August | 2014 | itsawonderfilledlife

Archive for August, 2014

No Guilt Allowed!

Posted in GOD, life, WONDER, tagged #galations5, #guiltfreezone, #noguiltallowed, Guilt on August 6, 2014| 6 Comments »

It is everywhere. It is given, it is received. It comes in different forms, and from different sources.There are opportunities everywhere to find it, and if you cannot find it … it will find you! But where can one go to escape the inescapable … guilt!

Maybe families? Hum, I don’t think so. As a mom, we know all about guilt … both receiving it and handing it out! We cannot seem to forgive ourselves for every failure of our kids, from them not being toilet trained at six months to their decision to work and not go to university on full scholarship. On the other hand, we also hand it out … from telling our preschoolers that we will cry if they don’t do as we wish, to asking our adult children if they forgot our phone number. So, I guess families are not a guilt-free zone.

Maybe schools? Hum, I don’t think so. Schools, their staff and students, are pretty liberal in the giving and receiving of guilt. Teaches tell students that they are not trying hard enough, and parents tell teachers they need to work harder to make ‘Johnny’ succeed, since they do not even have to work in the summer. So, I guess schools are not a guilt-free zone.

Maybe at your kids recreational activities? Hum, I don’t think so. Everyone with kids involved in activities from sports to music to arts to drama knows that ‘parent participation’ is the motto! And if you are not participating, when you arrive to bring ‘Sally’ to her martial arts class … all eyes will be on you! And, by the time you leave you will feel as though you are worthless! Of course if you are very active in your kids activities, there’s the finger pointing guilt-laden accusations that ‘you are at the top of the food chain, and you better run this club, group, committee well. And if you are the instructor, or coach every weakness of ‘Jimmy’ is your fault, because you are being paid, or simply because you are teaching them. So, I guess recreational activities are not a guilt-free zone.

Maybe when you are shopping? Hum, I don’t think so. I’ve certainly had times where I have heard an irate customer verbally go up one side of an employee, and down the other … all because the store has sold out on an item! I’ve also had the experience of a cashier giving me the wrong change, or ringing in an item incorrectly, and when I mention it to them, they look at me like I have ruined, not only their day, but their entire existence! So, I guess shopping is not guilt free! (and I didn’t even mention the guilt of making a purchase, and how you feel uneasy (guilty) about telling your hubby or wifey. Or the guilt of purchasing the chocolate bar. Or, heck, I know what ‘change room’ guilt is … try squeezing me and all my cellulite into a bathing suit! … but, I digress).

Maybe at your place of worship? Hum, I don’t think so. There are expectations (written and not … but mostly unwritten) that when you join a church, you will be involved. And some seem to think that means involved in everything, from cleaning the building, to teaching a class, to feeding the poor, to singing in the choir, to hosting a group … and what your gifts are (or there lack of) don’t even matter! On the other hand, if you are a leader or clergy in a place of worship every decision you make, every word you speak can be responded to with ‘you are out of touch with the congregation’. So, I guess places of worship are not a guilt-free zone.

Maybe when you are eating? Ha! Ha! Ha! Do I really have to expand here? I d o n ‘ t t h i n k s o !

But, there is one completely guilt-free zone … it is relationship with God. He never demands, never expects, never gives you ‘that look’. And when you or I fail, or forget, or just don’t do what we maybe should have done, or said … He doesn’t turn away from us. He is always waiting … for us. It is for our freedom, that God sent His Son. And thank goodness … He is a guilt-free zone!

“Christ has set us free to live a free life.

So take your stand!

Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you”

Galations 5:1

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The Theme of The Best Stories is Always ….

Posted in GOD, life, tagged #isaiah43:1, #summerreading, #thethemeofthebeststoriesisalsways, Books, Reading, Redemption on August 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

Summer is a time to think about sun, surf and reading a good book (and chocolate … like that is different from any other season).

I have a chosen reading list 🙂 Yes, I chose them all … last year, when I only read one book! It was obviously a very dry summer! So, the pile of books has been awaiting my attention for over a year now, just inside my closet doors. And I am determined that this summer, no matter how busy, I will take the time to read.

Reading is not something that I have loved since childhood. As a matter of fact, I can only remember reading one or two books, from cover to cover, as a child. It wasn’t until I was about thirty (when I was still young) that I picked up my first fictional novel to read … and when I had finished it, in less than twenty-four hours, I was hooked! So I read everything that author wrote, and then started on another author, and another, and another.

Then I started to read books that my kids were reading, because I had never read them as a child. Books like the Narnia stories, by C.S. Lewis, and Little Women, and Anne of Green Gables, and Tom Sawyer, and Captain Underpants (obviously, I love my son … but it is brilliant, in a boy-sorta way).

