Inner Thoughts

For we are God's handwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

              Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

Sometimes, the work that needs done has nothing to do with the exterior.  It's not in downsizing possessions, how one eats, exercising, creating or even in our interactions with other people.  Sometimes, the work is inner.  Within ones own self, the innermost being.  It's not even in worshipping or prayer.  But rather it is in allowing God's handiwork to reach it's full potential.  That handiwork being ourselves.  Recognizing that our purpose here is to glorify God, to do the work he has prepared for us to do.  

I struggle so often with "what" my work is.  Is it the work of helping new families off to a good start?  Is it creating beautiful artwork in paint, photographs, or stitchery for other's to enjoy?  Is it in the home I create and the hospitality I provide?  Is it in the blogs I write and share?  Is it in the relationships of family and friends and the brief acquaintances I make?  

John Ortberg states in his blog post, "One Flourishing Life"  that  the work to be done is "receiving power from the Spirit of God to become the person God had in mind when he created you - his handiwork."  The problem is that "I" get in the way.  

So my work is to get "me" out of the way, so that "God/Christ in me" can come to the forefront.  It's not an easy task.  It's all too easy to let my personal wishes and desires take priority.  The older I get, the more I realize what a selfish person I can be.  

How to change this?  I am no expert and am still very much on the journey,  but what I see is that I need to spend more time in the Word of God.  More time communicating with God in prayer.  Rooting out those things that cause my disobedience to God and that cause me to reflect poorly on God.  

The Kitchen Drawers

It has been a while since I updated this blog... mostly because I've felt stuck regarding my downsizing goals.  Lately, I've been thinking quite a lot about living smaller and am making some changes around the house.  Now that my daughter is married and no longer living with me, my needs have changed and I want to get back to having less stuff around in my daily life.  

I started in the kitchen by going through some drawers.  

The utensil drawer has been full to overflowing lately, so that's the drawer I started with.  First I dumped everything out on the counter.  How in the world did all this actually fit in one drawer?  

The tray was gross.  First step was to clean it and wipe down the inside and out of the drawer. 

Then I organized stuff into categories.  Who know that I had 5 different corkscrews, two wine bottle sealers and several bottle plugs/sealers.  Not to mention duplicates of several other utensils! 

Such as two sets of measuring cups, four sets of measuring spoons and three pair of scissors.  

After clearing out most of the duplicates and editing to choose only the utensils that I actually use, the drawer is much neater and so much easier to find things!  I actually wish I could keep the metal measuring spoons, but the set is missing the size that I use the most, which makes it very inconvenient, so for now, I opted for the most complete set.  I'd purchased the other set thinking I would like them better than the other two sets, but they feel awkward in my hands and so I always go back to the old tupperware ones. 

I did keep a small box of tools that I have used occasionally, usually for something specific like canning or Christmas baking. I set them aside in a small box and I will re-evaluate them in the next year.  If they don't get used, or I don't go looking for them, I'll get rid of them too. 

The next drawer up was the silverware drawer.  

This wasn't horrible... and yet it was over crowded and getting harder to find what I wanted.  

As before, I dumped it all out on the counter, washed the partitioned tray and wiped out the drawer.

All those fabric pouches are made of anti-tarnish cloth and all have bits of silver ware in them that I inherited from my Mom or have collected myself over the years.  

 It was fun to look through everything afresh and see what was there.

Lots of quirky old spoons!  My Mom used have a spoon rack in the dining room that most of these hung on. 

Some things like the lovely little silver pickle fork and olive spoon were wedding gifts to my parents. It's a joy to have some of these things and the memories that they evoke when used!

This set of flatware is my "good" stainless.  In truth, other than a few of the serving pieces, I haven't used any of this in years.  Time to go to a new home. 

After some judicious culling, the silverware drawer is much less overcrowded and so much easier to find things!  I kept the set of everyday stainless that I used daily - there are 16 place settings, so plenty for most occasions!  If you wonder why I have so many place settings, remember that I have 4 kids of my own and a foster son.  Now that they are marrying, there are usually 10 to 12 people around the table at family gatherings.  And soon, there will be grandchildren... so it makes sense to have enough for everyone!   At least it makes sense to me!  I just wish I had a few more serving pieces such as a slotted spoon and meat fork, but unfortunately, this pattern does not have any of those available.  

Next, I tackled the knife drawer.  

It too, was a jumbled mess and often worried that I'd cut myself while hunting for the knife I wanted. 

Once again, I emptied the drawer onto the counter to sort through and get things organized.  I kept my favorite knives and set aside the rest to get rid of.  A couple things got moved to or from different drawers, such as the rolling pins and grater.  

