Post-traumatic psychiatric disorder

When my marriage broke up after 120 years I thought I was going to lose my mind. Really. Once, in the depths of despair, I drove to the local emergency room at 3 a.m. I thought it was going to kill me and I wanted them to give me CPR. Or maybe I just didn’t want to die at home alone. I don’t know—it was truly temporary insanity.

So I sought out a psychiatrist, someone I knew vaguely because he was an advisor on a project I was working on, a project related to children of alcoholics. He had a private psychiatric practice but he also was an expert on youth resilience. I liked him a lot and his support was invaluable to me at a very vulnerable time in my life. But there are three specific things I recall him saying to me that have stuck with me, for better or for worse.

I can picture him, very dapper and urbane, in his beautiful chair, in his perfect artsy office. He pushed his glasses down on his nose and looked at me over the top of his wire frames. He said, “You don’t detach easily, do you?” Of course I don’t detach easily. That’s why I stayed married, for a little bit of better and a whole lot of worse, for 120 years. Once attached, I’m stuck. No amount of reason, no blast of reality, no betrayal, no urge for self-preservation will detach me once I’m stuck. He was disarmingly correct. I hated him for pointing it out and I hated knowing it was true. This is a flaw that I don’t know how to correct. I’m missing a detachment gene. Perhaps I can get a handicapped parking permit for that.

He also told me that I was one of the most resilient people he had ever known. From him, that was an enormous compliment. I try to remind myself of that from time to time, though many times I simply don’t believe it’s true, even though he was the expert on resilience.

And the other thing I recall him saying to me, something I thought was totally charming and endearing at the time, was, “Someday, some wonderful man is really going to love you.” I recall his exact words, burned into my heart. I took that as a promise, a solemn vow. Coming from his mouth, he who knew me so well, it felt like he was predicting my future. I was ebullient, hopeful, excited that my sorrow was going to be turned into joy. The ugly dissolution of the marriage was going to worth all the pain because I would spend the rest of my life with that wonderful unknown man.

Fast forward 15 years. I still don’t detach easily. I try to remember that I’m resilient but I’m stuck doubting the power of my resilience. And the wonderful man who is really going to love me is not here. I’m still waiting for that someday.

Carpe felis

I’ve just learned a new rule for living: If an avocado is at its peak perfection of ripeness, eat it. Eat it even if it’s 10:30 at night and you’re heading for bed. Who knows if you’ll even wake up in the morning? Who knows that someone won’t break into your house while you’re sleeping and steal the perfect avocado? What if there’s nuclear annihilation overnight and you passed up the chance to eat the avocado, believing there would be another day? (Such a cheery optimist, aren’t I?) If you paid a whopping $2 for the doggone thing at Whole Foods, savor it at its moment of perfection.

Today the weather was spectacularly gorgeous. I let my feline child go out in the backyard (under my vigilant supervision) because I simply couldn’t refuse her. She has had a tough week—trip to vet to have blood work and they got a urine sample by withdrawing it from her bladder with a hypodermic needle. I am grateful that I can pee in a cup when so instructed. My poor old kitty is about 120 in cat years and she has health issues, so letting her sit outside in the sunshine seemed like a good idea. She sat under the cherry blossom tree, stretched out on the mulch and let the cherry blossoms fall on her. Honestly, I could tell that she was full of the simple joy of sitting in sun, feeling the breeze and the cool earth beneath her tired old bones. I just sat on the back steps, seemingly for hours, watching her watching the squirrel that chattered in the tree above her, seeing her one blast of youth when she made a futile attempt to go after a robin. I kept thinking, who knows when or if she (and I) will have this chance again.

My old girl had a good day and she is now curled up, sleeping on the sofa in my office. I had a good day. I ate that avocado. I savored the moments.

