Why I Cook on High

With the smoke alarm blaring the girls would all chime in; “Moms cooking again.”

This was the running joke in our home for years.

With my children now in their thirties and multiple grandchildren around, unfortunately they too know that when the smoke alarm goes off at Nana’s house it’s not a big deal, it just means she’s cooking.

Recently I was teaching the 180 Program and had an epiphany as to why I always have cooked on high.

In my teen years, life to me seemed to always be in turmoil. It felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells. You see in any given twenty-four-hour period; I never knew what would happen when it came to my stepdad’s mood and therefore the atmosphere of the home.

For example, if I was given permission to do something on a Friday night, I would do everything in my power to stay out of the presence of my stepdad all week. If our paths did cross, I would quickly excuse myself from the situation and if that wasn’t possible, I would say the least number of words so it couldn’t be used against me or trigger a tornado to spawn.

When the day of the event would come, I would be as quiet as a church mouse and primarily spend the day in my room.

Watching from my bedroom window, I would wait, not so patiently I might add, for the person to arrive in my driveway.

As soon as I spotted the vehicle, I would as quickly and quietly as possible dart down the hallway. If my stepdad happened to be up and depending upon where he was positioned, I would purposefully take the opposite route to get down the flight of stairs and out the door.

To be truthful how I never went tumbling down the flight of stairs to the landing is truly a testament of God’s mercy. You see this flight of stairs were merely 2×8 piece of lumber and open on both ends. There was no banister let alone a handle. One misstep to the left and I would have landed on the concrete basement floor after another flight of stairs broke my fall. On the other side, one wrong step to the right and I would have landed directly on the basement floor from about 7 feet up.

I was almost free; I hadn’t heard my name yet. A turn of the door handle and I was gone.

“Not so fast. Where do you think you are going?”

So, what does this have to do with cooking on high and my latest epiphany.

I learned very quickly that for me to be allowed to do anything and finish it, I had to do it quickly so as not to be stopped.

Cooking on high was just a manifestation of my learned behavior that you do it as fast as you can, so you get to do it. The challenge for me is that it’s not just about cooking. That’s just the one that gets the most attention because it has an alarm attached to it.

When my husband has an idea to do something, he takes what I see as too much time preparing, when in fact he could just do it. I feel he is losing out and maybe even missing out. Me not so much. I jump in and let the chips fall where they may. For most of my adult life I have used a Type A personality, Go-Getter, 1^st born as my excuse, when in fact, it’s a learned behavior that needs to be changed. What I learned from my childhood was the least number of steps and preparation at least allowed me a chance to accomplish what I was scheduled to do.

Unfortunately, this type of thinking made me find systems to be a four-letter bad word. They bog me down and almost paralyze me in thinking I won’t be able to get to the next item, especially if I must follow a procedure. To me the more steps were more chances that someone could tell me; “You don’t get to do that”.

Understand that this stepfather is in my past, he hasn’t been a part of my life for more than three decades. Even though I know that fact, for some reason, I have never seen it as a fear that I won’t be able to do something because he said so. It is only because of my recent epiphany that I am now totally realizing my need to work through this stronghold in my life that I never knew I had because for years it was categorized as: Type A, First Born. Go-Getter. Driven. I didn’t realize cooking on high and setting off the smoke detector multiple times a week was a bigger problem than just wanting to get dinner on the table faster.

So, what’s next.

As I finish out 2023 and enter 2024 this newfound flaw in my life, business and personal, will be something I work on diligently to get new patterns established. I will also take what I am learning and apply it to goal setting, which is another blog for another day.

If any of this struck a chord or you feel you need help getting off the ferris wheel called “it’s just the way it is”, lets talk.

Learning to Waltz, Learning to be Led

A few years ago, Rob and I were invited to take a dance class and part of the package was a private lesson.

On that particular Monday we showed up ready to learn the Waltz. Philip, our instructor, not only showed us the proper posture but he went on to explain “the why” behind it. The lesson didn’t go as planned.

The next day as I was reading, praying and asking God for guidance, I had an AHA moment.

The Waltz:

The man leads.

He applies pressure to the shoulder area of the back and off you go….

BUT….

