What I learnt from giving up Caffeine

I gave up drinking tea last week Thursday.  I had learnt from a few different sources that caffeine (in the long run) can be pretty harmful to your brain and, not wishing to compromise any remnants of wit and wisdom, decided to make a clean sweep of it.

Well, at least just for Lent anyway...

All went well until Saturday when the first of many throbbing headaches descended...only to be joined by muscle aches and general ill-temper on Monday.

In all, I had anticipated two or  three days of "withdrawals".  Yet it was not until Saturday (yesterday) that I could truly say I was back to my cheerful self - a full 9 days after I'd begun my fast.

I wish I could say that I bore this burden with magnanimity.  I wish I could say it had some spiritual spinoff.   Yet it wasn't until today that I experienced some sort of illumination.  It came after reading the great Christian thinker C.S. Lewis' thoughts on temptation:

"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good.  A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means.  This is an obvious lie.  Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.  After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in.  You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not be lying down.  A man who gives in to temptation after 5 minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later.  That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness - they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.  We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight:  and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist"

About the only thing I can say of my caffeine fast (so far) is that I have truly discovered - and in fact am continuing to discover - the hold which caffeine had over my life.  I'd like to say therefore that in this particular area of temptation, I, (like Christ) have become a complete realist.  But that would be taking it too far.

When all's said and done however, it has got me thinking about the presence of other toxins in my life.  The secret, hidden toxins.  The type which snype cunningly at dreams and nibble silently at the corners of destiny.  Stuff I've so willingly acquiesced to that their presence is going almost un-noticed.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and incurable.  Who can understand it"

Mercifully I have a savioiur who can do just that!