Butterfinger Ice Cream
(Jan McAfee)
1 can Eagle Brand Milk
1 quart Half and Half
3-4 eggs
½ cup peanut butter
1 ½ cups sugar
12 (1 lb.) Butterfingers (freeze then pound to crush.)
Mix all ingredients. Pour into freezer and add milk to fill line
Broccoli Salad with Dried Cranberries
(Jan McAfee)
1 bunch of broccoli cut into bite size pieces
½ red onion thinly sliced then chopped
⅓ cup chopped pecans
½ cup dried cranberries or raisins
⅓ cup light mayonnaise or Miracle Whip
½ cup plain fat-free yogurt
¼ cup Parmesan cheese
1 tbs sugar
1 tbs vinegar (any type)
In serving bowl, combine broccoli, onion, pecans and cranberries.
In a small bowl, mix all other ingredients. Pour mixture over broccoli mix and toss gently.
Serves eight, 136 calories/serving.
Granny’s Fresh Fruit Pie
(Ruby Shryock)
1 graham cracker crust
2+ cups berries or fresh fruit
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoon flavored Jello
3 tablespoon cornstarch
1 cup water
Pour berries or fruit into pie crust.
Mix together Jello, sugar, and cornstarch; add water and bring to boil.
Cook until thickened, about 5 mins., and cool slightly.
Pour over berries in pie and refrigerate until set.
Our Sabbatical – a morning fog that is turning into a great day
I jump headlong into adventures. The world around me fades away when something captures my full attention. God alone knows which ideas will consume me with fire while others float idly by like a leaf in a stream. Kim has become accustomed to watching me chase dreams she may or may not understand.
This time is bigger though. I have quit my job and made it clear that my three-plus decade career is behind me. Without a firm grasp of what comes next, we are bounding into a future that is full of both promise and uncertainty. It is equal parts exhilarating and nail-biting.
Rather than chasing a calling, I believe that God is inviting us to ask for whatever we want. Confident that we will pursue Him, He is allowing us to choose how we move forward together.
He is asking “If you could have any life you want, what would you ask for?”
This blog explains how we are forming our answer to His question.
To answer that question, we needed to get away. Kim and I began preparing for a month-long Sabbatical in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. We rented a rustic two-bedroom townhouse with a beautiful view and packed our bags.
People asked us to explain what we were going to do. Uncertain herself, Kim trusted that I knew what I was doing. However all I had were some fuzzy concepts and clumsy explanations. It was enough for me to know that this deserved our full attention, not a few minutes carved out of days that were already busy.
As we arrive at the end of our month, it is becoming clear.
Here is what we did NOT do:
Go on vacation – despite the wealth of well-intentioned advice on sites to see, places to go, and things to do, we have done almost none of that stuff. Although we strayed out, most of our time was spent tucked away. We have been seeking answers, not experiences.
What we HAVE achieved:
Rest – The first week was nothing but nothing. We went to bed early. Slept as long as we could. Took naps. Ate whatever looked good. Watched a little TV. Took long walks. Talked about random nothingness. I don’t remember the last time we did so little for so long. It was refreshing and allowed me to let go of all my thoughts from a life being left behind.
Spent Time Together – The future may be shrouded in mystery, but I know who I want to share it with. Rest has given us time together just hanging out for the first time since college. We needed to be comfortable with each other before we started building something new. With a future full of blessing, I am thankful for a lifetime with Kim.
We Shared Our Dreams – This consumed all of week two. With a little age and wisdom, we have learned that dreams are about fulfilling needs, not accomplishing goals. Ask anyone who has accomplished a goal only to feel hollow afterwards. Dreams are about what is going on inside of us, not what is going on around us.
Talking about dreams is hard because it makes you confess the things your heart longs for. The world laughs when you reveal your feelings and leaves you feeling vulnerable. Having someone to confide in is a blessing of its own.
It is tough to put dreams into words – first speaking whatever comes to mind, then writing it down, and re-reading to see if it really captures your thoughts. Our first efforts tended to describe stuff we wanted to do, and we had to go back and change them to describe the needs we hoped to fulfill.
An example is that Kim dreams of travel, but that is an action. After a lot of work, we captured that her dream is to experience other cultures in an immersive way that allows her to see, smell, and taste how other people live, both now and centuries ago.
Those may sound like the same thing, but travel alone does not necessarily accomplish that dream. Also, there may be other ways to realize the dream that does not require travel. It is an important distinction.
Write It All Down – For our trip, I packed about a million pieces of paper and Kim’s favorite Crayola broad-tipped coloring markers. Each dream was written in bold, colorful letters and taped to the wall.
Listing our dreams has been something we have collaborated on for a long time and has helped us to stay happy together. We are each blessed with a partner who wants to help the other achieve their dreams, whether big or small, normal or weird. Our obstacle in the past hasn’t been a lack of support, it has been either a lack of a clear vision or poor communication. We are working on that.
As we stared at a wall full of papers, we asked ourselves “If this described our lives, would we be satisfied?” I think God stands ready to give us as much as we ask for. Our lives are limited only by the gifts we request.
Create Activities that Fulfill our Dreams – The idea behind the next step is simple – write down activities that will fulfill the dreams scattered across the wall. While we wait for God to step in, how will we step out in faith?
Some activities may align with multiple dreams. Some are one-time, and others are recurring.
However, it requires a lot of trust. Instincts kick in that scream “She may want to do this, but I don’t!” Every activity didn’t appeal to us both. Whenever one of us captured an idea that made the other squirm, then we would talk about it and explore ways to make it work.
Our secret was to work a little at a time. When we got touchy, we stopped for a while and went back to Rest.
