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rest (reposted)
‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’
Those are words spoken by Jesus, recorded in Matthew 11:28-30.
I am feeling a great need to curl up in the arms of my God and rest. I am weary. I feel heavily burdened, and my soul needs rest and refreshment.
misplacing god
Have you met my friend Joanne Heim , author/blogger at The Simple Wife? She’s a fantastic lady, and she has written a book that has just been released. Misplacing God : And Finding Him Again is available on Amazon! The Amazon link says it will ship in a month or two, but I’m pretty sure it will ship before that.
I will be doing a review of Joanne’s book Misplacing God: And Finding Him Again here on my blog as soon as I get my copy. And maybe, just maybe, I might have a copy to give away!
If you’re not subscribed to my feed, please sign up with the link below, the RSS link in the navagation bar at the top of the page, or one of the links in the sidebar. That way you’ll receive updates in your email box anytime I publish a new post. And you’ll know when the goodies like giveaways come along!
ooops!
Crud! I forgot to write a post for my American Frugal Housewife category today. I have one all written in my head ~ I just need to take some pictures, then actually sit down and write the post. Hopefully tomorrow…
two cute photos from last weekend
Last weekend while Ashley and Michael were here visiting, I took a few pictures. I think these are probably the cutest two:
ideas?
Look what my mom-in-law sent me:
Aren’t they great? They’re glass milk bottles. On the front is written South Side Dairy, Butte, Mont., Phone 792-5277; the back reads Homogenized, Pasturized, Milk.
Two of them have a price of 65 cents written on them. I don’t know if that was the original price, or if my mom-in-law picked them up at a shop where someone (negligently) wrote on the cork bottle stopper.
I could really use some suggestions as to what I can do with these wonderful bottles. They’re half-gallon size, but they’re pretty narrow at the top. Getting things into them may be a challenge, but I can try.
Now I need to wash them and set them out to dry. And I need to fold baby laundry ~ but that’s another subject altogether…
the economy of tears
I dislike crying. It gives me a horrible headache, makes the muscles in the back of my neck tense up, turns my face bright red, and gives me a stuffy nose. In general crying makes me very comfortable physically. I have enough daily pain from the fibromyalgia ~ I don’t like to add to it by crying.
This week I haven’t really had much of a choice when it comes to crying. I have shed more tears this week than I have in the past year total. Just yesterday I was telling 2 of my friends about what happened earlier this week, and I found myself in tears once again. My friends were surprised to see me that way ~ I’ve known them for about 3 years now, and I think they may have seen me shed a tear once before.
Revelation 21:3-4 reads:
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”(ESV)
After Christ returns, and the new heaven and new earth are established, God Himself will wipe the tears from my eyes. I will never cry again. I’m kind of looking forward to that, you know?
In Psalm 56, verse 8, David wrote:
You number my wanderings;
Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book? (NKJ)
God knows exactly how many tears I have cried; He has recorded them in His book and put them into a bottle.
Every single tear I have shed, and every single tear I will shed in the future, has been numbered and is held by God Himself.
Tears from me are hard won. I tend to be a bit hardheaded; it usually takes something very serious to draw tears from my eyes.
God has been using those tears to teach me this week. Through the pain inflicted on me by someone else, God has shown me parts of my heart that needed to be exposed to the light. My tears have brought me once again to the throne of the Almighty.
I’ve learned something. Each one of those tears has significance in God’s economy. They are a precious commodity! Not a single one is wasted! They have all been counted and saved.
Despite the fact that I don’t like to cry, the tears I’ve cried are a good thing. They’re a symbol of God’s working in my life. Every one of them has value ~ nothing is wasted in God’s economy.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
My friend Joanne began this topic a frugality and nothing being wasted on her blog The Simple Wife. Here’s a link to her post from today.
