Tasting Life Abundant

 I've been eating a lot of soup this week. I made two soups, a chicken noodle with white beans and spinach and my sweet potato, squash, spinach, sausage, romano cheese soup...Lol I need a better (shorter)name for it. This is a sampling of the treats I made for Christmas parties. Any treats I make are gluten free, and almost always corn and soy too. I have several that are dairy and egg free as well. Even though I don't have to so strictly avoid of all those myself anymore, I have a lot of family members that do avoid one or more of them, and also, I developed the recipes for a lot of my healthier treats when I was on a strict avoidance diet and I actually prefer the results when made that way. I made Butter cookies, caramel corn, peanut butter balls, double chocolate chunk cookies, banana bread, almond flour chocolate chip bars, and no bake peanut butter squares. So far. Four parties down, two to go! Christmas Eve morning breakfast! Brian was home, yay! He usually has ...

I love reading the Psalms. They are one of my favorite parts of the Bible. The Psalms are so full of real life, of emotions; they are so relative and applicable. This morning I was paging through the Bible, looking for something to catch my attention for my morning devotions, and Psalm 88 caught my eye. It's titled, "A Prayer for Help on Despondency" in my Bible. The first verses say "O LORD, God of my salvation, I have cried out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before You; incline Your ear to my cry." The psalmist continues by crying out to God, detailing his struggles and pain; specifically, the feeling that God has withdrawn His presence and care, and the psalmist feels so alone and unheard. "LORD, why have you cast off my soul? Why do You hide Your face from me?" I think we have all felt this way in our lives at least once.... We don't understand the situations and trials that we come to and we wonder if God cares anymore. ...

Over the last week, Facebook has been sharing "Memories" with me of what was going on in my life three years ago. Three years ago, I went in for an upper endoscopy and an MRI to try to determine the cause of my chronic abdominal pain and digestive issues. Praise the Lord, everything was OK in there, (as in no cancer or severe illness), and it was very relieving to hear and see that, but it didn't answer what WAS wrong, and it took a long, long time before things really got better and I began healing. Seeing the Facebook memories has had me thinking about how things were three years ago, and has made me that much more thankful for the progress I've made and the healing that continues to happen. Three years ago, I was a mess.....an anxious, miserable, depressed, sick mess. I had a one-year-old son, and a two-year-old daughter, and I felt barely able to take care of them. My son Nathaniel had terrible colds for the first two years of his life, and neither him nor Sop...

This  devotional message  I read today really spoke to me. I wholeheartedly agree that God sometimes takes things away from us, even good things, to bring something better into our lives. I am grateful to be able to see His hand in my life, working out The Plan He has for me. Sometimes now too, I remember how close I have felt to God during the hardest times, and I can see how I have drifted, even if it is only slightly, from focusing on serving Him and surrendering to Him, and I begin to crave that feeling of really being near to God. The closer you get to God, the closer you want to be.  I have been struggling a little lately....but now I have learned that while the struggle is not fun or easy, the results will be valuable and useful and helpful to me in my walk with God. Learning to welcome setbacks and pain and heartache is not something that most people probably think about, but I think that being aware of them, and allowing ourselves to feel the emotions that...