Friesencold

It’s official, I do believe, that Bauer has given up his afternoon naps. Now I feel like I need to be taking them instead, mainly because I’m having to get myself used to not having a protected chunk of time in the afternoon during which I knew both kids would be asleep. That makes me tired just thinking about it.

However, I’ve made a decision in the last few days to go to bed early, which for me is between 10 and 10:30, so I can get up a half hour before the kids and have some protected time then. I am spending the early morning time reading and journaling and praying for help for myself and others. What I’m reading is The Message Bible, just the New Testament right now, but I’m going from start to finish like it’s a book. I do enjoy books, so I thought that reading the Bible in a different translation like it’s a book would give me a fresh perspective. It was Frederick Buechner who inspired me to try this out by something he wrote in the June 15 reading from his book Listening to Your Life.

Buechner is giving some practical suggestions on reading the Bible and numbers 3, 4, and 5 really stood out to me.

3. If you have even as much as a nodding acquaintance with a foreign language, try reading the Bible in that. Then you stand a chance of hearing what the Bible is actually saying instead of what you assume it must be saying because it is the Bible…..

4. If you don’t know a foreign language, try some English version that you’ve never tried before – the New English Bible, Goodspeed’s translation, J. B. Phillips’s New Testament, or any other you can lay your hands on. The more far-out the better. Nothing could be farther out than the Bible itself….

5. It may sound like fortune-telling, but don’t let that worry you. Let the Bible fall open in your lap and start there. If you don’t find something that speaks to you, let it fall open to something else. Read it as though it were as exotic as the I Ching or the Tarot deck. Because it is.

Pretty cool, huh? Yeah, that’s the feeling I get almost every morning when I read what Buechner has to say in Listening to Your Life. I think getting up early and starting my day with Buechner, God, and myself is really going to help me listen to my life. And hopefully it will give me more time for writing in the afternoons. That’s my plan anyway. We’ll be launching a MealBaby blog very soon so I’m working on some posts for that as well.

Yesterday afternoon, when Bauer wasn’t napping, he helped me prepare a Peach-Blueberry-Cherry Crisp that we could have for dessert later that evening. I didn’t take a picture before we dug in, but here’s what was left last night.

While the crisp was cooking, we took a family outing to Trader Joe’s to pick up a few things we needed, including some vanilla soy ice cream to go with the crisp. I thought I could buy just the vanilla kind, but realized I would have had to buy a mango-vanilla combo to get vanilla and I wasn’t in the mood to dig around the container to try and scoop out just vanilla for everyone. So I ended up buying this instead.

It’s like what you get at Red Mango. The pleasantly tart taste of plain vanilla yogurt with live cultures, and even though our family doesn’t consume cow’s-milk based products very often at all, I’ll have to say this yogurt was a good treat for all of us. Bauer just kept saying it tasted like yogurt (and he meant the non-frozen kind that he loves but rarely gets to eat).

Unfortunately our trip to Trader Joe’s led to the discovery that they no longer have the miniature shopping carts in the stores for the kids. Now that’s a fairly large bummer, and I’m a huge fan of Trader Joe’s to begin with. When we asked at customer service, they said a lot of people had complained about getting run into by kids with carts. I can see that, I guess, but they already took away the balloons and now the tiny carts, too? The cashier did give Bauer a row of stickers that was as tall as him, probably 47, and that was fun for the car ride home at least. But he’ll sure miss the carts and helping me shop that way.

At the moment (2:34 pm) Cash isn’t napping but he isn’t upset either. He’s been back in his crib entertaining himself and making all kinds of noise for an hour and a half (with a poopy break in the middle of that). He was so rubbing his eyes just after lunch so I figured he’d go right to sleep. I think I may have missed his tired window today. At least he’s happy back there, and Bauer is happy now too, as he’s just turned on the Woody Woodpecker DVD that I got him from the library for the Letter W. He finished his Quiet Reading Time a few minutes ago and is now enjoying some TV time while I finish this blog. If Cashie isn’t up by 3pm, I guess we’ll call it a day for naps and go on to something else.

