And breakfast and lunch...I only eat three meals a day. That's all I need. I seriously didn't think that was possible but when your body is working right and you don't have sugars in it, you only need three meals a day. It's amazing and I would not have believed it until I experienced it!
I have four breakfast meals that I like to rotate through. The first two I do every other day. Then the second two breakfast options require some planning but I then put them in the rotation because it makes four servings for each one. I don't do all of these this week but wanted to put out there the four I like to use. I will likely just do #1 and #2 this week but wanted to share the two others in case you wanted to try them already. I will probably make the porridge Thursday or Friday this week.
Breakfast #1: Three scrambled eggs in coconut oil with raspberries,blueberries, and apple with raw cashews.
Breakfast #2: One Aidell's Chicken Apple Sausage with an apple with Justin's almond butter (make sure it has no sugar in there!) I have found the sausage at HEB in their Organic section and also at Target.
Breakfast #3: Banana Nut Porridge I make this with TWO bananas, instead of just one, and I like to top it with raisins. SO GOOD. I divide it into four ramekins and cover with foil and heat up for about 30 seconds and voila!
Breakfast #4: Baked Egg and Proscuitto Cups The blogger adapted this from another recipe to make it whole30 compliant. Be sure not to use cooking spray but use ghee instead. I eat two of these and sometimes some fruit with it. It's so filling.
Okay onto lunches and dinner. In general, I make my lunch whatever was leftover from dinner the night before.
Tuesday
Lunch: Pork chop and pan-fried sweet potato cubes. I have leftover pork chops from a few nights ago. The sweet potato is easy. I cut it into small cubes and then pan fry it in coconut oil and add sea salt. SO GOOD.
Dinner: Leftover Crockpot Beef Stew (I made this over the weekend)
Wednesday
Lunch: Leftover Chicken "Parmesan" with yellow squash. I cut up the squash and pan fry it in coconut oil and sprinkle sea salt on. This is another dish I doubled a few days ago and have leftovers still. I didn't make the sauce on this recipe but used this Make It With Your Hands Pasta Sauce. I also have found a marina sauce at Sprouts that is sugar free. That is nice to have on hand.
Dinner: Balsamic Marinated Chicken which is SO AMAZING. This marinade works for other meats too! It is INCREDIBLE on flank steak. I double this recipe so I have leftovers for lunch. Make with zucchini.
Thursday
Lunch: Leftover balsamic marinated chicken and sweet potato (can you tell I love sweet potato???)
Dinner: Tomato Dijon Turkey Meatballs with Make It With Your Hands Pasta Sauce and Steamed Broccoli with ghee melted on it and sea salt
Friday
Lunch: Leftover balsamic marinated chicken and yellow squash or zucchini
Dinner: Crockpot Pulled Pork This stuff is the BOMB. You have to make the Beasty BBQ Sauce that goes with it. I don't use all the sauce at once but instead divide and freeze one half to be used the next time I make pulled pork. I serve this with any vegetable I have on hand. My family eats it on a bun but I don't. It's that good! Plus buns aren't compliant!
Saturday
Lunch: Leftover pulled pork and any vegetable on hand
Dinner: Sweet Potato Chili. This is one of my favorites!
I will do some more adventuresome veggies next week like cauliflower rice and I might take a stab at brussell sprouts again. I'm pretty generic with veggies because coconut oil tastes amazing on everything! I also keep spinach leaves handy and toss then with chopped almonds and homemade Italian Salad Dressing.
Monday, December 29, 2014
TOMORROW is the day!
I've been waiting since November to start a new whole30 challenge but had to get through all the holiday eating and festivities first! Tomorrow starts my 2nd whole30 challenge. I was asked today a question someone else recently asked, so I thought I'd answer it in this post. The question of the day: What do you do to stay motivated?
I honestly had to really think through this one. I'm a hard-headed person. Once I want to do something, I just do it and plow through. That's an intrinsic personality trait I likely take for granted. So I'll try to share what motivates me. There is first a very vain element. I want to fit into old clothes and go shopping for new ones. I want to feel sexy and beautiful.While David has always loved what I look like even nine months pregnant, there is this really primordial anti-feminism element that makes me want to please his eye. That sounds SO prehistoric that I'm nearly ashamed to share that! Seriously, that is not the only motivation but it's a nice perk knowing he likes the fit shape. OMGosh I can't believe I wrote that. Okay onto less embarrassing reasons....
There's the vanity as I've already said. There is also the knowledge that my body has been in shape before and so I have that image in my mind and KNOW that I can attain it again. It might not be exactly what it was at 35, 30, and most definitely not at 25, but it can be the best possibly fit bod at 39. I feel better when I'm in shape and healthy. That feeling motivates me. Knowing what it feels like to be healthy and unhealthy is a motivation to keep focused on the goal. I also was not happy with my body as a teenager so I think when I finally had a shape that I was proud of, part of me is wanting to continue making up for lost time. I think women who have struggled with their shapes as teens have a deep desire to be in shape because we weren't the girls in the short skirts and skimpy tops as teens. So in some ways, I have a deep appreciation for fitness and a healthy body that maybe others, who come by it naturally, take for granted.
Then there are deeper reasons. I showed my children my pictures before my third pregnancy. Makenna said to me, "poor mommy." She could see how much I had changed since then and they felt bad for me! ha! We talk often about health here although we don't talk about size or weight. But we talk about being athletes and being healthy and strong. I wanted to be the healthiest and strongest example for them. I don't want my daughters to struggle like I have. I want them proud of me.
