Why I love today

1. It's snowing, a lot (I know, a few of you probably think I am crazy for that. And, I don't care).

2. I had an awesome night leading worship for the Youth Worship Gathering at Washington Heights. God is always right on time.

3. I had an unexpected and great conversation with a friend who lives a thousand miles away, but I felt like was right here with me (thanks, CCT :)

4. Lives are changing, for the good, the better, and the healthier (yes I may have just made that seem like a real sentence).

5. I don't work on Fridays, so, essentially I almost always love Friday for that reason.

6. I got to spend a Friday night cuddled up on the couch with my favorite person in the world laughing together at a funny movie. The best stay at home dates are when you never get sick of the person you are spending them with. Man, I am so sappy.

Here's hoping you are having a great weekend, already, too.

I like to win

I like to win things. I don't win very often, but, it feels nice when I do.

You have a chance to win something, too.

Just head over to my friend Yvonne's cooking blog here , and enter to win the baking dishes, they are awesome.

If you like to cook, you will definitely want to win these.

Too hot in the kitchen

It was bound to happen sometime....
With as much as I cook, I am actually surprised that it didn't happen sooner.

Last Friday I wanted to try out this yummy Asian Chicken Salad that I had heard about from my friend Yvonne who runs the website www.triedandtasty.com
I also thought it would be good to try it with those little crispy rice noodles that come on Asian dishes....so I went to the store and tried to buy some. Little did I know that they don't come pre-made, you have to cook them yourself to make them puff up and be the way you want them to be when you put them on a dish.
So I went home, put on a small pan of oil, let it heat up, and proceeded to head into the living room to finish an e mail I had started writing before I went to the store to let the oil heat up.
Then, I heard a strange noise....
In my curiosity, I got up and went into the kitchen to see what the noise was.
Apparently the oil had gotten too hot and combusted on itself and started on fire...and everything else that was around it. It started to melt a plastic piece that was on our range hood, hence the noise of the plastic hitting the top of the oven as it fell and splashed oil everywhere.

So I walked in to find a fire flaming higher than our cabinets and melting everything in site. The cabinets were starting to burn so I knew I had to be quick about putting this thing out. I screamed to Chas for help, who happened to be napping in our bedroom and had no idea I was attempting to burn the house down.
Even though it was a grease fire and we knew that it is a no no to put water on oil, we just had to get this thing out fast before it was uncontrollable. So, he ran outside, grabbed a pile of snow (in his skivvies, uh-hum), and dumped it on the main part of the fire.
Lucky for us it worked, but it was too late for the range hood and the smoke had already filled out entire house. Opening up the windows was good to let fresh air in, but it immediately made the soot go everywhere in our house, and we spent the next 4 hours cleaning it off the walls, cabinets, bed, dresser, etc.
I will just say that we are blessed, and very lucky. Blessed that we have such a great landlord who merely laughed and replaced the range hood the next day and supplied us with paint to touch up the ceiling in the kitchen. Lucky that it wasn't worse and neither one of us was hurt and it didn't burn anything worse than it really could have.


Lesson learned. I will never cook with oil like that (ok at least not for a while), and, I will never leave it unattended. Just in case it decides to start fire on itself again in the future.

Wholesome

Sometimes, you just need something that is a little wholesome.
Not store bought wholesome, homemade wholesome.

Every once in a while I can tell when my body needs a bit of refreshing, and I have been feeling that way especially after the holidays.
Don't get me wrong the gluten free cupcakes in Tennessee were great(not Sweet Cake great, but good), the home made gluten free cookies, dinners, dinners, and more dinners. All the food was delicious.
But the last couple of weeks, I have felt a bit sluggish. I just wanted food that was good, pure, good for me.

Insert Shauna at this gluten free website.

She has some of the best gluten free recipes, hands down. And her most recent post was just what I needed.
Nothing artificial, a slight amount of brown sugar, some walnuts, this whole grain muffin recipe satisfied my soul today, my gluten free wanting to really have something delectably gluten free but not overwhelmingly doused with sugar satisfying.
Even if you aren't a celiac, I would challenge you to try this recipe just once. It's healthy, it's wholesome, and it goes really well with just a touch of honey on top.

Sing a new song

Since October, our church has done a lot of growing, including merging with another small church in Bountiful, formerly called Grace Baptist. Now called Bountiful Heights, Chas and I have been helping out with getting the worship ministry set up by going down every other week and leading a team for worship that Sunday.

It really has been a great experience and God's obvious opportunity knocking for spiritual growth, as I find myself nearly every time I lead asking myself how I can be a better leader, pick songs that reflect His glory, yet assist in leading the rest of the congregation to a place where they too can worship. Whether it is by their own mouths in song, or just by hearing the words and reflecting in them within their hearts, the goal is not and never had been for me to engage a response from the congregation to spring up my own ego that I am actually doing something right. I know that I could do everything possible to create a perfect picture of what worship should look like, but in the end, I know it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with God and his timing for creating a response from his people depending on where their hearts are at during any given time of corporate worship.

However, I often find that during the times where I feel I have had the most worshipful experience, the words of the song have hit my heart so deeply that I couldn't help but express a heartfelt worship toward my creator and the one who has built my heart to have a deeper desire to know Him more. I often find myself choosing songs not for their musical creativity, but for the message that the words bring from the author who has put those words together.

I recently read an article in a Worship Leader magazine about what it means to worship. Worship is not about a song and how well you play it, what it sounds like after you have done everything you humanly can to "perfect" it and make it sound exactly how you think it should sound so that the congregation will respond to it because it is a good song. Worship IS, and the very end, our response to God and his greatness, goodness, grace, mercy, and love for us. It may not always be easy for people who are struggling to offer a song of worship to God, and it might be those days where they just sit back and don't sing anything at all. But regardless of how our personal hearts may be feeling, we have been made to recognize the amazing-ness of our awesome creator. In the end, it's about God, and worship is merely our response to Him in those times of recognition. That's what I got out of the article anyway.

Even the rocks will cry out to God in worship to him.....

For He has made known through His creation....so that no man is without excuse.

What's your reason for worship?

If you had a song that you could sing every week that best represents how you see/feel/respond to God, what would it be?