Now for the something else you’ve been waiting for: The Letter V and all the fun we had with that.

Bauer used his body to make the letter V.

Then he used some craft supplies we bought at Michael’s to decorate the blue Visor he picked out.

Here you can see his finished Visor and the Vitamin Water he chose at Meijer in honor of the Letter V.

For an art project, Bauer cut out pictures of Vegetables from some old issues of Everyday Food Magazine.

Then for dinner a couple nights ago, I cut up a ton of Vegetables (I almost couldn’t believe my eyes when I tried to start stirring these around in my big Wok)…

And we had Vegetable Ratatouille for dinner.

We read some good V books and Bauer LOVED Violet the Pilot.

He also loved making this little Volcano erupt using baking soda, vinegar, and food coloring.

I got this Volcano from the inside of a cereal box when I was a little girl. I’ve saved it all these years because I thought it was so cool, and I even knew where it was when I finally had a use for it!

For another art project, I helped Bauer make a Valentine for TJ. I’m still not sure why he put an extra A on the end of Dad, but he didn’t want help with spelling that word.

Bauer decided to make a Valentine monster on the back of the card, and after writing the letters EEKK, he asked me what it spelled, and so we named his monster “Eek!”

We finished off the Letter V with the V verse that Bauer learned last year when we were doing a verse for each letter of the alphabet. Usually I just write out the verse for the letter we are working on, and leave some letters or words out and have Bauer fill in the blanks with my help. But this time I decided to have Bauer illustrate the verse since it seemed pretty easy to do. He was quite hesitant to begin drawing, even after I’d written out each phrase and drawn the four blank boxes. So then I sat with him and we talked about what was happening in each phrase of the verse and how he could draw it. I was quite impressed. And just so you know, the solitary place where Jesus went to pray was the jungle.

And also just so you know, it’s 3pm and that little booger still isn’t asleep! Two hours and no nap! Oh well….I better go get him up, so I’m out of here.

I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project, and although you’d think it would be making me happier, I think it’s kind of making me unhappier because I’m realizing more and more how many things I want to work on and improve in my life. That was already one of the things I spend a lot of mental energy on, trying to work on myself, how to be a better mom, a better wife, a better person in general. Like I’ve said a million times before, other than God, it’s quotes and words that are helping me as I build and re-build my life. So regardless of the happiness-unhappiness spectrum I find myself moving back and forth on as I read Rubin’s book, I’m really glad to be reading it.

The author spends a year working on what she calls her Happiness Project. Each month she tackles a different area of her life that she thinks she could improve in. I’ve just finished reading April on the topic of parenthood. One idea she puts forth is that of fog happiness, which is “the kind of happiness you get from activities that, closely examined, don’t really seem to bring much happiness at all – yet somehow they do.” She talks about how having children falls into the category of fog happiness: “It surrounds me, I see it everywhere, despite the fact that when I zoom in on any particular moment, it can be hard to identify.”

I second that notion, for sure.

I also really liked these lines of hers:

“I had two healthy, affectionate little girls [for me, it's boys, of course], and I wanted my actions as a parent to rise to the level of that good fortune. I wanted to stop my quick bursts of temper – I indulged in that behavior all too often, and then, because it made me feel bad, I behaved even worse. I wanted to be more lighthearted. I wanted to take steps to preserve the happy memories from this time.”

I second all that too.

I want so much from life and it all gets so complicated sometimes with all these desires I have, but then it becomes so simple again when I remember words like these from Richard Rohr’s book Everything Belongs:

“There’s no answer, no problem-solving, simply awareness.” Rohr also thrilled me with his words, “Our private darkness is no great surprise. Who cares? Who cares where I am on the ladder of perfection? That’s an egocentric question. ‘Where am I?’ ‘How holy am I?’ become silly questions. If God can receive me, who am I not to receive myself?”

Anne Lamott put it this way in her book Imperfect Birds, which I’m now in the middle of going back through and writing out all my favorite parts, 104 of them to be exact, in my Goody Book.

