” And God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1:10c) This is how the book of Genesis describes how God saw His work at the end of the second through 5th days of creation and midway through the 6th day. He saw what He had done and it was good. Like the wonderful example that He set by giving us a day of rest, He gave us an amazing example about pacing ourselves and seeing and valuing our work.
God didn’t do everything in 1 day. He certainly could have, but He didn’t.
This is such a helpful reminder to me. I don’t have to try to do everything in 1 day either. Just do something. Just make forward progress. I can be satisfied with the work that I have accomplished and don’t need to stress about the work that wasn’t.
The second part of this verse snippet that is so reassuring to me is that is says “it was good.” It never says “good enough.” If I am striving to serve the Lord, my family, and anyone that my life touches with love, then it is good. I need to stop judging myself by the endless list of work that is never done. There will always be more dishes, more laundry. more school to teach the kids, more housework, more gardening, more farm work, more posts to write, more ways that I could serve, more outreach opportunities, more, and more, and more. What I have to remember is that what I can do today is good.
You are in the same boat, dear tired mamas and daddies out there. Let this echo within your hearts weary single parents working multiple jobs to keep your family going. Loving caretakers of ill or impaired family members find peace in this. What you are accomplishing is good. Don’t let the burden of “enough” hang over you and make you feel worth less that you are. If you are serving in love, you are doing good. Your work is good. Find hope and peace and rest from the business that our society places on us all. Breathe in the realization that “it is good.”
I have a confession to make. I love muffin mixes. :0 Yes, me, the person who likes making everything from scratch. I know that it’s simple to make muffins from scratch and that they are way better for you. (I do still make banana muffins from scratch, because I don’t really like the flavor of the banana muffin mixes. I also make pumpkin/winter squash muffins from scratch because our winter squashes have grown very well the past couple of years.) Maybe it’s because I have to make almost everything else from scratch. It is just so nice, to grab a box from Betty Crocker and add eggs, water, and oil. Plus, just having a mixing bowl and a spoon to wash up afterward is nice too. 🙂
Blueberry Oatmeal
But . . .
I don’t just make the make what that box says. Those 12 little muffins never fill up the hungry tummies that I have around here. I have discovered the magic of add-ins. It’s super simple, makes that box of mix stretch, and results in much more filling muffins. You simply make up the standard muffin mix and then start adding things. At the least, I add some old fashion oats (about 1/2-2/3 cup). I usually also add a couple of large spoonfuls of ground flaxseed. I keep a tub of freshly ground mixed nuts (almonds, walnuts, and pecans) in the fridge, so 1/2 cup of those probably gets tossed in as well. Depending on the type of muffins I am making, I may add things like cubed apple pieces (great in cinnamon muffins) or shredded coconut (perfect in chocolate chip). You can always add more fresh berries to blueberry muffins. I used to slice up strawberries or toss in some fresh raspberries, but DD doesn’t like fresh berries baked in things. I typically don’t add them anymore, unless I am making another kind of muffin as well. Seeds can be a great addition as well. Your imagination and your family’s tastes are the only limiting factor here.
One of the things that I miss a lot since I developed my onion allergy is Chinese food. After some trial and error, I have come up with a tasty homemade version of some of my favorites – egg rolls and stir fry.
This recipe for egg rolls is easy and much healthier, because you bake the egg rolls instead of frying them. DS and DD don’t like the taste of the wrappers but love the filling, so I will usually make a little extra filling and just let them eat it over rice or soba noodles.
Fixing the filling is simple and only uses 1 skillet. Yay for fewer dishes!
Filling them is super easy!
Baking instead of frying makes these so much better for you, but you still get that satisfying crunch!
Here is the full recipe.
Ingredients:
1 small bunch of broccoli
1.5-2 carrots – depending on size
1 14 oz can of bean sprouts (drained)
1/2 roll of sausage (mild breakfast sausage)
1 tsp garlic powder
1.5 tsp ground ginger
1 package egg roll wrappers
Small bowl with some water
Directions:
Cook and drain sausage, being sure to break it up into little pieces like taco meat. The return to the pan.
Shred broccoli and carrots either by hand with a box grater or using a food processor’s shredding disk – I used to use a bag of broccoli slaw but decided this was much more cost-effective.
Add broccoli, carrots, and bean sprouts to the sausage and saute on med-low heat until they start to soften. Mix in garlic and ginger while things are cooking.
Line a baking dish with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350° F.
Lay an egg roll wrapper on the parchment paper so it looks like a diamond (not a square). Place a small amount (about 3 TBSP) of the filling in the center, then fold up the bottom corner of the diamond. Fold in the 2 sides. Using your finger, lightly wet the edge of the remaining side (this should be the top) and then roll the egg roll up from the bottom. Set aside. Repeat until all the egg rolls are filled. As you go along, you may have to adjust your filling amount.
Line completed egg rolls on the parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for about 20 min or until lightly browned on the edges and slightly crispy. Try to line them so they don’t touch, otherwise they may stick together while baking.
Enjoy with your favorite dipping sauce.
DH would be happy to make a meal out of these anytime I fix them.
