Quieting the Mind

I'm and introverted perfectionist, and as such, my mind has a tendency to try to run away from me. I often equate the struggle keeping up with my thoughts to being in a hamster wheel that is spinning faster than I can keep up. Anyway...A friend asked the other day how to quiet the lies that Satan speaks into our minds, and I thought that question was worth addressing here. I am clearly not an expert on controlling the mind (which is why I need Jesus), but here are a few things that I do when my thoughts are going a mile a minute, and often in a negative direction.

1) Say, "Jesus" out loud over and over again.

There is power in the name of Jesus! (There's a great song about this, too: "Break Every Chain.")

2) Say, "I rebuke you, Satan, in Jesus' name" out loud.

A friend once told me that Satan is a spirit, not the Holy Spirit, and therefore cannot read our thoughts, so it's necessary to rebuke him out loud. "Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power" (Eph 6:10, New International Version)

3) Sing praise songs.

I'll never forgot the day that my best friend moved to another state. I was crying ugly tears and having a pity party when the Spirit was like, "Are you going to cry, or are you going to praise me?" I started singing through my tears and though I was still immensely sad, I remembered that God would never leave me (Deut 31:8) and was sovereign over this change in my life.

4) Scroll through social media (not always healthy, but distracting).

Social media is a double-edged sword, in that it can feed negativity and comparison. But it's also very stimulating, and switching from picture to picture takes me away from obsessive thinking for awhile (so long as I'm not looking at a feed that ties in with the subject of the hamster wheel thinking that led me to go to social media for distraction in the first place).

5) Do a hard crossword.

My supervisor in graduate school told me that it was necessary to find a hobby that would take all of your brain power so that the mind couldn't think of anything else. Hard crosswords, when I apply myself, do that for me. If I have my phone or dictionary out and am hardily searching for clues, I can't think about much else.

Friends, what do you do to slow down your mind and keep from overthinking? Please share in the comments section below.

Not Perfect Like Jesus

"Why do I need community?" I asked myself. "Why do I need so badly to find a place where I can be filled by other people?" After all, Jesus went away on a mountain to pray when he needed to regroup (Luke 6:12). "Why can't I do that? I'm supposed to be like Jesus, right?"

As I stood there looking in the mirror, I suddenly had this thought, "But you're not Jesus. You're not perfect." And then I had this thought, "Jesus always had community. He was a member of the triune God and always had that communal fellowship and filling." Yes, believers in Jesus have the promised Holy Spirit, but that's not exactly fellowship. If God intended for us to do life on our own, he would have made us one man bandstands who could give to others without needing to receive. But that's not the way he made us.

God made people to be relational beings. I've written about the verses that keeps me motivated to stay in church many times, but here they are again. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching" (New International Version). I need people. We need people. We can't do it alone. Yes, we need to give (a conviction that often brings me guilt), but we also need to receive. We can't do one without the other.

Healthy Homemade Cereal

I've eaten a lot of cereal since moving home. I didn't buy cereal very often when I lived on my own, so I guess now I'm making up for it. Like I eat cereal almost every night for a bedtime snack.

As part of my bucket list project, I wanted to try a new cereal. But then I got to thinking that I should make a new cereal. One of my Instagram friends posted about making cereal last week, and so I embarked on the cereal-making journey. 

I'd pinned several recipes for homemade cereal after constructing my bucket list, but I decided on this one from Southern Kissed. I didn't have oat bran and I'm not a fan of sugary sweet cereal, so I adapted the recipe and made it my own. Then I shoved my concoction in the oven and waited.

What emerged was a somewhat soft, definitely hardy version of granola. I'm not sure it's like cracklin' oat bran (as per the original recipe) since I left out the bran, but it's definitely good enough to share. I ate the cereal plain for my first bowl, but I mixed it in with other cereals afterwards (as per the first photo). It definitely grew on me, and after a week, it's all gone!

