New Job and Stuff

Today is my Friday, Praise God! I started my new job Monday and am blessed to work 4 10 hour shifts and get Friday’s off.  I can sure get used to that.  Things are still a bit nuts, we are trying to get all our gardens and farms done and planted.  Hubby is struggling with his back.  I am exhausted from my new job and all the learning.  I can really understand why we educate children and not adults, I can’t believe how tired I am from just learning a new computer system and office policies!

Quick update to say I’m still here and still alive.  Weight is actually staying pretty reasonable.  We were blessed to find a used steam sauna on craigslist for a CHEAP $150 rather than $1400, which is what it started out at, but the man was so desperate to sell it he dropped the price every other day.  But the time we found it, it was $150.  It’s a small capsule that one person sits in and it works similar to an electric kettle, the element heats the water and it steams up.  You can see out but hard to see in and there is a place to put essential oils (amazing for colds). So we are still taking good care of our bodies although I haven’t juiced since Monday, I’m just too tired. 

My Grandma went to heaven recently.  She had been living in a body that wasn’t working for many hard years, my Grandpa passed away several years ago and I know she was miserable without him.  I can imagine the beautiful reunion they had!  Although sad, it is a blessing she is no longer in pain.  Her memorial is at the end of the month, my Aunt has asked me to read one of the poems she wrote.  I knew she painted but never did know she wrote poetry.  It’s about the potter and clay and being molded for God’s use.  I shared her love of poetry but mine was more “poor me” type stuff.  It is interesting how much we learn about someone when they are no longer here.  I do remember going swimming in her pool, she taught me how to crochet and knit, I remember crawling into her huge bed and watching morning tv shows together, and I remember her passion and love for Jesus.  I look forward to the day I am reunited with her again.  I was not the best Granddaughter though, not visiting her much in her assisted living home.  When she started to get sick and older there was a time I was a kid and I had to help her pull up her pants in the bathroom of a restaurant.  It was hard for me as a youngster to understand that, Grandma’s where supposed to help you not the other way around.  I pray for the guilt I do feel and trust it will be forgiven.  I do think it will make me act differently if another family member goes into a “home.” 

Make sure to tell those you love how much they mean to you, this is a short life my friends and you never know when you won’t have another chance to say “I love you.”

xoxo

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End of 40 day fast: thoughts, food, and where do I go from here

English: A Burger King bacon cheeseburger. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

First thing I want to say is I am TRULY sorry for being very absent lately.  My life has taken quite the crazy turn, mostly at work where I find the most time to blog.  I no longer have that time, which is a good thing and a bad thing.  I have absorbed another person’s job and am swamped, but the trade-off is that they days fly by, even if I am stressed the whole day.

Monday (yesterday) was the first day off my fast.  I am truly proud of myself for sticking with this for 40 days, there were a few days I didn’t think I could or wanted to.  My cravings sometimes were too much and there were days I wanted to throw in the towel.  I haven’t been much of a finisher, so this was a good thing to prove to myself that I could (with God’s help of course) follow through with something I started.  I am happy to say I have lost 23lbs!  All my clothes fit amazingly, in fact I have found things that I still had tags on in my closet.   I bought some “birthday” clothes for myself last year, my birthday is in June so almost exactly a year ago, I thought I was a certain size bought that and went home without trying them on.  I remember going home trying on the pants that didn’t fit, then the top, throwing them all back in the bag and on to the top shelf of my closet.  I was so mad.  Now I get the joy of trying them on to have them be baggy.  What a joy!

I have seen others start their juicing journey because of my energy and excitement for it.  I have been told by people I know, as well as complete strangers at the grocery store that my skin glows, and I see that in myself too.  I’ve had good and bad days.  Over all, this journey has been really amazing and I am happy that I started on it, and even more happy I finished and can feel the results.

Yesterday Hubby got the good news that he got a job, that and it being the official day I could eat anything I wanted, we went out to celebrate.  However, the joys that we had yesterday were almost robbed from us with some car problems I had on the way home.  Satan didn’t win, he wasn’t allowed to rob us that joy.  We went out to a local restaurant, they serve the best burgers, and I have wanted a cheese burger for 40 days!  It’s funny, looking at the menu it was almost overwhelming.  I hadn’t had so many choices in food in a long time it seemed, there were almost too many choices.  We settled on a bacon cheeseburger and split it, when it came out it looked great, smelled great.   The first bite?  You know, it was just ok.  I know the hamburger was more than just ok, but my taste buds have actually changed.   We finished our meal and went home, soon to discover that burger sat like a brick in our stomachs.  Hubby even said we should have just went and spent that money on produce to juice, in a strange way I felt the same way.  It wasn’t the awesome meal I thought I was about to have.  I feel good about it, honestly, it helps me to know that I don’t need certain things in my life food wise, that I thought I did.  I can be content and full and satisfied with a much more simple diet.

