Confession

I’m fixing to tell you something that only a handful of people (outside of medical providers) know.

I’ve been a diabetic for close to 30 years now.  I’d like to share some common misconceptions about being a diabetic:

•   No, you don’t get diabetes from eating too much sugar

•   No, you don’t have to avoid every food with sugar in it

•   No, you don’t have to fix high blood sugars right away

•   No, you can’t control your blood sugar just by working at it

I guess those are the big four I want to share with everyone.  In my case, my grandmother (dad’s mom) and my dad were uncontrolled diabetics and both died in their early 50s.  I believe that diabetes is more a genetic condition than environmental.  That supports my stance that you can’t just control what you eat and drink to control your diabetes.

I guess another common misconception is that you die from diabetes.  The diabetes doesn’t kill you, but it does strain other body systems leading to their premature failure.  In my dad’s case, he died of a heart attack.  I’m sure his uncontrolled diabetes contributed to the heart failure that eventually claimed him.

My experience started in my early 30s; I had what is called a sugar spill.  Basically, I consumed much more sugar than my body could handle and I started dumping it in my kidneys and they dumped it into my bladder.  My bladder tried to get rid of the sharp molecules and I started bleeding with my urine.  I went to the doctor and they told me that I was pre-diabetic and I needed to lose weight and eat better or else I was going to become a diabetic.  I told myself I could do it - lose weight and eat better.

I limped along for the next 10 years.  I think I even added an oral diabetes drug during that time.  This brings me to a problem I have with modern medicine.  The equation of control is so complex that when you focus on one aspect, you might create other problems.  In my case, the oral diabetic medicine lowered my blood sugar but my body interpreted that as a problem to survival (most foods convert to sugar to be metabolized by the body) and told me I was hungry.  Then I ate more and gained weight which caused my blood sugar to rise which caused the doctors to increase medicine and…

Then we moved to Kansas and my new doctor wanted to more aggressively control my blood sugar and soon I was using insulin.  This turned my slow farm tractor speed weight gain/medicine problem into a Ferrari speed weight gain/medicine problem.  I gained over 100 lbs. in the next 10 years.  Eventually, I found the mechanism that broke that problem and got to the point where I could stop taking insulin.  Over the last 10 years, I’ve been able to manage my blood sugars without taking insulin.

There is a lot more I could tell you about my diabetic story but I want to focus on why I didn’t share with many people that I was a diabetic - my pride.  Over the last almost 30 years, I kept telling myself that I could control what I ate and that would fix my diabetes.  My pride was my sin. 

I am in as much control of my diabetes as I am about everything else in my life.  I would have been much much better off, giving my disease over to God and trust in his sovereign plan.

“And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.’” - Mark 7:18-23 ESV

My introvert nature will probably still keep me from sharing my disease with a lot of people but now, I recognize that my desire to fix myself is my pride sneaking through.  That doesn’t mean I have to stop trying to take care of myself.  In fact, just the opposite.  But like so many things a person can do, the attitude you have while doing them determines whether you are sinning or not.  Taking care of yourself to serve God as part of his flock is good, trying to control your disease yourself without leaning on God and his plan is sinful.

“How much better to get wisdom than gold! To get understanding is to be chosen rather than silver. The highway of the upright turns aside from evil; whoever guards his way preserves his life. Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” - Proverbs 16:16-18