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Live Simply: The Gray Spaces

Living simply is about choosing to live in the gray spaces of life.

Yes, I know living in the gray sounds far more complex than living in the black and white. Living in the gray is not easy and can often be very confusing, but this is where I remind you "simple" in our context does not mean "easy".

Here's the black and white:

Tax collectors are corrupt. Tax collectors swindle and skim off the top. Tax collectors we do not associate with.

Adulterers are sinners. Adulterers have abused the gift of marriage. Adulterers have sinned against God and their bodies. Adulterers must be stoned.

Samaritans are half-breeds. Samaritans do not worship in the right place. Samaritans belong in their place and we go around. Samaritans we do not speak to.

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Choosing to Overcome

Last week's post on eating disorders and living in recovery with an eating disorder seemed to hit home with a lot of folk. I think because so many of us these days have been affected by an eating disorder in some way--either we know someone or know someone who knows someone or we ourselves live with one. And the likelihood is if you haven't been affected, you probably do know someone, you just don't know you know.

So let's be clear before we get any deeper into the conversation, when we talk eating disorders, we're not just talking teenage and early twenties girls anymore. More and more men are developing eating disorders (about 10% of diagnoses in the US), and the average age in women has become incredibly skewed as treatment centers are seeing a dramatic rise in the over 35 crowd and the average age a girl begins dieting has dropped to age 8.

All in all, when we talk eating disorders in the US, we're talking about 7 million women and 1 million men who have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. And I believe, millions more who have not been diagnosed.


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Sunday Servings: Campfire Chocolate Cake Oranges

I had the joy of camping last weekend in the Colorado wild with my Colorado girls.

Although it was the first time I have seen most of these ladies in more than four years, as the time stretched itself across the cool almost fall days of Rocky Mountain leisure, it felt like only a few days had passed since we last gathered around the table and shared our stories.

I was amazed, and yet not amazed at all, to hear and see and feel how much we've all grown and changed in the past years and yet still somehow retained the closeness of shared experience and shared stories and shared life. How we fell into a natural rhythm around that campfire without any of the awkwardness of absence. How easily we could discuss the deep and meaningful and how naturally we could pass into the absurd and nonsensical.

What I'm certain of is that these kind of friendships are a blessing in life.


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Live Simply: Being Available

Living simply is about making yourself available. Available to relationship. Available to the what is happening right in front of you.

In our Peace Corps training during the first two months of my years in South Africa, one of the things emphasized over and over again was greeting--greet properly and greet everyone. Fail to do that and one of your fellow villagers will write you off as the rude American who doesn't belong and shouldn't be here.

In black South African culture, greeting is what says to the other person--here you are, the person in front of me, and you are the most important person right now. Talking with you, acknowledging your presence in my day, hearing your stories, your woes, your joys. This is most important to me.

But this is hard for most Americans because our culture is time focused...

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The Story of Women Overcoming

I was told when I first arrived in South Africa that within the black cultures of the country when a woman looks at you with twinkling eyes and remarks, "you're getting fat," she means it as compliment. She means to say, I'm glad you are enjoying life and enjoying my country. She means to say, I'm glad you are happy and your are healthy. She means to say, I think you are beautiful.

But for my American ears it was so hard to hear.

It was so hard to accept those biting words that brought up all my insecurities, that reminded of all those years hating my body and hating myself, that recalled all those times I told myself I'll be complete when I was skinny--skinny and beautiful.

More than once I gently admonished, "Thank you for your compliment, but in my culture that is a hurtful thing to say." And I tried to erase the words and the fears they brought up and erase how much I hated them for saying it when I knew it wasn't true and I knew it was not the thing that defined me anymore.

But then there were the younger women. Women in their twenties and thirties. Women highly influenced by the Western media prevalent on their TV screens and streaming through their radios. Women who were beginning to see their bodies differently and the bodies of their peers differently. Women who when they said "you're getting fat" meant it not as a compliment but as a cutting, hurtful judgement.

These moments, the moments when one of my peers commented on my weight in judgement. These moments, when our Western polished, politeness didn't stop the cut from being said. These moments, my heart cried out in sorrow...

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Sunday Servings: Blueberry Cookies

Baking is an act of generosity. It is love and kindness and sorrow and hope baked into a loaf of generosity. Sunday Servings is an attempt to spread the generosity a little further by sharing stories and recipes. If you would like to share your own story or recipe, please do so in the comments section or you can tweet ideas to @AmandaEPeterson or share on my Facebook page.

***

It was apparently one of those comedy of errors kind of days.

I had invited a new friend over for coffee and decided to try a new recipe to go along with the new friendship--blueberry cookies.