Coming soon to your neighborhood . . . senile dementia

I just read online a report about signs of senile dementia. Don’t ask me why I’m even reading reports on senile dementia. I think I’m going to become an indigenous Alaskan and walk into the ice house now and seal the door. Put me on the ice floe with a hunk of whale meat and a Bible and let me float away into oblivion. Here’s what the report says:

"More bad news for night owls: Your sleep cycle now may lead to dementia later. In a December 2011 study published in Annals of Neurology, 1,300 healthy women over the age of 75 were followed over the course of five years. By the end of that time, 39 percent had developed some form of mild cognitive impairment or dementia. Researchers found that women with weaker circadian rhythms (those who performed less physical activity early in the day) were 80 percent more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment or dementia than women who were active early in the day.”

Lord, help me! I have horrible insomnia. Horrible. I’ve tried everything. Don’t even mention “good sleep hygiene” to me—I’ve heard it all and I’ve done everything. I’ve done lots of drugs—ranging from over-the-counter sleep aids (it is to laugh, she says, any of the pain-PM meds don’t even make me yawn) to Lunesta to Ambien (I unconsciously shopped online on Ambien and had to quit it for the sake of my credit card) to Seroquel, a medication for psychotic disorders. Nothing works.

Take, for example, last night. I went to bed at around 11 and didn’t get to sleep (with medication) until close to 1 a.m. I was wide awake, legs moving, no hope of further sleep at 4 a.m. Finally I gave in and I got up close to 5 o’clock, cooked a bowl of oatmeal, checked my e-mail, did some online research, read for a while, then went back to sleep. It was nearly 10 a.m. when I got up again. This is not good. This is not restful sleep and I’m sure my circadian rhythms are going to be the death of me. Exercise in the morning? Last night was a good night. Many nights I don’t get to sleep until almost 4 a.m. How in the name of all that is holy am I supposed to get up and exercise in the morning light?

So if this kind of sleep cycle causes dementia I might as well get on the waiting list for the dementia unit at the home. I’ll skip past the independent living part and go straight to the unit with the locked doors. "Sorry, Miss Xander, this is your home now. No, you don't live in the pretty townhouse with the garden any longer. They had to sell it to put you in this ring of hell. Now just be good and eat your apple sauce." I did not need this “more bad news for night owls” from the neurology scientists. Note that they studied women and the bad news is specifically for women. For 80 percent of the women! I’m a woman. I’m one of the 80 percent. Am I walking down the road to senile dementia? Damnation, I don’t want this to be my life. Believe me, I’m much rather be sleeping.

The Home

Today I drove to church—as old ladies are wont to do on Sundays—then drove to visit my mother at THE HOME. I waxed a table for my mother, rearranged her potted plants, and moved her Easter décor into her storage locker. I passed up the chance to eat dinner with my mother in THE HOME’s dining room—roast chicken because it’s Sunday, over-cooked yellow squash, and apple brown Betty on the menu. I passed up the dining room with the bright lights, walker parking area, and peppermints in a bowl at the reception desk in order to come home and share a can of tuna with my cat. This is all true, except I made up the apple brown Betty part. I don’t remember what the dessert choices were.

By virtue of my age, I am now eligible to move into THE HOME. Two of my dearest, oldest friends were at my house for a visit last week and we were discussing what we plan to do when we get older and need to move into some sort of supported living environment. They think it’s a good idea for all of us to live in THE HOME together. All I could think about was the place where my mother lives. And I’m thinking about euthanasia—not for my mother but for myself. Just shoot me.

My mother lives in a very, very nice place. I hate the carpet in the hallways, I hate the way it smells, I hate the draperies and the cheery people who work there. I especially hate the storage cubes in the dungeon where people store all of their African masks and ugly artwork and luggage and family photos in chicken-wire cages for all the world to see. I’ve spent many an hour with my sister in that dungeon, sitting on the concrete floor rearranging my mother’s stored possessions. Her crockpot is in there because she never uses it. She has plastic bins full of Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas decorations. She has plastic bins full of décor pillows. (My mother has a pillow fetish.) All the framed photos of her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren are in that cage. It’s life reduced to what fits in a storage cage.