I was transported to places all over the world. I was able to live in the past, the present and the future. I was to laugh, to cry and to sigh. I felt emotions while reading that made me feel that I was living in the story. I could pick up a book, and escape the mundane of a regular day for the magical of the story within it’s covers.

The books I have read and loved, from various eras, various age ranges, various genres, all have one thing in common. This one part of each of my best loved reads is the glue that makes the story stick, it makes the story timeless, it makes the story sell.

This glue is the theme of the story, and it is one which will sell a book, or a movie. It is one that makes people recommend it, and re-read it. It is one that makes a simple grouping of words on a page (paper or electronic) a best seller. This glue is the theme of redemption.

Redemption is the act of deliverance, or rescue or salvation.

Maybe this theme sells because, in our busy, guilt-ridden, demanded upon lives, what we innately desire most is rescue. Maybe it provides that thing which we all need to survive … hope.

But maybe, it is also a great sell because, we are born with a need to be rescued, delivered, saved … redeemed. Maybe, just maybe, every fiber of our human being needs to be redeemed. Maybe we seek it in our literature, in our movies, in our jobs, in our families, because we cannot truly live without it. And, if we innately seek it out in our lives, it must be there for us to us to receive … just as our whole body struggles for air to breath, to live, and it is there.

“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”

Isaiah 43:1b

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Beauty out of the Dust

Posted in GOD, WONDER, tagged #beautifulthings, #beautyoutofthedust, Dust, GOD, gungor, Redemption on August 4, 2014| 1 Comment »

I HATE dust!

It makes me sneeze, it makes me cough, it makes my breathing labored, and … it is dirty! I just do not like it. The only thing that is good about dust is how you feel once you’ve showered AFTER being covered with it … it is then that you are truly aware of what it is to be clean, to be cleansed, to be freed from the dust of the ground.

Dust is a given for me when I garden. Our house is built on land once known as ‘sand hill’, and it was appropriately named! I remember digging up top soil to build a sandbox in our back garden. Once that was removed, I already had a sandbox, without the box …

I love to garden! It is an opportunity to work with beauty, or at least beauty imagined 🙂 My daughter gets frustrated with me when I garden, because I have gardening ADD … I easily get bored with where I put my plants, and move them around frequently … often before they really reach the pinnacle of their intended beauty (okay so maybe it has more to do with my lack of patience …).

But, when I garden (or cook, or paint, or clean the house … or move from one room to another …) I get really, really, really messy with whatever I touch. I am sort of like a toddler on steroids! All I have to do is make one step out of my door, and I’m a visual wreck! And, by the end of the day, there is not a bit of my body (you should see the dirt and foliage that falls from my unmentionables!) that has not been ‘dusted’ by my surroundings! I look (and smell) like a living dust cloud … like Pig Pen from the Snoopy comics. And, when I blow my nose, at the end of a gardening session, well the ‘outcome’ is a sticky, dirty black mess of goo (too much information?).

Some days, I feel as though my life is dust. I am dry, and there is simply nothing good happening. It can even seem as though all I do is make life for others miserable, like dust that makes me sneeze and cough. Sometimes it seems as though my purpose has dried up, and that there are no longer any signs of life.

It is interesting to me that at a solemn event like a burial, dust comes up. The phrase “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” is a common part of the burial rites, and is said to have been ‘inspired’ from Genesis 3:19, which reads, “You were made out of the ground. And you will return to it. You are dust. So you will return to it.” Those are NOT encouraging words for me … I HATE dust! If my beginning and my end, on this earth (pun intended ) are as dust … well, that is just not satisfying. I mean really, what is dust, but something to be washed away?

And, washed away it will be … one day. As I am, I am just dust. And those ‘dust-like’, dried up, miserable days, they are reminders that, on my own, I am just someone who needs a shower, a bath, to be cleansed. And, once the cleansing, life-giving, hydrating waters have flowed over, and under and through me, until the dust that I am is gone, and the water that refreshes me has taken over and is all that can be seen …

then I am a beautiful thing,

a living thing …

not because of anything that I could ever do,

but because of what God has done with the dust that I am.

“He has made everything beautiful in its time.

He has also set eternity in the human heart;

yet no one can fathom what God has done

from beginning to end.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

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Unrushed Moments

Posted in life, Marriage, WONDER, tagged #connectionsinthemundane, #lysaterkeurst, #proberbs31ministries, #survivalseason, #unrushedmoments on August 3, 2014| 1 Comment »

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It’s that time of year again … the mundane time of year!

