Blessed and broken

Blessings alone do not open our eyes. Indeed, blessings by themselves tend to close our eyes. We do not come to know Him in the blessing, but in the breaking. --Chip Brogden

Everything was just fine for the first 40 years or so. Well, all four of my grandparents died, and my young cousin died, and there was that pesky abduction. Other than that, life was without major sadness, disease, heartbreak, or other mayhem. I married the person I thought was the love of my life and had two incredible children. Life was full of blessings and I didn’t think I really needed God.

Then all hell broke loose. The love of my life crumbled, cheated on me more than once, and our marriage ended. Then he died. I lost my job. My father died. My roof caved in. My brother was murdered.

And somewhere in there, in the breaking, when I thought I had nothing left, I found God.

In the midst of the heartbreak there is so much good. Yes, indeed the barn has burned down but now I can see the moon. There are so many blessings—my little house (roof fixed), my garden, my cooking, my books, my music, my faithful friends, my church, my family, my God.

Insulation

We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world

On this Good Friday I’ve been thanking Jesus for His incredible sacrifice for the sake of my salvation. I’m taking the whole salvation thing very personally. He didn’t go to the cross for everyone; He went for me. He went for me and for anyone else who chooses to believe in His life, His death, and His resurrection.

Belief in salvation sets me apart. This world can be a wretched place. I recently have witnessed that fact first-hand. This world is full of grief and pain, sickness and death, tsunamis and war. But Jesus overcame the world. I’m hanging on to Him so that I have some insulation from the world, a way to rise above it. And from the bottom of my heart I thank Him for His saving grace.

Sweet innocence/hard reality

This old photo is breaking my heart. It's my mother in the center with her newborn baby Mark on her lap. Steve is standing to her right wearing the ironed white shirt, Michael is standing in front with the cute little shorts with suspenders. I'm the geeky big sister in the back. There was one child yet to come, our youngest sister Joan. It breaks my heart because the photo was taken so long ago, in the innocent mid-1950s. Our mother is a beautiful young woman, obviously pleased with her young family. We are all dressed like we were going to church (very likely). We lived in a rambler in the suburbs and we went to Catholic school. We had pot roast or spaghetti for supper on Sunday and our grandfather always came to eat with us. Every summer we drove to our grandfather's house on the Chesapeake Bay. We ate crabs and got stung by sea nettles. Steve was an altar boy and a cub scout. Mike promised our mother that when he grew up he would never leave home and every night when he was grown he would bring her a bag of doughnuts and a pack of CocaColas. I was going to be a nun or an airline stewardess. As Mark got older he longed to be a trash man--he would put his toys in a blanket, climb to the top of the bunkbeds, and throw the toys down into an imagined garbage truck.

I look at my mother's innocent face in the photo and wonder if she ever imagined that she would be 85 years old, a widow for less than one year, when that baby boy she is holding would be shot and killed. Every mother's greatest fear is that one day she could lose one of her children. But to get to the age of 85 and have her youngest son murdered is too much for an old woman to handle. She said today that she would not hesitate to trade her life for his, that she wishes she could have died in his place because the sadness is too much for her, that her life will never be the same. The loss is too great and he was her son for 55 years. The innocence was so sweet  . . .

The crap

When I was about eight years old and my brother Steve was about six, I beat up Danny Kellaher in defense of my brother. Danny Kellaher was probably eight years old at the time. He grew up strong and played college-level football, but how scary can an eight-year-old boy be? I was a scrawny girl with bruised shins and mosquito bites—he was taller than me and outweighed me by many pounds. I always thought of him as the biggest, toughest kid in the neighborhood, much more formidable than any of the Boeteler boys or the Herlihy boys. But I lost all fear when Danny Kellaher hurt my little brother.

