So what is on my heart right this second? The biggest thing, namely, is how incredibly flawed I am. And not in the physical way or even in the superficial things of life (even tho those are true). But in a deep way, in my mind, in my soul, in my heart. That I step back and look at myself and think “God, I know your word says you delight in me, but why? Why? I just don’t understand it.”

Truth is, the Lord has been bringing me through an incredibly painful season of life. I feel I am literally being put through the fire and even tho what is being put to death in me needed to die, quite frankly, it is still exposing parts of my heart that seem so black, so decayed that make it hard to breathe sometimes. I’m used to looking at the evil in the world and thinking how despairing and awful it can be. I am not, however, used to seeing it in my own heart.

I think the hardest thing about this refining process, this intense time of spiritual maturity, is what the Lord is going to call me to do when he’s done. This work is intentional, he has spoken that very clearly, and when he is done I will be asked to step out and be used. Then I think and worry and get anxious about how he will use me. I hate to travel. HATE. IT. I have a huge fear of flying, new places, foreign languages, unfamiliar landscapes, just to name a few. A few years ago when I really started living for the Lord, he gave me this image of Conner playing in the dust and dirt of a dry and barren place. He was playing with other children his age, children that were impoverished yet they were laughing and having the time of their lives. This image gave my heart peace but then fear took over as I thought “what is he going to ask of me?” And here I am, as he going to work on me, ripping out parts of my heart that need removing and filling those empty places with his love and mercy I start to worry and ask but what for? What is going to ask of me? And more importantly will I step out and say “Here I am, your servant, send me”? The God of the universe is taking the time to make me who he has created me to be and I’m already worried about what he will ask of me. More flaws.

I don’t understand why me, why now, why any of us, really and then I begin to understand now more than ever when Jesus said that the kingdom of God is at hand. It is here. It is right now. I grew up in the church and was taught to live with your eyes fixed on Heaven. But what God is teaching me is to live like Heaven is here. Love the Lord your God with all your heart (no matter how decayed), with all your mind (mixed motives and all) with all your soul (leaving emotions aside) and with all your strength (to the point of exhaustion), and love your neighbor as yourself. And as you strive for that, he will put you through the fire. One thing he has definitely shown me is when you get serious with him he will get serious with you. He will burn off all the chaff, he will strengthen you in your inner being. He will set you out of the muddy pit and onto the high places so you can see his Glory. I keep reminding myself that it is because God loves me so furiously that he has brought me to this place where I look at myself and am disgusted. He doesn’t delight in how I feel and doesn’t seek to make me hate what I see in myself, but he does delight in the fact that I keep choosing him and trusting in his character. That I keep letting him go there with me as he is perfecting my faith. Richard Foster says we reach this place where we say “I don’t know where God is or what he is doing, but I know he is out to do me good.” He is a good God. There is no wickedness in Him, even tho my heart is riddled with it.

So I sit here, flawed. But only in light to the fact that God is so good and so merciful. To weigh my flawed existence against any other backdrop wouldn’t be so bad. But when I realize that the God of the universe, who made me and loves me and calls me as his own delights in this pitiful mass of matter and selfish desires, yeah…I feel a little humbled. And, well, incredibly flawed.

I have to share this easy, healthy and oh-so amazing recipe with you. My husband has recently started a year-long wellness journey and one of the aspects of this project is that he not eat meat. This isn’t much of a stretch for either of us since the first three years of our marriage I was a vegetarian, so he got used to eating meatless meals. So in honor of his new eating habits & getting to crack open my dusty vegetarian cookbooks, I wanted to share this recipe with you. It is one of our favorites from back in the day & is now a family favorite - my picky four year old will even eat it, spinach and all. Enjoy!

Mediterranean Pita Pizza

(5) Whole wheat pitas
(2) 15 oz. cans of northern beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup crumbled feta
Fresh spinach leaves (about 4 hand fulls), rinsed and cut into strips**
(2) cups shredded mozzarella
(1) tbsp minced garlic
extra virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mash beans in a medium sized bowl with a fork (this is relatively easy if you first rinse the beans in warm/hot water) or food processor. Drizzle with olive oil, add garlic and mix. Spread bean mixture evenly on pitas and bake 10 minutes in oven. While they’re baking, chop the spinach leaves. When pitas are done
remove from oven and sprinkle (in this order) mozzarella, chopped spinach, and feta. Cook an additional 10 minutes. You can also add chopped sundried tomatoes if you’re a fan or you want more pops of color.

