Being Numb to Small Blessings

Well, the Lenten Season has officially started for a few days.  Each year, we try to find a way to challenge ourselves with our sacrifice (even before we converted to Catholicism we had this tradition for some reason!).  This year, we spent a good deal of prayer and talking over what our sacrifice (or something extra) would be.  It seemed that everywhere we turned, skills and experiences from when we were our poorest abounded and arose.  This led to a discussion in which we began to realize both the good and bad of where we've grown to in our marriage and finances.  We've had quite a few ups and downs in our 9 years of marriage.  We've experienced both of us working so many hours that we never see one another or have time to even eat a meal together, being so poor that we sold our wedding rings just to have some food in the house, as well as finally being able to work on putting our credit into a manageable state and having a nice car (where we are now).  Sometimes, it's really easy to forget the hard times and live in the good...really really easy!  In some ways, you almost become numb to things that in previous times of your life you would be thankful for!  For example, we have a really nice economical car right now.  We are extremely blessed by this!  Sometimes it's easy for us to look at our high car payment and forget what it was like when we had no car and had to walk or bus everywhere in the middle of winter.  We also forget what it was like to have a car that got terrible gas millage and cost a fortune to do our day to day driving.  It's just so simple to become numb to our blessings!  Even with beginning our fertility treatments again, we sometimes feel trapped in how long things take.  We are so blessed to have wonderful medical professionals to work with this time around, but we still get so frustrated with how our situation is responding!  This numbness of the small blessings is what we decided to try and tackle this lent.  Our approach to it is mostly a financial one, but we're hoping that one thing will lead to another!  Our sacrifice for lent is that we are going to live on as little money as we can.  We've recently gotten into the bad habit of not eating at home for many of our meals.  This is one thing that is stopping!  Lent has only been going on for a few days, but I will say that already, I've seen some changes.  It's been years since Mike and I really sat at the table and had dinner.  Some of this stems from feeling the ache of the children we yearn for and some of it stems from enjoying being entertained while watching a show.  To be honest, as a housewife, I haven't let myself enjoy the blessings of staying home.  Our infertility has numbed me to them and slowly, one by one, I've let them slip away.  Even though we are only a few days in, things like preparing meals and keeping tidy have begun to have joy to them again instead of just a routine.  I'd forgotten how nice it can feel to have a meal on the table when M gets home and to sit and eat with him without distractions!  Some things have changed since we were those newly weds in our first apartment after we decided I would stay home.  M may not be able to talk as much during dinner now, but there is a niceness and a pride there too.  For so long it seemed pointless to set the table and lug the food out into the dining room for two, but these last few days  have reminded me just how nice it can be.

Well, now that that has been said, I plan on trying to update this with my thoughts more regularly (of course I always have the intention of updating more regularly, but it doesn't always stick!).  I'm going to try to get M to have a say some too!  As we started this, I quickly realize that there isn't much in the way of motivation or help for living with less money in the blog world (at least not that I could find).  I'm hoping to make new recipes as well as highlight existing recipes I find that are economical to make and can help feed a family.  We of course as a family try to take a whole food approach to our diet (we make everything from scratch we can) so we will incorporate that in as well where we can!  My first sharing of this type will be to share a recipe I found just yesterday.  It's called Greek Chicken.  Now, I know everyone's cupboard is going to have a different rotation of stock, but hopefully these recipes can all be played with to everyone's advantage!  You can find the recipe here!

My raw mixture ready for the oven!

I won't be giving you the entire recipe here because I want everyone to support the original blogger!  The recipe calls for simple ingredients:  Salt, oregano, garlic powder, pepper, lemon juice, olive oil (any oil could be substituted I'm sure), bone in skin on chicken, and potatoes.  I'll be honest, I used the last of my garlic powder just before Lent.  If I can find some cheap somewhere, I'll have more, if not...well, fresh garlic is always a good price!  For my variation of this recipes, I substituted some fresh garlic for the powder, used four small russet potatoes, a half of a small sweet potato and tossed a handful of hand broken mushrooms on top.

My finished chicken.

