What Nourished (And Wrecked Me) this Week

What nourished and wrecked me this week:

1. Caedmon wanted to eat pizza Sunday night and Madeline wanted to knead it and watch it rise. So this is the pizza we chose and while the recipe encourages the use of a refridgerator pizza dough, in the past we’ve made it both ways.  I’m always looking for flavorful and frugal recipes and this one is Andrew and my favorite: Spinach, bacon and ricotta white pizza. Yum. If you like roasted garlic and bacon, you’ll love this.

2. This week I read this book:

Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer: Experiencing the Presence of God and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Ancient Christianity.

 

I honestly couldn’t stop.  I read it in between every crack and crevice I could find.

 

It made me hungry for new stamps in my passport, for chapels full of icons and incense, for silence and humble holy people.  This book reminded me that the church of the West is often adopting capitalism as a virtue and that I am a product of that church.  Which leads me to this next gift:

 

2. Last night I had the gift of an evening of Sabbath. My thoughts were tangled, my patience was short and it had been weeks since I had seen the inside of my own soul…alone. It was time for a Sabbath. Andrew kept the kids and I went out.

 

My Sabbaths usually start with journaling and lots of confession. Last night that took a while. I felt like I had been living through the wilderness temptation…with a toddler running around my legs. Hungry for bread over Bread. Striving to build and rule my own kingdom. Yeah, that.

 

I needed to turn down the volume on the world so I could hear the Voice of God again. In the old days, (and I mean the really old days) that meant leaving the world of rich fat Christendom and holing up in a cave in the desert. While that’s not really an option for a mom, that doesn’t mean I don’t crave a bit of desert. I started hearing one of my favorite texts early in the week, “Therefore I will now allure her into the desert and speak tenderly to her,” (Hosea 2:) This is exactly what my heart craves. No blips or beeps or rings. No full laundry baskets or over-taxed agendas. I need silence to remember what His Voice sounds like again.

 

3. After listening to my sin, this quote from Richard Foster’s Sanctuary of the Soul about surrender wrecked me: “We relinquish into God’s hands our imperialist ambitions to be greater and more admired, to be richer and more powerful, to be saintlier and more influential.

Ahhh, imperialist ambitions. So that’s where I’ve been heading…Tower of Babel building.

4. So if my Sabbaths usually begin with confession, they need to end with inspiration.

 

I have to go back into the chaos of motherhood armed with a new perspective.

Last night it was this: 

 

If you’ve never read Rachel Macy Stafford’s blog, read here first:

 

The Day I Stopped Saying “Hurry up.”

 

When Barnes and Noble announced their closing over the loudspeaker, I turned toward home.  After entering a dark house I tiptoed upstairs to the kids’ rooms.  I kissed cheeks, pulled blankets up and whispering to each that they were my treasure.

 

Today Hands Free Mama’s inspiration continued and instead of a painful two hours waiting for Midas to change my flat, the kids and I giggled over madlibs (remember those?) and arrived home full from all the laughter. Instead of spending time, we inched closer to each other. Thanks Rachel and of course, thank you to the God of Sabbath.