A Dream I Had Last Night

Last night I had a dream that was incredibly vivid and really challenged me. I can't even describe to you just how real this dream felt. I often dream at night, but usually I either don't remember my dreams or they are not really that important. I thought I would share this dream, though, as it seemed especially important. The dream actually reminded me of Daniel 3 when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refused to worship the golden image and were thrown into the fiery furnace as a result.

Here is my description of the dream from my memory:

The first thing I remember is that I found myself either traveling or living in a country where Christians were being persecuted and killed for refusing to worship either an appointed image or person. The law in this country was that every person must fall down and worship this different god or image at certain times when there would be a call to worship. I did not see an actual image to worship, but in my dream I saw people all around me falling down and worshiping at the call to worship. I knew that anyone who refused would be killed by the sword, beheaded immediately by men riding on horses. The part I really remember is brief. I heard the call to worship and saw hundreds of people around me falling down to worship this false god. I became nervous, knowing that as a Christian I must not worship a false god, but also knowing that I would be killed if I refused. I remember struggling a bit with this as I saw everyone prostrating themselves at the call to worship. I knew I could not deny the one true God and my spirit became strengthened as I refused to bow. I remember seeing 3 or 4 others in front of me who also refused to bow. There we were, only a handful of us standing while the hundreds around us were on the ground worshiping a false god. Then, I saw the men riding on horses with their swords galloping toward us to kill us. That is when I woke up.

This dream really struck a chord in me. I can't really explain it, but it just really challenged me and got me thinking. Here in North America, most of us don't face this kind of persecution where we could be killed for our faith and face that reality daily. It got me thinking about whether or not I would be obedient to God even when facing the sword. I don't know what it is like to have to live in a place where, constantly, my faith in Christ could cost me my life, but I hope I would be obedient to God even in the face of persecution. This dream reminded me to pray for the persecuted church.

This dream brought to mind the passage in John 21 where Jesus asks Peter 3 times, do you love Me? We need to ask ourselves - Do we love Christ? Do we really love Christ? Are we willing to be obedient to Him even unto death?

Journey to a Healthier Lifestyle (Part 3)

In case you missed them, you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here of this series.

As I said in Part 2, my theory as to why I was not able to have real success with losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight was because my methods and philosophy were both wrong. My methods included doing extreme things that I could never keep up with long-term and my philosophy was based too much on the numbers.

So, what is different this time? Well, I started to get serious again about losing some weight at the end of December 2009 when a fellow blogger decided it was time to get healthy and was hosting weekly weigh-ins. I basically just said, "why not" and committed to checking in each Monday with my progress. To be honest, I was skeptical as to whether or not this time would be any different, but I was getting really sick and tired of feeling sick and tired all the time. I had absolutely no energy. Besides the fact I was feeling sluggish all the time, having a baby changed my perspective on things. My family has a history of heart disease and diabetes. I started becoming concerned about my health and realizing that I need to take proper care of my body as I have a little one to care for, too. I want to set a good example to my children of how to live a healthy lifestyle. I wanted to look and feel healthy again; I wanted energy. This time it was about being healthier. Yes, the numbers still mattered somewhat, but ultimately, it was about getting healthier. I think that is why this time is different.

I looked at what I was eating and how much I was eating. I had to get honest with the fact that I had often been guilty of grossly overeating (gluttony), which is sinful. I had to get honest with the fact that I was eating way too much junk food, which was harming my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. Like I mentioned in Part 1, these were two of the main motivators for me to change my lifestyle. My lack of energy and feeling sluggish all the time were a result of how I was treating my body - what I was feeding it and how much I was feeding it, along with sitting around way too much.

So, my philosophy was different this time. I became more concerned about my health than just the numbers. My methods, therefore, were also different this time. I decided that I was only going to do things that were sustainable over the long-term.

For me, this meant that I could commit to exercising 30 minutes a day most days. I did not commit to more than that because I knew I wouldn't be able to sustain that over the long-term. My philosophy for exercise was this: Something is Always Better than Nothing. This meant that if I had a busy day and couldn't spend 30 minutes on the treadmill, I would just do 10 minutes. This meant that if I was super tired and just didn't feel like doing anything, I would tell myself to just do 5 minutes of activity. To get me motivated to exercise, I decided to set a goal to run 5 km in 30 minutes. I followed the Couch to 5 K program, which only required 30 minutes of training 3 days a week. This was realistic for me and I could blog about my progress to stay accountable. It gave me a goal to work toward where I could see real results each week in my fitness level.

My new philosophy and methods also meant no crash dieting. I was not about to say I would never eat chips, drink pop, or eat cake again. Why not? Well, the reality is that this would not be sustainable over the long-term for me. So I just said LESS of these things and MORE fresh fruits and veggies. I had been addicted to pop and had been drinking it almost every day. I decided to drink less pop and drink it only on certain occasions, such as when we went to someone's house, or when we ate pizza. I would try to share a can instead of drinking it all.

