2 Peter 3:8 (NIV) 8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 50. Half a century old. Me. Wait- what?! How did that happen?! When I … Continue reading 50
Category: Stuff
Pollo con Salsa Verde for Sandra
I know, you’re thinking why is she talking about food?
Well, because I was given the gift of some amazing friends for a season who not only taught me Spanish, but they taught me to cook authentic Mexican food. And because chicken with green salsa is Oh-Maze-Ing to make and eat!
I don’t make it often anymore because what I didn’t learn was how to make just a little. Haven’t been able to convince Sarge and Lucy yet that they’ll like it if they just try it.
Besides that, when I have taken the time to cook this salsa and shared it with friends, it’s been a huge hit. Thought I’d share the recipe so you can try it for yourself. Here’s what you need:
4-6 jalapeños (or more if you like it super hot)
10-13 medium-sized tomatillos
1 large or 2 medium onions- half diced and half sliced- I like a lot of onion so…
3 or 4 cloves fresh garlic
1 bunch cilantro- finely chopped
Salt
Pack (6-10) chicken thighs with bone in
In a large pot, cook the skinned and cleaned chicken thighs until done. Drain and set aside.
While they’re cooking, in another large pot, bring jalapeños (with tops cut off but not open to expose seeds) to a boil. Reduce heat to a rolling boil. When they are all olive green, add husked and rinsed tomatillos. Boil until tomatillos start to crack open. Drain but retain about a cup of the water.
Put jalapeños, tomatillos, the sliced half of onion, garlic cloves, part of the cup of water, and about 2 tsp salt into a blender and liquify until smooth. If you have more veggies than blender pitcher, add as much as you can and add the rest after the first part is blended. Add more of the water if it’s thicker than the consistency of brown gravy. That’s about as thick as you want it.
Rinse the large pot you boiled the peppers in and heat about 2 tbsp of olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the diced onions and stir until they start to soften. Be careful here- pour in the salsa from the blender. If you get slashed, well, I warned you to be careful. 😜
Stir well and add the chopped cilantro. Stir it in and add the chicken thighs, making sure they are all covered in the salsa. Turn the heat down and simmer until the chicken is heated back up. Probably 10-15 minutes is plenty.
Heat some tortillas to eat with it. Corn tortillas will not make you happy unless you heat them on a griddle or flat frying pan. They just get hard if nuked. Flour tortillas do ok in the microwave.
I don’t make beans like those in the picture but I cheated with Google images since I’m not actually cooking it today. You get the idea though.
Enjoy and Peace y’all.
Connecting the Dots
John 17:20-21 English Standard Version (ESV)
20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me…”
If you have ever struggled with feeling like you don’t belong, I understand. If you’ve ever struggled with the worry that people just wouldn’t understand you, I do understand. If you’ve ever wondered if anyone heard your cry, I’m listening. If you’ve ever struggled with how you fit into the grand scheme of things, boy, oh boy, do I know how that feels.
I’m finally starting to see where God has been leading me my entire life. Funny thing is that, as much as I fought it, it is right into His arms. Funnier thing is that, when I got here, there were a whole bunch of others here, too who had thought the same stuff! We are now connected in Christ. My dots are connected to their dots now. And there is strength in numbers.
The scripture I started this post with is where Jesus is praying that people would come to know Him by hearing the gospel and the testimonies of the ones who were with Him. That people would believe in Him and come to the Father through Him by being witness to the changed lives of His disciples. His prayer was that those who came to believe because of those lives would become one with them, and one with Him, just as He is one with God.
That’s not the only time the Bible says that He prayed for us. Luke 22:32 shows that Jesus prayed for Simon, that his faith would not fail him. John 14:16 says He would pray for the Father to send us an advocate, the Holy Spirit, to be our helper so He could be with us forever. Most importantly, in my opinion, when he pleads with God to “forgive them, for they know not what they are doing” in Luke 23:34. No doubt about it- Jesus is our great defender.
By praying for us, Jesus set an example of how we should lift each other up. In this culture of “whoever looks best in their neighbor’s eyes wins,” that’s a challenge for most of us. I take the challenge seriously now. In fact, I published my testimony the other day and I can’t even describe the whirlwind of response it has received. I prayed it would open doors for people who thought they were alone. I prayed it would give others courage to do whatever it takes to get their voices back. I prayed for grace as people came to know my secrets.
