Dana’s Avenue

On Tuesday I had a “prayer day”.  Jonathan worked it out with Mama Imanueli and I that each of us could have 1 day a month devoted to “focusing on God”.  She gets the day off for hers and for mine she watches Asher for me and doesn’t do hardly any other work around the house. 

So part of last Tuesday I prayerfully considered the mission statement for my life.  Here’s what I came up with:

To be a woman who knows and loves God; loves, respects, honors, supports, and submits to her husband; teaches Asher throughout life, raising him to be a respectful, responsible man who loves God; and provides a healthy, comfortable home that is a haven for her family from the ordinary stresses of everyday life.

As I finished the statement a few desired traits came to mind.  They are to be intentional, engaged, cheerful, content, flexible, relaxed, and patient.

Most of my time should be spent on things that bring me closer to my mission statement.  I thought of a few other things that may be missing at first but then decided to leave it as is.  My questions were:  what about loving others, and what about ministry.  My answers are:  loving others is directly related to loving God, and my ministry involvement right now is in the support of my husband and doing things ministry-related that help him.

So this is as far as I’ve gotten with this.  Now I can be encouraged that when I do dishes, I’m fulfilling my life’s purpose, not just doing busywork.

Pregnancy, pregnancy everywhere…  Off the top of my head six of my friends are pregnant.  Six!  And I don’t have that many friends.  (haha)  And that really puts the subject into my head. 

Ever since I had Asher I’ve said that I never expected to have a child and if he’s the only one God blesses me with I’d be content with that although I would like to have more.  And I still feel that way but when I hear a new pregnancy announcement I have a twinge of, “I want to be pregnant too!” 

Logically speaking, right now is not the best time.  I want to be able to have the next one (Lord willing) at home on furlough so I really shouldn’t get pregnant for quite a while yet.  But.  That’s just logistics and God will work all that out.  And if He did bless me with another baby right now I’d be more happy than worried about the details.

But.  I’m patient.  I’m content.  I’m happy.  I really am.  (Really!)  I guess more than a discontent, I just realize that I do, in fact, want more babies.  I can’t imagine having any extra love to give but you do, don’t you?  Amazing - no limits to love I don’t guess… 

What are these guys doing sitting on the side of the main road?  Your guess is as good as mine.  You see it all the time.

Okay, I’m going to rant for a moment about something that really has no impact on me but I just find it annoying.

Many of the books I read have typos.  The published books that I have paid full price for.  What do these books have in common?  They’re Christian fiction.  I like the content but in all my reading years, never have I found typos in books before I became acquainted with Christian fiction.  You’d think these books would be just thrown together and sold at a discount.  But oh no!  They are no cheaper or less put together than secular, mainstream books.

What’s the issue here?  I realize authors will make typos.  That’s what editors are for.  And shouldn’t they be the ones not letting them get to the printing press with typos?  I don’t really know the whole process of it but man it is irritating.

The last book I read had 2 obvious typos.  The book I just started has a typo in the first chapter so that’s already put me off a bit.  Hopefully that’s the only one but I won’t be shocked if there are more.

(And please don’t point out any typos you’ve seen here.  This isn’t a published novel.  It’s a blog.  :))

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. 

~Hoosier Farmer

Recently I read about scheduling on this blog:  http://homemakerslibrary.blogspot.com/.  She attests that scheduling moves you to focus on your life’s purpose.  Really?  Well I’ve never thought of it that way and read through her posts on the subject finally “getting it”.

I’ll go over what I took from her blog.  You can visit her to see the details.

Step 1 is to prayerfully establish your Life’s Purpose.  Here’s the rough sketch of what I have so far:

A) Know and love God

B) Love, Respect, Support, and Submit to my husband

C) Raise Asher to be a responsible man who loves the Lord

D) Teach Asher

E) Keep a nice home

F) Feed family healthy meals

She suggests that if you spend your time on things outside of your purpose then you are - eek - wasting time.  I don’t think that means we never rest or do anything for relaxation because then we’d burn out and wouldn’t be able to do anything at all so I’m not advocating a workaholic program for myself by any stretch of the imagination.

Today as I was determining what I needed to accomplish I thought, “I need to get back into my Bible reading plan.”  I realized that if my main purpose in life is to get to know and love God then I would make reading the Bible and praying more of a priority than I do.  That really put things into perspective for me.  Of course, it’s hard to do certain things when you have a baby but I’ve read many novels lately so I know I can read my Bible too (although, yes, it does take a different form of concentration).

So back to the schedule.

Step 2 is to go “room-by-room” making a list of everything that needs to get done in that room.  I did that today.  I can tell you I’m a bit overwhelmed but I keep thinking, “This is a long-term AND short-term list.”  I want to organize the pantry.  One day.  I want to fold and put away the laundry.  Today.  It’s just about a bit of prioritizing.

Step 3 is to go “person-by-person” but she hasn’t posted the details of that yet so I’m just getting to this point and thinking ahead only a bit.

For me, I have to be alive to fulfill my life’s purpose so I am making sure I take care of myself - physically, emotionally, spiritually.  Then, as I understand it, everything else comes under something within my “mission statement”.  So far (and by so far this has been a whole 3 hours or something) it gives me a sense of structure and focus and direction.

But where does ministry fit into this?  Right now supporting my husband, enabling him to do what he has been called to do, is my portion of our ministry.  I support him through conversation, encouragement, prayer, communication with supporters, and…  as I’ve now defined this as part of my purpose in life I will probably be more intentional in this and all the other areas as well.

