“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone,
it has to be made, like bread;
remade all the time, made new.” 1
I have bread on my brain!
Six years ago my husband suffered an acute pancreatic attack. After ten days in the hospital the pancreas became necrotic. After another eight days in the hospital we learned nearly 3/4 of the pancreas was destroyed. It took a month of high-powered IV antibiotics at home and nearly six months of learning how to eat again before he returned to teaching full-time and part-time preaching at a rural church on the weekends. We knew we were blessed.
With the 2025 spring semester finished it was time to enjoy the outdoors. While I went to work, he spent his days working in the garden beds, planting flowers and vegetables, and tending to his beloved lilies.
It was on an unusually hot afternoon when he called me at work. I immediately knew something was wrong and switched to FT. The slurred speech and confusion, along with a drooping eye and mouth, confirmed my suspicions. I called our son to meet me at home to help me get dad to the hospital. It took only a few hours in at the ER to learn the damage from six years ago had caught up with his body.
Remarkably, one round of IV insulin and fluids transformed him – almost as if nothing had happened at all. It was quite magical to observe. We returned home the following afternoon with prescriptions in hand to begin the next part of this journey – now as a ‘type-3c’ diabetic— the ‘c’ of indicates the disease is caused by damage to the pancreas.
To say I was disturbed is an understatement. I wondered how – and even if – I could weather this new health crisis. I stripped the pantry clean – tossing pastas, syrups, jellies, breads, canned goods, anything that had high carbs on the nutrition label into the trash.
A bit over the top, I am told! But I felt better ridding the cabinets of the culprits that contributed to the dangerous levels of blood sugars in his body. After a time of weeping I pulled up my big-girl britches and went to work doing what I do best- researching, fighting, and finding ways to beat this beast – or at least control it!
We had trusted God’s provision years before and we would trust God with this new condition.
I’m a baker at heart. My baking had declined when I returned to college and even more so after I began working part-time at our college’s bookstore. Nevertheless, I was frustrated when the first book I read recommended that the best course of action would be to eliminate all breads and grains from his diet. This included all breads, not just the so called unhealthy ones made from today’s refined white flour.
More time was spent researching. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the lack of consensus in the medical field about treatment plans. I had encountered so much of that in my biblical research projects. But I was!
And to tell the truth, it made me angry – no doubt a physical response brought on by purging my own body of the refined sugars and flours in our diet.
Several podcastors claim ancient wheat is better than modern wheat. Many other sources argue that it is the modern varieties of wheat and the agricultural practices in growing wheat that has directly contributed to the increased health problems and allergies facing many people today. Each back up their claims with statistics and data that made my head spin.
Several sources referenced a Green Revolution, a term first coined by William S. Gaud, the administrator for USAID back in the late 60s. The Green Revolution “was the emergence of new varieties of crops … that were able to double if not triple production of those crops.” Norman Borlaug, considered to be the godfather of the Green Revolution, developed a shorter wheat variety that produced strong stems that held the increased grain from the practice of chemical nitrogens to the soil. Borlaug committed to help poor farmers improve their lives and decrease malnutrition. His was a noble cause, to end world hunger. But, in hindsight, some believe it is his work that has contributed to the many health challenges facing us today.
Regardless of who we want to hold accountable for the increased health issues facing many people today, I knew we would going through our own personal revolution.
Would we really have to eliminate all breads from our diet?
That has been my concern for several weeks now as well as meditating on the beauty of bread, the sustenance of our daily existence.
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