Then I realized that, wait- people would know my secrets! But then they might come to understand that they are not alone. And maybe some of them would come to understand that they were meant to hear my story because God is calling out to them! Yes, that He is calling their sleeping spirits awake because they need to know that He is still on the throne and that He is still in the business of setting the captives free!
I have no more secrets, at least that I am aware of today. All of what has been done to me and all that I have done has been confessed to God and to a small handful of who I consider to be safe sisters in Christ. As I continue to walk in His protective shadow, I am being equipped to handle any other secrets that come to the surface but I am also being prepared to address the wrongs I have committed. I have not been blameless in this life. But I am free. I am happier than I’ve ever been. I am no longer ashamed or afraid.
So I pray that you are free. I pray that if you are not free, you would find a way to start that process. It can be as simple as looking at a friend and saying, “Hey, do you have a minute? I really need to get something off my chest.” Or maybe over a cup of coffee, you can start asking God to put someone in your path that would speak to your heart. Someone who would speak to your pain, be the first to say it so you can say, “Yeah, that happened to me, too.” Oh, the dots that are connected when we find we aren’t alone!
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •
There is healing in Christ. There is freedom in Christ. There is joy here. No lie.
Peace y’all….
Busy Work is for Bees
Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV)
28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
I’ve been too busy to write for a few days… ok, a week. I’ll admit, it’s been busy work to keep my mind off of writing. There’s a lot going on. But I’ve worked it out and now I know what I want to say. So here it is….
God’s Got This.
Profound, right? Sounds like the same old stuff everyone else says, but I mean He really does. I’ve taken a week to stress and then spend time with Him to make sure I had this down before I came back to tell you about it.
I love to make stuff. I love creating tiny gifts to give my friends and I love to talk about how each day God shows me something else to be excited about. My dream is to one day incorporate the two into one big, pay-the-bills-and-have-free-time-to-play-and-create pile at The End of the Sidewalk. But life keeps happening and distracting me from it!
So this past weekend, I turned my phone’s ringer off, including all social media notifications, on Friday night so I could think. I left it that way until I needed it for church and then for the GPS for a prayer dessert I was going to on Sunday. I wanted to read, pray, and listen. I had received a text earlier in the evening from a friend about the bookmark I had recently given her, saying her daughter wondered if I made panda bookmarks. Of course I never had but I quickly responded, “Why yes, I do!” As soon as the ringer was shut off, I started doodling. Saturday morning I got to work and by noon, I had created a few I thought she would like- cute, huh?
Nothing fancy, but she loves them. They’re mostly corner covers, and they’re not all pandas, but they were a hit! There’s even one her big sister might like and her dad’s a Tennessee Vols fan so yeah, I had to make one like that, too. Judge me. 😉
But it made me happy to know that I was able to share a little bit of the crafty side of me with a friend. And to boot, to show me how happy she was, I think she’s 7, she made one especially for ME!
This was all in response to listening to God to just be. Not be a bee: but Just. Be.
I have an hour drive home from work, so Friday on my way home, I was having this talk with God about why I’d been stressing all week. About why I even got to the point of wanting to be mean so my voice would be heard. I mean, earlier in the week, I had wanted to remind people that they had made choices that effect others and that just because they feel ignored doesn’t mean they get to get out of the choices now. I wanted to tell people they aren’t God and to be mindful of the examples they’re setting. I wanted to tell people “Let it go!” and “I told you so!” And every time, instead of posting or emailing or texting or confronting, God kept bringing me back to the thought of a yoke. The yoke of trying to fix things especially. The yoke of thinking that, after the life these people have watched me live (read: survive), they should be able to believe that I knew what’s best for them.
The thought of a yoke reminded me of a lesson from the Freedom in Christ classes I worked through last fall. In this particular class,the facilitator taught us the Biblical meaning of the yoke by telling us a story about a young ox that was hooked up to the yoke of an old ox. The young ox (Judi in this case) thought she was tough and strong and could work circles around the old ox (this one would be Jesus) and tried to prove it. The young ox would pull as hard as she could to get the old ox to hurry up and get the job done- probably so she could go play Candy Crush or something- but the old ox just kept up the easy but steady pace. The young ox pulled and stressed and got so exhausted the old ox ended up just about dragging her around while He finished the work.