So what’s next?  I see myself having meat every once in a while, maybe once a week, maybe not even that.  I see a mostly vegan diet with yummy vegan cheeses and stir fry and homemade black bean burgers.  I see soaked nuts on my counter every day, with homemade sourdough bread cooling on the rack.  Basically a whole foods diet, I don’t need processed garbage, tons of cheese (if you know me this is a really shocking statement, I used to adore cheese), or meat.  I have to admit, I’m changed.  I never want to go back to feeling the way I used to, to looking the way I used to… I pray that Corri is gone forever.  I promised photos… I have them, but they will have to be posted another day.  I’ve been too busy to load them onto a disc to bring to work and I never have enough time in the evenings, that is my Hubby time.

So the bottom line is, if you are considering a juice fast of any kind, I highly recommend it!  God’s nutritious foods are amazing life givers.  Praise God for his blessings!

Related articles

• Day 1 of the Vegan Challenge, into day 2 (veggiemachete.wordpress.com)
• Cheese please! Hold the dairy. (lifeaftergrains.wordpress.com)
• Juice Fast Day 14 of 40: Hungry (virtuousgracious.wordpress.com)
• Day 2 of 40 Juice Fast (virtuousgracious.wordpress.com)

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Juice Fast Day 27: So Hard On Myself!

Deep in thought………. Separate from the remainder of the herd but with a wonderful view. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If this fast has been anything it has been eye-opening.  Not only am I blessed to share my experience with others, but God is really using it to change my views on things, particularly myself.  As God’s children we are not supposed to be so down on ourselves all the time, we are supposed to have the joy of the Lord.  Sometimes I feel like when I don’t have that joy I am doing something “wrong” and God isn’t blessing me.  I follow a particular ministry online and they did a video on The Cycles of Christian Growth, I realized as I was listening that I am not alone in my thinking.  Sometimes God uses the lower times to build us up to the higher times.

We ALL struggle with some form of self-worth.  Even people we consider “beautiful” admit to struggling with the thought of their fat thighs or round tummy.  This weekend God opened my eyes to some very interesting things…me and my constant struggle with my body.  See, I’ve pretty much always thought I was “fat.”  Even though I look back at photos of me in high school and I think “What was I thinking!?! I wasn’t fat!!”  But in my head I was.  That same mental block has been around my entire life, I can’t think of one time in my life where I thought I was ‘thin’ or ‘beautiful’ or whatever the world tells us we must be.  I don’t remember a single time!  Ugh there is something seriously wrong with that.

In a computer change over I lost all our photos prior to probably 2010.  This means all the memories from Florida, our drive back to Oregon, friends weddings, OUR wedding, our reception… all gone.  Hubby is a sweet man, he tells me his memories are in his heart and he doesn’t have to have a photo to remember those things.  I finally got over the “loss” and started to move on, we will make more memories I can document.  This weekend God showed me that these memories were not lost, I had a back up disc from 2008 and I had all the memories from our wedding on a Walgreens CD.  I was giddy as I started to load these old memories on the computer!  Hubby and I started to scroll through them and then…horror! (a little dramatic?lol)

There on the screen staring back at me was me, horribly over weight, so fat!  I have to tell you it came as quite a shock.  I didn’t know how big I actually was until looking back now, and in a different place in my own body.  Even the photos of Hubby… wow! We were some chubby folks!  As time got closer to 2009 and our wedding things slimmed down drastically but still not more than right now.  Looking back sometimes can really show you where you came from and how you are getting to where you are going.  God also showed me how we used to be and that life was not glorifying to God in any way shape or form.

After going through those photos I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself now.  I am not the same person, not physically, not spiritually, not anything… honestly I don’t know what kind of conversation that Corri and this Corri would even have.  There have been some times during this fast I have felt that maybe I was “cheating” because I was eating some nuts or beans or rice.  I can say honestly that if something made me feel guilty (corn bread comes to mind) I wouldn’t go near it.  Everything I have put in my mouth for the past 27 days I have felt good about, even if I was really craving a cheese burger.  I am really proud of where I have come from, and what God is transforming me into.  Not only physically but so deeply in my heart God is changing me from the inside out.

