Feelings vs. Duty

Our family is going through a transition...and it's come upon us more quickly than I had anticipated.  We are transitioning into a VERY busy time.  Not that our life is anywhere near placid, but now it's starting to look almost frantic.  My husband is applying for seminary for the spring, we are both taking classes this fall, I just got a part-time job one day a week, the Good News Club our church sponsors is beginning again, and our boys will be turning 2 and 1 in August and October (respectively).  Add to the heavy load the fact that our classes, my job, and the Good News Club all start the same week (coincidentally the week of Monkey's 2nd birthday) and you have a recipe for disaster!  Oh, and all this on top of our regular responsibilities to jobs/church groups.

It has become clear to me in the last few days that this isn't just going to happen...at least the transition won't be anything but horrible without a little planning and change of attitude for me.  I need to have a plan...a plan for how to accomplish my primary job as wife/mother/home manager without feeling too overwhelmed, plans for what we will eat on days I'm too tired to cook, and a plan on how to organize my days/weeks that will make this transition easier on my kids.

The other major change is something that needs to happen quickly, and I'm very lucky that God has already begun this work in my heart.  I need to change how I approach life.  Wow.  Writing it out makes is sound impossible, but I'm thankful that I don't have to tackle the task alone!

As a woman (yes, I am saying that men and women are different...please don't hate me) I have fallen into the easy task of allowing my feelings to dictate much of my day/life.  As a single lady, it didn't matter.  I could do whatever I wanted as long as I still was able to pay my bills.  As a married woman, there was a bit more accountability and responsibilities began increasing, but it wasn't a whole lot different.  Becoming a mother...well that changed things much more significantly.  I had a tiny person who depended on me for EVERYTHING..and that's a sobering reality.  I couldn't just sleep in because I felt like it...no, I needed to get up or the baby couldn't eat.  I couldn't just lay around all day eating ice cream or watching tv or forget to eat all day because there was a little one that I was a) needing to provide nourishment to via breastmilk and b) I needed to set an example for my kids.  SO my life started to shift from being lived based on my feelings to being lived based on a sense of duty and responsibility.

This point hit home the other day when James and I were watching Mark Gungor talking about the feminization of men in our society (check out this article for his input and this article for more evidence).  Now while this argument is aimed at men, I felt that this was important for me to remember also...not to such a high degree as a man (because, let's face it, many women are improved by being attentive to their feelings) but it's important for me to remember that I also have a responsibility.  If I sat around all day online and didn't pick up after the kids, clean up messes, or go to the store and James came home and got upset that I had been home all day and hadn't accomplished anything...well it would be a little ridiculous for me to cry to him that I didn't feel like it and he shouldn't get upset about that.  It would be like your boss getting upset that you didn't accomplish anything all day at work and then you getting upset with him for yelling at you.  Don't you think you maybe deserved a little frustration on the part of your boss/spouse?

So I need to be more honest with myself.  While I may not *feel* like cleaning after I get off work, or cooking ahead when I have free time.  Doing so will make my days and weeks run much more smoothly.  Being aware that I have a duty to these commitments is paramount!  I think that feeling like doing these things will come after a while, and all the better!  But until that magic time comes...I'm heading into a time where I will be responsible because I have a duty...to plan ahead because that's what's best for my family...whether I feel like it or not.

Laying Open my Heart: One of Many Struggles

They say that "ignorance is bliss".  Now I don't know who "they" are, but I feel like I do understand that sentiment, especially when I learn something new that I want to pursue but there are a million roadblocks in my way.  In general this is how I feel about eating well.  I don't mean dieting or eating low-fat, but really nourishing my family with good foods that aren't processed or contaminated.  This issue may not apply to a lot of people because you either don't care, don't believe it, or don't have a problem implementing it.  But this weighs on my mind weekly if not daily.  I want to feed my family the best possible food I can.  I want my boys to be healthy and strong and smart.  Heck, I want to be healthy and strong and smart.  But sometimes my goals and plans don't line up with where I am in life right now.  I'm definitely not healthy or strong...I can agree with some that I'm kinda smart (but I'm no genius by any means).  Being a parent has really changed my feelings about nutrition. We know more now than we did when I was growing up and my kids generation will know even more...it's just the way we, as humans, are...we crave to know more, to dig deeper, and to understand.

For me, I really feel that eating a whole foods diet is healthy (I think few would compete with that statement).  I believe that eating organic is important in most aspects, that making your own things like bread is important (because of limiting chemicals and preservatives), and I think raw milk is great!  Unfortunately, I'm not a millionaire--I know you're shocked, but it's true.  I don't have unlimited funds available to buy meat straight from my local farmer or raw milk up the road...and even if I did, well do you know how expensive that can be?  And therein lies my dilemma...the one I struggle with.  Knowing what is most important RIGHT NOW, in the place God has me NOW, and knowing what it is that God has charged me with.  