If you want to make a batch of this hearty cereal for yourself, follow the recipe below.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 c rolled oats (divided)
1/2 c dried coconut
1/2 c ground flax seed
1 T cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking powder
1/3 c unsweetened applesauce
2 T maple syrup
2 T olive oil
1 t vanilla

Directions:

1. Place one cup rolled oats in the food processor and grind to a coarse powder.
2. Add the remaining dry ingredients and pulse 5-6 times.
3. Add wet ingredients and process until the liquids has dispersed.
4. Place on a greased pan and bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes.
5. Allow cereal to cool on the pan. Then break into clumps and store in an air-tight container.

If you try this recipe, please comment below and tell me what you think!

Gut Instinct and God-Things

I don't believe in coincidence. If you know me, you know that I make that comment often. I believe in purposeful living, in living authentically. I believe that when I listen to my body, and "go with my gut," things make more sense.

Take for example the other morning, when I was debating what to have for breakfast. I wasn't that hungry, but I felt a strong urge to stop and eat a big breakfast. What I really wanted to do was practice yoga, dilly-dally, and eat a long leisurely breakfast. But I decided to listen to my gut. It just felt like I needed extra nourishment for some reason. Ten or so minutes into breakfast, I got called out for work and only had a chance to to eat a protein bar between breakfast and dinner. Good thing I had that breakfast to tide me over.

Further back in time to Sunday, I felt obligated to go to an event for Christian community, but didn't want to go. As I was wrestling with my guilt over saying, "No," a friend came up and invited me to a different kind of gathering that was more conducive to my lot in life. That confirmed my, "No," for the other event.

At work, I had an instinct that something wasn't right and that I'd need to reach out to some specific resources. So I programmed those contacts into my phone before leaving. It turned out I needed them.

Is my gut instinct always right? No. I'm human, and a sinner (Rom 3:23). But I do believe that the Holy Spirit indwells me, and that the Spirit's still small voice is often what speaks to me through my visceral responses to things. Oswald Chambers writes in My Utmost for His Highest, 

"When you have a right-standing relationship with God, you have a life of freedom, liberty, and delight; you are God’s will. And all of your commonsense decisions are actually His will for you, unless you sense a feeling of restraint brought on by a check in your spirit. You are free to make decisions in the light of a perfect and delightful friendship with God, knowing that if your decisions are wrong He will lovingly produce that sense of restraint. Once he does, you must stop immediately."

I think Chambers' words totally apply here. Listening to gut instinct, or common sense, is a good rule of life for the most part. And when things don't turn out right, it's time to regroup, repent, and consider if the "common sense" I followed was my own voice, or the Holy Spirit.

Gut instinct? Nah. Holy Spirit? Yes. And with the Holy Spirit, there are no coincidence, just "God-things."

I'm linking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons for this Thinking Out Loud post.

Taking the Good with the Bad

As my parents and I sat around the table playing Skip-Bo earlier this year, I thought of the couple who taught me the game. The man was neither good nor godly, yet I learned from him. I learned more from him than just how to play Skip-Bo. I learned about God, and life, and living, and learning, and loving, and serving. I learned what I don't want to do, about the legacy I don't want to leave, and I received a lot of chances to re-examine my own great needs for restoration and forgiveness from God. God ordained a lot of good within the bad.

Good has come from "bad*" in other situations, too, like from the teachings of a pastor who resigned a church position. He preached the unfailing Word of God, and I learned from his sermons, whether or not his life looked exactly how I'd like. I don't want to forget the "God-things" he taught me.

[I put the term "bad" in quotes not to discount the evil or sin in the world, but to acknowledge that the word "bad" carries with it a lot of negative connotations. Often, people think that the "bad" isn't redeemable. I disagree. We're all bad, haven fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). But I believe in a God who can redeem all things (2 Cor 5:17).]

When life gets hard and people especially are "bad," we tend to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We swear off anything associated with the person, fail to speak the person's name, and sometimes, even deny we know the person. I don't think that's the correct response. When we don't acknowledge the bad that happens, we deny the sin nature that exists in all of us. We don't admit that we ourselves are also capable of bad. We don't seek out and celebrate the redemption and restoration of God. We throw away good things just because they have bad associations.

