CHEERIOS FOR DINNER

I'm having Cheerios for dinner.  What are you having?
Can't keep the lid on any longer.

  I have been cooking for 43 years.  I have been using the same Farberware stainless Steel pots and pans for those 43 years, eating off the same meal ware, vintage Old Town Blue Corelle dinner ware,

  using the same Supreme floral cutlery from Japan for the same.
 I need a good kick in the derriere.  43 years is a long time!
Cooking is my least favorite household task.  Every time someone posts a recipe or some yummy snack, I want to scream.
The thought of the amount of time to get food on the table, trying to blend together flavor with nutritional needs with time constraints drains my energy just at the thought.
 I used to cook and plan meals for the family but since my father passed away, I have had no interest in cooking.  (I did bake a loaf of banana bread yesterday.)

Farberware stainless Steel pots and pans

 There are so many other things I'd rather be doing. Grocery shopping is another part of the equation.  Growing up, Dad  did all the food shopping which included walking down the mountain on market day or monthly staples on trips into Mexico City or Puebla.  He always took one of us kids to help carry up the baskets full or to guard the car while in the city.  My mother was good at organizing the lists.
 Although, I do not hate it, I find it burdensome trying to figure out what to purchase and make for dinner EVERY night.

Dad at the market

I am not thrilled with much in my fridge.  My inspiration is at an all time low.  I am always looking for low preparation things.

My problem isn’t cooking, really, but having to think: find the inspiration, the recipe, shop, and focusing on what I am doing. I do enjoy going out to eat, however, restaurant food is not all that stimulating either.
My problem is , I want to spend more time outside of my kitchen. I’m tired of cooking.
I'm looking for healthy ways to eat without having to prepare each and every meal from scratch.
My problem is shifting into the mode of self care and preparing meals for only two.

Pot Head

Sometimes I just don't know what is going on.  I have been cooking for my husband and family for 43 years.  I have cook books and recipes.  So that is no excuse.
If I had the luxury of winning the lottery it would include a personal chef.   If someone else made the plans and decisions for meals, I would be on cloud nine.
So it's Cheerios for dinner tonight.  Well maybe...

RE-CALIBRATING EXPECTATIONS & ACCEPTANCE

  I am comparing current experiences to those of the past and re-calibrating expectations accordingly.   Re-calibrating expectations  has ultimately led to acceptance and with acceptance has comes peace.  As a fan and author friend of  Elisabeth Elliot, I was encouraged by the following quote that grabbed my attention:

 " ...She handled dementia just as she did the deaths of her husbands. “She accepted those things, [knowing] they were no surprise to God,” Gren her husband and care giver said. “It was something she would rather not have experienced, but she received it.”

 

My years at Multnomah University were a trial run for the greater challenges that were to come. Dark Days 

They turned out to be one of the loneliest times in my life.

I had it all pictured in my head—how I wanted things to turn out.  I'd graduate from college, find my mate there, have five children, and life would deal me an abundance of great pleasant adventures. 

Accepting the fact that I may never have children after five years of marriage,  death of three failed pregnancies, and death of my only son years later were not on my agenda but God chose those incidents to work in my life. 

The disappointment I felt dealt a hard blow when those things I was anticipating did not occur. 

I grieved the future I thought I would have.

 

 
“…as it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:20-21)

 

Joe Stowell spoke about expectations. He said there is only one expectation we can control in our life and that is to have an eager expectation to magnify Christ wherever we are.
 Other expectations will only lead to disappointment.

"God, prepare us for what you have prepared for us." ~Marj Saint   Letting Go

 

1972

It is an unrealistic expectation to believe we can go through life without trials.

Prayer Chapel at MU

  I once heard someone say that "Adversity is God's university."

1971

  Don't think you can eliminate hardship from your life. Heaven's Gain

It has taken me years to arrive at a state of acceptance.  Loses have forced me to re-calibrate my expectations.

God gradually deepened my faith. I experienced His faithfulness in a way I never had before.

 

My loses are not over.  My body has other plans.

 Ps.16:9 "Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure."

  I see wrinkles, have twinges in the joints, and moving slower, both mentally and physically.

Prayer Chapel in the evening hours.

 "As it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death." ~Phil.1:20
 

  Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.
Ps. 123:2 

 

"What a calling to be a handmaiden! Little things, little errands, relatively unimportant things that the mistress could easily do for herself if she desired to. “Lord, I’m your handmaid. You don’t have to have me.” But God has handmaids, and Mary was one of them."

So there’s a  little rebel in me that relishes the opportunity to preside over expectations assuming  such a radically alternative event would give peace.

Based on limited knowledge or experience, I indulge in drawing expectations and the tendency to count on expectations which make acceptance difficult to embrace when not fulfilled.

“Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy. Peace does not dwell in outward things, but in the heart prepared to wait trustfully and quietly on Him who has all things safely in His hands.” ~E.E.

A Poem by Amy Carmichael

 

In Acceptance Lieth Peace

He said, ‘I will forget the dying faces;
The empty places,
They shall be filled again.
O voices moaning deep within me, cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in forgetting lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will crowd action upon action,
The strife of faction
Shall stir me and sustain;
O tears that drown the fire of manhood cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in endeavour lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will withdraw me and be quiet,
Why meddle in life’s riot?
Shut be my door to pain.
Desire, thou dost befool me, thou shalt cease.’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in aloofness lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will submit; I am defeated.
God hath depleted
My life of its rich gain.
O futile murmurings, why will ye not cease?’
But vain the word; vain, vain: Not in submission lieth peace.