I keep thinking about Little Edie, living with Big Edie in the crumbling old house in East Hampton—Little Edie with her scarves and her swimsuits, dancing and feeding Wonder Bread to the raccoons that lived in her attic. Little Edie may have been totally wacko but at least she was doing what she wanted and she lived on her own eccentric terms, not in a dormitory full of old people.

Lord, I have just one humble prayer. Please let me die with my boots on. Please don’t let me drool and don’t let people feed me over-cooked vegetables from a plastic tray. Please don’t force me to have wall-to-wall carpeting. The carpeting alone will kill me. Please don’t let them put me in THE HOME with the old people.

Riptide

And I thought about the feeling of helplessness, the feeling of almost drowning, my little incident with the Atlantic Ocean.

It was the summer I turned 12. My family went to Bethany Beach on the Delaware shore for a day trip. It was hot and the beach was packed blanket-to-blanket with people searching for some respite from the heat. My father stayed on the shore, watching my younger brothers while my mother and I waded into the ocean. We floated in relatively placid surf on a rented rubber raft. I began to become aware that there was a little too much distance between me and my mother, who was alone on the raft. As I tried to swim back to her, I lost ground, swimming forward but moving backward deeper into the ocean. My feet no longer reached the ocean floor. I was quickly becoming tired as I moved farther from my mother and she began to realize that I was in trouble. After the fact, I knew that she began screaming, but all I knew at the time was sheer terror. I had never heard of a riptide and had no strategy to save myself. I was gasping, swallowing water when two lifeguards reached me and put me on a raft. I don’t know how much time elapsed, but as we neared the shore, they asked me if I wanted to ride in on a wave. Bad idea, but I must have agreed. The wave threw me and I washed up on shore like a half-dead mackerel.
 
I now know that the strategy for surviving a riptide is not to fight it but to swim parallel to the shore to get out of the current. But I have no intention of testing the theory. That’s why I’m not interested in swimming now, some 50 years later. The feeling doesn’t go away. I smell salt water or even chlorine in a swimming pool (I had another incident in a pool at Girl Scout camp) and my heart starts to pound.

And that’s how I feel about life in general sometimes—like I’m trying so doggone hard to swim forward but the current keeps pulling me back. My arms are tired. My feet don't touch bottom and the lifeguards sent to save me nearly drowned me again.

Imaginary man in the imaginary chair

My former husband John is not only my ex-husband but he died so there is no more communication with him. When we were married he had affairs—more than once. The repetition of that horrible betrayal is what led to the demise of our marriage.

Recently I learned that it seems nearly everyone who knew him at the time knew that he was cheating on me. Perhaps I was the only one who didn’t know. I was the fool. The first incident was well over 30 years ago, but sometimes it still hurts, causes a wrenching pain deep in my gut that can still bring bitter tears.

The word “closure” really means nothing to me but I’ve been struggling with some hurt that recently resurrected and I wanted to deal with it constructively. So I dug back to my counseling training and worked through a Gestalt type of conversation with him, talked with the invisible John, the man in the empty chair. I told him how disappointed I was in him, how much he hurt me, that I had loved him, been faithful to him for over 30 years of marriage, and never deserved his unkind treatment of me. I had attempted such conversations with him in real life and recalled the exact words he had said, so I knew what his response would be.

"It's not about you, Donna. I hate my f***ing life. I hate all this f***ing responsibility. I just needed a break. I’ve got needs. No one ever thinks about my needs. I don’t know why you have to think everything is about you.”

And now I’m able to talk to him calmly, with strength and conviction. I’m able to get through his anger so that for once he hears me. I say, “No, John, you’re wrong. A lot of it is about me. You were not operating in a vacuum. What you have done hurt me deeply. It humiliated me. The bond of marriage—our marriage—that was so important to me became meaningless to you. I loved you and never, ever would have considered doing to you what you have done to me. I feel betrayed by the person I loved most, the person I trusted most. I no longer know you, no longer recognize the person without morals who have become. And you obviously don’t know me. Because if you really knew me, you would know how devastating this has been for me. My life changed forever because you dismissed me as unimportant, because you deceived me, because you thought so much more of yourself than you did of me. So, no matter what you think or what you say, what seemingly logical explanation you conjure up, it is about me.”