Thinking of that scenario made me realized that God was trying to show me that all of that stuff that’s going on isn’t my problem, it’s His. He was trying to show me that my job is to keep the pace He has set for me and to let Him help me through it all. I realized I was trying to play God but that’s His job. I realized that all of the stressing and the busy work with groups and games and visits I had pulled off last week was about avoiding Him while I tried to figure out how I could work it all out myself. He was trying to remind me of how much I need Him. All the time.
So I closed it all down for a few days. I shut out the noise of social media, put my face in the Bible and a couple of good books I am reading, and I made a little girl some silly bookmarks. And you know what happened? The world kept turning. Facebook kept Facebooking. Twitter kept up with the tweets. People kept peopling (yes that’s a word now). Jesus kept being Jesus. And I survived not being in control.
I can’t fix anything but I can work to improve who I am as this new creation in Christ. I can focus on who I am called to be now that He is living in me. I can trust that He knows what’s best, what’s going on, and how it’s all going to work out while I take care of my little piece of the earth. I’m officially hanging up my robe and sandles folks. I’m gonna leave the busy work to the bees and let that easy yoke guide me on this journey. God’s got this.
Peace y’all.
Stuff- We’ve All Got It
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I bought this little storage box at Michael’s in the middle of October because I literally couldn’t walk by it. It cracked me up, and yes, I do mean out loud, right there in the middle of the store. It made me feel good about my life- to know that someone else realized how much “stuff” they had and they not only admitted it, but they painted a pretty box to store it in! I knew it wasn’t just me!
Today’s inCouragement is about stuff. Good stuff. God stuff. Check it out:
January 12-
I want to share hope. I want to share the longings of Christ’s abundance with confident expectation. I want to experience His hand at work in my heart.
~ Heather George, Especially Heather
My input: Yesterday’s post was about a quote by a lady I didn’t take the time to look up so I thought I’d try doing that today. Turns out that Heather George, like me, has had a lot of stuff in her life. I saw the scripture quoted on her About Me page and knew I was supposed to write this today. The scripture is God’s way of saying He gives us stuff so we know how much we need Him. And boy, oh boy, do I need Him.
Heather is the mother of a little girl named Emma Grace (which just happens to be the same name as one of my all-time favorite humans on the planet) who had been born in congestive heart failure, received a new heart at 5 months old, and then died at age 9. It tore my heart out to think about that kind of family trauma and even as I was reading it all, I thanked God for His great mercy in my life.
But Heather’s story (aka: stuff) didn’t end there. In 2007, she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The bulk of the blog is about treatment and survival and life along the way. She’s no longer updating the blog, but I found her on Facebook- yes, I have been known to do a little stalking- and, to my joy, found out she is still alive and appears to be thriving. She is devoted to Christ and lives by His promises and tells the world she couldn’t have come through the stuff in her life without Him. That’s where I am now.
You know that song by Plumb called Need You Now? You know, the one where she sings to God, “How many times have You heard me cry out ‘God, please take this’? And how many times have You given me strength to just keep breathing?'” It’s another source of encouragement for me to know that I’m not alone, that we all have stuff that we beg God to take off of us.
For example, I love listening to a certain Passion Conference video where Francis Chan explains how Jesus must have felt when He was in the garden praying before they came to take Him away. Francis is so passionate in his teaching that it brings me to tears every time I hear it, how he imagined if it was his own daughter asking him about the cup that needed to be drank- “Daddy, is there ANY other way?!” Do you get that? Do you know that Jesus carried our stuff to the cross for us? He didn’t have any stuff of His own, for real, but He carried our stuff to His death so we didn’t have to.
1 Peter 5:7 says to cast all your “stuff” on God because He cares for you. Psalm 55:22 assures us that if we bring Him our stuff, He will not only help us through, but He will not allow us to be shaken. He wants our stuff and He literally wants all of it. The more I give to Him, the more room for Him I have in me!
So today I will give Him my stuff. I’ll keep the box on my desk, right next to the dancing monkey who reminds me we were made to live free and joyful lives, and I will put my stuff in it as it comes up. I’ll make it a symbol of literally giving my stuff to the One who wants to free me from it. You’re welcome to drop yours in it too.
The End of the Sidewalk 
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