Then there is a really deep core reason that I believe is the drive behind everything. It is the love of the life God has given me and the deep respect for taking care of the body he has given me. When I'm on my bike and I want to quit, I can appreciate that I'm alive and strong enough to ride. When I see the wealth of this country and all the food I have at my fingertips, I am motivated to eat right when all the right foods are available and so many people around the world are dying of starvation.
So it's a lot of reasons. And not just one. But I pull from different reasons at different times. I think motivation is different for everyone. You have to know your 'why.' For me, it starts with vanity but underneath that is a desire to care for the only body I've been given and live as long as I can so I can see my grandchildren grow up and have babies.
In my next post, I'll post my menu for the week!
Sunday, December 28, 2014
I love to eat DIRTY but eating CLEAN is so much sexier!
I've labeled my holiday-eating as dirty eating this year. And it fits. And it's oh so good good good. But my body pays pays pays. My plan was to start another whole30 on January 2 as I know I'll want to eat yummy goodies on January 1. In fact, we have plans to go eat pancakes at Kerbey Lane this week too! Guess we will go and this girl will be eating something clean which won't include their pancakes. Whhaaaa!!!!! But my thighs and hips just sighed and said THANK YOU!
I did my first whole30 in October and it changed my life forever. What is whole30? I'll get to that. First you have to know where I was 'at' when I embarked on this adventure. I've lost and gained weight more times than I can count now. A time for truth...When I was 15, I got fit just riding my bike all over Georgetown. It was easy. Then I developed fat. I didn't 'get fat.' Fat doesn't define me. Fat is something I 'have,' just like I have hair and fingernails. It's not who I am. So...fat grew on me. Then I dropped some again when I was a senior in high school...and then some more my freshman year of college thanks to lots of marching band at Tech and riding my bike since I didn't have a car that first semester. Then...fat grew on me again. And again. Ugh. At 23, I got serious again and did the Weigh-Down workshop. I learned how to portion control. I don't recall really paying attention to calories/fat or cutting out grains but I also exercised. Religiously. And I went from a girl with a whole lotta girl to love to a size 2 teeny-tiny thing by 24. Then I got married. Fat crept in again. Then i got pregnant. Well the fat loves a pregnant girl. Especially one who eats everything in sight and quits working out. After Baby #1, I got FIT. I mean, seriously fit. I was into high-protein drinks, lots of veggies, lots of meat, and hardly any grains. And boy did I work out. Religiously. Then I got pregnant again. Remember that fat loves a pregnant girl. Also, at 23, I vowed I would never have fat again like that. Oh well, so much for vows. But then I did it again post baby #2. I got super fit and super controlled with what I ate. And I became a serious coffee addict. And diet coke addict. Weight crept in again and baby #3 began. And after Baby #3, what happened? The fat stayed. And grew.
Sound anything like you and your journey? I think at some point post baby #3, I decided that my fit days were behind me. I worked out 4 days a week but it didn't seem to matter. I had come to a point where I didn't want my picture taken. I had no energy. Even though I worked out, nothing changed with my body. THAT is depressing. Really depressing. I ate chicken and beans for lunch every day. HOW was I possibly not able to drop any weight? Then at the end of September 2014, my spin instructor Jules started talking about whole30. I perked up. She mentioned a book called It Starts with Food and I heard the key phrase "backed up with scientific data" and "lost 15 pounds the first month" and "I was never hungry and didn't starve." I seriously perked up.
Timing is everything. I was ready for a real answer. Too many people had offered diet shakes, diet pills, you name it gimmicks and I just had this strong feeling that healthy shouldn't cost me a ton of money and shouldn't involve a product some company had to sell me. I didn't like the idea of being dependent upon a company to be healthy. When my friend Jules said that being healthy should be free, I was hooked. Real answers. Real food. No gimmicks. And FREE.
I poured over www.whole30.com and began reading story after story. I ordered It Starts with Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig and started meal-planning which terrified me. As I read the website entries from the authors of the book, what totally hooked me into the program is their straight-up way of talking to you. Here's what got me: This isn't hard. Cutting out milk, grains, and peanut butter isn't hard. Fighting cancer is hard. Losing a child is hard. This.Isn't. Hard. I paraphrase them a bit but the gist was what I could do for 30 days was NOT as hard as I thought. I told myself why not just SEE if this could work for me.
Then the book further sold me. I was in. You give yourself 30 days to reset your body and its hormonal functions. You cut out legumes, dairy, grains, yeast, soy, ANYTHING inflammatory. So nothing processed. ICK. You won't want processed foods after this. (of course you will still treat yourself to them but you won't want them like you did before the challenge). And you cook. You make real food and cook with spices you didn't realize could make your food taste SO DANG GOOD. And you cook with REAL FAT, Olive oils, coconut oil, ghee, YUM! And best thing? No counting calories, no weighing food, no counting fat grams. I EMBRACE fat now because it's what fills me and gives my food FLAVOR that I love!
30 days resets your body. I kept a diary and what I think I'll do for the next 30 days is post my entries from my first whole30 so you can see what I was going through as I did my first whole30. I challenge you to do this with me! And if you aren't ready to start on Tuesday, give yourself a week to get organized and PLAN out your whole30 challenge.
PLANNING is key. You MUST plan. I don't care if you don't like to plan or if it's a pain. You have to. It's important for your entire life. It's the only body you've been given. It's your future. Remember Monica from Friends when she had her "Jam Plan"? Well this is your JAM PLAN. You plan out your meals, you shop, you stock your pantry and then you let yourself be your own lab rat and see what 30 days of clean and whole eating will do for you.
