Taste

 Today I had lunch at my desk as I frantically typed scenarios for skills checkoffs to be completed right after lunch. I always seem like I'm only one step ahead... if even one step. 

As I snacked on my nuggets and fries, dragging a french fry through ketchup and praying I didn't drop it on my white scrub top, I thought of how often I rush through things. 

Not just food, although I honestly do... eating on the run has just been a fact of life, dating back to dinner on the bleachers in a gym. And being a nurse, wolfing down whatever I could find that I liked in the cafeteria that could be eaten in 10 minutes before I had to go pick up another bag of blood or do another assessment or help take a patient off the bedpan (thank you, cafeteria staff, and nurse aides, and all those in the hospital that we can't do our jobs without!) 

Yes, I rush through experiences, always waiting for the next one. 

Rush through books because I want to check them off my list. 

Rush through time with family because... well, I have so much more to do. Not that family isn't important. They are THE MOST IMPORTANT... I just don't always treat them as such. 

When we wolf down our food, we don't give our salivary glands time to register the taste. I've honestly eaten before and realized when I was finished that I didn't taste anything... and it wasn't because my taste wasn't working. It's because I hadn't experienced it. 

There's something else that happens, too, when we eat too fast. We don't ever know when we are full, because we don't give our brain time to catch up to our body, and we just keep stuffing, and stuffing. 

If we take time to slow down and fully appreciate, we get a full sensation. 

And, again, that just doesn't apply to eating. When we pause to taste the joys of life... stop to smell the roses, if you will...

we realize how satisfied we can be. 

"Taste and see that the Lord is good."