Truthful Tuesday

Christians are like rubber bands. We (our spiritual selves) get stretched. A lot! And then we shrink again. But if you notice, once a rubber band gets stretched significantly, it never goes back to it's exact old shape, it stays stretched out to a degree. And each time it is stretched it retains that stretched shape a little better. Just be sure it's God who's doing the stretching, He knows how far you can bend. Otherwise, you may just snap.

Raising Beautiful Daughters

I joined my husband on the last night of a summer Bible study he was attending on a night I'm usually busy, and I really enjoyed it, I really like the way this pastor teaches, and I love learning alongside my hubby.

There was one passage he used to support something else he was saying, and he emphasized this verse, Psalm 144: 12 - "Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace." And repeated for us women, look at what God says about your beauty, not society. But I felt like I was missing something, not quite sure I was supposed to value beauty like a pillar.

So today I did on study on it, looking up the verse in various translations on Biblegateway.com. Then I Googled the verse to see if anyone else had shared a study on the essence of this verse I was searching for.  Sure enough, I found it. And it was written by a father. It was so well written and fleshed out. It made me appreciate my own beauty and strength, and what it really means to God and should mean to me. I just had to save it here for 'one day', and figured, why not share :)

 

Three Things Thursday

Three super powers I wish I had!
(this was also another The Choice bachelor question, but after a geeky girl's dream - comic book movie overload this last year - can't help but think about how I might be able to attain this kind of mutation)

1. Telepath would be pretty cool. Not only could I know when people are telling the truth but I could control the minds of criminals...of course to stop them!

2. Shape shifter would also be pretty awesome. Fun for practical jokes, I could look like any gorgeous woman I wanted, and they  heal very quickly! Being the klutz I am, that will come in handy! Then after I trip embarrassingly I could hide in the form of a couch while my injury quickly heals :)

3. Since I'm a big fan of storms but often not exactly content with weather in general (usually too cold or too hot or too windy, etc.) I'd like the psionic power of Storm from X-Men, ability to control all weather in a certain radius. Now that would be sweet!

Wellness Wednesday

I've been sensing for awhile now that this was going to be a year where I may find significant triumph (and hard work) in my health. In every situation where I am learning/growing I hear the messages relate to food and health!

At times it's seemed conflicting, at first I sensed God telling me I can't control it with my knowledge and willpower, that my schedule and being strict with food is interfering with other priorities He's given me. Ok, so I stop scheduling my health, I just tried to make good choices. Then at other times He's telling me it's still a priority and He's not going to drop the subject until every food/health/exercise related choice is a God-approved choice. Well, I guess those messages don't really conflict, but it's hard to figure which priorities go where when the priorities conflict! Anyway, I've been feeling this way since about April. Waiting for Him to tell me more because I was clearly stuck.

Then at the Summit it happened, a break through. Rick Warren talked about doing things on our own effort. His analogy is that we're driving in a boat Eastward, auto-pilot on, but we want to head West. What all of humanity typically does is just crank that steering wheel with all their might, and use all their power to keep that wheel heading West, fighting that internal auto-pilot which is determined to turn that boat back East. We need to find out what our auto-pilot is and turn it off (turn it over to God). Easier said than done, but I knew that is exactly what I've been doing my whole life with my health, fighting the auto-pilot. To figure out what that auto-pilot is he suggested recognizing or asking yourself, "it is so like me to _______". Out of 10 times we do that we are likely to find a pattern. Guess what mine was....hmmm, food??  I reward myself with food, I punish myself with food, I medicate myself with food, I celebrate with food, I pacify myself with food, I entertain myself with food. Yuck. What an awful realization.

As it was a recovery ministry summit, of course I was learning about recovery, and since I'm technically new to recovery as a program I never officially did an inventory (Step 4) of my life and they suggested if you haven't done it through CR that you should go through it the official CR way for more integrity and credibility for the people you are leading through it. I've been meaning to, especially now that my small group is at that point, but I definitely realized I need to work through it to find out where that food auto-pilot originated and sort out the roots so I can finally get rid of them!

Then, on the last day we did an exercise I've done before, nailing a sin to a cross, a symbolic gesture, but this time it wasn't just for forgiveness it was to finally and fully turn something over to Christ (Step 3). Before they invited us up they reminded us of some of the Step 1 and 2 areas that can hinder us from Step 3, one of those verses was Romans 12:1 "give your bodies to God because of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind He will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship Him." Although in my mind I know my body is not my own, it's a gift, it is something I am responsible for, to be a good steward over, it is His temple, I still have resisted sacrificing it.