** for this, I pluck any long stems off the leaves, pile them together & lightly mince them

*First, a word. This post is not what you’ll typically read here. I’m known for being brutally honest, not only to others but about myself and my struggles and I don’t want to limit that here, even tho this is incredibly nerve wracking. The truth is I feel an obligation to share part of my painful journey for no other reason than to light a candle in the darkness and extend it’s light to anyone who needs it. I’ve decided to split the posts up into parts for easier reading and also so I can gauge how much is appropriate to share at one time. Please say what you must, but be gentle in your words.*

So I mentioned in a post last week about how I’ve been having a rough time battling my depression, yet again. For those of you who have never struggled with this, one thing to know is it’s cyclical nature, coming on for months or even years at a time, vanishing briefly only to return again. You never come out of it thinking you’re glad that’s over because you’ll find yourself there again very quickly. For someone who knows what it’s like, you can nod your head in agreement as I describe it as torture. And not like bamboo shoots under your fingernails torture, fast and excruciatingly painful, but more like chinese water torture - it starts out manageable, but then before you know it each little droplet, each little part of life becomes too painful to bear. I think the worst part is not when you’re plummeting to it’s depths or stuck right smack dab in the middle of it, but at the beginning when you feel it coming like the helpless victim tied to the train track in one of those silent movies. And as the train comes rushing forth you squirm and you scream and you try with every ounce of life in you to make it stop but it just keeps coming and inevitably strikes and brings complete destruction.

Last January I was graduated from counseling. That was such a huge moment for me since it was the first time in my adult life I felt confident enough that not only had I dealt with a majority of my problems, but I could face them head-on if they decided to return. In addition to counseling the Lord had also done some extensive healing in my life. It blows my mind when I look back at how he took the pieces of my broken existence and made them not only whole again, but functional. He removed my chains and led me out of my Egypt, never to be enslaved to that darkness anymore. I was walking in God’s redemptive freedom and I can not remember when I had ever felt that happy. For eight months I lived in this euphoric mindset and drank in every second. When you finally realize you have been released of a burden you were never intended to bear, the effects are profound. Maybe I should put some testimonials on here of those who were in the trenches with me to attest to how the Lord radically changed my life.

Then around September that nagging feeling began. I felt…off. Something too familiar, something I knew all too well was getting too comfortable in my everyday life. Having tasted freedom and feeling that security slipping from my hands I got so scared and began to run from it. And when I couldn’t run I began to dig and bury and push it down. I would shake my head and mutter in my soul, “No, not again, this can’t be it. It just can’t be. He took it. He told me he did. No. It just can’t be.” With each new day that lost it’s color a little more than the day before I was slipping into that dark abyss that I thought I would never see again.

This time it felt the same and yet so different. There were no feelings of self-deprecation, that was good. There was no self-medicating, no coping mechanism that would cause more destruction than the depression itself, so that was nice. The only word that I can use to describe it in it’s entirety is aloneness. Complete aloneness and desertion. No one knew what I was going through. No one understood. Each person that offered a “hang in there,” or “it’s the wintertime - it’s tough this time of year,” would receive a sympathy nod from me but I would emotionally take a step back because there was yet another person who just couldn’t understand. And then there’s the issue of all of the prayers I cried out to God: “Where are you? Why have you led me back here? I don’t get it! What have I done? ANSWER ME!!!” I felt so alone. It’s one of the most ugly, horrifying feelings. Feeling that no one could hear my words and truly understand the desperation and pain in them. So I pushed it down some more, didn’t give it a voice. Crying out only meant those wails would echo around an empty cavern only to come right back to my mouth to be cried out again and again.

This feeling of being silenced & receiving silence continued for months until two weeks ago I found myself crumpled on my living room floor, alone, crying so heavy I was dry heaving, an ache that went from my gaping and wounded heart to the center of my gut. I couldn’t silence it any longer and I was faced with the painful realization just how deep I am in this.

Here’s the crazy thing tho. After I got it out, after I cried so hard my eyes were so swollen you could only see slits of them, after I called a dear friend just so someone could talk me down from the ledge, I felt like the Lord was satisfied. Not at my neediness. Not at my desperation. Not at the fact that I was out of options and had no where to look but to him. But he was completely and utterly satisfied with my brokenness. And it is not as sadistic as it’s sounds since in that moment for the first time in five long, agonizing and spiritually silent months I felt his peace. Peace. Something I wasn’t sure would ever return to the fullness I had grown so accustomed to. But I welcomed it. I breathed it in. I savored every ounce of it since I didn’t know how long it would last. It would be days later before he spoke to me, very quickly but very profoundly and then close the veil so I would be left alone in my spiritual desert again.

1) What would you call yourself if you could choose your own name?

I always wanted to be a Megan or Jennifer or Amanda since that’s what all the girls were name & Candace was so different (during a civics discussion of the roots of our names I was the only one who got to stand up & proudly say “Candace was an Ethiopian queen in the book of Acts). True, my mom found it during a bible study & thought it was so pretty. I never really liked it until I got a little older & realized it wasn’t so bad. Besides it’s one the best names for little kids to pronounce: “Kennis! Kennis!” - so cute.