Portion control was my main philosophy with regards to what I was eating. Basically I just decided to eat less of everything. I knew I had been overeating for a very long time, so I decided to pay attention to my body's cues and simply stop eating when I was full. Instead of a big piece of cake, I'd have a small piece of cake. Instead of my usual 3 scoops of ice cream, I'd have 1 scoop of ice cream. Instead of my usual large plate of nachos, I'd have a mini plate of nachos. Instead of my usual 3 cookies, I'd have just 1. This is really exactly what I did (and still do). I still eat junk food and sweets, I just eat less of them.

I also adopted the philosophy of "instead of this, eat that." What do I mean by that? In Part 4 of this series, I plan to discuss the practical things I did to lose the weight and what I'm doing now to maintain my weight.

Spinach and Tomato Topped Salmon

Something tells me I already posted this recipe, but I can't seem to find it on my blog anywhere, so I am posting it again. This is an awesome tasting, healthy, and quick meal to make. It is currently my favourite way to prepare salmon fillets.

Spinach and Tomato Topped Salmon

2 - 4 salmon fillets
2 cups fresh spinach (torn into smaller pieces)
1/3 cup sundried tomato & oregano dressing
2/3 cup sundried tomatoes
2/3 cup fresh chopped tomatoes

Place salmon on greased baking dish. Mix remaining ingredients and spoon over salmon. Bake at 375 F for 20-25 minutes. Serve with rice.

Menu Plan Monday (June 28)

Last week's menu got changed around a bit, so I have a few repeat meals this week. We ended up having taco salad instead of roasted chicken because I needed a quick make-ahead meal and we ate at family's house for Saturday, so I didn't make Tortellini Soup either. My new recipe last week (breaded beef cutlets) was a huge flop. I'm actually not a big meat eater and prefer my meat to not taste like meat (if you know what I mean). I need my meat (especially beef) smothered in sauces and mixed in with things like pasta and veggies in order for me to like it. Well...the beef cutlets just tasted a bit too much like beef for us! Needless to say, I won't be making them again. On a positive note, the new gravy recipe I tried with it was excellent.

As for my grocery challenge...well...I kinda fell of the budget wagon and didn't stick to my budget plan this last week. However, I did still substantially reduce my grocery bill this past month. I think I had set a bit of an unreasonable budget for our family that I'm pretty sure is not sustainable. But after this little experiment, I think I now have a pretty good idea of what is a reasonable grocery budget for our family if I am careful to take advantage of sales and coupons and then menu plan accordingly. I have simple and mostly quick meals planned this week due to my husband's work schedule and the Canada Day holiday.

If you have never tried, I highly recommend trying to make your own homemade pita bread sometime. This flat bread is versatile and freezes very well. It can be used for making pita chips, pita pockets, wraps, and quick pizzas.

Here's the plan for this week:

Sunday, June 27
Lunch: Bbqing hot dogs
Supper: Picked up some burgers (really healthy day, I know!)

Monday, June 28
Tuscan Roasted Chicken, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies, Gravy, Mixed Veggies

Tuesday, June 29
Leftover Chicken and Potatoes

Wednesday, June 30
Spinach & Tomato Topped Salmon (on bbq), Wild Rice

Thursday, July 1 (Happy Canada Day!)
Quick Pizzas (on bbq) using Homemade Pita Bread, Caesar Salad

Friday, July 2
Crunchy BBQ Chicken Wraps (new), Veggies or Salad

Saturday, July 3
Sweet & Sour Meatballs, Rice, Veggies

Baking/Desserts to Make This Week:
Homemade Pita Bread (for pizzas and wraps)
Almond Rhubarb Pastry (recipe to come)

*For more great meal ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday hosted by orgjunkie.com*

100 Facts About Me...for my 100th Post

For my 100th post, I decided to do something a bit more fun. Here are 100 facts about me.

I...