I have much more to say, but that’s the crux of it. I’m sure he would have much more to say too, and in real life I wouldn’t have had much of a chance to say anything coherent because he would have just shot me down with his characteristic intense anger. But in a funny way I got to tie him down in the imaginary chair, slap duct tape on his mouth, and make him listen to me. For once maybe he heard me. And I can tie him down in the imaginary chair and do it again whenever I want to. I've got all the power now.

The boys at the dead tree

Writing exercise. You may not know how it works, but you'll figure it out. One take, no edits, just to make me do it.

Samuel L. Clemens, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, page 161. “On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.”

“No,” she said, “Not that boy. He’s the boy from high school, the one I told you about, the one you never remember.” I smirked, that wise-ass smirk of mine that I smirk when I think I’ve outsmarted her. “Well then, it stands to reason that if I can’t ever remember him, then I simply don’t remember him now or ever.” Truth be told, I knew who he was but I didn’t want to acknowledge that to her, especially when she told me she was marrying the boy next Saturday. It was going to be a quiet marriage ceremony in the Methodist Church on the island. “Oh, Lord have mercy, Shelley, did Mr. No-Name get you knocked up?” I said, without an ounce of compassion. She looked away and said, “No, that’s not it at all. We’re in love and we just don’t want to wait.” Oh, sure. I couldn’t accept the love thing but even less than the love thing, I couldn’t accept the sex thing. I knew where babies came from and the whole idea totally grossed me out. The fact that my cousin Shelley had done it—probably in the back seat of Raymond’s Chev-Ro-Lay—was repulsive. What was she thinking? I wouldn’t even kiss that pimply-faced geek on the lips, much less do it with him. Her standards were so low. I knew all about Raymond, even though I refused to acknowledge that I knew him. He was one of those boys with greasy hair who wore plaid shirts and pants pulled up too high, one of the group who would hang out by the dead tree behind the service station, smoking cigarettes and trading comic books. They were goofy little boys who didn’t even have enough guts to be real juvenile delinquents. And the thought that my beautiful, talented cousin Shelley did it with one of those losers and was actually going to marry one of those losers made me want to barf. Shelley could have been prom queen, she could have gone to beauty school or been a flight attendant, but instead she was going to marry that greaseball Raymond? She added, “I’m sorry to tell you that you can’t be my bridesmaid because there aren’t going to be any bridesmaids. And you can’t even come to the wedding because only our parents are coming.” “Okay, Shelley, that’s it!” I replied. “Ever since we looked at those bridesmaids dresses in the Sears catalog you’ve been promising me I could be your bridesmaid. Now you’re not only telling me you’re marrying that creep Raymond but you’re also dropping me as a bridesmaid. This is my only chance, Shelley. How can you do this to me? And how can you do it to Kookie? You swore you would marry him and I believed you.” Shelley was the president of the Edd (Kookie) Byrnes fan club. She even had a photo of him that he personally signed. And she was going to marry Raymond when she could have had Kookie? So on Saturday, just before noon, Shelley, wearing her baby blue dress with the white daisies and a blue bow in her hair, sat in the back seat of Uncle Frank’s car and rode to the church to marry Raymond. Raymond wasn’t behind the service station that day, smoking cigarettes and trading comic books. He was at the church marrying Shelley. But the boys carried on without him. On Saturday, shortly after noon, the boys were at the dead tree again.

Without your love

Grief. Grief comes back, recycles on cold Sunday afternoons. Especially on a cold Easter Sunday afternoon.

