Perspective

I had trouble sleeping last night. The rooster knocked the hen house door shut in the evening and I didn't get out in time to open it, so they roosted somewhere else, outside. I looked and looked for them with a flashlight, but couldn't find them. The night before I had brought home two new silkies (chickens) and in an effort to slowly integrate them I kept them in a wire dog pen overnight. I got home with them at about nine pm and woke to find the pen drug to the tree line, and both little chickens gone, only feathers, and no sign of forceful entry anywhere. So I was rightfully worried about my chickens and called a friend who brought some live traps down last night. I had trouble sleeping for thinking of them, and for the fact that I kept dreaming that the sugar ants who have invaded my kitchen, and I haven't been able to get rid of, were crawling all over me. I finally woke up this morning because my face was in a wet spot. At first I thought I must have been sleeping with my mouth open and drooled, but my sleepy brain told me that couldn't be right because it was a very large spot and suddenly I was wide awake, because I realized that I had finally found the wet spot that correlated to the wet panties from last night. Yep. Sleep'n in pee-pee. That's me. Mother of twins.

Through a series of circumstances I ended up reading part of a book yesterday that has been on my shelf so long that I don't have any idea when I got it or how long I have owned it. It's called Tortured for Christ: faithful Christians heroically enduring agony, suffering and death in communist prisons by Richard Wurmbrand. This book says that Wurmbrand “spent three years in solitary confinement- seeing no one but his communist tortures. After three years he was transferred to a mass cell for five years, where the torture continued...After eight years he was released and promptly resumed his work with the Underground Church. Two years later, in 1959, he was re-arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Mr. Wurmbrand was released in a general amnesty in 1964 and again continued his underground ministry.” 

The following is what I read this morning: “I remember Piotr (Peter). No one knows in what Russian prison he died. He was so young! Perhaps twenty. He had come to Rumania with the Russian army. He was converted in an underground meeting and asked me to baptize him.

After the baptism, I asked him to tell us what verse of the Bible had impressed him most and had influenced him to come to Christ.

He said that he had listened attentively when at one of our secret meeting, I had read Luke 24, the story of Jesus meeting two disciples who went toward Emmaus. When they drew nigh until the village, “He made as though He would have gone further.” Piotr said: “I wonder why Jesus said this. He surely wanted to stay with His disciples. Why then did He say that He wished to go further?” My explanation was that Jesus was polite. He wished to be very sure that He was desired. When He saw that He was welcomed, He gladly entered the house with them. The communists are impolite. They enter by violence into our hearts and minds. They oblige us from morning to late in the night to listen to them. They do it through their schools, radio, newspapers, posters, movie pictures, atheistic meetings and everywhere you turn. You have to listen continuously to their godless propaganda, whether you like it or dislike it. Jesus respects our freedom. He gently knocks at the door. “Jesus had won me by his politeness,” said Piotr. This stark contrast between communism and Christ had convinced him. He was not the only Russian to have been impressed by this feature in Jesus' character. (I, as a pastor, had never thought about it this way.)

After his conversion, Piotr risked his liberty and life again and again to smuggle Christian literature and help for the Underground Church from Rumania to Russia. In the end he was caught. I know that in 1959 he was still in prison. Has he died? Is he already in heaven or is he continuing the good fight on earth? I don't know. Only God knows where he is today.

Like them, many others were not only converted. We should never stop at having won a soul for Christ. By this, you have done only half the work. Every soul won for Christ must be made to be a soul-winner. The Russians were not only converted, but became “missionaries” in the Underground Church. They were reckless and daring for Christ, always saying it was so little they could do for Christ who died for them....

I myself was later in prison together with souls whom God had helped me win for Christ. I was in the same cell with one who had left behind six children and who had was now in prison for his Christian faith. His wife and children were starving. He might never see them again. I asked him, “Have you any resentment again me that I brought you to Christ and because of this you family is in such misery?” He said, “I have no words to express my thankfulness that you have brought me to the wonderful Savior. I would never have it another way.”