I'll tell you, we both loved this dish!  It was easy to throw together and since M found a bunch of chicken legs on sale for $0.88 a pound right before Lent, it didn't cost much.  We typically have everything that goes in this dish always around the house.  My thought is that even if you don't have oregano, you could easily substitute another seasoning and this would still be a really yummy meal!  I will warn you (because this part took me by surprise) the recipe calls for 1 1/2 hours for cooking time.  It's not really a bother because it's baking time and you can do other things while this is cooking, but this is not a quick throw together meal!  With the addition of the mushrooms and sweet potatoes, we were able to use the potato mixture as our side dish to the chicken.  For the two of us, I cooked a total of four legs, but we could have easily gone to a leg a piece if I had added another side dish.  I think next time I will experiment with some carrot mixed in the potatoes as well!

Well, I'll leave here until next time (which should be soon!).

Garden Week 6 (Opps!)

One of our first baby tomato fruits!

Well, it's been two weeks (opps!) since I posted last.  What have I been up to to keep me so busy? Well, we do have an event coming up (this weekend!) and we also did some small shrine tours here in Michigan ( you can find pictures of these trips here for the National Shrine of the Little Flower or here for the Shrine of St. Joseph).  That's not really a good excuse though.  :/  Oh well it will seem like the garden has grown massive amounts since my last post!

The tomato buckets!  This seems to work really well for growing them!

Here are the tomato buckets!  (Please ignore my grass...it needs to be cut desperately >.>)  I actually think I may be won over with this particular container growing.  The tomato plants seem to looove living in the buckets!  I've also noticed that the leaves prevent any droppings of the black walnut of doom to get on/in the soil so it's a double win as far as managing goes!  All of our tomato plants have little baby fruits (as seen in the picture at the top) so it's hard to think they aren't thriving!

The pool herb/leftovers garden.

The pool garden is doing well again this year!  I do have to say, I really need to spend some time and try to figure out what's what growing in there.  It's all looking good, but I need to pull out weeds and see what is coming up so maybe I can plant some more herb seeds to encourage the herbs I want to grow in there!

Our container cucumbers.

Well, we did take a loss here.  Our cucumbers were doing great then boom...just fell over and died (no sign of disease or anything!)  My guess is that even though we tried hard and everything else didn't seem to take any damage, the freeze got to these guys (We had a late freeze a couple of weeks ago).  I have decided if I want to plant some seeds to fill in the gaps or just let that be growing room for the survivors.  Time will tell, won't it?  

The Eggplant/bell pepper container.

To be honest, we've actually had two frost warnings and then the freeze as well.  I guess that's Michigan weather for your (or so my husband says).  That is another way that the containers have been nice!  With the tomato plants, we just carried them into the house and let them spend the night in our kitchen.  The rest of the containers (minus the cucumbers which was probably why they took such a hard hit) were still small enough that we could close the lids on the boxes, stack them (to conserve heat) and cover them in blankets.  Since the cucumbers are in a different bin style, we just draped

the bell pepper container

and wrapped them in blankets as gently and thoroughly as we could manage.  We didn't want to hurt the plants, but we also wanted to try and keep the cold out.  It seems to have at least partially worked though since some of the plants are doing fine.  Thankfully we've been getting a fair deal of rain lately.  I'm not sure I entirely trust Ypsi city water (years ago...close to 8 to be honest the water quality was so bad that they had to do a public release of the information).

The green bean bucket!

The green beans finally shot up.  I'm just waiting for them to start flowering!  I love fresh green beans!  It seems like they don't mind container style either (although these were one of the veggies that didn't seem to mind the black walnut tree that much).  I'm really hoping that we'll have a blessed growing season because I want to have plenty of yummy veggies to share with friends and family and the church congregation (if anyone wants any that is!).

The snap peas.

It looks like the peas are finally taking my lead and working on building my "wall of green" for the little deck/patio thing.  We grew these guys for the first time last year (and they didn't grow amazingly or die) so when we did get produce we weren't entirely sure what to do with it.  It was actually funny because I think when the plants did bite the dust, we had gotten just enough for one stir fry.  I'm guessing they didn't like the black walnut or perhaps the transplants (we bought them as such) just were weak.

Catnip!

