A fishy dishy

I recently made this for the little lady and was quite glad to munch the rest of it when she wouldn't finish it!

Ingredients:
Fillet of Fish-any kind! I used seabass because it was reduce at the Co-op :)
6-8 New potatoes
75g of sweetcorn (ish) it doesn't have to be precise just chuck some in the pan
1/2 a yellow pepper diced

Bake Mr. Fish for 20 minutes or so in a little olive oil wrapped in tin foil at about 180c
Boil up the potatoes for about 10-15mins
Towards the end of cooking the potatoes add the sweetcorn
Blanch the pepper for 2 minutes
Mash the pots, sweetcorn and pepper and add the flaked fish.

Yum yum.  It made about three portions for her ladyship- now 11 months.  If you want to go all out add a teaspoon of cream cheese and mix well.

Any one got any other good fish recipes please let me know as fish is not my forte!

Shepherding a Child's Heart

Well, well, well.  I am currently reading Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp and I thought that I could blog about a few of my reflections on each chapter.  It’s such a crazy original idea I can’t believe that no-one else has ever done it before…eh-hem.

I am reading occasionally before I go to bed and although this is no bed-time read I have at least have approx 7 hours to try and allow my sub-conscious to digest and process!

In the introduction Tripp outlines three areas that we need to develop in order to develop a God-centered and biblical approach to parenting:

Authority:

“You must not direct your children for your own agenda or convenience.  You must direct your children on God’s behalf for their good”.  In our self-obsessed culture where “children are often thought of as a liability” I must learn that I cannot simply manipulate my little girl in order to make my life easier.  This is a direct challenge to my sinful heart which always seeks to put itself first no matter the consequence. I think people sometimes physically shrink when they think about authority; it has so many negative connotations.  In our culture we are often actively encouraged to disobey authorities especially if those authorities are restraining us from following our hearts.  But what a bad idea- following your heart!  Jesus said “out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander”. (Matthew 15:19).  Really our hearts are a terrible thing to follow!  Thank goodness for the kind and servant hearted authority that Jesus exercises over my life to protect me from following my heart.  I must trust him and be obedient if I am to teach the lovely little one to live freely under God’s gracious authority.

Shepherding:

“Values and spiritual vitality are not simply taught, but caught”.  Simply put: I need to put my money where my mouth is.  I need to demonstrate to the little one that living with God at the centre of life is refreshing, fulfilling and overflowing with joy.  Not easy when I’m tired after work and lose my cool because the little lady pulled the guitar down on herself and persisted to howl for 45 minutes and then was sick because she’d cried so much.  Just an example I can pull off the top of my head…do I say “I’m sorry but Mummy’s been at work all day and got frustrated with you because she was tired” or do I say “Mummy reacted wrongly and used her tiredness as an excuse to allow her sinful nature to react impatiently an unfairly towards you”.  I know which explanation is easier to come up with but I know which one will teach her about human nature and point her towards living for a God of mercy and grace.

The centrality of the gospel:

“The gospel enables you and your children to face the worst in yourselves- your sin, your badness, and your weakness and still find hope, because grace is powerful.”  Jesus' life, death and resurrection is more than the forgiveness of sin it is also hope and empowerment for internal change.  I don’t just say to the lovely little lady ‘well, we sinners will always be sinners’ I will say ‘we sinners will always be sinners but there is real hope for change found in a relationship with Jesus’.  

Crikey. 

I hope I can remember all that when the crunch comes.

The Forgiveness List

It’s hard to blog when you’re constantly thinking about being vaguely inspirational and witty.  Especially when you’re lacking inspiration and being witty is too much hassle.  Blogging is especially hard when you think about the public persona you have to live up to, a rod for one’s own back me thinks!