That probably sounds weird, let me try to explain.  I feel passionately about feeding my family the best food possible, but what I don't feel passionately about is going broke doing it.  It would make me a poor steward of my families resources to ignore the balance in our bank account and spend all of our money on better food.  You might think I'm being extreme about how much it would cost or underestimating the importance of good food on our nutrition, but the honest lay-it-all-out-there-for-the-world-to-see truth is that our budget for food every month is slightly less than it would be on food stamps...I have a grand total of $320 to spend on food, toiletries, household products, dog food, and all 4 members of our family.  It's tough, it's a stretch, and that number actually includes a generous increase that I finagled when we decided Carter needed to eat gluten free (not a cheap option)--before two weeks ago our monthly budget was only $220. Its frustrating!

This amount of money can only be stretched so far.  We don't always do a good job of sticking to our budget, but we definitely feel it elsewhere if we don't.  And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that God has called me--as a stay-at-home wife and mother--to do everything possible to keep us on track.  It is my responsibility to ensure that we have enough food in the house to feed us all as well as finding unique ways to make up for any shortfalls.  If I don't do this, then I am not only disappointing my family, but I know I am disappointing my Heavenly Father.  This is what he has called me to...it's not always fun, it's very often frustrating, and I don't know how I make it sometimes.  Coveting others grocery budgets is something I have to keep in check quite often.

I don't talk to many about how much I spend on groceries and I do my best to make sure that we still get to use a good portion of that for ministry opportunities (inviting people over to our house to share a meal, taking someone food when they're sick, eating out occasionally in fellowship with our church family, etc.).  Ministry is very important to us and I joke that my spiritual gift is cooking :).  God has demanded us to be open to these opportunities to fellowship with others--believers and unbelievers alike.  It is important to us and a calling from God.  So that brings another aspect of my struggle to light.

How do I justify spending my small budget on others?
God has asked me to.  Can I really say no?  I guess I could, I could say to myself and others that we just don't have the money or it's more important to feed my family, but then I would be saying to God that he doesn't provide for us adequately and that is absolutely un-biblical!  God tells us in the Bible that He always provides for our needs.  If I say that I can't do something because of my own folly or poor stewardship that is one thing, but to claim that I "can't" because I don't have enough?  That is claiming that God is not who He said He was.

And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.

2 Corinthians 9:8

And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:19

So that is where I stand, or usually kneel.  Dealing with my own frustrations and sinful thoughts, relying on God to reveal a better path for me.  I am so thankful for his grace and compassion.  I am also thankful for a wonderfully understanding and hard-working husband.  But this is my struggle...not the only one, but one that is prominent and I frequently have to return to God for strength in going on.  I can't let myself become mired down by what I *think* I should be doing, but to find strength that God can help me through it.

I hope that all who reading this will understand that it has been difficult to reveal this personal aspect of my life and will take that to heart before commenting.  I know that I am doing the Lord's work and I would be more than happy to have a more intimate conversation about this with you so feel free to email or (if you have my number) to call :)
I hope that in sharing these intimate struggles and thought, I can encourage other women--especially Christians--to step up and be willing to be more transparent with one another.  I don't think anyone has it ALL together and I certainly don't think we're meant to seem we do.  While it's important for us to seek joy and understanding in our situations, this doesn't always have be done in private or alone.  Please reach out to those around you and if someone comes to YOU with something weighing on their heart...please try and be Christ-like in your response.  God Bless!

Tackling the Laundry Monster

Have two kids under two is tough...especially when it comes to keeping any sort of schedule because something always comes up.  Someone wants to read a story or not take a nap.  While I love these impromptu moments of cuddling and teaching with my boys, it can make it difficult to get anything done around the house.  Laundry is by far the hardest thing to get done.   Partly this is because my laundry room is near our back door and quite a way (in my toddlers eyes) from the main part of our house.  He does NOT like mommy to leave his sight and so it's usually the cause for a crying/screaming fit when I go out there.  So I try to do it during nap time or at night when daddy is here to distract him.

When it comes to actually doing the laundry, I don't sort colors...I know, bad mommy!  I sort based on these five criteria:

1. Heavy duty clothes -- These are things like jeans, underwear, and socks.  Any kind of clothing that should be washed in warm water for sanitary purposes, but I'm sure won't shrink.  
2. Regular laundry -- The laundry that can we washed and dried in the dryer (mostly this is my shirts and my kids clothes).
3. Air dry things -- Mostly this is my husbands work shirts which are notorious for shrinking if dried with any amount of heat in the dryer...some of my nicer shirts go in this one also.
4. Bathroom towels and bedding -- Pretty self-explanatory.
5. Kitchen laundry -- We mostly use cloth in the kitchen instead of buying paper towels (check out this post) and I don't like to wash these with the bedding/bathroom towels because they have nastier stuff on them (food, bacteria, etc).