I’m about a third of the way through doing that and it’s been hours of fun so far, and lots more to come. I really sincerely love more than almost anything in life that I get to enjoy and savor and re-read and hopefully one day become all the words that mean so much to me.

Here’s the part from Imperfect Birds:

Rosie kept asking Rae, through tears, just to please tell her this one time what the secret was. She had never felt lower, skinnier, uglier, more deservedly alone. “Okay, okay,” said Rae. “Here it is.” She wrapped the scarf around Rosie’s shoulders, then leaned over to whisper in her ear: “You are pre-approved.” A calm sense of relief had filled Rosie’s chest, like stepping out of the cold into a warm car.

For me, reading these words, and having the privilege to re-read them and think about them, and now to share them, is like stepping out of the cold into a warm car.

TJ surprised me with something that definitely made me happy, even after I’d had a horrible day with the kids yesterday. It wasn’t entirely horrible (going to Jamba Juice and the park with Jaime and her kids after church was good), but I was definitely in one of my “mean-Mommy” funks a lot of the day yesterday and so it was pretty fitting to get to read the chapter on Parenthood today from The Happiness Project book. The surprise was from Amazon and how crazy that it arrived to our house, via some white delivery van, on Sunday late afternoon! I don’t think Amazon delivers on Sunday, but God does. I didn’t deserve a present for sure, but I did feel very known and loved by TJ when he opened the package and handed me Shauna Niequist’s new book Bittersweet. And it’s light blue!!

Shauna is the writer of one of my favorite books from all of last year, Cold Tangerines. I’ve read a few chapters of the new book already and am happy to have it in my life right now. Thank you, and I love you, TJ.

These are some pictures from almost two weeks ago. TJ and Bauer built a snowman after lunch on a Saturday. Bauer finally got to use the snowman accessories that Gigi gave him for Christmas.

Our snowman is still standing, even though it’s 47 degrees out today. All of the accessories had fallen off, save the hat, but Bauer remedied that today when he came from from Parents Day Out.

Now on to other truly random stuff from lately….

I finished copying down all the parts of Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years that I had underlined. Now TJ says he wants to read the book again. It’s that good.

My first attempt at homemade bread was less than stellar. I made the “Almost No-Work Whole Grain Bread” from Mark Bittman’s book Food Matters. It truly was almost no work, but I think I shouldn’t have added quinoa to the dough. It just made the bread a little too crunchy. Also I should have oiled the loaf pan even more; I thought I was using plenty of oil, but half of the bottom crust stayed in the pan when I turned the loaf out. Rather than use the bread for sandwiches as I had hoped, we’ll probably have it on the side with our dinner tonight. I will try again soon.

TJ and I celebrated his birthday recently with a trip to downtown Chicago. We left our kids with some good friends and made the long trek on a Friday evening to our favorite restaurant in these parts. Bandera! We got our usual fare of house veggie burgers and TJ used his iPhone to take pictures of our meals.

TJ got his burger with mashed potatoes.

And I had the amazing peanut coleslaw.

After dinner, we went shopping at The North Face Store on Michigan Avenue, so that TJ could pick out and purchase a winter jacket. I had secretly emailed some of our family members, asking if anyone who was planning to give TJ money for his birthday would be willing to give toward the purchase of the jacket. I heard back from several people and was able to surprise TJ over dinner by telling him we could go buy a jacket for him. It was fun going into the store that night, knowing we were there to buy. TJ found just what he was looking for but I have no picture to show you. Later that night, we watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire, which I had rented from the library for $1 and which after seeing the movie, I would paid $20 for a story that good. It was nice having a night without the kids, but knowing they were in such good hands with our friends. Bauer was asking this morning (a week later) when he can go back to their house. The reason he was asking is because we were having waffles for breakfast and Bauer loves the Aunt Jemima syrup that he got to have at Branton’s house.

