Moments

Today I spent the vast majority of my time getting ready to host an adults only dinner for our Sunday School class.  

On Wednesday some of the girls came to cook with me.  We made as much as we could ahead of time.  We made a bunch of deliciousness.

So today I was mainly getting my house in order.  Larry cleaned out the garage (where we would be eating) and one of the girls came over to help me decorate.  

I believe it was a smashing success.  Here are some photos:

Did you notice all the spring flowers?!  They are so lovely.  While I am a lover of winter, I seriously enjoy some daffodils and tulips.  They make my heart happy.  And the weather today was incredible!

In the middle of my preparations I decided to go for a run.  

Here is where all the 'moments' come in.

The first was an amnesiac moment.  I forgot my sunglasses.  I like to wear them to a.) keep the sun out of my eyes and b.) disguise myself a little.  But no biggie, I'll just squint a little bit.

Next there was that awkward moment.  A family I know was just leaving their house and walking in the same direction I was running in.  Now, I haven't been running long and I'm running slightly downhill so I am not out of breath and can say "Hi!".  So I pass them and they are walking behind me and I am very aware of the parts of me that bounce a lot move more than I'd like them too.  Seeing as how it was such a lovely day, I wasn't wearing a hoodie which helps to camofloge said parts.

And then the awesome moment.  A stranger high-fives me.  Thanks, random old guy!

Ah, the avoidance moment.  This is my favorite because I like to call myself names.  So, I am almost at the point in my run where I turn around and run back the way I came.  But up ahead I see a guy come out of his house and start running toward me.  I can tell that when I get to my turn around point he will be right there too.  So, to avoid having to watch him leave me in the dust, I turn the corner with my prideful foolish self and run a longer more difficult route.

Which leads to the asthmatic moment.  Cuz now I'm running up more hills.  And I'm running a longer distance.  And I can't breathe.

I'm an idiot.

Life is full of moments.  Some are fun and some...not so fun.  

What was your most recent fun moment?

Day 4

I'm not sure anyone realizes we are doing this mutiny yet.  I mean, sure, I've talked about it but let's look at the nitty gritty:

Day 1:

 Breakfast was sausage, eggs, and cheese sandwiched between english muffins.  Lunch, leftover homemade pizza.  For supper there was chicken with fried quinoa.

Day 2:

Cole ate the last of the Cheerios at breakfast which induced tears from Jake.  It was Sunday morning which means I have no idea what everyone ate.  At lunch we finished up the rest of the lettuce by having salads (some of us).  Someone ate the last of the fried quinoa, someone ate couscous.  Typical Sunday lunch: leftover buffet.  There is no beautiful Sunday lunch here.  We drag all the leftovers out of the fridge, throw them on the island and put some plates out.  Fill your own and microwave it or don't eat.  It's how we roll.

Sunday evening we celebrated my dad's birthday.  My family's contribution was a supreme pizza from Slice of Italy, chips, coke, and red velvet cake.  My sister brought 4 other pizzas for everyone who doesn't eat supreme (read:  everyone but me and dad) and a cherry cheese pie.  My brother has abandoned the family to live in Atlanta so he didn't show up.

Day 3:

Leftover pizza ALL DAY LONG.  This is not a complaint.  If you've never ingested pizza for breakfast you are missing a rare and beautiful thing.

Ok, I exaggerated a bit.  There was no pizza left for supper.  Yesterday was Monday which in our house means:  Meatless supper (insert groans).  I'm the only one who enjoys it.  Larry tolerates it, meaning he doesn't voice his objection.  But eyes can speak a lot.  

Here's what the kids think of Meatless Monday:

The last one.  I can't even.

Those photos were from a month or so ago.  One child literally ended up on the couch in tears over the food he didn't want to eat.  One mother was not compassionate.  at.all.

Back to last night:  I made a Meatless Monday meal that is endorsed by all.  Beans and rice over tortilla chips.  With salsa, sour cream, and cheese.  Yum.

Then we picked the name of a country out of a jar and googled poor people in that country.  Suddenly supper wasn't sitting so well with me.  I hope the images we looked at are burned in my children's brains.  I pray they don't forget what we learned:  2/3 of this country's rural population (which makes up 90%) doesn't have enough to eat for the whole year.  To make this hit home we made that number 4/6.  There are 6 of us.  What if only 2 people living in our house could have enough to eat for the whole year?

Sobering.

This morning my kids left for school with full bellies.  They carried full lunch boxes.  When they come home from school I will have a snack for them.  Tonight my in-laws are taking us out to eat for my birthday (which is next Wednesday.  I'm still 31.  Don't forget it.)  