Well I have to go, because the rooster is crowing, and I have a possum in a live trap in my yard, right in front of my chicken coop. And I have to make that big batch of sourdough pancakes for breakfast, and get the girls the ready for church, and take a shower, and I sure do hope some hens lived through the night, and not just two roosters and...

And some things in life that feel very important or insurmountable don't matter at all. Isn't a little perspective in our lives a breath of fresh air? Please God help me! Help me be willing to die to myself more each day and be more like you.

The Foundations: Food

I haven't really wanted to talking about my personal food philosophy, but I am starting to realize that so many of the things I would like to tell you about won't make any sense to you unless you understand some of the background thinking and research that I have been doing for the last four or five years. I want you to understand that the changes and understanding came slowly, and the choices we are making now as a family reflect a fairly long process of life change.

Grilled cheese with turkey and apple slices

To start off, if this information is new and shocking for you, then don't make any sudden life changes, especially big ones. Remember to always keep your priorities straight, and don't let food come before God or your family. Ever. Period.

Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them.
1 Corinthians 6:13

So with that disclaimer lets dive right in. I come from a family that is pretty health conscious. My mom mainly cooked from scratch and taught us to do the same, really cooking not just following recipes. We didn't eat a lot of sugar, and I remember often wondering why I couldn't just be like the other kids have fruit roll-ups and gummy snacks in my lunch. I was almost an adult before I ever took any antibiotics, because mom always took care of our colds at home. So I thought I was pretty healthy, as far as lifestyles goes. But I was always sick. Always. Anyone who knows me well can attest to the fact. I got whooping cough at 24. Seriously. This and the fact that I was becoming a wife and mother spurred a deeper interest in researching and understanding the foods I ate. I was surprised to learn when I was already pregnant what a large roll the foods I (and my husband) ate BEFORE I was pregnant would play in the overall development and healthy of my future children. I would HIGHLY recommend the documentary The Ghost in Your Jeans, as a way to help you understand how the choices you make today (not just food, but so many choices) affect not just your children, but directly link to many generations after you. You can watch much of this documentary for free on YouTube, in little ten minute segments. This is a slight rabbit trail, but it is very interesting to watch it in light of verses like: Ex 34:7 and 1Cor 6:16-18. So we all have the opportunity to heal and harm the genetics we have and will pass onto our children. I started to realize how wide ranging the ramifications of my choices could be. In addition to that, as a wife and a mother I am the gate keep of my family's health, a job I take very seriously. Good healthy is a gift that cannot be bought, and is a huge asset if used properly in the kingdom of God. Generally speaking my kids will only eat as good as I allow. My kids can't make their own dinner, and even if they could they wouldn't have the wisdom to make choices that would bless them.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
1Corinthians 6:19 & 20

So this obviously brings us to the questions what is healthy food? First eggs would kill you science said, then they are the amazing miracle food. Some people think being a vegan is healthy. Others think eating a high protein (low-carb) diet is healthy. Some think fats are bad, or salt is bad, or...the list could go on and on. There are so many opinions out there, and there is a lot of propaganda, a lot of flaky "science". So how do you know what to believe?
That's a tough questions and one I have asked myself and other quite frequently. The best answer I have found is to hold it up to the light of God's word, which might sound kind of obtuse, when it comes to something like food science, but the Bible has an amazing way of keeping us balanced and helping us to keep our world in perspective. It also talks a lot about food. Second I have learned to question my sources. I learned that food manufacturing is THE largest industry in the US. Stop for just a second and mull that over. The largest in of the wealthiest nations in the world. We are talking about a lot of money.
It's easy for us as modern day Americans to think that science is this unbiased, factual, objective machine, and that my friends is a load of bull crap. Everyone has a history and we all view the "facts" through that history. Science is no exception. You know this if you have looked honestly and openly at the science behind evolution. Science can have an agenda just like everything else, and most of them time that agenda doesn't really care about what is best for you.
"A good example is Harvard University where Dr. Frederick Stare, head of the nutrition department for many years, began his career with several articles delineating nutritional deficiencies caused by white flour and a study on Irish brothers that positively correlated a high intake of vegetable oils-not animal fats-with heart disease. Soon after he became department head, however, the university received several important grants from the food procession industry. Dr. Stare's articles and weekly newspaper columns then began assuring the public that there was nothing wrong with white bread, sugar and high processed foods. He recommended one cup of corn oil per day to prevent heart disease..." Nourishing Traditions.

