That Grace Place

There’s a circumstantial place encompassing everything from difficult to impossible - a tense, emotional place that is just plain HARD, a place saturated in God’s grace.  My part is to meet Him there.

Grace is God’s empowering presence upon and within me, enabling me to be and do all He calls me to be and do.  Grace does not stand idly by as passive “unmerited favor” (the canned definition of His grace), but rather it calls His people/places/things to work on my behalf while enabling total sufficiency in everything concerning me. 

I can feel it.  The place is HARD, but the grace is real and active.

"Vice Cream"

“Vice Cream”

Introducing Strawberry-Banana Sorbet drizzled with Dark-Chocolate!  Sound like a decadent item on a fancy dessert menu?  Hmmmmm. 

Tonight I used my Champion Juicer with the blank to make “Vice Cream” (the official name of the recipe, although I prefer to call it Strawberry-Banana Sorbet) with frozen raw bananas and raw strawberries.  The end product was very much like a rich and fruity soft-serve ice cream. 

Then guess what?  I topped the mound of pink sorbet with a thick, smooth dark-chocolate sauce made from raw honey, raw cocoa beans, and vanilla that were whirred together in my Vita-Mix super-duper-high-powered blender. 

Goodness!  Isn’t it just WRONG for something beyond-yum-yummy to also be nutritious?  Actually, it makes good sense to me.  Who needs ice cream infused with artificial and/or chemical this-and-that (like what's in the Hudsonville original vanilla currently in the freezer)....

Stabilizer (mono and diglycerides)

Cellulose gum

Polysorbate 80

Carrageenan

Guar gum

Artificial flavor

Artificial color

…when you can have real-for-sure, no-preservatives-added “Vice Cream?” 

Eyes to See

It’s humbling to have the old geriatric 1994 Villager minivan break down on the way to an appointment…to flip into emergency mode, call a tow truck, and wait for it in the freezing cold until your body feels like crackly peanut brittle ready to be crunched…and then to have the wrecker guy come…and offer (out of the goodness of his heart) to do a quick check before towing you off to never-never-mechanic-land…and for him to figure out the problem and even get the engine to temporarily work so it will run until you can get it into a garage at a more convenient time. 

This car is OLD.  It is no surprise when it breaks down like this.  The unexpected help from that tow guy (who charged a minimal fee and willingly passed up a chance for a real paying job) seems very much like divine mercy in action, at just the right time – as long as I have eyes to see it as such.

It’s humbling to have the hubby’s old senior-citizen body break down…with yucky physical fever plus bloody phlegm and chunks of grossness from his lungs…with coughing and wheezing and aches and sleeplessness…stuff that finally, out of desperation, sends him to the doctor…and there in the presence of compassion (in a clinical white coat) he’s told oh yeah, it’s pneumonia (no surprise), and by the way, you’re on the border of going to the hospital but hey, let’s try this antibiotic and bed rest first. 

This body is OLD.  It is no surprise when it breaks down.  The in-the-nick-of-time, aggressive but let’s-not-jump-right-into-invasive-mode treatment seems very much like divine mercy in action, at just the right time – as long as I have eyes to see it as such.

Thanksgiving Reprint

After I read a blog written by my friend Kathy this evening, I immediately emailed to ask her if I could reprint it – and she said YES!  Kathy is blind, teaches in a public high school, and has just published her second book - this one about assistance animals entitled Two Plus Four Equals One.  I found her thoughts today encouraging, inspiring, and true in an ALETHEIA kind of way. (Aletheia is Greek for “truth” that withstands even critical interrogations and exists no matter what, even if you don’t believe it!)

This Thanksgiving Day brings me to much reflection. I am blessed in so many ways and challenged in so many ways. I wonder if the challenges are actually blessings too. I am convinced they are likely the gateways to the greatest blessings. After all, it is not very fulfilling to be set gently down upon a mountain top, as compared to climbing up through toil and exhaustion and danger and despair to finally get to that place. So, as Two Plus Four Equals One spreads its wings and I step back into a role of gentle serenity, may I be at peace in knowing this climb was both loved and hated, but this mountain top is real, and even when the valleys ahead make it difficult to see this summit, I can be grateful to know that this one and others are there, are real, and are blessings, each one of them, whether I can see them or not. Perhaps that is what faith is. Perhaps that is my next expedition: to learn and love serenity and faith as deeply as I was engrossed in this book project. Yes, may it be.

-Kathy Nimmer

Peace and Safety

It’s true; Biblical prophecies have a good track record and can be trusted!  One day the earth WILL be like this:

“The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the hold of the cobra,

and the young child put his hand into the viper’s next.

They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea.”

Isaiah 11:6-9

Fruit & Nut, Custardy-Caramely Sundae

Oh man.  I just ate a small bowl of very rich, creamy stuff (think cheesecake to wrap your mind around the degree of decadence) made from raw cashews, agave nectar, coconut butter, vanilla, water, and salt and drizzled with a sauce made of dates, water, and vanilla – then topped with sliced bananas and raw pecans.   Would you believe this comparatively healthy dessert rates right up there on my scale of over-the-top-ness with tira misu?  Or crème puffs?  Well, it does.

Mallards

As I waited with the car and trailer at the lake’s public landing today, a handsome pair of wild mallard ducks fed in the shallows.  I was reminded of the mallard couple in Robert McCloskey’s Make Way for Ducklings, and wondered what private conversation might be ensuing between them as their voices chattered privately in low, almost sensual, tones. 

They both seemed unconcerned by my presence at such close range.  Each time they bobbed for weeds, their white, curly-feathered tails shot straight up in the air and their little webbed feet paddled furiously in place to maintain such very top-heavy postures.

I couldn’t help but wonder what they thought of me, and wished I had some Thanksgiving fare - bread crumbs or peanuts - to augment their meal of seasonally dead aquatic weeds.