Diet Update

We have gone several weeks now trying to avoid gluten and dairy and I am happy to report it is going well.  I had a short spurt of eating only soup because the weather turned cool and I discovered soup is an easy thing to make without gluten and dairy.  Here are some of the meals we've tried:

Sloppy Joe stuffed potato boats-  I baked some potatoes scooped out some of the potato to use for another meal and filled it with sloppy joe.  I put it back in the oven for a bit and then topped it with crushed up potato chips.  The children loved this, it's a definite keeper.

Our good ol' stand by fried rice which everyone likes

Spaghetti stuffed squash-we stuffed a spaghetti with marinara meat sauce and baked it.  The children loved this.  Pete and I had quinoa and chicken sausage stuffed acorn squash.  It was really good.

Salmon Salads

Roasted Vegetables with Chicken Sausage

Tacos-surprised to find no one misses the cheese or minds using corn tortillas

Soups-chicken wild rice, chicken pot pie soup, alphabet soup and cream of vegetable soup.  These were all really good, but I did have some requests from my family not to make them all in one week for our meals.

It has been really great to see that there are still fun culinary options for eating despite the need to do without many things.  I have been putting off this change for a long time in fear of being a burden to others with our special diet.  It does take extra time, money and effort but the health results for us have been so encouraging.  I am still working on getting over the hurdle of letting go of having what I want when I want it and the other hurdle of having to plan and inform others that I can't eat dairy, gluten, corn or tomatoes and a few other items.  I've always tried to live by and teach the children that we eat what we are served in gratitude.  I do believe that if others are willing to serve me by cooking for me I should have a grateful heart and never put forth demands.  These food intolerances I am finding are a huge blow to my values and I haven't worked through how to manage the situations we encounter eating with others.  Initially I thought it wasn't very often that this would come up but now I realize it's all the time!  We can't simply run through a drive through, there's too few options that or family can eat.  If we are invited to some one's house I haven't quiet figured out how to communicate our needs.  Perhaps the hardest is celebrations with others where I feel like I don't even want to go because I have to bring a separate meal for some of our family and then explain, explain, explain why we don't eat certain things.  Depending on the crowd and family the reaction is often that I am a paranoid freak.  Which perhaps I am, but would rather not admit to others!

So the physical part of our experiment is having some great results.  The emotional part is a different story.  I didn't realize there would be an emotional part to this and feel a little side swiped.  Thankfully I have been feeling a lot better which gives me a lot more margin to deal with these issues as they come up!

Worrying the Kids Away

I read this post by Nancy Wilson this morning and felt I must share it.

"We mothers are tempted in many ways, but one of those ways is to be worriers.
What do we worry about? Oh, we are very imaginative! If we don’t have any real situations on our hands, we can come up with all kinds of potential stuff to worry about.

Now, worry is bad for us. And it’s bad for our kids. It’s an uglifying sin (like all the rest of them). Worry is antithetical to biblical femininity. It is never pretty. It sucks the joy out of our lives, disturbs our peace, and disrupts a gentle and quiet spirit."  To read the rest go here.