I can’t remember the reason for the fight. All I know is that the boys were at the end of our block near the mailbox. (Remember those big blue mailboxes on the corner of every block, the metal bins where the boys dropped in cherry bombs? The Postal Service says that it has nearly eliminated neighborhood mail boxes as a cost-cutting measure but I think it was really all about cherry bombs.) The pummeling of my brother had begun. I didn’t think about Danny Kellaher’s size or my relative inadequacy. I became fearless. All I knew was that I had to protect my brother so I started beating up Danny Kellaher and he ran home to his mama.

That’s the image that I keep replaying in my brain now—the image of myself as a scrawny kid defending my little brother. And I think about my youngest brother Mark, shot and killed two weeks ago by his neighborhood bully. I’m still the big sister and I wish I had been there to defend him. I wish I had beat the crap out of that guy to keep him from killing my brother.

Round two

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Proverbs 3:5

I really don’t want to be a person who is a bottomless pit of woe. This is not the life I imagined for myself. I want to process this emotionally and rationally and get back to my rather dull life, imperfect as it was. I’m deep in the throes of grief again. On April 8, 2010 my dear father died. And on April 3, 2011 my dear brother Mark died. My dad was nearly 89 when he died from complications of open-heart surgery. My brother was 55 when he died from being shot in the back. I thought I knew what grief was when my father died and I was wrong. This is something else, something beyond grief, something crushing that sits in the middle of my chest and grabs my throat from the inside. It’s angry and aching and seemingly inescapable.

People are asking me (rhetorically, I presume) where God is in all of this. How could a loving God permit my brother to be murdered? I don’t know. I’m not even asking Him for an answer to that big question now. I’m just asking Him to help us get through the days. Please. Lord, this pain, this grief is . . . there’s not a word for it, but surely He knows. Will we be stronger because of this? I don’t want to be that strong; I don’t want to believe anything this horrific could ever happen again.

But how do I process this grief? By giving up the need to make sense of it in my flawed human mind? By giving up on trying to grasp God’s plan? Once again I go back to Proverbs to try to discern what God wants me to know.

God shouts

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” – C.S. Lewis

What is He shouting to us now?

I’m processing a new reality in relative quiet. The funeral is over, my children have flown away, and I stare out the window hearing only the fan of my electronic air cleaner, the hum of the refrigerator, and an occasional car passing by. I’m hoping to hear what the Lord is shouting.

Eight days ago my younger brother was murdered, shot in the back by his neighbor. I don’t think any of us can process this heartbreak and senselessness while it’s so raw. But we all need to have something to hang on to, some reason to find meaning in this tragedy. I don’t use the word tragedy often and I’m not using the word glibly now. It is a tragedy, the worse thing that has ever happened to our family.

Days ago I decided that I have to create a box inside my head that I’ll label “senseless things I’ll never understand.” Mark’s death will be in that imaginary box. I could spend the rest of my life grappling with it and it will never, ever make sense.

As soon as Mark died, people started caring for me and my family. My neighbor Nancy drove me 25 miles on Sunday night because I was too shaken to drive to my mother’s house to break the news to her. My dearest friends have been by my side. People from my church called me and sent me messages offering to do anything for me—I know that they meant it. People from all over the world prayed for my family and me—I know that their prayers were lifted to the heavens in one great cry of grief and comfort. My two children cancelled everything else they needed to do to fly across the country just to be with me.

What is God shouting? I think what He is shouting is that terrible, terrible things can happen in this world, There are evil people who can take away people we love. Things happen that we will never understand while we are on this Earth. This is a world of hurt. But in this world of hurt there are so many good people, people who reach out to us, comfort us, pray for us when we get blind-sided by the world of hurt. God isn’t with us in a physical sense but He sends people to us who reflect His love. Thank you, Lord, for showing us in a real, tangible way that you are weeping with us.

Murdered

I have heard that writing can help to heal wounds of the heart. I’d have to write War and Peace one hundred times over to heal this wound. Yesterday my little brother Mark was shot and killed by his next-door neighbor. Yesterday my little brother was murdered.

