.little daylight.

Thanksgiving was fabulous.
thursday morning i woke up with the biggest craving for acorn squash. so, since we had planned on a really low-key, low-stress ready-made sort of a day, i needed to go over to the store for these surprisingly delicious vegetables. walking around the produce section, all sorts of harvest-ey sort of plants drew me in. i walked home with yams, heritage tomatoes, bell peppers, and what i thought was a sweet potato but turned out to a rutabaga (it most definitely turns out i am not
a farm girl). wanting to do something a little more exciting with my veggies, i found this delicious recipe, and tweaked it to what we had on hand.
the acorn squash i baked alone, cut lengthwise, scooping out the seeds, placed on a pan face down with a bit of water covering the bottom of the pan. 350F for about 50 minutes (absolutely delicious just adding a little bit of salt to the cooked product).
the soup though. the soup was the grandest part of the meal. the only veggies i had on hand for this project were a pair of yams, that rutabaga, most of a large onion, and a couple of carrots. i wasn't sure what it meant to "sweat" vegetables, so i simmered them for around 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. once i had all the ingredients in, i had just finished the fried green tomatoes (unconventional for thanksgiving, i know, but those tasty heritage tomatoes just begged for it), and had the remains of the milk dip left over, so probably what ammounted to an egg and maybe 50-100ml of milk, which i added to the soup, this gave it a really nice texture, along with the oats (which I'd never put into a soup before.) the only other major variation from the recipe was that I needed to let it simmer for a really long time until we were all around and ready for dinner (maybe a couple hours).
the best part of the afternoon? i don't cook very often, and i was having such fun that the time just slipped by so comfortably.
plus, it was raining outside, and the last 4 days have been the first rains we've had in san diego. hopefully we'll go walking around mission trails tomorrow, the wildflowers will be amazing!

.clean sweep.

So, my plans for a gigantic garage sale are going well, except for one problem... I'm having trouble getting rid of things! I throw myself full-on into the project, but at the end of a time, I see that the keep pile and the "to go" pile continue to end up about even. This is still harder than I thought.

One redeeming factor though, I have absolutely amazing friends. I shared with the girls last night my dilemma, and they popped right out with huge offers of help. Their eyes gleaming a bit in the light, they started spouting out ways to help in the cause. Before I knew it, we had set up the plan for an enormous sifting of my belongings, a la "clean sweep".

It will be hard and grand to have the girls come over and go through in a pragmatic sort of a way "this is ridiculous, you need to get rid of it", to things that I have attached myself to that simply drag me into chaos. I'm finding this tough already! How much more so when they grab my beloved (insert useless piece of crap here, that I probably already have at least 2 of!), and question me about it. Up to this point, I've been doing what's simply natural - getting rid of things I no longer want or like. And getting rid of some things that fall into neither category, I simply don't need them. But really, none of it has been any sort of sacrifice. No weighing of things in light of the necessary question "is this item holding me back from fulfilling my promise to be light enough possessions-wise for Him to pluck me out of one way into another?" I may not end up with only what I could carry with me on an airplane, but I trust I'll be a whole lot closer to that than my current ability to fit myself into an enormous extra large u-haul.

Silly, I know, but I was really inspired the other night, when I thought of the character Rose Tyler from Dr. Who (yes, i quickly fall into geekdom). Had she clung to loads of nothings, what sort of adventures could she really have thrown herself into? Where I'm at now, had I been in her shoes, my call would be "ok, hold on a bit, i've got to sort some things out first", and off would the opportunity slip from my reach. So, on with the sweep!

On a side note, if you're near San Diego around the second weekend in January, come by the incredible garage sale. If weather agrees, we could share delicious lemonade in the sun, though being mostly san diegans, we'd probably be wearing warm fuzzy sweatshirts and cozy boots as the temp might go below 19C!

my church is closing down in less than a month. i didn't expect to be this broken-up about it, the ten or so of us sat around on couches, lost. a little kid screamed a giddy scream as he leapt into the community pool outside our door. and yet alan had a great bit to say about it. none of it has been what we've planned, six years of pouring ourselves into the community, into so many people, most who had been far out on the sidelines from church, feeling outcast for years. But God is good. He chose to reach into so many people's lives through this church, and He chose to say that this movement had reached it's close, and chooses for all of us to walk with him in a different direction. God walk with us all.

still dazed, jon foreman played his spring ep on the speaker filling the air...



and one we played as a reminder. something to awaken our next steps...

so i've just seen the most lovely movie...
...absolutely right, every step in the movie.

i've pulled out my suitcase again. how exciting! granted, there are as yet 70 days (give or take) 'til i actually step onto a rickety tin can suspended over the water, but of course i'm not counting yet. eek! it was a strong whisper in my mind five months ago, but confirmed officially just a handful of weeks ago. i'm headed to Panama for a YWAM (youth with a mission) discipleship training school. hooray! not at all what i expected to hear all those months of desperately asking and whispering and shouting and drawing and walking and wondering about in the prayer room. ">

but then, i'm so glad that most of what i expect to happen just...doesn't. so... what has he been telling me anyway? a. go to the dts. b. don't make any plans yet for anything after. c. don't even try to guess what God will be telling me next. d. he WILL be telling me what's next exactly after the last minute, but just before i really need to know. e. be praying for the leaders of the dts. f. keep prepping my heart for it through reading the bible. g. get rid of most of my things in order to be ready to just be picked up and taken where i need to be next. h. trust. trust. trust. TRUST him & his process within me and keep listening. and of course i. it's absolutely, most definitely worth it.

so... what am i doing at this point? well, there's definitely a little bit of freaking out going on, much of it surprising me in random anxious dreams recently, (i mean, seriously, how frightening is it really to loose track of one of the teens in my care for a little while, they'll be fine, really!) (but then, say that to this panicked, wild eyed, wild haired gasped breath wake-up in the middle of the night. it doesn't seem so able to rationalize then) (which, then sent me into praying: ok, so, something's up. this isn't normal, but help me to first dig deeply enough into self to find out what this is about, and then to let it go and trust.) so alot of this panic has melted almost completely as i again actively take steps and make choices to keep following the instructions i've already received, after several weeks of ignoring them and just distracting myself into hand-wringing despair.

so... back to what am i doing at this point? building up to one of the grandest garage sales west of the mississippi :), (or something!), working for two more months with the Special Needs Unit of the YMCA (now how is that for unexpected, working for a little over a year with the ymca to be told to walk toward ywam), learning how to draw! (yay! this has been a fun adventure), spending time with dear dear friends, and wondering about what's to come.

my plan is to keep this blog up quite a bit more regularly than the last year (which, good for me, really won't be a hard task, as my competing record is 4 posts within an entire year!), no, but seriously, i'd like to keep all my dear ones, and all those just curious more aware of all the happenings and musings and ridiculous bits along the way.

happy november!

another couple of websites that i've just run across:

.algae.

i have a little journal that bullied me for months to just try and come up with an entry good enough to ink-up the beautiful handmade pages. i carried it everywhere with me, with just the right pens, ready for just the right story to start off the process. one afternoon, grabbing the wrong pen, i slipped three pages into the binding and wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote venting, frustrated conversation.

next day i wrote on a warm little dock, floating above clear water, in the sun and breeze. algae waved under the water. looking closer, a school shimmered faintly. in the corner of my eye, legs crept up from the hole around a post in the dock. i jumped. breathed. and wrote some more.

six months after, i found just the picture, gluing it to the page, i finally found my perfect opening.

it's a bummer that blogs don't have an opening page that one can skip over, to come back to later on with just the right beginning.