Introducing My New Best Friend...

I want you guys to meet my new best friend. I *think* she's a she. I *know* she is reliable, helps me out in a crunch and she smells awesome. Plus, my husband and sons LOVE her!

Without further ado, meet Crock Pot:

I am not kidding when I say life has taken it up a notch in the busy-ness department. I am finding that I roll in the door from work and the kids have to be somewhere in under an hour. This leaves barely any cook time, which leads to poor quality meals and lots of processed foods. Ick.

This is where Crock Pot comes in. If I can plan ahead (which I can), and if I can allow 5 to 10 extra minutes in the morning for prep time (let's face it, that amounts to me NOT pushing snooze), I can get Crock Pot going, and she will gladly cook my meal for me all day. I walk in that afternoon, make a quick salad and maybe an easy side and dinner is made.

It's a beautiful relationship indeed.

I have discovered many other busy moms who have a similar best friend and we like to share recipes. Check out these: Pepperoncini Beef (shout out goes to Jenn), Slow Cooker Chicken Pot Pie, and Chicken Taco Soup (thanks, Ali).

I would love to hear YOUR recipes... Look at it this way, it will only strengthen my relationship with my best friend. (And if I'm being honest, she has a complex about needing to be useful. Something about feeling like she's being put away on a shelf, blah, blah, blah). Plus, there is a handy comment section below just waiting to be filled with your culinary genius!

xoxo,

Mindy

edit: one recipe I love but don't have a link for is pork chops: I use bone in pork chops, 4 to 5, put them in crock pot with equal parts Teriyaki sauce and Dr. Pepper, enough to cover. Cook on low all day and sprinkle with pepper when ready to serve. Really yummy...got the idea from my bro-in-law, who cooks his in a smoker.

Spiritual Jazz Hands???

I am a shy person and I generally hate attention, so it is ironic that I was a born performer. At a very young age I figured out I could do my signature "hiney shake" and get laughs from my parents and 3 siblings. Don't think I didn't pull out said move when I needed strokes, or maybe even when tension filled the house and we all needed diversion.

Then came elementary school. I eased into the role of model student and quite liked it. Hung on to that role till I wore my morterboard.

Next came show choir (this was before "Glee" made it hip, cool and now). I could pull out jazz hands and the white girl "Roger Rabbit" with the best of them...resulting in smiles and applause from the crowd.

Just in case you needed a visual

I don't think I was a fake in any of these roles. I don't think the "performances" were disingenuous.... But there was a definite mind-behavior connection: When I am in x,y,z role, I act x,y,z way. So determined were such roles, I could ease into them robotically, on cue, on demand kind of thing.

It should come as no surprise to me that this performance mentality creeps into everything I do... A good mom should act this way. A dutiful wife should employ such and such behaviors.

A godly woman should look and act this way. ...and right now I am dealing with this particular performance.

When I became a believer almost 19 years ago I immediately went into the "what do I do mode." I adopted behaviors I saw other Christians doing, and I made my life look the way I thought it should look. This is not all bad, b/c I do believe we should let mature Christians model for and mentor us. But I do believe I got it wrong at the heart level. I skipped the part where I sit and soak in my new identity. Where I sit and soak in His love, His choosing, His adoption, His fondness of me. Where I sit and soak in Scripture and let it become my heartbeat and guiding light.

Did I touch on those things? Absolutely. Did I let those things organically move me into action? Not so much.

So now I am pushing rewind, if you will, and I am trying to sit and soak in the Truth of his love for me. Sitting and soaking in is like pulling teeth, by the way, b/c in this current world, silence and contemplation is simply counterintuitive.

The thing is, I want to get this right. It's too important not too. It sickens me to think about performing as a Christian, putting on spiritual jazz hands and wowing those around me with something I conjured up and did in my own strength.

So my prayer--the desire that is determining how I order my life right now is this: I want to know who I am in Him and to Him. I want to sit in my role as beloved and soak up every ounce of it. I want that to be what matters paramount in my life. I want Him in me, to be what moves me.

Remember Me???

My last post was June 30th. That was...well, a ridiculously long time ago. Let's just say I hadn't blogged in such a long time that one day I pulled it up and found that my super cute template had vanished and what was left was just black and white and some weird floaty squares. Mortified, I quickly fixed it, but alas, still no updated posts.

It was a busy summer for us and I simply ran out of hours everyday. It was work, kids, blah, blah, blah...but it was also my compulsion to complete a certain project. One thing you may not know about me is that I love writing fiction. As of this August, I have written 2 full length novels. Before you ask, no they won't be published. No, I'm not going to shop either out to agents. Simply put, I'm not that good of a writer. The thing is, I just enjoy doing it. I enjoy the process. I enjoy crafting the perfect sentence. I enjoy creating characters you can relate to and get inside of. But I don't aspire to be some well-known, published author.

It may sound like a waste of time, but for me it relates to what I wrote about in that ancient post on June 30th. It's about being who I was made to be. Embracing what makes me tick. It's about finding pleasure in doing what I was made to do. Heck, I feel God smile on me when I decoupage (my blog banner is actually a picture of a decoupage I did). Sounds ridiculous, but when I get my creative juices flowing and connect that to my hands...pure bliss.

I certainly find pleasure in more "lofty" areas of life too, such as the ministries I am involved with at church, and parenting my little boys. But my point is, there is A LOT to each and every one of us. Layers and layers to us, and it's fun to peel those back and figure them out and see "His appointment" in them.

So for now, please see this post as an apology for my unintentional blog sabbatical. I have committed mistake #1 from DO YOU MAKE THESE 10 MISTAKES WHEN YOU BLOG?, per Michael Hyatt (this guy is pure genius)! I'm pretty sure it's not my only transgression on this list, but oh well, what's a girl to do?

I'd like to end this post with a question, which would require YOUR participation (she says as she taps the microphone. Hello, hello).

[side bar] I am taking a a risk here, b/c getting folks to comment is hard. I don't know why, but a lot of us prefer to blog-stalk anonymously, right? Nothing at all wrong with that. I am a certifiable blog stalker myself...you can see where I personally lurk, on the side bar of this blog to the left, titled, "I Really Dig," which might be more aptly titled, "I Totally Stalk."

So here goes.

What is is that you do in which you feel God smiling on you??? Share your lofty and decoupage-esque endeavors alike...