The daylight is fleeting, the leaves are falling, the schedules are underway, and the next holiday or ‘down time’ is still counted in weeks … or months.

We live with our crammed full calendars. We struggle to find refreshment, stress is our most common state, sabbath is a day of the week with almost as many commitments as the other six days, and romance … maybe we should start scheduling that too.

We have entered the survival season.

Then, today, I came across wise words, from a woman whose passion it is to encourage women to be Proverbs 31 women. That daunting scripture that seems to describe the ‘perfect’ woman, Proverbs 31, Lysa realized wasn’t about “her activity but rather the (Proverbs 31) woman’s identity that mattered the most.”

So, today, in this survival season, I want to share her words, and encourage us all to look for unrushed moments in each of our mundane days.

“My marriage isn’t perfect. No marriage is.

I’ve been known to throw orange juice across the kitchen, pitch a complete fit over something totally irrational, and go silent for days.

Yeah me.

But twenty two years has taught me love, real love, is two people deciding to stay. Work it out. Fall in love again. And fight for, not against, one another.

Each morning I have a routine with my husband. It’s simple. Nothing profound. Nothing for which we’d ever stop and snap a picture.

It’s just a moment.

He asks me to help him pick a tie. He then needs gentle hands to fold the collar over.

Actually, he doesn’t need. He wants gentle hands to fold the collar over. And I do. It’s just a moment. But it’s a moment where we stop. We see what a gift imperfect love is.

And in this unrushed silence, we connect.

It’s just a moment together. Or is it? …”

To continue reading, please click below:

Lysa Terkeurst

(do it! It really is so worth it!)

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Regretfully August

Posted in WONDER, tagged #chasigblueskies, #fallschedule, #kristenstrong, #peoplepleasers, #regretfullyaugust, #sayingno on August 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

When the calendar changed from July to August, I felt it …

For me, this change from closing my eyes one evening to awakening the following morning, means that I have awaken to the month I return to work, the month I bid farewell to summer’s pleasures. Though it is still w e e k s away, I know, without a doubt that with the fall schedule comes new and renewed opportunities and responsibilities. With these opportunities and responsibilities comes the choice to say yes or no.

‘Yes’ is such an agreeable response, and ‘no’ is so … negative. Yet, to say ‘yes’ to every request (or the wrong request) can leave us drained, fatigued and disappointed … hardly agreeable reactions!

Recently I read the reflections of Kristen Strong, a mom to three kids and wife to one man, who writes her blog posts at Chasing Blue Skies. Today, I am featuring her post called, “How To Say No With Confidence (Not Guilt)” with the hope that it might help us (especially the people pleasing amongst us) prepare for the onslaught of requests and opportunities in the weeks to come.

“The lake house air, heavy-laden with humidity, smells like heat and magnolia. But when we stroll the peninsula walkway to the dock, the air cools and lifts. Not much later, my boy with the dark, stick-straight hair casts the long stick attached to line and bait into the muddy, cool water.

I watch him fish from his spot on the end of the dock. Sometimes he gets a nibble, a bite, or a catch. Sometimes nothing at all. No matter the outcome, there is a steady rhythm to his work-not-work: cast out, wait, reel in.

Repeat.

My fingers tap along to this summer rhythm so familiar to we Strongs.

My boy now fiddles with his hook after a fish smuggled his worm. He looks over to me, shakes his handsome head and says,

“That fish stole my worm before I felt a single tug!”

It happens quickly.

Just as quickly, time steals. And for me, what steals time at warp speed? Giving too many yeses to good things but not best-for-me things. Saying yes to something simply because I don’t want to disappoint the person asking.

Here’s the thing: the wrong yes still disappoints. It disappoints me because it disrupts my family’s rhythms before I feel the tug of passing time.

My boy baits the hook, adjusts the line, and casts it once again. I look at him, take in his silhouette of ever-growing inches and feel the weight of all these yeses inch me further and further away from God’s best for me.

The water licks the edge of the dock and I taste the bitter thought of letting someone down. Before we left for the lake house, I decided to quit with the automatic yes and sent two notes with a firm (but hopefully gracious) no. One receiver understood and one struggled, and this near hopeless people-pleaser dwells on that second response.

I’m adjusting to new rhythms this summer as I write now more than ever. Out of necessity I am choosier with my time, more intentional with my daily rhythms. And I’m discovering how a well-placed no reopens and renews the creative parts of my heart. But more than that, it lifts restrictions so I can more freely enjoy fro-yo dates with my sons, naming mountain wildflowers with my daughter, and snuggling with my man on the back porch.