1. Am, first and foremost, a daughter of the King of Kings and desire to serve the Lord Jesus Christ in all things
   
2. Am a wife and helpmeet to my best friend
   
3. Am the mother of a beautiful baby girl
   
4. Like olives (and I mean really like! I have been known to receive giant jars from friends and family for my birthday or other special occasions)
5. Got engaged to my husband while I was still in Grade 12
6. Took a lot of heat from my teachers for getting engaged to my husband while still in school
   
7. Married my husband the summer I graduated from high school
8. Never regretted marrying "young"
   
9. Grew up on a farm
10. Would like to return to my "rural roots" someday and live on an acreage in the country
    
11. Play the piano
12. Like to sing
13. Have a fear of fish
14. Been to Hawaii
15. Partially conquered my fear of fish while snorkeling in Hawaii
16. Love to cook
17. Always wanted to learn to play the violin
18. Pretended to play the violin with wooden spoons when I was a kid
19. Not very good at scrapbooking
20. Wish I was good at scrapbooking
21. Have somewhat curly hair (I guess that would be called "wavy". Lol)
22. Hated my curly/wavy hair as an adolescent and straightened it every day for a year
    
23. Have now embraced my curly/wavy hair and rarely straighten it
24. Would like to learn to sew
25. Love to bake
26. Want to try making sour dough bread sometime
27. Like to read but have a hard time making time for it...but when I find to read...I
    
28. Read (other than the Bible) mostly nonfiction, historical fiction, or the classics
    
29. Am not embarrassed to use coupons and I do use them...a lot
30. Am terrible at gift wrapping presents
31. Am not the most "creative nor crafty cat on the corner"
32. Like to use alliteration (see above) Lol
33. Have a weird sense of humour
34. Am married to a man I will never beat in any board game that involves strategy because...I
35. Am married to the smartest person I know when it comes to strategy or logic
36. Would like to have several children, Lord-willing
37. Do not have any idea how many children is "several", lol.
38. Am planning on homeschooling our children
39. Am very competitive with respect to sports, board games, etc.
40. Like musicals such as The Sound of Music, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Mary Poppins
41. Am not fond of bananas
42. Am not fond of milk
    
43. Think that "fond" is a funny word
44. Am a bit of a neat, clean, and organization freak...however...I
45. Do not always have a very neat, clean, nor organized home :-)
    
46. Am a home-body and enjoy staying at home
47. Like Mediterranean food
48. Like going on road trips
    
49. Have taken a road trips to South Dakota.
    
50. ...and Yellowstone National Park
51. ...and Minneapolis
52. Have gone para-sailing in Mexico
    
53. Like hazelnut chocolate
54. Am an wannabe-organizer
55. Want to experiment with canning and preserving food
56. Wish I knew how to quilt
57. Had horrible morning sickness with our first baby
58. Delivered our daughter via emergency C-section
59. Am planning on having a VBAC next pregnancy
60. Am disturbed by the fact that store bought bread takes forever to go moldy
61. Bake my own bread most of the time because of the above disturbing fact
62. Think one of the best smells is the way the house smells after baking fresh bread
    
63. Recently read the Duggar's book 20 and Counting! and thought it was awesome
64. Get nervous when I play the piano in front of people
65. Have been known to be the bossy older sister at times
66. Am afraid of heights
67. Yelled in fear while riding the ferris wheel once because of the above fact
68. Am more of a night owl than a morning person
69. Like to play tennis
70. Like classical music
    
71. Used to pretend to conduct the orchestra while listening to classical music
72. Attended university for 2 years
    
73. Like taking my baby for walks when it is nice outside
74. Feel faint at the sight of blood
75. Worked for a brief time as an optometrist assistant even though the word "eyeball" has always given me the shivers for some strange reason.
    
76. Really enjoyed playing basketball in high school
77. Don't watch much tv
    
78. Don't listen to the radio much either (pretty much never)
    
79. Watch things like cooking shows, home decorating shows, family shows like Little House on the Prairie, and sports when I do watch tv.
80. Am a Philadelphia Flyers fan (along with my husband)
81. Enjoy watching hockey with my husband and cheering for the Flyers
82. Met my husband while working at a Bible camp
83. Hid in a garbage can for "campers find counselors" hide and seek at Bible camp
    
84. Want to learn the art of cake decorating
85. Like coffee drinks but can't drink them just black
    
86. Often play Christian music in the house, especially when I am working in the kitchen
    
87. Like hymns and wish we sang them more
88. Like looking through cookbooks and marking down recipes I want to try
    
89. Was the last person to get on the last bus leaving the university during the worst blizzard I have ever seen.
90. Stood on that bus, which was packed like sardines, in the blizzard for 3 1/2 hours to get home on what was normally a 10 minute bus ride home.
91. Was one happy girl once I waded through the above waist-deep snow to crash inside after that bus ride
92. Am having a hard time thinking of 8 more facts about myself :-)
93. Have been taken by ambulance to the hospital
94. Have never broken a bone
    
95. Am very allergic to nickel and constantly have eczema because of my nickel allergy
96. Learned to read before I started kindergarten (my Mom taught me)
97. Can barely draw a stick-person even though my grandmother was a very talented and fairly well-known artist with her own art studio and shop
98. Enjoy the subjects of English and History more than Math and Science
    
99. Love my husband and daughter more than I can ever tell
100. Am blessed beyond words with a wonderful family and most of all, the assurance of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in the Lord Jesus Christ.
     

