This Is The Day That The Lord Has Made

I meet every Sunday morning with a wonderful group of women at church. We are reading the book Disappointment With God. We discuss the reading from the book, talk about our week and make goals to enrich our spiritual life for the upcoming week. 

One of the things we have talked about is God's presence, or the feeling of the lack of it. Is God there? If He is, why can't He just show Himself? Oh wait, He did. Over and over. And then when people either didn't listen or were frightened of Him, He sent His Son because what could be less intimidating than a baby. And still, when that baby grew and preformed miracles, still there were doubters. 

I love hanging out with Jacob and talking about his faith, because he is a true, firm and pure believer. There does not seem to be any room for doubt in his faith in the Lord. A good example is the day we were driving down our hill in the snowstorm. We started to slide and the van was turning backwards and we were heading towards the ravine. I started out calmly "we're ok, it's ok, we're going to be ok", which turned into "we're not ok... oh &%$# we're not ok!!" What was Jacob's reaction during this scare? He sat beside me in the car with his hands on his Action Bible and prayed. I didn't even think of praying until we were safely stopped. 

This year for Lent I am doing two things. I am getting up every morning and doing my sun salutations (some mornings grumbly, but I'm doing them) and then I'm doing what is quickly becoming my favourite part of the day - I stand at a window with Jenna and we watch the sun rise. 

If you have ever doubted that God is out there preforming miracles, look at the beauty and miracle of the sun rising. It has become the grounding and enlightening part of my day - standing there with the girl who literally taught me to stop and smell the flowers and watching this miracle every day.

Interestingly, over the past week I have received reminders from around the world of the beauty of a sunrise (and one sunset).

Here's a sunset that came from Dad:

A sunrise from Mom:

A sunrise from Hawaii thanks to Sophia getting her parents up and going:

And the sunrise from our backyard this morning:

With all this beauty in the world why is it that we as humans keep on doubting our relationship with God? Someone who can create such beauty surely must love us a lot!

I love how over the past few days Mom, Dad, Gill and I have been exchanging sunrise pictures without planning to do so. 

This is the day that the Lord hath made!

Rolex and His Panic Attack

Years ago I was at a horse show with Rolex. I was used to me being a stressed out mess at the shows. But aside from a general case of bad attitude (or strong personality - depending on how I chose to look at it that day) Rolex was generally pretty steady with his personality. He only got stressed by cows and trucks driving by. He was definitely made to be a show horse and not a riding on the ranch horse. As high maintenance as his owner!

Anyway, I was at this show and getting ready - which included having both he and I dressed and clean as well as  often a trip behind the horse trailer so I could toss my cookies before getting on and warming up to go into the ring. This time however, I was standing beside Rolex and holding his lead shank. All of a sudden he started shaking and sweating. Not just a little, but violently. Then he just bolted away from me. Forget that I was holding on to him. The rope got yanked out of my hands and he was off.

Not a good thing at an A circuit show with all the fancy people there. 

We finally managed to catch him, and a friend who boarded her horse at the stables where the show was being held was kind enough to let me use her stall. Once I managed to get the rude, spoiled  (C**ly Sc****gor) girl off the phone to call the vet they were fast to arrive. Woe the days before cell phones when we had to line up for a land line.

Dr Rach looked him over and I can’t remember what he gave him that calmed him down, but he did quickly quiet after the vet arrived. What he did diagnose Rolex with was a selenium deficiency. Apparently there is not enough of that mineral in the Alberta soil and this was a common reaction to not having enough selenium in a horse.

He started on supplements and that was the last time he had a “freak out” - well for that reason anyway. Cows and trucks still made him lose his shit.

When the Ayurvedic doctor at Kripalu suggested I take the CALM magnesium supplement, it made me think of Rolex. What if some of this anxiety I can’t seem to shake is because of a mineral deficiency? Could it possibly be that simple? Nothing for me is ever simple. But I wonder how much of that is because if there are two paths to choose from, not only do I chose the one less travelled, but I chose the one what is covered in blackberry bramble. Seriously.

What I'm *Not* Giving up for Lent

Actually, I have never really been good about giving up anything for Lent. I don't know why I've never done it. It's not even like I didn't feel like I could carry out a commitment for 40 days. Once I set my mind to a project I can pretty much complete anything I put my mind (body and soul) to.

But last Sunday one of the ladies in my spiritual enrichment group (makes it sound all fancy, but pretty much my book club at church - which is fancy in its own way) made a comment about perhaps adding something that would enrich their lives this Lent.

That struck a chord. After all, this is the year of enrichment for Melissa. The year of doing things that make me a better, stronger more fierce Me. And adding something to my daily routine could be a huge step on the road to accomplishing that.

So.... the question then was - what to add? After nixing several grandiose "save the world" type ideas, I settled on something that would just be good for me. That hopefully will make life a little happier not only for me but for the ones I love and care for. Sun Salutations. I pledge to do a series of Sun Salutations every day during Lent. Today I managed to do 5 (on each side) and had to stop. I want to get so that doing 10 is easy.

What are Sun Salutations?  Here's a chart taken from The Yoga Lotus



I don't look anything like the stick people (as of yet), but I'm working on it. Mostly I just wonder how I'm going to get to the next pose without running out of breath.

Why Sun Salutations? Well, it occurred to me as we were doing a modified Sun Salutation at Kripalu how good this flow made my body feel. To add to that, I had just finished reading Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi  and he cured his colitis (which I don't have, thank the Lord) by doing Sun Salutations throughout the day. I do have some wonderfully fun digestive issues brought on by the immense amount of stress I seem to want to carry around though, and am hopeful this will help with that issue.

