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Faithfully thinking: weeding out the bad so the good can survive

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

 

My son was recovering from an illness on the couch and watching a cartoon on his laptop, my daughter was watching a cartoon on my phone and I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook when it all shut off out of the blue.

For ten seconds we sat there and looked at each other bewildered. What were we supposed to do now? With all our devices dark, except the phone which continued to work off data, we were completely lost.

Suddenly I felt excited. I felt a sense of freedom and dashed outside to my garden, over run with weeds thanks to weeks of neglect, and began yanking weeds out by the handful. I felt like a giddy child let loose in a candy store. The smell of dirt and grass andnature was setting my soul on fire.

In the midst of the euphoria I was also disgusted that it had taken the electricity going out to wake me up and break the chains of apathy and digital busyness that I had let hold me down.

Logged on to Facebook I seem to think I have to read one more post, see one more photo, laugh at one more pointless video and then before I know it it’s the afternoon and I’ve accomplished nothing. I haven’t finished the dishes, cut up and put the extra zucchini in the freezer, cleaned up my room, made the beds or weeded the garden.

And I certainly haven’t nourished my soul or connected with God.

Instead I’ve only fueled anxiety that I often call “my anxiety” claiming the state as my own, as if it’s an expected mindset for me to be in.

I’ve found that scrolling past story after story, some positive but many aimed at igniting our fear – fear of cancer, of death, of loss – is damaging my emotional health and in turn my physical health.

Many say “I just ignore those negative or fear based posts” but to me it seems the continuous exposure to these types of stories often permeates our thoughts and perpetuate our fears without us even realizing it. The negative affects of today’s social media are subtle and unassuming.

I’m not saying social media doesn’t have its good points or that it can’t be used to help encourage, connect, and support. Along with the good, however, comes even more counteractive and isolating aspects.

We have never been more connected than we are today, Facebook founder mark Zuckerburg likes to tell us again and again. In some ways this is true but in reality we’ve never been more disconnected or separated.

Satan is never happier than when we are isolated, made to feel alone, and spending our days on Facebook, pretending we are actually connecting with people. When we are on our computer or staring at our phone we are not living in the present or focused on those around us. Our minds are on a digital and virtual plane, trapped in a world of fantasy, antagonistic words, pessimistic views and sometimes fake optimistic ones.

I thought about this all as I yanked the weeds out of the garden so I could plant spinach seeds, seeds of a plant to bring our family nourishment.

I found it pretty pathetic that it took the electricity going out to motivate me to weed out the bad and plant the good. Yet it often takes a power failure in our life to wake us up to the good we have been missing out on.

Philippians 4:8 says: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”

Sometimes I need to pull the plug on the busyness of life so I can focus on the noble, the right, the pure, the lovely and the admirable.

If I don’t cut off the power sometimes, or let God flip the switch for me, then the negativity, fear, pessimism and anxious thoughts will grow in my life like the weeds in my garden. The weeds are choking out my healthy plants, stopping them from growing. I’m nowhere near a master gardener and I know I have a lot to learn if I want a bountiful harvest in the future.

There are days I feel the weeds of life all around me, trying to steal my joy, my hope, my fervor for life. I put my hands up to push them back, but without the help of the one who is our Master Gardener, I’ll never find victory.

I need Him to help me keep the weeds in check and to remind me they need to be pulled so I can breathe and grow. 

Money saving tips: Don’t be afraid to buy cheaper cuts of meat, your veggies whole

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

Panic set in when money got tight this last year but after a lot of prayer I’ve been learning more about how to save money and reduce expenses. This learning is a long process that is coming in stages.

Currently my money saving focus is on groceries and household items.

Groceries is one of the biggest expenses for our family, and probably most families, so that’s where I first started looking for ways to save. While groceries are expensive overall anymore, the highest costs are in the meat department. In the past I didn’t pay much attention to the cost of meat per pound but when Ihad to fit my purchases within a certain budget I knew I would need to start focusing on it.