I looked at the contents of my closet the other day and noted that it looked like the closet of someone in mourning. I suppose that’s about right. I’ve never been into bright wardrobe colors, rather consider that my choice of so much black, so much drab, identifies me as an artist. Do I have to be in mourning to be an artist? Do I have to feel the constant ache of a broken heart? A few weeks ago I marked the one year anniversary of Mike’s death—the latest in the death triology—my father dead, my brother murdered, Mike dead. And I thought maybe I was moving beyond the grief. Maybe. Maybe not.

The wonderful thing, perhaps the saddest thing is that Mike loved me. He told me I was the love of his life. He told me that the times he had with me—what he called “the adventure”—was the best time of his life. He said that even when he was dying. There’s a big hole left when someone who loves you departs this Earth.

A year is not nearly enough. I am learning what life is like without him. Sometimes it’s okay, but many times it’s incredibly lonely. I miss his music, I miss his strength, I miss his wacky sense of humor, I miss his knowledge of all kinds of trivia. Sometimes I’m not sure where I am without him. All I know is that I miss him and I don't have any idea how long I'll feel this way. 

And the words of a song cycle through my head, Michael McDonald singing “without your love, where would I be now?” I guess I know the answer to that question.

Flagship Rum Buns

This is something I feel I need to post as a public service to my friends who are native Washingtonians who grew up eating the Flagship's rum buns. There has been a discussion on the local Chowhound about the rum buns and many people have been searching unsuccessfully for the recipe. Well. . . I have a very old, yellowed, disintegrating copy of the recipe that I cut out of the Washington Post many years ago in a column called “Anne’s Reader Exchange.” Here’s what it says:

"The rum buns served at one of our waterfront restaurants have gained national as well as local fame. The October, 1967, issue of Gourmet magazine carried the recipe for this specialty of the house. A reader repeats it here for Mrs. I. L. of Woodbridge, who requested the recipe after tasting the buns at the Flagship.

Happy baking to Mrs. I. L. I think this is the recipe for rum buns she wants.

In a bowl, combine 1 cup milk scalded with ¼ cup each of sugar and shortening and 1 ¼ teaspoons salt. Let mixture cool to lukewarm and stir in 1 envelope or cake of yeast. Beat the batter with a rotary beater until it is smooth and stir in 1 egg, well beaten, and 1 ½ teaspoons rum extract. Add 1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted flour and beat the mixture with a rotary beater until it is smooth. Add 1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons additional flour and mix the dough until it is smooth and light. Cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough rise in a warm place (80 to 85 degrees F.) for about three hours or until it is double in bulk.

On a lightly floured board roll out the dough into two strips, each about 12 inches long, 4 inches wide, and ½ inch thick. Brush the tops with melted butter and sprinkle each strip with ¼ cup each of sugar and chopped raisins. Rolls out the strips into jelly roll shapes about 15 inches long, pulling out the edges, if necessary, to keep them uniform. Cut the rolls into crosswise slices about ¾ inch thick.

Place the slices in well-buttered muffin tins, cover them with a towel, and let them rise in a warm place until they are double in bulk. Bake the buns in a hot oven (400 degrees) for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the buns from the oven and brush the tops immediately with an icing made by blending 1 cup confectioner’s sugar with 2 tablespoons rum extract. This makes about 18 buns.

Signed by Johanna"

 

Does anyone know Mrs. I. L. of Woodbridge, Virginia? Hope she has had many years of happy baking and that she still uses that old rotary beater.

Good Friday tears

I found this artist’s conception of the face of Jesus a few days ago. I’ve been looking at it and looking at it again, considering Jesus’s humanity in this week before Easter. And tonight I went to Good Friday worship service and imagined His face, imagined what this week was like for Him 2000 years ago.

Just knowing what we know from historical accounts brings me to tears. Imagine that Jesus was just a man, not the son of God. He must have been a really nice guy. People loved him and crowds followed him, listened to every word he said. He was selfless and kind and outrageously principled. He was wise and forgiving and he loved his mama. And he loved and served God, his father. Yet he was betrayed by his closest friends, unjustly accused, savagely beaten, and sent to die a horrible death, nailed to a cross to appease an angry crowd. That alone is one of the saddest, most heartbreaking stories I’ve ever heard.