It's critical to educate yourself on the plan FIRST before starting. I've read many people get into it without planning, without following the rules, and it affects the results. Plus it's cheating. You have to follow it exactly as Dallas and Melissa Hartwig say to do it.
I nearly forgot to say how much I lost that first challenge. And it's because it's not the most important thing! I lost 8 pounds and two full sizes! I kicked my soda habit to the curb and even gave up coffee! (Don't worry, you CAN have coffee during the challenge!!!!) I no longer have artificial sweeteners in my diet and I NEVER WILL AGAIN. I love that I'm no longer addicted to caffeine and sugar. THAT alone is my greatest reward and joy.
I'm no cook but now, I feel like I'm quite the chef! Whole30 made me feel competent in the kitchen. It forced us to surround the table for meals together. I had a motivation to provide my kids with clean food and they got into it, wanting to know what I was going to make now. It's been fun educating them. I don't make them follow the plan. They still eat junk and grains and milk. But their dinner is about as clean as I can get it. And that's very satisfying as a mom.
I promise each blog won't be this long! Ask questions if you have them so others can learn too! I'll do my best to answer them! Be looking tomorrow for my menu for the week!
I did my first whole30 in October and it changed my life forever. What is whole30? I'll get to that. First you have to know where I was 'at' when I embarked on this adventure. I've lost and gained weight more times than I can count now. A time for truth...When I was 15, I got fit just riding my bike all over Georgetown. It was easy. Then I developed fat. I didn't 'get fat.' Fat doesn't define me. Fat is something I 'have,' just like I have hair and fingernails. It's not who I am. So...fat grew on me. Then I dropped some again when I was a senior in high school...and then some more my freshman year of college thanks to lots of marching band at Tech and riding my bike since I didn't have a car that first semester. Then...fat grew on me again. And again. Ugh. At 23, I got serious again and did the Weigh-Down workshop. I learned how to portion control. I don't recall really paying attention to calories/fat or cutting out grains but I also exercised. Religiously. And I went from a girl with a whole lotta girl to love to a size 2 teeny-tiny thing by 24. Then I got married. Fat crept in again. Then i got pregnant. Well the fat loves a pregnant girl. Especially one who eats everything in sight and quits working out. After Baby #1, I got FIT. I mean, seriously fit. I was into high-protein drinks, lots of veggies, lots of meat, and hardly any grains. And boy did I work out. Religiously. Then I got pregnant again. Remember that fat loves a pregnant girl. Also, at 23, I vowed I would never have fat again like that. Oh well, so much for vows. But then I did it again post baby #2. I got super fit and super controlled with what I ate. And I became a serious coffee addict. And diet coke addict. Weight crept in again and baby #3 began. And after Baby #3, what happened? The fat stayed. And grew.
Sound anything like you and your journey? I think at some point post baby #3, I decided that my fit days were behind me. I worked out 4 days a week but it didn't seem to matter. I had come to a point where I didn't want my picture taken. I had no energy. Even though I worked out, nothing changed with my body. THAT is depressing. Really depressing. I ate chicken and beans for lunch every day. HOW was I possibly not able to drop any weight? Then at the end of September 2014, my spin instructor Jules started talking about whole30. I perked up. She mentioned a book called It Starts with Food and I heard the key phrase "backed up with scientific data" and "lost 15 pounds the first month" and "I was never hungry and didn't starve." I seriously perked up.
Timing is everything. I was ready for a real answer. Too many people had offered diet shakes, diet pills, you name it gimmicks and I just had this strong feeling that healthy shouldn't cost me a ton of money and shouldn't involve a product some company had to sell me. I didn't like the idea of being dependent upon a company to be healthy. When my friend Jules said that being healthy should be free, I was hooked. Real answers. Real food. No gimmicks. And FREE.
I poured over www.whole30.com and began reading story after story. I ordered It Starts with Food by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig and started meal-planning which terrified me. As I read the website entries from the authors of the book, what totally hooked me into the program is their straight-up way of talking to you. Here's what got me: This isn't hard. Cutting out milk, grains, and peanut butter isn't hard. Fighting cancer is hard. Losing a child is hard. This.Isn't. Hard. I paraphrase them a bit but the gist was what I could do for 30 days was NOT as hard as I thought. I told myself why not just SEE if this could work for me.
Then the book further sold me. I was in. You give yourself 30 days to reset your body and its hormonal functions. You cut out legumes, dairy, grains, yeast, soy, ANYTHING inflammatory. So nothing processed. ICK. You won't want processed foods after this. (of course you will still treat yourself to them but you won't want them like you did before the challenge). And you cook. You make real food and cook with spices you didn't realize could make your food taste SO DANG GOOD. And you cook with REAL FAT, Olive oils, coconut oil, ghee, YUM! And best thing? No counting calories, no weighing food, no counting fat grams. I EMBRACE fat now because it's what fills me and gives my food FLAVOR that I love!
30 days resets your body. I kept a diary and what I think I'll do for the next 30 days is post my entries from my first whole30 so you can see what I was going through as I did my first whole30. I challenge you to do this with me! And if you aren't ready to start on Tuesday, give yourself a week to get organized and PLAN out your whole30 challenge.
PLANNING is key. You MUST plan. I don't care if you don't like to plan or if it's a pain. You have to. It's important for your entire life. It's the only body you've been given. It's your future. Remember Monica from Friends when she had her "Jam Plan"? Well this is your JAM PLAN. You plan out your meals, you shop, you stock your pantry and then you let yourself be your own lab rat and see what 30 days of clean and whole eating will do for you.