2) What was your worst date?

My first date as a freshman in college with one of the nicest & sweetest guys I’ve ever known, but totally clueless. Started off the date on the wrong foot when I met the girl of the other couple we were double-dating with and before she told me her name she asks smiling & bright-eyed “Do you prefer to be called Candy?” & I choked out “No way, sounds like a hooker.” Hooker was my exact term because I remember the look on her face as I said it since her name was….wait for it….Candace. But she prefers to go by….yeeeaaah. *gulp* Then we went to Applebees & our dates proceeded to tell us the plan for dinner: we order the free-refills chips & dip appetizer to split four-ways. After our incredibly stuffing dinner we headed to a party out in the boonies & drove around for two hours because we were lost. Just me & the hooker, sitting in the backseat, waiting for this night to be over. *Sigh* My boys will hear this story many times of what NOT to do.

3) If you had to teach one subject in high school or college what would it be?

Government or Civics

4) When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried?

This happens quite often because I laugh a lot but the last I remember was last week with the boys. Conner has a way of getting Max so wound up & Max has a way of being a total ham. One crazy antic led to another, bodda-bing, bodda-boom mama was in tears. In a good way.

5) What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Not done but said. A friend, whom I don’t get to visit with often & doesn’t know how many times I struggle to keep my head above water as a wife & mother, told me how blessed my children were to have me. That when the time would come they would rise & call me blessed, like the Proverbs 31 woman. It meant so much to be since I really felt in my heart it was God whispering his hope & promise to me.

6) If money or skill-set was no issue, what would you love to do for a living?

My knee-jerk would be caterer or event planner - shocker, right? - but the truth is I would love to teach high school. But only at a school where I could smack the kids around when they get on my nerves. (What? That’s never allowed? Really? Hmmm…ok, then definitely a caterer.)

7) What is one thing as an adult/parent/spouse you do that you swore you would never do?

I swore I would never get married or have kids. Kind of crapped on that one pretty good!

8) If you could go back to one particular time in your life (not to live, not to change anything, just to visit) when would it be?

Freshman year of college. Loved every minute, every day of it.

9) If your walls could talk, what would they say about you (good & bad)?

That she has good intentions & should probably be medicated

10) If you could fix or put an end to one problem in the world what would it be?

Poverty

If you haven’t done yours yet go here & do it! Now!

1) What would you call yourself if you could choose your own name?

2) What was your worst date (as in going out on a date, not an actual calendar date…unless you have a really bad one to share)?

3) If you had to teach one subject in high school or college, what would it be?

4) When was the last time you laughed so hard you cried?

5) What is the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

6) If money or skill-set was no issue, what would you love to do for a living?

7) What is one thing as an adult/parent/spouse you do that you swore you would never do?

8) If you could go back to one particular time in your life (not to live, not to change anything, just to visit) when would it be?

9) If your walls could talk, what would they say about you (good & bad)?

10) If you could fix or put an end to one problem in the world what would it be?

So last week was a doozie. And I mean…yeah. All attempts at blogging were dashed any second I tried to muster up a post. I would enjoy - no, LOVE - to talk about it but it seems like it’s so much, so detailed & so incredibly personal that I don’t know if this is the correct platform in which to air it. Bottom line is I have been suffering from depression (again) for the last six months (and those of you who know me in real life or who followed me from Laughing Daisies know this is something I have struggled with for over ten years), until this week when the Lord clearly & very painfully, I might add, set me straight that it was not a depression but instead an intense time of spiritual maturity.

See? Heavy stuff.

While I stand today completely wide-eyed at all that the Lord has showed me in just a weeks time, I don’t want to scare anyone off or jump head-first into a big theological post. I feel like these building blocks in our faith are given not just for us but for others to bear witness to, but I also want to respect the process & share it in it’s time & as the Lord ordains it. So the jury is still out on that one but please delight with me as the Lord has put a new song in my heart to bring Him praise. He is so good!

On that note, here are two other posts I’ll link you to for todays reading. One I wrote for my sweet, bloggy friend Amanda over at Impress Your Kids, a great blog designed to impress your kids with the knowledge of God, as commanded in Deuteronomy 6:4-9. I recently read a book on how to give the Biblical blessing & it has changed the way I am speaking to & blessing my children, my husband, & those around me. A definite must-read as a parent, in my opinion.

The other post is by another dear friend who took my headshots for me for my biznass (to be unveiled in the near future, hopefully, as I get the guts to do so) & their recap of it. Super fun, SUPER TALENTED, super great team at Kellan Studios, can’t say enough good things about their work or their friendship.

