“Cleansing the Temple.”
I am not the man I was seven years ago. My life was heading full bore into a diagnosis of cancer. And I was feeding the flames of that hot fire completely unaware.
I was loading my body full of things that were not beneficial to its future, health, and wellbeing. I was a metabolic mess, consuming all of the wrong things hand over fist. Sober-minded decisions were not what I was making. Clearly, I had a problem that needed to be addressed and so I did.
I was granted the serenity to accept the things I couldn’t change, the courage to change the things I could, and the wisdom to know the difference. I began to recover my life that was long lost and spiraling out of control. A life of sobriety.
I still had a ways to go before I would feel truly sober-minded, but at least I was sober in body and learning a new way.
It took me a few years to figure out that alcohol was only the beginning of my journey back to being a whole person. Alcohol was clearly, ‘A’ problem, but it was just the tip of the iceberg and only one of the leaks in my sinking ship.
Fifteen months into my sobriety I ran into some health problems that would take another fifteen months to be properly diagnosed, which helped me better focus my energy towards a better outcome. A cleaner life. A life toward a sober-minded existence.
My body is a temple that no unclean thing should ever enter into. My body is also a garden of life that needs proper care and maintenance. I had not been a good steward and I was paying the price. But that changed when I started investing in my future, and my sober-minded decisions are starting to pay dividends. I am getting to reap the rewards of faithfulness for properly tending to my garden and serving wisely in my temple(body).
I am now physically much younger and healthier than I have ever been at any point of time in my life.