thanks sis

"In canonizing the poor in spirit, Jesus reverses all past ideas of human greatness and offers a totally new idea of human vocation. Jesus said in effect: Like a little child consider yourself to be of little account. Blessed are you if you love to be unknown and regarded as nothing: all things being equal, to prefer contempt to honor, to prefer ridicule to praise, to prefer humiliation to glory."

- Brennan Manning

Grocery Shopping with a Teenager

This is what comes from not paying attention to foods being thrown into basket at grocery store.

Now I'm sure this is a perfectly fine lemonade juice drink product thing. I like the Newmans Own brand...it might be exactly what I would buy if I hadn't just picked a hundred pounds of FREE LEMONS!

Son - "But this is already made."....sigh

....and of course there were a few other nutritious snacks tossed in :)

...tee hee :)

He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.

- Oscar Wilde

Our Cellar

For about the last 10 years (at least) we've had a mess down in our cellar that the occasional mild cleaning just didn't take care of. This year it got so bad that I dreaded every trip

down those dirty, cluttered stairs.

Despite the many plastic storage tubs, there was no organization and every time we needed something it was a major hunt, and frankly, extremely depressing.

So Steve and I bit the bullet and purchased a large storage shelf at Lowes and have started the process of organizing. We emptied the cellar, went thru every single box and threw out a considerable amount of ....crap.

We plan on buying 3 more shelf units (one a month) so though it looks better, we expect even more improvement in the very near future.

Labels on every container....yea!

There's still a few things I have trouble getting rid of for purely sentimental reasons....T-Rex here was one of the first stuffed animals I made for the boys when they were little;

the other was a Brontosaurus.

And while we were at it we rigged up a seed-starting area which we plan to expand in the next few weeks.

Tomatoes are up!

But the best part of the whole experience...

...I now love going down these stairs :)

Lemons!

Once again we are inundated with citrus....tho this year I had to go to Freecycle for lemons, much fewer trees around I guess. Anyway, we picked over 100 pounds of fruit and I spent

most of a day juicing and slicing.

Ended up with about 5 gallons of juice which I froze in ice-cube trays (then bags) for using all year long.

Also made and canned 9 quarts of strawberry lemonade (pictured above). We had several bags of frozen strawberries from last spring still in the freezer and needed the space anyway. I had intended to enjoy this refreshing drink during our long hot summers, but my kids discovered the jars and have already gone thru several. Oh well, strawberry season is in a couple months :)

I even dehydrated several batches of slices, tho I'm not quite sure what to do with my handiwork....

....but they do look pretty up on the shelf :)

Lastly, I made one of my childhood favorites....lemon bars...yum!

Hear, Hear

Tebow's Super Bowl ad isn't intolerant;

it's critics are

by Sally Jenkins

Washington Post Staff Writer

I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.

As statements at Super Bowls go, I prefer the idea of Tebow's pro-life ad to, say, Jim McMahon dropping his pants, as the former Chicago Bears quarterback once did in response to a question. We're always harping on athletes to be more responsible and engaged in the issues of their day, and less concerned with just cashing checks. It therefore seems more than a little hypocritical to insist on it only if it means criticizing sneaker companies, and to stifle them when they take a stance that might make us uncomfortable.

I'm pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I've heard in the past week, I'll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the "National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time." For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.

Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.

There's not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the "need" for abortions wasn't so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow's ad.

Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.

"Are you saving yourself for marriage?" Tebow was asked last summer during an SEC media day.
"Yes, I am," he replied.
The room fell into a hush, followed by tittering: The best college football player in the country had just announced he was a virgin. As Tebow gauged the reaction from the reporters in the room, he burst out laughing. They were a lot more embarrassed than he was.
"I think y'all are stunned right now!" he said. "You can't even ask a question!"

That's how far we've come from any kind of sane viewpoint about star athletes and sex. Promiscuity is so the norm that if a stud isn't shagging everything in sight, we feel faintly ashamed for him.

