Things my kids don't need to see

Okay, I am pro-life. That is pretty much a given if you know me or have read one iota of anything on this blog. There is no question. My children, ages 8 and up, know what abortion is and the sad truth that it is legal in our country. They know we are saddened by it. They've even been to Planned Parenthood with us to pray and talk with anyone who would like to talk. They know what this is about--in the way that 8 and 9 year olds should. We haven't shared gory details, but they do know that our world does not value life the way that we should.

Given all of this, I am still appalled when I see huge, detailed pictures in public of aborted baby body parts. This makes me sick!! I do not understand the reason behind this agenda. Not only does it make me sick, but it makes me angry. It makes me angry that they are so public that I have to fight for my children not to see them. My kids don't need that image in their minds. Today as I was driving out to buy our raw milk for the week, right on the side of the road in a huge, open space was one of those mobile, bill board trucks with massive pictures of bloody baby arms and legs and heads all pulled apart in an absolutely grotesque manner--big as day for my kids to see. There was no question that they were body parts--all bloody. I realize that shock value is exactly what the people who promote this are going for. I realize they are hoping to shock some poor pregnant girl who is considering abortion into keeping her baby by showing her exactly what the abortionists' knife and suction is going to do to that baby in her womb.

I agree. It's a horrible, horrible thing. It's sickeningly sad and it makes my heart ache for all those babies and for the moms who will have to live with the guilt. And I even believe there is a place for the pictures. They belong in pamphlets in Planned Parenthood (a place I know that they'll never be) and crisis pregnancy centers. They could even be put in OBGYN's offices under the caution of "adult eyes only." I believe they should be plastered up as big as day inside the courtrooms of the Supreme court so that the justices can see exactly what their laws are allowing. Parents with children would be warned before entering, of course. I'd be okay with those pictures being posted in the Oval office or in Obama's bedroom, for all I care. But they DO NOT need to be on the side of the road out in the open for my children's innocent eyes to see and question!

As we were driving up towards it, I casually glanced at it, noticing that it was something out of the ordinary. As my mind started to focus more on what it was, I quickly started grappling with how to engage my children's attention so that they wouldn't look out the window! I think I succeeded. Thankfully, no one was in the front seat. No one asked a question so I guess they didn't see it. Thank you, God, for protecting my babies' innocent eyes!

On the way back, I was thinking once again how I could keep them occupied and then noticed it wasn't there anymore. I had just been by there less than 10 minutes before. I guess the time was up or whatever, but I saw it then driving down the main road. I slowed down so that I wouldn't get near it. Imagine!! Sitting at a red light or something with those horrible images right in your children's faces!! Oh the thought makes me shudder. I can't even imagine the nightmares that my kids would have after seeing that.

It's happened one other time--about two years ago. I was driving down Pine Ridge Road and some group of Pro-lifers was out. That's great! I'm glad they are showing a presence!! They were right as everyone was slowing down for the red light. Then I noticed that they had a series of huge posters on big sticks. The first couple were beautiful--the baby in the womb sucking his thumb, a 3 or 4 month old baby in the womb. Then the pictures of the bloody, aborted parts started. It was so out of nowhere that I didn't catch it in time. Trand was in the front seat. Now, I know he was 12, but he was an innocent 12. He may not be so innocent now at 14, but I can promise he was then!! He did see a couple before I told him to close his eyes. I asked him if he saw them. He said, "no" at first because he knew I didn't want him to. But after further probing he said, "yes." We talked about it some, but at least he was 12. I knew that Jon had taken Liza-Hill down that same way just a few minutes before. I asked him if he saw them. He said "yes." Of course, he lets her sit in the front seat even though she shouldn't. I asked if she saw them, and he didn't know. I didn't want to probe and ask her and bring up anything that I shouldn't. So I never asked. She never commented to him or me so maybe she didn't. She usually pretty aware of what's going on, but she also usually would ask, "What's that?" if she saw something like that. Since she didn't, my prayer was that God protected her eyes.

So anyway, this outrages me!! Does it work? I mean, really? Have abortion rates dropped since the public parading of bloody baby body parts? Maybe it's changed one girl's mind. If so, I'm thankful for that. But surely there's got to be a better way. I try so hard to keep my children's minds innocent--shielding them from what the world has to show. And now I have to shield them from the pro-lifers too? I just don't know how anyone thinks this is okay? If I feel this way about it, I can't imagine how someone who is pro-choice feels about it!! I can't imagine what they would say about their children seeing this!! Surely they would be even more upset than me, and it certainly wouldn't provide any strides toward "lovingly" showing them why we believe what we believe.