It's critical to educate yourself on the plan FIRST before starting. I've read many people get into it without planning, without following the rules, and it affects the results. Plus it's cheating. You have to follow it exactly as Dallas and Melissa Hartwig say to do it.
I nearly forgot to say how much I lost that first challenge. And it's because it's not the most important thing! I lost 8 pounds and two full sizes! I kicked my soda habit to the curb and even gave up coffee! (Don't worry, you CAN have coffee during the challenge!!!!) I no longer have artificial sweeteners in my diet and I NEVER WILL AGAIN. I love that I'm no longer addicted to caffeine and sugar. THAT alone is my greatest reward and joy.
I'm no cook but now, I feel like I'm quite the chef! Whole30 made me feel competent in the kitchen. It forced us to surround the table for meals together. I had a motivation to provide my kids with clean food and they got into it, wanting to know what I was going to make now. It's been fun educating them. I don't make them follow the plan. They still eat junk and grains and milk. But their dinner is about as clean as I can get it. And that's very satisfying as a mom.
I promise each blog won't be this long! Ask questions if you have them so others can learn too! I'll do my best to answer them! Be looking tomorrow for my menu for the week!
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Truthful Blunders
Had the most hilarious moment this morning with two friends and the toddler son of one of them. My friend and I had traveled to our third friend's house to pick her up at about 7:30 am today. Our purpose was to participate in the 40 Days for Life by praying outside an abortion clinic in north Austin. Some might think this sort of thing is aggressive but it is not. Gone are the days, at least in the circles that true pro-lifers are in, of yelling and badgering people. We sign Peace Agreements and actually, 40 Days for life participants are solely to pray only. However, while one of my friends would be actively offering sidewalk counsel, we were going to watch her and follow her lead if given the opportunity. I could blog about the entire experience but I will save that for another time. I mainly want to share a hilarious moment of truth.
We had pulled up to my other friend's home and as she came to the car, her toddler was following and hovering at the door of the house. I have a feeling Daddy wasn't out of bed yet but toddler was. We've all been there. I went back up to the door and asked him to go back in the house and shut the door and lock in. He asked me where we were going. I could have said we were going to a house (which was true because the clinic is in a house structure). I could have said we were going to an office. I could have said we were going to a business in Austin. I didn't intend to say we were going to a doctor's office or a hospital because well, that's simply not true. What I said next was also not really true, at least in the typical sense. So I grabbed on to what I knew he would understand and I said, "we're going to church." That totally satisfied him. He shut the door, locked it, and I went to the car, proud I had him safely back inside while Daddy still was sleeping. As I sat down in the front seat, I turned to his Mom and said, "Just so you know, I told him we're going to church...which actually isn't totally untrue. I mean, the Church isn't a building, it's where the people are, it's where the people of Jesus go to meet others who need hope and love. And that's true, so...."
She started to laugh and said, "Well, he is going to be really confused now because I told him we were going to a dangerous place where people get hurt." My other friend and I started shaking with laughter at the hilarity of the two things we had told this child. We're going to some place dangerous and it happens to be a church, according to Mommy's friend.
As we started laughing so hard that tears were rolling, she then further went on to sputter, "I told him it's a place where they take your money from you." This sent me over the edge in hysterics. As I write this, my shoulders are starting to huff up and down, you know the kind of laughter that you try to hold in, but it comes out of your inner being and your chest starts to shake and the laughter takes over your back and shoulders before the cackling spills out of your mouth. All the while I'm realizing that what she told him applies to the church too. Oh dear goodness.
What a crazy commentary on what the church can be. It CAN be a dangerous place. It does take your money (except we give it as an offering to the Lord's work). It can be a place that hurts others. And it's a place that brings out the hurt in you.
As the laughter settled I realized we both spoke truth to this little boy. The place we were going IS dangerous. Women's wombs are being hurt. Her risk for placenta previa increases dramatically and her risk for breast cancer is a well established fact. This clinic is hardly a safe place. People ARE hurt here. Abortion clinics are NOT places of healing. At. All. They are places of heaping more hurt onto an already-hurting woman.
On the flipside, while the Church is run amok with saved sinners trying to fill the mission of Jesus, we fail miserably. But we keep trying. And we know we cause hurt. Because we are hurting people who are also broken. But the Church as a Body and the 'church' bodies held inside buildings are places of HEALING. Church institutions are supposed to be places of healing. So while we sometimes really suck at it, our intention in the Body of Christ is to bring about healing. Our intention is never to harm.
And money....well, much can be said about churches taking money from people. It's true. There is corruption. Wherever money can be handled, corruption can follow. Having said that, it requires no money from anyone to go into a church building or into a community of believers to find healing. I make no profit from offering my friendship and voice of encouragement to another human being. People can come into a healing environment of Believers and receive love and acceptance at no cost. The clinics charge a nice cash fee of roughly $425. And it isn't healing they are given. No, they are not remotely concerned about her and her pain and where she is at, that has brought her to this desperate place. They care not about her future, her education, if she's being forced by her pimp, or if she feels she can't finish college with a baby in tow. But the church does. And it should.
