I'll have been a vegetarian for two weeks on Monday. It's not as hard as I thought it might be. On Christmas, I was so tempted to eat the delicious ham my mother prepared. This is how I kept myself from eating it. There's a bit of a story behind it, but if you're willing to listen, I'll tell it.
It all started about three years ago, when my family went to a livestock auction just to see what it was like. Boy, was that a mistake. We fell in love with a big eyed, long lashed, knock-kneed baby bull that they had up for auction. We left with the little guy for $15. That's right, $15 for a helpless baby animal that would otherwise have been killed. We brought him home and named him Ferdinand. That little baby drank three gallons of milk a day. We loved him to death. He would prance around, bucking with joy when he saw us. Unfortunately, it was only a temporary arrangement. We didn't have enough land (although we had quite a bit, but that was used for our other animals, like the horses and sheep) to keep Ferdinand happy, so he needed a new home. We gave him to a friend of ours who had steers on his property just because he loved them. Not to eat or kill, but to just live and graze on his land.
Now, whenever I am tempted too eat meat, I just think of my dear Ferdinand capering about the corral with pure joy to see me. Then I think of the animal on the plate. I think, "This animal was once like Ferdinand, prancing about and playing. Would I want to be the cause of Ferdinand's death? Of course not, so I don't want to be the cause of this or any other's." It works for me!