I still insisted the stewardship would be on my terms, I would decide what was sacrificed and what was not. I convinced myself I was doing what would be acceptable to Him. I even hashed out what it meant to make my body a temple for Him. Clearly the back and forth weight and motivation over the years proves how good a steward I have truly been. Not. I talk a great talk (discipline not deprivation, don't undermine your determination), I have 66 posts on health over 5 years, but in the end I was only willing to sacrifice physically, not spiritually. I physically disciplined myself but not spiritually.

But that's it. I'm done with my terms. I am finally out of denial and I realize I am utterly powerless. I nailed this to the cross Friday August 10, 2012.

I know this doesn't mean I have this thing beat. This means I'll actually be more prone to failure for awhile, during this shift in my thinking. I know it's going to be a struggle to turn my auto-pilot off and keep it off. To replace mindless eating habits with mindful eating habits. It's interesting how I've increased in inviting God into every area of my day, being in tuned (my increase in intuition) to where He may be guiding me, yet I feel like there is a disconnect at my meal times, that this just seems to stop happening during that time. Highly doubtful that's a coincidence, that I get God-blocked when I'm most susceptible to falling for temptation. 

It's great having intuition for opportunities to become 'Jesus in the flesh', but I also need sin-tuition to recognize when I am about to choose to give in to MY flesh. I'm hoping returning to saying a grace of gratitude before each meal (during preparation even) will help correct that, being thankful for the fuel and inviting God to spend my meal with me, I hope to become keenly aware of which are the God approved choices in my kitchen. At the Summit, one of the speakers spoke about temptation and how it isn't only a negative choice (sin) we are facing, if we choose to not fall to temptation and make the positive choice we are choosing spiritual growth. I'm choosing spiritual growth not continued body growth!

Things I Want My Children To Know Someday

I stopped this 'segment' on my blog a few years ago, you know, not wanting to think of the children I wasn't having. But, now that I've let myself believe that could happen again another one of these thoughts popped into my head a little while ago.

So here's my latest 'Things I Want My Children To Know Someday'

Each human being is a unique recipe of ingredients God assembled to create us. Iingredients He hand picked and blended until they were just the perfect balance of what He wanted us to become. We may have the exact same ingredients as someone else but never in the same quantities and combinations, meant to develop in a way no one else can.  Not everyone will appreciate our ingredients, but that's OK. Just like taste buds, everyone has different likes and dislikes, that's the result of our individual recipe.  We may not mix well with brussel sprouts and we may not mix well with chocolate (not THIS recipe! *points to self*). But there will always be ingredients we do mix well with, and they will enjoy our company, and we may even make something better together than we do apart.

Monthly Miscellany Monday

Here's my monthly collection of ordinary happenings and moments I don't want to forget.
~ hubby and I were invited to go out for lunch after Church with my ministry director and her husband. it's always nice to be able to chat about something other than ministry for a change, an opportunity to get to know each other better and bond over things that don't have anything to do with 'work'.

~ so I got a whim after a friend of mine chopped off her hair that I'd like to try it shorter too, the shortest I'll have willingly had it since grade 4! It's actually longer in the front but much shorter in the back, and I'm enjoying a 'hair free' neck in this heat wave we'v had for the second half of July!

~ Muki arrived again the evening of the 17th, while his momma went to Paris with her daughter! Wow! Couldn't we all just come along? :) 

~ I was just thinking it was time to follow up on my tattoo design when I got a call that she still wasn't 'feeling' my design and created something 'inspired' by the elements I wanted, so I went down to check it out. it wasn't my style, although it was beautiful, so she recommended me to another artist. I had come prepared with additional 'inspiration' closer to my design idea than the drawings I first provided. I brought this picture and she loved it! can't wait!

~ I spent the 17th out in Altona and Steinbach. I of course had to do my 'day with the newborn', oh yeah, and my sister. JK! I love getting hours of one-on-one sister time while I get to cuddle a newborn. And then get to play with Teigon when Tami was busy with Paxton. Then I stopped in Steinbach on the way back so that I could see my sister Jodi's new house. Their first house they've owned since they sold mom and dad's back to them about five years ago.  It's a really nice place they will be able to stay in for a long time, lots of room for the kidlings!