So with a good laugh of the blunder with the little boy, we spoke all sorts of heavy truth. How is the church dangerous? Well, it's dangerous to Satan. He's not so keen on the idea of people finding healing and hope and aligning themselves under a different master. He really likes having humans under his thumb. So I suppose like any metaphor, there are limitations. Dangerous to the person coming to church or into a faith group? Perhaps. It might rock their world a bit, challenge them, in fact, push them into a better path. That can feel dangerous because it's unknown, it's new, it's change. That feels dangerous. Like the bear C.S. Lewis describes that has fallen into a trap and the man is trying to release him and has to push him further into the trap in order to free him, from the perspective of the bear, this man's interactions feel dangerous when in fact, they are anything but. They are to bring about freedom.
So those are my ponderings. Had a fabulous laugh at the fun blunder with a child. And it brought all sorts of God-truths that I can't hide from. Beautiful, rich God-truths about His desire to heal and mend and bring hope. As I like to say, If my faith is some silly opiate, it's my drug of choice and I like it. I will stay addicted to it. Where is the harm in my addiction? Where is the harm in a faith that brings peace and purpose to my life?
We had pulled up to my other friend's home and as she came to the car, her toddler was following and hovering at the door of the house. I have a feeling Daddy wasn't out of bed yet but toddler was. We've all been there. I went back up to the door and asked him to go back in the house and shut the door and lock in. He asked me where we were going. I could have said we were going to a house (which was true because the clinic is in a house structure). I could have said we were going to an office. I could have said we were going to a business in Austin. I didn't intend to say we were going to a doctor's office or a hospital because well, that's simply not true. What I said next was also not really true, at least in the typical sense. So I grabbed on to what I knew he would understand and I said, "we're going to church." That totally satisfied him. He shut the door, locked it, and I went to the car, proud I had him safely back inside while Daddy still was sleeping. As I sat down in the front seat, I turned to his Mom and said, "Just so you know, I told him we're going to church...which actually isn't totally untrue. I mean, the Church isn't a building, it's where the people are, it's where the people of Jesus go to meet others who need hope and love. And that's true, so...."
She started to laugh and said, "Well, he is going to be really confused now because I told him we were going to a dangerous place where people get hurt." My other friend and I started shaking with laughter at the hilarity of the two things we had told this child. We're going to some place dangerous and it happens to be a church, according to Mommy's friend.
As we started laughing so hard that tears were rolling, she then further went on to sputter, "I told him it's a place where they take your money from you." This sent me over the edge in hysterics. As I write this, my shoulders are starting to huff up and down, you know the kind of laughter that you try to hold in, but it comes out of your inner being and your chest starts to shake and the laughter takes over your back and shoulders before the cackling spills out of your mouth. All the while I'm realizing that what she told him applies to the church too. Oh dear goodness.
What a crazy commentary on what the church can be. It CAN be a dangerous place. It does take your money (except we give it as an offering to the Lord's work). It can be a place that hurts others. And it's a place that brings out the hurt in you.
As the laughter settled I realized we both spoke truth to this little boy. The place we were going IS dangerous. Women's wombs are being hurt. Her risk for placenta previa increases dramatically and her risk for breast cancer is a well established fact. This clinic is hardly a safe place. People ARE hurt here. Abortion clinics are NOT places of healing. At. All. They are places of heaping more hurt onto an already-hurting woman.
On the flipside, while the Church is run amok with saved sinners trying to fill the mission of Jesus, we fail miserably. But we keep trying. And we know we cause hurt. Because we are hurting people who are also broken. But the Church as a Body and the 'church' bodies held inside buildings are places of HEALING. Church institutions are supposed to be places of healing. So while we sometimes really suck at it, our intention in the Body of Christ is to bring about healing. Our intention is never to harm.
And money....well, much can be said about churches taking money from people. It's true. There is corruption. Wherever money can be handled, corruption can follow. Having said that, it requires no money from anyone to go into a church building or into a community of believers to find healing. I make no profit from offering my friendship and voice of encouragement to another human being. People can come into a healing environment of Believers and receive love and acceptance at no cost. The clinics charge a nice cash fee of roughly $425. And it isn't healing they are given. No, they are not remotely concerned about her and her pain and where she is at, that has brought her to this desperate place. They care not about her future, her education, if she's being forced by her pimp, or if she feels she can't finish college with a baby in tow. But the church does. And it should.
So with a good laugh of the blunder with the little boy, we spoke all sorts of heavy truth. How is the church dangerous? Well, it's dangerous to Satan. He's not so keen on the idea of people finding healing and hope and aligning themselves under a different master. He really likes having humans under his thumb. So I suppose like any metaphor, there are limitations. Dangerous to the person coming to church or into a faith group? Perhaps. It might rock their world a bit, challenge them, in fact, push them into a better path. That can feel dangerous because it's unknown, it's new, it's change. That feels dangerous. Like the bear C.S. Lewis describes that has fallen into a trap and the man is trying to release him and has to push him further into the trap in order to free him, from the perspective of the bear, this man's interactions feel dangerous when in fact, they are anything but. They are to bring about freedom.
So those are my ponderings. Had a fabulous laugh at the fun blunder with a child. And it brought all sorts of God-truths that I can't hide from. Beautiful, rich God-truths about His desire to heal and mend and bring hope. As I like to say, If my faith is some silly opiate, it's my drug of choice and I like it. I will stay addicted to it. Where is the harm in my addiction? Where is the harm in a faith that brings peace and purpose to my life?
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Modern Pillaging of Women
By no means do I mean for the following ponderings to diminish the real experiences of women and men who have experienced rape by sexual force. The parallels I am about to draw are not perfect, and I do not mean to devalue a victim of rape. I have not personally experienced rape, so I can not fully speak into it. However, I can't help but find my mind wandering to this subject when recently I realized that the number of abortionists who are men far outweigh the number of abortionists who are women.