And a link to Jen’s blog, A Pair of Bartletts. She has shared a couple of yummy-sounding muffin recipes!
blogrolling
When I started The Fruit of the Spirit graphic and blogroll, I decided to use Blogrolling.com to host the blogroll. If you haven’t used Blogrolling.com, you might not know what it is. Blogrolling.com is a free online service that allows you to type in all of the links you want contained under a certain blogroll, then you can choose from a rather impressive list of choices for that specific blogroll. For example, you can choose how you want the links listed (alphabetically, in the shape of a pyramid, most recently updated blog in top slot, totally randomly, ect.); you can choose to associate a picture with individual links; you can choose how often the blogroll is updated if you want the links listed in order of most recently updated….the list goes on and on.
The best feature about Blogrolling.com is that it allows you to add or delete links from a blogroll, and the blogroll will automatically be updated with the addition or deletion. With The Fruit of the Spirit blogroll, member blogs never have to worry about adding or deleting from the blogroll ~ it’s done automatically for them when I add or delete from Blogrolling.com.
The service has been down for several months now. I have not been able to update the blogroll ~ and quite frankly it has been rather frustrating. It has also hindered me from expanding the blogroll in number of members. There’s no sense in adding a bunch of blogs to The Fruit of the Spirit blogroll if the blogs’ links won’t show up on the blogroll!
As soon as Blogrolling.com gets their stuff together and launches their new version of Blogrolling, The Fruit of the Spirit blogroll will be updated. I plan to delete those blogs that are listed as members but aren’t displaying the graphic. I have a few new blogs to add, and there will be more additions once Blogrolling.com is back up.
easy menu planning
It seems that menu planning is the hot topic of the week. Since both of my friends Holly and Meredith decided to write about menu planning over the past week or so, I guess I’ll throw my hat in the ring and offer a small contribution that I hope will encourage you as well as be helpful.
I have long failed at the homemaking art of meal/menu planning (I use the terms interchangeably). When Roger and I were first married, I had no idea how to even cook, much less how to plan what to cook. Since then I’ve made some strides in the cooking department, but occasionally I still fall flat when it comes to meal planning.
Before Ashley and Attison moved in, I had a lot more free time. I made meal planning and grocery shopping lists something of an art form. Just ask my husband ~ I would spend a whole day planning the menu for 2 weeks, then make a grocery list that was separated according to our commissary’s aisles (a commissary is simply a grocery store on a military base). I would even coordinate my coupons with the shopping list. That way if the brand I had a coupon for wasn’t available, the coupon could be quickly located and removed from the pile of coupons that would be given to the cashier once the shopping was completed.
To be honest, I kind of enjoyed being so “persnickety” about my menu plan and shopping list. I started a homemaking notebook which contains about 300 recipes ~ that way I wouldn’t have to look through a stack of cookbooks to find the recipe I was looking for ~ they were all right there in my homemaking notebook.
The grocery list organized by aisle was wonderful ~ it really made grocery shopping easier. Roger usually does the grocery shopping. At first he sort of chuckled at my coordinated list. After a while, once he realized how much easier grocery shopping was with my list, he came to love it. The last time he went to the grocery store, he went with just a list, not an organized list, and he told me it was awful! He now appreciates my coordinated grocery shopping list!
I was teaching Ashley my system for meal planning and grocery shopping before Attison was born. Once Atti came along, all bets were off. I had forgotten what it was like to have an infant in the house. I’ve had only teenagers for 4 years now, and even though we homeschool, I had TONS more free time than I do now.
So, I’ve concluded that my all-day event of menu planning and grocery list coordinating is no longer feasible. I’ve had to re-think my methods and find quicker, easier ways of doing the meal planning and making the grocery list.
I’ve learned a few secrets over the years that I would like to pass along. My first secret is Menus4Moms. Oh goodness, are they a time-saver! Each week they send out a menu plan for the next week, along with a shopping list of what you’ll need for that week’s meals. All of the planning work is done for you!