I really want to come up with a Top 10 for tomorrow but am drawing a complete blank as to what to do. Any ideas? Suggestions? I’m thinking of turning the tables on you to have you answer ten questions for me since I know some but not all of you & I wanna shake things up a bit. Consider this your warning.

1. Handwritten “Love” Chocolate Heart Cookie, 2. Pink roses close-up on the red background, 3. mini cookie “cakes”, 4. So yummmm, 5. shadows of love, 6. Sweeter Love, 7. sweets for my sweet!, 8. Love without demand {Explore FP}, 9. cookies, 10. Happy Valentine’s Day!, 11. LOVE revisited, 12. I love you, 13. happy valentines day!!!, 14. Rubber Ducky Love, 15. Assorted Box of Cake, 16. Pink Martinis…All in a Row!

A few weeks ago one of my dear friends Amy asked me if I would make a cake for her, & not just any cake but a surprise-gender cake for her, her husband & their family. They are having their first baby & were headed for the big ultrasound. They wanted the u/s tech to keep the gender a secret, they would then bring me the information & I would put either a pink or blue layer of icing in the center of the cake to indicate what they were having. Then the family would gather together that evening so they could all find out together. A pretty cute idea right? & I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a little drunk with power as they handed over the results & I watched her husband squirm at the thought that someone other than the doctor knew what they were having (sorry Jared!).

I had made the cake the night before (using Bakerella’s scratch yellow cake recipe - wonderful & relatively easy I might add) & once I had the ultrasound results in-hand I assembled the cake.

I have to say that I’ve iced cakes before but never trying to do a smoothed buttercream finish. I was quite nerve-wracked about it but it wasn’t that difficult. The best part about doing a buttercream finish is that if you mess up, you can smooth over the smudges pretty easily. I still need to perfect the overall “smoothness” but for my first go with it, ever, I wasn’t hating the results. I had to add the dots because I love polka dots & after Conner’s birthday party I was itching to use my icing tips some more.

Over all it was one of the funnest projects I’ve done in awhile - I got try something new & for something so fun as letting mom & dad know what they were having. I should add that I had to make four - yes, FOUR - batches of buttercream frosting. There was about three layers around the cake with two thick layers of icing on the inside & the thing weighed eight pounds (I got out the wii fit balance board & weighed it) - it is serious. I kept telling mom to prepare herself for the diabetic coma that would inevitably follow. I love having these types of projects to do - new, fun & a gift of sorts.

Oh, & they’re having a baby girl. Congratulations Amy & Jared!

Isn’t it awesome? Beth at Taste Selects, a local bakery took my design & ran with it. Love how it turned out! I did the red cuppies to accompany it & our good friend Ryan Portnoy came to snap the pics.

cupcakes…..yummmmmmmm

This is the pennant I made, which was super easy - cut out triangles, hole punched the edges, slide cotton yarn through, hang, voila - pennant. Conner loved this thing. When hubby & I were hanging it his eyes lit up & he kept asking, “Is that for me? Is that for my party?” The concept of alllllllll of this being for him was blowing his mind.

I am such a fan of cookie favors. I highly highly recommend doing them for your next party. No annoying toys that fall out of that awkwardly small little bag, no more leaked thing of bubbles all over your car, no. Instead, you spend a fraction of the cost (even if you buy already made sugar cookies & let your kid decorate them) & your guaranteed that everyone will love & use your favors.

These are the thank you’s that I did & while they were time-consuming they were still fun. Any excuse to nerd out with paper crafts & I am there! Piecing the squares together took the most time, but after that they came together easily.

Overall the party was a blast. I got to see my little guy set loose with eleven of his most-loved peers & while it parted my hair quite a few times, they all had a great time.

Happy 4th birthday my sweet Conner!!!

So anyways, back to 52 new things. Brandi, I don’t even know if I’m doing it right but I’m giving it a shot! One of my goals for the new year was to try a new recipe every week. I hate cooking. I love baking (love. love. love.), but hate cooking. Because of said hatred, I cook the same things over & over. I’ve got a solid dozen recipes, but we’ve been eating those over & over since hubby & I said “I do” seven years ago. Hubby loves when he comes home & dinner is on the table. Seriously, he beams - that’s the only reason I do it. That & I don’t want my children to tell their teachers that “mommy makes the best turkey, cheese & ketchup crackers ever!” So to try & make the whole thing enjoyable for everyone I am experimenting with some new dishes. This one I did last night & it was so good, but so unbelievably filling I am pretty sure I was still stuffed well into this afternoon.

It’s Warm Tortellini Salad & Roasted Tomatoes with Green Beans. The only thing different that I did was I didn’t cook the green beans with the tortellini, but instead sauteed them with extra virgin olive oil & garlic salt. It was super delicious & like I said verrrrrrry filling. Go on, give it a go!