So there is a LOT of money to be made or lost depending on what you believe and what those beliefs will cause to you to do, because it reaches into money made off of our poor health as well. Understanding that fact will help you to filter in the information you come across. The main aim of the food industry is to make money. Not to keep you healthy, not to say that they are all evil and want to make you sick (though I'm sure that is the aim of some), but that your healthy is not their main goal.

For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil...
1Timothy 6:10

When I was trying to sort out all of these issues, I kept running across references to the book Nourishing Traditions. I hear about it on People's Pharmacy, from healthy nuts, from bloggers, from religious conservatives. It seemed to be popping up everywhere. So I decided to get a copy. Much of the book is simply a cook book, but it has a lot to say about food science and seems to be a very well researched fairly well balanced book. You can read a shortened version called Healthy 4 Life for free here. Other resources that affected my thinking include the documentaries King Corn, Food Inc., and Super Size Me. I also have found Real Food by Jessie Hawkins to be helpful. All of these resources have their own agendas and biases. It's important in any issue to listen to the arguments at both extremes. 

More more than any of these, it has been simply paying attention to the world around me. It was hearing it a news cast that Toco Bell was being sued because their all beef tacos because they contain more "meat filler" than beef. Or learning from neighbors and friends who raise cattle that they had problems with some sick cow (often times it was cancer) and would take it to be slaughtered. I finally asked (fearfully) if the meat from a sick cow was set aside for non-human consumption. I was told according to the law if the cow could walk it could be eaten (though they did tell me the cancer spots where cut out...not that this helps me much). Yum! It was hearing stories from the chicken processing plants in the town where my parents lived (I talked about some of them at the end of this post). It was reading about the link between a low fat diet and depression. It was hearing from a friend that her daughter had constant yeast infections until they switched to organic milk. If you want to be healthy you have to learn to think for yourself. You have to learn to pay attention to the world around you. Learn to learn. Knowledge is power! You can't blindly trust the world around you with no ramifications. The world does not have your best interest at heart, not in any area.

Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

Matthew 10:16

I know, this was a lot of some of you take in. Lord willing next time we visit this topic I'll try share some of the concrete conclusions I have come to about our diet and life style, and what it means for our family, but I know that our diet will continue to change as our understanding changes, and as we learn more.

Simplifying Breakfast

I try to read through the book "Created to be His Helpmeet" every once in a while. Two copies were given to me by different people as wedding presents,  and now I give out copies to women I think might "enjoy" it. I say "enjoy", because though it is not a difficult read, the book really stands up in your face and challenges you quite a bit. And I like that, though I don't agree with the author in all things. And every time I read the book I seem to walk away with so new challenge or discovery. One part that struck me this time through was, "Always offer your children only once choice for breakfast...Providing the same simple food every morning (except maybe Saturday) causes a child to look forward to getting cereal on that one special morning." And the author went on to describe how to do a weeks worth of simple cooking by morphing one crock pot meal into the next. "It is not a grouchy old husband or bad days that cause the problems of cooking and cleaning for young wives. It is the lack of simple planning."