One thing I don’t like about Menus4Moms is that at least once a week they include a pork meal. I have a thing about pork. Can’t do it. Nope. Just can’t. We lived in North Carolina for 5 1/2 years. All of their barbecue is pork (what’s wrong with these people?), and there are tons of pig farms. Pig farms are gross. Living in NC cured me of ever liking pork again. The rest of my family likes pork, but I don’t, and I can’t even bring myself to cook it.
Another glitch I ran into was that Menus4Moms only sends out meal plans for dinners, and they only cover 5 days a week. Avoiding the pork on the Menus4Moms plans also meant a little bit of extra work in coordinating the menu and grocery list, but it wasn’t rocket science. But add into that the need to plan meals for the other 2 days a week, as well as snacks, breakfast and lunch…well, it just took up more of my time that I was willing to part with.
Another solution to my meal planning dilemma I have found extremely helpful is Meal Mixer. It’s a paid subscription meal planning service, but it’s much more flexible than Menus4Moms, and it provides menus for 3 meals a day, 7 days a week. You can also request snacks to be included in your personalized menus.
Meal Mixer is wonderful. You can change the recipes if you don’t care for one of the recipes provided. The ability to upload your own recipes is included. And you get a full shopping list for everything you will need for all of your meals that week.
Meal Mixer will calculate calories, carbs, fat, protein, sugar, fiber and more for each meal and each day. It’s truly an amazing menu planning service.
I have used both Meal Mixer and Food Allergy Meal Mixer ~ they’re the best menu planning service I’ve come across. There are other paid menu planning services out there ~ I’ve even tried a few of them. In my opinion, Meal Mixer is superior to any of the other menu planning services available.
Right now Meal Mixer is running a special 10-day free trial offer which includes 2 full menus. When you sign up for the free 10-day trial, you’re given the opportunity to choose the length of your plan should you decide to stay with Meal Mixer. They’re offering a FULL YEAR’S MENUS for $48.00. That’s less than a dollar a week for a full menu plan including 3 meals and snacks 7 days a week, custom tailored to your tastes, food choices, diet restrictions, and even the size of your family!
If you ask me, there’s not a better deal out there (that I know of).
With Meal Mixer you can sit down at the computer and plan your week’s meals according to your family’s schedule. Then simply print off the shopping list, check your refrigerator and pantry to see which items on the list you already have, cross those off the list and viola! your menu and shopping list for the next week are completely taken care of.
I haven’t even listed all of the customizations available through Meal Mixer. If you click here you’ll see a run down of all the customizations available, as well as the costs for different lengths of subscriptions.
In order to be completely upfront about it, I am an affiliate with Meal Mixer. I became an affiliate because I LOVE their menu plan service. I would not recommend it so highly if I hadn’t used it myself. Being an affiliate is an added perk for me. I make a little bit of money from every subscription that comes in through my affiliate link, so if you do decide to try the 10-day free trial of Meal Mixer or Food Allergy Meal Mixer I would greatly appreciate it if you used my link. 
I know there are other online helps and choices out there. If you’re already good at planning your menu but you’re looking for some good-tasting recipes to add variety to your menu, please check Meredith’s cooking blog and Holly’s cooking blog. Both of these ladies have wonderful recipes they have shared online.
I have other sources for great meal planning tips and fantastic recipes. I’ll have to write another post about those ~ this one’s long enough as it is!
rejection
Have you experienced the sting of rejection recently? Rejection comes in all kinds of forms from all kinds of sources. It can be very subtle, and it can be very blatant. I think rejection is one of the hardest things to deal with in life. No one likes rejection.
I know rejection hurts. I’ve had my fair share of it throughout my life so far. The past two years (almost to the day) have brought two major rejections that I honestly never imagined happening. I wrote about how God was using the first major rejection here. That rejection brought forth The Fruit of the Spirit graphic and blogroll. And just today I learned of the second major rejection. I’m still a little shocked about it, and my heart hurts almost to the point of actual physical pain.
There’s something else I know though: God has promised to never leave me or forsake me. Deuteronomy 31:8 reads:
The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.