There's got to be a better way.....

Silence

Silence.....

I feel like this word describes my summer. I've been mostly silent on my blog. That wasn't my plan. I thought summer would be a great time to write, but here it is coming to the end of July, and I've only written seven posts all summer. Several of those were just recipes or songs. I have wanted to write, and yet I feel like God has kept me silent. I haven't been overly busy. Don't get me wrong, I haven't been bored or sitting around twiddling my thumbs! I've cleaned my house, done my laundry, shuttled children back and forth to various activities, etc.

I also feel like it describes my summer in another way..... God's silence. I've actually felt this since last November but more so in recent weeks. That's probably another reason I haven't written anything. I haven't felt too much inspiration. But am I right in this? Is my reasoning correct? Or do I need another prospective?

One thing that I have just begun is a new Bible study last week at church. It's only been two weeks into it, and I can wholeheartedly recommend it. If any of you are PCA (or even if you aren't) I would say "GO TO THE PCA WOMENS' CONFERENCE IN OCTOBER!!" It will be worth it. The keynote speaker is Nancy Guthrie, and she's the author of the Bible study I've started, "Hoping for Something Better." I read her first book, "Holding on to Hope," last year. It's a loose study on the book of Job. It's her heart wrenching story of love and loss. I'm not going to share it here, but believe me you will be blessed by reading it. This second book is more of a true Bible study that goes deeper and makes me think harder than anything has for me in a long time.

Nancy spoke right to my heart last week in chapter one when she said this,

"Sometimes our feelings may tell us that God is silent. But when we complain that God is silent, when we're straining to hear the voice of God, what we are really saying is that we exhausted this final decisive Word he has spoken to us in the person of Jesus and in the pages of Scripture. It's as if we are saying the Bible has nothing further to say to us, that we've seen all there is to see in Jesus and heard all there is to hear in the gospel, that it has no power to speak into our current situations."

WOW! Is this what I'm saying? Certainly not intellectually or consciously, but when I think about it, that is exactly what my attitude is saying. I've heard so many people say over the years that God has been silent in their life for a certain period of time that it just seems to be a normal thing. But thinking about it this way makes sense. We have God's word that is living and active and able to speak to us every time we read it. We have a God who is waiting anxiously to hear from us, to answer our call, to comfort us in our sorrow. How could I think he's silent? It's not him. It's me.

In this time of "silence" I have been waiting. Some of you know about this. Others don't. I've shared a little on here, but I know it's been vague. I haven't been ready for a bombardment of questions in my life so I just share basic, vague information about what's going on. But I'm still waiting. I've felt like my life was on hold for months--not knowing what to plan for, how involved to be in activities, how to live day by day not knowing what the future holds. I try. I really do. And most of the time I do a pretty good job of it. I do put my trust in the Lord. I do put my hope in him. He is my rock and fortress. I know these things, and I cling to them. I cling to his promise to never leave me or forsake me. And I remember my blessings and how amazingly blessed I am. I remember that things could be so much worse. I remember that we have our health and that my husband and my children know Jesus. What more could I really be concerned about? And yet I am. I don't like living in uncertainty. I don't know many people who do. I happen to be perfectly fine with change. I am really okay with the thought of moving. I wasn't three months ago. But I am now. I'm okay with new friends, new church, new town, total strangers, etc. I can get pretty excited about newness actually, but it's the "not knowing" that makes it hard. It's the "not knowing" where we're going (or even if we're going.) If we do go, will there be a good church and will there be any sort of homeschooling community? Will there be good friends for my children?  These things keep me in constant communion with my Father in heaven--continually giving it to him. And maybe that's the point anyway.....

But I'd like to share something with you that I learned this week through this study. The study is on the book of Hebrews. It's all about Jesus. Really. And it's teaching us that it truly is ALL ABOUT JESUS. What does this look like really? What does this look like in our life? So we are looking at Jesus. Hebrews 2: 17 says,

"Therefore [Jesus] had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God..."

