A New Beginning

So, it is almost that time again, you know what I mean...the time where we stuff ourselves like a turkey for two months and then "begin again" with empty promises of a year of healthy eating and exercise.



Well, I am going to try to minus the two months of gorging and start early with the resolve to be healthy. Don't get me wrong...I do plan to indulge this holiday season, but with moderation in mind. Please, for all you super disciplined folks out there that would love to scold me each time I reach for a goody, I ask you to be encouraging and not reprimand me. I have found in the past that this is very counter-productive for me.

As a means of achieving a healthier lifestyle, I have done some Internet research. I considered joining Weight Watchers, AGAIN, but just didn't want to find the time or energy for all that counting. I LOVE the program and have found it very successful in the past, but am going for simple and mindless and FREE at least to jump start things. I enjoy looking at Kraft Foods.com for easy recipe ideas and recently came across the "Healthy Living" tab. You can set up a personalized log in with your individualized stats (all those numbers we don't want anyone else to see). The site gives you individual weeks of full day menus that fit your caloric needs to be healthy. Oh, and you can even print out a shopping list that they have already put together for you and can make meal substitutions easily. The only thing is that the meal recipes are portioned for one, but I am just doubling the dinner recipes to include the hubby.

Here's the site: http://www.kraftfoods.com/kf/HealthyLiving/HealthyLivingLandingPage.aspx. Once there click on the "Meal and Fitness Planner." You can chart your progress and log exercise as well. I've never joined Weight Watchers online, but it seems like a free alternative to that. I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow, so I will let you know if it is astronomical and if so I am back at square one. Would you like to join me? I would love the company on this little journey to healthy living!

Food for thought

I know this blog typically is pretty light hearted, or at least I purpose it to be, but today is going to be different.

I have been up since 4 AM thinking and praying. I've spent the last two years of my professional life wrapped up in the foster care system. Unfortunately, it has not always seemed to be focused on it's true purpose, protecting and nurturing abused and neglected children and providing them with a permanent home. Lately, that has made me jaded, as I'm sure earlier posts have reflected. Over the last couple of months God has begun to give me a fresh perspective that has brought me to consider the Body of Christ's roll in caring for abused and neglected children.

About a year ago Jeff and I did a small group study on James with some dear friends. Since that time God has continued to work on us in the manner James describes, which often includes difficult circumstances. James chapter 1 is dedicated to the work of trials in refining and humbling us. I never realized it before, but right at the end of the chapter is this verse:
"27Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

There it is!! God calls us to develop compassion and humility through our own personal trials and then to utilize this in ministering to the most vulnerable among us, "orphans." I'm not sure how God is going to use these revelations, but am grateful for the fresh perspective! I hope you too are encouraged by this call to Christian service. Truly, if the church took this to heart, we'd have no need for a bureaucratic system of foster care because Christian families would open their homes to children in need. Just something to think about!