It’s hard not to be discouraged when a major rejection happens. Today I have questioned something that I thought was true all of my life. My perception of who I am has been altered. My eyes have been opened to a lie, a deception that I have held as a truth until now. One of my greatest fears has been realized, and my world has been rocked just a little bit.
I’ve shed some tears today. I’m sure I will shed more tears in the days to come. When I was taking classes to earn my Biblical counseling certificate, I learned there are 7 general stages of grief: shock & denial, pain & guilt, anger & bargaining, depression, the upward turn, reconstruction, and finally acceptance. These stages aren’t written in stone, they’re just a general guide of what to expect. When I wrote Fruit last April, I think I was probably somewhere between depression and acceptance. Regarding today’s discovery, I’m all over the chart.
But way deep down inside, at the very core of my being, there is peace, and even joy. I know that God is using this situation for my good. He tells me so in Romans, chapter 8, verse 28:
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
In my post Fruit, I wrote this:
I have a heavenly Father who I can run to with every tear, every emotional hurt, every disappointment. Every time one of those hurts begins to bubble up in me, I can crawl into my Father’s arms, and He comforts me. He reminds me that “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, (and) selfish ambition” are acts of the sinful nature. He reminds me that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature………keep in step with the Spirit.” It doesn’t mean that the hurt is completely gone, but what that gentle reminder helps me to do is to forgive, and every time that same hurt comes bubbling up again, it’s easier and easier to just let it go.
I still believe it. I stand by that statement. I know eventually this fresh wound will begin to heal. I don’t know how long it will take, but I have faith in God. No matter what wounds other people inflict on me, God will never leave me nor forsake me. He promised ~ and I believe without a shadow of a doubt His Word is Truth. His Truth is that He loves me; He goes before me. I need not be afraid; I need not be discouraged. No matter what.
the american frugal housewife
My sweet friend Joanne (http://thesimplewife.typepad.com) has been writing about economy in the home and using the resources available to you. Frugality, simple living, economizing, downsizing and want vs need are things that have been on my mind and heart for well over a year now. We’ve had a couple of additions to our family within that time, and a lot of other things going on, so I haven’t had time to explore this topic (or is it more likely that I’ve been ignoring the call God has put on my heart??).
Joanne’s writing always inspires me. I enjoyed her book Living Simply and I’m looking forward to the release of her new book Misplacing God in February. She plans to continue writing about economy in the home and in our lives on her blog every Friday.
I asked Joanne’s permission to copy the I’m An American Frugal Housewife. Are You? button from her sidebar. I’ve linked the button to her original post about economy. It’s a wonderful post; if you haven’t read it yet, you’ll find it here.
Joanne asked me if I would like to join her in posting on Fridays about economy in our homes and in our lives. I think that’s a great idea. I was raised in a home where I was the only child, so just about anything I wanted I was given. When Roger asked my dad’s permission to marry me, my dad said very plainly, “She’s very spoiled, you know. Are you ready to handle that?”
Economy in our home will be a new and strange topic. I was not taught to be frugal, to save money, to use coupons or even to shop the sales racks at department or grocery stores. Simply making sure we use what we have, including eating leftovers (gasp!), will be a challenge for us (at least in the beginning).
The “economy” Joanne is writing about is so much more than clipping coupons or saving a few cents by making your own laundry detergent. I do believe that being a good shepherd of what the Lord blesses us with is a responsibility He gives us. But living a life where nothing is wasted, and understanding that where God is concerned everything, e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. is used to the fullest (and for our good) goes infinitely deeper than eating leftovers.
Joanne has given her permission for you to “steal” her button, too. She would like for you to link it back to her original post, but she won’t send the cyber button police after you if you don’t.
I think there are things about God’s economy that we can all learn, whether you’re new to the idea of economy or an old hand at it. I’m going to start a new category here on A Joyful Heart titled joyful economy. I plan to join Joanne in writing about joyful economy every Friday.
Would you like to join us?