"A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand"

My mom and sister have started baking cookies, cakes, pies, and all kinds of other goodies. Well, I shouldn't say they just started doing it, because they've been baking for years. But they only recently created a blog page where you can actually see what they're cooking up, and get an idea of what you want to order! :)

Christmas cookies make a really good gift for family, friends, and co-workers. Or maybe you're headed to Great Aunt Edna's for Christmas dinner, and have been tasked with dessert. Instead of spending hours in the kitchen making something that may or may not taste like cardboard, let them do the work for you and you're guaranteed to get a dessert that will have everyone asking for seconds.

Check it out:

http://www.cakeboxgirls.blogspot.com/

In Memory of Adam

A Soldier's Christmas Poem

Written by Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt.

'Twas The Night Before Christmas,

He Lived All Alone,

In A One Bedroom House

Made Of Plaster And Stone.

I Had Come Down The Chimney

With Presents To Give,

And To See Just Who

In This Home Did Live.

I Looked All About,

A Strange Sight I Did See,

No Tinsel, No Presents,

Not Even A Tree.

No Stocking By Mantle,

Just Boots Filled With Sand,

On The Wall Hung Pictures

Of Far Distant Lands.

With Medals And Badges,

Awards Of All Kinds,

A Sober Thought

Came Through My Mind.

For This House Was Different,

It Was Dark And Dreary,

I Found The Home Of A Soldier,

Once I Could See Clearly.

The Soldier Lay Sleeping,

Silent, Alone,

Curled Up On The Floor

In This One Bedroom Home.

The Face Was So Gentle,

The Room In Such Disorder,

Not How I Pictured

A United States Soldier.

Was This The Hero

Of Whom I'd Just Read?

Curled Up On A Poncho,

The Floor For A Bed?

I Realized The Families

That I Saw This Night,

Owed Their Lives To These Soldiers

Who Were Willing To Fight.

Soon Round The World,

The Children Would Play,

And Grownups Would Celebrate

A Bright Christmas Day.

They All Enjoyed Freedom

Each Month Of The Year,

Because Of The Soldiers,

Like The One Lying Here.

I Couldn't Help Wonder

How Many Lay Alone,

On A Cold Christmas Eve

In A Land Far From Home.

The Very Thought

Brought A Tear To My Eye,

I Dropped To My Knees

And Started To Cry.

The Soldier Awakened

And I Heard A Rough Voice,

"Santa Don't Cry,

This Life Is My Choice;

I Fight For Freedom,

I Don't Ask For More,

My Life Is My God,

My Country, My Corps."

The Soldier Rolled Over

And Drifted To Sleep,

I Couldn't Control It,

I Continued To Weep.

I Kept Watch For Hours,

So Silent And Still

And We Both Shivered

From The Cold Night's Chill.

I Didn't Want To Leave

On That Cold, Dark, Night,

This Guardian Of Honor

So Willing To Fight.

Then The Soldier Rolled Over,

With A Voice Soft And Pure,

Whispered, "Carry On Santa,

It's Christmas Day, All Is Secure."

One Look At My Watch,

And I Knew He Was Right.

"Merry Christmas My Friend,

And To All A Good Night."

For an Angel on His Birthday

Happy Birthday to an Angel

May you know how much you’re missed

By all of those whose lives you touched

Which are more than I could list.

May you enjoy this day

With your Father above,

In the light of His glory,

And wrapped in His love.

My prayers are with your family and friends

Who all are missing you so.

The ones who stood beside you

Through the years, and watched you grow

From a small boy full of mischief,

To a grown man proud and tall,

To a warrior filled with courage,

A fallen soldier who gave all.

Thank you, dear angel, for selflessly living

The life that you so freely gave

For love of your brothers, for love of your country,

The land of the free and the brave.

I’m sure of the words of our Father above

As into Heaven He welcomed you.

“Well done, my son, you’re finally home

My good servant, faithful and true.”

Happy Birthday Adam.

Did you PLAN your bear hunt in the wilderness?

Walking with God does not mean walking with him when it's convenient, through a problem-free life that we have all planned out.

You may want to re-read that. I’ll give you a second. Ready? Good. The above statement is something that has, at times, been hard for me to accept. I’ve never actually heard this statement anywhere, but I came up with it in an attempt to encompass three common misconceptions about walking with God that have been hindering my own spiritual journey.

First, walking with God means walking with Him through life and all that comes with it. It does not mean you walk with Him around the problems, or above the tragedies, or somehow pray your way out of hardships and trials. I remember in preschool or kindergarten, when we would sing the song about going on a bear hunt. I don’t remember it exactly, but it involved running into several obstacles along the way. One was a river. And what choices were we faced with when we came to the river? “Can’t go over it, can’t go under it, can’t go around it, gotta go through it.”