~ we received the worst call of our lives (so far, but hopefully ever) on the night of the 21st to find out my mom had a heart attack. we still can hardly believe all that happened in a week, because exactly a week later she was home. she's recovered now very well and other than some possible side-effects of her new medication, she feels like her recovery from the surgery aspect is pretty much done! it hasn't even been a month yet!

~ mom's heart attack was good timing on many fronts, after Paxton was born but before my trip to California, thanks mom :) while preparing for my trip I had a little event called a birthday, but it went by without a lot of fanfare because the usual family celebration was supposed to be the weekend after mom's heart attack, but not knowing when she'd be out or up to we just cancelled. my birthday dinner with Sean was also postponed due to I wanted it at a down town restaurant and downtown at this time of summer is just a little too crowded for us. I did however get lots of love on FB and I even received a lovely journal! bought BEFORE my request :) Thanks Meg!

~ also during this week before my trip, Sean had an epiphany about a career change, he told me about it, I validated the idea, we prayed about it, we tested it out financially and with a few respected people's opinions, and then went for it! Sean will be attending Red River evening courses to take Applied Counselling! Yay! It will take awhile because we've decided to not go into debt for school, so he will remain working until he's done, which will take a little longer, but we feel this is exactly where God has led him.

~ luckily right before leaving for California I did get the long weekend Monday off, but as usual Sean didn't, so I got it to myself. I packed, prepared and then visited my friend in her new house for the afternoon. I brought her this belated gift for her June birthday, which she loved, because she's a dancer of course.

~ then Tuesday, bright and early...for me, at 6 am I was picked up to go to the airport. I took Gravol to help with flight queasiness I've been getting the last few times and it knocked me out so I slept through most of the three flights down to Santa Ana/Orange County where we landed at 4 pm. our days and evenings were jam packed with things to do so other than seeing palm trees and being in a heat wave, even for California, I essentially really could have been anywhere. I didn't get to see the ocean or anything 'tourist-y'. but that's ok, the things I experienced at the conference were more than worth it! I did get to see a few things for the first time ever, including the Grand Canyon on the flight back home...shortly before I fell asleep again!

~we arrived home just about 4 pm on Saturday the 11th, Sean met me there and I was soooo happy to see him and be in his arms again. we finally got to have my birthday dinner and of course a trip debrief meeting :) then we spent the evening watching The Skit Guys videos, laughing until it hurt!

What a month!

Best Things in Life

~ The really tight hug I received from hubby when he met me at the airport upon returning from California a week ago.

Geeky Girl - Responsibility

It has been the summer for Comic Book movies and I'm loving it! :) And of course, the one-liners have been passing our lips frequently, I still can't stop repeating the Hulk's famous line after bashing Loki, "Puny demi god." Perfection!

Batman The Dark Knight Rises had a great one as well, "Maybe it's time we all stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have its day." Alfred is always good for one or two of the profound statements.

But the one that really got me was from The Amazing Spider-Man. Not even close to my favorite of all the comic movies this summer, but they reworked the line 'With great power comes great responsibility', a favorite of mine, and instead Uncle Ben says, "“If you can do good things for other people, you have a moral responsibility to do it.....You owe the world your gifts.” Some people are ticked at them for changing it but I think it's aimed more at the 'masses' now, it can and does apply to everyone. We see, more frequently than we want to, the the opportunities to do good things for other people.

A lot of people don't see themselves as having any power. They don't see the financial power they have. They don't see the influential power they have. They don't see the creative power they have. Yet, too many of us readily boast of our gifts, this is a point of pride but we have the same responsibility because there is power in our gifts.  We don't owe the world our gifts, but we do owe God. We won't ever have to answer to the world for not using our gifts responsibly, but we will have to answer to God.

Three Things Thursday

Three things I've done to show generosity to others:
(I watched the Choice yesterday, corny dating show, but the celebrity bachelors asked a question to help elimate, and this was one of them, I thought, 'finally! a question that could actually determine something profound!).

1. During our honeymoon we had a really awesome waitress in the hotel restaurant, we had her every morning at breakfast, so our last breakfast there we tipped her just a little more than our entire bill.

2. We took a page from my dad's book and bought supper for a couple that prayed before they ate at the same restaurant as Sean and I were eating at several years ago.