 Nobody is concerned that we won't have enough food for tomorrow.  Some of us might be concerned that we won't like the food we have for tomorrow.  But if anyone goes to bed hungry, it's because they've chosen to.

And one of us knows that the coffee creamer will run out tomorrow.

The inside of my head is a mess.  I either have so many thoughts because:

a.  I've had too much caffeine 
b.  I took too long of a break from blogging
c.  The Holy Spirit is really trying to teach me something

OR

d.  all of the above

I'm going with 'd'.  

I just returned from a run hoping that I could pound out some thoughts while I pounded the pavement (see what I did there?).  Except I didn't.  My thoughts are in the same tangle they were when I left.  I don't even know where to start.

Maybe I'll start with some photos.

Remember how I'm forcing inviting my family along on this journey of "7: an experimental mutiny against excess"?  And how the first month is about food?  In my last blog post I told you the 7 foods (milk, cheese, chicken, eggs, broccoli, cauliflower, apples) we are going to buy at the store weekly to supplement what we already have at home.  I also told you how we will cheat just about every week.  Starting today:

Except it's not really cheating because I didn't buy anything special to make this cake, I had it all in the cupboard.  Except it is cheating because I bought chips and soda to have with pizza before we eat this birthday cake.

But I digress.  Back to my pantry picture.  That is the "Day 1: beginning of the mutiny" photo.  I hope the day 30 photo shows everything as empty.

There's more tho.  Here are the rest of the Day 1 photos:

We've got a lot of food.  I'm wondering if we will even be able to eat it all in a months time.

Which begs the question:  Why do I get to have enough food in my pantry, cupboards, fridge, and freezers to feed 6 people for a month (or more) when there are people all over the world who don't even have enough for today?

It makes my heart hurt and my eyes leak.

The "easy" answer is that I am blessed so that I can be a blessing.

We had an amazing church service/sunday school class that completely reiterated what the Holy Spirit has been reveling to me.  Ever since Christmas and that horrible commercial (I think for K-mart?): "Get more Christmas" I have become increasingly uncomfortable with the excess that we have.

So, being an all or nothing kind of girl, when I read "7" by Jen Hatmaker my heart screamed "I'm ALL in!".  Month one is food, and I've talked enough about that.

Month two is clothes.  I've gotta admit, I am already getting hung up on this one and we're only 1.5 days into month one.  I did just recently purge my closet (which is what started all this mutiny against excess) but I still have a lot.

More scarves than you can shake a stick at.

Jewelry out the wazoo.

I need more accessories like I need a hole in my head.

In "7", the author picked 7 articles of clothing for the whole month.

What?!

I can't stop thinking about it.  Trying to figure out how I can twist it like I did month one.  Can I do 7 outfits?  Can I include 7 accessories?  Can I NOT count my work clothes?  Can I NOT count my workout clothes?  This is gonna happen in the month of April, for crying out loud!

If that last sentence doesn't make sense to you then you must not live in Lancaster county.  In April it could be 80 degrees or it could snow, most likely in the same week.  How do I pick 7 articles of clothing to accommodate weather like that?  Heaven forbid that I might be too hot or too cold.  Heaven forbid that I might be uncomfortable.

Heaven forbid that I might be uncomfortable.

Ouch and double ouch.  I never think of myself as a selfish person but that sentence proves it.  I don't want to be uncomfortable.  I like my middle class comfort zone, thank you very much.

But Jesus challenges that, doesn't he?  I say I'm a Jesus follower, but will I follow him somewhere uncomfortable?  Jesus says "Take up your cross and follow me."

"Hey, can I do that from the couch while I eat my dark chocolate and wear my comfies and watch TV?"

I'm not exactly sure what Jesus is calling me too.  Certainly to a life of less.  

Less stuff.  Less stress.  Less comfort.

But what he offers is so much greater.

Abundant life.

"The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." ~ John 10:10

I'm ready to empty out so that I may be full.

Let the Mutiny Begin!

Yeah, except I think my family might be staging a mutiny against me and my crazy idea.

I introduced the concept of "7 an experimental mutiny against excess"  by Jen Hatmaker tonight.  If you read my previous blog post then you know I am pretty much obsessed with this idea right now.

I explained to my family how Jen chose 7 foods and ate them for a whole month.  Nothing else.  And how that was not what we were going to do.  I tweaked it.  Everything that is already in our cupboards/pantry/freezer/fridge is fair game.  And we will decide together on 7 foods that we will buy at the store weekly to supplement what we already have.

