peelosophy

I recently read about a man being described being on a “passionate quest for the real whole-wheat Bread of Life”.  As a mom that tries to read labels, what struck me was the adjective “whole wheat”.   To me, whole-wheat means it’s the real deal, the best nutrition-wise and what I should be feeding my kids.  I never heard of the Bread of Life/Jesus explained like this and it made me question, “What kind of Bread of Life am I partaking in every day?  is it 100% Whole Wheat? or is it Wonder White? or somewhere in between?”

Then I got carried away with the illustration in my head.  I decided that I wasn’t getting 100% Whole Wheat Bread of Life daily because of all the “preservatives” I fill my life up with instead – all the busyness that occupies my hands and my head all day.  Some necessary, but some that I could definitely put off.  These preservatives are tricky. Like with bread, they help it not to spoil, they extend the bread’s life, but not without nutritional costs.  For me, my preservative is busyness. I use it to make me feel in control for a while, but it also has a nutritional costs – it creates a barrier between me and God.  And, with my self-induced preservatives I can’t get the 100%WWBOL. (Whole Wheat Bread of Life)

I could go on with what was going on in my head about bread and Jesus, the parallels between high fructose corn syrup or what it means when you cut the crusts off the bread.  But, I’ll spare you the the crazy that comes from the internal committee in my head.

I’m trying to understand how the fact that God gives me the choice about where He is in my life- He is offering me 100% Whole Wheat (Ephesians 3:19)- but I choose through my excuses/busyness the lesser.  How do I flip that – I don’t know quite yet, but I’ll let you know if I figure it out.

note: the one thing I couldn’t draw a parallel to is why does PBJ taste SO much better on white bread?

I’m blogging about my mornings this week because I want to be intentional and accountable about how I spend my time without kids.  To see how I came to be with out kids and how I desire to spend my time click here.

This morning I had no idea what I was going to do.  Nothing was planned.  I figured I’d head over to Kaldi’s in Kirkwood with a few books I was reading and go from there.  I ended up popping into Madison Avenue Salon to see if they had any openings for a pedicure. They did and could get me in right away AND they were offering a special, buy a pedicure and get a manicure for FREE.  What the heck? Only if I had “time”, they said.  And I did have time, so I did.

I ended up having a great conversation with the nail tech, Catherine.  She is a mother of five, ranging from 22 to 9 years old.  She was very encouraging and just real about being a mom. I really enjoyed our time together.

At the salon, I also started to read a book Kim lent me called, “I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids“.  I LOVE it so far.  I’ll probably blog about it in another post.

Afterwards, I headed up to Kaldis to grab a quick lunch before I got the boys.  I tried something new – the Turkey Artichoke Sandwich and the Berry Tea.  I was not disappointed, really delicious, but a bit messy – glad I was alone.

We go to our little library in the strip mall about once a week.  Don’t knock it, it has some of the sweetest librarians around.  Every once in awhile, we’ll get a couple of books from the library that I don’t want to take back.  We have a little library, so usually when we get books I pick up ones that I requested online from recommendations.  The boys also pick from the selection there too, which usually means dumping out shelf after shelf to find the one they want to take home.

I’m not going to do a book report on each of them, that’s what Amazon is for, so here’s our list from our “checked out” this week.  These are all great, you know the the kind of book that you actually don’t mind to read again, the books that the words just bounce off your tongue (love Dr.Suess) and then especially the ones that get a giggle out of me and the boys.

Read more…

Dinner tonight was a new experience. There were candles. It all started because I’m reading the book, “The Intentional Family“.  It’s written by a family therapist and talks about how families can greatly benefit from cultivating family rituals.  These rituals can be anything from family dinners, holidays, couple time, vacations, etc.

So one of the rituals I am working on is our dinner time.  I would say we already had a pretty good thing going.  We sat and ate as a family I would say 70% of the week and I cooked.  After reading the book, I realized that I really wanted this time to be a ritual for family connecting.  Before the book, I don’t think were very intentional about making it a time for this connectedness, I guess it I thought it would just happen on it’s own. Read more…