Mushroom and onion soup, sweet potato fries and fried bananas!

I was watching Chopped, a cooking show on the Food Network, with my mom last night. On eof the chefs competting made a really delicious looking mushroom soup. It wasn't a hit for the judges, but it sure did look amazing and it inspired me to make something a bit similar. So, tonight I made a mushroom and onion soup with sweet potato fries and a fried banana on the side. I've decided to share the recipes with you so you can try them yourself! They're all pretty easy!

Ingredients

One package of button mushrooms

One half of an onion

One garlic clove

Vegetable stock

Sweet potatoes

One banana

Spices such as thyme, rosemary, oregano, basil

Coconut oil (You can use olive oil, I just personally prefer coconut oil)

Soy sauce

Agave nectar or honey

The soup

In a medium boiling pot, throw in about a quarter cup of coconut oil and a package of chopped button mushrooms. Turn your burner onto a medium heat setting and let it saute for about ten minutes, stirring here and there. Once you see the juices starting to flow from the mushrooms, add your vegetable stock and turn the heat up to almost full heat. In another pan, use the coconut oil to saute a half of an onion and your clove of garlic. When the onions are a bit browned, it's time to add it to your pot of soup. Once all of this is put together, throw in your spices including a bit of pepper and a few dashes of soy sauce. Let the mixture sit for about five minutes, stirring every once and a while and then serve! 

The fries

Slice your sweet potato up into even slices. It doesn't matter how large they are, just try to keep them similar sized slices. Once the potatoes are cut up, put them in a bowl of cold water (I don't know why you're supposed to do this, but my grandmother told me to, so I do!) After about a minute or so of soaking, take the slices and place them on a paper towel to dry out before putting them in the hot oil. 

I use a skillet for this part, but you can use any sort of pot or pan you'd like. (I've even used a large boiling pot in my most desperate scenario). Add almost a full cup of coconut oil (or however much will gives the fries a nice little bath) and let it come to a good frying heat. Once the oil is ready, place the fries in the oil and cook until they look done! Once they're done cooking, place them on some dry paper towels to let the oil drip off and to allow them to dry. 

The bananas

Take one banana and cut it into four pieces. Simply place them in the same oil as you cooked your fries. It wont take long for them to brown, so keep a close eye on them. Turn them over with a spatula so that each side can get browned. Once the bananas look a good, golden color, dash in a bit of soy sauce. (Be careful, the oil isn't going to react pleasantly when you do this!) Straight afterwards, squeeze on a bit of honey or agave nectar to the banana slices. Let them cook for about ten more seconds or so and then serve. They're amazing! 

Enjoy! :)

Thankfulness.

I just spent about thirty minutes trying to type up something good. I don't have any ounce of eloquence in me at this moment, but I do really want to write. Tonight I'm thankful for God's sovereignty and faithfulness to us and I'm happy to be at rest in that. I've been a Christian for about five years and words like sovereignty and faithfulness and love and grace and mercy used to always just be words on a page to me. I guess that's what studying the Bible just to be a know-it-all can do to you. I'd also never really gone through something with God so that words like these came to life for me. 

Months ago during a really dark time in my life, I remember reading articles about Mother Teresa and how she never felt the presence of God once she started tending to the poor, dying and destitute, and how she was pretty much always in constant Spiritual agony. I always admired her so much more after that. I'll let you find and read the articles for yourself if you're interested in them, but I will say that though what I read that night was really heavy, depressing and dark, I went to sleep trusting in God's presence without really feeling it. I know that sounds weird, but I think it had a lot more to do with having faith that God wanted me rather than relying on the feeling. I remember going to sleep thankful that in the midst of all of my sinfulness, in the middle of the most turmoil and darkness that I'd ever faced in my life, He was still there, whether or not I heard Him or felt Him. He was always the little bit of light that I held onto in the darkness (and now in hindsight I see that so clearly). I went to sleep that night thankful that I could be more broken than I'd ever been and still be perfectly and unconditionally loved. That I could be ridiculously flawed and ugly from my sin and still be wanted and accepted. And when I suddenly lost all that I wanted and was pushed by God's love for me to do things that I had fought for so long, words like faithfulness and love and grace and mercy finally came to life. 