It was a pleasant Sunday afternoon and my brother was doing yard work, weeding and trimming shrubs at his house on Kent Island, Maryland. There are no credible witnesses to describe what happened next. Yesterday my little brother was murdered. Only my brother Mark and the murderer and my brother’s dog were there and my brother can’t tell his side of the story because he is now dead. The dog may have wandered into the neighbor’s yard. The neighbor had issues in the past with the dog and my brother has tried to keep the dog within the bounds of his own property. No one is sure what happened. My brother had hedge clippers. The neighbor had a gun. My brother was shot in the back with a double-barrel handgun loaded with those wretched bullets that enter a body and explode.

Yesterday my brother was murdered. Apparently he staggered a few yards from where he was standing when he was shot. He collapsed and died in his front yard, near the little cherry tree.

Can someone explain to me what kind of person would carry a double-barrel handgun in his yard on a Sunday afternoon? Can someone explain to me why someone would kill another person because of a dog wandering into his yard?

Mark was a peaceful, friendly guy. He worked hard and loved his family. He doesn’t even own a gun—he has hedge clippers and a riding mower. He was a sweet, loveable man who would give you the shirt off his back. And now he is dead. Yesterday my brother was murdered. I don't know if a big sister's heart can ever heal from a hurt like this.

Natalie's bread

My niece Natalie brought a homemade yeast bread to my house a couple of weeks ago. I'm not good with yeast breads, never was able to get them to rise properly. But Natalie is a Montessori preschool teacher and she said that she bakes this bread with her three-year-old students so surely I can do it. (Ha! Should I consider that a challenge?)

So she sent me the recipe and I baked two loaves a couple of days ago. I didn't get it to rise really well and it looked flatter, more like focaccia than Natalie's loaves, but it was still delicious. And I'm determined to conquer this bread thing and I'm going to keep at it until I get it right. I can't let a toddler outbake me, not even a Montessori toddler.

Vegan Rosemary Garlic Bread

1½ cup lukewarm water
1 packet active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ cup chopped fresh rosemary (divided)
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups bread flour
1/3 cup olive oil
3 to 6 cloves of minced garlic
2 teaspoons kosher salt (or sea salt)

In a small bowl, mix the water, yeast, sugar, and half of the rosemary. In a separate large bowl, add 1 teaspoon salt to flour, mix, then add yeast mixture to flour. Mix slowly until the dough forms a ball.

Knead on a floured board for 10 minutes (this is when having a three- or four-year-child around comes handy). Place the dough in oiled bowl, cover, and let it sit in a warm place until it doubles in size (about an hour).

Mix olive oil, remaining rosemary, and garlic. Punch dough down, knead a few times to make it easy to handle. Shape dough into 2 loaves, place several inches apart on the baking sheet. Score loaves, pour oil/rosemary mix on top. Sprinkle each loaf with kosher salt.

Allow loaves to rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake bread for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Fishsticks on Friday

I’ve been hankering for a hot dog all day today. I couldn’t quite figure out why. You’ve heard the horror stories about how the processing plants basically grind up some unfortunate hog (hair, skin, teeth, and bones) and slide the ground mass into a section of intestine. We buy it, grill it, and put it on a bun with relish and spicy mustard and call it lunch. It sounds great to me now and I’ve figured out why. It’s Lent and it’s Friday and I’m not supposed to be eating meat. Tomorrow a hot dog won’t be the least bit appealing but today it is forbidden, hence the only reason I want it.

When I was growing up it was a mortal sin for Catholics to eat meat on any Friday. (A mortal sin is the really bad kind of sin, the kind that condemns you to hell for all eternity. Venial sins are the little sins, like telling a minor lie, for which you burn in purgatory for an undefined period of time. Sister Mary Ignatius said it was sometime between 300 years and 700 billion years. I don’t know where she got her data.) At some point I heard that it was a mortal sin not because eating meat was wrong but because it was considered disobedience to the church. But the Catholic Church changed the rules in the 1960s with Vatican II and now the abstinence from meat rule is in effect only on Fridays in Lent.