Okay I know I’ve rambled a bit through this.  As I continue to figure this out, I’ll keep you posted…

In the five or so months I’ve been here I’ve learned a lot about cooking.  I know how to cook and bake things that I didn’t before.  And I’ve focused mostly on the baking because I really enjoy it.

Five pounds and a major loss of energy later I’m thinking I want to learn how to cook better (and bake less). 

I don’t just want to eat to fill my tummy, produce my milk, and keep myself alive.  I want to be healthy and have energy.  What clinched it was that today I woke up tired.  I barely made it to Asher’s nap at 1:30.  I laid there with him for 2 hours and when we got up.  I was tired.  I thought, “What is wrong with me?”  The answer?  I’m not eating food that is fueling me - only food that is filling me.

There has to be a better way.

So what do I eat on a normal basis?

Oatmeal for breakfast every day.  That’s good, you say.  Right.  Except the spoonfuls (and spoonfuls) of sugar I put in it.  (I NEVER used to put sugar in my oatmeal but somehow I got on that kick and it’s hard to go back!!!)  Some sort of baked good for midmorning snack and usually chocolate in some form in the afternoons.  As far as meals, I don’t even know.  Usually leftovers and if not that, egg salad or peanut butter and banana sandwiches.  Dinner.  Well.  I haven’t thought about WHAT I’m eating but what I can COOK.  I’ve been cooking a wide array of things.  Tonight is burgers and tomorrow is pizza.  I’m so happy that I can make this kind of food at home here in Africa that I haven’t thought of how unhelpful it is to, not only me, but to my family as well!

So.

I’m changing direction.  I have no idea where to start really.  I googled “eating for health and energy” but…  Nothing really jumped out at me.  I did see one link to a ”new ground-breaking way to eat”.  Yeah right.  I’m not going on a diet.  I’m not cutting out yummy baked goods all together (and definitely not cutting out m&m’s) but on a regular basis I want my food to be working for my body.  Not against it. 

I’m going to have to go with common sense here.  What do they always say?  Whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats.  It may be a challenge here based on what we can get but I know I can eat better than I am so I’m going to start planning my food better and really focusing on the quality of what I feed myself and my family.  Especially now that Asher will be starting to eat solids!  I don’t want to say, “Eat your fruits and vegetables.  Now excuse mommy while she polishes off this chocolate cake.”  Haha!

So here’s to a new way to eat!  Which is really just the old way to eat…

(Addendum:  I did find one helpful article actually titled:  “Eating for Energy and Health”.  She lost me at “Drink a cup of liquid greens every day” but I caught back up with her at “Eat chocolate”.  I’d say 50% compliance is okay in this case.  :))

Ever since I got pregnant I’ve been able to cry much more easily.  I thought that would end once I had him but it didn’t.  And it still hasn’t.

Last week Asher started babbling again.  He had done it a lot a few weeks before but then abruptly quit.  We’re sitting there one Sunday and there he goes babbling again.  It was everything I could do not to cry.

This is a part of motherhood I never anticipated and I kind of like being that amazed by him.  I wonder about women with a lot of kids - if it’s any less miraculous after a while.  I imagine it’s not.

The other day I decided to start tracking my calories.  I’m only a handful of pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight but I just want to eat healthy and get more in control of what I’m putting into my body.  So I went to www.sparkpeople.com where you can record your food, set goals, etc and found that I can’t join because I’m a nursing mother. 

Crazy, I thought.  I’m just nursing.  It’s not like I’m pregnant or anything.  But they have a sister site called www.babyfit.com for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and women trying to conceive.  They have guidelines for how many calories you should be eating based on which category you fall into.

Through this I discovered that nursing mothers need MORE calories than pregnant women!  MORE!  It takes MORE to produce milk than it does to grow a baby.  This is just something I didn’t know…

So I only ended up tracking my calories one day.  It is, after all, a lot of work.  I may go back to it though.  I did learn a lot about myself in that one day though.  I can easily eat the calories I’m supposed to but because of what I choose to eat (think about how many carrots you could eat to equal the same calories as a pop tart…that sort of thing…) I end up hungry at the end of the day and that’s when I want to pig out.  Definitely not the best time of day for it - if there is a good time of day to overeat…  The other problem I have is that I’m a little carb heavy.  They do percentages for you and it recommended like 55% of your calories coming from carbs and mine was about 57-58% so not crazy over but still too much of that and too little protein.

Based on all this and some general observations I think I’m going to try to eat less at each meal (I’ve been trying to eat larger meals and not snack in between which doesn’t feel very good) and choose healthy snacks.  I just have to figure out what those would be and take the time to make them which is probably the hardest part.  I could either grab a handful of m-n-m’s or scramble up an egg…  The m-n-m’s usually win out.

Oh and I’m also going to make exercise a bit more intentional.  I find myself tired a lot so I end up trying to sneak rest in all day but it would be nice during one of Asher’s awake times (which is a lot of the day now) to go with him for a walk.  He loves it outside and I think it would do us both some good to get the fresh air.

So here’s to taking control!  I created a budget and feel more in control of our spending.  I created a meal plan and feel more in control of my cooking.  Now it’s time to bite the bullet and really pay attention to what is going into my body.  After all:  Garbage In, Garbage Out.