The women doesn’t just follow, because she is always going backwards. She has to trust the male to lead.

The male is dancing them gracefully in and around the dance floor and the women’s part? TRUST his direction.

Right? Well that’s not all.

The other part is, ONENESS.

As the man is leading, in order to turn, you will switch feet. The woman needs to be one with the male or there will be clumsiness, and fumbling.

They can get back in sync but they may have to stop and start over.

As a person who has the personality of take charge, let me do it, and I’ll figure it out as I go, the Waltz was not easy for me. I was always wanting to take over. But that was not the way the Waltz was intended.

I feel like my relationship with God is like doing the Waltz… He is leading. I have to trust. I have to remember that He can see the end game, I can not.

But if I am not spending time with God, how will I know the trust part. How will I be in sync with what He is doing, twirling me around the dance floor called life.

I won’t get graceful on the dance floor if I don’t practice, and the same goes for my “Waltz” with The Lord.

If I don’t take time to learn, read, grow, pray and practice, I will always be fumbling, trying to take the lead, thinking I know best and never becoming the person God created me to be.

How’s your “Waltz” coming?

Open Concept, What a Novel Idea

Have you ever had a meeting with someone and after that meeting you can’t stop thinking about something that was said?

I was meeting with Paula Mosher Wallace and as she was sharing her story, I saw a house that was built in the early 1900’s, it was small and every room had 4 walls and a door. There was no seeing into the room from any other room. You only could see what was in that room if you walked in, looked through the window or the door just happened to be open when you were walking down the hallway.

The next vision I saw was what today HGTV stars would call an “open concept”.

You can stand in one place, look from one end to the other with nothing obstructing the view or the flow.

The more she was talking about compartmentalizing our abuse the more I found myself realizing how many times I have compartmentalized my healing.

I realized that as I have been “working on myself”, I would, for a lack of a better analogy, shut the door and not return to that room unless something came up and I needed to revisit it. I would then go onto the next “room”, (item that I needed to work on), get it to where I thought it was “good enough” and then walk out, turn off the light and shut the door.

I realized today that by compartmentalizing my healing, that I was not working on myself also as a whole.

I thought that by working on things one at a time that they did not affect the other parts of my life. The problem is that it all affects me and who I am.

By saying, this happened over here, so therefore it only affects this portion of me; well I am lying to myself.

I did not become a successful business owner overnight, it took months, years. It took me maturing and learning. It took adding one skill to the last to build the person I became in business.

So my challenge as I am working through my own “brokenness” and “healing”, I need to tear down some walls, place some I-Beams for structural support (God’s arms) and realize to be completely free that what is broken in the spare bedroom, really does affect the way you interact in the kitchen.

Please feel free to fill out the contact form if:

You are broken and just need to know someone is praying for you
You are broken are ready to heal
You are broken and just don’t know where to turn

***for information about Paula Mosher Wallace please visit her website and learn about her book “Bloom in the Dark”.***

They didn’t choose to be Homeless

In November I started teaching the women at the local homeless shelter. I was excited to be a teacher of Job Readiness and Parenting. The Job Readiness class is about to wrap up and has been very successful. The parenting class though has been a different story.

We started with week 1 and there were 4 women in class but 2 of them had their children with them. When I inquired why these children were not with the rest of the children I was told “they are not allowed to participate in the activity with the other children”.

The 2^nd week the children were once again in the class, I asked why the children were in the parenting class when a group had come to have a Christmas party with ALL the children. The answer again was “they are not allowed to participate in the activity with the other children”. So I proceeded to sit down to teach and the 2 other women, whose children were allowed to participate said, “If there are going to be children in the class, then I won’t come”. They stood up and left.

That night instead of teaching about parenting I told my families story of an unruly teenager. How we had her locked up before her senior year in high school and how she could have chosen to quit after high school. I talked about how she kept plugging away and did graduate just last year with a Bachelor’s Degree. I told them about owning a pizzeria and what I learned there. We were all over the map with discussion and stories, but at the end of the night that group of pre-teens/teens asked if I would teach them about jobs, anger and getting along (basically these were the subjects we touched on during my talk). I was so excited and got approval to come back the following week to teach the teens.

