What is the number one comfort food? Did you guess chocolate? Chocolate is (surprisingly) not the number one comfort food in the U.S., it comes in second to macaroni and cheese!
Today, October 28, is both national "I love you Day," and national "Chocolate Day." Seems a good excuse to get some yummy chocolate comfort food, or to take some to another as a surprise! The two go together well, along with flowers (an embellishment for today).
It all points to a loved one and maybe some good memories that after a loss are painful because missed. Food can be a two-edge sword, one side a trigger of memories, the other a bandaid of stress relief. Certain foods, called comfort foods, are believed to create particular "feel-good" chemicals that give about a 20 minute lift -- but sometimes a 20 minute lift is exactly what is needed. Sometimes, especially in either early grieving days or on special dates or holidays, just getting the next 15 to 20 minutes under control in a planned activity, is the perfect thing to do. Sometimes, partaking in comfort food will bridge you over an abyss of threatening depression. Then it is a good thing to partake. There must be a balance, however, and not overindulgence.
We must get our real comfort food from Spirit -- be fed by Love divine. God is Father and Mother, and we are His beloved children. He holds us close and angel messages help us awaken to where we are in the arms of the Infinite tender Love. It is like waking to find yourself safe in bed rather than in a dream where you may be running through a field to escape a mad bull! Waking up from a bad dream, we are in a higher conscious state, a clearer sense of the real. Waking from the mesmeric false sense of separation or loneliness, we find ourselves held by the ever-present, the Love that fills all space, that knows and cares for you every moment. Pray for more spiritual awakening because this is the true comfort.
WHAT TO DO. Everything really depends upon how we frame it in our thinking. What Scripture is most comforting to you? Write it down. How can you reframe the one memory that may be triggering sadness, stress, anxiety, or overwhelming grief? Write that down. Now go on a strict 24-hour "watch" of your thought regarding this one thing, and keep that verse active in thought as well as visible on that paper.
Example: My late husband, being Italian, was well-known in our family for his magnificent spaghetti sauce (he called "gravy"). I cried over spaghetti for a long time after he was gone. One day, I decided to "reframe" this trigger, this negative impact of missing him that plunged through me when it came to making or eating "gravy." As I put the ingredients together, starting with the good imported olive oil, the garlic and onions, I said out loud, "I'm making this for you." It was to HONOR him. It was to take a wonderful gift that he had given me and lifting my concept of it up to honor him -- and make him smile -- that's how it feels to me. I made his "gravy" and thank him, and we smile. So it is reframed. It is a comfort food to me now rather than a trigger food. It makes me smile instead of cry.
Everything is how you think of it, so choose one thing that feels difficult and sad right now, reframe your sense of it, stick to that, and be comforted.
If chocolate speaks love to you -- indulge in a balanced way today -- celebrate national "I love you" day, especially in the comforting act of bestowing a chocolate gift to someone with at least a smile that silently speaks of love -- God's Love.
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