“With our garnered free time, we are more apt to drain our creative springs than to refill them. With our pitchers, we attempt sometimes to water a field, not a garden.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

I tend my garden, and God oversees the field. Slowly but confidently, I am learning the best way to remember this is to be as bold with my no as I am with my yes. I still don’t love the thought of letting someone down. But I realize my job is not to navigate a person’s opinion of me. My job is to investigate God’s desires for me.

And to follow through with obedience.

4 Things to Help You Say No with Confidence:

1. Cast out your no with conviction because you are the boss of your own time. Also, if you detest the awkward that dangles after a no and feel you must justify it, then have a couple (truthful!) reasons ready. (i.e. “You know, I’ve been praying about these opportunities and I feel the Lord has yet to make room for them in my schedule.”) Remember: saying no may hurt for a little bit, but the wrong yes hurts much longer.

2. Wait prayerfully and believe your no makes room for someone else to say yes – someone who is better suited and better equipped to meet the need right now. And your well-placed no in this season opens up space for you to give a well-placed yes to something better for you.

3. Reel in trust that God’s knowledge of you is absolutely intimate and His opinion of you is sky-high. Your Creator isn’t disappointed in you. He cheers you wildly anytime you make a hard but good decision. Hold onto His will for you and discover how astonishingly easy He is to please.

4. Repeat the above and find the more you practice saying no, the easier it gets.

The evening sky darkens around the dock, but the atmosphere lightens. A chorus of cicadas add their summer melody to our rhythms.

And I am confident the music delights all on the dock . . . and our Father in heaven.”

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Itsawonderfilled Summer Recipe Tortellini Pesto Salad

Posted in life, Recipe, WONDER, tagged #itsawonderfilledsummerrecipe, #tortellinisalad, Recipe, Summer on August 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »

This recipe is the one that, to me, says ‘it’s summer’!

It is the combination of colors, the freshness, the cornucopia of summer vegetable and herb flavors with that deliciously filled pasta, also known as the ‘belly button’ pasta (obviously an outie, or maybe an innie from the inside view). Also, you can ‘change up’ the vegetables that you use, depending on what is fresh and what you have on hand. Who doesn’t love versatility?

I also love it because you can make it the day ahead, or even the day you want to eat it (although it is better if made ahead, even a few hours, to let the flavors blend).

This recipe came from the same summer cooking contest as my summer recipe a couple of weeks ago (on July 30), in our local newspaper. I cut both out of the paper, and have been making both of them, regularly ever since.

So, here is the recipe of the week …

Tortellini Pesto Salad

Chop up 1/4C fresh parsley, and 3/4C fresh basil (okay, confession time … years ago, I bought a butt load of herbs for my garden, and planted them all together. Well, the next year only one came back … what I thought was basil … not! It was Thyme, but I thought it was basil … so, for about four years I made this recipe with fresh thyme … and it tasted pretty good too! So, if you, like me, have blond roots, and no sense of taste, you can use either one … but, I digress ;).

Whip together 1C mayonnaise, and 2Tbsp milk (or, if you want to live on the edge, half and half … but I do prefer my blue-hued non-fat milk) until smooth. Then stir in the parsley, the BASIL, 1/4C fresh parmesan cheese (if it comes out of a can, that you bought from a shelf, and not from a cooler, it is NOT fresh … fresh parmesan melts, stuff in cans does not … I am a parmesan snob), and 2 cloves minced garlic.

Set your delicious saucy mixture into the refrigerator, while you get ready to chop, chop, chop.

Now, this next step is only for the adventurous cooks out there … it is the vegetable chopping time! And, if you take your vegetable chopping as seriously as I do, when it comes to knives, size matters! The bigger the better to make cutting vegetables more … funner (?).

Get ready to slice / julienne your 1C carrots, and 1C zucchini. Then cut 1C of cherry tomatoes in half. Other vegetables that could be good are small snow peas, corn kernels, broccoli (small florets), diced sweet peppers and any other vegetables that sound appealing. Once you are finished slicing better than a Slice-O-Matic, get out your P & P’s … pots and pans …

Really you just need the pot … Fill it about three quarters full of water, cover and place on stove top on high. Once it boils, add salt and 1 package (24oz / 518g) cheese tortellini (I like the ones that are multi-colored … orange and green … it kind of makes you think you are getting healthy vegetables in your carbohydrate-laden pasta), and cook until al dente (tender, but firm). Drain in colander, and run cold water over the pasta, until cooled down.

Toss pasta, vegetables and saucy stuff in a big bowl (and if you are nuts about nuts, throw in 3/4C walnuts … my family is nutty enough without them). Then chill until ready to eat!

It is great served with grilled meats, or on it’s own as the main event. It will be hard to eat only a little bit.

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