Apparently there were lots of exceptions pre-Vatican II but none of them worked in our house. If you were over 60 years of age you were exempt because you were too old. If you were a nursing mother you were exempt because I suppose babies need meat in their breast milk. If you were of Spanish descent you were exempt because sometime in the last 2000 years someone Spanish did a favor for the pope so all Spanish people were henceforth exempt from the no-meat Friday rule. The girls in high school in Mother Rosary’s Spanish class claimed that they were exempt because they were learning to speak Spanish. What a fool I was to be taking French.

Did you ever hear George Carlin’s take on Catholicism and not eating meat on Fridays? George Carlin also grew up Catholic under the old rules. He said it seemed unfair that people were spending eternity in hell on a “meat rap” for their sin before the no-meat on Fridays rule was changed. Timing is everything.

Forever I will associate tuna noodle casserole with meatless Fridays, though sometimes growing up in my house we had fish sticks or pancakes. Over the years I messed with my mother’s basic tuna noodle formula—tuna, noodles, and cream of mushroom soup. My kids loved my doctored-up version of tuna noodle casserole whether it was Friday or not. You’ll never see this recipe in Bon Appetit.

Tuna Noodle Casserole

16 ounces egg noodles
8 ounces cottage cheese
6 ounce can French-fried onions
3 cans tuna
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 cup frozen chopped spinach
½ cup grated carrot
1 cup milk
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Cook noodles as directed on package until barely cooked, drain. Mix cooked noodles with cottage cheese, half of the French-fried onions, tuna, soup, frozen spinach, grated carrot, and milk.

Put noodle/tuna mixture in a large deep casserole dish. Top with remaining half can of onions and grated Parmesan.

Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbly and brown on top.

Cauliflower soup

What to do when you find a beautiful head of cauliflower sitting on your kitchen counter? You make curried cauliflower soup!

I happened to have saffron and turmeric and ghee in my pantry and I searched through my files, combined, adapted, and came up with this recipe. It was yummy and really not hard to make. [If you don't have an immersion blender, get one! It's a great little tool!]

Curried Cauliflower Soup

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium-size head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 large onion, diced
1 tablespoon ghee
1 teaspoon sugar
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground turmeric
Pinch saffron
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (½ teaspoon if you want it hotter)
3 cups chicken broth, homemade or from a carton or can
½ cup half-and-half
½ cup coconut milk
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep pan. Add cauliflower, then onion; saute, stirring occasionally until vegetables start to turn golden brown, about 7 minutes. Reduce heat to low, add ghee, sugar, and garlic. Cook about 10 minutes until vegetables are brown and carmelized. Add ginger, turmeric, saffron and cayenne pepper; and saute 1 minute longer. Add broth and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until cauliflower is tender, about 10 minutes.

Remove a few pieces of cauliflower and set aside. Using an immersion blender, puree until smooth, about 30 seconds. Add half-and-half and coconut milk and heat through. Add cauliflower florets that were set aside and serve.

Makes about 4 servings.

Swordfish

On Friday night I had almost nothing in the refrigerator. I held out one more day and avoided the grocery store. But in spite of my self-imposed no grocery shopping embargo I had a really great dinner last night. I even used the pickled sushi ginger (but not the buttermilk).

God bless Ina Garten! I had a couple of Trader Joe's swordfish steaks in the freezer. I thawed them and made this recipe from the Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics cookbook. I used chopped sushi ginger instead of fresh ginger. It was fabulous and I'll bet it's a great marinade for chicken too.

Here's the recipe almost exactly as I made it--you know about the ginger and I only used 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard. I'm even posting her photo of the dish. Absolutely no one is better than Ina Garten.

