Love Me Some Jagger

I am laying in my bed tonight, Tracy is sleeping soundly after a stressful weekend then right back to school and Jagger, my precious boy cat is stretched out exactly along my heart cath site, purring quietly and relieving the pain in my leg completely. It's just crazy!

What a crazy weekend it was...I went to work Saturday, started having pain between my shoulder blades, just like my heart attack although not as severe. I spent Saturday in Vandy ER and eventually got admitted. I felt better by Sunday afternoon but still had to wait for a heart cath on Monday. They offered many times to do the cath in my wrist but I said, "No way!" every time! Finally around 1PM on Monday they started the cath and the news was good: stent looked great and no new blockages. They believe my low potassium caused some coronary artery spasms and they changed my medicines up a little (actually a lot) and I was home by Monday evening.

Miranda came home with me because Tracy was going back to school Tuesday and she took such good care of me. I don't know why but my healing process has been much slower this time. After my heart cath in Bowling Green last August I was walking the Greenway the next day. This time I am so sore and it hurts to get up and down, sit for long periods, or walk very far. I also have a bad cold and have had a low grade fever with aches all over. Sooooo pretty discouraging recovery.

But I noticed this evening that no matter how I laid Jagger wanted to lay across my leg. If I tried to push him away he would come right back and stretch across my leg and purr away. He wasn't doing it for his pleasure because I wasn't even petting him. But I began to notice the purring and the warmth of his body made my pain go away. Check it out online, apparently he has some healing virtue in his little cat body and wants to share it with me :) Gladly!

"Anyone who has held a purring cat in their lap understands the warmth and feeling of contentment that is conveyed by the sound and feel of the vibrational purr. Researchers are continually looking into the domestic cat as a healing tool for human stresses. Tabby's purring can help reduce his owner's stress or anxieties. Cat purring can ease discomforts such as stomach pain, and also help boost immune systems.
Veterinarians have long noted that broken bones heal quickly in cats. The vibrations associated with the feline purring is of interest to the holistic healing community. The measurable Hertz of a cat's purr lies between 25 and 150. 20 to 50 HZ have shown great promise in speeding bone injuries in human medicine. Research is currently being done to find out if purring actually accelerates the natural healing process of broken bones in humans..."

How sweet :) it just makes me smile. Hopefully I will recover completely in the next few days and in the meantime I am loving that kitty we call Jagger.

It's Beginning To Look A Little Like Spring Around Here

Say hello to my first sprout of 2012 :)

My seedling setup

It is mid-February and I have some new babies sprouting up!  Last Friday I planted 36 seeds in a mini-greenhouse with a CFL light bulb over them and now I have several little sprouts poking their heads up through the dirt.  I am excited!  I planted six Roma tomato seeds, six Better Boy tomato seeds, six jalapeno and banana pepper seeds, and started chives, oregano, and basil from seed.  Everyone is sprouting out except for the peppers which are always slow and very cold intolerant.  I am hoping the CFL bulb overhead will give them the extra warmth they need to come on out.  If not then I can always purchase pepper seedlings from Walmart but I hope I won't have to.  I am going to start a few more things this Friday and try having a staggered harvest and therefore make harvest and preservation much easier.  Tracy has procured  the wood for our Square Foot Gardens and the pallets to make a compost bin so we are ready for spring activities!  It is 60 degrees today so I am feeling the fever :)

Valentine's Day: What Is Love?

"...Who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant..."

Valentine's Day is about love and love in the human sense can be sweet and sincere but sometimes it is fleeting, or mistaken for other emotions, and on occasion downright disappointing. Who was the greatest Lover of all?  I would say Jesus, Who was fully God and yet humbled Himself and died on a cross because of His love for you, His love for me. That is the sincerest form of love, a servant's heart and a willingness to place everything aside for those He came to save.

Jesus was asked by the teachers of the Law, of all the commandments, which is the most important?" This question caught my attention because certainly Jesus' answer is important and here is His reply: "...love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength..."  I am sure over the years I have read this scripture dozens of times but I decided to break it down and try to determine what heart, soul, mind, and strength actually mean. After all, Jesus said this is the GREATEST (most important) commandment of all. It seemed to me that this is foundational to being able to follow or obey the other commandments.

Here are some of my thoughts and ideas from my studies about heart, soul, mind, and strength. Heart...here is the seat of our affections, our longings, our desires. Our hearts carry powerful emotions that color the way we see everything. So how do we set our hearts towards loving God? Jesus says, "If you love me you will obey me." So when I am tempted to sin, I make a choice to obey God which demonstrates my love for Him and He notices. How much do I love God? It's simple...how often do I choose to obey His word? That is my barometer.