In and through the Holy Spirit's power, I've chosen to enjoy and celebrate the game of Skip-Bo, even if it comes with some hard-to-accept associations with a bad man. I've chosen to say the name of that pastor that left the church and admit that I learned from him, even if other people won't. Am I perfect? No way, no how! There are a lot of times that I deny the bad in life just so I don't have to admit my own bad. But I don't want to live that way. I don't want to miss out on God's good just because the bad exists. God is sovereign over both.

A Clarifying Question

I whipped open that new document at the speed of light and started to paste in a link to an article that resonated with me and buoyed my belief in my cause. I was ready to build a case against the nonsense a loved one had been spouting recently. And then the Holy Spirit stopped me, "How will that affect your heart?" It asked. I stopped dread in my tracks. Mind you, I almost pasted in that link and went back to search for all the other articles I had read that supported the way I believed. But I stopped and thought first.

As I thought, I asked myself how having a library of articles would help my relationship with that person. I asked myself if I intended to send my bastion of proof to the person in written form. I asked myself if my "burden of proof" would really change the way my loved one thought. Not well. No. No. I answered. 

"What would a retinue of articles do for me?" I asked. Justify my cause. Make me feel self-righteous. Make me hold a grudge against the person.

Weighing the pros and cons of my "law library," I made a decision. I closed the document before I pasted in the first link. 

The world doesn't need more lawgivers or judges. The world doesn't need more people arguing their cases, especially about things that don't have eternal value. And my loved one certainly doesn't need a whole lot of push-back against their lifestyle choice, especially since it's not really a black-and-white/right-or-wrong issue.  

"How will that affect your heart? What a good clarifying question to ask before I cast the next stone. "They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them" Romans 2:15 says (New International Version). God will take care of the law. And about things that aren't God's law? I've got better ways to use my time for the kingdom. Thank you, Spirit, for the reminder.

I'm linking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons for this Thinking Out Loud post.

Crocheted Scarf Project

I "taught" my sister-in-law to crochet via video chat (and then her grandma really taught her) a few years ago. Since then, we've been exchanging pictures of our current projects and trading ideas for future making. Over the holidays, we decided to do a crochet link up where we would both pick a pattern and text photos back and forth regarding our progress. She chose the rouge infinity scarf pattern, while I chose the every man scarf, which I wanted to make for my brother who lives in the cold hinterlands of the north. She asked me if I planned to change colors as indicated in the pattern, and I was like, "Nope! Too much work for me."

I used Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick and Quick for this project, which I purchased at Wal-Mart. I went with the variegated moonlight color to give some character to the scarf. This yarn was pretty pricey and took almost three skeins to make an approximately 5 inch by 70 inch scarf.

I chose this pattern because it was easy. In truth, it was probably a little too easy. I managed to screw it up by doing front post only double crochets every other row (instead of back post only double crochets, as stated in the pattern), but it worked out. I only completed seven out of the ten rows with my ergonomic J hook. Three more rows would have been overkill. (I thought ending on row three made the pattern look better, so that's what I did. Basically, I altered this pattern a lot without meaning to.

I completed this #bucketlistproject item in five days, more quickly than expected due to being down with a flu-like virus for a week, but oh well. It's done. (And my sickness might explain why I inadvertently changed the pattern so much.)

Step-by-step pictures are below:

Row 1:

Row 2:

Row 3:

Row 4:

Row 5:

Row 6:

Row 7/Finished project:

Thoughts on this step-by-step crochet post? Do you have questions about this pattern? Do you want to see more or less posts like this? Please share in the comments section.

Wild and Free (Book Review)

I'm trying something new today. After finally finishing reading the book Wild and Free, by Jess Connolly and Hayley Morgan, I typed up the quotes that stuck out to me and created a word cloud:

I thought I'd also share my a bullet point book review:

Agreements:

-God has already won our freedom, so we don't need to strive for it. 
-Our lives are about God's glory, not our own. 
-We need community to thrive as wild and free women.

Disagreements: 

-We're God's treasures, not God's tools.
-What about Ephesians 2:10, which says, " For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do?" 
-Can we find identity as treasures of God so that He can use us as his tools, too?

Take-away: 

-“Everyone wants to know a free woman's secret. The secret is Jesus. Because He has set us free” (p. 226).

