The pastor of our church is a cycling enthusiast. He keeps himself fit, and watches his sugar intake. Beyond that I don’t think he is a fanatic about nutritional things, and I don’t sense he is aware of the Blood Type Diet. However he made a point in his sermon Sunday that was very applicable to the BTD.

He has been preaching a series on the 10 commandments. This week was on the 6th commandment – Thou shalt not kill – or more literally translated – you shall not murder. He started off by saying that he wasn’t going to limit his sermon to homicide, because as far as he knew no one in our church had committed that crime. He said he wanted to get us thinking about other ways that we may take a life.

It wasn’t the liberal cliché type of things like capital punishment and self defense. Those are clearly allowed in the Bible.

He said that emotional sins like anger and bitterness, which shorten our lives, violate the 6th commandment. Ouch! A guy cut me off in traffic today and my temper flared. I would never have thought of that as a violation of the 10 commandments, but I see his point. Stress and lack of sleep also contribute to disease which take many lives prematurely.

I would have expected him to mention smoking and drinking – after all this is a Baptist church. But he barely mentioned those two habits. Instead he focused on gluttony, which, he said, progressively kills us.

So to the degree that I know what food is good for me, but I willfully choose to eat junk, I am slowly killing myself. If my lack of will lets me drift with the flow of popular, but nutritionally worthless foods, I am guilty of my own murder.

Sometimes the BTD becomes about ME – my health, my energy level, my quality of life. But it’s really much more than that. God made me for a purpose. I need to take care of the body He gave me, so I can serve Him effectively.

The officially designated Mother’s Day weekend was frantic. It was the day before my most critical yearbook deadline. My Honorable Husband and Darling Daughter knew I was stressed. They also knew that there would be a long wait at every nice restaurant, and they knew our son would be home the next week. They asked if it would be ok with me if we postponed Mother’s Day. I thought it was a wonderful idea.

I didn’t expect anything on Mother’s Day morning, but there on my place at the table was an orchid corsage. It was beautiful. I wore it to church, but after the service we came home and ate leftovers.

From the time my Strong Son arrived home there was a little buzz between him, HH, and DD. I knew something was up. On Saturday afternoon SS, DD, and I went for a hike in the Hill Country. It was a gloriously beautiful day. From time to time they would remind me that we had to get home and get cleaned up. We must leave for dinner by 7:30 if we were to make it to the second part of the celebration. I had no clue what they meant. Going somewhere special for dessert might be something they’d plan for Father’s Day, but not for health-conscious me. I’ll admit I was very curious.

In the car they made me close my eyes. I felt the car turn into the parking lot. When I opened my eyes we were at a little rustic steak house. We pass it often, and I always make some BTD or Type O comment. The menu made me smile. It had the usual baked potato/salad choices, but it didn’t stop there. It also listed green beans, baked sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and a steamed vegetable medley . Steak was clearly the specialty, but there were enough chicken and seafood choices so that HH and DD enjoyed their meal every bit as much as SS and I did.

We got back in the car and began to drive. They told me they were taking me to a movie, but they would not say which one. DD pulled me to one side while HH bought the tickets and SS parked the car. Then I had to walk with my eyes down, looking only at the carpet until we were inside the theater. The movie started. I was still clueless. Then I saw “based on the novel by C.S. Lewis.” We were seeing Prince Caspian, the second of the Chronicles of Narnia movies.

I give Prince Caspian two thumbs up. If you didn’t see the first movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when it came out a couple of years ago, I would recommend that you rent it first. The basic story of Prince Caspian stands alone, but there are references to the first movie that might be confusing if you had never seen it.

It was a perfect Mother’s Day – a delicious beneficial meal, an exciting movie, and being with my wonderful husband and children.

Our son is home from graduate school for a week. He is taking many interesting classes as he works toward being a doctor of physical therapy. One that fascinated me was a class he nicknamed “diseases I will never treat.” It is about symptoms of diseases that physical therapists must recognize before they start treatment. If another disease is present, it is important to refer the patient to the proper specialist. It was a very difficult course, but it was practical and necessary.