"Chicken nuggets!"

"Fried rice!"

"Hot dogs!"

"Desserts ~ lots of them!"  (this from my husband who is addicted to sugar like crack cocaine.)

Hold the phone, people!  Our 7 foods need to be at least semi-nutritious!  After some debate (and one child nearly crying over the thought of no strawberries for a month) we chose our 7:

milk

eggs

cheese (only one kind at a time)

chicken

apples

cauliflower

broccoli

My pantry is full of things like quinoa, lentils, rice, couscous, black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, and black eyed-peas.

I have baking staples like bread flour, whole wheat flour, regular flour, cake flour, brown sugar, raw sugar, and rolled oats.

I've got dried herbs and spices.  Condiments galore in the fridge.  Three kinds of oil (coconut, canola, and olive).

There is candy.  This is something I rarely buy but we always seem to have in abundance.  I blame my mom.

The freezer has vegetable purees, applesauce, icing (!), tomatoes, peaches, and enough butter to last until kingdom come.

Seriously, we could survive for a whole month without buying anything from the store.

I will be absolutely delighted if at the end of our 30 days the pantry, cupboards, freezer, and fridge were empty.

But we are already encountering stumbling blocks and we haven't reached our start date (March 1).  "But what about my birthday?" says my going-to-be-10-years-old daughter.

Yeah, I've thought of that.  And my birthday.  And offspring #3's birthday.  And my dad's birthday.  And our vacay to Atlanta.  What do we do with those?

We're getting pizza for my dad's birthday.  That will be day 2 of our experiment.  Hopefully nobody dies on the first day, they will be sorely disappointed to miss real pizza from a pizza shop.

My sister is taking me to Shady Maple on my birthday.  I won't apologize for that.

I've decided that I don't want my children to remember their 10th and 7th birthdays as being ruined by their mother's desire to eat everything in our house before we buy more food.  Cheeseburgers, chips, and cakes will rule the day on March 16, their combined birthday party.

And there will be joy in the land again.

I'm undecided about our road trip.  I'm sure we will eat out some.  I want to make road trip food.  I'm gonna do my best to make do with what is in our house already.  Wish me luck.

So, month one is already full of loop holes.  Justification is so easy.

Please check up on me and ask how it's going!  Keep me on the straight and narrow.  And pray for my family.  They may hate me til this is over.

Ain't NOBODY need More Stuff

It's a phrase I'm fond of saying.  Especially around Christmas and March and June.  Those are the times of year people with wonderful intentions and giving hearts ask me the most dreaded of questions:  "What would (insert child's name) like as a gift?"

And I want to scream "NOTHING!!  THEY DON'T WANT ANYTHING!!  THEY DON'T APPRECIATE THE THINGS THEY HAVE NOW!!!"

Now, the above statement is not totally true.  My kids do want anything.  I was going to type "something" but then realized "anything" is more accurate.  I have one child in particular who will see some bright shiny gizmo and say " I want that!"  to which I reply "Do you know what it is?"  And the answer is "No, but I want it."

Seriously?  Did these people really come out of my body?  Why are they so different from me?!

Except they aren't.  It's just that the stuff they want is cheap junk.  And the things I want are...expensive junk.

I have this sign hanging in our kitchen:

Jesus says something along the same lines, just not as flowery.  Cut and dry for people like me: "Watch out!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions."

If I want my children to not follow the greedy American culture of more, MORE, MORE, I better be paving the way.

Enter this book:

Sorry about the sideways, again.  Maybe some day technology and I will be friends, but not today.

After my last blog post, a friend recommended this book to me and then was so kind as to borrow it from her church library and drop it off at my house.  Wow!

After reading the first page I wanted to cancel the rest of my life so I could stay in my chair and read.  Seriously, Jen Hatmaker is one amazing author.  Hilarious (like I'm seriously laughing out loud.  My 3 year old keeps asking me what's so funny) and deep.  I'm in love with her.  If Ann Voskamp and Jen Hatmaker had a baby, I'd want to be that child.

Anyway, if you turned your head sideways to read my picture then you know the title of this book is "7: an experimental mutiny against excess".  I love those words.  

"Mutiny" especially.  

I feel mutinous a lot.  So I'm not even past the cover and I want to memorize the whole book.

To try to sum it up (I'm terrible at summing things up, by the way) Jen basically took 7 areas of her life and mutinied against the excess that Americans take for granted as our right.  One mutiny each month.  And she recorded her real, honest, raw feelings. 