When I walked into the shelter that Tuesday evening I was ushered quickly upstairs to the kids room. They asked “now what is the lowest age group you want?”

What, excuse me? After comprehending that they thought I was here for all the children I said “I am here for just the two families and their children?”

To which I was told “I am sorry but they are not allowed to participate in any activity with the other children”.

As I sat there in this empty room I was overcome with all types of emotions… but the main emotion I felt was sadness. I had let those kids down. I promised I would be back to teach them. I had the relationship with them, and now I was in a room with pre-teens and teens that had NO relationship with me so why would they listen to me.

I quickly decided that God had me here so I was going to make the best of it and figure out the rest later.

A few sat down at the tables, a couple in the chairs up against the wall, and one of the youngest came and sat on the built-in bookshelf right next to me.

We chit chatted for a bit and then we talked about rules and why there are rules.

We talked about anger and how we need to control it. We also talked about things we could do when we got angry that did not include hitting someone or something.

We talked about fathers and relationships with their dads. The youngest one sitting right next to me blurted out “I don’t have a dad, I have a sperm donor”. My heart sank when I heard that, because I knew those were the words of his mother or mother’s family.

I realized that these kids were all angry in their own way. Some have been labeled “trouble makers” and it’s easier to live up to that label than to let someone get close because they don’t know what tomorrow has in store. They did NOT ask to be homeless. Nobody asked them if they wanted their life to have to fit into a locker. Their mothers for whatever reason have chosen to live in this shelter. Their lives are always in a state of flux with no personal space to call their own. If their mother gets angry at a rule she can yank the kids up out of their seats and storm out, not to be let in again til the next day. If their mother happens to find “love” they could find their things at a complete strangers one night and back at the shelter the next because “love” didn’t work. Some are in the shelter because their mother stated it was better to be homeless living in a shelter in Nashville than staying in Michigan or Ohio.

So what’s the answer? Relationships.

Healthy relationships with the moms and the kids.

And where will these relationships come from? The church

If you are interested in becoming a part of the solution please contact us. We will train you and your volunteers. We will give you the tools to allow you to be an in an equipping relationship and make sustainable changes in the lives of hurting families.

The Blessing of a Bad Day

June 28th was a B E A U ti-Ful day for a motorcycle ride. As we were ending the ride, still not quite sure what happened, but we ended up in the ditch, with a totaled motorcycle.

Even as I am writing this, I am reliving the scene and can feel the anxiety filling my body from my toes all the way up to my head. I can still see my husband laying in the ditch lifeless. I am screaming and screaming trying to get him to answer. I call 9-1-1. Rob is still lifeless. Finally, he starts to moan, my body just wants to scream, don’t leave me. The moans were so death like, I thought he was taking his last breaths.

Rob has a dislocated collar bone, a sprained shoulder and a concussion. I have bumps and bruises.

Fast forward to the last few weeks of a new normal for our lives

Because of Robs limited use of his arm (we find out later that he had tears in the muscles around his rotator cuff), I drive him a majority of the time. The concussion though, is another story. He is sleeping most of the days away. He can’t get on the computer to work. When we do think he is ready to venture out, he can’t even make it 1/2 a day without tiring. Up until this week, all evening outings were put on hold. And I become a full-time care giver.

This is just the physical aspects of what has happened.

Rob is not 100% yet, but he at least has better movement in his shoulder and his “smart butt” attitude is coming back.

The wreck 6 weeks ago, created another trauma in my life. The anxiety has been so great that it created a depression that was so heavy, that many times, I would want to cry, but my body wouldn’t let me because I needed to be strong.

My husband needed me to care for him.

I needed to stay strong, because my husband was in no shape to care for a wife who was losing it.

During a recent trip downtown Rob said, “I hope you are ok with walking down here, because I won’t be able to defend you if anything happens”.

I did not realize how much the reality of that statement along with the anxiety I was feeling started a spiral downward into a deep depression because I was NOT strong and I couldn’t do anything about it.

