cauliflower, sweet and sour, half an hour... Veggie tales!

Tonight I made Chicken Parmigiana (spelled that right first try!) and Sauteed Rainbow Chard. I was in foodie heaven. I said several times, muttered actually, to no one in particular, "don't talk to me, I'm eating." Before it was ready, as I stood at my stove covered in pans of various sizes, I even said to Marcus. "Please be prepared to help Beau because I am cooking here. Really, actually cooking so..." It was delicious. Chard?! Who knew?! Okay, lots of people I am sure but it was a revelation to me. A night when vegetarianism makes complete and perfect sense. Ahhhh.

And the ONLY reason I happened to have chard is because we signed on for some organic produced to be delivered by a farm that is a little north of here. I got our box today and it was like Christmas morning as I unwrapped the pretty produce. This week it contained the blessed chard of course, asparagus, broccoli, some sweet mini peppers, Romaine, a pineapple, two grapefruits, two blood oranges (!), four roma tomats and five apples. Boo. Ya. All organic. 30 bucks. Yippee!

Clutch in, time to shift. I am getting older and growing up. I am finally seeing some quirky things about me revealed through so many different things in my life- even this box of good from the farm! You see, I would never buy winter greens myself, because I ASSUME I wouldn't even know where or how to begin, then it would sit in the crisper drawer and thus lose all its crispness because I would forget about it and choose potato chips instead. So why bother?

I had actual trepidation about even signing up because nagging at the back of my mind is "Sara, you will flake out. You will forget. No one will like the stuff anyway. It will be a waste of money. It will prove a failure." Can you believe that?!

I recently had a blessed opportunity to be with my friend Maggie for a few days and actually processed this aloud for the first time... I have a tremendous fear of failure. I order my life as best I can so that I will never experience rejection or failure. It weaves it way into lots of things- even as I type this I am thinking of more instances. Even with my dearest people, when I absolutely MUST ask for help I do it in a way that will make it so easy for them to say no. It spares me. It makes the fall only an inch or two with only slight bruising, if any.

I am learning this is a stressful way to live. And as a woman of faith it is an opposing way to live. It is a life of no faith. Last fall our smallish group read a book called Crazy Love by Frances Chan. Talk about a book full of tall orders! To me, the crux, the question of the book was this: Are you going to live your life as if God doesn't really exist? Are you going to live taking risks of faith where only He can provide and come through? It challenged how we live out our faith in our culture as well. I can speak for our group members when I say it gave us a ton to think and talk and pray about!

It was an important book for me because last October as I was sitting at Bible study at church I felt what I can only describe as a mighty, rushing wind blow through my insides as I listened to Chip Ingram preach about the deep love of God. And I knew in that moment that I was supposed to have another child. That despite all my trepidation and fear and recorded anxieties in my own journal, I had more room in my soul to love another a child. And the kicker: an orphaned child. WHAT?! I know, me too. Are you kidding me? I can scarcely write about this still!

So there it is. Out there. There is of course more of the journey and the story to share, but I believe my posts from last spring/summer and the crazy miraculousness I witnessed, may explain. It is breathtaking for me to go back and read them, as I now see it as a seed planted. God using circumstances the way only He can to educate me, chide me, bless me and soften me to the tenderness in His own heart towards the fatherless.

I am not sure what else to say at this point. Quite honestly, I feel as though I have an egg in my throat at this very moment! It's just.... a lot. There's so many questions, doubts, fears, threats that I must simply trust God. There is very little that I can do here except to fling myself, cast myself like a toddler off a diving board into my Father's arms. And for the girl who's afraid to buy unusual produce... its the tallest order yet :)