Homemade Vegetable Broth

I saw this idea somewhere on the internet and decided to give it a try. I thought this was a good way to use up scrap veggies that I usually would have just thrown out. For a week or so, I collected all my scrap veggie pieces (celery tops, onion pieces, carrot peels, etc.) in a container in the fridge. Then, once I had a bunch collected, I put them all in the crockpot, added some spices (a couple of bay leaves, dill, parsley, salt, pepper), covered it with water, and let it simmer away all day. Then I just strained it and let the broth cool and then put it in the fridge. It was so easy to make! I used it the next day to make Kommst Borscht. You can freeze the broth in ice cube trays. Then transfer the cubes to a freezer-safe bag. That way you have veggie broth available to use whenever you need it.

Journey to a Healthier Lifestyle (Part 2)

In case you missed it, you can read Part 1 of this series here.

Ultimately, I had to fact the fact that I had not been taking proper care of my body, the temple of the Holy Spirit. For the past 4 years, I had been giving little thought to what I was putting in my mouth and was simply too lazy to put in regular amounts of exercise into my day. Before I got married (right after I graduated from high school), I had been extremely active, playing lots of sports all through my high school career. Playing sports was so much fun that I never really thought of it as "exercise". Additionally, my mom made sure we were fed nutritious meals, so I hardly gave a thought to what I was eating. I didn't grow up with a lot of junk food in the house, so eating it was never really an issue for me. We had the occasional treat, but that was it.

After I graduated from high school, got married, and moved away from home, things were completely different. I was no longer able to depend on high school sports to get my physical exercise, and I was too shy to join a recreational sports team in a city where I hardly knew anyone. The demands of working outside the home and having a home of my own now to take care of left me with little time or energy to go to the gym. It also left me little time or energy to put into planning, preparing, and eating healthy meals. Thus, with my husband enrolled full time in an intense university program, and with me working outside the home and having so much to learn about cooking, cleaning, and now being a married woman, my physical health and appearance quickly got put on the back burner. Meals were mostly high in calories and low in nutrition, and we did not eat much fresh fruit or vegetables. I got accustomed to throwing on a pair of sweats and a baggy t-shirt when I got home from work. We started having ice cream every night before bed and going for lots of late night runs to the McDonalds Drive-Thru when my husband wanted a break from studying around midnight.

It really shouldn't have surprised me, then, when my weight started going up. But, the weight crept on so slowly that I didn't really realize (or maybe I was in denial) how much weight I had gained until I saw pictures of myself in my friend's wedding, only 6 months after my own wedding. In 6 months, I had probably gained about 20-25 pounds, and I was really disappointed in myself. I couldn't believe I had let myself go like that. Over the next couple years, I would try to diet and exercise several times. I would lose 10 pounds, and then gain 15. Then several months later I would try again, and the same thing - lose a bit, gain a bit more. I guess I was what you might call a "yo-yo dieter." I couldn't figure out why I wasn't able to have some real long-term success. In about 3 1/2 years, I had gained at least 35 pounds since I had gotten married. Then, when I got pregnant with our daughter, I gained an additional 35 plus pounds during the pregnancy (most of which came off quite quickly after she was born, thankfully.) But by December 2009, I was getting sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

Looking back, I realize that a big reason why I couldn't have long term success during those first 3 1/2 years was because I wasn't looking at weight loss the right way. Both my methods for weight loss and perspective on weight loss were all wrong. I was going to extremes, doing things that I could never do for the rest of my life, such as exercising for an hour or more every day and restricting my food intake too much in order to lose the weight. I was restricting my food intake so much that it was only a matter of time before I would binge and be worse off. I had set myself up for failure each time.

Besides my methods being wrong and not sustainable over the long-term, my perspective was also wrong. I usually started one of my failed attempts to lose the weight after going shopping for clothes and feeling badly about my ever-increasing size. I was only focused on the numbers. Thus, when the numbers stopped dropping or I didn't see "number results", I would get discouraged and give up completely, thinking "what's the use" - thus gaining the weight (plus more) back. I really think that this is key - In order to have real success, you CANNOT ONLY be focused on the numbers. The reason for this is because eventually the numbers will stop dropping. You will stop losing eventually. You will hit plateaus along the way. If you are only focused on the numbers, you are setting yourself up for failure, in my opinion. You may have some success, but I don't think it's likely you will achieve long-term success.

So, now I've discussed how I gained the weight and my failed attempts at long term success due to having a wrong perspective and wrong methods. Obviously I cannot truly say that I have achieved long-term success yet because I've only lost the weight recently. However, I really am hopeful and quite confident that this change will be for the long-term because of my new perspective and methods. In Part 3 of this series, I'm going to discuss my new perspective and methods.