I have really wanted to use gardening as part of our homeschool for as long as we have been homeschooling. Both my kids are outside and helping around the farm just about every day, so why shouldn’t our gardening time also be life skills and biology. My biggest problem has been finding a way to structure it so it’s not just me hollering “Okay kids, were going out to the garden again to pick things, weed, and water,” or another lesson in seed saving from tomatoes while we are saucing them. Has anyone else ever felt this way? Most days the kids are bored, frustrated, and/or overly energetic – aka they don’t learn anything, because I don’t have any kind of plan.
Enter The School Garden Curriculum by Kaci Rae Christopher. (This book is amazing by the way! It gives full 8-9 week plans of gardening lessons for Kindergarten through 8th grade for fall, winter, and spring, complete with several downloadable worksheets per trimester. Each year focusses on a different topic – things like seeds, soil, etc.) The problem was that it is designed for classroom use at a school where all grades are working in a community garden on different projects that all work together. Each year builds so my next question was “where do I start?” In addition, they were growing some things that we don’t typically grow. (Since we have a home garden instead of a community garden, we only grow what we eat.) Here I was with a lot of great plans (which I really needed) but some confusion over how to adjust them to fit my needs.
I read through the book again with unit studies in mind and found a lot of things that either I have really wanted to start as projects around here or things that I thought the kids would really have fun with. My conclusion was to try to just pick a unit for each season and be fine if we jumped all over the book. I reached out to the author and asked her for her advice on how to augment her book for our homeschool. She had a similar idea.
I handed the book to my kids and asked them to each pick a fall unit, a winter unit, and a spring unit. They both picked the same fall unit (win!) and on their own compromised on the other two (double win!!). This year, we are doing the 3rd Grade fall unit, which is all about the garden as an ecosystem, and the 1st Grade winter and spring units, which are mostly about seeds. The spring unit just happened to fit perfectly with our main science program this year, so yay!
I worked up a lesson plan for these 3 units and printed the corresponding worksheets. We are going to try to do 1 lesson each week from late September until we finish., probably on Fridays, which are usually our more relaxed day each week. Some lessons may need to get moved around depending on how different things in the garden are progressing – for example, I don’t know when my sunflowers will be ready to harvest seeds on and that is the second fall lesson.
I will try to post about our adventure regularly. Time to dig in and get our hands dirty! 🙂
A couple of months ago, I tried to take a realistic look at my schedule and everything that I was trying to get done in a day. I ended most days feeling like a failure because I had listed out everything that needed to get done and I never seemed to get it done. DH would look at me like I was a dragon with 3 heads when I expressed my feelings of failure, because to him, I was knocking it out of the park. I was getting worn out by the constant feelings of failure and the burden of always feeling in “catch-up” mode. So I gave myself a big kick in the rear and started to think about things from a different perspective.
The first thing that I did was list out everything that ACTUALLY had to get done in a day and how long that each would take realistically considering my family and their needs and personalities. Here is what I came up with:
Sleep – 7-8 hours
Morning Bible study – 30 min
Meals – 2.5 hours
Daily hygiene – 1 hour
Cooking – 2 hours
Morning farm work – 1 hour
Afternoon farm work – 1 hour
Kids’ bedtime routine – 1 hour
Dishes – 30 min
2-3 loads of laundry start to (hopefully) finish – 1 hour
Cleaning up the kitchen after meals – 30 min
When I totaled everything up, it came out to about 20 hours out of my day! That gave me 4 hours to do EVERYTHING else. That includes structured school time for the kids, working the horses, tending the garden and orchard, farm projects, cleaning the house, house projects, mowing the always growing 7 acres of grass, etc. I started to think about those hours as my fluid hours. I realized that if I had 4 fluid hours in a day, I could really only plan for about 2-2.5 of them being usable, because inevitably someone would have a meltdown or get hurt or decide to take twice as long doing the morning farm work because we had to stop and study a micro-habitat that exists under a water trough that we were supposed to be scrubbing or kiddos get into a huge fight over who was supposed to brush their teeth first after breakfast which resulted in a 30 min discussion about treating each other with love and respect. You get the picture – life happens. 🙂
As soon as I realized how much I was actually getting packed into that tiny span of time and how much I was getting done out of necessity without thinking about it, I started to feel much less like a failure. I also started making much, much shorter to-do lists. I made loops for everything that needed to fit into those hours: school subjects; fun activities with the kids; barn work; etc. Whatever doesn’t get done today, just get’s moved to tomorrow. I have let go of having a clean house for now. When the kids are older, they can help more. For now, we farm and school and live in our house. It’s never going to be perfectly clean, let alone Pinterest-worthy. I celebrate the days that when I go to bed, the dishwasher is running and the kitchen is clean. But most nights, some dishes are soaking or there may be a stack on the side of the sink. Often, DH and I have some quality time and laughs watching something silly while we fold the day’s laundry that’s stacked on our bed.
I still have days when I feel like a failure, because I haven’t lived up to my expectations. But they are getting fewer and further between. I wrote the phrase “Remember, you only have 4 fluid hours in a day, so only plan for 2-2.5 of them.” in big letters on the rub-away board by my kitchen table. I see it multiple times a day. It is sinking in. My 4 fluid hours realization is freeing me to be in the moment with my family, because I’m not feeling the constant pressure of that to-do list of doom that was always unachievable and setting me up to fail.
Recent Comments