Teachings on Contentment & My Gallbladder

The Gratitude Messages Can Kill You

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I remember the first time it happened. A slight kind of indigestion I do not recall ever having to deal with. At the age of 23, I suddenly had to sit at an incline to digest a hearty meal of steak and potatoes.

No longer could I lie down or, even still, go to sleep after eating.

And it used to be my favorite thing. In the morning, when I was in elementary school, shuffling downstairs to eat a bowl of cereal and retreating back under the covers to go back to sleep.

On my stomach, no less.

And slowly, over time, in my early adult life, this became less of a frequent occurrence.

I owned my own home, built when I was 22 and was married.

I also need to tell you of my fanatical ketchup obsession.

When I was young, I could easily drain a ketchup bottle to the point where it became a trademark. I was my father’s last child, and he was of retirement age by the time I was in high school.

Like any growing person, I wanted and craved my father’s attention not that it was too terribly difficult to get. But still, I desired to be seen as worthy of noticing. I had his quick math skills and ability to logic my way out of a dark hole, and that gave us plenty of commonality.

Add to that my love of sporty cars and real estate, and there was plenty to talk about. We would routinely discuss interest rates and what the Fed and Alan Greenspan were doing on any particular morning. A young Alex Keaton in the making, my father indulged my curiosity on building kit homes and one day flipping them.

But this ketchup thing? It just straight amused him. He was at work a great deal of the time after losing his job in the recession of 1986 or ‘87. It was difficult to find work in Baltimore after working 30 years as a chemical engineer, because ageism was real and kept older people like himself out of the market. When he finally did begin working again, it meant I did not see him a great deal.

I would pour ketchup on anything. Bacon, eggs, rice, French fries, sausage, cheeseburgers, anything. And I would do so liberally. He would compare me to All in the Family’s Archie Bunker not that I remember the reference as I had not seen many reruns of the show, but I knew it was a point of fun.

It was comical to him that I would be so culturally unsophisticated.

It would turn to laughter and resigned pleading to try something, anything, other than ketchup. Ketchup instead of steak sauce would send him reeling. He declared it a waste of good food. High fructose corn syrup was not a delicacy in his eyes.

Oh well.

And as I grew and got my own car, I filled the McDonald’s bag with ketchup packets. So, when the gnawing sense of stomach upset began in 2002, I equated it with my love of ketchup which was, just as equally, tied to my want to be loved.

Like Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, I had a faint but growing disquietude about what was wrong with me. I would try to lay down on my stomach after steak to prove that I still could. And sometimes, I was able. Other times, not so much.

What was, at first, difficulty with digestion morphed into saw-toothed wheels grinding against each other in radiating pain from my collar bones to my belly button.

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When you are in your early 20s, you often lack the vocabulary to describe what is happening to you. Instead, I felt guilt and a crushing responsibility for the fate that was to befall me.

I did not equate it with a mounting problem that could quite possibly kill me but instead as a discomfort I would learn to live with, because it’s what I deserved.

I was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and while they are not evangelical Christianity, they do have a lot in common in certain ways.

They pile on the shame and make you feel at fault for simply existing without giving you the way out you so desperately look for. It’s odd that purveyors of the gospel would have so much in common with a works-based religion, but they do. If I did not know what was preached and only judged by what is practiced, I would fear a wrathful God intent on retribution for all the ways I had failed.

And the thing is to be careful not to do that but to preach patience and faith and a love so strong it sent Jesus to the cross on your and my behalf. Too often, the theological decisions people make veer either toward construction of a totally sterile environment spiritually speaking or to deconstruct into doctrinal error and a distrust of God and of His word.

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You have this impending sense of being watched. Add to that the need to get it all right which, seemingly, is harder for those who are supposed to be on the right side of the equation. Sinners don’t care, and therefore, technically, live with more faith. We, who believe in God, analyze every decision and can’t move a muscle without consulting a compendium of scripture and a panel as to whether said choice is or is not correct in all ways, including its ramifications, motives, implications, and has sufficiently given glory to God.

That wears me out. I don’t even try. Never mind going to whatever it was I had planned. I’m just staying home now and ordering gluten-free pizza. Calling it a day.

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The Jehovah’s Witnesses put out a great deal of literature. The goal for every rank-and-file member is to consume all of this material, but the reality is that everyone falls woefully short. Determined to beat the system, I started requesting audio tapes of the articles and would listen while out on my daily walk.

Even then, I could not keep up.

The system was rigged.

A good Jehovah’s Witness reads all of the spiritual food prepared by the faithful and discreet slave, the name given to the JW organization. But no one could.