While they can be a good workout, they are also a fantastic way to balance the body and the mind; to calm your brain while energizing your blood.  Win, win eh?

Mostly though, I like the idea that instead of taking away something negative from my life and focusing on not having and not doing, I am adding something positive and focusing on having, loving and doing. I think it is the right thing for me this year.

Namaste

For Shame! What Nutrition are you Managing!!!

This came to me in an email today:

"I wanted to make everyone aware of a lunch menu change for Wed. Feb. 13. Due to the early dismissal, we will be offering Corn Dog Nuggets in place of the Pigs in a Blanket. We apologize for the change, and any inconvenience it may cause.
thank  you
*theperson'sname*
Nutrition Manager
*ourschool'sname*

This hurts me. I have been to have lunch many times with dear Jenna and the majority of the kids I watch are buying lunch. And these are the choices! Most times I have to ask the kids what they are eating because I can't recognize it as anything. A lot of the time they don't even know what it is themselves. 

For shame! Is this really the best we think our kids deserve? This is the best we can do for them? I don't even know what Corn Dog Nuggets are but assuming they're like regular Corn Dogs, they're switching out one highly processed pile of sludge for another. Why are we ok with this? Then we expect them to march back to class and learn. 

As a firm believer in "you are what you eat" these poor kids don't stand a chance. 

Why is this ok? I don't understand! And I know I'm as bad as the rest of them. I don't let them buy lunch and educate them about why we prefer "home food", but I don't go to the school and raise a stink either. 

I need to figure out a way to change this so it's not ok. So that our kids grow up knowing that eating healthy food is cool! It's yummy too! 

I would be really, truly embarrassed to have my name attached to the title of "nutrition manager" and be offering this sludge as food. Where exactly is the nutrition in this?

Just thinking about this makes my tummy hurt :-(

A Happier Breakfast With the Kids?

This morning was the first morning we had to have "school ready breakfast" at home since I returned from Kripalu. I got back from the most amazing, rejuvenating trip to my sacred place last Thursday morning. I was supposed to be home late Wednesday night, but Mother Nature intervened and kept me on the tarmac in Boston for a few hours and then for the night in Charlotte. Friday She intervened again and kept the kids home for an "unsnow" day here (I think there may have been areas where there was some snow - it missed our mountain though). Monday was a planned day off of school for Parent Teacher Conferences. Since Christmas break the kids have not had a full week of school - but that's a story for another day.

I was sitting in a lecture on Ayurveda last week, frantically taking notes and trying to absorb everything the speaker was saying. She started talking about breakfasts and how different doshas have different breakfast needs. For example, right now my kapha is out of balance and I should be alright actually skipping breakfast. People may die because of it, but apparently this is true. I had been eating steel cut oatmeal every morning prior to the private session I had with an Ayurvedic Practitioner who told me that in fact for my imbalance I should not be eating oats at all. Who knew?

I started thinking about our morning breakfast routine. Sometimes I ask the kids what they want ( I usually try to), sometimes I just end up make them something without their input - oatmeal with peaches, cinnamon and brown sugar, or pancakes and ham, or toast with cheese - something like that. Then if they're chatting, or generally farting around  I end up giving them heck and telling them that they need to eat their breakfast or their brains won't work at school. So, even though they're telling me that they don't want any more I have been making them at least have a few bites to make me happy.

The key there is to make me happy. I have provided them with healthy choices of food they like and then I ride them to tell them how much of it I think they should eat. So I can be happy or satisfied they had enough.

99% of the time I send the kids a homemade lunch, so I know they're having a quality snack and lunch. I don't have to worry they're getting the toxic "food" they serve at the school. So, why am I forcing them to eat, eat, eat. Especially in a culture where we eat too much?

Today I decided to let them guide their own stomachs. Jenna had a toasted cheese sandwich and a hot cocoa (light on the sugar - I love that I can control the sugar in that) . I made her a half sandwich and she got cross at me that I had not made her a whole one. I said that she could eat that one and I would be more than happy to make her another one if she wanted it. She ate about 2/3 of the sandwich and was happy. Jacob picked pancakes and 2 slices of ham. He ate the pancakes and 1 of the slices of ham. The other he made a pacman with.

Again, at first I was going to tell Jacob to stop playing with his food. But I was in a different lecture last week where we did an exercise on mindful eating. We were given a container with almond slivers and raisins in it and were told to pick up one by one the items and feel, smell, truly inspect each piece. Then we put one piece in our mouths and rolled it around our mouths, absorbing how it felt on our tongues, against our mouths etc. Then we slowly chewed it, again really paying attention to what was happening with the tiny morsel as it was chewed and swallowed. We then got out our journals and wrote about how we had eaten this tiny piece of food and all those feelings that we had just experienced. We also shared this with the person next to us.

A pretty big to-do about just one little almond sliver and a raisin eh?

But it really hit home how much mindless eating I can do. If you gave me a tiny handful of almonds and raisins I could very easily throw them in my mouth and chomp them down without really even registering that I was eating them.

As we were having a group discussion after one lady said how interesting it was that from the time they are toddlers we tell our children not to play with their food, yet how much more we had gained from our eating experience by doing just that.

So, I let him play with his ham. I actually thought the pacman was pretty funny.

After all this thought and reflection guess what I did? I forgot to make Jacob's lunch and had to give him money to buy the crap they sell at school. I couldn't believe it. I always make their lunches. Ugh. Baby steps!!!!