Indonesian Grilled Swordfish

1/3 cup soy sauce

¼ cup canola or peanut oil, plus extra for brushing the grill

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest (2 lemons)

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ cup minced or finely chopped fresh ginger

2 tablespoons minced garlic (4 cloves)

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

6 (8-ounce, 1-inch-thick) swordfish steaks

Combine the soy sauce, canola oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, ginger, garlic, and mustard in a bowl. Pour half the sauce in a low flat dish that’s just large enough to hold the swordfish in one layer. Place the swordfish on top of the sauce and spread the remaining sauce on top. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or preferably overnight.

Thirty minutes before you’re ready to serve, build a charcoal fire or heat a gas grill. When the coals are medium-hot, brush the cooking grate with oil to prevent the fish from sticking. Remove the fish from the marinade, allowing some of the ginger to cling to the fish, and discard the marinade. Sprinkle the fish generously on both sides with salt and place it over the coals. Cook for 5 minutes on each side, just until it’s no longer pink in the middle. Place on a platter, cover tightly with aluminum foil, and allow to rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Serve hot or warm.

Concoction

For the past few days I have refused to go to the grocery store. I’m just not in the mood. But that posed a bit of a problem when I opened my refrigerator tonight to figure out what to make for dinner. I refused to call for pizza delivery. Beer and oven-roasted asparagus are nice but they don’t make a balanced meal. So I looked at what I had available—Canadian bacon, buttermilk, cheese, pickled sushi ginger, and a jar of olive salad. I didn’t use the buttermilk or the pickled sushi ginger—they will have to be breakfast tomorrow. How about a buttermilk/sushi ginger smoothie? Anyone want to come to my house for breakfast tomorrow?

So tonight I took what I had available and came up with a concoction that actually was quite good. I didn’t measure so I can’t tell you exact amounts. Just punt.

Pasta with Canadian Bacon and Olive Salad

Canadian bacon, about 4 slices, cut into julienne strips

Angel hair pasta (the one that’s high in protein)
Boscoli Italian Olive Salad, about ¼ cup
Shaved parmesan cheese

Saute the Canadian bacon until crispy.
While the bacon is cooking, boil water and start cooking the pasta.
When the pasta is cooked, drain and toss with bacon and olive salad.
Sprinkle parmesan cheese on the top and eat it.

Serve with beer and oven-roasted asparagus.

Serves 1 lazy person.

Fen-Phen

It’s a shame about Fen-Phen. It’s a shame that the FDA discovered that it caused heart damage in as many as 30 percent of the people who took it. It’s a shame because it worked.

Fen-Phen was a combination of prescription drugs that was used to suppress appetite. Toni and I went to a doctor to get prescriptions for it back when it was the hottest thing in weight loss. Toni and I have done many crazy things together. Going to a diet doctor was but one of our misadventures. We loved Fen-Phen. Dieting was effortless. We were skinnier than ever. It seemed too good to be true and I suppose it was.

It probably has been 20 years since we heard about this doctor who was prescribing the weight loss wonder-drug combination. So we both made appointments and went together to his office in Alexandria. Neither of us liked him—he was a pale, pudgy, weasel of a man and he just seemed creepy. But still, he was a means to an end. Apparently he needed some sort of excuse, some diagnosis, in order to submit the charges to medical insurance and to prescribe Fen-Phen. Amazing but true, both Toni and I were diagnosed with . . . are you ready for this? . . . ear wax. The weasel doctor stuck instruments in our ears, extracted ear wax, and prescribed appetite suppressants. I suppose the appetite suppressants also suppressed the accumulation of any future, deadly ear wax. Go figure.

At first Toni wasn’t losing weight as quickly as she wanted so he also gave her a prescription to rev up her thyroid. Wow—that really worked. The guy was probably giving us drugs that would kill us, but we’d be thin when our hearts blew out.

Yep, it’s a shame about Fen-Phen. It’s a trade-off. Would you rather be a fat person with ear wax or would you prefer to keep your major organs functioning? I know, I know—it’s a hard choice.

