Lessons Learned As A New Mom - Part I

In this adventure of motherhood, I have learned several things about myself that I’ve been wanting to write down for future reference for myself and maybe as an encouragement to other new moms. There are 10 points divided into 4 posts that I will publish every few days so as not to overwhelm you with a super lengthy entry. I would love to hear you comments about your experiences and lessons learned from Mommyhood.

1. First of all, I usually don’t feel like a mother at all. I guess I thought there would be a different sort of feeling or aura that would come over me as I became a mother. For a while I felt guilty, especially since Wesley’s adopted, thinking I wasn’t bonding with him properly. Since then, I’ve talked to plenty of moms who have their own biological children, older than Wes, who feel the same way. Do you ever really feel like a mother? What does that mean exactly? Is it just something we make up in our head? Or dream about as little girls? Or see on TV? Hmm...

2. Second, through mothering, God has revealed areas of sin in my life that I was vaguely aware of before becoming a mother but that now are openly evident to me and convicting. I think God can use any and everything in all stages of life, single, married, with or without children to help grow a person toward maturity so I’m not saying you have to have children to be qualified for more growth and maturity. Through different stages of my life and through different experiences, God has peeled away and revealed layers of sin as well as revealed new aspects of His own character. The same is true for now. What I’ve noticed for the most part, is that Mommyhood (and all other ‘hoods’ of life - life in general) seems to require extreme selflessness, patience, humility, disciple, self-control and flexibility.

That said, I am learning what flexibility really means. I thought I was a really flexible person but quickly found out, as a Mamma that I was not. I was flexible if whatever was causing the flexibility coincided with how and when I wanted to do things! Babies don’t work that way, even Wesley, who as babies go, seems fairly easy. This in turn reveals my selfishness, my impatience and my desire to control all things! Booo... I also worry and obsess entirely too much about some things sometimes, while at other times I don’t at all when I probably should. The funny thing is that though I want things around me to be under control, I’ve learned through this past year that I lack a lot of discipline and self-control in my own personal life and can be just plain lazy. Mommyhood has opened my eyes to these things not just with regard to being a mother and taking care of Wesley but in many aspects of my life. I just have to thank God for His grace to be a mother to this little one and pray for the grace to help him grow into all that God wants him to be despite all my shortcomings.

A Natural Remedy

I do not claim to know very much about natural healing in the least. However, after some experimentation and casual research and accidental discovery, I think I've found a way to greatly lesson the length and hurtiness of fever blisters and canker sores.

Fever blisters are just dreadful! They hurt terribly and are so ugly. They feel like a volcano on your lip. I rarely get these but whenever we in stressful situations I watch out for them and usually am terribly disappointed but not surprised when they show up.

Well, not surprisingly, two popped up on my lips a couple of weeks ago. These were a bit different, they were on the inside, so perhaps they were not really fever blisters but canker sores, also brought on by stress. I also got a sore on my tongue and the roof of my mouth. :( On top of emotional strain, I had been doing a lot of baking for a tea I had, involving lots of sugar that I don't normally eat. So had my mother, who sent us a batch of goodies, and my mother-in-law, who brought a batch of goodies for Christmas. So here is what we had in the house - ginger snaps, fudge, a chocolate torte, snickerdoodles, white trash, turtles, graham cracker delights, a graham cracker cereal chocolate bar thing that we loved, a homemade batch of cinnamon rolls, and homemade Chex mix. If you know me well, you know that this is way more sugar than I ingest in a year, really! We started eating it and didn't quite until it was done. In the midst of eating all of this was when the sores popped up and boy did they hurt!

I pulled out a remedy I had tried earlier in the year and it worked again so I wanted to share it with you. I use Burt's Bees lip balm on my lips as often as I can remember, even on the inside, though I don't know how well it goes on. It needs to be the kind with mint. Also, this time around I drank mint tea a lot. It really helped to soothe it. Also, I eat a lot of yogurt when they pop up. And, almost the next day that all our goodies were gone, one of the worst sores was virtually gone, no doubt stopping all the sugar combined with the other remedies helped tremendously.

So, if ever you find yourself with one of those nasty, unwelcome visitors to your lips, get out the yogurt, invest in Burt's Bee's lip balm and pure mint tea, and stop eating sugar, at least for a while.