My occasional outside cat (he's getting older and since he was a sickly kitten, I think he may be struggling with arthritis, so he really likes to lay in the sun) has really been enjoying this!  Surprisingly enough, he hasn't been eating the plants or hurting the plant in any manner (what I expected to have to deal with honestly), but he just loves to stick his head into the baby plants and then roll around on the porch.  I also haven't seen the massive amounts of stray cats that Mike was worried we'd attract.  I did pick one leaf and bring it in for the inside only little girl and she really seemed to enjoy eating it.  My cats love catnip (although I don't know very many cats that don't).  We recently picked up some of the catnip bubbles you can find in stores.  I have to say I was disappointed in them.  They are really heavy (for bubbles) and sink straight to the ground when you blow them.  I ended up mixing a 60/40 (60 % traditional bubbles and 40% catnip bubbles) mixture that worked pretty decently.  The only downside to it is that they "foam" up and you have to leave the bubbles alone until the foam settles back down.  Fana (our little cat) really seems to like this mixture better though because they float a bit, still smell of catnip, and she can chase them.  Of course, she has a small case of hyper active play disorder (she'll play herself to panting and tends to obsess during play time).  Her favorite toy of all time is light.  She will chase the laser pen, flashlights, (and much to my pain one night) car lights.  

The sweet pea flowers

Well, I got off topic didn't I?  If I'm this annoying as a pet owner, what will I be like when I have children to go off on tangents about?  That was actually part of the reason we went on the shrine tour.  We really wanted and intended to visit Saint Rita's shrine and make a bit of a pilgrimage of it to pray over our infertility, but as they tend to happen, unexpected things kept us at bay.  We instead went to local shrines and started a series of novenas geared towards praying about infertility (leave a comment if you'd like to know the ones we've been doing :) ).  We've also been doing a good deal of talking/praying about what parish we want to become members of.  We absolutely love the parish we were confirmed in, but all their two adult masses are sometimes hard for us.  There is the early morning one (8:45 am) or the really packed you can't always get a seat mass (11:30 am).  The 11:30 mass is hard because I really struggle with being shy.  Big whoop, I know, but it can (on bad days) cause some serious stress and pull me away from the mass because I'm terrified of making a mistake (it is purely by the grace of God that I make it through confession I'm sure).  It's something I'm working on, but its' also not something easily conquered each day!  As for the 8:45 mass, well, to say that Mike and I aren't morning people is a bit of an understatement.  It's true we aren't morning people by nature, but were also are what has been called spiritual firefighters.  We tend to be higher up on that list when people need help (and we love being able to be there to help people) so we tend to get a chunk of later evening calls or visits out of the blue.  During RCIA we really tried to limit this so we could be early mass people, but I think it must be a calling.  We've tried everything short of telling the people we can't help them to avoid it, and we're still being sent folks :).  I'm glad that we're in a position that we can help though.  It's also seemed like we've been receiving a fair amount of questions about Catholicism now too.  Ack, I stopped myself from going off topic, to go off topic again!

Dog-struction!

Just a bit more then I'll finish up :)  As you can see in the above picture, my in ground flower garden has been ravaged!  I think I'm going to spend a day out there and dig up all the bulbs and move them to the garden in the front.  Since I normally keep this area fenced off and the dogs out, the mole/groundhog likes to hide out here to stay away from the dogs.  I'm still not entirely sure when it happened, but the pups apparently decided enough was enough and busted through (and destroyed) my little garden fence to go mole/groundhog hunting.  The poor flower garden is just ravaged now!  Since they did this though, I haven't seen any mounds from this guy.  I feel bad saying it (because I hate killing critters or seeing dead critters.  For crying out loud, I really hate spiders, but I'm more likely to take a shoe with me to threaten them to leave me alone then to kill them), but part of me hopes they got this guy.  He kept digging around my bird feeder pole so the soil would be uneven and the squirrels could shake the food out.  What do you guys think?  Should I transplant the bulbs and be done with it?  Or should I give it another go around?  I'll be back next week with a product review (yea BzzAgent!) as well as a garden update!  Until then, God bless folks :)

Loneliness

First, to start with I want to say ACK!  I had all the best projects and intentions lined up for winter and yet....no posts!  At least this year it wasn't for the lack of content, but rather for the lack of time.  We are currently going through the RCIA course and come Easter, will be members of the Catholic Church (isn't it exciting :) ).  Posts should be flowing soon (I already have some of my starters started...we really want to be able to plant bigger plants when it's finally time!) and I'm really excited to see what a new year is going to bring.  A lot of things have happened since my last post and I will gladly recap them all soon enough but I have different plans for this post!