I do 1-2 loads a day (depending on whether I am washing cloth diapers or not).  Here is the schedule I try to keep to:

Monday - regular laundry and cloth diapers

Tuesday - bedding/towels

Wednesday - heavy duty laundry and cloth diapers

Thursday - kitchen laundry

Friday - air dry things and cloth diapers

Saturday - catch up day

Sunday - my day of rest :)

We have four people in our home (including the two boys under 2) and this works well for us now.  My hardest chore is getting it all put away promptly without my 19 month old stealing/hiding things.  I have been really wanting to switch to a family closet for ease of getting laundry put away (only one room to go to to put away regular laundry), but so far my husband has not been on board so I wait patiently (most of the time) until he feels more comfortable and/or until I can find a very compelling way to implement this in our house.

This has been posted for Works for Me Wednesday, hosted by We are THAT Family.

WFMW - Finding Shortcuts in the Kitchen

So, I promised to write more about my marathon-o-cooking that took place last week.  Trust me, it was NOTHING compared to the cooking days I had in preparation for Henry's birth (you can read more about that here).  I do, however, like to set aside find make time to do some small things in the kitchen that help make my daily cooking adventures a bit easier.  So, from time to time, I will do a few days like this (usually not all at once) to keep my freezer stocked.  So here are a few ideas that I've found to help me keep up during busy times by being prepared for our families needs. (NOTE: Our family is different than yours, not better or worse...just different.  Find what works for you and try to make time to fit it into your schedule to make it easier on you at other times when you just CAN'T find one extra second.)

1. Browning large quantities of ground beef at once.  I don't like to brown too
much b/c of fears of freezer burn, but having some already browned ground beef that can be quickly thawed for dinner can shave off some serious time in dinner prep--especially if you're like me and often forget to thaw the raw ground beef you need to start fixing dinner...in an hour.  Last week I browned about 16 lbs of ground beef, stored it in 1 lb portions in Ziploc bags, labeled them with the date and contents of the bag, and put them in the freezer.

2. Cooking up several pounds of cinnamon apples.  Carter loves cinnamon apples for breakfast, I quite enjoy them in oatmeal or grits (I know...no true Oklahoman apparently likes sweet grits, but I'm a transplant), and James enjoys cinnamon applesauce for snacks or lunch.  I core and dice several pounds at once, cook them with a bit of cinnamon and sugar, and then put them in canning jars.  One usually goes in the fridge and the rest in the freezer.  Also, this is a super easy way to make applesauce, just puree the apples in the blender after you're done cooking them (or after you've thawed them in the fridge).

3. Blanching and freezing potatoes.  This is something that never occurred to me before last week when I was upset, once again, for having so many potatoes about to go bad and not knowing how in the world I was going to use them all.  My solution was to dice them into approximately 1" chunks and blanch them for about 5 minutes in boiling water.  I then put them on a cooking sheet and in the freezer.  Once frozen, just pop them into Ziploc bags.  This works great as we really love cheeseburger soup, stone soup, and cheesy potato soup, and casseroles...it makes the cooking time on all of these a lot faster also!

4. Sauteed onions and celery.  Celery is another thing that usually goes bad before I can use it all.  Today I chopped several stalks of celery and about 1/2 a large onion and sauteed them in butter, laid them out on a cooking sheet, froze them, and then bagged them up for use in future soups and stews.

5. Cooked, chopped/shredded chicken.  Usually at least once every 3-4 weeks I cook two small roasting hens in the crock pot all day.  Then I take the meat off the bone and shred/dice.  I package it in 1 cup portions and freeze them.  This is also convenient for use in making quick meals (like this one).

Well, that's what's working for me right now.  Are there shortcuts you use in the kitchen that make dinner prep easier?  I'd love to hear about them!


This was posted for Works For Me Wednesday, hosted by We are THAT Family.  

When I Learned To Cook

I was inspired today by two things.  One is my friend Lynn (who blogs at Lynn's Kitchen Adventures) and my the massive cooking day I did today (more to come on that later).  Lynn asked when we learned to cook and whether it was something we loved or hated....hmmmm.  I'd never really thought about WHEN I learned to cook, probably because I feel like I'm still learning....a lot!

All that aside, I think I have been interested in cooking for quite a while.  The first time I remember really cooking was when I was  Freshman in high school.  I begged my mom to let me plan a dinner party for my grandparents, mom, sister, and our old neighbor who lived by himself.  I was obviously interested in cooking enough to even have this idea.  I made EVERYTHING from scratch and by myself (also planned the menu on my own).  I don't remember everything, but I do remember that I made a batch of rolls, some kind of chicken dish, a fresh salad, and a side of some sort.

