hospitality inspiration

I heard her tell the story more than once.  There was a couple who she and her husband knew while in grad school who showed them what true hospitality looked like.  Their home was open to anyone at any hour.  She always ended the story by saying how much it had inspired them.

Marlena Graves was my RD in college.  I babysat her daughter, I worked as one of her RAs, I asked her to stand up with me in my wedding.  And I spent many wonderful hours in her apartment.

Marlena and her husband always remember the couple they knew in grad school, but when I think of hospitality, I will always think of the Graves'.

Their apartment wasn't big or spectacular (after all, it was connected to our dorm).  It wasn't extravagantly decorated.  There wasn't usually an amazing feast waiting for me.  If I dropped in unexpectedly, I wouldn't be surprised to find things a little out of order.

But it was perfect.

Instead of making excuses about what they didn't have, the Graves' chose live out hospitality with what they DID have.  They recognized that hospitality is less about having the perfect house or the perfect meal and more about embodying Christ.

They lived life with us college students, whether we knew them from the classroom or the dorm.  They choose to let us into their lives and in return we felt safe to let them into ours.  Their apartment was a haven when life was stressful.  A safe place to ask questions and get advice.  And yes, sometimes a place to laugh about the latest SNL short.  Even now, a few years later, there are nights when I wish I could just walk down the hall, knock on their door and discuss things that are going on.

Now I'm "grown up" and have my own home.  My husband and I are doing our best to follow the example the Graves' gave us (some days we do better than others).  Our table only sits four and we don't really have much furniture in our living room.  But I'm learning that most people (the kind, good-hearted ones) don't mind sitting on the floor in exchange for good conversation and a free meal.




**I'd love for you to visit Marlena's blog and be encouraged by her writing.  : )

currently reading: Tempted, Tested, True

Dr. Arnie Cole and Michael Ross, both currently of Back to the Bible, teamed up to write Tempted, Tested, True: A Proven Path to Overcoming Soul-Robbing Choices.  Various other writers also contributed.  The book focuses on temptation, reminding readers over and over that all people all are tempted, simply in different ways.  Additionally, it gives practical steps to overcoming temptation and changing habits.

This book begins by talking about the seven deadly sins and also about the four stages of temptation (mentioned in James 1). Throughout the book, the writers touch on many different sins including sloth, gossip, lust, worry and materialism.  Each chapter ended with a "nudge" such as "Nudge 1: Learn to be God-centered" and "Nudge 4: Change your brain".  These nudges had seven steps: tempted, tested, true, memorize, listen, respond and pray.  Included in each nudge were questions to answer, research/quotes to consider, Scripture verses and written prayers.    

The appendix was noteworthy.  In it, the authors explained "three protestant views about sin and salvation" by comparing the theologies of John Calvin, Martin Luther and Jacobus Arminius.  Included was a helpful reference chart.

I picked this book to review because I was intrigued by the phrase "soul-robbing" in the title.  I appreciated the authors' straightforwardness about sin and thought that they dealt well with it: showing the gravity of our sins (ALL of our sins, not just the "big ones") but reminding readers of hope for change through Jesus.  I liked the "nudges" because they gave clear steps for change and I believe they could be of great help if used properly.  Personally, I didn't care for the fact that there were multiple writers.  Having the two main authors was fine, but multiple other writers were added, I wished that their sections would have been designated differently.  Sometimes I had to look back a few lines to figure out who was writing.  Perhaps the editors should have changed the font or set those parts in a quote block to avoid this confusion.  Other than that, the book is easy to follow.  As someone who enjoys reading more academic-type books, I did get annoyed a few times when something was written without a reference.  For instance, on page 53 the authors write about how "ancient Jews thought that a desire...could have a life of its own".  I would have appreciated an endnote designating where they found this information, however, I recognize that most people wouldn't have been bothered by that at all.  The appendix was great - I appreciated their work there.  Overall, I would recommend this book as a reminder of the gravity of sin and practical guide to overcoming temptation.