I plan on the final post about this fast to pull some of the “fat Corri” photos and post a little timeline from then to now.  My journey of before to after.  If only I could post photos of my heart changing… although I don’t know how much of the “before” I would like to share, now the after?  That is ALL God’s handy work and I am more than blessed to be changed by the hands that formed the world.

<iframe width=”420″ height=”315″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/CFCi_UAmFS0&#8243; frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen>

Enjoy the Cycles of Christian Growth, I do hope you find the time to give it a listen.

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Day 2 of 40 Juice Fast

So thanks to the suggestion of my blogger friend who writes under the blog A Real Food Lover (Please check her out by the way) I am not doing a 30 day fast but a 40 day fast.  Why 40 days? Well it was brought to my attention that God uses 40 a lot in the Bible, it’s one of his numbers.  Just a quick google search (what did we do without google!?) I found a great site talking about 40 in the bible, read it here but here are some of my favorites.

Significance of 40 in the Bible (all info here is from http://www.40day.com/40_in_the_bible.html):

• It rained for 40 days and 40 nights when God wanted to cleanse the world and start over.
  (Gen 7:12 KJV) And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.
• Moses was on the mountain with God for 40 days (TWICE)
  (Exo 24:18 KJV) And Moses went into the midst of the cloud, and gat him up into the mount: and Moses was in the mount forty days and forty nights.
• The Israelites spent 40 years in the wilderness, one year for each day they explored the Promised Land.
  (Exo 16:35 KJV) And the children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.
• Jonah warned the City of Nineveh they had 40 days until God would overthrow the city. The people repented in those 40 days and God spared the city.
  (Jonah 3:4 and 10 KJV) And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.
  And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.
• Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness
  Mat 4:1-2 KJV) Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. {2} And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.
• Jesus was seen in the earth 40 days after His crucifixion
  (Acts 1:3 KJV) To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: .

So obviously 40 is significant to God.  I have some things in my body that need healed, and I believe that God will heal me using his created fruits and vegetables.  I believe that God is faithful and true and he wants to heal his people.

Last time I fasted for a week I ate nuts and seeds.  This time I’m not, just juice and fruit and vegetables.  I do have to confess that I wanted peanut butter SO bad last night, funny thing to crave but I didn’t give in.  I was really tired today, groggy and kind of foggy.  I’m currently working on my second quart of juice for the day and just got back from wonderful walk.  I had so much energy on the walk I was surprised, but near the end I was ready to be done.  Other than that I’m doing well, a bit of hunger pangs but they will go away when I finish the juice.  I still want nuts very badly, but I think it is good to deny our flesh things too.  I pray God works in my life, my body and my spirit in these next 40 days.

 

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Mental Health Friday

The past few weeks have been really rough at my job.  Before I go on, I must say I am such a blessed woman to have a job, to have a good job and I am grateful for my job.  I like to say how grateful I am about my job because I certainly don’t want God thinking I am ungrateful, I couldn’t make it without my job!  That being said, my job is draining me to the core of my being.  I don’t want to go into too many personal details but the issues are 50% my boss and 50% rude ungrateful people, not to mention that I loathe having to drive two hours a day to come to my job.

My mom used to always say “God makes you uncomfortable when it’s time to move” I have no idea where that saying comes from, but it does seem to ring true in my life.  I am really starting to feel uncomfortable in my job, when I wake up I am starting to think “there has to be some kind of reason to call in sick,” this is never a good sign.  I understand ups and downs.  We have had them here, some how I just feel like this time is different, like maybe this is the time to really move on.

Yesterday after a particularly rough mental day at work I started looking at the jobs on craigslist.  I do this a lot, my husband is in desperate need of work in our small town so I frequently check to see if there are new postings, but yesterday something happened… a job came up that could be perfect for me.  This job is in our small town, I could ACTUALLY walk to work!  This could save us a ton on gas each month, not to mention insurance because my daily commute would be like a mile, if I drive.  Two issues stand in my way.   The first is the job is in the dental field and I have been in medical for 11 years.  The second is there was no pay listed on the ad, and I have pretty specific needs in this area because I am the main bread winner currently.