Much neater and certainly easier to find things now!  

The drawer next to the knife drawer was also a mess and turning into a catch-all for things I didn't know where else to put. 

The rolling pins and grater got moved to the knife drawer.

Now the drawer has baking bags, cake decorating items and canning tools.  

The next two drawers I organized were the drawers containing plastic bags and rolls of foil and a few other miscellaneous items. 

There was another bag of silverware here - 6 place settings of a silver-plate luncheon set that I've never used.  Time to go.  Several partial boxes of matches were consolidated and some old napkins left from other events were added to the get rid of box.  Now I can find the things I want! 

 This drawer wasn't bad, but I put the bags I used most frequently in the high, easier to access drawer.

The last drawer to deal with had a mix of stuff in it and it was getting too messy to find anything easily.

Before and after. Once again, some items like canning supplies got moved to another drawer.  Other things like seasonal/special occasion napkins that I haven't used since I moved in got put in the get-rid-of box. 

One of the things in this drawer was an assortment of cookie cutters.  I also had cookie cutters in three other spots, so I gathered them together and this is the resultant mound of cutters!  Some were mine, and some were from my Mom. 

I pared down my keep pile to these cutters that I actually use almost yearly at the appropriate season. Much more manageable, but probably still too many.  The rest went back into containers to get rid of.  

So, that was my downsizing start for today.  I still have rather full drawers, but much more manageable now.  In time, I hope to pare down still further, but for today, I've culled out about 1/3 of what was in the drawers and kept only things that I know I'll use.  It feels good and even though I can't see the difference when I walk into the kitchen, I can "feel" the difference! 

The Story of the Tommee Tippee Cup

When I was a very tiny girl, I had a Tommee Tippee cup, just like the one pictured above.  It has a weighted bottom so that it always stands upright and won't tip over.  I loved that cup and can remember using it as a little girl.  Then my sister used it after me.  My mother, being rather sentimental about things, kept it for many years and when I had my first child, she passed it along to me.  It was a treasure of my childhood and I loved that my son was using it as I had so many years before.

The time came that our little family took a trip to Missouri to visit some friends.  We stayed in their lovely old farmhouse, sleeping on an iron bed in a wallpapered room that time seemed to have forgotten.  The Tommee Tippee cup made the journey with us as my son was only a little over a year old and just learning to drink from a cup.  One afternoon, after a drive to see the countryside with our friends, we stopped in a little town many miles from where they lived to have lunch.  As usual, the Tommee Tippee cup came in with us for our son to drink from during the meal.

It wasn't until hours later when we were nearly back to our friends house that I realized I had left the Tommee Tippee cup sitting on the restaurant table.  When I let everyone know I had forgotten it, it was decided that it was too far to go back and get it.  That should have been the end of the story.

As we went to bed that night, I could not stop thinking about the Tommee Tippee cup and as the night progressed, I became more and more distraught about it.  Hours of sleep were lost while I thought about this little pink plastic cup that had been mine as a child.  It was as though I'd lost my childhood.  I tossed and turned, fretted and worried.  I was really upset.  How was I going to get it back?  It seemed so important not to lose it.

Around 5:00 a.m., with the sky beginning to turn light outside, I began to realize through the grace of God, that I was losing an entire night's sleep over a stupid plastic cup, that it was just a thing, an object that in the larger scope of things had no real meaning.  And I was allowing the loss of this piece of plastic to ruin a good night's sleep and probably much more if I continued on the way that I was.  I remember praying about it and then falling into a sound, restful sleep.

On awaking later in the morning, it came out how upset I had been about forgetting the cup and about my losing sleep over it, but now I was able to say that it was ok and that it wasn't worth the long journey to try and recover it.

Many years later, the lesson about losing what was just a "thing" turned out to be of enormous importance.  In 1999, when our house burned down, it was so much easier to cope with because I had already learned the lesson of "things" versus what really mattered... the people and relationships of those around us, of putting our trust in God to see that all would be well.

This past Christmas,  as we talked about my desire to downsize my belongings, I told this story to my kids.  Then, for my birthday a few weeks later, one of my gifts was the Tommee Tippee cup that you see above!  So now, as I go through my belongings and work at downsizing, I have this cup sitting on my kitchen windowsill to remind me that it is all just stuff.  I can choose to let the stuff weigh me down, to run my life, to keep me awake at night worrying about it.  Or I can let it go and be free to live with focus on the things that truly matter.

Toward a Simpler Healthier Diet

Part of my journey to a simpler life involves making changes in how I eat and drink.  These guidelines

come from the hydration advisor at CamelBak.  I thought that they made a lot of sense and were stated

in an easy to remember format.

