A Bit of Honesty

I haven't written about my Rheumatoid Arthritis in awhile, so I will give an update. I have finally started living day to day without joint pain! Yay! Though I am excited I still have days where I feel this tug of not being grateful but still just thinking, "but this isn't what I want, so I don't want to even feel excited that I feel better." Selfishness and the feeling of being slighted slip into my heart and can wreak havoc. They disrupt my peace and joy. I know it is still part of the process, that it is okay for me to not want to welcome this new guest to my life, but I also long for my heart to be thankful and to be okay with it all. The tension some days is palpable and some days just annoying to deal with.
Today I am feeling particularly pouty about it. I had a doctor's appointment and he was all excited about where I am. I didn't feel excited. I felt annoyed.
I trust that the Lord can break these crusty places in my heart. I can be thankful for this.

Bread

I have been a slacker this summer about posting. Life has been busy between work and going out of town. But here is a fun post.
I have been hitting my old Italian cookbook from when I took a cooking class in Florence in college. Since being back I have tried several recipes and so far all have been good. Last night I got ambitious and tried to make Focacia Bread. It turned out better than I though. Not quite as flat and salty and oily as the good stuff, but I will hopefully perfect it in recipes to come.

Basic ingredients and my Food of Italy cookbook. Flour, water, yeast, oil, salt, and some sage. Yeast is insane...I have never cooked with it. It is in that blue bowl and started out 1/3 that size and just kept growing and growing. Pretty crazy!

I had to do a lot of kneading. 15 minutes worth and then 5 later. I learned that kneading is a good arm workout...another way Italians manage to stay fit.

Before rising

An hour later

Ready to cook

 Finished product (minus my tastes)

Not too bad for the first run. Next time more salt and herbs and roll it flatter or use less yeast.

True Colors

This has been one of those weeks of seeing my heart's true colors and they are not pretty. A week of seeing the gross places of my heart over and over. A week of feeling like Paul when he writes in Romans 7:18 "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want." A week of feeling at times dragged down and guilty and hopeless in the presence of such gross places. But then also a week of being reminded of grace and that I do not live under condemnation and that I am free of this and that though I am incapable, the Lord is able. A week of seeing my complete and total need. A week of hard and good. A week that I am glad is behind me, but that I know I will walk through again and again. And there are places within this place for which I can be thankful.

True Art

John has this book I started reading on the trip. It is essentially the beginning of art history, written by Vasari. He was born in the early 1500s and started recording the lives and stories of the artists he encountered in Italy. He was an artist himself. It is incredible to read accounts of what these artists were like or how certain pieces, like the Duomo's dome, actually came into being. I am enjoying it.
In Vasari's intro he says the following. I thought about this while we were on the trip seeing such amazing pieces of art and architecture. I was thinking about why it is so enjoyable and almost worshipful for me to sit and look at something that beautiful, something that took so much of someone's time and effort and heart to create so many years ago. Then I started reading Vasari and he captured it well:
"I would say that design, the basis of both arts (sculpture and painting), or rather the very soul which conceives and nourishes within itself all the aspects of the intellect, existed in absolute perfection at the origin of all other things when God on high, having created the great body of the world and having decorated the heavens with its brightest lights, descended with His intellect further down into the clarity of the atmosphere and the solidity of the earth, and, shaping man, discovered in the pleasing invention of things the first form of sculpture and painting."

Surviving vs. Embracing and Thriving

This post comes from a combo of thinking about life and some words from Randy's sermon several weeks back and a conversation with Danielle today. I have been thinking about those shifts in life....when you realize that the Bible is more than just a book of good characters but it has broken messy people in its pages, like David. Or when you realize that life is just hard, that it isn't always this bubbly great place where things work out exactly as pictured. So the other day as I was weeding my yard I started thinking some about this and when these shifts happen. I think that because at one point we lived thinking that life would always be easy and good it is hard to make that shift and to not want to run away from pain and difficulty when it settles in.
As Randy put it, when we are faced with a difficult situation we can either be survivors or thrivers. To me surviving is just hunkering down, saying I just want to make it through, or ignoring the pain of the situation and brushing it off saying "it's all okay and not a big deal, it will be fine." Thriving is really embracing the situation, letting the reality of it sink in and seeing the hope of the Lord in the midst of the struggle. It is experiencing the depths of the situation. Surviving is walking around the pain instead of through it just to make it to the other side. Surviving is ignoring my heart and my heart's pain.
Romans 5: 3-5 And not only this, but we also exult in our suffering, knowing that suffering brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and proven character, hope; and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
I have hope, I have the Holy Spirit, I have Christ. Suffering leads me to seeing those things...that God's love is poured into me in the Holy Spirit so that I see myself and that I see him. It may not make it feel immediately any easier, but I think with seeing those things comes some peace and lifts some of the weight of pain.

Hosea

Today my ipod thought I needed to hear Andrew Peterson's song Hosea twice during my workout. So I listened twice and felt like the second time around the words washed over me more. The story helps me get a slightly more tangible feel for what God's love is. Even then it still blows my mind all the time.
The song is sung from the perspective of Gomer, the prostitute that the Lord called Hosea to marry, likening his love to God's love for Israel...the kind of love that never walks away, that forgives, that keeps on loving, that loves no matter who you are or what you have done.
I am Gomer, so content to prowl in the city, looking for love, expecting to find it with each return. Then I remember, I hear the Lord's voice and I come back. But I forget as easily as I remembered and return in search of love. Peterson says it like this:
"I tell you that my love is true till it fades away like the morning dew."
"I stumbled and fell on the road on the way home."
But then Hosea comes in and carries her back home. Hosea 2: 14:  “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her."
Do I hear that tender voice? Do I stop long enough to be led anywhere, or to be allured by that kind of love that never walks away, forgives, keeps on loving kind of love?

Wishing

Still trying to adjust to life back here. Right now wishing I was back here:

With these cats:

Eating some of this:

Slow Down

I have returned from my fabulously adventure filled and relaxing vacation abroad. It has been a long time since I went on a pure vacation for this long..I honestly can't remember when that time was. It was nice, much needed, and helped me realize a few things about me that I wasn't seeing here in the ole US of A.
The over-riding message right now is how much I need to slow down, to take time to not be busy or even over stimulated by electronics (as I am right now :)) to just be still. We were busy every day that we were gone, but we still managed to take time each day to just sit...either in some beautiful Piazza somewhere, on a park bench or back at our hotel. We would just sit and take it in or talk or read or play cards. I need time like that. I realize that in my constant busy-ness there is part of me that thinks I am a better person because of that, or working to get closer to God, or more productive, or am just ignoring the fears or feelings hiding beneath the surface.

I am going to try and slow down more on days off or even work days... I know I won't always have views like this to look at, but regardless I can enjoy the peace and quiet that my soul needs.