Now for the reason for my blog

Rob and I have talked about our deaths and what we would do if the other one died and we survived. I have always said, “well, I know where you would be, so I would be happy for you and I would NOT get remarried but throw myself in to the ministry and keep going”.
What God has shown me through this wreck is that I have not waited for Rob to die, to act as if he was. For many months God has been reminding me about how much I used to be the wife who kept the house clean, I was always cooking breakfast and bringing it to my husband in bed. Over the years, I have become a very focused person, which can be good and bad. Good in the business world, but bad because I have realized how much I get focused on the “busy-ness” of life that I have neglected my husband and his need to be appreciated and loved like I used to.

So God used a motorcycle wreck to show me how much I love my husband and how weak I am and there are things I need to change.

Seeking Your Well Done

As this 17 day trip to the North comes to a close, I have realized that this trip has been bitter sweet.

The sweetness was spending time with family, being able to attend Memorial Day celebrations and birthday parties.

We also were able to meet up with old friends

and meet new ones.

And as I was created to do, I was able to teach and minster to people.

As th P1010806 is trip has been also about walking the piers, crossing Lake Michigan on a big boat,

it also has been a time of healing from my past.

Therefore Rob and I took lots of walks and I took lots of pictures.

I teach people every day that if you want to relocate, great! Start over, awesome!

But I warn; make sure you are running towards and not away.

Part of my healing from my past, was for me to come back to my hometown and face my demons head on. My demons are part of my story and they are used everyday to help people overcome their past. But as much as I hate to admit it, I do allow my demons to take up too much residence in my present.

Because of my self-confidence in what I teach and more importantly what God created me to do, you would never know. But it’s the fear of failure, the fear of never being good enough that keeps me from achieving that next level that I dream of.

It’s my low self-esteem. It’s the lack of value I see in myself.

So how do I start to change the low self-esteem?

God taught me, on this trip, that my value comes from being a daughter of the most High King. And the only “well done, good and faithful servant” that has any bearing on my value as a person, is that of Gods.

As this trip of training and equipping comes to a close I can’t but wonder what God has in store next?

My question for you is, what do you do to hear from people, “well done”?

What you get them with….

It is said that what you get them with, is what you will have to do to keep them.

This can be said about flashy church services, youth groups, or any type of business that deals with the public; but this also goes for relationships.

As you are trying out different relationships, remember this simple rule: what you do to catch them is what you will have to do to keep them.

Let’s talk about friendships first: if you change who you are so that someone or some group will ask you to join them, then just remember this simple rule: what you changed to be accepted by them is what you will need to continue to do to be continually accepted by them. You may think that the change is no big deal it could be as simple as liking a different type of music or food but in the long run, you will realize that it was not just about music or food, but it becomes about a core value.

What I really want to talk about though is the way women dress.

Women have a “dress code” for every event.

I don’t care event: sweat pants and a sweat shirt, no hair done or makeup.

I like these people event: jeans, pants nice shirt, do the hair and makeup

I really don’t care about what happens, I just want some action event: hair and makeup done up to the hilt, tight jeans (doesn’t matter if I have the body for it or not) and a tight low cut top….and oh yeah don’t forget the boots.

If you are looking for a relationship and you are dressed in tight jeans, low cut tops and boots….who do you really think you will attract?

I will tell you who you will attract. You will attract the men that only have one thing on their mind and I will tell you it’s NOT….to provide a stable home with 2.3 kids, white Pickett fence and a dog. It will be a one sided relationship built on sex and pleasure. And the first time you say “no” or decide you want something more or different; you will find yourself alone again and most likely pregnant or with an STD.

I recently lost a lot of weight and felt real good about myself. I found myself buying shirts that needed an undershirt. Instead of buying an undershirt that was modest, I bought one that should only have been worn by….well let’s just say…..I, a married woman should have only worn it at home for my husband, not out in public. I started getting convicted about my dress code and realized that, while there is nothing wrong with dressing pretty, I needed to dress modestly.

The first realization came when I was walking out of Home Depot with my husband and another man gave me a double look. This sparked a conversation about men and how they are visual beings. That day started me thinking about something as innocent as clothing can spark something that was never meant to be.

So ladies as you are looking through your wardrobe and starting with “New Years Resolutions”….let’s start by asking God is there something I need to change to be a better representation of what I profess?

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