▪   Eat whole unprocessed foods, drink tap water.

▪   Enjoy a diet that has lots and lots of plant foods, with small amounts of meat and dairy products.

▪   Snack on real foods, not "snack food"

▪   Support local farmers and eat seasonally, locally and regionally to the extent you can

▪   Get cooking!

▪   Take less, waste less at the dinner table.

Some of these are things that I really struggle with.  It’s so easy to get caught up in what is “easy” and forgo the sound basics of nutrition.  For instance, when I was preparing for bariatric surgery back in 2011, I cut out all soda, including diet soda and switched to water and Crystal Lite.  I also dropped all caffeine except for one morning cup of tea.  I was able to stay soda free for two years, but lately I’ve gotten back into the diet soda (albeit caffeine free) habit.  I get so I just crave it and first thing you know, I’ve gone through 3 to 5 cans in a day.  The carbonation can stretch my stomach, allowing me to take in more food, and first thing you know, my weight starts creeping back up. 

How shocking to also realize that to put 1 liter of soda in my fridge from a water footprint and energy use standpoint uses the equivalent as 340 to 620 liters of tap water!  From an earth stewardship standpoint, that is not how I want to be wasting precious resources.  So a new goal over the next month is to get back to my 2011 habits of drinking tap water in place of diet soda.  I also hope tot drop the Crystal Lite as I just cannot believe that all these artificial sweeteners and chemicals used in such products are beneficial and healthy.  I also find the ongoing use of artificial sweeteners just seems to make me crave sweet things, and that certainly makes the struggle to maintain a healthy weight a more difficult one.

I do pretty well with the plant foods part, though I do eat a fair amount of dairy.  It's the snacking on REAL food and not on "snack" food that gets me into trouble and is probably the other big part of my struggle with weight.  I tend to crave salty things and most times, if offered a choice of candy or chips, would nearly always choose the chips.  There aren't a lot of "real" foods that I've found that can satisfy that salty craving, though I may need to look at home popped popcorn again (not the microwave variety).    

Some days I think it would be nice to simply step out of this current life and all it's issues and step into a new one, with all the foundation already in place ~ the clean minimalist house, the fresh, unprocessed food in the fridge and healthy meals and snacks already prepared.  But then would I learn what I need to along the way?  

Radical Change

I am searching for radical change.  It doesn’t come easily, but I have had glimpses of the potential rewards of this change in my life.  I want my home to exude the peace that I am finding in God, I want it to reflect the calm beauty that I see in God’s creation around me.  I want my home to reflect the purity, clarity and wholeness that can only be found in a life centered in God.  It may sound strange, but I begin to understand why in the Zen tradition of Buddhism, there is a spare-ness, a focus on a single beautiful object.  It helps to clear the mind, prepare it for a singular focus.  While I don’t follow or put faith in Buddhism, I begin to see how this can also benefit our Christian meditation.  How can we focus on God when our mind is continuously bombarded and clouded by the chaos, over-abundance and clutter that surrounds us.  It detracts us from the handiwork of God, from being able to see and experience him through his creation, from hearing his “still, small voice”. 

Henry David Thoreau wrote, 

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.  I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”  

(italics are my emphasis, not Thoreau’s)

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, 

“Be not the slave of your own past—plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.”

Jesus told the rich young ruler, 

"You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven, and come, follow me.” (Mark 10:21)

Jesus also taught the following, 

“Take heed, and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15)

For a long time, I have been convicted of the need to live with fewer possessions.  There was a time when I looked to possessions as providing comfort and stability in my life.  But surely and steadily, God has been teaching me that contentment in life does not come from things.

As I said earlier, I am looking for radical change.  I not only want to change my surroundings, but change the way I live life.  
~ I want to suck the marrow out of life.  
~ I want to dive deep, swim far.  
~ I want to live, pared down to the essentials.  
~ I want to retreat from our consumerist and debt ridden society.  
~ I want to live sparely, serenely, contentedly, focused on relationship with my maker.  
~ I want to paint pictures that share this deep and abiding peace that God brings, that share his still small voice and make it known.  
~ I want to spin and knit things that share the warmth and protection that God gives.
~ I want to stitch things that share the deep joy that faith in God brings  
~ As a nurse, I want to be an instrument in the hand of God that shares the deep love that he has for us.  
~ As a parent, I want to share my experience of life in Christ with my children, in hopes that it will encourage and uplift each of them spiritually.  

And Jesus said to his disciples, "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven."
"With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." 

~ Matthew 19: 23, 26