It was actually yesterday, but I was caught up in the Opening Ceremony, so I didn’t think to blog.  Two days ago was the year anniversary of Lady’s death.  She’d had such a hard life with multiple allergies and near-constant UTIs, and the steroids that she took to keep those items under control eventually took her life.  I was sad, but also deeply convicted at the realization at what our sin really caused.  We didn’t just separate ourselves from God; we separated all of Creation.  Because of our sin, we live in conention with nature; because of our sin, animals must prey on each other.  Because of our sin, Lady was afflicted with such crippling diseases.  And it wasn’t their fault.  I have an easy time accepting humanity’s unworthiness in the face of God’s grace.  We definitely don’t deserve it; we removed ourselves from God’s presence.  But Creation was an unwilling bystander that was punished for our sins.

That conviction led me to realize that I could no longer eat animals.  In the Garden of Eden, animals and humans were vegetarian (Genesis 1:29-30).  In fact, the first death in the Bible is the animal God must use to make clothes for Adam and Eve after they have sinned.  Our contentious relationship with animals was not how God intended it to be, and as such, I just didn’t feel right perpetuating it further.  So, February 12th, 2009 was my first day without meat, and I’ve remained vegetarian since.

I don’t think that it’s a requirement to be a good Christian to be a vegetarian; I also recognize that I’m still imperfect and that I am hypocritical in a hundred other ways.  This is just one of the ways that I’ve found that I can be a light, that I can seek to be consistent in my faith as I continue to try to strive to be more like Christ.

I am also not a vegan.  I do not believe that bees would begrudge us honey or cows would begrudge us milk or chickens, eggs…although I do believe that locking them in cages so that they can’t move to exhaust their physical capabilities until they are useless and then slaughtered is completely and totally wrong.  My decision is partly about animal rights, yes, but in the way in which they relate to God’s will for our lives and how precious they are to God, just as we are.

I’ve been outright laughed at by people at church.  I’ve had the people who make fun of what I cook and tell me to “slap a steak on top of it” for it to be good.  I’ve been called a tree-hugger and a hippie.  I’ve dealt with the eye-roll.  It’s funny to me, because I’ve never been preachy, and I’ve never made anyone feel like I’m better than them because of my decision.  I’ve had people tell me that “God put them here for us to eat.”  No, He didn’t, and I’m firmly grounded in Scripture there.  He allowed us to eat them after we screwed everything up.

Likewise, though, I’ve gotten support, from my parents, from Joey’s parents, from some coworkers.  It’s actually been an amazing witnessing tool, and it’s really allowed me to live more freely in Christ.

On a hands-to-the-plough level, I’ve cooked more, tried foods I would never have tried before, and I’ve learned how wonderfully other foods were designed to meet our nutritional needs.  Tempeh?  Seitan?  Falafel? Hummus?  All incredible foods that I hadn’t bothered with much before my change to a vegetarian lifestyle.

Sorry, I intended a light-hearted “list” post about this, but I felt pretty overwhelmed to give my reasons for doing it and my experiences in the last year.  Thanks for listening.