**This book was given to me by Bethany House Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

summer produce challenge

We're trying a fun little experiment in our house.  It started as the idea to eat vegan for lunches.  But it has slowly evolved when I realized that quite a few of my recipes for yummy vegetables included parmesan cheese and I really didn't want to skip that!  So then we were calling them vegetarian lunches.  But it doesn't really do it justice, because it's more than just not eating meat.

Last night I told my husband that it's "lunches where the vegetables shine" and I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes and requested that we please just stick with calling them vegetarian.  :)  We'll be eating primarily vegetables and fruits for week day lunches for the summer.

We're starting tomorrow!

I've been busy pinning interesting vegetable recipes, choosing the ones we'll try this week, compiling the list of ingredients and shopping for them.  The picture above is our shopping cart after we left the produce section! (side note: I'm a little disgusted by how many plastic bags we used.  I need a new system)

Here are some of our reasons for doing this experiment:

• make healthier eating choices and hopefully lose weight
• eat more intentionally (perhaps focus on what is in season and buy more local produce?)
• find new recipes to avoid getting stuck in a cooking rut
• teach our bodies to be satisfied with a meal of vegetables 
• to say we did it!  we both thought it sounded like a fun experiment for the summer!

Here's the recipe I'm making for lunch tomorrow: Cucumber Avocado Caprese Salad

repost: bathtub of emotions

**this was originally posted on august 17th, 2011 but it's been on my mind lately as I've been thinking more about dealing with chronic pain in the midst of other general life stressors.  hope you enjoy the read!


This has been one of the most helpful communication tools in my life so I thought I would share.  I think it's especially good on those days when I am in deep pain and working with people who don't understand what that's like.  I've explained this over and over again when I was an RA and working with girls.  Mr. Mays uses this a lot to understand what I'm thinking and why I'm responding a certain way.

Imagine that you have a bathtub for your emotions and for stress.  Each time something is stressful or upsetting, it adds to the tub.  When the bathtub is full, the reaction comes.  That's your personal limit and you response in anger, frustration, tears, or shutting down.

Each situation of life adds a different amount (and each person can handle different amount of stress).  For instance, if you lost your keys and were late to an appointment, that might have only filled up your bathtub 1/10 of the way.  Another day, your car may have been stolen and that is especially stressful to you, so your tub is half filled by that situation.

Here's the key:  Life piles up.  Stress piles up.

When you lose your keys and you suddenly melt into a puddle of tears, it might be hard for you (and others!!) to understand why that small situation was so upsetting.  After all, it only filled up your bathtub 10% of the way!   But what you've forgotten is that it's not just the lost keys....  Before that happened your emotional bathtub was already filled to 95% with other issues so that last 10% pushed you over the edge and your bathtub was overflowing.

Caleb knows when I'm upset about something to ask how full my bathtub is.  It sounds silly, but it really has helped us!  When my pain levels are up, my bathtub is already filled to about 80%!!!!!  So when something that is seemingly small happens, I can get upset quickly.  It has helped our relationship a lot for him to understand how many "little" issues are filling up that bathtub.
It's a very simple word picture.  But it's proven to be really helpful for me.  Hope that this can help others (especially those dealing with pain).  Chronic pain is debilitating.  When others can't understand, it is isolating.  And it's even worse when you can't even understand yourself.

Accepted to BookSneeze!

This week I heard that I was accepted to BookSneeze so I'll be getting more free books and blogging my reviews!

My first pick is Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes by Shauna Niequist.  It should be here in a couple of week so I'm looking forward to reading it and sharing it with you.

air force life: key spouse program

My husband and I started dating in college and, since he was in ROTC, I knew that if things got serious, I'd end up as an Air Force wife.  We had many conversations about the military. Would he just fill his commitment or he make it a career?  How did I feel about potentially moving every few years and putting our future children though that?  How would we balance my educational/career dreams with Air Force life?

One thing we agree on though:  if we were going to be in, we were going to be all in.  Many people talk about the military community and we knew that we wanted to participate in that.

Well...we had some disappointments.  Sometime maybe I'll share those stories, but for now I'll just say that people were not as welcoming or friendly as we had hoped.  It was discouraging, but we also knew that we could be a small difference.  In other words, instead of complaining about how people weren't welcoming to us, we could be welcoming to others and be a very tiny catalyst for change.