Of course the better quality meats cost more, which was frustrating to me until I started to watch a couple of cooking shows and learned that meats that are thought of as “lower quality” can be used to create a variety of delicious meals.

There are many sites and cook books available to help you use not only cheaper cuts of meat to make amazing meals, but also supporting ingredients and dishes.

Stretching these cuts of meat by cutting them up and freezing them for later can also reduce the grocery budget.

I try to cook mainly Paleo meals for my family since gluten, dairy and sugar cause different health issues for each of us. If a recipe isn’t Paleo, I do my best to adapt it to fit our food lifestyle (I am not a fan of calling Paleo a diet, because I don’t eat that way to lose weight, but simply to feel better).

Because the rest of my family is not full Paleo, not every meal I cook adheres to the Paleo guidelines. I do add wheat and dairy to some meals, but avoid it for myself.

If you’re wondering what Paleo even means, Michelle Tam of Nom Nom Paleo has a great explanation on her blog. 

Michelle’s blog  is a new source for me for meal planning after she turned me on to cooking with an Instapot via her Facebook live videos. I purchased the Instapot this past week (no, I am not getting any kind of payment from them) and am excited to see how it not only saves on time, but money, in relation to preparing meals for our family.

You can find her instapot recipes HERE.

About a year ago I read some invaluable information on a blog about cutting food expenses. One of the suggestions was to buy meats with the bone still in and skin still on and cut the meat up yourself to avoid the butcher passing the cost of cutting up the meat on to you. It’s the same for vegetables and fruits which are priced higher if you purchase them already cleaned and cut for you. While convenient, buying your meats,  vegetables and fruit prepackaged can increase your grocery budget. It’s also not always the healthiest option as sometimes extra sugar or preservatives are added to keep the products “more fresh” for a longer period of time.

Ree Drummond, otherwise known as The Pioneer Woman, recently opened my eyes to cost saving ways to use various cuts of beef,  the highest priced meat on the market. In the past I cooked an entire roast in a crockpot and sometimes used the leftovers for vegetable beef stew. Based on Ree’s ideas I’ve started buying a roast and then cutting it into either cubes for stew, slices for breakfast steak (haven’t tried this yet) or strips for stir fry. For chicken I have been buying split chicken breasts with the bone and skin still on, deboning it and then either keeping the breast whole or slicing it into tenders or chunks. I can use the chunks for chicken spiedies (if you’re not from the Northeastern part of the United States you can find a definition of those HERE), to add to salads, to make chicken nuggets or to add to a one-pan bake.

I plan to buy whole chickens in the future and cut them up into the cuts I want to use later. Tips on how to cut up and entire chicken or roast or debone chicken and fish, can be found on many sites online, including video tutorials like this one by Gordon Ramsey on YouTube (no swear words in this series, but beware of his salty language in other YouTube clips, of course.). Tips on how to cook a variety of recipes and food can also be found on YouTube.

A few YouTube video tips I’ve enjoyed include:

How to make the perfect rice by Gordon Ramsey;

How to make the perfect omelet by Jamie Oliver (apparently I like the British chefs).

How to make crackling chicken by Nom Nom Paleo.

Adding vegetables or beans, rice or fruitcan help stretch your meat and budget even more. When it comes to vegetables and fruit savings, a great idea is either growing your own and freezing them for later or stocking up on your favorites when they are on sale and freezing them for later.  Buying items you use a lot of when they are on sale is one way my parents, who are on a fixed income, save money. This tactic can be used for groceries, household items, clothing, and just about any other needed product (versus wanted ones.)

Another great idea by Ree to stretch the budget, and make sure you get your veggies, is to make one pan meals with ingredients all piled into a roasting pan. You can find her one pan recipes on her site here.

I will make a quick disclaimer about Ree’s recipes – they are not Paleo in the least and often not super healthy. If you have watched her show or bought her cookbook you know she uses tons of flour, grains, dairy and sugar. Despite the fact I try not to use any, or at least less, of these ingredients I enjoy watching her Food Network show and reading her blog (which I followed before she became famous) . She offers some money and time saving tips, I enjoy her posts about her family, she seems very authentic in how she presents herself and I can often “hack”

her recipes to fit my family’s eating style.  