3. Sean had a co-worker a few years ago who had an unauthorized collection directly from her bank account, leaving her with no money for two weeks, so we gave her a $100 gift card to Safeway.

We both dream of the day when we can constantly do random acts of kindness like this and more!

I'm still here

really, I've been here, reading your blogs, but haven't had a lot of time to write my own. between nephew, mom, birthdays, California, and now of course the aftermath-of-knowledge-overload-that-needs-to-be-processed, the posts are far and few I know but I will have my usual Misc.Monday catch up, hopefully soon, and I have a few posts started just not finished, so there could be an influx once I have some time! thanks for still checking in though :)

Laugh of the Day

Really, it was the laughs of every day out here, Wednesday through Friday, a couple times a day, that we were laughing until we were crying, splitting our guts, in stitches! I had seen a few of The Skit Guys video's before, the ones I saw were humorous but this was hilarious! Live the energy was awesome and they improved as well. This is one of the funniest skits, I don't know if I've ever laughed so hard in my life.

Three Things Thursday

Three things I have never seen before this week:
(sorry it's a little late....been crazy busy here in California!)
1. Salt Lake City Utah - flight connection, this is all I saw of it.

2. Dr. Henry Cloud in person! Author of Changes That Heal, Boundaries and many more.

3. The premier showing of the movie Home Run! 

Right Now

Shopping for Sean's school supplies. I'm such a geek at Staples, I squealed (quietly) more than once. But we were there to shop for Sean, not me.

Yes, you read that right, Sean is going back to school! :)  We're pretty excited for this new path in life!

Things Grey's Anatomy Didn't Prepare Me For

So, it's been 6 days since I spent any time in the hospital with my mom (because she went home Saturday! YAY!) and probably that many days since I've mentioned anything about it here, so I thought I'd recap that experience from my point of view....ways in which I felt all the medical shows failed to prepare me for sitting at a loved one's bedside in a hospital:

1. For a serious health issue or surgery, there are far too few machines pictured in those hospital rooms. I barely remember noticing more than one or two, and my mom had seven the first day and a bit, gradually getting off them until the last one (oxygen) was removed on her second last day there.

2. Connected to that point, is the t.v. hospital rooms are far too quiet, probably because they don't have all the machines they need! Every few seconds one of the machines attached to mom was beeping, it took me a few hours of jumping at each one to finally realize they were no cause for alarm. Just annoying, and the nurses seemed to think so too :)

3. Also connected to the machine point, the patients on t.v. have it easy! The amount of tubes going in and out of mom (attached to all those machines) made her almost cyborg looking! Seriously, I wasn't sure I counted all of them but I definitely counted 11, with 3 of those attached to valves that attached to 3 more tubes each, so technically 17.

4. On t.v. it is pretty obvious who is a doctor and who is a nurse, and that's just about the only people you need to identify, other than maybe the Chief. I had a really hard time catching on to who was who coming into mom's area, dark blue scrubs, bright blue scrubs, turquoise scrubs, green scrubs, any pretty scrub you want, and long white coats. They all had different jobs, it took me awhile but I finally caught on to which were nurses, orderlies, janitorial, surgeons, doctors, etc.

5. Nurses need their own show. I've heard about how nurses can fill in for doctors on quite a few procedures but this really showed me up close and personal that nurses really run the show! Especially in intensive care anyway, the nurse was in the room, or just outside, the whole shift, other than a break, making a lot of the decisions based on mom's progress. The nurse was the one who gave the report at rounds, not a doctor or resident. The doctor's only came in twice the whole 8 hours I was there on Monday. And the surgeon actually said, 'don't let us get in the way of your job', treating her like 'the boss'. In general recovery I didn't see that from the doctor though....but I also really didn't like that doctor, but that leads to my next point.

6. Seems to me most t.v. doctors are portrayed as the 'higher functioning and therefore incapable of a nice bedside manner' and nurses are the compassionate care givers. At St. B I was impressed with all the nurses and they were definitely all so compassionate, each in their own way - which wasn't necessarily Florence Nightengale, but you could tell how much they cared and wanted to help, some so tender and bent on giving mom her dignity, others with a sense of humor to make it all not seem so harsh - even though it was.
But I was even more floored by the bedside manner of that same surgeon who cared for my mom in ICU. He was so calm and easy to talk to, he kept me informed and explained so I could understand, and even if he had news that wasn't the best, which he didn't water down, but explained in a reassuring way. And he remembered my name! My name isn't on a chart but he would come in and say 'Hi Lori!' I was floored.
It's too bad the same couldn't have been said for the general recovery doctor, he was even a little worse than I expected for bedside manner, didn't seem to be giving credibility to the nurse vouching for my mom's motivation to get independent, and pushing mom as though she was avoiding the work of recovery. But he was the one exception to an otherwise awesome group of staff we encountered!