Even so, there was a day I recall reading an article about the need for gratitude in one’s life. I considered myself a fairly grateful person by the fact that there wasn’t anything I could complain about all that loudly or persistently. I let circumstances roll off my back and was adjustable to whatever life had to throw my way.

I was young and had not heard too many pieces to this effect. I lacked the critical thinking at this point to pull apart the implications of what I read.

At the outset, the message was to be thankful for all that came into your life before segueing into how important it was to realize that Jehovah allowed whatever to come into your life that was presently with you.

Now, while this is technically true, this can be weaponized to dash the hope of the most trusting to pieces. If God is allowing all of this hatred and violence upon my life to happen, He must not like me too much.

Well then, they give the reason. It’s meant to be there to shape you. To help you and to keep you from sin. Again, this can be true to an extent, and here is where the need for discernment and proper teaching comes in.

With the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I do not recommend them at all at any time for anything, and this is why. Something can be Christian adjacent and not really Christian. It can tick off some of the boxes, completely subverting them and yet serve as a substitute for the original and fooling many of the people.

It’s something folks sometimes get angry at me for when I throw out the entire error-ridden baby with its stinking bathwater. Because there is nothing that is salvageable here.

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The die was cast when the writer went on to say that any attempt to change your circumstances was to reject God’s desire to improve you as a human. I cannot remember the exact verbiage, as this was over twenty years ago, but the emphasis was to trust in God with your difficult circumstance but to leave it exactly the same.

And so, as I struggled with ever-increasing gut pain, the implication was clear. Don’t remove it. Don’t try to change this. It is here for a reason, and it is God’s will that it stays.

The next logical conclusion was that I deserved this. And so, in my 23-year-old mind, the reason must have been that it was due to my ketchup-consuming ways. It was because I had walked into something stupid because of my intense need to win my dad’s affection.

And because of this, the short-lived glory would end in sorrow.

God was teaching me a lesson, and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it. I rued that I had not known this wisdom when I was a teenager in order to have veered off this path of destruction.

No wonder old people did not lay down after supper as I had taken for granted in my younger years.

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I started eating Tums. One tablet would clear the sensation of roaring discontent, but soon, that would no longer do the trick. One day, I ate as many as 8 gravely-but-sugary Tums to try to ease a storm that would not be assuaged.

I went to the doctor, but this was also to little avail.

And so, the days rolled on. I began to eliminate problem foods from my repertoire. Steak was out. So was my beloved ketchup. Tomatoes. Tomato sauce. And the weight of doom fell upon me that this was only going to be the way going forward, as it was obvious this was what God wanted.

I thought I understood adulthood to be one long, hard slog during which systems begin failing at a rapidly accelerating rate until there is no enjoyment whatsoever to be found. This was surely why Ecclesiastes said to serve the Creator in your young manhood before all enjoyment of life was gone.

I knew the secrets to existence and wondered why no one had explicitly told me. And why my words seemed to fall on deaf ears.

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The time required for digestion increased. First, by one or two hours, then by three or four. The time it took to eat dinner and be able to go to bed swelled to eight hours’ time. And then I would sometimes be woken in the middle of the night with the familiar pressure that became my mainstay, my silent companion at all hours.

It was as a specter that haunted me, pointing out my sins of eating ketchup and wanting a father who loved me. God wants this, you know. And when you’re raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses or with any group who teaches you they are the absolute voice of God, then what they say is taken as gospel.

Your sincerity is a tool used against you.

You want to do what God wishes from you, and you do your best not to think on your own or to disagree or be rebellious. The organization and umbrella that He established here on the Earth as His mouthpiece is one who you will follow. To the grave as need be, as sometimes happens.

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The day finally came when there were not enough minutes in the day to process whatever food I had consumed. Twelve hours and a blob of oatmeal was not sufficient to be able to lay down and rest at night. I inclined on a recliner and stayed awake often, sitting in just the right position to let the anguish subside.

I felt as a woman in a corset made of steel, one that punished for the slightest mistakes, a reality the Jehovah’s Witnesses had essentially primed me for.

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Why didn’t you fight harder, people always want to know. How was I supposed to fight against God? Even Gamaliel, a Pharisee and teacher of the law in good respect, knew not to do that when the others were upset by the presence of Paul and the other disciples.

Who am I to do such a thing, a lowly little person struggling over some oatmeal?

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The Serenity Prayer tells us to accept those things we can’t change, to change the situations we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This here was an inversion from what I was hearing.

You didn’t ask if you could change something.

You simply saw what was and did nothing to stop the flow in any given direction. In my case, this was heading towards certain death.