I’ve given you a few ideas I’ve been using to reduce our grocery budget, now it’s your turn. I’d love to hear some of your tips in the comments or on my Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/lisahoweler and with your permission I’ll use them in a future blog post about ways to save money.

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The garden is indeed a disaster

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

You might remember my prediction that our first attempt at a garden may be a disaster.  

That prediction has proven to be fairly accurate as shown by the weeds attempting to choke out the few plants that did survive the initial stages of planting a month and a half ago.

First, I missed the memo about planting everything in neat little rows. There definitely isn’t anything neat about our garden and not really any rows at this point.

I didn’t read packages right and failed to space the seeds far enough apart, as well. Then there was the week long rain that started the day after I planted. I’m convinced it washed away a good portion of my carrot seeds.  

I am a total garden newbie so when I started yanking out weeds and didn’t see carrot tops sprouting where I thought they should have been I ended up ripping out a few carrot seedlings. I thought they grew a lot faster than they actually do. Whoops. 

One side of the garden never even got planted and the weeds know it and have taken residence there, creating what is going to be a town violation at some point if I don’t get in there and yank out more of those pesky, pointless plants. It seems as soon as I weed one part I return the next day to find 1,000 more. Who knew weeds could grow so fast.

This week we harvested two little summer squash and you would have thought I’d won the lottery. Little Miss and I ran in the house and proudly displayed the little veggie to the boys, who were appropriately impressed but not as over the moon as we were.

There is currently something growing where I thought I planted cucumber. I thought it was zucchini but now it’s rounding out like watermelon and I truly do not remember buying watermelon seeds at any point, let alone planting them.  A quick message to my dad and he said it’s a pumpkin growing, which is very upsetting to me because we now have four official pumpkin plants and two more trying to grow by my house. I had no idea simply dropping pumpkin seeds could lead to plants sprouting up all over the place. 

I guess I’d better start searching the internet for pumpkin recipes now. And now to freeze pumpkins, carve pumpkins and convince others to take pumpkins away from us.

So at this point, I’m fairly certain we’ll have at least some summer squash, no cucumber, maybe some butternut squash (need to Google and find out when that usually starts to make an appearance) and I’ve learned that I can plant spinach and kale later in the season so I’ll be trying that too.

How about you? Do you garden? Does your garden thrive or barely survive?

The flowers are sad

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

 

I love how my 2-year olds’ brain works.

Sunday at my parents, we were walking to the house from the pool and she saw the flowers along the wall and said “oh those flowers are sad.”

They were purple flowers drooping down, closing up as the sun set.

 

I said “oh do they look sad? They’re really just closing up for the night.”

She looked at some green flowers that aren’t blooming fully yet and said “those flowers are angry.”

And she was right. They did look angry with their spiked petals and centers, dark green towering above the rock wall. With the shadows cast from the trees the petals almost looked like teeth ready to bite down on us.

It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about – flowers looking happy or sad or angry.

When you look through the eyes of a child you see so much more than you did before.

And children see, feel and understand much more than we realize.

Mom guilt is the best

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

I totally pulled the grandma-wouldn’t-want-you-to-do that card this week.

Totally.

Little Miss is in a mean phase.

At least I hope it’s a phase.

When she wants to sit somewhere her brother is sitting she shoves him until he moves. When she wants what her brother has she takes it.  When she wants to play with his Legos she tries to shove him out of the way so she can stand at his Lego table.

She doesn’t do this with other children. Only her brother. 

He’s eight years older than her. She doesn’t care. The age gap doesn’t intimidate her.

She is a bully.

I’ve been reading articles and wracking my brain how to teach her not to be mean. So far it’s been time outs and long talks asking her how she’d feel if her brother was mean to her instead.

But the other night I changed my strategy, one my own mother has been grooming me for since I was born.

I used mother guilt.

I knew it would all be worth it one day.

My son was hugging me at bedtime, laying across me, and his sister didn’t want him to hug me so she stuck her toes in his armpits and pushed hard with her foot, trying to dislodge him.

