Sunday Meanderings

Did you know that if you mix a little soy milk (instead of regular milk) into your scrambled eggs - even original flavor soy milk - that it makes them taste weird?

For the record, I used to eat them this way regularly. People looked at me funny, but I was used to it and it didn't bother me. (People look at me funny when I put cinnamon in my scrambled eggs, too, but that just tastes like french toast batter without the toast!) After a while I stopped putting any kind of milk in my eggs and just scrambled them pure. The other day I thought I'd try soy milk again. They tasted weird. I don't recommend it.

That's probably the most entertaining thing I've learned recently. And it gives me a reason to laugh at myself.

Other interesting things I'm learning...

This week has been kind of tricky, because now that I have a job, I actually have to get up and going at the same time every morning. Getting back in to a routine is tricky even when you're healthy, but doing it during chemo recovery has presented a few extra tricky minutes. I have wanted to be well enough to work all day and still have energy to accomplish something after dinner, but what usually happens is that by dinner time, I'm pretty wiped out and really should either be sleeping or sitting in the recliner with my feet up. (This is not to say that I actually did that any night this week, but I should have. It turns out that pushing yourself to the outer limits of your physical capacity is also not the wisest way to try to counteract the potential insomnia associated with ending the prednisone cycle. But it was worth a try.)

Needless to say, I felt a little discouraged more than one night this week because I couldn't do all I wanted to. One particular evening, I knelt down to say my prayers, and what came out of my mouth was "I don't feel particularly grateful tonight. I feel frustrated and discouraged ..." and the answer that came back was "That's OK."

It's OK to have minutes where we don't feel very happy about things. And when we turn to God in prayer and tell Him about those minutes, something really interesting happens. We learn more about ourselves and we learn more about our Savior. Our expressions of frustration or anger or sadness or discouragement activate His grace, and with His help, we get through that minute. Sometimes those minutes come back more often than we'd like, but each time they do, we can invite Jesus to help us. And He will.

Those kinds of prayers, for me, also make my relationship with God more real. I don't always have to be happy and positive. Sometimes I can be mad, or sad, or discouraged, or lonely. And when I tell Him about those times, invariably His response is one of love and compassion.

I'm not perfect and that's OK - God loves me exactly the way I am. What a wonderful thing.

This weekend I have been trying to take it easy, resting and reading and not cleaning and not working. It turns out that I'm still exhausted by dinnertime even when I don't do much. So I will keep resting until that changes. It occurred to me last night that perhaps some of the things Father wants me to learn from this are how to slow down and how to be content with doing less. (I'm not very good at that.) Thankfully, I have good people all around me who pick up the slack when I can't do all I want to be able to do, and they do it cheerfully and willingly because they love me. That is a great blessing.

And one last happy thought:

My lovely, wonderful visiting teacher came over last night with two bags of grapefruit, freshly picked and still warm from the 75+ degree sunshine we had all day yesterday. It smelled like heaven. So I juiced three and drank it with dinner. Happiness in a glass!