9am: homemade browines in the oven with a

9am: homemade browines in the oven with a new frosting recipe sitting and waiting to be spread within the next hour. 

I wouldn’t necessarily label myself a ‘foodie,’ but then again, recipe books have remained a source of dwelling interest for me over the years. Recipe books can be expected when receiving gifts for a birthday or a holiday and I honestly wouldn’t want anything else. I can sit and read through a 300 page Italian cookbook with no problem. The vast offering of cultural perspective from insiders is addictive. I can’t seem to learn enough of other cultures and their expressions via food. I’ve currently been reading the memoir of Julia Childs as she moves to Paris and experiments through hundreds of french recipes which leaves me lusting through each and every page. 

Though cooking and baking have always been a place of relaxation and therapy for me, I would love nothing more than to combine both elements of food and travel. Thanks to Pintrest, I’ve been able to ‘travel’ through the broad world of recipes I’ve simply never touched before. Most of them work out miraculously, but there are always instances where the birds enjoy scones that were less than edible or mint mousse brownies that transformed into a chocolatey sauce not resembling the recipe picture in the slightest. 

After my boyfriend started up a contemporary worship service on Saturday nights, I found myself committed to making weekly desserts. Not only did this serve as an instant welcoming gesture for visitors walking into the service, but also an outlet and excuse for me to practice never-before-made recipes I found enticing. Pintrest fed into this addiction, as well as cookbooks i’d received from the Ocean Grove annual collaborative recipes of all the women in the town from years prior.

Would I call the process of creating with food a calling? Somewhat. Even in college, baking thousands of cookies only to give the away served as an avenue to love those I cared about without awkwardly emotionally vomiting in their presence….cookies seemed to do the job quite well. Today, I have a smaller circle to pass baked experiments off to, but regardless of the quantity, I still feel as if a slice of banana walnut bread or a chocolate chip oatmeal raisin cookie will do the trick. 

I’ve thought of combining a career with what I feel is my enjoyable ‘calling’ (if you will), I’m not sure I want to make that a demand and career for the fear of losing something I’ve grown passionate about over the years. If it brings me to France or Italy for a term of learning to cook the ways the locals do….that’s another story. For now, I’ll remain in my own kitchen with Pintrest and Pandora to keep me company as new creations are discovered and worries are baked away in the process.

 

I never really knew what to expect after

I never really knew what to expect after graduating college. Months following that walk across the podium, I found myself somewhat making progress in what was now deemed ‘adulthood.’ I found some stability in a job- not nearly in my field, but nannying pays the bills, was in the process of applying for graduate programs around the world and continued in the habitual tendencies of studying late into the night, reading any and every comprehensive study within English Literature.

Fast forward six months and I find myself doubling up on nanny jobs to keep up with undergraduate loans and the owner of six rejection letters from those exact programs I assumed I would be admitted to for the fall. That is where I went wrong. I’ve always been performance-oriented and inherently driven toward efficiency, but repetitively hearing I ‘wasn’t right’ for this or that program brought me into a realization that I may not be as academically valuable as I once assumed. Not even that I concededly found myself superior to other students in my position, but with past opportunities, things miraculously turned out in my favor…

This change of course currently leaves me to reassign purpose and meaning to not only four undergraduate years spurred on by loans upon loans, but begs the question, what now? Two conflicting sides fight for precedence: the urging motivation toward professional progress and a possible career and the overwhelming sense that I am done applying, pursuing, and searching for the time being. It’s almost as if contentment comes in the time of inefficiency, in the times of taking 5 year old twins to gymnastics or baseball.

 I don’t necessarily feel the same ‘burn out’ feeling that some years in college left me feeling at the end of a semester, but as for personal life goals, I can’t seem to focus enough energy to truly pursue any possible doors that may very well close the moment I step forward.  But, I haven’t lost the underlying intention toward progress and change.  After taking UCipher, a test geared toward uncovering personal, professional and leadership potential, I’ve found myself once again open to opportunities catering to strengths I was previously ignorant toward. Even though I want to begin the process of uncovering my calling, any thoughts of continuing on at this present moment send my nerves on edge and thoughts of failure and ineffectiveness to a maximum. I’ve come to the point where the present needs to be processed and dealt with and the future must be placed on hold until I can confidently say it was all for the better. 

http://mikedonehey.tumblr.com/post/46260555431/subarus-sex-porn-stars

By Mike Donehey:

Subarus, Sex, & Porn Stars

Becoming a father has made me a softy.