Obviously Tebow can make people uncomfortable, whether it's for advertising his chastity, or for wearing his faith on his face via biblical citations painted in his eye-black. Hebrews 12:12, his cheekbones read during the Florida State game: "Therefore strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees." His critics find this intrusive, and say the Super Bowl is no place for an argument of this nature. "Pull the ad," NOW President Terry O'Neill said. "Let's focus on the game."

Trouble is, you can't focus on the game without focusing on the individuals who play it -- and that is the genius of Tebow's ad. The Super Bowl is not some reality-free escape zone. Tebow himself is an inescapable fact: Abortion doesn't just involve serious issues of life, but of potential lives, Heisman trophy winners, scientists, doctors, artists, inventors, Little Leaguers -- who would never come to be if their birth mothers had not wrestled with the stakes and chosen to carry those lives to term. And their stories are every bit as real and valid as the stories preferred by NOW.

Let me be clear again: I couldn't disagree with Tebow more. It's my own belief that the state has no business putting its hand under skirts. But I don't care that we differ. Some people will care that the ad is paid for by Focus on the Family, a group whose former spokesman, James Dobson, says loathsome things about gays. Some will care that Tebow is a creationist. Some will care that CBS has rejected a gay dating service ad. None of this is the point. CBS owns its broadcast and can run whatever advertising it wants, and Tebow has a right to express his beliefs publicly. Just as I have the right to reject or accept them after listening -- or think a little more deeply about the issues. If the pro-choice stance is so precarious that a story about someone who chose to carry a risky pregnancy to term undermines it, then CBS is not the problem.

Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

Maybe I Should just Twitter this...

For some reason we cannot comment on other people's blogs right now. I hate computer issues....and I hate that I'm a computer dunce....sigh.

My Day

Unexciting as usual...but I thought I should post something, you know, to appease my fan base ;)

Cooked a turkey for enchiladas and made chicken stock (aka turkey stock) with the carcass; will can it tomorrow....

....squeezed some limes (yes, these are limes)...

...made spaghetti sauce, some to freeze, some for tonight's lasagna...

...and dehydrated a bag of carrots.

Oh, and I have a loaf of bread rising in the pantry....good day :)

Haiti

If you are thinking of donating to the Haitian relief, please read this post on UNICEF....and the comments.

We're giving to Compassion International instead :)

Sam's Job

Sams unit with the 82nd Airborne has the unique distinction of being the Armys only Global Response Force. Their brigade is trained to be ready to deploy anywhere in the world as a first responder in a crisis situation. Before the earthquake they were readying for deployment to Afghanistan.

Excerpt from: 82nd Airborne to the Rescue Again

Capt. Andy Salmo, an infantry commander with the brigade in Haiti, described the global response duty as a mixed bag. "It's a love/hate relationship," Salmo said. "They see they're making a difference, and they like that. At the same time, your job as an infantryman is to fight somebody."
Soldiers see their brothers and sisters from other brigades heading off to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the United States has been waging war for most of a decade. But a large number of 82nd Airborne paratroopers will record their first deployment in a small island nation where, at times, they stowed their weapons and handed out food to starving people.

(I think that's a good thing)

Read entire article here.

On Being a 'Good' Christian

Excerpt from:

When I Am Weak: Why we must embrace our brokenness and never be good Christians

by Michael Spencer

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Cor 12: 9-10

Weaknesses are with me for the whole journey. Paul was particularly thinking of persecutions, but how much more does this passage apply to human frailty, brokenness and hurt? How essential is it for us to be broken, if Christ is going to be our strength? When I am weak I am strong. Not, “When I am cured,” or “When I am successful,” or “When I am a good Christian,” but when I am weak. Weakness- the human experience of weakness- is God’s blueprint for exalting and magnifying his Son. When broken people, miserably failing people, continue to belong to, believe in and worship Jesus, God is happy.