As our blog subtitle says, not only is this a place for Mike and I to share our day to day adventures, but it's a place we want to share our spiritual ones as well.  For me this latest bit of pondering came late Friday night while I was praying the Sorrowful Mysteries Rosary.  I'd like to share some of the aspects of my contemplation from this with you folks :).

I'll put my reference here:  I was using the scriptural rosary out of my book of Marian Prayers.

The First Mystery:  The Agony of Jesus in the Garden in Gethsemane 

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsem'ane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here, while I go yonder and pray."  And taking with him Peter and two sons of Zeb'edee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  Then he said to them, "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me." And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, "My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will,  but as thou wilt."  And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "So, could you not watch with me one hour?  Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."  Then he came to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest?  Behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.  Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand."
(Matthew 26:36-41, 45-46)

So, this one struck me a little hard.  Mike's been having a really hard time lately with crashing out on me.  It's especially a struggle when we'll have company over and he's full of life and as soon as  they close the door on their way out (even if it's not late) he starts to snore.  I know that he doesn't mean to fall asleep like that, but I still find myself feeling hurt and asking him very similar words.  "You can't spend one hour with me?  I can't have one hour of your time?  I'm not worth one hour?"  This can be a very lonely feeling, truth be told.  I'm sure we all have had someone that we really loved that when busy times came we felt this way about.  I suppose one could also relate this to self worth as well because in a sense it does bring those struggles of not being worth this person's time to mind.  This was where my mind turned to the loneliness of Christ during his passion.  He was alienated from his closest friends and felt the loneliness of needing their time and their love, but being denied it (I doubt it was intentional on their part!).  He knew this was the last bit of time he would have with them before his passion.  I'm sure everyone's had a rough day or been in a bad situation and had friends "come to the rescue" even if it was just with fellowship.  We've all known the difference even the small things they do can make to us in those times.  Christ spent this time in a desperate prayer without even the small comfort of his friend's companionship.  If that doesn't sound lonely, I'm not sure what does!

The Second Mystery:  Jesus is Tried, Condemned, and Flogged by Pilate 

And Pilate again said to them, "Then what shall I do with the man whom you call the King of the Jews?"  And they cried out again, "Crucify him."  And Pilate said to them, "Why, what evil has he done?"  But they shouted all the more, "Crucify him."  So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barab'bas; and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.
(Mark 15:12-15)

Christ came to die for us to save us from our sins.  He came to make the ultimate sacrifice ..for us.  To me the crowd here was a stand in for each and every one of us.  How lonely if must have felt (even though he knew he had come to die) to have the very people he came to save cry out for his death.  I can't even imagine what it must have been like to stand in front of that crowd as Pilate asked "Why, what evil has he done?" and for the only reply to be shouts calling for his death.  This also brought me to thinking on how often we turn our own backs to him.  How often have you known that what you were planning on doing was wrong, but chosen to do it instead?  I've really been working on this in my life, but I know that it's something that I still struggle with.  Worse yet, I think, is hearing the call to do something (it could be a one time call that needs immediate attention, it could be a long term call, or it could even be a call to change yourself or your life) and making the choice to put it on the back burner or to just flat out ignore it.  Can you imagine offering someone you've known since they were a child $1000 to sit down and have a 10 minute conversation with you, only to have them tell you that they are too busy, maybe another time, or even just ignore you?  How much more lonely it must be to offer someone the world, everything in creation and get the same response.

The Third Mystery:  Jesus is Crowned with Thorns 

And the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is the praetorium); and they called together the whole battalion.  And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on him.  And they began to salute him, "Hail, King of the Jews!"  And they struck his head with a reed, and spat upon him, and they knelt down in homage to him.  And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak, and put his own clothes on him.  And they led him out to crucify him.
(Mark 15:16-20)

My initial response to this was with my pride (because we often feel lonely when our pride has been wounded).  It made me think back to the times I was bullied or picked on in school (we all have some of those memories).  I know I always felt very alone in that spotlight of attention.  It always felt like I was singled out, the only person who was whatever I was being picked on for, and as if no one cared or else this would stop.  God Incarnate, our King of Kings was mocked with a crown and false homage.  What an insult!  The one who truly deserves both of these was instead mocked with them.  As I pondered this, I started thinking about prisoners of war.  I thought about how acts such as these are taboo because they strip the dignity of the person on the receiving end of them.  The first terrible treatment of prisoners I think of is always the Holocaust.  This makes it a bit easier to grasp the concept for some reason.  The prisoners were beaten, abused, and all at least had the glimmer of hope of rescue.  Christ was beaten and mocked knowing that his death was soon.  He came to die so that even these who would persecute him could reconcile with God.