Friendships and Our Children

I have been lacking clarity and discernment lately in the area of friendships and our children.  There are so many messages that I've allowed to populate my  mind.  Unfortunetely I have not been on my toes to the chaos these messages have caused until now.  I've always had several ideas running around my head about how to spend time in friendships, but never really have come to a hard and fast conviction of what friendships and social time in my children's lives should look like.  I suppose part of the reason why I haven't really evaluated what my convictions are is that my children are still pretty young and the subject didn't come up very often.  The past 6 months have changed that.  Now that my eldest is 9 I am finding that I need to figure out these convictions and quick!  The pressure to spend time with others, invitations and oppourtunities for friendships are astoundingly many.  The choices we make as parents will have a big impact on not only our children's friendships but their entire future.
I know that choosing the wrong company can lead to a plethora of issues.  That  was my childhood.  I always seemed to choose the wrong crowd and suffered the consequences of shallow, rebellious relationships my entire childhood.  It is really sad to look back and see that without any guidance the easy choice was always the wrong choice.  Knowing this, I have complete confidence that I, as a parent need to be heavily involved in where our children spend their time and energy in relationship.  The problem is that now I know I need to be involved what do I do?  Praise God that I do not parent alone and have a very wise husband.  I have much control over our daily schedules, but love that he ultimately looks at the schedule and can easily tell what is and is not wise.  I find the more I consult my husband and pray to God the more readily I can make righteous decisions in this area. 
The two biggest questions that seem to perplex me the most is who to allow the children to spend time with and how much time.  As christians we want to be a light to the world.  I want to train my girls to be able to to deal with difficult people and stand true to their convictions.  I want them to share the love of Christ readily and show his love by speaking the truth in love.  I find that this desire drives me to allow them to sometimes spend time with company that does not share the same convictions in their walk or a belief in God.  I was under the idea that somehow my children were ready to be a shining example of Christ's love to others and they would not be tempted give into the temptation to follow the ways of the world.  God ever to kindly rebuked me of this naiive attitude I've had.  This  morning as I was praying about a specific relationship in one of my children's lives I was reminded that we are not on earth to have pleasures and be popular.  Was I allowing my child to compromise her character to be popular or liked?  I was allowing her to pursue and spend much time in a relationship that was often causing her to sin.  I am so thankful for God's gentle wisdom in this matter. 
My dear friend Kim Doebler once told me that she often asks of relationships, "are we being more influential or being influenced."  In this relationship my child wants to be in I am so dissappointed to say that she is being more influenced and unfortunetely it is for the detriment to her.  I am not sure the other child has any intention to lead my little one into sin, but sin is what results from her time with this child.  So as unpopular as I will be for limiting the time she has in this relationship I am convicted it is not for my or her popularity that we spend our time, it is for the Lord. 
Thankfully we have many other relationships in our life that are uplifting and mutually encouraging in our walk with the Lord.  We are so incredibly blessed to have others that lead us towards righteousness that we don't have enough time in our schedule to nurture all of those relationships in our lives and the childrens closely.  We had a terrible afternoon of crashing this week after over committing and under discplining ourselves.  It was a blaring red flag to me that I had mismanaged our time and stressed my entire family out by having too much time with friends and in enjoyment.  We were no longer able to refresh and keep our home running and we all had a feeling of chaos.  This has led me to evaluate how much time we spend with our friends.  God has not spoken to me quite so clearly about this one.  I think there must be a balance that I try and strike with this that happens before we commit to things.  I know each family has a different tollerance for outside activities, ours happens to be very little.  I know this about us.  I know that we can only handle a few extras in our schedule before it has a bad effect.  Given that understanding I think the best course is to look at the realitites of our capacity and schedule a little more clearly in the future and ask my husband a little more often his input!
I feel a have a little better vision and conviction to move forward with but still have a long ways to go.  I don't want to raise children who are so guarded they don't know how to function outside of our home.  But I also don't want children who value friendship more than God.  It's a delicate balance, one that I am sure I'll continually be learning to seek God's will in. 

Day 2 of Our Dietary Expirement

This morning I got up motivated to try a new recipe and was rewarded!  It was fabulous and go two thumbs up from every family member.  An unanimous two thumbs up vote at our house happens rarely so I'm feeling pretty good about myself right about now!  I tried another recipe from Cooking for Isaiah, the chocolate banana waffles.  The waffles were really good with a nice crisp crust.  I found a gluten and dairy free chocolate sauce recipe on-line that I drizzled over the waffles and bananas.  We added some sausage and fruit salad.  That recipe will definitely stay.  We had left overs for lunch and look forward to a roast with potatoes, carrots and onions for dinner with a salad.  Day 2 was a huge success.  My child's skin is looking better too.  I'll just have to figure out a way to stretch our budget to keep up with all of these new recipes! 

A Dietary Expirement

Our family has been almost completely dairy free for almost a year.  Our little Gretta kept having skin rashes and digestive issues that prompted us to have her tested for food insensitivities.  The only thing that came up was pasteurized dairy so we decided to go dairy free.  On occasion we've enjoyed a little raw cheese but otherwise we don't use dairy.  Our goal has always been to gratefully accept whatever is offered when we are out.  However, Gretta complains of belly aches after dairy so we try and really avoid it. 
This fall as one of my children started experiencing allergy symptoms and a skin break out a friend suggested that it may be gluten so we are on day 4 of her not having any dairy or gluten and by golly her skin is clearing up!  So we are going to do an experiment in no dairy and no gluten in our diets for a few weeks and see how it effects our family.  I plan on reviewing here how it is going and what sort of recipes we are using.  Here is tonight's review. 

Dinner:  chicken rice tetrazzni with mushroom gravy and mustard crumbs from the cookbook Cooking for Isaiah, maple roasted acorn squash and salad.  Squash is a huge hit with our kids so that went over well.  The children did not really enjoy the tetrazzini, but Pete and I did.  We will not make it again as Pete wasn't thrilled about it and none of the children really liked it.

Dessert:  Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies from the Cooking for Isaiah cookbook.  I used Earth Balance margarine in place of the shortening and a mix of chocolate, white chocolate and butterscotch chips.  This was a hit!  I made them to bring to church so the kids could have a cookie with their friends.  I loved these.  In this cookbook there is a baking mix and pancake mix you pre-make.  It makes the prep for baking gluten free easy. 

