The Best of the Worst: Best of Part III

Ray and I have recently started "eating clean," which has been incredible. Who knew it would be possible to feel even healthier and more energetic?! Gluten free + eating clean = best life ever. BUT, the big but, it's always important to allow yourself what I like to call

"cheat treats."

Even one of my new favorite fitness professionals

Alicia Marie

admits to having double stuffed Oreos in her freezer for not so clean eating after a photo shoot or competition.

I personally have not discovered the courage to try many pre-packaged gf cookies, mostly because it only takes one bad experience to make you run the other way and never look back.

But have no fear, here are some of the really good/but only every so often gf cheat treats:

I've never tried make brownies from scratch, only from a box. So, the best box-o-brownies: Gluten Free Pantry

CC Cookie Recipe: Pamela's (can be found online on back of baking mix)

Cupcake heaven: Whole Food GF Bakehouse

Ray loves the vinilla, I love the chocolate

And my favorite dessert ever: Cheesecake

The best recipe we have found so far (which Ray has mastered creating, much to the delight of mouth and dismay of my hips) can be found in

Carol Fenster's 1000 Gluten Free Recipes Cookbook

The Question That Rocked My Education...

Today in my scriptures II class we discusses the book of Amos. Have you ever read Amos? It's only 9 short chapters, you should stop and read it now. Seriously, I need you to stop and read it now, so you can help me out with this question.

Done?

Okay.

God's pretty angry, yeah? Talks through the prophet Amos about bringing plagues and droughts and other horrible things on the people God is rather angry with.

This text did not sit well with me, simply because in my personal relationship with God I haven't known God to be extremely angry. I found my feelings confusing and hard to explain, but a classmate of mine did not and asked the most intense question I have encountered thus far in my seminary journey.

I would say most Jesus followers (or at least the ones I know) do not assert that God causes bad things to happen. But, if you read Amos, you see very clearly that God is taking full credit for bringing bad things upon God's people. Wouldn't that then mean that God does in fact cause (or at least has caused in the passed) bad things to happen?

Thoughts?

The Land of Enchantment

Weapon of Choice

There are so many things I have come to love about small town living.

No traffic (minus the tractors), learning to garden, knowing everyone, the quiet and still nights. I truly love this place.

But last week I was reminded of the one thing I deeply detest.

Passive-aggressive-gossip.

In our small town of 150 where everyone is related in some shape-form-or-fashion, the deeply ingrained mode of handling issues with one another is by talking badly about an issue/person to someone else. This person then goes on to tell someone else, and someone else, and someone else (you get the picture) until it gets to the person who was being badly spoken about to begin with. Then one of two things happens, 1. the person being spoken about gets angry (and rightfully so, they have now been gossiped about throughout the entire town) and (not rightfully so) passive-aggressively responds with an angry/bitter silence OR 2. they respond by talking badly about the person who was talking badly about them, thus causing the vicious cycle of passive-aggressive dysfunction to continue.

I am the wife of a pastor. Did you know that?

The wife of a pastor, who was a child of a minister, who grew up in some seriously dysfunctional churches. I've been in ministry almost all my life, which sadly means I've watched people tear each other down and deeply wound each each other with their words for well over two decades. Words, that many times eventually made their way around to the ministers and their family; my family.

The author of James describes the tongue as a "tiny spark that can set a great forest on fire," saying that "it is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body," that surely "it is set on fire by hell itself." At the climax of this passage he says that the tongue is "restless and evil, full of deadly poison."

I wish I could say I weathered the unforgiving words against my family with grace and mercy, but that's not what happened. I instead wielded the weapon of my tongue and became a fighter. I garnered the skill of wounding with words. My tongue became my best weapon; a weapon of mass destruction, a weapon of defense. This fighter mentality was something I could actually get away with as a child.

But I am no longer a child.

I am no longer the child of a minister.

I am woman.

I am the partner of a minister.

It's no surprise that the people who make up the church haven't changed; we are all still people after all. So it should come as no surprise that people talk badly about my husband. It should come as no surprise that they do not come to him with their frustrations and concerns, but passive-aggressively wade them through the channels of town gossip. So, reader, should it be any surprise that my automatic response to hurtful words against someone I passionately love is make mine hurt more?

But I am no longer a child.

I am no longer the child of a minister.

I am a woman.

I am the partner of a minister.

I have often wondered why God brought us to this small town. A place in which Ray and I many times feel so out of place. But last week I was reminded that one of the many reasons we are here is so that I may be confronted in a very exposed way of the thing that I actually deeply detest.

My sin. My weapon of choice.

"For if we could control our tongues, we would be perfect and could also control ourselves in every other way." James 3:2