And a few miscellaneous surprises; Grey's used a white board for surgeries but even St. B had a smart board for this, food in the cafeteria was a huge selection and had a lot of yummy, healthy options (yet I still saw the majority of doctors with pizza or fries), and there are no time-lapse commercials that make tests and tests results happen faster! The only thing that moved fast was that first day at St. B where they moved mom into the OR within an hour and a half of deciding which surgery to do. 

It turns out, if you are scheduled for a bypass surgery there is a few less surprises, as they will actually give you a 'tour' of patients at varying stages of recovery so it's less of a shock and you can be more prepared. But prepared or not, we made it through this, and in record time, almost exactly a week from mom getting the blood clot pains to being release! Hallelujah!

Three Things Thursday

Three things, Lori's 'believe it or not' edition
(inspired by the 'fun facts' game we played at our leaders BBQ, I thought I'd use it here too).

1. I have fired a 9MM gun and hit my target at 15 ft (approx.) on the 3rd try. My husband fired an AK-47 originating from an undisclosed desert, war-torn country.


2. I had 7th row seats to the Rolling Stones here in Winnipeg in 1997.


3.I was in the line for the Mind Bender (West Edmonton Mall) rollercoaster the night it crashed off the rails and killed people, including my neighbor's babysitter.

Reading Rainbow

I'm calling this semi-annual  post topic "Reading Rainbow" because after I came across this picture, I'm smitten with having a reading nook/happy place that looks like this!

So, I've finally finished a few books lately that I wanted to note here, my reading at bedtime has really put a dent in my book pile although it's still growing :)

Case for the Real Jesus

Loved just as much as the Case For Christ.  Deals with what people here about Christianity today, everyone has their own skewed version, trying to make Christianity what they want it to be. Like The Divinci Code, giving credence to illegitimate gospels, which this book looks at objectively. Experts weighing in on credibility of historical texts was enlightening, but also re-verified for me the validity of the Bible and the process it went through to become. Very interesting!

The Me I Want To Be

Sean read this one first, it was his pick from the stack of books we bought at last year’s WCL Summit.  He couldn’t stop himself from sharing with me things he was learning every chapter so I put aside my stack of books to read this next. WOW!  Such amazing insights!  It has shown me how to get to the ‘me I want to be’, how I’m wired to connect with God, and how much I am already doing that is yielding results that I didn’t know before.  Spoke on great topics like; our purpose, restoration, worrying, difficult people, and so much more.
I have found myself working more on the best version of myself rather than working on my spiritual maturity. As the book says (paraphrased), “don’t work at trying to grow, just let the Spirit flow”.  Tapping into the Holy Spirit and letting the Spirit move me is the way I’ll become my best self.  I found myself weekly sharing insights from this book with my small group and even borrowed some sections when I was a speaker one Friday night at Recovery.  I want to read this again to make notes, but it is also a small group study which Sean and I are determined to bring to Riverwood :)

Sun Stand Still

This was an excellent book to read after The Me I Want To Be, in fact, TMIWTB’s last points talked about Caleb & Joshua, and that’s where Sun Stand Still picked up!  It’s really been challenging me that the best version of me has even more powerful potential than I have ever thought.  I’ve had audacious faith in God for the last few years but this book is helping me have audacious faith in God’s plan for me as well! 

The author says if our idea of what God has planned for us isn’t intimidating to us it’s probably insulting to God! Wow! He is great at demonstrating God’s desire to accomplish in our weakness/imperfections something awesome that can only give Him glory. He uses a lot of Biblical stories to illustrate his points, several real life examples from him and his church, and he has many awesome analogies.  One in particular that stood out, and that I loved, is the image of the wave jumper.  http://www.stevenfurtick.com/personal/wave-jumper/.

New books on the go:

Chasing Daylight

Guide to End Times Prophecies