Here's some photos of a really good friend and I from a couple of days ago. We spent the day being 12-year-olds and taking photos of each other and other things. I found a set of bones and a cicada molt, as well as played in the fountain downtown, so it was a fun day. I'm thankful to feel alive again. I'm thankful for deep friendships with people who aren't exactly like me. I'm thankful that God loves me and chases after me in every condition. I'm thankful for His Word and thankful that I've gotten to a place where I'm beginning to delight in it. I'm thankful for the overwhelming amount of healing that I've been going through. I'm thankful for the past, no matter how dark it is or how hard it was to go through. I'm thankful that God is beginning to satisfy me and comfort me like no other. I'm thankful that He's showing me who He really is...who I really am. He's genuinely becoming the joy of my life. Finally. 

Awkward picture. Whatever. 

These are just funny to me because never do I lay in the grass
of a courtyard staring at a flower. I'm also one awkward little lassy.

Trying to become okay with my body and the fact that I'm not
as tiny as I've always dreamed of being. Trying to find peace in
the fact that my value doesn't come from my body and that it
was never made to be used as something to impress people with.
It's just a vessel.

She's crazy beautiful in every way possible. 

You Alone Know-The Soil and The Sun

Drawn out like a sword 

A river running through my fellow man 

Into my hands 

Blessings 

Coming back to break me 

Build it tall to cut it down 

Give me sight or make me blind 

On the ground I get 

Feel who created it 

In the brook I bathe 

Bare, before your gaze 

From the summit see 

Material that I don't need 

I don't need to understand 

Every word you speak to me 

I don't need to recognize 

Every truth, every time 

I don't need a bigger noise 

All I need is to hear your voice 

One dichotic seed 

Buried down inside of me 

Jaws like a holy war 

Claws like a burning sore 

It never ends, I'm caught up in 

What it'd be like 

To lose your love 

Building up our sanctuary 

In the walls of Babylon 

Free my body, heal my mind 

Under the surface locked in 

Some presupposed history 

And all my biggest talking 

Won't bring him home, back to me 

It's a thin line you're walking on 

And I can find fault in anyone 

So, watch what you say 

Watch what you say 

I thought I'd be much stronger 

As my hair is getting longer 

My Pillar of Wisdom 

Pillar of Wisdom 

The world under water 

Slowly lifts us to the Father 

But time is not my own 

Time is not my own 

I know it's freedom that's been given 

From the curses that we've lived in 

Remind me Your Name 

Remind me Your Name 

Yes, it's foolish what I'm saying 

You should hear what I've been praying 

For any other way 

Any other way 

Deliver me, Deliverer 

Good Spirit, come, Good Giver 

What wonder is this universe! 

In every heart unending worlds 

You know 

You alone know

Today in photos.

Loved the colors in this photo. The
smoothie plus the dried roses as
well as the pops of green! Ahh!

Today was more productive than usual. I cleaned my room for the first time since I moved, I made two smoothies, rode my bike, finally typed up my snail mail newsletter, and I did some crafting. It's crazy how close it's getting to September and so much will be happening that month. I'll be turning twenty and I'll be embarking on one of the biggest adventures of my life so far. I'm so excited to move to Houston, Texas no matter how hot it is there. I'm excited to have a fresh start, to meet all kinds of different people, to finally experience close community, to be challenged in ways I've never been challenged before, to experience God in a new place and to sweat my tail off!

Rambles about healing, God and Goodness.

I've been holding off on a blog post lately. Mostly because I've been growing and healing a lot and rarely have the words to convey any of my thoughts or emotions. Sometimes words are too cheap to really express the things you're going through and sometimes moments are so sacred to you that you'd rather just keep them a secret. 

God talks a lot about freedom in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testaments. He announces in Isaiah His plan to pronounce good news to the poor, to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to open the prisons to those who are bound, to proclaim the year of His favor and the day of His vengeance. To comfort all who mourn and to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes. 

Much later in Luke 4 (like, hundreds of years later), Jesus proclaims in the synagogue, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

These words and promises never meant much to me until I recently had a dramatic illumination that I am a severely damaged and wicked person and there is a lot in my life that I need to be freed and healed from. When I seemed to have lost everything, that's when my heart began really opening up to the Lord. That's when I came back to life. It's crazy how dangerous studying the Bible for knowledge's sake can be. I've always been interested in context and historical significance when it came to the characters, places and scenarios throughout Scripture. When my life "fell apart", however; I began reading the Bible in a very different way. When I became desperate to hear His voice and feel His presence again, Scripture became sweet to me. He let me hear Him and feel Him. I became more satisfied with just being fed than becoming more theologically sound. Being freed from just that alone feels incredible. (I don't want to downplay the importance of knowing context and historical significance. It's always a very good and valuable thing, it just isn't why I read anymore.)