What do you think of this type of post? Would you like to see more posts like it in the future? Please comment below.

My Lack of a Smile Doesn't Mean I'm Unhappy.

If you've read my blog for awhile, you know that I'm a fan of the Chasing Joy podcast. As I listened to Episode 45 with Marian Mellen, I was struck by her comment about smiling in pictures. She noted that Americans feel forced to smile in pictures and show that they are happy, while this isn't so in other countries. As I pondered her statement, I got to thinking about how this country, and especially Christian culture might too strongly associate happiness and smiling.

Although I consider myself a happy person, I'm not necessarily a smiley person. As I've started singing on worship team at church, I've gotten several comments about how I need to smile more. Okay, I'm working on it. But really, do I need to smile while I sing? God is a high and holy and awesome God. Sometimes when I sing, I'm not smiling because I'm standing in awe of God. Sometimes when I sing, I'm not smiling because I'm focusing on the words, lyrics, or music. Sometimes when I sing, I'm just not thinking about smiling and my face is in its natural resting state. I'm okay!

I'll keep trying to smile while I sing, as I know it improves the worship experience of others, but in the meantime, can we work on accepting non-smiling faces? Sometimes people are hurting. Sometimes people are thinking. Sometimes people are sad. Sometimes people are even happy. They just might not be smiling.

I'm linking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons for this Thinking Out Loud post.

Chipotle Hummus Pasta with Spinach and Mushrooms

Lots of people eat black-eyed peas at New Year's for good luck. That's isn't me, but since we had black eyed peas and all of the other ingredients on hand, I decided to make this spicy chipotle hummus this first week of January. I ate the hummus with veggies and chips (and some cheese!) a few days for lunch.

But then I wanted something different. So I invented this chipotle hummus pasta with spinach and mushrooms based on a recipe I'd see from Budget Bytes.

Creamy, yet spicy sauce, wilted spinach, and umami flavor from the mushrooms? Yes, please! This is really a "use up leftovers" meal, too, so any other type of wilting greens (chard, cabbage, etc.) and vegetables could be used. I personally think a cabbage and mixed vegetable version could be good with the chipotle hummus flavor. (Other flavors of hummus could also be used). Ingredients here could be increased as needed, but the proportions seem to work well.

Ingredients:

1/2 c pasta of choice (I used elbow macaroni)
2 c mushrooms, sliced
3 c baby spinach
1/2 c hummus of choice (I used chipotle black-eyed pea hummus.)
Reserved pasta water

Directions:

1. Bring 2 c. water to a boil in a large sauce pan.
2. Once water boils, add pasta and cook as directed, adding mushrooms for the last five minutes.
3. Once the pasta and mushrooms have cooked, drain the pasta, reserving the pasta water.
4. Return the pasta and mushrooms to the pot. Add the spinach and a little pasta water and stir over medium heat until the spinach wilts.
5. Once the spinach has wilted, stir in the hummus and additional pasta water until a nice cream sauce forms.

Dish up and enjoy piping hot!

How I'm Trying to Redeem My Time

After constantly complaining about how little time I have, I decided to do a little experiment on myself. I decided to "audit" my time by writing down everything I did. I hoped to realize what was and wasn't taking me "so long," in an attempt to save time and use my time more wisely. Want to try this yourself? It's pretty simple. Just find some paper (I used my journal) and try to jot down the appropriate time it takes to do each task of your day. How specific you get is up to you.

Here are a few examples of my own time audits:

Day 1

Day 2

What did I learn from this experiment? 

• Although I can do my devotions in 3o minutes, I need to allow extra time to get up and actually get around to doing them.
• It takes me a lot longer to do some chores than I think. For example, I estimated that hanging out the laundry took five minutes. It takes more like 15 minutes. 
• Two minutes on social media is more like twenty, and night time is a black hole for social media use. If I don't use social media at night, I have a sliver of time for a relaxing activity like crochet, writing on this blog, or reading.

Will I continue the time audits? Maybe not everyday, but on occassion, yes. Time auditing takes time, but it also keeps me accountable.

