Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Comfort of Sovereignty

You may have noticed a theme in my last few posts: the sovereignty of God.  It is such a comfort to me to know that God is in control of every. single. thing.  There is much to be said about the subject, but for now I just want to share a link to a quote that sums it up so well.  Today's post at Girl Talk is short, but well worth reading!

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Saw it Coming

A long time ago in a land far, far away (Florida), we had David, born right on his due date after 20 weeks of labor. (Don’t worry: I am nowhere near ready to write about our long and complicated child-bearing history, so that is not the point of this post.) It was the beginning of a baby parade that wound down just over seven years later when Daniel was born here in Minnesota. Now Daniel is seven, and we are fresh out of babies. We’re not even a parade any more. Just like that – seven years pass and things are totally different.

Now don’t get me wrong; I am not pining for the days of sweet babies and toddlers. I enjoyed those days immensely, but I thought I would miss them much more than I actually do. I am thankful that God gave me just as many of those sweet, trying days as He had planned for me. I’ve had just enough days with diapers to change (ten years straight!), just enough days of packing a huge bag before leaving the house. I’ve had just enough days of scheduling around naps, just enough days of saying, “Hold on to the cart” while trying to navigate the grocery store parking lot (in the snow). While I am sure I have not answered the “Are they all yours?” question for the last time, people ask that much less often now that the kids look more like a gang of friends than a pack of babies. “Who in her right mind would bring 5 kids under 8 years old to Sam’s Club if they were not all hers??” I wanted to scream more than once. And yes, we are aware of what causes that.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Cooking Up a Storm

Over the last month or so we have been trying to eat better for several reasons, not the least of which is that we are trying to diagnose some possible food sensitivities in one of the kids.  So we've been avoiding all things dairy and soy.  Most of us are still eating stand-alone dairy products, but anything prepared for the whole family is now milk- and soy-free, unless you count rice milk or almond milk as milk! 

As it turns out, every packaged food in the universe has either milk or soy, or both.  So this has pointed out to me just how much of that stuff we used to eat. I would have said it was not that much, but now that I have been forced to read every label I have noticed that is simply not true.   Even the foods I would not consider to be junk are full of junk.  I could not find a loaf of 100% whole wheat bread that does not have soy of some type; the few that do not, have milk.  Most have both.