I got an iPhone yesterday. That’s pretty exciting. I am liking plenty about it, but haven’t yet figured out to use it with one hand like I could with my other phone. The church where TJ works recently switched cell phone providers and when AT&T was decided upon, the iPhone for TJ was also decided upon. I’m an add-on to TJ’s plan so I  could have gotten the iPhone too. But I decided to go with the Samsung Magnet because it was cheaper and I didn’t really think I needed all the extra capabilities, but after a month of TJ seeing me text on that little thing, he decided enough was enough. He really wanted me to enjoy the greatness of the freakin-awesome iPhone, as he would say, and now I thank him for it. So that’s that.

I got some godly sorrow this week too. It was good how God led me to that through a number of things all on the same day. I have been reading a book called Grooming the Next Generation for Success. I have some mixed feelings about the book so far, but I have definitely been convicted to be more intentional about what we are or are not doing as we train Bauer and Cash for the future. Then there was a phone call I had with my friend Jaime about some of our children’s behavior recently, coupled with a long email I received from my friend Gretchen about things they are doing to groom their children for success, that made me realize how short I have fallen from being the kind of parent God wants me to be and that I know I want to be. I found myself that day and night telling God how sorry I was for not being better, but there was also a lot of hope in my prayer, knowing that God is going to help me remember and help me change. I have noticed a difference in myself in the past two days in the way I interact with Bauer on the little things and I am truly grateful for God being at work in my life.

I am also kinda grateful the Olympics are over. We enjoyed them, don’t get me wrong. We had the TV on probably every night but two. But the Olympics were totally cramping my style with Arts Hour. I couldn’t focus on reading when we had the excitement of the Olympics to watch all the time. But now that it’s over, I want to get back to some good old-fashioned reading. Anybody wanna recommend a great story?

Last but not least, it seems to me that MealBaby is picking up some momentum. We have a new developer and are in the process of making some updates and changes to the site. Please recommend the site to anyone you know who needs meals delivered. We might even see about getting a MealBaby app for the iPhone. How cool would that be?

I’ve been thinking about story a lot lately. I just finished reading Donald Miller’s book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and my favorite part of the book was the part about Bob Goff and his family and the story they are living. I want to have a story like that, or just a story period. I am going to go back and write down all the lines I underlined in a little bird notebook my sister gave me for Christmas. I love words and quotes and lines from books, and I love having them all together in one place so they can add up to something in my life.

Here is just one line I loved from this book, “You become the character in the story you are living, and whatever you were is gone.”

I am also thinking about placing an order for some new supplements from Hallelujah Acres. I have never taken a greens supplement before, but now that Hallelujah Acres has introduced a berry blend of their well-known BarleyMax product, I was thinking I might want to try it out. I worked it out, and the cost to take BarleyMax Berry would be $1 a day.

I also want to order some of their professional strength probiotics. I realized after starting to see the chiropractor that the probiotics I have been taking don’t have nearly enough strains, especially if I am hoping for that to help resolve the hormonal issue I referenced earlier. The chiro recommends 20 billion strains a day, and for me, he said 40 billion might be good for a while. The cost of this amount would also be $1 a day. So just for these 2 supplements alone, I would be spending $2 a day on myself. That’s not counting the Iodine supplement I am also considering, or the Vitamin D3, Vitamin B12, multivitamin, or chia gel I am currently using.

I was thinking about the 67 and the 20 which are numbers our church talks about all the time. 67% of people in the world are far from God, and 20% of people in the world live on less than $1 a day. And here I was, fixing to spend $2 a day to take a concentrated greens supplement and probiotics. I am thinking about what I think about this.

What if I took that $1 a day I was going to use on BarleyMax and actually did something different and specific with it?

I think it is so interesting that there are so many causes that a person could get involved with. For example, I was at the train station one day last week with the kids. I took them there to see the trains but it was cold enough that day that we had to go inside the train station to wait for the next train to come. I saw an old man sitting there in the train station. He was wearing glasses and he was holding the paperback novel he was reading very close to his face. I couldn’t see the man’s face as his back was to me, but I kept looking at how close he was holding the book to his face in order to see the words. It made me think, what if he needs a new prescription for his glasses and he can’t afford that, so he has to make do with the glasses he has and hold whatever he is reading so close to his eyes in order to see the words? I felt very sad for that man. I told TJ about him that night, and I have thought of him and felt sad about him multiple times since that day.