I sent off my resume and a cover letter via email with my specific pay requirements and I prayed the whole way home.  God knows my specific needs, he knows where I will be next week or in a year from now.  He knows how much our mortgage is and how much we need for utilities.  Yet there is this part of me that wants to hold on to all control and believe I can do it all myself, I can’t.  It seems that losing control is one of my worst fears, and yet something God wants us to do.  He wants our trust and faith, he wants control to lead us to beautiful things he has planned for us.  But in all I do it seems the lesson that comes out of it is that I want to be in control.  There is a constant power struggle, and I always lose.

I am sure God is here whispering to me “Corri, let it go.  I have you!”  The song from JJ Heller listed above is one of my favorites because of how much it relates to my desire for constant control.  It is in fact time I let it go.  To trust in God’s divine plan for my life and trust that no matter if this job comes or I stay at my current one, I am resting softly and peacefully in the loving hands of my creator.

I’m taking a mental health day Friday, to recoup from all the stress around me the past few weeks here, to spend some time laughing instead of pulling my hair out, to hang out with a friend and his cute daughter, to kiss her as much as she lets me! 🙂  I need a day away from my job to de-stress, to remember how much I am blessed and how sweet this life can be sometimes.

Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

 

 

 

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Are You Willing To See Others View of Yourself?

I came across an article on one of my favorite websites, naturalnews.com.  I get daily emails from them with new articles and if you’ve never checked them out, I do recommend the site.  I’ve learned so much about natural medicine, vaccinations (hot topic!), cancer treatments etc from this website.

Today as I’m reading through titles one struck me “When the change you need to make is obvious to everyone but you,” this has actually been something I struggle with.  To be perfectly honest, I don’t like to listen to others opinions of me, especially when negative.  I mean, come on, I just walked on water yesterday!  Hubby struggles with this.  God bless that man!  He has worked and fought with me for 6 years trying to get me to see my faults.  Why is it so easy to point out the issues with others but when they point out ours we get defensive?  Honestly, I’m sick of it.  I’m tired of being that person that no one wants to tell their attitude sucks, or their response to something is rude.  It really goes against what I believe.  God said in his word “Who so loveth instruction loveth knowledge: but he that hateth reproof is brutish (showing little intelligence or sensibility)” (Proverbs 12:1), “A wise son heareth his father’s instruction: but a scorner heareth not rebuke” (Proverbs 13:1) and even “Poverty and shame shall be to him that refuseth instruction: but he that regardeth reproof shall be honoured” (Proverbs 13:18).  So to deny reproof (or criticism for a fault per Websters) is to deny what God is telling us to do.  He says that a good person, a just person, a REAL person of God will gladly accept correction for errors rather that get defensive.  So when I read this article on naturalnews, it really struck me.  It’s not a Christian writing this, but I struggle with this same thing.  Here’s the article… pray for me in this, so that I can be pleasing not only to my husband but also to my Savior.

http://www.naturalnews.com/035002_point_of_view_perspective_happiness.html

My favorite line: “I pay attention to feedback with the awareness that I may have a blind spot and that others certainly have a perception of me that I don’t see.”  We all have blind spots, isn’t that why God gave us family, friends and spouses to help us see where we are not “perfect” and where we can use a change?  The only perfect person who walked this earth was killed and hung on a cross, it is time I wake up to that fact and know that I am faulty just like the next guy.  I will have flaws and I will make mistakes, I will get angry and say the wrong thing, I need to be humble enough to accept the reproof and turn from those mistakes.  Luckily I am a work in progress, and I’m grateful that God works in me.  It is time we all allow that to happen.

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The Finisher

I’m going to open my vulnerable door for a moment to share something quite personal and well, embarrassing.  I am a quitter.  There I said it and I guess it wasn’t so scary to say.  What I think is scary is the change that has to occur to stop being a quitter.  Yep, I want to quit being a quitter.  This is me, below… the quitter.  If I put a face with this post it makes it real, I can’t hide anymore and that is an important thing, in changing this behavior, I believe.

This part of me has been around since I was a child.  I quit dance team, I quit cheer-leading (even though we won a trophy), I quit track, volleyball, softball.  I really won’t bore you with the entire list of things in my life I have quit but let me tell you it is extensive.  I often wish that at some point in my growing up period my Mom would have forced me to finish something I started.  I wonder if that would have changed something in me?  However, it didn’t happen that way and I am a 30 year old woman who can no longer put the blame of her life in the hands of someone else.  If I am a quitter, that is because I have allowed this to continue in my life.  Hopefully this post is the beginning of the end of that Corri.

