimes seem overwhelming.

OTHER EXAMPLES
"Daily" "Quiet" Time with God
I don't want to be legalistic about this but a concentrated time of reflection has been missing from my life and I decided to add it back in.  It isn't exactly daily. Thursday and Friday last week and today I've done this over breakfast, but I missed Saturday and Sunday when I was out of town visiting family.  It isn't exactly quiet. C sits next to me and chatters while she eats her breakfast, and I am frequently interrupted.  But I've been using lack of consistency and inability to have true quiet as excuses long enough.  I will choose to be faithful to this small thing, one day at a time. 

I've been using a method I learned at Mariners Church -- journaling about yesterday, asking God to reveal insights, then reading a portion of Scripture and looking for one thing I can apply that day, then writing out a prayer using the ACTS acronym. 

Housework
Doing things as I see they need to be done versus putting them off until later is the big thing here.  Reminding myself when it feels like a chore that it is a way to bless my family. 

Diet
Keeping strictly to the dairy free diet that C and I require, and not giving in to temptation to cheat "just this once" as a treat.  Starting a gluten free diet that I'm hoping will help me with some IBS-like symptoms and general fatigue and brain fog (Today is day 1 ... planning to evaluate after 30 days).

Grace is for Mamas

I had a really bad day on Monday.  It was the first day of my period (first one since my recent miscarriage), so I was already very on edge.

C and I had a good morning, baking pumpkin bread and starting laundry, and a good lunchtime and early afternoon, playing outside with leaves.

Then we came inside. C needed to nap. I nursed her at the keyboard and she never quite fell asleep enough for me to put her down. She wiggled and wanted to pat me.  I was feeling very touched out. I needed a physical and mental break from her, and I didn't get it.

The late afternoon was pretty rough on both of us. I feeling tired by then, but couldn't sit down without C wanting to climb on me or nurse.  The clutter in my house was another irritant, and since I had to be up anyway, I felt compelled to start cleaning. 

But C didn't want me to clean.  C wanted to play.  She wanted a snack.  Fine.  But, being a two year old who didn't get her nap, she started losing it over every. little. thing.  And when she wasn't screeching, she was getting into something, hindering and undoing my cleaning progress.  I quickly lost patience with her.

I have lots of gentle, positive discipline tools in my toolbox.  I could have involved her in my cleaning efforts and made it a game.  I could have redirected her away from the offlimits things to something truly appealing.  I could have suggested we sit and read a book together to fill her cup with the attention she was clearly asking for.  I could have turned to playful parenting and make us both laugh and smile and reset the rapidly souring mood.  I could have declared that we both needed a break and vegged out with her in front of a movie.  I could have taken us back outside, or on a ride to visit a store or a relative. 

I forgot and/or chose not to use any of those tools.  Instead, I got more and more locked in to what I was doing.  I was seeing red and yelling a lot.  I did some redirection, but with an angry voice and forceful hands.  I also had punitive vindictive thoughts, such as "Why should I turn this into a fun moment when she is giving me such a hard time?!?"


Anger kept building. 

I started dinner.  Thoughtlessly, I chose one of the more involved recipes on my week's meal plan, one that involved peeling potates and dicing onions.

C persisted in trying to get my attention.  When she wouldn't stop turning off the dishwasher I'd just started and then switched to pulling things out of the drawers, I got fed up.  I told her since she couldn't control herself, I would help her by putting her some place where she couldn't get to the dishwasher.  I hauled her to her room and shut the door on her, leaving her screaming to be let out. I finished peeling the potatoes before returning to open the door.

When I let her out I gave her a little speech about why she had been in there and then gave her a perfunctory hug. 

That sort of reset things for a while but all too soon we were right back where we started.

Not too much later I was putting away the laundry in my bedroom.  When I had my back turned, she started pulling the clothes I had just put away out of the drawers.  I was so angry I felt like I was going to lose control and physically hurt her. I carried her quickly to her bedroom, yelling all the while.  I slammed the door behind her again (with her screaming again, of course).  I needed to get away from her to keep her safe and calm myself down.

Her continued wailing behind the door broke my heart and infuriated me all at the same time.  I flung the door open and grabbed her into a tight hug, fearing that if I let her go I would really hurt her.  She clung to me.  In my arms she felt so small, so scared.  In so many ways still just a baby.  My intense anger melted away, but the irritation remained.

I called DH and asked him to hurry home because things weren't going well.  Somehow C and I managed to survive until Daddy came to the rescue with a fresh batch of patience and energy.

So, does this bad day mean that positive discipline/grace-based discipline (GBD for short) is an idealistic theory that doesn't work in real life?

Not at all. 

I can think of so many extenuating factors that contributed to this situation. C is teething 2 year molars and they hurt her quite a bit.  On top of that, with Halloween and family birthdays, I've been letting C have dairy recently, "as a treat."  She's intolerant to it and it makes her feel bad: itchy skin, upset tummy, poor sleep which all gives her a resultant shorter fuse.  Finally, there had been too much time between lunch and dinner and C didn't have much of a snack, so she (and probably I as well) had low blood sugar on top of everything. C is an extrovert, and a cold had kept us home alone for the past week or so. She was asking for my attention and to connect with me, and I didn't give it, partly out of spite.  Did I mention I'm hormonal/PMSing/grieving? 

So much of GBD is about being proactive, setting up our children (and ourselves) for success. 

This is a day when I was reactive.  I became the scary, shaming parent I am trying so hard not to be.  I really blew it. 

I'm so grateful grace is for mamas too.



I told this whole sad story to DH when he got home, wondering aloud if I am cut out for this, and he said, "You're a wonderful mother, everyone has bad days." He shows me grace.

As I told the story to him, I realized I owed C an apology.  I got down on her level and said I was sorry for losing control and scaring her.  She gave me a hug. She shows me grace. 

Out of the ashes of that bad day, there are a few positive things: I was able to model humility and how to apologize to C. I've renewed my efforts to keep C and me on a dairy-free diet. I'm also working on building more structure into our days for both our sakes.


Not the first time and not the last time we will need to live out the verse our family chose as a parenting theme verse at C's baby dedication:

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32