 I've also been reading the Reformation Acres blog and have been enjoying the inspiration and encouragement in the areas of laundry, cooking and cleaning. And I got to thinking about how much of my energy is directed into making these little decisions like, "What's for Breakfast!!??" while crabby hungry children cling to my legs wailing each and every day. So I started to think and pray about streamlining much of our life in these little areas, and leaving me with more time to enjoy my family. One issue was hampering me though; I'm an epicurean...a foody. I really do love to cook. I love to imaging it up. I love to see it come together. I love all the senses involved. The sizzle of onion in the pan, and watching it turn translucent, and then golden brown. I love to look in the fridge and find inspiration where many would find nothing. I would have been hard pressed not to fall among the leeks and onions crowd of Israelites leaving Egypt...oh and the melons. Don't forget the melons. So I had to come up with something simple...yet interesting. And this is what I have landed on for right now. Oatmeal. Doesn't sound like foodie food to you? Well here's how I'm approaching it. Oatmeal is basically a blank slate, like rice, and I can really dress it up in any way I please. While the blackberries were in I would pick some out of the hedge row and add it to our morning breakfast. I can simply continue through the year dressing up the oatmeal with what ever is in season, moving from berries, to peaches, to pears, to apples, to bananas and almond butter, or dried fruit in the winter. You could even go crazy and add chocolate chips. There are also spices to add, and nuts, or coconut or coconut oil, butter and cream or milk, and nut butters. (I have my first batch of homemade almond butter in the fridge right now. It was very easy, and since I never let it sit at room temperature the oil never separated. You can check out the directions here.) You can also dress up oatmeal with savory additions, like cheese, thyme, chives, bacon, onion, garlic, or even scrambled eggs. It's an interesting combinations, since oatmeal is kind of a sweet grain...I've only tried it once, and I can't decide if I like it or not. Basically what I'm saying is your imagination is the limit to your options, but what you do each morning basically stays the same. Muesli is also a good cold oatmeal breakfast dish if the heat is getting to you.

But I've gone an additional step in simplifying our routine. When I cook the oatmeal I make a double batch. Then the next day I take it out of the fridge and mash it well with a fork (you know how cold oat meal turns into a giant glob) add in any extras for flavoring (like the ideas above) and beat an egg into it all. If I have a lot and the oatmeal doesn't look completely coated then I add another egg. Then I plop down spoonfuls of this mixture into a well heated pan with lots of grease and fry them until they are golden brown on both sides. We eat them with syrup. And if there were ever any left I would save them as finger food snacks for the girls...but it doesn't seem to mater how much I make...there are never any left. They taste like a cross between oatmeal and french toast. It's a great way to reinvent any left over oatmeal, or any sort of left over starchy foods, like bread, mashed potatoes, or rice- but a word of caution, I don't think I would try this with instant oatmeal. I've been working this system for about three weeks now and breakfast is the ONLY meal I've not had any trouble getting the girls to eat, and I haven't gotten tried of it yet either. It really feels like you are eating something completely different the second day, and I guess really you are. So I just wanted to share, in case you might find it helpful too. Now if The Man gets tired of this at some point I will have to come up with a couple of systems to rotate through. We'll see how it goes. I'm saving muffins, pancakes, fresh donuts, waffles, coffee cake and all the other lovely breakfast things out there for Saturdays that I have enough gumption. Now I'm trying to turn my attention to simplifying and organizing my chores and lunch and dinner. Well see how it goes. Blessings!c

Our life in approx 115 sq ft

I thought I might share some pics of the "nursery". As we are currently homeless, we feel very blessed to have a room to call our own, for now, with my parents. I have worked VERY hard to try and maximize the space, while trying to keep the clutter down. No easy task, but a rather fun creative challenge as I have to keep changing things to meet new needs. Our under 1,000 sq ft house is going to feel like a mansion after this.