The picture is from this website - http://whatscookingamerica.net/mint.htm

A Blanket of Snow

The other day as Eric and I were driving to church, the Sunday after disappointing adoption news, a fresh covering of snow lay on the ground. The sun shone brightly and the day was just gorgeous except that it was 10 degrees outside. In the summer this place is so beautiful, one shade of green melts into another as huge trees grow into others and flowers bloom in beautifully landscaped yards and city squares. However, because there are very few evergreens here, winter is rather bare and gray. I've never really liked winter because of its bareness and chill, but as we rode through town, the soft blanket of snow warmed me to the season a little more. It truly did seem to cover up all that was ugly about winter.

I started to think about winter in regards to the seasons. I've always just viewed it as a season of deadness and dreariness compared to the others. Last year, as you all know, was the winter like no other. It snowed here so often and so much. We had snow on the ground continuously for a month, a short break and then for weeks again. The temperatures were bitter! Wind chills in the negative numbers. However, when the temperatures rose, the snow melted and life reawakened, the landscape was more beautiful and more green than ever. Plants grew like crazy! It seems that the snow acted to protect a lot of growing things from the bitter cold and served to water the earth when it melted.

In our lives we all hit seasons of great joy and amazing spiritual growth and sometimes life seems blah or dark and dreary and cold. Then there are some, like fall and winter that are a little of both extremes. As I looked at the snow laying so quietly on the ground, I felt encouraged that God's grace was like that snow, covering over us in these discouraging, dark days, protecting us in unforeseen ways, and that these hard days aren't just random days meant only for dreariness and frustration with no meaning but that they do serve a purpose, to promote the continuance of great growth in the Lord and for Him to exhibit His beauty in our lives, even in the midst of the winter seasons of our life.

We don't live in a world, spiritually speaking, where it is "always winter but never Christmas" like in Narnia before Aslan's victory. Christ did come in our spiritual winter to bring hope and life to our desperately needy souls. Though I don't like having to drive 30 minutes to church, I am grateful for that day's thoughtful drive and the beauty and hope and light that the Lord showed me that comes out of the deep darkness of a long winter and why I should rejoice even on the coldest, hardest days. Without winter, how could there be beautiful Spring?

O Holy Night

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining,
It is the night of the dear Saviour's birth.
Long lay the world in sin and error pining.
Till He appeared and the Spirit felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices,
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.
Fall on your knees! Oh, hear the angel voices!
O night divine, the night when Christ was born;
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!
O night, O Holy Night , O night divine!

Led by the light of faith serenely beaming,
With glowing hearts by His cradle we stand.
O'er the world a star is sweetly gleaming,
Now come the wisemen from out of the Orient land.
The King of kings lay thus lowly manger;
In all our trials born to be our friends.
He knows our need, our weakness is no stranger,
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!
Behold your King! Before him lowly bend!

Truly He taught us to love one another,
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother.
And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
With all our hearts we praise His holy name.
Christ is the Lord! Then ever, ever praise we,
His power and glory ever more proclaim!
His power and glory ever more proclaim!

Unusual Christmas Message

This Sunday in church the text was from 2 Pet. 3, a chapter about "The Day of the Lord," judgment day. Not the usual text read for a Christmas message. So here is how it fits...

For the last four weeks, the sermons have had to do with Advent, a time set aside for the anticipation of Christmas. The first week's topic was "Longing." The text was Psalm 40 where the psalmist cries out, "How long O Lord?" It is an acknowledgement that all is just not right with the world and in our hearts and the desire for them to be made right. The second week was about the "Promise" from God to reweave the fabric of society, to make all things right, to put creation back as it should be, to restore the relationship with the people He created. The third week discussed the "Arrival" of the King to begin to fulfill the promise. It was the inauguration of His kingdom, the setting in motion to make all things right, beginning with the hearts of man. Jesus was sent by God the Father as God the Son, from heaven, to walk with us as humans, to weep with us, full of sorrow because of our sorrow and our sin. He took this burden on Himself, dying in our place, to make us whole and make things right with us in relation to God. We don't have to prove ourselves or do things to measure up to Him. There is no way we could. He has done it for us. We are covered by His blood alone.

So, now we are up to the fourth week, "Anticipation." It is the idea that Christ will come to finish His work. He has been working, is working and will complete His work on the judgment day. His kingdom was inaugurated when he arrived on earth 2000 years ago; He will return to consummate His Kingdom and to have His day of reckoning for all that is not and has not been right. He will make all things right! So, though we may have looked on the Day of the Lord with fear, if we are followers of Jesus, living a life of repentance, then we have nothing to fear. It should be looked to as a day of rejoicing because it will be the completion of all that God has done to make things right that have been messed up by us. What hope is there in Christmas and in longing and the promise from God if there is no final reckoning to deal decisively with all the injustice in the world? Without the Day of the Lord, there is not climax to the plot, no resolution to the storyline. This is the exclamation point at the end of the entirety of the gospel story.