What if I found a way that I could give the money I would have spent on BarleyMax to an organization that helps people who can’t afford to pay for getting glasses, or new prescriptions, or vision check ups? That would be a true gift, to enable people to see. What if I couldn’t see the words that mean so much to me? Without the words, I would not be nearly as healed as I am. Words heal me in ways I cannot describe with words and what if that healing is what I would be offering by helping people to see with their eyes? I am just thinking about all this and wanted to share it with you.

I also wanted to tell you what is on Bauer’s little mind. Besides loving Caillou, which we discovered during the itchy days of chicken pox when all he did all day was watch TV, Bauer is truly head-over-heels about the little Lego instruction booklet and product catalog that came with the Lego City police helicopter set I bought for him recently.

I have never seen Bauer so attached to one thing for so long (except Tucker). He has been carrying the little booklet around with him for days and almost always has it turned to the one page with the big green Lego airplane that sits in the middle of the Lego airport scene. He says multiple times a day how much he loves that airplane. If he happens to forget about the Lego booklet for a little while, as soon as he remembers, he is quick to ask me where his airplane book is (and of course, I always know). He wanted to go to Target the other day just to look at the Lego stuff. He wanted to know when his birthday is and if he can get the airplane for his birthday. He wanted to know if he can get it sooner with the money in his jars or if he sells stuff he has (yes, my idea). He keeps wanting to know how much the airplane costs. He took the booklet in the bedroom before his nap today and wanted to lay on the bed and look at the airplane page for a few minutes before he went to sleep. He wanted the book left open to the airplane page when I put it on the nightstand by the bed while he took his nap.

This whole thing is just so cute for me to see, that Bauer has a desire. Something he really truly wants. I like the idea that we can try to teach Bauer to be resourceful through this want of his. Like, if you want something in life, what can you trade or give up to get what you want? I am also thinking, though, about how to teach him that we are not entitled to anything, that all we have is God’s, and that what other people need is way more important than what we want.

“There’s no answer, no problem-solving, simply awareness.”  (Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr)

Please forgive my typing errors in my earlier blog from today, if you saw them before TJ fixed them. I think I must have been half-asleep or something.

And a quote that speaks to that is this:

“The only true perfection available to us is the honest acceptance of our imperfection.” (Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr)

I’m chewing on this, too:

“You get a feeling when you look back on life that that’s all God really wants from us, to live in a body he made and enjoy the story and bond with us through the experience.” (A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller)

And finally, but never finally:

“Spirituality is about seeing. It’s not about earning or achieving. It’s about relationship rather than results or requirements. Once you see, the rest follows. You don’t need to push the river, because you are in it. The life is lived within us, and we learn how to say yes to that life.” (Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr)

Ummm, go buy the book already.

I wrote these four quotes on index cards earlier this evening, but I haven’t decided where to post them yet. For now, I’m just toting them around with me from spot to spot: kitchen table, desk, coffee table, bathroom counter. I guess I will put them by my bedside tonight.

Last night the strangest thing happened to me. I have been feeling bad for almost a week now and I thought it was just a cold, but then yesterday I had started to think maybe it’s a sinus infection from how much pressure I was feeling on the right side of my head and how stuffy my right nostril had continued to be. TJ and I had just settled down to watch the first episode of the new season of LOST and I noticed my back was starting to hurt. I thought maybe it was because I was sitting in a different chair than usual, or just that I was turning my head to see the TV. I moved to my usual chair where I sit to read (that never makes me hurt!) and I even turned the chair to face the TV so I wouldn’t have to turn my head, but the pain just continued to get worse and worse.