The power to choose to obey is part of the awesome dignity God gave humans when we were created in His image. We are not animals, or descended from animals, acting merely out of animalistic instincts and uncontrollable urges. Choosing to obey God is an awesome act of love toward Him and it never goes unnoticed by Him. He is moved by our desire to love Him with all our heart and when we demonstrate this love by obeying His Word, His Spirit pours out God's love in our hearts, therefore our capacity to receive and give love increases.

Another thing to remember is NO ONE but you can love God like you do. Another demonstration of God's awesome creative ability is the unique, specific characteristics that make us individuals and that specialness was given to us by God. My love for God is love that only I can give Him, as yours is love that only you can give. God chose to give me, Lisa, life so I could love Jesus in my own special way. Love for Jesus is costly and rare. Don't deny Him the love only YOU can give Him.

What is my soul?  I believe that it can be defined as my personality.  Two important aspects of my personality are my attitudes and my speech.  Am I humble? Do I live to serve others? Do I put others ahead of myself? Jesus certainly did all of these things! And if He is my example, if His Words are my blueprint, then theses attitudes should be present in me.

One of my pet peeves is when people judge the actions of others too harshly. I know there is no bottom to the evil, worldly, flesh-driven side of me.  One reason I know this is because the bible makes it very clear (Isaiah 64:6, Romans 3:10, John 3:19 and on and on) Humans, apart from the redeeming blood of Jesus, are no good. Yes, there are degrees of "badness" from a human standpoint but compared to the perfection of Jesus there is no comparison.

So it upsets me when people look at another's sins and feel all high and mighty and judgmental as if to say "I could never do that!" Oh yes you could. Oh yes I could. We would have to walk in that person's shoes and experience how their personality developed and know what fears and darkness their actions were based on but we all start as sweet precious babies, innocent and full of potential for turning to God or turning away.  I believe that apart from Jesus, anyone is capable of anything.

Another part of my soul is my speech. Speech clearly indicates my inward attitudes. The bible says a lot about speech and the book of James says the tongue is a fire and it corrupts the whole person (James ch.3)  A soul that loves God renounces speaking out when wronged by others, resists negative talking, slander and gossip, and recognizes that out of the abundance of our heart the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34)  Our speech is a clear indication of what dwells in our hearts  Is it love and service and the building up of others or is it bitterness, division, and the tearing down of others?

Loving God with all my mind requires me to continually feed my mind the truth. Where is the truth? The pages between the covers of my bible. To me that is ALL the truth in the world and the ONLY truth in this world. I must renew my mind continually and remove wrong mindsets constantly in order to love God with all of my mind. To me this can be the most difficult arena to control because my mind is constantly barraged through all my senses by the world and its desires for me. I admit I am a devotee of pop culture, icons, rock stars, and pretty imagery of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  I have many conversations with myself about where to draw the line and frankly if I am questioning the lack of godliness in a TV show, or picture, or imagery it is probably already clear I should turn away. But often I do not and the loss is all mine.

The language of the mind is imagery.  "Image"ination is given to us by God. He desires we visualize His truths in our lives and seek Him in a deep and personal way.  Whether good or bad, there is always a movie going on in my head, and in your head. We are always thinking about something. What movie is playing in your head? What conversation are you having in your mind? Those thoughts, those images, lead to actions. The mind can be a very dangerous place if it is not fully engaged in loving God. And I don't mean only dangerous in a serial killer, evil kind of way but also in a passive, dry, meaningless sort of way where live passes you by and you never live up to the plans God intended for you. To die ON the vine (Jesus is the vine) is a terrible, wasted  place for a Christian and sadly  I have been there at times in my life.

We can supernaturally replace wrong thoughts and replace the bad movies in our heads with new ones. The Word of God renews our minds and redirects our thoughts.  Reading the word regularly puts Jesus in His proper place, as our first thought, not an afterthought or the lifesaver we cry for when  crisis arises in our life.  Jesus becomes our escape from sin and temptation through the washing of His word as we learn to flee TO Him rather than from Him. To love Him with all of my mind is to stop dreaming of anything that is not based on His truth and taking the time daily to read and agree with God's word.

We are also called to love with all our strength.  I believe these strengths include giving of our money, our talents, and our service to others. Don't forget prayer is a service to others and requires time and strength and commitment.  Fasting also requires our strength and this is a discipline I have never experienced but I am beginning to study. Forgiving our enemies requires strength and turning away from pleasure time to study the word and pray requires strength. Loving with all our strength includes giving from all of our resources:  time, service, forgiveness, and energy. All of our strengths are gifts from God which are mightily restored as we give in love as evidenced by obedience.

So Happy Valentine's Day and may we all experience love in the truest, deepest sense of the word!