Time efficient friends, any other suggestions or tips for making better use of time? Please share in the comments section below. 

Thanks!

What a Gray T-Shirt Taught Me About Blame

"Who put this gray work shirt in with my white load of laundry?" I grumbled as I pulled the wet clothes out of the laundry. Roughly yanking up the shirt and unfolding it, what did I discover? It was my "good" t-shirt, and I put it in the white load of laundry to keep it away from the dirty gray "work" shirts.

I am so guilty of blaming other people for my problems. And I do it without ever trying to investigate the facts or gain perspective on the situation. Blaming other people keeps me from realizing my contributions to problems. It keeps me from feeling my own pain and shame when I screw up. It can keep me from being accountable for the consequences of my own actions. 

I want and need to be quicker to investigate and slower to judge. I need to be faster to admit fault and slower to cast blame. The world might be a better place if I did (or at least I'd have a better attitude about that gray shirt in the laundry).

(Brene Brown's video on blame is excellent and the source of some of my thoughts here.)

I'm linking up with Amanda at Running with Spoons for this Thinking Out Loud post.

When Overdoing It is a Good Thing

I have a tendency to overdo things. That tendency crops up in almost every area of my life. In terms of my mind, that means I tend to overthink things. I think and think and think, and worry and worry and worry, and I get myself all worked up. Overthinking has never really led to anything positive in my life.

I've had a lot on my mind recently, and I'd expect that this would lead to overthinking, but recently I've noticed a change. I've been overpraying. I find myself praying during my jogs, praying in the car, praying around the house, and generally praying in all the normal places that I tend to overthink. I'm not necessarily praying for particular answers, but rather, "Lord, I pray for ________ (person, place, or thing)." This process of praying everywhere and all the time feels weighty, yet freeing. I'm trudging through some deep stuff, but not carrying a heavy load on on my back like when I overthink. I find that reading the Bible or listening to praise music restores me more quickly than when I'm exhausted from overthinking. 

I've always told myself that overdoing anything is bad, but maybe prayer is an area of exception. After all, 1 Thessalonians 5:17 says to "pray continually" (New International Version). I wouldn't say that I'm to the "continual" stage yet, but the Spirit is certainly doing something new in my heart and in my spirit. Praise be to him! 

The Bucket List Project

I don't make New Year's Resolutions, at least not the rigid, "I will do this thing every day for the whole year," type of resolutions. I make lists of things I want to do, like I did in 2016, or set small monthly goals like I did with this year's yoga challenges. I want to have reasonable and attainable goals, if I even call them that. Maybe I should call them intentions.

My overall goal for 2017 was to pursue passion and find purpose. I wrote a little bit about that, but let's be honest, it came late in the year. For most of the year, I struggled. When I changed jobs, I realized that I'd been faking life for most of the year and hadn't really been present or truly living. That epiphany brought with it a wave of self-discovery and honestly, a lot of struggle and pain. I don't have a bad life, but there are certainly parts of life that are very hard. I wasn't quite ready for the overwhelming feelings that came with real living and lost some of my pursuit of what mattered in the process.

I am turning 30 this year. Realizing that I'm growing older by the year, I've decided to try a different approach for living in 2018. I'm constructing a bucket list. 

When I think of bucket lists, I think of Second-Hand Lions and doing what I want to do in my latter years, or at just the last minute before I die. I don't want to live like that. I want to live as many moments as I can being intentional, and present, and purposeful. Having a life's end list makes me want to put things off that I could do now. I considered a reverse bucket list for 2018, but decided against it, too. Yes, I want to be grateful, but a reverse bucket list is about what's been done. I want to focus on doing things now. 

So for 2018, I've made myself a list of 30+ things I want to do this 30th year of my life, and with my fellow JoySquad member @717jr decided to embark on the #bucketlistproject. This is a project to try to focus on doing things that matter to us now instead of later. It's a project about being intentional and taking advantage of the moments we have.

Want to join us in this project? Tag your Facebook or Instagram posts with #bucketlistproject so we can share each in other's joys. Link up with this blog by posting about your bucket list projects in the comments section. Let's seize the day today instead of waiting until tomorrow.