Then around 9:45, I started feeling this awful ache in the left side of my body. It is hard to describe how it felt, but along with the achiness I also started shaking, sort of like a chill came over me and I couldn’t warm myself up. Fifteen minutes later, just as LOST was ending, I was in complete tears, feeling like there is something majorly wrong with me and why can’t I relax? What is going on that is making my back and left side hurt so much? Why can’t I stop shaking? My whole body felt tense and miserable and I was truly thinking I might end up in the hospital if things didn’t improve. I had no idea how I was ever going to get to sleep, and I knew that sleep was one of my greatest needs at this point as I had been up since 3 am due to not being able to sleep the night before from all the congestion in my head. I even wondered if this whole episode was my body’s reaction to not getting enough rest this last week, even though I’ve tried! I never knew that breathing through my nose had so much to do with me sleeping, but it obviously does.

Well, I decided I should try to make it to the bed and see if that would ease any of the pain, so TJ helped me get up off the couch and begin moving. I was like a zombie, walking with my eyes closed. I felt like this must be how a person with a migraine just goes into a dark room to just be in there until things pass and they can get on with life. Once I got situated on the bed on my right side (the non-hurting side), TJ got warm covers for me. Then I asked TJ to just put his arm around me and put pressure against my body. That was the only thing that helped at all, just having the pressure to keep me from shaking as badly.

I was just laying there, all stuffy, crying, shaking, aching, not knowing what is going on, what is taking over my body. And then TJ started praying for me. When he was done and we were silent for a few minutes, TJ began saying that this could be our enemy the devil’s attempt to stop the good things God has been doing in my life. I truly have been blessed again and again lately with things I feel like God is allowing me to see about life, and the real reality, through the book I am reading called Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr. That would be a whole other story to tell, and I will in time. But the main thing that’s happening to me is that I’m getting free! I am letting go! I am becoming less and more all at the same time! TJ began praying again, this time against what the devil would possibly be up to in my life. He spoke the name of Jesus which is always the most powerful name to speak. As TJ prayed this second prayer, I felt the strangest most peaceful calm come over my body. The pain in my back subsided and the shaking stopped. Stopped! I was able to lay there calmly and begin to rest. I also began to see firsthand that what is, is the great teacher (that’s from Rohr’s book).

Once God answered like that, I felt such a desire to praise him. So I prayed for a bit, and after that, TJ and I began to talk. We just lay there on the bed, talking, and it was as if time had stopped. It didn’t matter to me at that point if it was 10:30 or midnight. All that mattered was that TJ was there for me and I was going to be okay.

TJ was there for me. He was really truly there. And that counted for so much. As I lay there thinking, I imagined me in the place of TJ, and Bauer in the place of me. I imagined myself thinking about all the things I’d rather be doing than just being here with Bauer. I imagined how I would feel like I was being hindered from accomplishing tasks. Then I thought of myself and TJ in the current situation, and how it so strongly felt like what TJ was doing by being there with me, just resting with me and staying with me, was something huge. It counted so much and I don’t know how to say it differently than that. I feel like I was able to see how Bauer’s needing me to be with him, in times of sickness or sadness or childness (which would just mean daily), is a need that counts just as much as any task I could do. It is huge and thank God, some scales finally came off my eyes to let me see that.

God taught me so much through that hour and a half long experience last night. There’s a line in Rohr’s book that says, Have you been loved well by someone? I know last night that I was loved well by TJ. I let him love me and it felt good to be so needy that that is all you can do, just let yourself be loved. I do not have much experience with this in life because I have lived with the belief that as long as I feel good about myself, it doesn’t matter what others think of me, whether they like me or not (and like could just as easily be called love in this sense). Well, I am beginning to see that it does matter about others because letting them love me is a very good start to letting God love me.

Did you notice the second meaning in that question about being loved well? It’s as if God love for me and TJ’s love for me are what made me well last night. Well in body and a lot more well in soul and spirit than I’ve been in a long time.