So how does this affect our lives? This anticipation for the consummation of the Kingdom should give us a deep passion for the Lord! A diligence, a focus, a clarity of purpose to set our hearts on the holiness of God, to let our lives be a reflection of that and to speak the whole gospel story. It should resize us so that God is the main character, not us. It should encourage us to examine our lives daily and live with a repentant heart, not to perform for Him but because He has performed and finished the work for us.

I've never much thought about the Day of the Lord and am a complete skeptic with regard to so many people trying to predict when the end will be and that we live in end times. As a student of history, I've studied how bad all of history has been. The things that started out good get twisted. Our present age is not the inventor of evil. It has ebbed and flowed throughout history, hidden for a time but still working and thoroughly heinous and obvious at times. Every generation thinks they are living in the end times. However, in light of certain things in our own lives, I've been confronted personally with the fact that all is really just not right with the world, our country, our laws, etc. No government is perfect, nothing is. We expect things to work with swift justice and they simply don't. It has forced me to long for the day when all of this mess will be made right forever, when there will be no more orphans and no more fight for them and no more hunger and starvation and disease and extreme poverty and slavery and human trafficking. This anticipation should wake us up to these things, all the injustice and wrong in the world, and to cry out to the Lord to see and hear and work and to seek to help soften the blows of our fallen world but with realization that only God will finally put an end to it all, that we are not the saviors to end all of this, it is not our burden to carry. Christ, the Holy Child, is the Savior and Coming, Conquering, Victorious King.

Come, Lord Jesus Come!!!

Taylor's Table - Butternut Squash Soup with Chicken and Root Vegetables

I decided to finally cook one of the butternut squash I grew this year. I used some of it to make some baby food purees for Wes but I still had a lot left over. So I made something up! I had tasted a butternut squash bisque for babies that my neighbor makes as a business and thought it was delicious! I wanted to make something similar. This recipe was inspired by that baby food with a few additions! Don't be squeamish though. Give it a try first. I think you will really be pleased. The ingredients and directions may be a bit vague because I made this on the fly with what I had in the fridge.

• butter or olive oil (I think butter gives it a creamier flavor)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 carrots, chopped
• 1 parsnip, chopped (If you don't have this, you can leave it out but I think it adds a distinct and unique flavor to this soup!)
• 4 cups chicken broth? (I am not exactly sure how much broth I added!)
• 2 large new potatoes, cut up in 1 inch pieces and boiled or steamed.
• 2 cups or more butternut squash puree (I peeled the squash, cut it into pieces, cooked until soft, then mashed with a potato masher - or you can cut in half, lay cut side down in pan with a bit of water and cook at 350 until tender)
• 1 cup applesauce or cooked apples
• 1/2 - 1 cup shredded chicken
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• 2 TBS butter
• Parmesan Cheese

Heat butter in Dutch oven over medium-low heat. Add onions, carrots and parsnip and saute until tender. Add broth to the sauteed veggies. Add cooked potatoes, butternut squash, apples and chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. You may need to add more broth. Then puree with an immersion blender. Be careful not to burn yourself and wear and apron! When you are ready to serve the soup, add 2 TBS butter. Garnish with freshly shredded Parmesan cheese. Enjoy with a hunk of hardy bread and apple cider. ***This tastes even better left over!

* Thanks Randi for your inspiration!!!! :)

Launching "Sew Delighted"!

After over a year of thinking, planning, reading, buying, creating and praying, I am finally launching my little cottage shop called Sew Delighted. Thus far I have available napkins, notecards, cloth diapers and diaper doublers, and "half'-ghans. I also want to make cloth wipes/rags, baby quilts, and aprons, baby toys, and a few other things.

I am very excited about this opportunity because it gives me a creative outlet without a time crunch and because God has led me to use it to bless others by giving a portion of the proceeds to a ministry. (I will write another blog post later about this inspiration - I have so many blog posts in the queue in my head waiting to be written!!!)

I may eventually try out an etsy.com site but for now, I'm just keeping it here.

If you know anyone who'd be interested in any of these items, send them my way!

Hop on over to Sew Delighted - the link is also at the top of this page and is part of this blog site. You will learn a lot more there and see all the items for sale.

I would love your comments and suggestions!!!!