I Am Off the Wagon

Hello, My name is Rob. I am a chocoholic.

As many of you know, I have a long history of overindulgence in chocolate. In my college days I was known to consume one-pound bags of M&Ms in a single sitting, or dozens of chocolate chip cookies in a couple of days. I love extra thick chocolate milk shakes made with Marble Slab's double dark chocolate ice cream. I love double-stuff oreos—and the new ones with chocolate filling are a welcome improvement. Chocolate cake, chocolate pie, chocolate candy, chocolate milk, chocolate-covered raisins…well, you get the idea.

I gave up chocolate for Lent—something I have done before. I did this for two reasons. Fasting from something you love during the weeks before Easter causes you to think about Jesus and his suffering every time you think about the thing you have given up.

I thought about Jesus a lot!

I also gave it up to deal with my chocolate craving. To be honest, going without chocolate for six weeks wasn't as hard this time as it sometimes was in the past. Even as Easter approached and there was chocolate candy everywhere I turned, I managed to abstain without a great deal of difficulty. So I was pretty confident that I had the chocolate problem under control.

Then came Easter.

My wife baked me a chocolate cake with chocolate icing and Ghirardelli's chocolate in the mix. She put a big chocolate Easter bunny on the top. By Tuesday night I had eaten nearly all of it. Some friends gave me a bag of the best chocolate truffles I've ever put in my mouth—they're nearly gone too (but I did share them with family). And then there were the little chocolate eggs wrapped in pretty foil—I would have eaten more of them, but it takes too long to peel off all that little wrapping.

An interesting side-effect of eating all this chocolate has been that nearly every time I indulge, I am reminded of the six weeks without chocolate, which reminds me again why I gave it up. So eating lots of chocolate has made me think of Jesus—often!

Does that sanctify gluttony?