It had to be blueberry something because sadly I had a few blueberries who had been banished, uneaten, to the freezer. Now they needed to be used up before freezer burn rendered them a complete waste.

So blueberry cookies, an old recipe I'd found which sounded like a great compliment to the rich aromatic pleasures of coffee.

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Live Simply: An Introduction

Thursday Themes is an ongoing series of posts focused on given topics or passages of scripture relevant to adoption, knowing God, and learning to live simply and love radically. Please feel free to tweet theme suggestions to me @AmandaEPeterson or leave a suggestion in the comments section.

This week we are starting a new theme on living simply. If I had a tag line to carry around with me and introduce the most basic important parts about who I am what I believe, it would be this: Live simply. Love radically. That's it. If you sum up all I believe about God, all I believe about humanity, all I believe about this world we live in and what we do in it into a few simple words, you get live simply and love radically.

In the Live Simply Series we're focusing on what it means to live simply in all aspects of our lives.

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Hannah's Homecoming

Doing something a bit different today with a video blog because I need to talk one on one with you about how you can get involved with Hannah's* homecoming. (Trying to ignore my the weird way my eyes seem to role up into the back of my head when I'm trying to think of what to say next, I hope you'll try to ignore it too, but I'm sure you're used to it.)

View the video at the all new www.AmandaErinPeterson.com.

Get involved by going to www.AdoptionBug.com or www.JustLoveCoffee.com.

Sunday Servings: Peach Pie

Baking is an act of generosity. It is love and kindness and sorrow and hope baked into a loaf of generosity. Sunday Servings is an attempt to spread the generosity a little further by sharing stories and recipes. If you would like to share your own story or recipe, please do so in the comments section or tweet ideas to @AmandaEPeterson.

***

I hosted my first real house guests this week, my high school best friend Mackenzie and her two year old son. (Apologies, family, you don't count as real house guests. I love you, but you don't.)

Inviting the first guests into your home is, I think, the moment an apartment, a flat, a house, an abode becomes a home. It's the first time your own little space in the world wraps its warmth around someone else and for a few moments shares it's hominess and comfort. It's the first time you are established as the owner or the renter of the space and get to play host, offering out good food and comfy chairs and good conversation. It all becomes a little bit more real--this is mine and I want to share it with you....


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Isaiah 61: They will be Called Mighty Oaks

...they will be called mighty oaks,

a planting of the Lord

for the display of his splendor...

Today we're wrapping up our series on the anoinments of Isaiah 61. I can think of no better way to sum it up than with Isaiah's own summing up: They will be called mighty oaks, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.

They.

Those who are poor.


Those who are brokenhearted.

Those who are captives.

Those who are imprisoned in darkness.

Those who long for the year of God's favor.

Those who mourn.

They will be called mighty oaks. They will be planted by the Lord. They will be the display of his splendor.

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The Fledgling

The fledgling.

Mother nudges, gently at first, then more forcefully.

You will come to the edge. You will fly. You will learn to spread your wings. Your courage will be greater than your fear. You will be what God created you to be.

The fledgling.

Falling. Falling fast. Falling faster.

Wings spreading and stretching. Flapping. Flapping. Catching the current.

Flying!

Rising higher. Rising and rising.

The fledgling soaring.

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Sunday Servings: Buttermilk Pie

The past week was a long one with a lot of work and a bit of a cold coming on, so I'm afraid I've only have leftovers to write with today.

Since it's only leftovers, I thought a suggestion with what to do with leftover buttermilk might come in handy. After making the Triple Berry Buttermilk Bundt a few weeks ago, I was browsing the internet trying to find a good recipe to use up my leftover buttermilk.

There's the obvious--buttermilk pancakes, waffles, biscuits--but I was feeling the mood for something a bit more nuanced. I came across a recipe for buttermilk pie, something I'd never heard of and asked my mom if it was a new one on her as well.

Apparently my great-grandmother Mama Bell used to make buttermilk pies. An old recipe that has fallen out of fashion.

Mom went scrounging in her old cookbooks and managed to find a recipe she thought was similar to Mama Bell's. This pie is very rich and tasty. Probably more of a winter pie than a summer pie, but a recipe well worth bringing back into the modern era.

Enjoy!

Buttermilk Pie

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cups of sugar*
• 4 tablespoons of flour
• 1/2 cup melted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Unbaked shell**

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. Beat eggs well and mix ingredients in order given. Poor filling into an unbaked shell.
3. Bake for 1hr and 15min until firm in center. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving. Also tastes nice cold.

