Ramblings

School is done is a little over 2 weeks. Sooo not soon enough :-/

Life is an odd pace right now. A year of nights and the girls are really stepping up their game of Let's Hose the New Step-Poppa. Simple rules that have always been the standard are met with defiance. The amount of creativity that goes into getting out of chores is absolutely incredible. If they would harness it into just half of what they are currently using in failed escape plots said chores could be done three times over. It's frustrating and causing some tension. Love it while you can, kids. In a couple weeks there's a new sheriff in town. Momma's back home at night.

Somewhere in the past couple of months, meat has started to lose it's appeal. It's not that I don't enjoy a good steak and I will never give up fish. It's not an animal thing. No mantras of "Nothing With a Face" will erupt from my lips. It's the hormones and chemicals and the conditions that effect the healthiness of the meat we eat. Currently, our deep freezer is in the garage at my dad's house. Without that we can't buy local cows or pigs and have them processed. Free-Range Chickens are almost impossible to find already killed and plucked. Buying grass fed meat is crazy expensive. So I've started cutting it out in an attempt to limit the toxins from my body. What I've found is that I don't miss it like I thought I would. I feel better than I've felt in years. My body is functioning on a level that I don't recall it doing since I was a teenager. I'm still tired from 50 hour weeks at the salon and my knees are increasingly trying to become arthritic (getting older SUCKS....physically), but I feel good. I feel fuller, yet I'm eating less. My stomach which has long been my problem area is shrinking faster than my butt! Whaaaaa???? I've NEVER had that happen. The part I'm liking best is the freedom I'm feeling in this type of diet. I eat meat if I want to eat meat. I just don't have as much of a taste for it, so I'm looking for more interesting... more fun things to eat. I was talking to Emma about how I was thinking about this around New Year's. She responded that it was kinda funny because she'd been thinking about it too! Emma has been stricter with her new found vegetarianism than I am...She's already lost TWO pant sizes!!!

I've started making my own face wash. I'm not some uber-crunchy granola. I just like using natural things to clean my home and nourish my body. The oil mixture makes my skin a wee bit dry so I think I need to add more olive oil or vitamin E and go easy on the Castor.

I was reading voraciously, but school seems to take up so much time. However, I'm reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. I love love love Oskar. But I feel that the character is too young in age for how it is written and too old at the same time. Which I guess is how it feels to be too young and too old as well.

Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider (I'm not posting links as this is written today to purge my thoughts and share this anyone who happens to be listening all that has occupied me as of late. Google works wonders.) has transfixed me in the first chapter. I can't move on until Brandon and I manage to sit down and hash out a Purpose Statement that I can type out and print up in scrawling print on beautiful paper to motivate and remind our family that loving each other and the least of these is what Clan Maxwell is ALL about.

Purposeful living is worth the struggle of the change. I wrestle with the want of 'stuff' as much as any other American. I'm a clothes whore and have been trying to buy more second hand and find new ways to reuse old items. To not base my worth and value on what's on my back and feet. But I do so love all things hair and make-up and fashion. It's a part of who I am. It's also what I do. I just don't want it to define me. Which in the past I have allowed.

New Year's Resolutions are going well. Being present is an awesome experience. You connect so much more with the those put in your sphere. Choosing Gratitude as my word for 2012 has changed me tremendously in only 27 days. Even if I'm not typing up a new post every single day on The Gratitude Project Blog, it is not being eclipsed by the daily grind. If anything, it has brought me closer to a more tenderized heart.

I'm still not making the time for my devotions that I was craving. I keep trying to set up a plan of some sort to get through my sort of secret resolution to get all the way through the Bible this year...but I got bored with Job....again. Truthfully, I'm choosing to go through vegetarian cookbooks and play Castleville than get into the Word. Yes, Castleville. Because we are THAT family. You know the one. Overly competitive with each other. OK so maybe it's just Brandon and I, but the race is on to get the most Castle points. I am shameless in this. I'm having a wonderful time saying things like: "You have a BLACKSMITH'S SHOP!!! I don't have a Blacksmith's shop!! But I have a tailor *smug smile*"

HC (House Church) starts tonight. For now it is just me, B, and NiNiblended family. Just a family.