But if you read the Bible and believe, like I do, that Jesus was indeed the son of God, the horrific betrayal and death is not a tragedy. It was and is the means of our salvation. When on the cross He cries out His last words, “It is finished!” it is not a cry of defeat, but of victory.

I still cry when I think of what He went through. He went through it for me and I am so grateful.

Inspiration

I'm totally using other people's creativity here. Just for the record, these are some of my new favorite pieces of painted furniture. When possible, I'll cite the source. These are the things that make it impossible for me to stop painting. Last week I was at my daughter's house in Austin, painting furniture of course. I picked up a plastic cup to take a drink of water. It wasn't water--it was paint. Oh, well. . . no wonder I'm loony.

This was done with CeCe Caldwell Paint by Nancy Walker at Fresh in Jasper TX. The colors are Mississippi Mud and Georgia Clay. The drawers have a cheesecloth application, which I need to learn! Note that it appears this is a dresser but the lower drawer was left out. Great work, Nancy!

 

 

This cupboard was in some random catalog. Don't know much about it but I love it and it was the inspiration for a little cupboard that I did.

 



Don't know much about this one either but I love the blue stripes on the white painted stairs and I love the chest at the top of the stairs. I painted an old immigrant's chest like this, just from the little glimpse of the piece at the top of the stairs.

This is from Miss Mustard Seed who is well loved in the shabby chic paint world. I think she uses milk paint not chalk paint. Love the pale green over the reddish brown and the very shabby distressing.

Don't know where this one is from either, just an image I saved because I love the tone-on-tone color of the simple little chest.

This room, everything, just makes me want to paint something these luscious shades of green and greenish blue.

This is one of my favorite colors--Annie Sloan Chalk Paint Emperor's Silk. This piece is by Lisbeth Danner who has an Etsy shop called ReCreation Studio. Great job with the red and great fabric. Thanks for the inspiration, Lisbeth.

That's enough for now. I've been inhaling too many paint fumes.

'90s fashion

“Sorry, Mom, no offense but it’s so ‘90s.” Last week I bought my daughter a cute, trendy, designer label jacket at a discount store. I e-mailed her a photo of it, thinking she would be thrilled. It seemed like something that she would like. Wrong. Only I thought it was cute and trendy. She thought it was ‘90s.

“What’s wrong with ‘90s?” I asked myself. Isn’t that the current thing? It’s all a matter of perspective, I suppose. The 1890s were a while ago but in my mind the 1990s were recent. Weren’t they? It’s not like the jacket had giant shoulder pads or wide lapels. I wish I had a photo of myself wearing the hip-hugger fluorescent orange polyester short-shorts with the wide white belt that I wore in about 1970. Now that is a dated look. Even I shudder to think I once wore such a thing. But I still wish I had the photo to prove it.

Then there were the “parachute pants” I owned recently—not one, but two pairs. I loved those pants but my daughter called them MC Hammer pants. If I had them on, she’d say, not too subtly, “It’s Hammer time.” I probably bought them in the dreaded ‘90s. Shamed into a wardrobe purge, I gave them to Goodwill. Some lucky woman somewhere has those pants.

Since I’m on the subject of fashion, I want to point out a consumer shift that I heard about on NPR a few days ago. Apparently sales of adult diapers have now surpassed the sales of baby diapers. Talk about dressing 90s—as the population ages (yes, I’m talking about us, the baby boomers) we’re incontinent and wearing diapers. Lord, forgive me, but I just considered putting a bullet through my head.