How do we imagine the life of faith? What does living faith look like? Does it look like the “good Christian,” “whole person,” “victorious life” version of the Christian life?
Faith, alive in our weakness, looks like a war. An impossible war, against a far superior adversary: our own sinful, fallen nature. Faith fights this battle.

I fall down. I get up….and believe. Over and over again. That’s as good as it gets in this world. This life of faith, is a battle full of weakness and brokenness. The only soldiers in this battle are wounded ones. There are moments of total candor- I am a “wretched man” living in a “body” of death. Denying this, spinning this, ignoring this or distorting this reality is nothing but trouble in the true Christian experience. The sin we are killing in Romans 8 is, in a sense, ourselves. Not some demon or serpent external to us. Our battle is with ourselves, and embracing this fact is the compass and foundation of the Gospel’s power in our lives.

What lands us in churches where we are turned into the cheering section for personal victory over everything is denying that faith is an ongoing battle that does not end until Jesus ends it. Those who stand up and claim victory may be inviting us to celebrate a true place in their experience at the time, but it isn’t the whole person, the whole story, or all that accurate. They are still a mess. Count on it. This battle- and the victories in it- are fought by very un-victorious Christians.

I'll be accused of a serious lack of good news, I’m sure, so listen. At the moment I am winning, Jesus is with me. At the moment I am losing, Jesus is with me and guarantees that I will get up and fight on. At the moment I am confused, wounded and despairing, Jesus is with me. I never, ever lose the brokenness. I fight, and sometimes I prevail, but more and more of my screwed up, messed up life erupts. Each battle has the potential to be the last, but because I belong to one whose resurrection guarantees that I will arrive safely home in a new body and a new creation, I miraculously, amazingly, find myself continuing to believe, continuing to move forward, till Jesus picks us up and takes us home.

Now, let’s come to something very important here. This constant emphasis on the “victorious life” or “good Christian life” is absolutely the anti-Christ when it comes to the Gospel. If I am _________________ (fill in the blank with victorious life terminology) then I am oriented to be grateful for what Jesus did THEN, but I’m needing him less and less in the NOW. I want to make sure he meets me at the gate on the way into heaven, but right now, I’m signing autographs. I’m a good Christian. This imagining of the Christian journey will kill us.

We need our brokenness. We need to admit it and know it is the real, true stuff of our earthly journey in a fallen world. It’s the cross on which Jesus meets us. It is the incarnation he takes up for us. It’s what his hands touch when he holds us.

Do you remember this story? It’s often been told, but oh how true it is as a GOSPEL story (not a law story.) It is a Gospel story about Jesus and how I experience him in this “twisted” life.

In his book Mortal Lessons (Touchstone Books, 1987) physician Richard Selzer describes a scene in a hospital room after he had performed surgery on a young woman’s face: I stand by the bed where the young woman lies . . . her face, postoperative . . . her mouth twisted in palsy . . . clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, one of the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be that way from now on. I had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh, I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had cut this little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to be in a world all their own in the evening lamplight . . . isolated from me . . .private.

Who are they? I ask myself . . . he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously. The young woman speaks. “Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks. “Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.” She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. “I like it,” he says, “it’s kind of cute.” All at once I know who he is. I understand, and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with the divine. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers. . . to show her that their kiss still works.

This is who Jesus has always been. And if you think you are getting to be a great kisser or are looking desirable, I feel sorry for you. He wraps himself around our hurts, our brokenness and our ugly, ever-present sin. Those of you who want to draw big, dark lines between my humanity and my sin, go right ahead, but I’m not joining you. It’s all ME. And I need Jesus so much to love me like I really am: brokenness, memories, wounds, sins, addictions, lies, death, fear….all of it. Take all it, Lord Jesus. If I don’t present this broken, messed up person to Jesus, my faith is dishonest, and my understanding of it will become a way of continuing the ruse and pretense of being “good.”

read entire article here

Phone Call from Haiti

Sam called this morning....yippee yahoo!

