I am usually more careful. I really am. No one likes to feel like that, but......

I am allergic to pork. It didn't start affecting me until I was a middle aged adult. It started slow. At some point I realized that I got sick whenever I ate ham.  In time, maybe ten years or so, the only pork I could eat was bacon, which was fine. After all, what is life without bacon? After moving to Indiana, I found out what life without bacon was like. Imagine, no bacon! Well, there is turkey bacon, but really?

The last real bout of pork sickness came at Wabash hospital in Indiana, where I was a patient for a few days. I was feeling pretty good and I ordered potato soup for lunch. I asked the lady on the ordering phone if there was bacon in the soup and I was assured there was not. And it was good! Very good! And a few hours later I got sick. Sicker than I ever remember being. Everyone was alarmed. They kept me an extra day, I suppose because they thought I was going to die. The next day I was still sick and in so much pain I could hardly move. An aid came in and suggested I eat some soup, and then the light came on. I asked if the potato soup had bacon. She pulled out a list that had all the ingredients to the food in the kitchen. Bacon wasn't listed. At that moment a nurse came in to do vitals. She was drawn into the conversation, and she left for the kitchen. There she found the box of mix for the soup and right on the list on the box it said bacon. That is how I am affected.

So, I check labels. Pepperoni has pork in it, so only vegetable pizza. No eggs cooked in bacon grease. No little bits of bacon in a salad. I never want to be that sick again.

Saturday a lunch companion and I went to a Chinese buffet restaurant neither of us had been to. I happen to love egg rolls and so I took two. I have eaten at two such buffets since returning to Ohio and have had no problems. I never thought about it. I was halfway through my second roll when my friend said, "I thought you couldn't eat pork." "I can't. No pork on this plate." "You didn't see the sign above the rolls? 'PORK FRIED EGG ROLLS.' Go look."

A couple of hours later I started getting sick. By 9PM I was buried under covers. Sunday morning, I hurt so bad I didn't want to move. It lasted till around Monday noon.

While I was agonizing, my brain still functioned. Mostly it was saying 'YOU IDIOT YOU IDIOT YOU IDIOT YOU IDIOT!' But there were a few normal thoughts, as well. I knew I would survive, so at one point the thought came; 'This is how we enter into sin. Satan puts sin in front of us and we avoid it. But then he puts it in something that is pleasurable. Cheating a few dollars on our taxes, feeling flattered when someone from the opposite sex compliments us, breaking the speed limit on that lonely stretch of road, losing our temper because we were provoked. Then, once we have sinned, we realize it and feel badly. But then, we get over it and we find out that it did feel good!' And sin has entered into our lives and has gained a foothold. 

Hebrews 12:1---Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight that so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.

Even a tiny sin is sin. Set it aside.