Ina's redemption

I was in Austin for a couple of weeks with my daughter and granddaughters. Food? Yes! I got to eat at my favorite restaurant in the entire universe--Fonda San Miguel--and had Chiles Anchos Rellenos de Picadillo de Pollo (Ancho Chiles Stuffed with Chicken Picadillo). Lord, forgive me for loving food so much. Surely it must be sinful. I actually have the recipe for this dish, directly from the chef at Fonda San Miguel. But I'm afraid to make it. I'm afraid that I won't do it justice, that the perfect tortillas and the funky art and the margaritas at Fonda are what make the experience so wonderful and I won't be able to re-create it at home. I brought home matchbooks from the restaurant as if that could comfort me. Sigh.

However, while in Austin I did try Ina Garten's recipe for lemon roasted chicken with croutons. Doggone good. So I tried it again today at home, just to make sure it was really that good. Yep, it's really that good. I needed to purge my recent negative Ina Garten experience, needed to erase the look and taste of that dreadful meatloaf recipe of hers. The mere thought still makes me queasy. But now my house smells like roast chicken and burned onions. It's fabulous. I wonder if some random eligible male walking down the street might follow the aroma to my house and propose marriage on the spot. And look at how beautiful the chicken looks--perfectly roasted! Should I refuse such a proposal?

You can find Ina's recipe on the Food Network at http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/lemon-chicken-with-croutons-recipe/index.html. Make it!

Balsamic roasted Brussels sprouts and apples

I made this recipe last night to accompany rosemary pot roast. (The pot roast was another new recipe that turned out well.) Sorry, but the Brussels spouts/apples didn't last long enough to get a photo. Plug here for a local store--Ah love--that sells olive oil and vinegar. The store is fabulous because you can go in, get a little cup and a little chunk of bread, and try out all the varieties of olive oil and vinegar. For this recipe, I used Ah love Laconiko Greek lemon olive oil and green apple white balsamic vinegar. The olive oil is incredible--I just drizzled a little of it on some angel hair pasta to make sure it was as incredible as I thought it was last night. It is. And the vinegar? You could drink it. Not kidding. I'm imagining sprinkling some on strawberries and kiwi fruit, maybe with some shredded mint. In my humble estimation, roasted veggies have no equal, and with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar . . . heaven.

Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Apples

2 cups trimmed fresh Brussels sprouts, cut in half
1 large honeycrisp apple, cubed
1 tablespoon olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Toss Brussels sprouts, apple, olive oil, salt and pepeper in a large bowl; place in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment (be sure to spread pieces apart). Roast at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes or until just tender. Remove from oven and sprinkle with balsamic vinegar; return to oven and roast an additional 5 minutes or until tender.

Source: The Professional Palate

Ash Wednesday

   “Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I.”   
Isaiah 58:9

While I have both feet firmly planted in my non-traditional Bible-based practice of Christianity, occasionally I look back over my shoulder at my long-standing Catholic roots. Like today—Ash Wednesday. I sometimes miss the rhythm of the liturgical calendar, days like Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the period of preparation for Easter.
 

Last week in community group, our group leader talked about the value of fasting as a method of prayer and staying focused on God’s sovereign grace. And in my head I was already thinking about Lent and what I had traditionally done as a Catholic. In the Catholic Church, Ash Wednesday is a day of fast. My community group leader’s suggestion gave me the perfect opportunity to try fasting within the context of my current church while honoring the tradition I grew up with. So today I’m fasting. I’m nearing the 24-hour without food mark. Yes, I’m getting hungry and my stomach is growling but I’m keeping focused on the reason for the fast. It’s all good.

This morning my eye caught a Bible verse I have on my bulletin board—Isaiah 58:9. And wondering about the context for that verse, I read all of Isaiah 58. A strange coincidence—part of the chapter is about fasting and how we should approach it.

I went to a noon Mass at my local Catholic church because I wanted to stay focused on God today and I wanted to go to a liturgical Ash Wednesday service. And yet another amazing coincidence—in his sermon the priest quoted Isaiah 58—the exact verses I had been meditating on this morning. I guess God wants me to pay attention to Isaiah 58. I hear you, Lord, loud and clear. Isn’t it amazing when He works that way?