He said, ‘I will accept the breaking sorrow
Which God tomorrow
Will to His son explain.’
Then did the turmoil deep within me cease.
Not vain the word, not vain; For in Acceptance lieth peace.

THE BROKEN GOBLET

"Marriage is perhaps the first opportunity really to know ourselves, our weaknesses

and our capacities."  ~E.E.

 Now 40 plus years later, I am bemused by the mythical man I envisioned God would send me.  I would have thrown out my list and concentrated more on praying that God would change both of us to be more like Jesus.
The daily business of loving and living with someone who is part of me but not, someone who isn't like me but  discovering how different I am.
Someone once said "We're none of us prize packages--just look for the essentials..." 

My everyday spaces were invaded by that marvelous man who wooed me when I had no clue of what was to hit me in the years ahead. He has sat next to me for 40 plus years.
I stand by that man who gets a traffic ticket on the 5 freeway for going to slow because he was watching the Good Year Blimp float over head.
I marvel at the fact that he skidded on his motorcycle at 40 to 50 miles per hour on the Hollywood freeway during morning rush hour and lived to survive.
I am constantly reminded that my Man is
fallible and sinful, and so am I.

It takes
a great deal of the grace of God for us to manage to live together, year in and year
out.
There is no normal marriage and how do we know what is normal anyway.  "Love always hopes" from the Cor.13. 
  My marriage is forged on hope, faith, and grace that could only come from One far greater than us.
My man and I have hope, 
 we have weathered storms, been challenged by crisis, "tempered by love, sealed by God above,"

Even when the better in "for better or worse" seems so far away. 
 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8,9)."

A love/and not so in love relationship with anything that requires consistency can at times become very challenging.
 I’m just thankful for maturity that reminds me I need to do things I don't want to do. I need grace to live up to my vows with my husband.
I am often reminded of a symbol of our resiliency during our early years of "marital bliss".

 The story behind drinking wine is the intent of the winemaker to embibe in a stylish wine glass.  I am led to believe that we received someones "white elephant"  re gift as we unwrapped our wedding gifts and found two perfectly matched wine glasses when neither of us had ever drank or given wine a second thought.
  As with great stories, a stylish glass may have reflected our personal story.  It began with a salad, not wine.

  We carefully unwrapped that pair of stemmed wine goblets, designed to make an  inherently delightful activity even better.
As we gently place them on a newly thick carpeted floor one toppled over and broke, leaving only one that I recently rediscovered on a top shelf. 

That set of exquisite wine goblets became just one in an instant of broken things, a picture of grace for the future  broken worldly baggage.

Just the basics.

  That one goblet sits on the shelf of my china cabinet and is an incident my husband and I refer to periodically, the day that the other goblet broke.  
  

 

MARITAL BLISS & BLUNDERS

Now that care giving is over, I am giving myself permission to step back into my own life.

To Union Station, Driver!

In 1975, we had taken the Pacific Surf Liner down to Ocean Side from Union Station.

  We then picked up my husbands
V8 Rebel Rambler that he had stashed in Vista.  You know one of those cars with a bench front seat where you could cozy up to your man while driving.

The fact that we took so few photos of ourselves on our honeymoon amuses me. 

San Diego Wild Animal Park until 2010,  1,800 acre zoo in the San Pasqual Valley area of San Diego, California, near Escondido.

Apparently we were so enthralled by the performance of the elephants at the wild animal park we were visiting, we took more photos of them and other animals than of us.

Marital bliss is over rated.  We were either in a state of perfect happiness, shock or oblivious to each other and so enthralled by the animal antics than each other.

JUST MARRIED

  Smartphones and social media were not available to capture and record our experiences easily.  We enjoyed Sea World but sadly no photos to prove we were there.

Franciscan Inn Motel, Vista,CA.

   My very first visit to Disneyland, and only memories exist, in the fascination of it all, we did not take any photos here either but you might have thought that our whole honeymoon was comprised in one day, as I wore the same dress day after day, having forgotten to pack an extra set of clothes.

  Parking was $2. 00 and spending the night at the Disney Hotel did not break the bank.  The value book gave us choices to which attractions we wanted to visit.  It gave our friends options to donate the unused tickets to our advantage on our shoe string budget.

"A" attractions were the smallest or least popular, "B" attractions were more popular and/or more advanced, and "C" attractions were the most popular and/or most advanced.  (I have not been back to Disneyland since around 1986)
I was most fascinated by Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, given my interest in history.
It was during this time, we fell in love with Denny's.  Our propensity to deal with dead car batteries began in the parking lot of Denny's near Disneyland as also my new husband's fascination toward extending the life of a battery began which later morphed into running out of gas more often than I dare mention because of a faulty or no working gas gauge until we purchased our Hyundai in 2006.

Room at the Franciscan Inn

So now 40 plus years later, we are a bit more seasoned, a bit more experienced, a bit more knowledgeable, and a bit more forgetful of how the Lord has brought us through, but the fact that he did, has, and will continue to follow through on his promises.  We are a bit more into the photo thing now than in those earlier years.

The overnight vanity case changed my whole perspective on packing.  I did survive.  We cut our honeymoon short when I broke out in some nasty hives in unmentionable places. 
Marital bliss and the perfect honeymoon do not exist.  Marital blunders still occur.





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