7 Day Fitness Challenge

I'm inspired. Maybe it's that blah feeling you get after holiday food. I didn't even eat that much and I still feel it. Maybe it's those family pictures that turned out really well but revealed more than I wanted to know about my present state. Maybe it's inspiring people like Amy M. who have been hopping on the treadmill late at night and are getting so skinny one barely recognizes them.

Anyway, I'm giving it a week. I'm going to exercise at least an hour a day for the next seven days. I'm going to do it after the kids go to bed. I'm going to fly in the face of all the excuses, however valid, and just do it.

Anyone with me?

Murky Milk Musings

With six people in the house there's the tendency to always have some sort of drama.

There was lots of drama today. No one warned me that pms starts at the age of 7. And you know that sensitive guy that everyone hopes to marry? I did. His children are every bit as "sensitive." (Sorry, MacGyver. You know it's true.) The main trouble is that "sensitive" in a child translates into a lot of hitting, pulling hair, yelling, dissolving into tears, kicking, and screaming "I hate you" to the very siblings that they prayed fervently would come to be.

And when I was a child, I straightened up pretty fast when I got in trouble. At least I think I did. I didn't want a repeat. My children seem to revel in punishment. They can barely set foot out of timeout or finally have a privilege returned or receive any other form of punishment and a minute later they are pulling the same act that got them there in the first place.

Strong willed in a husband means a safe home, provision and comfort, relief that he will take care of the hard things and the big things. Strong willed passed on to 4 small children means.... either a whole lot of fun or a whole lot of drama.

I hate drama.

Anyway, this has nothing to do with what I was going to say in the first place, so it's time to get back on topic. All this was just to say that something's always going on in the house. Baby J has taken center stage in my mind in recent days.

Before I reveal my dilemma, I have to make a confession. Until a few days ago, I secretly looked down on moms that were sure their nursing babies had a milk allergy. I was one of the ones that rolled my eyes and whispered to other look-downers that it was all in their head and they were going to all that trouble for nothing. That even if the baby had a sensitivity to something the best way for them to "get over it" was to expose them to it.

That was before. Before that first little weird rash on his face a couple months ago. Before my happy, friendly baby got such a sad look on his face. Before hearing from the nurse that he'd only gained 3 ounces in two months. Before changing 4 dirty, weird looking, awful smelling diapers a day.(CLOTH diapers. I've been rinsing. A lot.) Before wiping my precious baby and seeing blood from all the sores on his bottom.

I'm supposed to take care of that bottom.

So I did my homework and to my great surprise the symptoms added up to an allergy. Which allergy was, and still is the question. I started with the most common. I stopped eating any dairy whatsoever and made sure everything that went into his mouth was also non-dairy. It's been a hard week. I love cheese. I miss cheese. The results haven't been incredibly clear. He seems happier, his bottom has healed, his face is a little less rashy, but we're still doing 3 dirty diapers a day. I'm going to throw all caution to the wind and eat Thanksgiving dinner the way it was intended to be eaten, in all of it's buttery, whipped cream glory, and see if there is any change. If not, I guess it will be time to haul the entourage back to the doctor. Hey, we made it a couple weeks without going for someone, I guess.

So that's the topic of the day. Strike a chord? Want to tell me off for my uncharitable thoughts? Tell me I deserve it? I know I do. Go ahead and say it if it makes you feel better. If anyone has advice or thinks I'm doing something wrong, that would be quite welcome also.

Good night!

A Few Rules

Okay. I'm a pretty nice person. I always give people the benefit of the doubt. But I have to say I'm done answering any inflammatory posts. I have never claimed to have any supreme knowledge about anything, and I am writing from the viewpoint that the Bible is the true and inspired word of God. If you do not agree, you are welcome to your opinion. But I will no longer argue about it.

This is not to say that it is wrong to question and to seek answers for those questions. There are other blogs, other sources that will gladly take these things on, if the questions are serious, and I encourage those with questions I cannot answer to find someone who has the time and energy to discuss these things.

Resources I would recommend include

http://www.rzim.org/ (Ravi Zacharias, apologetist)

http://leestrobel.com/ (Ex-Atheist)

If you are a reader and you like deep, C.S. Lewis is an excellent choice.

As for my blog - sincere questions to which we can find the answers together are as always welcomed and appreciated, even if you disagree with the conclusions I've drawn. But it must be with the understanding that the Bible is the source for finding those answers.