That dirty word

Since when did the word evangelical become a dirty word? I never try to hide my Christianity. Yet I’ve noticed that some people kind of look at me sideways when they ask me if I’m evangelical, like that’s just too weird. I know what they’re thinking because I used to think the same thing. They equate evangelical Christians with Republicans and Tea Party members and meat eaters and people who wear lots of polyester. Politically I am somewhere between leftist and I-don’t-care to be either a Republican or a Tea Party member. I’m a fallen vegetarian. I prefer natural fibers but I have no moral repugnance to man-made fibers. Even man-made fibers are useful on occasion. But I’m still determined to be a Christian—does that make me (that dirty word again) evangelical?

(Never, ever depend on me for a definitive explanation of anything theological. What I write has no theological basis, it’s just an observation.)

I’m not even sure what the term evangelical Christian means any longer. I think it’s supposed to mean that a person who believes in Jesus is called to proselytize, to “spread the faith to all nations.” No one else ever affected me by preaching to me and I’m not comfortable preaching to others. I’m just going to live my life the best way I can, try to “live the Gospel,” and not be an embarrassment to Jesus. Sometimes I fail.

For me it’s okay to defy description. It’s okay to be a liberal, a Bible-toting Christian, a feminist, and a banjo player all at the same time. None of those labels is inconsistent with being evangelical, is it? Can I simply work on being a good Christian and not worry about the labels?

Irish cooking

A number of years ago my mother recounted her adventure eating Irish food. She was in Ireland on a group tour. The food had not been memorable and toward the end of the trip they were craving something different so they went to an Italian restaurant. She ordered spaghetti and meatballs. The dish arrived—a pile of spaghetti and meatballs in the center of the plate, surrounded by mashed potatoes. So much for Irish food.

My opinion of Irish food wasn’t elevated much by all the women of Irish heritage who surrounded me when I was growing up. For over 30 years I was married to a guy who was 100 percent Irish. Not a drop of non-Irish blood sullied the family bloodline until he married me, a mongrel. My mother-in-law was a wonderful woman and she made great spareribs. But I recall one Thanksgiving looking at the table and seeing nothing green—there was a turkey, ham and roast beef, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, rutabagas, stuffing, and slightly burned rolls. I think there was a brownish jello mold.

My husband used to complain that I didn’t have the things in the refrigerator that his mother had. Like he could always open his mother’s refrigerator and find a plate of cooked meatballs, unimpeded by any kind of protective wrap. He always entered his childhood home through the back door to the kitchen and walked straight to the refrigerator. I just wasn’t a good wife or a real woman because of a cold meatball deficiency. It was grounds for annulment in the Catholic Church.

Yesterday my dear friend Trish made colcannon and sausages and brought them to my house. Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish that is a sort of cabbage and potato hash. The colcannon was yummy, but note that although it has a fancy Irish name it’s still cabbage and potato hash. What’s not to love about cabbage and potatoes fried together with butter?

For our Irish meal I made a new recipe for Irish soda bread that turned out well—slightly salty, slightly sweet, slightly caraway—and not dry like the commercial soda bread you buy at the market. And it’s easy—just requires a bowl and a wooden spoon, a quick stir, and pop it in the oven.

Irish Soda Bread

2 cups all purpose flour
5 tablespoons sugar, divided
1½ teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons butter, chilled, cut into cubes
2/3 cup raisins
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 375°F. Lightly butter a 8-inch-diameter cake. In large bowl stir together flour, 4 tablespoons sugar, baking powder, salt, and baking soda in large bowl to blend. Cut in butter with pastry cutter until coarse meal forms. Stir in raisins and caraway seeds. Make well in center of flour mixture. Add buttermilk. Gently stir dry ingredients into milk to blend. Do not over mix.

Using floured hands, shape dough into ball. Transfer to cake pan and flatten slightly (dough will not come to edges of pan). Sprinkle dough with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.

Bake bread until brown and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes. Cool bread in pan 10 minutes. Transfer to rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.