I made soup for lunch yesterday.

When I say “made,” I mean I opened a package of NeoGuri spicy seafood noodles from South Korea, dumped the spices and dehydrated veggies in the bottom of a microwavable bowl, placed the thick disc of hardened noodles atop that, poured the specified amount of water on it and nuked that sucker until it was hot enough to melt facial hair.

I let it cool for a few minutes as I watched a Star Wars web series episode on my phone, then started slurping.

That stuff was very hot still and extremely spicy, or — as I would have said it then — “Dat tuff ith ek-stweme-wee spy-thee,” because I would have been trying to blow on my tongue as I ate noodles.

I have not lost any spicy food challenge I have taken on, as yet. I’ll try almost anything once. Once. I even ate a couple of piled-high tablespoons of extra spicy tomatillo sauce around Christmas just because my daughter-in-law dared me to. Didn’t phase me. I drank hot sauce on multiple occasions. I’ve eaten all kinds of peppers and such. I’m not saying nothing hurt, plenty did. But I still enjoy hot stuff. A lot of things don’t even bring a tingle to my tastebuds anymore.

Still, this stuff had a punch to it.

I made it through the bowl of broth and noodles fine, though, only getting a few bits of rehydrated plant matter wedged in between my enameled biters.

When I got down to just about a quarter cup of broth left in the bowl, I decided to just drink it rather than keep trying to get it all with a spoon. So I turned up the bowl.

At this point, it was still warm, but not hot. I drank the fluid, swallowed and immediately found that I could not breathe.

My throat rebelled. The spices in that red broth coated my throat and began attacking, causing tiny convulsions and calling me dirty names. I grabbed my icy cold bottle of water and began dousing the fires a gulp at a time.

I’m sure I’d have been just fine if I had continued to sip away, but no … I just had to go for it.

So, what can I learn from this?

Obviously, don’t repeat that stupid decision.

Also, it’s the little things that often bring us down. I couldn’t really see the spices in the broth — it just looked like broth. But the little monsters in there tried to kill me.

We really need to be careful about what we allow in — in our bodies, our minds, our spirits, our families, our relationships, etc. Garbage in, garbage out. Spicy stuff in … well, you know.

Maybe that lunch noodle soup was a sign from God that I should be more focused on these types of things in general.

Then again, maybe it was just soup.

Brett Campbell can be reached at brett.campbell@dailyleader.com.