He and his platoon from the 82nd Airborne are living in an outbuilding at the Haitian University Hospital in Port-au-Prince (engineers have deemed it safe <---say a prayer on that one, will ya)... cots lining the rooms (literally touching each other) no running water, one electric outlet (guys are taking turns charging phones and ipods) muggy weather (90's during the day cooling slightly at night, they keep the windows open all the time) living in the same uniforms they arrived in (says you get used to the smell:) and reading or listening to music in their spare time. They are living on 2 MRE's a day and bottled water. As soon as I get a mailing address, I'm sending FOOD (and a few books).

The soldiers are providing security for the hospital, making sure only medical personnel and patients go in and out. They also ride on transport trucks to the airport, accompanying patients who need to be flown to the states or the hospital ship for more extensive treatment. The doctors have thanked them for being there, they feel much safer with a military presence. Sam has seen aid workers from all over the world, some are camping out on the hospital grounds, as are many of the patients.

He says that the Haitian people seem resigned to their situation but determined to survive and are happy to see the army guys wherever they go.

We are so proud of our son.....continued prayers for the military, aid personnel and the people of Haiti. May God's grace and mercy be shown and acknowledged.

SSgt. Julio Escareno with Charlie Company 1/132th watches as a woman is taken through the front gate of the Port Au Prince hospital complex after seeing doctors. Ft. Bragg's 82nd Airborne Division is tasked with security. The 82nd along with thousands of others are flooding into the country which was ravaged by a 7.0 earthquake a week ago to render aid and security.

Photo credit: Chuck Liddy. More on the situation at the hospital here.

This one Makes You think...

...and is very timely. My sister and I were talking recently about being offended by people 'of means' who constantly thank God for all the blessings in their lives. And these blessings seem to primarily be focused on the things they have or the houses they live in.

Now, I think it's important that we remember to thank God for our circumstances, for our abilities, for a good job, for providing for our families...but I do think we need to be careful not to confuse blessings with what we choose to BUY for ourselves. Food and shelter can be considered a blessing....5 televisions is a choice, and maybe not a very good one. We are an incredibly rich nation and there are many who take that as proof of our goodness, as well as taking it for granted. What happens when it all falls apart? Will we be as quick to thank God for these new blessings?

My wonderful husband found an article that expounds on these thoughts.

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Robertson is Right about One Thing

by Karen Spears Zacharias

Rescue crews hadn’t even begun to unload supplies before Pat Robertson began to upbraid Haitians for their “pact with the devil.” Robertson said Haitians joined forces with Satan’s Army: “They said, ‘We will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok, it’s a deal.’ They kicked the French out … ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

That curse includes punishing poverty, howling hurricanes and now an earthquake so violent the foundations of their finest buildings have crumbled like graham crackers in the hands of a toddler, leaving an untold number buried alive and many more dead.

While more compassionate souls offered help with antibiotics, bandages and cases of bottled water, Robertson offered advice: “[Haitians] need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God.”

His callous comments drew push-back.“Go to hell Pat Robertson – and the sooner the better,” said the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and editor at the Huffington Post. “Don’t speak for Haiti – and don’t speak for God.”

Ari Rabin-Havt, vice-president of communications and research at Media Matters, suggested that Robertson’s comments “represent right-wing media figures’ willingness to use any tragedy to forward its own agenda.” (Of course, Mr. Rabin-Havt’s response appears to represent his own left-leaning agenda to bash right-wingers.)

Everyone is so focused on berating Robertson that they have completely missed how he reached his conclusions:

“The island of Hispaniola is one island. It’s cut down the middle,” Robertson explained. “On one side is Haiti; on the other side is the Dominican Republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous today, full of resorts, etcetera. Haiti is desperate poverty. Same island. They need to have, and we need to pray for them, a great turning to God.”