Release Things That Don’t Have a Place – Anyone who has been to our house on New Year’s Eve has been part of our Release & Embrace ritual. This looks a lot like that without the fire. We wrote down the things that will prevent us from realizing our dreams.
Some things we let go of were yesterday’s dreams that we are proud of achieving, but they are now complete. Those can be tough to release.
Do It Again – Every day we looked at our Dreams to see if they were accurate and complete. If something was missing or phrased incorrectly, we changed it. Then we would talk about Activities that could fulfill those dreams. If an activity seemed missing, we would check it against our Dreams to challenge what stirred it.
On days when we had our morning coffee and just didn’t want to talk about those notes on the wall, we went back to Rest for a while – maybe another day. Maybe two.
Eventually, we stared at the same lists over and over until they captured what we really hope for. They paint a life suited to us. Some of it is stuff we already do. Some of it is new.
Are We Finished? – The question God has asked is “What life do you want?” We have a better answer than we did a month ago, but I don’t think we will ever finish and hit the “publish” button. At least I hope not because I never want to stop dreaming.
God’s question to us is an on-going journey. As we are faithful, He invites us to share more of His reign and riches.
If we were to summarize our answer, it would look like this:
Celebrate a life with God at the center, prioritizing relationships, and enjoying the gifts we have been given.
We want our focus to remain on God and the people we love. We want to love better and more. If we can be famous or rich in something, love is the currency we choose.
This answer probably won’t be as exciting as some people hoped. After a month, they will expect a grand revelation, They may be disappointed. However this simple sentence represents us, and provides a framework for us to evaluate how we spend our time.
The details of our our activities will probably adjust as soon as we get home. That’s OK. We have planned our path and trust God to guide our steps (Prov 16:9).
I am recharged and ready to get back in the game, even if I don’t have all the answers. We may not know everything we want to do, but we have a better understanding of what success feels like. Some of our ambitions seem large, others feel more like gratitude for what we have already received.
When folks hear we have returned, we will be peppered with questions about what we decided. They will want clean, concise statements. People tend to focus on the Activities and ignore the Dreams. That is unfortunate.
Life is more about chasing butterflies than it is checking items off a list.
If you want to see a copy of our dreams, click here. If you want to join us in achieving them, stay tuned.
You Talkin’ to Me?
Kim and I are reading the book of Jeremiah together one chapter every day. We thought it would give us a chance to digest the message a little better while we talked about the daily verses.
My initial reaction was to see Jeremiah as a wailing prophet, warning wrongdoers of impending doom. There are about a million examples.
‘Thus says the Lord: “Behold, I am fashioning a disaster and devising a plan against you. Return now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.” Jeremiah 18:11
I’ve never seen myself as an evildoer so the Books of the Prophets haven’t interested me as much as the really cool stories about David, Gideon, or Elisha.
Eventually, one of the stories broke through to me.
In Jeremiah 34, God told Jeremiah to command the people to free the servants they had held beyond the 7 years allowed by Mosaic law. They obeyed but then took the same people back into servitude again. Another example of evildoers, right?
I skipped through this pretty quickly until I thought about it further.
When the servants were “released”, where were they supposed to go? As long-term members of one household, what job skills did they have to find income? What money did they have for the first month’s rent or a security deposit? Their social network was made up of other servants from that house or others close by – should they abandon their roots?
So the servants reluctantly asked to be taken back into their previous positions, surrendering freedom for familiarity.
The families were faced with a tough choice. Welcoming them back as servants meant ignoring Jeremiah. Rejecting their request meant casting them into a world they weren’t prepared for.
I can imagine hearing them talk about how the High Council should put together a transition program for these people before mumbling about the politics of the day never getting much done.
You can almost hear a husband and wife arguing about how to help – one seeing the need and the other bemoaning a difficult financial year where their resources were already spread thin.
In the end, they conceded that if their servant wanted to “come home”, then they would let them. This time they would be nicer, maybe get them some new clothes, or give them an afternoon off every other week.
After all, what else would they do? Anything more would require completely upending their lives and raise a thousand questions where they didn’t know the answers.
The more I reflected over how Jeremiah 34 actually played out for the people, the more it sounded like a very practical solution I would have devised. It changed the way I viewed this wailing prophet.
Jeremiah wasn’t talking to people who didn’t care or viewed themselves as the “bad guys”. Most of these people believed they were doing the best they could in their situations. They had either drifted or were following paths they were raised on.
Jeremiah was primarily talking to people who followed most of the laws of the day – observing the Sabbath, avoiding unclean foods, and displaying mezuzahs on their doorposts.
When God judged the people, he called whole families together (Rekabites in Jer 35). Each was accountable not only for their own behavior, but also for their parents, siblings, and children. That must have been difficult to hear.
God was judging whether or not they would listen to His prophet, reflect on their lives, and blow everything up if it brought them closer to Him.
Jeremiah is pleading for me to ask myself:
Am I willing to listen to what he says and reflect on my own life, or assume he is talking to someone else and keep flipping pages? Do I want more, or am I satisfied with what I have?
I’ve recently rearranged my life to give time to contemplate a lot of things. Some questions are easy – How much should I exercise, and what diet do I want? Some questions are hard – Am I building a city on a hill, joyfully surrendering everything I have been given to expand His kingdom? Are there parts of my life I am holding back, not doing evil, but not pursuing relation with Him as my highest priority?
Jeremiah asks hard questions. He warns of punishment but also promises reconciliation.
Most of the people of his day ignored him. They had busy lives and were generally satisfied with themselves and their situation. Reflection is time-consuming and difficult.
Jeremiah challenges me:
Will you welcome me into your house, listen to me as the voice of God, and then repent?