The Fourth Mystery:  Jesus Walks the Way of the Cross 

And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyre'ne, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus.  And there followed him a great multitude of the people and of women who bewailed and lamented him.  But Jesus turning to them said, "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.  For behold, the days are coming when they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!'  Then they will begin to say to the mountains, 'Fall on us'; and to the hills, 'Cover us.' For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?"
(Luke 23:26-31)

So, I'll be honest.  My initial thoughts on this turned to infertility (so much so that I was tempted to wake Mike and get his take on the verse when I finished) and how so often we are told that we are lucky we haven't been able to bring a child into "this world".  After I came to terms with this though, I figured that since I had been led to loneliness in each mystery thus far it was most likely here as well.  As I ran the scripture through my thoughts, the fact that Luke used the word seized to describe how Simon came to be the bearer of Christ's cross.  Even with all these people lamenting for him and following him, the guards had to seize someone who was just passing through to carry his cross for him.  I would like to think that if I were in the shoes of these following and wailing for him, I would try to make any burden of his lighter I could.  Seize is just such a strong word for even conscripting Simon into the service of carrying the cross.  They say being a celebrity is one of the loneliest jobs in the world because they are constantly followed and adored, but no one really takes the time to love on them.  What I mean to say is that just as quickly as everyone loves them, their fans can quickly turn and hate them.  These people were mourning for his death, but it was a stranger from out of town who was the one to help carry the cross.  Even through this loneliness though, Christ thinks of them and warns them of the future to come.

The Fifth Mystery:  Jesus is Crucified, Dies on the Cross, and is Buried 

And it was the third hour, when they crucified him.  And the inscription of the charge against him read, "The King of the Jews."  And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.  And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads, and saying "Aha!  you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!"  So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, "He saved others; he cannot save himself.  Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe."  Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.  And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour,Jesus cried with a loud voice  "E'lo-i, E'lo-i, la'ma sabah-tha'ni?" which means, "My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?"
(Mark 15:25-34)

Alone on the cross, Christ is mocked, but what struck me more was what comes next.  And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried with a loud voice "My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?"  My thoughts on this (and some of this understanding comes from my Pentecostalism background) is that the darkness was when God the Father  could no longer stand to watch Christ on the cross.  What remorse I was filled with!  In his darkest hour, Christ was apart from even that which he was a part of.  I can't even begin to understand what it must feel like to be separated from a part of yourself.  All I can say once more is, how lonely!


Now, during my reflecting on this, loneliness was what was laid on my heart.  In all this, Christ did for us.  He suffered all this previous loneliness so that we would never feel the loneliness of being separated from God.    How can you not want to do everything you can to try and comfort him.  For me, it's felt as though I've wronged a dear friend and I want to do everything in my power to make amends!  I was so moved by this, that I want to seal it into my heart so that the next time I'm tempted to sin, I can remind myself of what all he suffered for me.

Mike and I have been going through 33 Days to Morning Glory (A Marian Consecration).  We are currently learning about Blessed Teresa of Calcutta.  She spoke of the thirst of Jesus.  His thirst for souls and for love. I can't help wonder if this didn't play a part in my understanding his thirst a bit more.  How much he must love us and desire our love if he was willing to suffer this all for us.

I should really begin wrapping this up (it is a long post isn't it?  and there aren't any pictures this time!).  I posted the links for the books so that if you are so inspired you can check them out for yourself!  (Although, if there is a local catholic book store near you, I would suggest giving them your business instead of Amazon!)  My point in sharing this was no other than to present an opportunity for the wheels of your minds to begin turning.  So many people suffer from feeling alone in the world (and I know when I'm feeling that way I'm all about misery loving company) that hopefully knowing that God truly does understand the loneliness we're experiencing might make it easier for us to approach him and pray about it.  I hope that this is at least a fraction of the blessing it has been for me for someone else!