It was so much fun and I really enjoyed it!  This was probably my earliest memory of enjoying cooking and, of course, was for a "crowd".  I still love to do that!  I love cooking for a lot of people...church fellowships, small group fellowships, birthdays, etc.  Now cooking for myself or my hubby and I...not so much.  That is an area where I am definitely still learning to have joy.  In high school I did a lot of cooking for myself.  I went through a phase where I was vegetarian, where I was working multiple jobs, and where I was just plain tired of only eating food my mom had either purchased from a restaurant or could make in the microwave.  Mostly this was one dish meals, casseroles, or even frozen skillet meals.  I also remember eating quite a bit chicken and hamburger helper.  It was a necessary chore and one I didn't particularly care for.

***Disclaimer:  To be fair, my mother did used to cook wonderful meals almost every night!  Pork chops, steak, burgers, pizza, etc.  That was when she was a stay-at-home mom (while I was in 4th through 8th grades).  After that she was divorced and fell into a horrible depression.  That is where the microwave meals became her friend.    I wish I had been old enough (or smart enough) to really remember the wonderful meals she made for us, but unfortunately for far too long all I remembered were the microwave meals--something I still joke around with her about.

If you care to join in...please let me know when you discovered a love for cooking or whether you're still praying to find joy in that area (as I am).

Works-for-Me Wednesday....making my life easier edition

The other day my husband and I were talking about the "stuff" we own and how it affects our lives.  We've all heard the guys on TV, other bloggers, friends, and family talking about how some new gadget or machine has made their life so much easier...but is it true?  Do we really need new things to make life easier?

In some ways I completely agree!  I really enjoying having a washer and dryer and do feel that those make my life easier.  But I'll admit that I have, before, become caught up in owning new cleaning gadgets and they end up making my life more difficult and tying me down with lots of stuff!  That's not easier for me.

Here are some things that we do and don't own that HAVE made my life easier...some of them you may agree with and some of them you won't...but this is what works for me!  

1. Not using paper towels.

This was not something we actually did on purpose, believe it or not.  I had read of people who stopped buying and using paper towels and it sounded like a nice idea, but one that I thought would have to wait until we had the "right" cloth options.  That's what I thought anyway.  One day we ran out of paper towels and I just didn't buy anymore...we had a ton of paper napkins that did the job in a pinch and we really weren't ever using them so I thought I'd wait to buy paper towels until we ran out of napkins.  It has now been several months since we ran out of napkins.  I don't really know when it happened and certainly didn't notice until cooking bacon a few days ago and I wasn't about to leave what I was doing to go buy a roll of paper towels!  So we used a wire cooling rack.  The next time we used a regular dishrag (clean of course) and it worked great!  

2. Not having a working dishwasher.

I never thought I would enjoy NOT having a dishwasher.  We do have one, technically, but it has been broken for goodness knows how long and we just haven't had time to fix it.  While I do miss the convenience when we have lots of people over, I don't miss how many dishes we used to have and use!  Since we have to wash everything by hand, we only have 4 place settings.  This wouldn't have been enough to fill up our dishwasher and I would have felt bad using all that water for a very less-than-full machine, but by washing things by hand we use fewer dishes.  We also question every time we want to get out a dish...which has lead to less snacking!

3. Using "family cloth" in the bathroom.

If you aren't familiar with this, please check out these posts for more information.  This came as an idea from a fellow blogger and I am so happy with it!  Since I already wash cloth diapers, I can just throw them in with my son's diapers, but I've been known to throw them in with regular towels also.  The name is a bit misleading, I am the only one in the house that uses these and I only use them for....shall we say, "wet" trips to the restroom.  My family thinks I'm crazy and it's OK if you do too!  I love it!  The cloths are more absorbent, comfortable, and leave no paper residue.

4. Owning a steam mop.

We recently had to buy a new vacuum cleaner and while we briefly thought of shelling out major dough for a top of the line one for allergies (as the whole family has been plagued this summer something awful) we reconsidered.  We only actually have one room with carpet (which is hopefully going to be torn up this summer) and 3 area rugs.  It didn't make much sense to spend so much on something that would really only clean a handful of surfaces/floors in our house.  So we looked at steam mops.  I HATE mopping!  I really am not so keen on sweeping either, but it's necessary so it happens most of the time.  With the new steam mop I can vacuum the floors and steam mop in the same time it takes me to sweep/mop with normal methods.  But this way I don't have to worry about any nasty cleaners being harmful to my babies and I don't have to mess with a mop/bucket.  It works for me and I love it!

Those are just a few things that I thought of that make my life easier.  Maybe not always simpler...but definitely easier :).  What are some of the things you use/own that make your life easier?  

This blog post is submitted to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.