I put a lot of thought into what kind of baby gear might work best for us, both now and when the house is done. I opt-ed for a pack-and-play that will work as a bassinet for both babies (and got it almost brand new at a yard sale for $25...it even has a little noise maker/light attachment). When the girls get bigger we have another pack-and-play that was generously given to us and plan to use one for each instead of cribs. (Note the convenient location of the TUMS bottle and the ipod in the attached storage basket at the end, lol.) While the pack-and-play is at the raised height I am storing all the baby blankets in the bottom of it. Don't ask me where they will go when we have to lower it, cause I just don't know :)

You can see the two wooden framed images on the wall behind the "crib". They are a project I finished a couple of weeks ago. I had been thinking about times I've babysat for screaming children, and when I wanted to sing something to sooth the child (and frankly myself) practically every song I knew just flew out of my head, except maybe sometime very un-soothing like Jingle Bells. So I thought of some good old hymns I like and then copied them down (I'm afraid you can't see it very well in this little pic, but I wrote in all down in free form bubble script and it took me forever, especially when I messed up half way through!) on heavy water color paper and framed them with some very cute vintage baby wrapping paper I picked up months and months ago. The song in this frame is "Can you count the stars?" and it's an old hymn my dad used to sing to me when I was little. You can read the lovely old words here. Just reading them lowers my blood pressure, and that has to be a good thing for a new mama, right?

And lastly we have the girl's dresser, given to use by a friend who didn't need it anymore more. It's just the right size for a changing pad which we screwed onto the back. All the diaper changing supplies and cloth diaper stuff is conveniently located in the top drawer. We are REALLY hoping to make good use out of these, especially after I saw the price of diapers combined with the fact that with twins we can expect to go through 12 a day. Yikes! I know washing diapers is work, but so is earning money...to spend on diapers...to fill with poo-poo...) The step peddle trash can is our cloth diaper pail, lined with a water proof bag that can be washed with diapers.

So for now, this is our little home. And I must say, that even though some people would feel panicked about the levels of unknown in our life right now I can only seem to feel blessed, content, and frankly happy. Especially in light of some stories I heard just in the last day. One was a young woman (friend of a friend sort of thing) pregnant with twins and about a foot shorter than I am-meaning not much room for two babies. She has just been hospitalized with pre-term labor and she's not due till April. But that's just the start. She's newly married, and got married because she was pregnant. They are in debt up to their eyeballs, and...yep there's more...the day after she was hospitalized her husband lost his job. Or even harder than that was the pod-cast I listened to today about the mom who found out she had breast cancer about the same time she found out she was pregnant with her second set of twins. She beat the cancer during the pregnancy and then four months later had massive heart failure, and now lives with a complicated heart pump. So. Suddenly the of idea of being a new mom to twins while living in this lovely little 9'x13' home doesn't seem like such a hard thing to do.
Blessings!c

Vacation Reading-Life Management for Busy Women

I brought "Life Management for Busy Women- Living out God’s Plan with Passion & Purpose" by Elizabeth George with me on our little vacation, but didn’t really get into until after we had come home. It’s very different than the flowers and calendar on the front cover led to me think (you know what they say about judging a book by it's cover), much better in fact. I am VERY temped to write a post on every section of the book, but after a little thought have decided against doing this. One reason is I think you ought to get a copy of this book and read through it yourself. George has the ability to come along side you and feel like a close friend and mentor, and I don't think I could capture that in blog posts without simply typing up most of the book.
The book in broken into eight parts covering the following topics: managing your spiritual life, physical life, home life, financial life, social life, metal life, ministry life, and finally pulling all these parts together, managing your time...and your life. Each areas she breaks into two basic sections: what does God have to say about this and how can you practically apply this to your life.
I have been gobbling this book up. Her studies and the verses she brings to bear on each topic of the book are in depth, highly inspiring, and very motivational. She states her goals for this area well, "We've been addressing the matter of the heart. We've been going over our God-entrusted stewardship of all that we have and all that we are...Why go over these deeper issues? Because the first thing we must manage is our heart. As Christian women, our hearts and our lives (and everything else!) belongs to God. And when our affections are set on God, everything else falls into place..." She then follows up these studies with practical real life disciplines (usually ten) which help form habits in keeping with God's will for our lives. None of the disciplines are detailed guides of what to do, but instead are practical principles which should guide what we do and how we do it. I'm going to write a post soon from the first section of the book called At the Heart of It All-Managing Your Spiritual Life just to give you a taste.
Note: Check for this book at your local library; mine had it.