Notes

*I used a half cup less sugar and the pie was still very sweet. In the future, I'll probably only use one cup of sugar.
**As appropriate for a leftover feeling, I used store bought pre-made crust. Look for homemade crusts in future recipes.
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Like this recipe? Check out others in the Sunday Servings gallery.

Thursday Thematics: To Comfort All Who Mourn

Thursday Thematics is a new and ongoing series of posts focused on given topics or passages of scripture relevant to adoption, knowing God, and learning to live simply and love radically. Please feel free to tweet theme suggestions to me @AmandaEPeterson.

For our first theme, we're walking through the anointments of Isaiah 61--the passage Jesus read in the Nazareth synagogue at the beginning of his earthly ministry (Luke 4:16-20). After finishing his reading, Jesus rolls up the scroll and says to the crowd, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." If this scripture has been fulfilled, how does a fulfilled version of Isaiah 61 impact our lives today?

...to comfort all who mourn, 

and provide for those who grieve in Zion--

to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, 

the oil of joy instead of mourning, 

and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair...

I've only truly mourned twice in my life.

The first was when my grandfather--my dad's dad--passed away. Although he'd been sick for more than half a year, he was getting better and his dying caught me off guard. It caught me off guard in far away Portland where I had just moved. It caught me off guard in a place that although I thought I knew it for the summers I had spent interning at our small urban church, ended up being strange and all together unfamiliar and very different from the safe confines of my native small town Texas.

I cried in ways I've never cried--deep, heaving, pop blood vessels in your eyes sobs.

I cried for my loneliness. I cried for my determination to be so perfect and do so well and for my overwhelming feelings of imperfection. I cried for the dark hidden feelings inside of me--feelings of being unloved and unwanted and alone. I cried for the suicidal thoughts dormant for years, starting to make themselves known again. I cried for how I hated my body and how I hid the eating-disorder that had kept me company for so many years. I cried for my grandfather, deeply cried, not knowing I was also crying for all these other things.

The second time I really mourned--deeply and uncontrollably--was when I broke up with a long-term boyfriend--him a man who I'd loved deeply, loved like none I had ever loved, loved like myself. Him who I believed I would marry and who I was waiting for the proposal from. Him who walked away and left me a shattered portion of myself--unable to function and remember the Amanda I was without him.

I have grieved many other losses--I've grieved the passing of my maternal grandmother. I've grieved the loss of friendships. I've grieved over sickness and death, and pain and hate, and misunderstanding and jealousy, and losses of many kinds. But these are the two times in my life I can point to and know how my grief turned into a mourning, a deep loss of far more than I was able to name at the time.

It's the nature of life that we all grieve and mourn. None of us will come through without grief. None of us will come through without knowing what it is like to have your heart ripped out of your chest and the subsequent numbness take control of all we were. None of us will escape loss.

But Jesus came to change the way we mourn. He came to bring hope to the hopeless and joy to the joyless. He's come to not only offer comfort to all those who mourn, but for those of us in Zion--those of us who've entered into his church and his kingdom--for us He's come to provide for us in our grief.

He's come to offer us the Spirit of comfort and of consolation. He's come to invite us to share our grief with him. To come as Hannah came to the temple in her distress and to poor all our heart-sobs out before him. He's come to adorn us with joy--with crowns of beauty and oils of joy and garments of praise--an outward sign of what he's doing in our hearts to bring true healing and true comfort.

We are never promised that when we befriend Christ we will not have troubles. In fact, Jesus says just the opposite, "Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows." But thankfully Jesus doesn't leave off there. He continues, "But take heart, because I have overcome the world" (John 16:33, NLT).

Take heart--be certain of this and completely undaunted by the trials and sorrows and troubles.

If given the opportunity, would I undo those things? Would I give us more years with my grandfather? Would I mend the broken relationship? Absolutely. The answer is always absolutely. We would all undo the things which brought us the most brokenness. But at the same time, I don't regret the brokenness.

It's the brokenness I wouldn't undo because that brokenness shaped me. It made me a deeper, richer person more capable of empathy, more capable of love.

Befriending Jesus does not and never did mean eschewing all worldly trouble, but it does mean a Jesus and a Spirit who will mourn with you and provide for you in your grief. It does mean a Jesus who will not abandon you in your troubles and trials and sorrows. It does mean on the other side of brokenness, deeper, richer people.

And that. That is a comfort to me in my distress.

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Like today's post? Read other posts in this series:
Proclaiming Good News to the Poor
Binding Up the Brokenhearted
Proclaiming Freedom for the Captives

Release from Darkness for the Prisoners

The Year of the Lord's Favor