At lunch today, I asked him what he and his roommate do about food. He said, “I don’t eat out much, Mom.” He fixes himself a sandwich and fruit before he leaves for class. He eats his sack lunch at the hospital.

For dinner, he fixes meat and frozen vegetables. He eats a lot of frozen chicken breasts and ground beef patties. He and his roommate don’t cook together, but his roommate also prepares most of his food in the apartment.

He said, “I don’t eat as healthy at school, as I do at home, but I do try to eat right.”

This really makes me glad. As heavy as his class load is, I couldn't have blamed him if he had been picking up fast food in desperation. But he is not. He is making a conscious decision to focus on vegetables, meat, and fruit.

I asked if any classes in nutrition were part of his program. He said that they had studied how protein, carbs, and fats were metabolized in physiology. They haven't studied diet. He agrees that it is important, particularly with people who are trying to lose weight to minimize joint pain. I hope that when he has his own practice that he can share some of what he knows about healthy eating and the Blood Type Diet.

Whew, with dual credit finals over, my Darling Daughter and I took a day off from school to register her for her college classes. She has a summer job, so this will be the last time she visits campus until she moves into the dorm in August.

We listened to CDs as we drove. She was driving and I was dozing. Through the brain fog, I heard the words, “Everything I love is killing me.” I woke up and asked her to play the song again. It was an Alan Jackson song about a man giving up his favorite things – coffee, liquor, and cigarettes – because they are causing him bodily harm.

DD and I started to laugh – it could be the BTD song. We started to sing the chorus substituting BTD/GTD avoid foods. Ice cream and catfish were two that rhymed particularly well.

Seriously, I have known several people who abandoned the BTD because they could not give up certain avoids. When I talk to Type Os, they often look at me incredulously and ask what I eat if I don’t eat wheat. I need to sing them a chorus of this song. Sure I loved wheat, but while the pain in my stomach might not have been killing me, it hurt! I know several Type As who couldn’t make themselves give up chicken fried steak. If the beef wasn’t bad enough for you, the deep-fried will certainly finish you off.

Popular, processed foods combined with foods that are avoid for your Type really are killing you. We need to find new loves. The best place to start looking is not in a Honky Tonk, but on the beneficial food lists.

Some of you have kept up with my Darling Daughter for four years through this blog. She is graduating from High School later this month. Today was the focus of all her senior year stress. She is taking three dual credit classes. That means she is taking classes through our local community college. She will get both high school and college credit. A lot of the seniors are taking college Freshman English this semester. DD is also taking Accounting and Economics. All three of her finals were scheduled for today! If that wasn’t enough she had two papers due last week before the finals – one of them a major research paper.

It would be difficult to come up with the words to describe the stress level around here. None of us have gotten anywhere near enough sleep. That is particularly bad for DD as a Type A. However, I mix a little coffee with her morning soy shake to get her going.

There is not much we can do about the number of hours in the day. However we can control our exercise and what we eat. DD hasn’t had an avoid food in more than two weeks. Almost everything she has eaten has been beneficial. I could have said the same thing until lunch yesterday, when I ate a few pinto beans that were in my taco salad.

We have been exercising together to hold each other accountable. There was one day when she finished up a paper so late that I convinced her to go to bed without exercise. Other than that we have used physical activity quite effectively to disperse stress.

By 9:00 tonight she will be through with the toughest part of her senior year. She has tests and projects in her regular high school classes, but they are nowhere near as intense as the dual credit classes. She does not have to take high school finals as long as she keeps her A averages. So, while she doesn’t exactly get to coast to the end of the year, her stress level should drop dramatically.

I, on the other hand, am facing my most stressful day of the spring next Monday. Half of the yearbook is due at the publishers. I worked long hours this weekend to consolidate all that the class has done and assign pages that have to be finished by Friday.

Bring on the beneficials and the intense exercise. I’m going to need it this week!