The recent news story as reported by Life Site News from just four days ago is what brought me face-to-face with this question. As they reported: "Millionaire Oklahoma abortionist Nareshkumar Gandalal “Naresh” Patel, who once faced charges of raping and sodomizing his abortion patients, is once again under investigation after Operation Rescue filed a five-count complaint against him with the State Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma Health Department, and the Oklahoma Medical Board. The complaints were based on documents and medical waste that had been discarded in a publicly-accessible trash receptacle near Patel’s Outpatient Services for Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City."
Clearly this abortionist got his 'jollies' off of assaulting patients and then aborting their baby. It then occurred to me I only ever hear about male abortionists, not female abortionists. This startling fact gripped me because while not all abortionists are assaulting their patients, they must be receiving some form of gratification for the 'service' they perform. In fact, the truth is that abortionists ARE male. Abortion itself, while not a sexual act, is a form of rape. Rape by definition includes more than just sexual acts. It is an act of plundering, of violent seizure, an act of abuse. What we do know about abortion is that it is the highest form of human abuse on the preborn human. It is a violent seizure of a child, whether through evacuation or dismemberment. It is violent. Period.
It could be argued this isn't rape. The woman is there voluntarily. This is true in some regards. But we do know that women are under duress and are often pressured by family members and the father of the baby to abort. I personally have numerous friends who have had at least one abortion. They all tell me they regret it and felt they had nowhere else to go. While they may have voluntarily walked into the clinic, I hear stories from my friends who cried during and after their abortion. Regardless, for the abortionist, what better way to violate a woman legally than through abortion? What power the abortionist wields as his weapons, aka his surgical tools, suction a baby out a woman's most inner place, her womb, thereby violently seizing a valuable treasure, her child. This is plundering and pillaging. What is being plundered and pillaged? A woman's womb. What is her womb but an organ designed to provide a HOME for a preborn child. A child is exactly where he is supposed to be, in her uterus, an organ specifically designed to provide a house for a child before birth. The pillaging is on her womb. The plundering is on a small little town that houses one citizen, her baby.
Doesn't this just make the women's rights thing seem ludicrous? How is this empowering of a woman when she willfully is allowing a MAN to plunder and pillage a human being out of her body? Women, we can do better than this! Pillaging means to wrongfully seize something. How is this a wrongful seizure? Sure it's legal. But it's a wrongful seizure because the baby is living exactly where nature designed it to live. In the womb. The baby is occupying the only place it is supposed to occupy. The womb. Legal does not mean the seizure is not a wrongful seizure. Plunder is something taken by fraud. You might wonder how this is fraud? Fraud is deceit for profit and gain.
The woman finding herself in a desperate place finds herself in the perfect position to be deceived for the gain of the abortionist and the entire industry. Here are the lies she hears, whether from the abortionist, the counselors, or simply in society:
*You are in control of your body. You have a right to do what you want with it.
*That isn't a baby. It's just tissue.
*Your life is over.
*You will never be able to have a career if you have this baby.
*Your boyfriend will leave you.
*Your family will disown you.
*Your reputation is ruined
*You can go back to how it was before this little mishap
*No one will ever know
*Every baby is a wanted baby
I could go on and on. And when she believes these words, she is a victim of fraud and who gains financially? The abortionist. I serve at a local crisis pregnancy center. I gain nothing financially for my work there. If anything, I give financially. I give, not take. The abortion industry...it takes and takes and takes. It is the ultimate Plundering. It is barbaric pillaging.
I am a New Feminist. No man will ever have a right to plunder and pillage my womb. I would never let a man do that to me. HE is the sicko. He is getting off on some weird trip by stealing these babies out of their mother's wombs. I don't know what sick pay-off he gets inside, but he gets something out of it. It's quite brilliant isn't it. An abortionist gets to plunder and pillage woman after woman after woman. The ultimate power. The ultimate control over a woman.
Remember that phrase "I am woman; hear me roar!?" WHY did we stop ROARING??????? Now women have regressed centuries and lay their bodies in front of the abortionists and let him pillage her.
Women, we have GOT to wake up. MEN--protect women from this act of violence on babies and this act of violence inside a woman's uterus. How dare something unnatural enter a woman's uterus when it's clearly been closed off to protect the new human inside it? The abortionist breaches those walls and it is the ultimate violation because it is legal and presented as woman empowerment. Don't you know those abortionists cackle as they count their dollars earned for every woman they violate?
Wake up women. Wake up. Roar.
The recent news story as reported by Life Site News from just four days ago is what brought me face-to-face with this question. As they reported: "Millionaire Oklahoma abortionist Nareshkumar Gandalal “Naresh” Patel, who once faced charges of raping and sodomizing his abortion patients, is once again under investigation after Operation Rescue filed a five-count complaint against him with the State Attorney General’s office, the Oklahoma Health Department, and the Oklahoma Medical Board. The complaints were based on documents and medical waste that had been discarded in a publicly-accessible trash receptacle near Patel’s Outpatient Services for Women abortion clinic in Oklahoma City."
Clearly this abortionist got his 'jollies' off of assaulting patients and then aborting their baby. It then occurred to me I only ever hear about male abortionists, not female abortionists. This startling fact gripped me because while not all abortionists are assaulting their patients, they must be receiving some form of gratification for the 'service' they perform. In fact, the truth is that abortionists ARE male. Abortion itself, while not a sexual act, is a form of rape. Rape by definition includes more than just sexual acts. It is an act of plundering, of violent seizure, an act of abuse. What we do know about abortion is that it is the highest form of human abuse on the preborn human. It is a violent seizure of a child, whether through evacuation or dismemberment. It is violent. Period.