That's another thing I love and am striving for in my life:  real, honest, raw.  My friend Melissa recently started a blog and wrote a wonderful post about real, honest, and raw.  Her bravery is inspiring!

Back to 7 and mutiny.  I'm going to bully talk my family into taking the plunge and fight the excess in our lives.  I will probably do some twists on what Jen did during her experiment but I am excited to begin.  And I'm sure it will make for some hilarious and thought provoking blog posts.

Stay tuned.

Crazy Wardrobe Idea

So, in my last blog post you voted on what my next post should be about.  Many of you were interested in #4: a crazy wardrobe idea that I'm not sure I have the guts to do.

All your votes = me having the guts

It's an idea that I've vocalized more than once.

"If money were not an issue, it would be so fun to get rid of everything in my wardrobe and buy anything that I wanted."

Now, before you start thinking I won the lottery or am somehow independently wealthy (neither of which are true) let me say I am not getting rid of all my clothes and going on a major shopping spree.

Sigh.

But what if I ruthlessly went thru my closet and discarded everything that didn't fit right or I don't like for some reason?  And what if I documented it?  And what if I learn something surprising?

Well, I did.  All of the above.  Join me in my closet and thought process.

Welcome to my closet.  This is the "before" shot.

After I took this photo I just stood there for a minute, thinking. 

Am I really going to do this?!

What if I have nothing left?

Should I set an amount I am willing to spend to rebuild my wardrobe?

Then, without really answering the questions, I dove in.

After the first pass, my reject pile wasn't all that big.  So I figured I wasn't being totally honest with myself.  My fear of having nothing to wear was trumping my desire to have only clothes that I feel good in.

Wow, does that sound shallow?  

I didn't think cleaning out my closet would produce soul-searching thoughts.

Please don't misunderstand me.  I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to look nice.  I believe God created us with a bent toward beautiful.  But how much stock do we put in it?  Do I spend as much time in the morning with Jesus as I spend on getting ready to go out?  What makes me more beautiful, the clothes and jewelry I am wearing or my heart that is changing to be more like God?

Oh. my.

Hold that thought, back to the closet.  The second and third passes thru were more cut-throat.  And just for fun, I made three piles.

There's the "oh my goodness, what was I thinking when I bought that?!" pile:

sorry about the sideways.

The "I don't have anything to wear with this" pile:

And lastly, the "I don't like the way this fits and/or I don't like the way I look in it" pile:

My friends would use the word "confident" to describe me.  And I would mostly agree.  But the height of that last pile tells this truth: I am not always the confident person I appear to be.  Remember that the next time you look at someone and think "I wish I could have it all together like her."  Everyone has their pile.  Mine just looks different than yours.

The "after" picture:

I thought I would take stock at the end and make a list of the things I needed to buy to complete my now de-pleted wardrobe.  I noticed I had quite a few of these things:  cardigans, dresses, and boots.  Enough dresses in fact that I could go out every day of the week and not wear the same one twice.  How many girls in the world are that blessed?

It dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, there is nothing else I needed.

Yeah, but...

NO "yeah, but"s.

So what started out as one crazy wardrobe idea has now evolved into a different crazy wardrobe idea.  What if I choose to be content with what's in my closet right now?

Care to join me?

Random Swirlings

Ah, my poor neglected blog :(   

And my poor swirling brain.  I have several blogs in rough draft form inside my skull.  Let's face it, if they don't make it into the blogosphere soon, there is good chance they will be lost in the gray matter forever.  

F.O.R.E.V.E.R

But tonight is not the night for them.  Instead, a list of what I'd like to blog about in the near future.  Oh!  Idea.  Leave a comment on which one you'd be most interested in reading.  Saves me the trouble on deciding which one to write first.

1.  Snow and why I love it so much.  This has been the best winter ever.  (If you'd like to send me hate mail my address is:  105 Carriage Way, East Earl.  Dad, I'll look for your's first.)

2.  My 2 word theme for 2014

3.  What I'm gonna do about March

4.  Crazy wardrobe idea that I'm not sure I have the guts to do.

5.  How I'm tired of 'pinning' things and never doing any projects

6.  Letters in my Bible

Whew!  Feels good to have a list.  I love them.  Are you a list maker?  Sometimes I add things I've already done onto my list just so I can cross them out.  Raise your hand, I know you are out there, kindred spirit!

I'm at a loss on how to end this post.  Maybe just, goodbye?

Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite?

Have a good night?

Fade out...