That’s how the Christian life works. You gotta go through it. But no worries, God is right there with you. In Hebrews 13:5 He promises us “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

Secondly, just because we’re walking with God doesn’t mean we get to make the plans. We can’t come up with a great plan, pray about it, and expect God to jump on board and bless it just because we ask Him to. That’s a little bit backwards. First you should pray about it then ask Him to show you how to follow His plan. So when something interrupts your plans, the question you’re faced with is this: Will I go with God on this journey, even though it’s not what I had planned? Will I go with Him anyway?

“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.” - Proverbs 16:9

Thirdly, walking with God does not mean walking with Him when it’s convenient, or when it serves our purposes, or when we think we will get something out of it. Basically, we need to either decide to walk with God 100%, or get out of the way. The decision to walk with God, and stay with Him, is not always going to look like the most exciting choice. Suppose someone gave you these two options:

1. Walk with God down this path and receive tons of blessings, or

2. Walk your own path, follow your own plans, and end up misguided and frustrated.

Obviously, this would be an easy choice. Now suppose someone gave you these options:

1. Walk with God down this path and lose your sense of worldly security (financial, social, etc), and face trials that will ultimately serve to make you grow, but will be painful. Or,

2. Walk your own path and live a relatively comfortable life with no intrusive obstacles along the way.

A slightly more difficult decision, right? I am not trying to over-simplify what it means to choose God’s ways over our own. I’m just trying to make the point that choosing the path God wants doesn't mean we’re choosing a painless, obstacle-free journey. But it does mean we have Him right beside us all along the way.

Right now I’m doing a Bible study that centers on the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt, their journey to the Promised Land, and all the wandering they do in the meantime. The study invites each person to be willing to follow God into the “wilderness”, whatever that may be for him/her.

Everyone does not face the same wilderness. It may be something tragic that happens in your life. You lose a loved one, or lose a job, or a marriage that you thought would last forever begins to fall apart. It could simply be a situation that is frustrating you, because it’s not “what you had planned.” It could be something more voluntary, where you have to make the choice between journeying into the wilderness or staying safely where you are. However your individual wilderness manifests itself, the basic principles are the same.

Often when God allows a wilderness opportunity into our lives, it’s because He sees potential in us to be more and do more in our walk with Him. He’s not letting things into our lives because He’s mad at us, or because we haven’t passed some unwritten test. He does it so we will grow.

Don’t expect a short journey through the wilderness. You may get a short one, but don’t expect one. God will allow you to remain in your wilderness, face-to-face with it, until He has used it to fully develop your potential and cause you to grow. Remember that when you’re facing something in your life, before you attach any type of negative label to it, remember that God can use it for something positive. God’s ways are not our ways. There are no mistakes in His plan. The only mistake would be to not trust Him to lead you through that plan.

“‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the Lord.” - Isaiah 55:8

Thoughts on Grieving

Sorry this first one is not all that cheerful. But I found this one in my "In Progress" folder and it was actually already complete! :)


Thoughts on grieving…

When we grieve, we grieve not only for the one we lost. We grieve for every single possibility that may have awaited us in our future. All the questions of “what if” and “if only”, which begin to creep into our heads the very second that person is taken from us.

“What if he hadn’t been at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“What if he had somehow lived through it?”
“What if I had said more often how I felt?”
“What if he had made it back home safely?”
“What if we were meant for each other?”

We can’t run from the questions. Well, we can run from them, but not forever, and not with good results. Not only must we turn around and face these nagging, unanswerable questions... We must take each one in turn, walk with it down the road of the mind’s eye, accompany it to the dead-end that awaits, and watch helplessly as it dies a slow, agonizing death. Then we must trek back to the starting point, only to pick up another unanswerable question and begin the same journey once more.

To me, there is a very fine line between working through grief and torturing yourself. Honestly, the process is the same, the questions are the same. But the factors which determine which result you’ll get (healing or torment) are your attitude, your faith, and your determination not to become completely overcome by the grief.

It’s important to understand that it’s okay to have a bad day. Grieving is not supposed to be some neat, orderly process, where each day is always better than the ones before. Some days you just can’t face the grief, and that’s okay. Don’t push yourself to. Heaven knows it will still be there waiting for you when you’re ready to pick it back up again and face it. But don’t hide out too long, either. The anger and grief will fester and eat at you until the day comes when you must either release the grief or let it destroy you.

I think one thing that makes grieving so hard is being overly concerned with whether or not you’re doing it right, or fast enough, or slowly enough. I know for me, I was terrified of not going through the grieving process correctly and at an acceptable pace, for fear that I would have to retrace my steps, or end up emotionally scarred for a lifetime. So after reading up a bit on the topic of grieving, I picked up several tips. Some were from educated professionals who study the mind, and some from caring souls who have walked the road already and want to help out those who come behind them. So, here is my advice… my one all-encompassing tip on grieving.