It could be argued this isn't rape. The woman is there voluntarily. This is true in some regards. But we do know that women are under duress and are often pressured by family members and the father of the baby to abort. I personally have numerous friends who have had at least one abortion. They all tell me they regret it and felt they had nowhere else to go. While they may have voluntarily walked into the clinic, I hear stories from my friends who cried during and after their abortion. Regardless, for the abortionist, what better way to violate a woman legally than through abortion? What power the abortionist wields as his weapons, aka his surgical tools, suction a baby out a woman's most inner place, her womb, thereby violently seizing a valuable treasure, her child. This is plundering and pillaging. What is being plundered and pillaged? A woman's womb. What is her womb but an organ designed to provide a HOME for a preborn child. A child is exactly where he is supposed to be, in her uterus, an organ specifically designed to provide a house for a child before birth. The pillaging is on her womb. The plundering is on a small little town that houses one citizen, her baby.
Doesn't this just make the women's rights thing seem ludicrous? How is this empowering of a woman when she willfully is allowing a MAN to plunder and pillage a human being out of her body? Women, we can do better than this! Pillaging means to wrongfully seize something. How is this a wrongful seizure? Sure it's legal. But it's a wrongful seizure because the baby is living exactly where nature designed it to live. In the womb. The baby is occupying the only place it is supposed to occupy. The womb. Legal does not mean the seizure is not a wrongful seizure. Plunder is something taken by fraud. You might wonder how this is fraud? Fraud is deceit for profit and gain.
The woman finding herself in a desperate place finds herself in the perfect position to be deceived for the gain of the abortionist and the entire industry. Here are the lies she hears, whether from the abortionist, the counselors, or simply in society:
*You are in control of your body. You have a right to do what you want with it.
*That isn't a baby. It's just tissue.
*Your life is over.
*You will never be able to have a career if you have this baby.
*Your boyfriend will leave you.
*Your family will disown you.
*Your reputation is ruined
*You can go back to how it was before this little mishap
*No one will ever know
*Every baby is a wanted baby
I could go on and on. And when she believes these words, she is a victim of fraud and who gains financially? The abortionist. I serve at a local crisis pregnancy center. I gain nothing financially for my work there. If anything, I give financially. I give, not take. The abortion industry...it takes and takes and takes. It is the ultimate Plundering. It is barbaric pillaging.
I am a New Feminist. No man will ever have a right to plunder and pillage my womb. I would never let a man do that to me. HE is the sicko. He is getting off on some weird trip by stealing these babies out of their mother's wombs. I don't know what sick pay-off he gets inside, but he gets something out of it. It's quite brilliant isn't it. An abortionist gets to plunder and pillage woman after woman after woman. The ultimate power. The ultimate control over a woman.
Remember that phrase "I am woman; hear me roar!?" WHY did we stop ROARING??????? Now women have regressed centuries and lay their bodies in front of the abortionists and let him pillage her.
Women, we have GOT to wake up. MEN--protect women from this act of violence on babies and this act of violence inside a woman's uterus. How dare something unnatural enter a woman's uterus when it's clearly been closed off to protect the new human inside it? The abortionist breaches those walls and it is the ultimate violation because it is legal and presented as woman empowerment. Don't you know those abortionists cackle as they count their dollars earned for every woman they violate?
Wake up women. Wake up. Roar.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
A possible answer to a question
A question was posed in the last week on a facebook page that left me pondering all week. I would love to say what page it was but I follow at least ten pro-life activist pages and news sites that I no longer can find the original posting. The question asked what the pro-life movement needed to do this year to be more effective. Here is my answer....
For one, stop typing furiously away on facebook in discussions and less time trying to be 'right.' I have fallen into this trap repeatedly. I get sucked in. I admit it. Part of me loves and even delights in snapping back at a pro-choice advocate on a facebook feed. Then afterwards, I realize I did nothing to 'change their mind' because the reality is no debate can be 'won' online. I repeat. You can't win an argument on-line. I have had two trusted friends tell me this in the last twelve months. I ignored both of them. I enjoy keeping up to date on what is going on in the movement, what is countering the movement, and I do believe in staying informed and knowing what is being said on the airways. And I am not saying never to engage. But I have stopped engaging completely with arguments online. There is zero point. I won't win. They won't win. We both leave having done nothing to help anyone. IN fact, it's draining people. It's just draining. I will share photos, I will post occasionally (sometimes too often to some people) but arguing on facebook with someone who doesn't agree, some person who lives in a place far away and I will never meet, and I feed into them, only to feel deflated and disgusted afterwards. All it does is put me in a prime position to judge someone and just get really freakin' mad at them. What in the world does that DO to help me emotionally, mentally, spiritually? It does nothing. Zilch. Nada.
So what should you do with all that energy instead? Spend time committed to serving in your local crisis pregnancy center and better yet, if your area doesn't have one, start one. As a pro-life advocate, I am no longer concerned with debating the issue with someone. I think the pro-life movement will be FAR more effective when we stop arguing with pro-choicers, stop splitting hairs amongst pro-lifers, and instead focus our energy into the humans, the women, the babies, the fathers, and focusing on serving them, being there for them in their crisis and loving them and being the solution for them.