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It’s easy to believe you have been chosen for unending punishment if you haven’t been especially loved or protected in this life. And we lose our ability to speak up and say we’ve been treated unfairly.

The courage to change the things we can is not appreciated for the badassery it is. I suppose not many Jehovah’s Witnesses are alcoholics.

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I ate very little but did not lose weight, as that is not a thing that my body does.

And the process of eating food escalated to vomiting outside on the porch of my newly constructed home. The doctors still were not terribly responsive to my predicament, but my sister was having a similar situation, though in a much earlier stage than my own.

She was being tested for gallbladder issues and was fast-tracked into surgery.

Nine years older than me makes a difference, too. People take the 30-something more seriously than the one in their early 20s.

But when my mother insisted my doctor, who, incidentally, was also the same as my sister’s, conduct similar imaging, he balked. A fight nearly ensued, and he agreed simply to shut her up.

A day or two later and he asked how quickly I could be to the hospital without telling me why. I responded that it would be only a few minutes, and he told me to pack at least an overnight bag.

When I arrived, I was hooked up to IVs and infused with antibiotics, because the infection I had needed to be cleared before anything could be done.

I spent three days without food while this was done and then, when all was cleared, I headed into surgery.

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My badly deteriorated gallbladder was, essentially, disintegrating. The horrendous push and pull sensation and the sawing back and forth was from a stone nearly the diameter of a centimeter rolling around and blocking the bile duct.

Put simply — I was dying.

Rotting from the inside.

And to a large extent, simply letting it happen.

Because ideas have consequences. Especially stupid ones.

But the dumb didn’t stop there.

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Next would come the true test of my faith. Should I bleed out and need an intervention to prolong my existence, God would be truly incensed, they claimed, if I were to receive a blood transfusion or any type of assistance that utilized its components.

I would not find out until later that I have thrombocytopenia, a blood clotting issue, so I do not make enough platelets as it is. I would know this seven or so years later.

I can’t say for certain whether my blood was able to properly clot at this period or not.

But I can say that emergency preparation was made to ensure I signed a document to renounce any type of blood product in the event my life was on the line. The nurse asked me repeatedly if I would rather die than do so.

Now twenty-four years of age, I can tell you categorically, I had no idea what that even meant.

Just that I was strongly told to deny a lifeline if, in fact, I would need it.

Thank God, I did not. Need it, that is.

I signed the death wish paper, because again, that would alter the inevitable, and me bleeding out on a table would have pleased the Jehovah’s Witness idea of God.

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Contentment does not mean being an idiot. And to be completely honest with you, a lot of backward scenarios are being preached as God’s indisputable will when it is anything but. All because protesting in any way, shape, or form is ingratitude.

We are asked to die unnecessarily lest we seem to be complaining.

After all, what even is prayer if not a pleading, a wrestling with the angel, so to speak, for a blessing, something, anything other than this current desperation. It is not mere acceptance. It is not a noble martyrdom. It is holding on for dear life all through the night that if God doesn’t do something, your life may fail.

Because it just might.

We pray to change circumstances. And that is the very model of the communication we were given by God. Because if He doesn’t give us our daily bread, we will starve. We ask for forgiveness, because if not, we will languish. If we are not lead away from temptation, we will surely wander into it.

I hear all manner of nonsense thrust in the direction of God’s children and cannot imagine how that must grieve His Fatherly heart. He is not the tyrant that is depicted nor the heartless and cruel despot into which others have painted Him.

He is kind and tender and lovingly leads His sheep.

His shepherds will have a lot to answer for.

And so, with all the love I can muster in my heart: do not accepted your goddamned circumstances. Do not simply suck it up. Determine if it’s God’s will through trial and error. Push on that door. See if it opens. Don’t just stand there and play dead.

As an older woman looking back on my hapless stance to just let whatever slide my way on the waterway of sludge was anything but wise. It was not stewarding the God-given brains I had at that point, which were precious few, admittedly.

It was not a good use of resources, and I could have fucking died.

Dead. Buried in the ground. Never to be heard of again.

Because stupidity.

And God-awful lies posing as doctrine.

And so, my dear brothers and sisters, if you have read this far, please be smart. Run away from bad and toward good. And always remember to poke the boulder and see if it moves. Never forget that blind acceptance can be lethal.

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About the Author

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Rosa A. Hopkins has hosted radio shows on 11 Christian stations, is a writer of gospel songs, has promoted Heartbeat legislation, and is a singer and songwriter. Her writings can also be found on her Facebook page. Join 29,000 other readers here.