This evening I am doing a lot better. I got some Afrin nasal spray and my, oh, my – how did I not know about this stuff sooner! I recently mentioned to TJ that I was thinking maybe I should take a week off from working out, but little did I know that was practically going to happen by default. Only this afternoon did I start thinking how nice it sounded to go outside and take the boys for a walk in the stroller. I told Bauer we could walk over to the train station after Cash’s nap, but I didn’t know Cash was going to sleep till 4:45 – a solid 3 hours! We ended up not being able to go, but I think I might be up for a walk tomorrow morning.

While Cash was sleeping, Bauer and I did some things in the kitchen. First I cut up veggies to go in our chili tonight while Bauer pretended to cook his playdough pancakes in a pot on the stove. Then we washed grapes. Bauer did a good deal of the separating of the grapes from the stems and all of the hands-in-the-water washing.

Yes, I resorted to the "don't smile" technique and it worked!

While Bauer was busy with the grapes, I decided to make the chocolate pudding recipe my friend Hannah shared with me a while back. It’s not your typical pudding – it’s made with avocados! – but I really thought it would be good since I used similar ingredients for the eggless chocolate cupcakes I made for the boys’ birthday party last fall. If nothing else, I figured I could tell Bauer it was yogurt and that is a kid that loves yogurt. I have had to explain to him recently why we don’t buy yogurt. He knows some of his friends get yogurt and he often asks for yogurt if he sees it at the store. My explanation was something to the effect that some people use cow’s milk and some people don’t. I did promise him, though, that we’d look into yogurt made from soy, almond, rice or coconut milk at Whole Foods. So many options!

So, back to my pudding…It was just 3 ingredients: 2 avocados, 1 cup dates, and 1/2 cup cocoa powder. Put everything in the food processor and let it do the work!

My food processor is usually the bomb, but on this I just couldn’t seem to get the pudding smooth enough. I’m not sure if it was because the dates I used were a little on the hard side or what. I kept blending and blending but finally decided enough was enough. Bauer wanted a taste (and then another) and I kept asking him if it was chewy. He seemed to like it, but we’ll see if that’s still the case tomorrow when he can actually taste things (I don’t know why I didn’t think of the fact that neither of us would even know if we liked it with our stuffy noses, but oh well….) When TJ got home tonight, Bauer was excited to show him our creation, which he kept calling “chocolate stuffing.” I guess that’s a little more accurate with our noses anyway.

This book I’m reading, Everything Belongs by Richard Rohr, is really turning my world upside down. These lines just earned 5 little stars in the margin on page 90:

“Life does not care what I like or don’t like. It doesn’t matter a bit. If we stay in the world of preference and choice, we keep ourselves as the reference point. As if it matters what color I like.”

Whoa, what am I supposed to do with that? There again is the focus on “I.”

I am really grateful to a God who lets me be a part of this mystery. He let me be born and as Rohr says earlier in the book, “God is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another it means that God is choosing us now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn.”

I think I am starting to see what life is asking of me, and that is to die. Die to everything I have ever known or exalted about myself. Death first, then life can come. Losing myself to find myself. And this isn’t pie-in-the-sky “feeling” stuff. This is lived out in the daily-ness of it all. This is me giving Bauer my attention when he calls for me to look at something – I can choose to really look or to pretend to look. This is me getting up to pick up Cash’s fork off the floor again when I’d rather TJ or Bauer get up and do it. This is me letting go and oh, how it might hurt to do so. But it is the hurting that will bring the healing.

Two more quotes from Rohr:

“What can’t happen if we live entirely within the small “I” is, quite simply, love. Love is almost not possible there….When we live out of ego, we impose our demands on reality. But when we live in God’s presence, we await reality’s demands on us.”

“The private self is clearly an illusion largely created by thinking. My life is not about me. I am about life!…Don’t take this private thing so seriously. The primary philosophical and spiritual problem in the West is the lie of individualism. Individualism makes church almost impossible. It makes community almost impossible. It makes compassion almost impossible.”

Wow – There is just so much here, now. And I am here, now. And God is here, now. And all of that is just about the most amazing thing ever.

That, and this: How did Richard Rohr come to see all of this, and not just to see it, but to write it in a way that I can feel it more deeply than I have felt most any other thing in life? The answer only makes God even more real and true.