This all came to an emotional head last night.  We live in a small town outside of Portland, Oregon.  I’m an Oregon girl through and through.  I grew up in Portland and we just don’t get snow in the city.  So it’s a foreign thing, but always fun.  Well this week we got clobbered, a foot and a half.  Yes, that is clobbered to us here, don’t laugh.  The weight of the heavy wet snow snapped a limb off a tree in our yard, as well as our hedges.  The snow was so heavy they were leaning over to the side about ready to fall over.  So hubby (who is a go getter) and I went out to try to remedy the situation.  We removed the snow from the bushes then propped it up with boards so that hopefully, the hedge would continue to grow upward.  During the process I was cold and wet.  My hands were getting cut (it felt like) from the frozen snow on the boards.  I couldn’t separate the boards that were frozen together.  I would have rather just quit and gone inside.  And apparently my attitude showed that.  “I can’t” flowed out of my mouth like water.  Over and over, “I can’t.”  Well it actually turns out that I could, and did help to get this done, but it left a taste in Hubby’s mouth that he didn’t like.  I think the worst thing for a go-getter is a “I Can’t” person.

After a long conversation where it became PAINFULLY obvious that I have a problem with being too negative and “I can’t” but that attitude also made me feel like I couldn’t do things so just quit and move on.  I laugh at quitters on tv (Ice Road Truckers is a favorite) but I am just like them.  I don’t pull out that “fight for it” mentality.  I got to thinking about all the things in life I start and quit.  Here is a short list: Books (I love to start but rarely finish), Knitting, Exercise, Cleaning projects, Writing, Bills, Arts and Crafts etc.  So last night after a bit of thinking and praying I came up with a solution to some of the smaller problems I have.  If I start a knitting project or a book or something like this, I am requiring myself to touch it at LEAST one time a week until it is finished.  I will start using my calendar to write down when I read or when I knitted.  I will plan out a day to make soap (etc) so that these things don’t sit unused and money wasted.

The bigger stuff is harder.  When something becomes too hard it’s just my nature to give up.  This morning on my way to work I was thinking about this.  I thought of John 19:30, Jesus, our savior, was up on the cross after being beat, tortured, mocked, and spit on.  First off he asked God to forgive the people because they know not what they do, but then he says in John 19:30 When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.  IT IS FINISHED.  What if Jesus didn’t finish?  What if Jesus said ” you know what? You people don’t even care, you are ungrateful and  uncaring and I don’t care anymore. I’m getting myself down off this cross and you all can figure it out for yourselves.”  But that isn’t the way it went down because if it was, we wouldn’t have any chance of salvation, because everyone sins and we have all fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).  His pure love for us and his desire to be with us forever was so great that he was willing to be killed at the hands of his creation to save it.  While that same creation mocked him, told him to prove himself and come off the cross, gambled for his clothes, stuck a crown of thorns into his skin, forced him to carry his own cross, and then nailed him to it through his skin, he stuck it out and asked God to forgive them.  I mean if anything was going to make someone quit, that would be it.  He could have too… he could have got down off that cross and stopped everything from happening to save his own flesh, but Jesus was more than flesh.  And yet there he hung, for the sins of everyone who will just accept him, no fancy prayers to say a zillion times a day, no works to get to heaven, HE paid the price and he didn’t give up on us even though we hated him.  He finished.  His last words were “It is finished.”  Wow talk about powerful.  As a follower of Christ I should be able to finish too, just because of his example.

So who am I to be a quitter?  Not to mention that having a positive attitude about things in general help positive things to happen to you.  And I’m not talking about the hocus pocus stuff that The Secret tries to lie about.  I’m talking about a positive attitude that things will turn out ok, because ultimately God is in control and when he says we go, we go.  So I want to be a finisher, just like my savior was.  It is time for me to grow up and get strong and start finishing things that I start.  When things get hard, I find a way to keep going, I dig down deep to find that extra push to keep my legs moving, or my arm swinging, or my body working.  I truly want to hear “well done” when I stand in front of Jesus and a quitter won’t hear that.  Pray for me, please.  The power and strength of God will help me through, because that is where strength truly comes from.  Lift me up in prayer and hold me accountable.  I want to be a finisher.

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