One piece of advice I was given when thinking about blogging and finding sources of inspiration was to recycle.  Look at articles, read books, nab poems, rephrase…it’s basically acceptable plagiarism! So tonight I thought "easy peasy!" I’ll just take a look at my book called “Soul Food for Mums”, it’s usually quite interesting and helpful, I can just recycle this week’s topic.  I can borrow someone else’s inspiration and wit and pass it on as my own…

But I then realised that all I would be doing would be lying to myself and the handful of faithful readers out there!  So here’s what I’ve really been dealing with recently:

The Forgiveness List:

I have lost my temper so many times recently, taken God’s holy and precious name and made it into a swear word, been angry towards my brothers and sisters in Christ, hated people, been impatient with people, been self-serving and self-seeking (in fact I was thinking the other day there isn’t one single positive word that begins with “self”…please correct me if I’m wrong!).  There are so many things I have done wrong and I haven’t asked forgiveness for a single one.  Then, in a few brief recent moments, when I have thought about apologizing to God I haven’t known where to start! Or how to tackle my huge list of sins and I’ve panicked and given up thinking I’m just too sinful to come to God.

The Realization:

On Sunday my frustration was finally vented and talked about with a kind Church family member.  Later that day I said to God “I’m sorry”.  And that was it.  I didn’t have to list all the things I’d been thinking about, I didn’t have to try and recall sins I’d forgotten I had committed.  Psalm 139 tells me that God knows when I stand up and sit down, he’s got a pretty good memory and remembers ALL my sins BUT the great thing about being genuinely sorry and asking for forgiveness is that he then instantly forgets them.  My slate is wiped clean because God has already poured out his anger towards my sin on Jesus and all I need to do is trust that fact and live in light of it.

Happy Monday:

A good friend came to my house on Monday and I told her how I’d been feeling and what’s being going on in my head.  Together we briefly looked at Isaiah 25 here is the first verse: “O Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you; I will praise your name, for you have done wonderful things, plans formed of old, faithful and sure.” The last thing I have thought about recently is exalting the Lord and praising his name and it’s the last thing I’ve done.  But my friend pointed out to me that coming back to the Lord and asking for his forgiveness was exalting the Lord!  It honours him and gives praise to his name.

So that’s it. That’s what I’ve been thinking about in the past few days.  I hope it’s useful, I hope it tells you a bit about my heart and my journey but most importantly a bit about what kind of God I worship. 

Real Mums...

Real mothers don't eat quiche;
they don’t have time to make it.

Real mothers know that their kitchen utensils
are probably in the sand box.

Real mothers often have sticky floors,
filthy ovens and happy kids.

Real mothers know that dried play dough
doesn’t come out of carpets.

Real mothers wear insanely bright coloured clothing 

to hide the sick.

Real mothers don’t want to know what
the vacuum just sucked up.

Real mothers sometimes ask “Why me?”
and get their answer when a little
voice says, “Because I love you best.”

I like to think I'm a real Mum!  I have a practical rain mac in place of my fashionable navy blazer, I am never more than ten feet from a packet of baby wipes, I really don't want to know what the hoover sucked up and I can't wait to get a sand box...

Recently I've been obsessing over the state of my floors, they are filfthy and admittedly so much so that the little lady's baby gros all have brown knees even if they started off white! or off-white...no baby is that clean!

I've swept my kitchen floor three times already this week and I've had to do so again today.  Amongst my floor treasure I found a raisin, a strawberry, mushy banana, toast, rice cake, cat hair and mud all together now: "ewwwww!"

But I don't want to miss out on any more of my happy baby by cleaning and obsessing, I'm going to be a real Mum and ignore the sticky floors and the oven that needs cleaning so bad I think it might stop working.  The little lady has just learnt to play peek-a-boo behind our arm chair and it is one of the most adorable things I've ever seen in my entire life and I get such joy out of playing it with her.  She's got a toothy smile and a dribbly chin and couldn't care less whether or not the floor is clean. 

She's a real baby so I'm gonna be a real Mum and I hope one day she'll say "I love you best"!