So far so good.  I had one child pretty upset she couldn't have some french bread with garlic butter, but was happy to have the garlic butter on our sprouted bread so other than that hiccup it's been going well.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.....

Compromise

Having a blog is a bit of a soap box for me.  The great thing is that no one has told me to get off it yet.  Maybe today will be the day?
I can't count the times I've heard someone say that marriage is a 50/50 relationship.  It's give and take.  You must compromise.  For years these sort of attitudes have rubbed me wrong.  It's sort of like how Revelations 3:15-16 says, "I know that your works: you are neither cold nor hot.  Would that you were either cold or hot!  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth."  Compromising often leads to a similar feeling.  We are fed this idea that if I take a night out, then my spouse gets one.  If my spouse gets a new toy than I get the next one.  It's my night to get up with the children tomorrow, you do it tonight!  That's my play money use your own.  I don't know that it is a sin to set up a plan in marriage as far as who does what when.  But I know that it can lead to sin in our human hearts when we only give in expectation of getting back.
When we fight for our rights to our half of our share in life we are settling for mediocrity.  We are steeling away the opportunity to bless others by simpling serving.  Perhaps we become a terribly tepid taste in our Father's mouth.  I don't care to think of my God wanting to spit me out due to my taste.  When we insist that others take care of us and expect that others put us first, again we lose our flavor.  It is better to choose to be cold and indifferent than feign the middle ground.  The Bible doesn't speak much of the middle ground, it does ask us to walk righteously and give all. 
So how do we stay hot, on fire and motivated for God?  We serve like Jesus served us and we take time to be with our Father.  Get up with the baby at night.  Prioritize a quiet time of prayer and Bible reading.  Take care of the children instead of expecting to get a sitter or someone else to always help you.  Look to someone elses needs first. 
Does this mean that we never ask for help, NO!  But we ask God to give us discernment and wisdom about how many favors we are asking of others.  Don't be a score keeper, especially in marriage.  Let your husband take care of his flock, especially you by simply relating to him the needs that you have.  Be careful that Satan doesn't fool you into thinking that you can't get by without a little "me" time.  We as wives and mothers can and should be able to take care of our homes, our children and our husbands.  If we are struggling with doing these things it is a wise woman that learns to assess her time.  If you run so much you can't keep up, prayerfully go to God and your head (husband).  Surely they will be able to lead you into what needs to stay and go so you can accomplish their will.
"Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."  Mark 9:50.  It's not easy to be a mother and wife.  We have so many balls to keep up in the air these days, but we can choose to be at peace in our marriages and lives.  This is the one solution offered in Mark 9:50.  BE AT PEACE!  The key word here is be.  We keep house by work, we keep up our children by effort and diligence, we try and keep good health why would we not spend as much time working on keeping peace?  So next time you are asked to get that thousandth cup of water for your little one, or to serve another family, or to run that extra errand for your hubby or to not go out with the gals so your man can do something remember to be at peace and remain salty.

The American Dream. Heaven On Earth?

I read an article on world news about social security and viewing retirement from a christian worldview http://www.worldmag.com/articles/18569.  There was a quote by John Piper that said, "we must reward ourselves now in this life for the long years of our labor." Retirement—playing, traveling, sleeping late—is "the world's substitute for heaven since the world does not believe there will be heaven beyond the grave."

This was in reference to retirement but I couldn't help but think I have run into this sin lately.  In my quest to be comfortable have I been trying to exchange the pleasures of a true heaven for earthly ones?  In my desire to have things look just right, taste well, to feel well, to make sure the children have experiences have I turned my heart away from God?  The trials of this world seem to mount up on my shoulders so quickly and I forget that trials are what this world is made of.  I will not be able to replicate what my perfect God has made for eternity in this fallen place, not only that I will lose the opportunity to glorify him.  Taking this thought a step further I realize that my children miss out on the opportunity to hunger for God when I pacify them with pleasures here. 

God's timing is amazing.  After going to the dentist this morning and spending way more money than I desired to, it was good to be reminded that trials are where I have the opportunity to "prove my mettle" as Oswald Chambers said.  God has provided for this and will continue to.  He does not promise a nicely decorated suburban home in keeping with everyone else I know.  He doesn't say that my days will be easy and that I will flawlessly mother, teach, mentor and submit.   I find myself challenged to remember and truly believe what he does say each day, that he will never leave me or forsake me, that he will provide all things, that he will work all things for His good.  It is really much easier to believe what the world says.

What a gift the Bible is in times of temptation and confusion.  My heart overflows with gratitude for truth and direction from His Word.  It would be easier to construct my own heaven here on earth without any concern for eternity.  But I've never been one to follow the crowd!  I can undoubtedly say that I hunger for heaven  more than the American Dream.