Gather together every piece of advice on grieving and loss, whether you consider it to be good or bad. Print it out and put it all together in a notebook. Got it? Now throw that notebook as far away from you as possible. Or set the thing on fire. Feel better? Didn’t think so. Feel alone and vulnerable and petrified and directionless? Good. You have to work through your grief in your own way, and in your own time. You cannot borrow someone else’s notes and cheat on this test. Doesn’t work that way. Suppose someone tells you to go through five stages, in this specific order, and allow 3-5 weeks for each. But you really needed only 3 stages, and you needed 6 months in each. You may very well end up at least temporarily, if not irreversibly, screwed up. That grieving plan, though it may have worked for someone else, is not your own individual plan, and it will not work for you.

All notebook-burning joking aside… Here is what I would suggest, and what I will hopefully do the first time around whenever I have cause to grieve again. Pray. Ask God to make you sensitive to what you need, when you need it. Trust. You have to know that you can depend on God completely during this entire process. Give yourself freedom. When you feel like crying, cry. When you feel like looking through old letters and pictures, do it. When you feel like writing, write. When you feel like dying, fight. When you don’t think you can think about it for one more second, don’t. Think about something else. Or someone else. One of the best ways to get your mind off yourself and your problems is to reach out and do something for someone else.

Just know that God will get you through it. Lean on Him and trust Him with all your heart.


Psalm 23

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my
cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of
the LORD forever.

I'm back...

Well, I know it's been about 9 months since I've written anything for this blog. I was able to get some posts cranked out at the last minute before leaving for Basic Training, and get those auto-published while I was in BMT, but I haven't done anything since then. I'm back now, though, so please feel free to breathe that sigh of relief and return, finally, to getting a full night's rest.

I have an entire folder full of "in progress" blogs that are in various stages of development. So I'm going to try to finish some of those, and then return to creating new ones. Of course, they're all new to you, the reader, so I basically just wasted time and energy writing this entire paragraph.

Aren't you glad I'm back? :)

Rocket Coffee

At the train stations in Italy, there are drink machines and vending machines beside virtually every track in every station. We tried lots of different things, but our favorite was a type of candy we fondly refer to as “Rocket Coffee.” It is chocolate candy filled with liquid coffee. You bite into it, and your mouth is filled with coffee. Strange at first, yes, but incredibly addicting and wonderful. Especially in the afternoon when you’ve been walking forever and you’re starting to drag. It’s really called Pocket Coffee but we apparently didn’t look very closely at it, and now the name has stuck.

Grappa

Mom and I had plans to have a picnic in one of the parks. We went into a grocery store and found some fruit, cheese, and bread. We wanted to get some grapes, so Mom oh-so-confidently marches up to one of the store workers and asks where she might find “grappa”. We were slightly confused as he headed away from the produce, and then stopped in front of the wine section, pointing, and repeating “grappa.” I’m sure he was disappointed and probably somewhat frustrated when we didn’t purchase any wine… I don’t think we ever found any grapes. :)

Paged in Rome

My Mom and I are planners. We are list people. We have lists for our lists. We have an item on our to-do list that says “Make a list of to-do lists to make.” Haha. We do not like to be late, and we like to be prepared. Oh, and neither of us necessarily likes to be the center of attention. I point these things out to you so you will keep them in the back of your mind as you read this next story.

Our flight home from Italy had one stop. We flew from Florence to Rome, and then from Rome to Atlanta. Our layover in Rome was about 3 or 4 hours, if I remember correctly. We had missed seeing St. Peter’s during our visit to Rome earlier in our trip, so we actually toyed with the idea of zipping over there and seeing it before our flight left. Being the sensible gals that we are, we decided against it, thinking it more prudent to just hang around the vicinity of the airport until our next flight. We had a blast wandering all over the airport, people-watching, shopping, and just walking around. We got our last serving of gelato, and ate it while sitting next to a window that was right beside the runway. Mom and I are both fascinated with planes, so we sat there forever watching planes take off and land.

Finally, we decided we should go ahead and start making our way to our gate. On the way there I stopped at the ladies’ restroom. It was quite crowded, so I was standing in line… All of a sudden mom dashes into the bathroom, eyes wide, and says, “They are paging us to our gate!!!” Forgetting any necessity of bodily functions, I immediately followed her out, and we proceeded to practically run to our gate. We finally got there and the two people working there verified who we were, and then practically shoved us through the terminal. We boarded the plane where dozens of passengers were patiently (ha) waiting.

This story is just a testament of the irony that exists in both of our lives, especially mine. With a four hour layover, most people would have tried to squeeze in some last minute sight-seeing or shopping. Not us. Being the ever responsible travelers, we had decided to just park it and wait until it was time for our flight. And in doing so, we just about missed our flight. :)