Any comments that discuss inappropriate topics to this blog(to be determined by the blogger) will be immediately deleted.

Thank you for reading, as always, the musings of a really really busy and really really tired wife and mom.

Revelations, Perfections, and Ironies

The stars have aligned, and a few hours of time have been granted to me. I finished my 600 page Francine Rivers novel. (Her newest - a two book series. Read it.) I only have a moderately large pile of laundry on the basement floor, and have actually put away all of the clean clothes. It's Sunday afternoon, and since I actually spent more than 8 hours last night actually sleeping - I don't feel the need to sleep away the afternoon as is my custom of late.

The result? A thought out blog entry of sufficient depth that a great discussion is anticipated.

We're studying Revelation in church. Maybe it's my imagination, but I feel like our worship has been upgraded to the next level ever since we began. Today our choir, although we were still struggling with it this past Wednesday, pulled off the Hallelujah chorus. And it reminded me, our highest praise during this life will not compare with the worship we'll be about for eternity if we know Christ.

Which led me to my next pondering. Heaven. We discussed life after death this morning in Sunday School.

Because I know you tricky blog readers, I will begin with the facts. The Bible says much about Heaven, but the basics are this - Heaven is where God is, eternity will be spent on a brand new and perfect version of earth, and the followers of Jesus will spend eternity in brand new and perfect bodies. See 1 Thessalonians 4, Hebrews 8, Hebrews 11:16, 2 Peter 3, and parts of Revelation.

Some of us might be tempted to let the descriptions of heaven go in one ear and out the other, especially if we've been taught them since we were children. But have you ever truly just pondered the amazing future in store for us that know him?

Now we jump into my speculations and wanderings. I think God knew what he was doing when he didn't give us too much detail about our forever home. Even with the limited facts he's given us, we tend to picture heaven as a blah-fest. Standing around in white robes in a huge white room and chanting like cloistered monks while God sits on his throne and looks harsh.

Or was I the only one that got that impression from the way I heard people speak of it? That could be.

But when you force yourself to look past the vague description and the traditional versions of the truth, you realize that heaven is the perfect version of that vision and infinity times more. Now, as far as I know, it is an accepted fact that we use precious little of the brains we've been given. Have you ever wondered why? My theory, based on my own fallible logic, is that the parts we don't have access to are going to be activated when we get into eternity. We're going to be completely human, completely amazing inventions of God that are capable of everything that even the wisest, most intelligent person who ever lived couldn't even imagine.

Let's bring it home. What's your strength? What's the thing that drives you, the thing that makes you get up in the morning, the thing that delights and inspires and motivates you to live to a higher version of yourself? I'll give you my example, so you can think about what yours is, because it's tempting to say that there are too many to choose one. (At first thought, I might say, well, I love to write. I love music. I love to sing. I love to be a mom. I love to teach my kids.) But if I'm really going to boil me down to one core trait, I'd have to say that the one thing that makes me who I am and upon which all my other loves rests is simply my imagination.

Now, my imagination has also gotten me in trouble on plenty of occasions. There were the things I totally missed out on because I was daydreaming, there are the very real fears I had as a child because of the things I could imagine. Especially in the dark, old, creaky and possibly haunted church next door where my completely unimaginative mother made me go and practice piano by myself and probably scared 10 or 15 years off my life at the same time...

My sisters know what I'm talking about.

But all in all, my imagination fuels my deepest loves and my highest goals. And it's my suspicion that it will be my imagination that will drive me through eternity. I believe that when this temporary life is over, I will still be creating music, creating art, creating something that will be my eternal act of worship to my Creator.

I have other theories about eternity. I think we'll have "superpowers." I think we'll still be in the process, always, of learning new things, only we will not be hindered by laziness, weakness, short attention spans... you name it. Life will still be exciting, amazing, rewarding, and delightful. In fact, we probably haven't experienced the tiniest speck of what those words mean as of this moment. I think the irony of all that we try to come up with is that God is so big, so immense, so timeless and powerful and wise that it's going to to take forever to figure him out.

And we'll revel in every moment spent in the endeavor.

So what is your strength? I want to hear some of your boiled down and generalized descriptions of the driving forces that motivate you. There's no wrong answer. We've all been given special gifts by our Creator. The trick is finding them and putting them in the right spot in the puzzle of time and space that God is creating.

