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My Peculiar Life

My Peculiar Life

Last updated on: May 4, 2017 at 12:00 am by Brenda Renee Coats

My Peculiar Life 2017-05-04T00:00:26-07:00 Brenda Renee Coats

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Well, I feel bad. I promised you last week that I’d be a real writer this week and put out some legit blogs (whatever that means). I have written three blogs this week. One I shared on Tuesday. The other two will be perfect for the week before Mother’s Day. Which is next week. Which means for now, I’m going to subject you to trivial events and such that take place in my peculiar life. So here goes:

1. I’ve been juicing carrots, right? I’m drinking almost two cups of carrot juice per night now, thanks to a medicine the doc prescribed to help with gut motility. It’s the first veggies (okay, veggie juice) I’ve had in well over a decade and I’m finally enjoying something besides yogurt sweetened with honey for breakfast, yogurt sweetened with honey and grilled chicken for lunch, and grilled chicken and yogurt sweetened with honey for supper.

Every. Single. Day.

For years.

Bleh!

Pardon my peculiar excitement about this seemingly irrelevant thing we call carrot juice, but the orange liquid has become my new food idol. It has literally (I hate that word) revived my brain to a certain extent, given me a few ounces of energy, and best of all, caused my heart to beat in a way that is less … peculiar.

All that to say that if a diet of chicken, yogurt sweetened with honey, and carrot juice isn’t peculiar enough, now we must deal with grocers who think it’s their duty in life is to comment on how many carrots we buy every time we go through the checkout.

The standard question:

“Do you have horses?”

“No”, we say.

“Oh,” (insert blank stare here). “Bunnies?”

“No”, we say again.

*crickets

“A juicer. We have a juicer.”

*louder crickets

“Oooohhhhhh, oh, oh. Okay, then.”

“I give the peels and ends and pulp to a horse. Does that count? And I may be getting some bunnies soon. How ’bout that?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Cool.”

After asking whether we had horses and bunnies, one grocer this last week went on and on about how her (crazy) brother juices carrots and that’s all he eats.

“We keep telling him he’s gonna die, that a guy can’t live on carrots alone. But he doesn’t listen.”

“Alrighty then, well, yeah, you know. I guess carrot juice isn’t a well rounded diet.” I wanted to add “And I would know,” but truly … I had to run. As fast as my feet would take me.

Before I ran though, the grocer with the rebellious brother chased me down, mumbling something about how she just had to give me, her carrot-crazed customer a fake flower to wear on my shirt.

Whatever. It was Boulder.

I wore my peculiar Freaky Carrot Juice Drinking Woman Award the rest of the day. Proudly, people. Proudly.

2. We have a fox. And by we, I mean mainly my neighbor, although said fox was standing in my yard when said neighbor snapped some pictures. It’s a red fox. Kinda mangy looking. And apparently famished. It killed one of her chickens, and maybe Quacks, her duck. Though it killed her chicken, it didn’t run off with it (her dogs chased it away, me thinks). So she set up a trap with the dead chicken as bait. But this fox is sly. It did snoop around the trap. Even stuck its nose in the trap. But it never got the gumption to enter it. Clearly, it smelled something fishy. I mean chicken-y. I mean dead. And it probably thought it’d be joining that chicken in Chicken Heaven or Hades or Purgatory or wherever animals go when they … you know.

Croak.

Also, the sly fox could genuinely qualify for the job of being a crosswalk guide for school children. When it ran off, it headed toward the road, looked both ways, hunkered in a ditch when it saw a car coming, waited for the car to pass, then crossed the road.

Why did the fox cross the road?

To get to the other side, where less peculiar people live.

Processed with Snapseed.

3. We sometimes go to a certain restaurant where they serve chicken this and chicken that and chicken everything while some guy in a cow costume runs around being cheerful, encouraging everyone to eat more chicken.

Like I need more chicken.

Needless to say, I don’t eat at this silly restaurant. Only Shaun eats, and l just sit around looking skinny and probably hungry to most people. Lately, we keep seeing an old friend there, as he is employed by the chicken place and works with the friendly cow. He always stops, talks a spell, and asks if he can get us anything. For the first three visits, he just looked at my cup of ice and asked if he could get me a refill. Last visit though, he finally asked what I knew he was wondering:

Do you not ever eat, you peculiar woman? Is your husband so superior, you must wait until he’s finished to feed your scrawny self? Do you also walk five paces behind him at all times?

Just kidding. He didn’t ask any of those things, except for whether I ever eat or not. And as usual, I bumbled through a short explanation of why I don’t eat in restaurants, and he didn’t understand, and I finished by saying it’s rather a peculiar and painful subject that is really nobody’s business. Not even the Easter Bunny’s. Or the chicken-loving cow’s.

Kidding again. I just gave a quick explanation and squirmed in my seat, and he dropped the matter like a true gentleman.

4. In all seriousness, we are referred to as peculiar people in I Peter 2:9, KJV. In the ESV, in place of “peculiar people”, we are referred to as “a people for his own possession.” So I think to be peculiar means to be different because we are Christ’s. Not simply because we are His, but because we act different than the rest of the world – because we are His.

That may not look like my silly illustrations about having to explain to someone (who works with a chicken lovin’ cow) why I don’t eat with Shaun. But maybe it does look like explaining a difficult life situation with grace and joy and a peace that surpasses all understanding. Most folks are horrified when I go into a detailed explanation of why I can’t eat much. They can’t imagine life without chocolate and cheese, pizza and pistachios. But if I can do life in an “unimaginable way”, and do it with peace and joy?

That would be a testimony to God’s enabling power in my life. To me being His and Him being mine. And it would look very peculiar.

While a particular type of peculiar living comes naturally and effortlessly to me (see #1 and #3), the biblical kind of peculiar living is more difficult to attain. It doesn’t come naturally at all. It takes work. Intentional effort. And help. Supernatural help. It’s been a rough life of chronic illness. You’re probably tired of me talking about it. I’m tired of talking about it. I hate that illness, in some ways and at some level, defines me. That it is difficult to go anywhere, even out to eat with my husband, without having to explain it. But it is my lot. My big, fat, peculiar lot that I need help to navigate every single hour.

I need Thee every hour,
In joy or pain,
Come quickly and abide,
Or life is in vain.

Amen and amen.

I’ll see you next week, the week before Mother’s Day, with some posts about motherhood. Particularly young motherhood.

Until then …. toodle-oo.

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