We will have a far greater impact being the an answer for them, for the woman IN the crisis, than we will be on facebook, trying to prove a point to other pro-lifers, or to pro-choicers, or engaging in a debate online. It just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't amount to anything but frustration, dissension, and hurts the pro-life movement....all the while we do this, there are women everywhere today who will discover they are pregnant and scared and not certain what their options are. I serve at my local crisis center. I give financially to the center. The money all stays local. It's volunteer-driven. Get active in being the solution for women, not the ambassador driven to argue with others about philosophies, judgements, etc. While all well-meaning, I have personally found myself realizing I have spent untold amounts of time online and have done nothing real to save a baby or soul.
Can you imagine if there were a crisis pregnancy center every 20 miles? Okay, that's perhaps a wacky dream. But imagine being SO available and SO connected that women go to US first for help. And then we love her. We give her options. We provide for her materially. We teach her skills. We are there for her baby. We find her medical care. We find her food. We find her clothes. And we love her. Love. Love. Love. Did I say that enough? Nope. Love.
The final thing I think we can do better is getting off our biblical soap box. I am pro-life for reasons having nothing to do with my faith. I am pro-life based on science. Fact. Statistics. I am pro-life because I care about a woman's body and her health. I care about her womb. I care about her risk for breast cancer. I want her to fully know the risks she is taking by having an abortion. I care about her health. We spend enormous time educating now about the harmful effects of GMOs and aspartame and every gluten containing food under the sun and need I even begin to rant about the harm that is announced surrounding immunizations? Or sunlight? Or the effects of your cell phone being too close to your breasts and its link to breast cancer? It is Crazy people. These are all scientific health concerns. Pro lifers need to get vocal and focus on our concern for HER HEALTH and HER BODY. We can get SO focused on the baby. And believe me, I want to rescue every baby. But I think we will be more effective when we increase our focus on the woman. And our deep concern for her. While the Bible backs up my beliefs too, to the one who does not follow Jesus, it falls on deaf ears. We need to be smart. We need to let science and reason back up our position.
I might write more....this might just be a start...
For one, stop typing furiously away on facebook in discussions and less time trying to be 'right.' I have fallen into this trap repeatedly. I get sucked in. I admit it. Part of me loves and even delights in snapping back at a pro-choice advocate on a facebook feed. Then afterwards, I realize I did nothing to 'change their mind' because the reality is no debate can be 'won' online. I repeat. You can't win an argument on-line. I have had two trusted friends tell me this in the last twelve months. I ignored both of them. I enjoy keeping up to date on what is going on in the movement, what is countering the movement, and I do believe in staying informed and knowing what is being said on the airways. And I am not saying never to engage. But I have stopped engaging completely with arguments online. There is zero point. I won't win. They won't win. We both leave having done nothing to help anyone. IN fact, it's draining people. It's just draining. I will share photos, I will post occasionally (sometimes too often to some people) but arguing on facebook with someone who doesn't agree, some person who lives in a place far away and I will never meet, and I feed into them, only to feel deflated and disgusted afterwards. All it does is put me in a prime position to judge someone and just get really freakin' mad at them. What in the world does that DO to help me emotionally, mentally, spiritually? It does nothing. Zilch. Nada.
So what should you do with all that energy instead? Spend time committed to serving in your local crisis pregnancy center and better yet, if your area doesn't have one, start one. As a pro-life advocate, I am no longer concerned with debating the issue with someone. I think the pro-life movement will be FAR more effective when we stop arguing with pro-choicers, stop splitting hairs amongst pro-lifers, and instead focus our energy into the humans, the women, the babies, the fathers, and focusing on serving them, being there for them in their crisis and loving them and being the solution for them.
We will have a far greater impact being the an answer for them, for the woman IN the crisis, than we will be on facebook, trying to prove a point to other pro-lifers, or to pro-choicers, or engaging in a debate online. It just doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't amount to anything but frustration, dissension, and hurts the pro-life movement....all the while we do this, there are women everywhere today who will discover they are pregnant and scared and not certain what their options are. I serve at my local crisis center. I give financially to the center. The money all stays local. It's volunteer-driven. Get active in being the solution for women, not the ambassador driven to argue with others about philosophies, judgements, etc. While all well-meaning, I have personally found myself realizing I have spent untold amounts of time online and have done nothing real to save a baby or soul.
Can you imagine if there were a crisis pregnancy center every 20 miles? Okay, that's perhaps a wacky dream. But imagine being SO available and SO connected that women go to US first for help. And then we love her. We give her options. We provide for her materially. We teach her skills. We are there for her baby. We find her medical care. We find her food. We find her clothes. And we love her. Love. Love. Love. Did I say that enough? Nope. Love.
The final thing I think we can do better is getting off our biblical soap box. I am pro-life for reasons having nothing to do with my faith. I am pro-life based on science. Fact. Statistics. I am pro-life because I care about a woman's body and her health. I care about her womb. I care about her risk for breast cancer. I want her to fully know the risks she is taking by having an abortion. I care about her health. We spend enormous time educating now about the harmful effects of GMOs and aspartame and every gluten containing food under the sun and need I even begin to rant about the harm that is announced surrounding immunizations? Or sunlight? Or the effects of your cell phone being too close to your breasts and its link to breast cancer? It is Crazy people. These are all scientific health concerns. Pro lifers need to get vocal and focus on our concern for HER HEALTH and HER BODY. We can get SO focused on the baby. And believe me, I want to rescue every baby. But I think we will be more effective when we increase our focus on the woman. And our deep concern for her. While the Bible backs up my beliefs too, to the one who does not follow Jesus, it falls on deaf ears. We need to be smart. We need to let science and reason back up our position.
I might write more....this might just be a start...
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