Robertson is right about one thing – we Americans equate prosperity as proof of God’s favor. People of all faith traditions believe God rewards those he loves best with material blessings. No longer is John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” the most quoted Bible verse. It’s been replaced by Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

This notion that God desires us to be wealthy is not new. “It has been the warp and woof of the American soul since the Puritans came over with their divine enlightenment and Calvinistic work ethic,” said Michael Spencer, a biblical scholar and the author behind InternetMonk.com

Spencer is one of Prosperity Gospel’s most vocal critics. The Prosperity Gospel maintains that God wants us to have bigger homes, better cars, that job promotion, and better health. It is most often linked to the Word of Faith movement and to its leaders – Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts and now America’s most popular preacher – Joel Osteen. Osteen urges his followers to “expect God’s favor.”

Spencer says that the Prosperity Gospel takes its purest form here in America: “It is deeply wound up in who we are and far more mainstream than Joel Osteen. I grew up hearing my entire life that if you tithe, God will pay all your bills.”

Like most television evangelists, Robertson preaches the “Law of Reciprocity” – give money to God and he’s going to give it back to you ten times over. Embedded in this theology, however, is the misguided belief that material goodies come our way because we’ve been faithful to God. And if bad things are happening? Then, we need to straighten up, fly right and return to God.

What Robertson has done in the name of Jesus is deplorable. But perhaps even more troubling is the insidious ways in which all of us continue to buy into this notion that God loves Americans best and that we are the people who honor him most, which is why we are so rich, so beautiful, so smart and so immune to the sorts of disasters decimating other “pagan” people.

While it’s true that having money can inoculate a people and a nation against some diseases and some disasters, wealth should never be considered proof of God’s love or favor toward a people or a country. Nor should it be the standard by which we judge – or misjudge – a people or a nation’s devotion toward God.

Perhaps we would all do well to remember the one thing Jesus did promise us: “In this world, there will be trouble.” (John 16:33)

The question for believers and unbelievers alike is not why there is trouble, but what are we doing to help alleviate the suffering it creates?

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All the blessings we enjoy are Divine deposits, committed to our trust on this condition, that they should be dispensed for the benefit of our neighbors. - John Calvin

To whom much is given, much is expected. Luke -12:48

Grapefruit Marmalade???

I am participating in a canning challenge at a wonderful blog I stumbled upon recently. The idea is to preserve one item every month using the water bath canning method. This months produce of focus was CITRUS. How much easier could that be for those of us living in the Central Valley of California. We can pretty much get free citrus all winter. In fact, we used the last of our orange juice during Sam's Christmas visit.....time to start squeezing again.

Because our neighbor (like most people around us) lets his grapefruit rot on the tree I thought that would be a good one to start with. Having NEVER made marmalade before (eating peels?) and not even questioning why you don't typically see grapefruit marmalade on store shelves (light bulb going on yet???) I dove right in.

Peeled about 8 grapefruit.....

...sliced off as much of the white part as I could...

...then I thinly sliced the peelings.

I at least had the good sense to do some research and found a recipe that addressed the bitterness issue. By boiling the peels separately first and draining the water (before adding the pulp and more water) most (but not all:) of the bitterness should dissipate. After boiling the mixture (without sugar) for 10 minutes, I let it cool overnight in the fridge.

The next day I added the sugar, cooked it for about an hour, couldn't get it to thicken properly, added more pectin and more sugar (and I usually make jam with the least amount of sugar possible) and cooked it some more. I am not printing the recipe....mostly because I deviated from it to the point of unrecognizability (is that even a word?).

The final product is pretty, has a consistency of blubber (like I would know) and tastes fairly tangy (sounds much more appetizing than oddly bitter) ...and I probably won't make it again (but I will eat each and every jar, dag nabbit).

If you want to see a successful presentation of marmalade check out the lime marmalade on the Tigress blog....beautiful photos as well.

My Daily Reminder

Sam is in Haiti....doing the hard job of aiding and protecting the Haitian people who have suffered so much thru the recent devastating earthquakes. We pray for him and his fellow soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, as well as the other US military and relief personnel from all over the world. For our brave young man we know it will be a life-changing experience;

it is already changing mine.