~ Retro Talents ~

I have been thinking a lot about the lives of my family and how differently I live today compared to how my grandparents and great-grandparents lived.  There are so many talents they had that have been totally lost and I have been thinking of ways to restore those talents in my life.  Now I don't think they would consider them "talents."  Canning, freezing, quilting, sewing, gardening...these abilities were a way of life for them and were necessary for survival.  While I think of these activities as a hobby or craft, I am sure they thought of them as vital to putting food on the table and clothes on their backs and staying warm at night.  But regardless of how I label these abilities, I still want to be able to do some of these things, to remain in touch with their way of life and to improve my own quality of life.  And who is to say that such skills won't be necessary again some day in the future?  One never knows what the future holds.  So I will keep you up to date on my progress!

In my future!!!

 My first endeavor is taking an online course on preserving food.  I miss the Farmer's Market food so much this winter and thought perhaps I could grow enough extra to can and freeze this summer for the winter.  So I went online looking for books on the subject of preserving food and found the USDA website which is full of preserving tips and offers an online course through the University of Georgia on canning, freezing and drying foods.  I will grow some foods for preserving and purchase others at the Farmer's Market.  I am excited!

My next step was to plan my garden and I purchased the book "Square Foot Gardening" from Amazon (actually it is an ebook and I am adjusting slowly to the idea of ebooks because it saves so much space.) I am using a trial offer of plangarden (@plangarden.com) to do what else? Plan my garden :)  Here is a picture of my plans so far:

Again, I am excited and this mild winter weather has made me feel like I should be out there digging around. But it won't be long 'til spring arrives for real!

Square Foot Garden!!!

So I remember I am not supposed to say it's been so long since I posted but it has been so long and I am working on some plans to alleviate that.  I think my Mom really misses my posts and I miss this outlet to write things down.  So I have dusted my old laptop off and deleted lots of extra junk off of it and it seems to be running better for now.  I will keep it ready for more blogging and hopefully I won't go so long without writing it down.  Writers should write even when the backspace bar sticks...arrrgh!

Love your heart...it is the only one you've got :)

A few days ago was the six month anniversary of my heart attack and closely coincided with Wear Red Day for women's heart health.  I wasn't working that day and so I didn't get out but if I had I would have probably worn red.  Usually I am not all about special health concern days and if anything I would rather have worn a shirt saying "Ask Me About My Heart Attack" and then offered some advice to the curious.  But truly I don't think anything I could say would change a single mind because most people just don't think it will ever happen to them.  I certainly didn't, despite all the risk factors working against me:  strong family history, smoking, high blood pressure, weight issues, poor food choices and stress galore.  

I watch co-workers eating outrageous food choices, fighting high blood pressure, smoking like fiends, unwilling to exercise, and working in jobs that are super stressful and I know their day is coming.  I don't wish this on them at all, on the contrary, I am so sad for them because I know they might not be as blessed as I was.  I have exercised most of my life, I recognized somewhere deep inside that I was probably having a heart attack, and had my husband with me to get me help immediately.  That is not always the case.  When they make fun of my "rabbit food lunches" while they eat processed, nutrient-poor, stripped down, worthless food full of trans fats and wash it down with high fructose corn syrup delivery systems called "Mountain Dew" or "Dr. Pepper" or worse DIET drinks, I sincerely pray for them because they need help to change.  Having a heart attack woke me up but I hope they wake up without one.  Time will tell.

It has also been six months since I smoked and that really feels good.  I rarely think of smoking anymore.  Most of the triggers are long gone although yesterday when I started the fire for the grill (yes it was 60 degrees yesterday!) I had a huge desire to smoke hit me out of nowhere.  Then I realized I used to smoke a cigarette or two while I waiting for the coals to be ready for the food and my brain remembered that, too!  It quickly passed but took me by surprise.  I know if I ever smoked one cigarette, I would be smoking all the time in no time.  So I am glad that most of the time, smoking never occurs to me at all.  

Another project I have been working on is my own Smashbook called "All Things Food" and it is sooooo much fun.  My Mom gave me a journal for Christmas that was similar to a Smashbook and with more help from my Mom I turned it in to a book for the subject of food in my life.  Topics include my garden plans, recipes, menu plans, notes from my preserving course and gardening book and food prayers.  Food is such a vital part of everyone's life and in food prayers I list the people who I pray for to be healthy and make good food choices and pray for them all to return to eating food more like God had in mind for us.  Here are some pictures of the binder:

The front

The inside cover

The Back

Thanks Mom for all the materials to make an awesome place for "All Things Food!"  I write in it almost every day.  I have just about given up on ever losing much weight.  I think menopause and quitting smoking in the same year have caused my body to store every ounce of fat it can.  But I walk hard most every day and still do Pilates and some free weight lifting and I am concentrating on feeling good.  Maybe someday the scales will concur with my habits but for now I am over the numbers!

Well I think that is a lot of catching up I have done and I will hopefully keep up to date.  I love you all and will post to you soon :)