And if I'm really going to be honest, though this blog is based on the idea that we can make this life better by growing and learning, and I'm a believer in changed lives... we're trying to do things that aren't going to work until this imperfect, broken world is replaced by the new model. So I guess I can relax a little, even if I don't write every day and even if no one agrees with what I say or even cares or reads. Because my eternal blog will be AWESOME.

Let me know what you think your "driving motivation" looks like. One word descriptions are fine, for those of you who are thinking you won't reply just because you can't think of the right way to explain it.

And if this sparks any other thoughts about heaven you might have, let's have it.

(Oh, and if you aren't sure your ticket for heaven is sealed, and you can't believe I am so sure mine is, please know that your fare was already paid by Jesus, and all that is required of you is to admit you can't pay for it yourself and reach out and take it from him. End of story. If you doubt me, say so, and I'll come up with some verses to prove it.)

Hair Part Two

Okay, I had questions. And I will endeavor to answer them to the best of my ability. Not that it is any great ability.

The question was about what I meant by last instruction about using the curling iron. I knew it wasn't clear when I wrote it, but I was too lazy to think of a way to put it into words.

Not that I came up with something brilliant. I just took my camera up to my curling iron and snapped a few pictures. Here they are. Hopefully it will cause the light to come on for those of you who were confused and frustrated by my last post.

(Disregard my funny faces. It's hard to curl your hair and take pictures at the same time, let alone smile pretty.)

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

At this point, you have your basic curl. Now run your fingers through it and shake it up a bit.

8.

Now to discuss another little problem that busy moms tend to have when they don't wash their hair every day. (Those of you that have never considered this and find this disgusting, just keep in mind that it is actually HEALTHIER for your hair NOT to wash it every day or even every other day. The oils that are secreted that you wash off every time you wash your hair are protectants. Over-washing leads to dry hair. At least this is what I read. Or heard. Or both.)

I was discussing this with my hair stylist again this week at church and she suggested that anyone with light colored hair can erase the signs of oils at the roots with a little bit of baby powder. I'm excited to try this. For now - this is my solution:

9.

So there you have it. We've about exhausted my knowledge of hair care. Add your own tips if you have them! (Or let me know if this is still not clear at all!)

Hairy Blogging

Apologies. I'm sorry I haven't blogged. You know what stands in my way, I won't go on about it.

Confessions. For the same reason - I have only been on the elliptical once in about two weeks. I haven't had time. Fortunately, I haven't had time to eat either.

I'm coming along with my list of essential oil recipes. My plan is to offer samples of any that you are interested in trying so you can know which oils you would like to invest in.

Today I'd like to discuss hair. If you are male you probably aren't going to have any interest in anything I come up with today. I'm sorry for wasting your time.

I've always liked long curly hair. This may have something to do with the straight, boy-short hair that my mom felt was necessary when I was six years old. I deal with the trauma by letting my hair grow and curling it. Sorry, Mom. You did great in every other way.

Anyway, so recently while discussing this love of long curly hair but lack of time with my wonderful hair stylist, Shannon, she showed me how to curl and told me what kind of curling iron to buy. I found an amazing iron. It's a little pricey but worth every penny and more. It has 5 different heat settings and heats instantly. Here's a link to check it out.

http://infiniti.conair.com/catalog.php?pcID=49&products_id=174

So the actual curling takes a little practice but with this iron it only takes me 5-10 minutes to do ALL of my hair. And I have A LOT of hair. Several things to keep in mind:

1. Start a couple inches down, but curl from the top down.
2. Curl backward, not toward your face.
3. Do as large of a section as possible.
4. Try to curl the entire section of hair with one pass from the curling iron. I can't think of a better way to word this but it's very important.

If you are asking "Why are you telling me this?" then I'm again - sorry for wasting your time. It took me a long time to figure this out and it's so easy that I can do this on a regular basis now and be really happy with the results. I'm also telling you this so you can look up at me in the choir or passing you in the hall and not think to yourself "She keeps saying she has no time - how in the world does she have time to do that to her hair?"

I know you thought it. Some of you said it. That's okay, I would think the same thing.

So this is my tip for today. I suppose I should get back to putting this house together for the fourth or fifth time today. And Sunday's the easy day.

Let me know what you're thinking.