I'd like to go on retreat. By myself. A hotel somewhere for a weekend. Just to draw closer to God. Jill did this last winter. It had never occurred to me until then that you could go solo on a trip that wasn't guided by someone else and it still be a retreat. It didn't occur to me to take one until about a month ago. I'd like to go on a small trip for the second anniversary of our first date...our own sort of Rededication of Our Relationship to the Lord Getaway...but we have an actual marriage retreat 2 weeks later, so I guess that'll have to work...even though we don't get to share a room. I don't like that. It feel unnatural to sleep away from him.

I have to cut myself off now. It's been ages and ages since I've sat down to write. Oh, how I've missed it so. I'd just keep regurgitating information and thoughts and feelings, but the kids need picked up in about an hour and I'd like to watch Once Upon A Time while looking through a cookbook :)

Kisses to your faces, Babies!!

Rach

Recalculating

I have so many things going on in my head and 12 of them (AT LEAST) I want to write on and each are different but of course totally connected...*DEEEEP Breath*

It started a month ago when I snagged a Joyce Meyer Believing God CD Series at the library to listen to on my way to school each night. The majority of it centered on what we of a Pentecostal background like to call 'stinkin thinkin'. Because we have the power to speak life and death (Proverbs18:21) what we say and how we think often effect our own blessings or the where our spiritual life is heading.

So it began...the collision course that lead my egotistical flesh to run head first into the truth of my heart. The realization that I go to school and everyone tells me I'm so sweet and that I really walk out this Christianity thing and then I come home and I'm short with my kids about the dishes, hard on my husband for not being up to my speed with the parenting thing, plain ugly with my best friend, and here's the kicker of it all...I didn't really feel that way!!! I could not wait until I got home to be with my family, but the second I walked in the door it was like a wave of annoyance washed over me. Oh and let's not forget that I am the QUEEN of Justification so aaaallll my actions and reactions were beyond called for, y'all.

The more I pressed in to the changing of my attitude the worse my behavior got. Emma had said on more than one occasion I was being a jerky (didn't go over so good...after all she is only 14 and I know everything cuz I'm bigger, right?). NiNi kept trying to gently call my attention to some details that just flat pissed me off at her. I was avoiding her and usually snippy and mean when I didn't. How come all she ever saw was the negative stuff about me? Isn't that why I gave her the CD to listen to too? So she could see herself? Why is it other people think I'm great and she's always cutting me down? I'm sick to death of her always pointing out every flaw I have. How come I can't grow around her? She just wants to keep me stuck and I'm tired of staying stuck for her!!! This was pretty much the tirade I went on in my head (you know, the place I was suppose to be getting away from negativity so it wouldn't poison my heart and hinder my walk).

Then one day last week she called and we started talking. I was immediately offensive and offended and any other adjective you wanna dot in here. Somewhere in that conversation where I was prattling on so I didn't have to listen to her, I told her how in the last week I had woken up three times in the middle of the night really angry with B. I mean hopping mad. Hurt. Rolling away from him in a huff. I didn't go to bed that way. I would have to fight to not stay angry when morning rolled around. But I would wake straight up in the dead of night mad as a March Hare. As I said it out loud something in me jostled awake. I felt like I was sluggish and just coming out of a really deep sleep which held very realistic dreams. I was operating a vehicle and completely lucid yet my spirit felt as Snow White must've felt when she finally came out from under that nasty spell. At the same time all this was happening in my spirit, I heard NiNi say with forceful alarm, 'That's not natural!!'

I had a vision of a sci-fi force field in front of me. It was iridescent and pliable. It had give but would not break. It muffled everything as if I was listening underwater. And most of all it seemed to have a numbing effect...except with irritation and/or anger which then was amplified.

I don't know if the field is dissolved or just weakening. I haven't seen it since. What I do know is that I went home that night and spilled my guts to my husband. We had a sort of spiritual confession session and it seems to be on the up. I'm still getting testy about stupid things that I have to stop and check if I'm truly feeling that or am I simply reacting in a way that was becoming habitual. Like Frodo in Shelob's web there were thin veils of cobwebby things that have been choking my heart, silencing my spirit, blinding my eyes, and binding my hands and feet....God is pruning the dead places.

I'd ventured off my path...not far...but enough that I've gotten a couple of thistles stuck in my feet. Out of clarity comes recalculating. Letting God reset the map and pull the splinters out so that He can bandage the wound and set me right.