That’s when brilliance struck. I felt very proud of myself when I said:  “Oh my, this would make Grandma so sad. She thinks you are just the sweetest little girl and if she saw you being mean to your brother she would be so disappointed and so sad.”

She continued to push but was watching me and I could tell she was thinking.

 “She would. She says you’re so sweet and your brother loves you…she’d just be upset.”

 “Grandma? She’d be upset?” She asked. Her legs weren’t pushing as hard now. “With me?”

 “Sad, yes,” I said. “Not mad, but very disappointed and sad.”

She took her toes out of his armpits and lowered her legs.

“Oh my! Grandma would be upset at me! She’d be sad!”

She turned to her brother.

“Grandma is upset at me! She sad!”

The mother guilt was getting a little out of hand so I reassured her Grandma would be happy now because she had stopped being mean to her brother.

“Oh. Okay.”  She said, hesitantly relieved. 

I’m quite pleased my tactic worked.

For now.

I may not be as happy when the therapy bills start coming in though.

However, none of my therapy bills were related to my mom’s superior mom guilt so I think it will be okay.

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The Garden

/ Lisa R. Howeler / Leave a comment

Rain fell steady just like the weather app said it would and I felt a twinge of disappointment. I knew it would mean a couple more days of waiting to plant the garden my son and I have wanted for a couple of years now.

I had always dismissed the idea of a garden because we live in town on a busy, noisy street and somehow, for this country girl, gardens are meant for quiet, out of the way yards where they can be admired on a warm summer evening in golden hour light. 

I had wanted to wait until we actually moved to the country to create a garden but since that doesn’t seem to be remotely close to reality at the moment, we started planning what we wanted to plant and where, early in the spring.

Pumpkins, squash and various herbs for him.

Cucumbers, carrots, green beans, peas, and potatoes for me.

Strawberries and watermelon for her.

What makes this year different is that for the first time in 13 years we don’t have a dog to consider and worry about digging up the plants. This lack of a puppy has me fairly heartbroken and I sat next to the garden space one day this week and cried from the grief of missing our Copper.

My dad brought his rototiller up to “the big city” and made the space for our garden. My son helped to break up the dirt and smooth it out and his sister worked next to him, most likely negating all the work he had already done.

Dad was only supposed to drop the rototiller off but instead he broke the ground for us. He then gave advice on what to plant and where.

There are days that living in town has its advantages, like when an old friend is driving to her daughter’s band concert at the school across the street and sees you standing outside. The friend, who I have barely seen in several years walked across the lawn with a sun-infused smile (or some might say Son-infused), her hair as blond now at 39 as I remember it at 19. Looking at her has always made me think of the “got milk” commercials, partly because of her sparkling white teeth and smooth skin but also because her family are diary farmers about ten miles from us.

Standing out with the sun pouring across the lawn and the kids, and Dad and potential, catching up on our families made a busy week seem less busy and more manageable. 

It was dark by the time the garden was done and Dad reminded my son that when the dirt crumbles in your hand it’s the best time to plant.

The kids had dirt in their finger nails like I had at their age. My legs and arms were bit up by mosquitoes because apparently they love my blood. My head was full of ideas but also of thoughts the Father, Son and Holy Spirit after Dad brought me a file of thoughts he had gathered about healing, Christ, and souls on fire.

He stood there as the sun set and pondered people who have prophetic dreams and people who are filled with the Holy Spirit, but don’t understand it. Pondering God and  how He works and why He works the way he does is something he’s done all my life. Though not a big reader of fiction, he’d often sit at his desk (now his computer) and pour over books on theology, blessing, curses, and God’s role in our lives.

I called Mom when he pulled out, a tradition, and told her he was on his way home, since he often is out late helping others, or if not, wandering aimlessly in Lowe’s admiring planks of wood and nuts and bolts to add to his collection, and forgets to update her on where he is.

Baths were late.

Bedtime was late.

But lungs were filled with fresh air, bonding time was spent, hard work was done, and deep, well earned slumber followed.