Enter the Key Spouse Program.  :)

A very, very basic description of a key spouse is that they are a liaison between the spouses and the squadron leadership, especially focused on families who have a deployed service member. 

My husband's squadron is supposed to have several key spouses, but when we came it just so happened that no one was filling that role, so I decided/was asked to take it over.  The link above provides good information about the key spouse program, so you can read that if you're interested in more.  I'll just give a summary here of what I do.

First I had to be "appointed" by the commander of my husband's squadron and then I had a meeting with him and the First Sergeant to make sure we were all on the same page.  Then I went through training (provided by the base) and learned about the job and learned about all the different agencies on base that provide support for families.  Let me tell you, there are SO many programs!  It was a little overwhelming, but awesome to hear about all the ways that military families can get help.  There are a variety of counseling options, a support program for new parents, free childcare if someone is deployed to name just a few.

While I've been a Key Spouse, here's what I've been doing (right now I'm just working with the families who have a deployed spouse/parent).

• every other week we deliver homemade meals to give the parents a night off from cooking
• relay information about squadron/base events 
• check in to see if they need anything (like driveways plowed after a snowstorm)
• delivered Christmas cookies in December
• give updates to the First Sergeant

Each squadron is different depending on their key spouses and their leadership, but I've loved working with our squadron.  Delivering meals every other week has been a tangible way to help and it means that I've gotten to be friends with several of them as well!  Overall, the Key Spouse program has been an interesting way for me to meet people, get involved and volunteer. 

currently reading: Finding God in the Dark

Finding God in the Dark: Faith, Disappointment and the Struggle to Believe is written by Ted Kluck and Ronnie Martin.  When reading my options of books to review, this one stuck out to me because I've been having many conversations lately that revolve around doubting.  I've read a few other books on similar topic and I have studied this subject on my own so I had high expectations.

This is a book I would recommend to others and will no doubt be re-reading in the future.  Kluck and Martin shared their own stories of disappointment and, I thought, were transparent with their feelings even though they had some very "unchristian" thoughts.  Kluck writes about the sorrow (and anger) over a failed adoption which seemed to be the last straw in ongoing disappointments over infertility, tight finances and an unpredictable freelance writing career.  Martin writes from the perspective of a Christian musician whose career never really took off as others did.

Other reviews I have read of this book acted as though Kluck and Martin's trials weren't difficult enough and they have given the book poor ratings as a result.  This confused me.  Perhaps this book wasn't filled with tantalizing stories, but the authors were honest about their troubles and their feelings and it seems odd to imply that their struggles weren't "hard enough" to write a book on disappointment.  I don't think we can really compare.  We all have different events that take us to our lowest point in life and these men were simply honest about theirs.

If you're looking for normal Christian niceties about how the authors are soooo godly and how they respond perfectly to all hard circumstances, this is not the book for you.  The authors are very honest about how they felt in circumstances, even when it paints them in a selfish light.  But, in my mind, that's part of what makes the authors relatable.  Over and over again I found myself nodding my head, reading bits aloud to my husband and annotating with fury.  In addition to sharing their own wisdom, both authors quoted from other theologians (e.g. C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller, A.W. Tozer) and included Scripture verses as well.

The chapters alternate between authors, which could feel a bit choppy at points.  I found myself looking forward to chapter changes because I resonated with one author more than another.  I can foresee some readers being frustrated as both authors write from a (very) Reformed perspective.  If you come from a less Reformed background, be prepared for many, many references to God's sovereignty.  ;)  This could have come across as a flippant answer to disappointment and suffering (i.e. "Oh, just trust that God is sovereign and move on!"), but I really felt like the authors didn't use that as a cop-out, but continued to wrestle through the issues.

Overall, I really liked the book and am going to recommend it whenever I have the chance.  I know many people who have experienced disappointment that has left them doubting and I think this would be a good guide for them as it encouraged me in my own doubting.  Much of what Kluck and Martin wrote I had heard before, but I thought they did an exceptional job at intertwining stories, quotes and verses to make the information especially poignant.

(I posted an excerpt from the book here if you're interested)


**Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of this book from the publisher (Bethany House) in exchange for an honest review.