Who are his brothers? We are! In verse 11 the author of Hebrews tells us that Jesus "is not ashamed to call [us] brothers." So Jesus was human, flesh and blood. This is really nothing new to most of us in the Christian faith. We also know that he was tempted as we are, and he went through every human emotion that we do. We know that he was made like us so that "he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God" just as this verse says. He is a perfect mediator. How could he do that if he hadn't been through it?? But sometimes this all stays as head knowledge. It does for me anyway until God brings me to the point where I'm digging so hard that I have to see it.

But in thinking through this concept this week, it hit me. Jesus was 30 years old when he started his ministry. He was 12 when he first went to the temple and impressed the socks off the Jewish rabbis. He knew at that point that he was God. Whether he knew before then (humanly speaking) is debatable and there are many different ideas about that. But it really doesn't matter. The Bible is silent about Jesus' life on earth from the time he was 12 years old until he was 30. Did he live through those years or did he just skip them? Stupid question, right? Of course he lived them. And during those years he experienced all the things that normal teenagers experience and then all the things that normal twenty-somethings experience. All the while, he knew he was the savior. He knew God had a plan for his life. He knew the will of his Father. What he didn't know was "when" that would happen. Could he have saved the world at 13? Probably. Could he have done it at 18 or 25? I'm sure he could have. But God had him wait for 18 years. So Jesus knew what it was like to wait.

This gives me comfort. Jesus knows. Jesus understands. Jesus is at God's right hand telling him exactly what I need because he's been there. He's done that. I can rest in this knowledge. Oh, my glorious Jesus knows and cares and mediates for me.

Does it make it easier to wait? For now it does. While I keep an eternal perspective it does. When I lose that (which I'm sure will happen from time to time) I will probably worry again. I'm human. I'm fallen. I'm nowhere close to the perfection that God is sanctifying me for. But I have truth to fall back on. I have God's word that is never silent, always living, and always able to speak to every situation I will ever encounter. That's the word of the amazing, living God of the universe that we serve.

Raw "dessert"

I made some raw cookies yesterday in the dehydrator. I got this dehydrator a few months ago and posted once on here about the fruit leathers we made. They weren't such a huge success because they were very tart. I guess I need to work on the sweetness without sugar!! But yesterday I wanted to try some cookies in the dehydrator. They are so yummy and healthy all at the same time. The kids love them!! And I can even give them to Cedar knowing that they are good for him--full of live enzymes.  I forgot to take pictures until I spread the mixture out on the paraflexx sheet so sorry. And, I never measure so sorry about that as well!!

Ingredients:

Sesame seeds

raw coconut

raw dates

I probably used about 1/2 cup of sesame seeds (maybe a little less) and soaked them in water (just enough to cover them) for about 2-3 hours. Sesame seeds don't get "gelatiny" in water the way flax seeds do but the water make them "sprouted" and keep them a little sticky. Spoon the sesame seeds out into a food processor, add coconut (maybe 1/4 cup?) and about 6 big dates. Add some water from the sesame seeds as needed to keep mixture moist and sticking together. Process until everything is mixed well. The only thing I'll do differently next time is probably make the dates into a "paste" in the vitamix first. The food processor left bigger chunks than I wanted, and even though the taste was even, I'd like for there to be a more even look to it--just aesthetically speaking.

Then I spread the mixture out on a "Paraflexx" sheet for the dehydrator.

Then I scored it with a knife into squares.

Then I put it in the dehydrator. Raw foods should not be cooked above 105-116 degrees (depending on who you ask.) But the air in the dehydrator can be higher than that the first couple of hours because it takes a while for it to get warmed up. So I put the temp dial on 145 degrees for about 1 1/2 hours. After that I turn it down to 105. From the charts and examples I've looked at, the temp of the food never gets above 90 degrees doing it this way--which is the important part anyway. This speeds up the process by hours depending on what you are drying. I put this in yesterday around 2:30 at 145 degrees.  After 1 1/2 hours I turned the temp to 105. I took them out last night before bed at around 11. I would have liked to have left it in another couple of hours but not all night so I decided to get it out then. The cookies are a tiny bit chewier than I would like--but I've had them that way out of the bag as well. I do like these pretty crunchy. But Breck, Cama-Jane and Cedar have loved them!! Below is my lunchtime "dessert" with almond butter and coffee!! Yummy!! Breck enjoyed them with almond butter as well, but CJ liked hers plain.

Happy Eating!!