Cleaning my plate

There is a sense that I possess, and I feel like it's a strong personal value.
I make up my own values, and they are stronger than those of the rest of humanity.
It's a strong sense that I must finish everything on my plate.
When I was growing up, food was extremely important and often homemade from scratch. My mom made chili from dried beans in a cooker she made herself on a throwing wheel.
We grew up like the citizens of a east Kentucky holler, my mom canning tomatoes and blueberry and strawberry preserves for the winter. 
We grew up in a town close to NYC, and in the 1970s things must have been a little tight.
The only respite was steak dinners and spaghetti and meatballs on weekends at my Nan's house.
Otherwise I ate things I didn't like, such as the bony fish my dad got at the store. I hated it, because the bones got caught in my throat. I eventually learned to pick the bones out before eating it. 
Sometimes it was this nasty tasteless roast my parents would make. I would gag on it, and my dad would laugh at me while I was gagging. I wasn't gagging for air of course, but I gagging because it was so disgusting. 
My brother recently said he never liked corn on the cob. I was astonished because I thought he liked it. Our mom even bought the corn from a local farm, and we would wait until August when the sweetest corn would come out but nonetheless Brother didn't like it. Wow. 
In the 1980s things improved. My dad constantly talked up antipasto, lobster, pizza and lasagna. There were constant exclamations of:

"Wow!" 
"Wow-wee!"  
"This is out of this world!" 

The best one was, "You know what? This always tastes better the day after", and my grandmother would always say this to my dad on the Friday after Thanksgiving, as we were eating up the leftovers. We kept them cold by putting the leftovers pan in the garage, and then Mom would just put the pan in the oven and heat it up. Those meals were delicious! 
I pretty much ate everything on my plate growing up, and I still do. 
I am not disgusted by very many items I eat. I look back, and I think this attribute of mine contributes to a sense of responsibility and completeness. 
I don't feel as if I'll offend the person who cooked or otherwise provided my meal, but because it tastes so good. 
However, I feel like certain people can take advantage of this otherwise innocent attribute of mine.
When I was in the "Boston Movement" I was considered a man of "little account": I was once told that I was "quirky", and I was also accused of never bringing anyone to church. My dating relationship was delayed due to "dating rules" in the "kingdom". 
The truth is, I got only eleven people out to church in thirteen long years of "being a disciple". I now consider this an act of protest on my part, and it's not too unlike the gagging from years before my time in the "Boston Movement".
I went ahead and did nearly everything else this group required of its members. I attended every midweek and Sunday service. I was a teacher in the "children's ministry". I also was an assistant "bible talk leader", for a few weeks, and also I had a "discipler", who I had to call while I was on vacation to "confess impurity". 
When there were conferences, I went. I drove several times to Washington DC for services there, because they were in the "American Commonwealth Region". 
I can honestly say I tried to eat everything on my plate, but I continued to give "regular contribution" and "special contribution" and participate in "campaigns", which were month-long periods where each member had to invite everyone they met to church. 
In trying to eat everything on my plate, I ran my student loans into forbearance, rather than giving the church a small weekly amount, and then socking away $40 or $50 weekly to repay my loans. I went carless for a few months while trying to responsibly hold down a teaching position in an inner city school. But nobody in the church told me to reduce my contribution; this was replaced by a dire sense that if I stopped giving contributions, and repaying my student loans, the church would collapse, and I would "go to hell" on top of it! 
So I kept on going: attendance, invitations and contribution continued until that fateful day at Cancun airport, but that is another story. 
Only then did I finally realize that, at least metaphorically I didn't have to finish what's on my plate, and I left the Boston Movement cult. 
I was done, clean plate or not.