I mean, I was a crier even before I had kids, but now?
Dang.
I was choking up watching a Subaru commercial last night.
A Subaru commercial?! Seriously?
I know, I know.
My man point stock is crashing with every key stroke, 
but before you condemn my whimpering,
have you seen this one?
Dude is sitting at the bus stop in the morning with his little girl
when the bus suddenly screeches to a stop and the doors swing open.
His daughter proceeds to give him the most achingly forlorn look I’ve ever seen in the history of the world, as she drearily ascends the steps of terror to cruel and certain elementary isolation.
So what does he do?
He jumps in his car and races beside, constantly peering through the school bus windows to make sure she’s getting along.
And in slow motion you see her with new found friends, laughing at the brilliance of rainbows and all things bright and beautiful.

Punch me in the face.
I’m hysterical at this point.
And why?

Well, it’s taken me all night, all morning and a particularly large cup of coffee to work it through, but I think it’s starting to become clear.
That commercial gets to me because no father ever said, “I hope my daughter becomes a porn star when she grows up.”

What?

Even as I’m typing this, my two year old girl just ran up and snuggled her face against my chest. She touched my face, looked in my eyes just along enough to melt me into man-mush, and then scampered off.  I don’t where she just went but I’m pretty sure she was scampering.
And I think, 
“God, I will do anything to protect her.  Even if I have to get my school bus driver’s license and drive the thing myself.  Even if I have to clothe her in burlap and cover her in an impenetrable coating of quinoa, I will do anything to keep her safe.”
But a chill runs through me.
I can’t.
No matter how many Subarus I buy, or how many baths in Organic milk she takes, I cannot control what happens to her.
And perhaps even scarier? I can’t control what other people will do to her.
Sure, I will educate her.
I will read her stories and applaud her.
I will tell her I’m proud of her.
I will hold her and esteem her.
I will pour myself out to fill her with all the love that I can.
I will arm with her the gospel.
I will cover her in an armor of prayer and joy,
and in every way I can, 
I will strive to cultivate the kingdom in her,
and show her how to bring it with her wherever she goes.

But at some point, I will have to let her go into the world.
A world that has seem to forgotten that every girl has a father,
and every woman is some father’s little girl.

Let me talk to the fellas for a second.
Guys.  
I know you’re scared.
I know you don’t feel as loved or as valuable as you long to.
I know you try to push those feelings down by achieving and belittling.
You cover them up with swaggering and bragging.
I know because I have and still do.
But remember.
Please remember, that if you use some “chick” to make yourself feel valuable, you are using somebody’s baby girl.
Ok. Sure that’s melodramatic.
But it’s true.
And you know it.
Deep down you know what drives you to the computer.
You know what drives you to take advantage.
You know what fuels you to forget that the picture is a person.
As Steinbeck surmised in East of Eden,
”The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, 
and rejection is the hell hefears.”
Rejection is the hell we fear.
Our clamoring for retweets is like cracks in the concrete.
Let’s stop with the excuses.
No more of this “boys will be boys” nonsense.
“If boys will be boys then girls will be garbage.”
-Ann Voskamp
Let’s own up and let down.
Let down our defenses, pull down the masks.
Own up to the love you’re really after.
We must stop viewing each other as commodity for use and misuse,
for selling and trading, for rule and conquest.
We must present ourselves to one another as gift, 
if we are going to stop using one another like currency,
we need to lose our need for such a system.
If we could just;
be filled to overflow,
to bless instead of take,
to gift instead of steal,
then we might just find the love we were always after.
And in the process, we might dry up the fuel that gives demand for girls like mine to become porn stars.

I don’t want my daughters to become porn stars,

and neither will you.
Learn from Steubenville.
Learn from the endless demand and consumption of pornography.
Learn from the millions of trafficked women and children around the world.
Sex will never save you, so save yourself.
And save someone’s daughter in the process.

I fear for my daughters like a man driving a Subaru,
but I also believe in the power of Christ to fill the void that drives our lusts.
And this morning I pray specifically to that end.

Jesus, 
I trust you.
And I trust you with these daughters you’ve given me to raise.
But tender Christ you see what has become of us.
You see how we use one another.
We manipulate.
We exploit.
Men and women both, we turn each other into objects.

Taking, always taking.

So I come to you Lord asking that you would fill us.
I ask that you would fill the emptiness and the lack of love we feel.
May we know that we are yours, and look upon each other with those eyes.
Sons and daughters, daughters and sons.
Give us life to give.
Give us new eyes to see.
In Your Life-giving name,
Amen.