Something that has been most sweet to me lately within the above passage (taken from Isaiah 61) is the part about God binding up the broken hearted. I'm a woman and most times, we don't take break ups very lightly. From my experience, they're one of the worst and most nagging emotional experiences to go through. There have been times when I have laid in my bed crying, begging God to take away all of my hurt. Though He has definitely done a lot of healing in my heart and has been making it easier and easier for me to move on, I'm still feeling pain, I'm still not fully healed and as hard as that is sometimes, I'm thankful for it. 

I guess that sounds a little weird, but think about your best friend. Think about what drew the two of you so closely together. It isn't just because they're so wonderful and fun. If it were just that, you'd probably get pretty bored with your friendship quicker than you'd expect. People grow close to one another when they experience things with each other, typically things that aren't easy. The same thing goes for our relationships with Christ. When my life completely fell apart and when everything that I (so very unhealthily) valued was taken away from me, I finally let Christ be who He wanted to be for me, and that is where my falling in love with Him has finally started to bloom. That is where my healing has begun.

I know that some of you reading this blog may not think very fondly of God. I know that some of you may have a lot of angst in your hearts towards the Church, towards Jesus, but I really, really want you to know that God is not who you think He is. He certainly isn't who I have always thought He was. There is no amount of knowledge of the Bible that can ever amount to really experiencing Him or seeing His Word come to life. There is no box that you can ever put Him in that He will fit. There is no number of hateful church sermons, no belligerent group of Christians that can ever take away God's goodness. He is good and in the purest sense of the word imaginable. When you taste and see His goodness, when you experience who He is and what He is like, that's where you will really find rest. That is when you will finally be satisfied. Being with Him is what will give you fullness. He is who we need in order to be complete. To be who we really are. He doesn't want to take anything away from you in order to harm you. He doesn't want to be wrathful or mean to you. He doesn't want you to be perfect before you seek Him. He wants you now. He wants to take your mistakes, your wounds, your darkest moments and turn them into something beautiful beyond anything you can ever imagine. He really wants to melt your heart with His passion for you. Don't let anything rob you of that experience. 

I'm not writing this in order to condemn. I'm writing this because I'm someone who is really freaking broken, who has been stripped of everything that she loved because of God's deep and passionate jealousy and I have finally experienced His love for me. I know that He wants you to know Him for who He really is too. He wants to bring all of us to life and wants to show us who we really are. 

He is real. More real than anything you've ever experienced. 

He is so kind and so patient. I promise He is good. I freaking promise. 

Almond Brothers Smoothie

As many of you know, I lived in Asheville, NC for a bit of time. There was a cafe there called "Green Sage" that serves all sorts of food and drinks. One of my favorite items on the menu was the Almond Brothers Smoothie. From the first time I tried it, I was hooked! The smoothie is a bit expensive, however; so I decided to try and make it myself at home. It was a success and it's now something that I make almost every day. I've decided to let you guys in on it too. Here's the recipe! I'ts delicious! 

P.S. I don't do measurements very well, I just kind of eye ball everything. Haha. Therefore, I wont be providing many exact measurements in this post. Sorry! 

Ingredients:

Almond butter

Almond milk

Carrot juice

One banana

Ground cooriander

Ground cloves

Ground cinnamon

Ground nutmeg

Prepare:

Put one banana, about half a glass of almond milk, a quarter of a glass of carrot juice, about two large table spoons of almond butter and a pinch or two of the above spices. Blend and enjoy! It's freaking delicious! 

P.S.!

Please consider donating to my Mission Year account! I'm going to be spending a year in Houston, Texas doing ministry with the urban poor. It'd be awesome for you to help me get my first 1,500 raised by donating here! Any amount is appreciated no matter how small or big!

I used to be eighteen.

I used to be eighteen. 

I'm almost twenty. 

Post rock puts me to sleep. 

I want to heal. 

I feel like I'm stuck in a 

vicious cycle of sin and addiction. 

I can hardly stomach certain truths. 

Despite all of that, I'm starting to love Jesus 

more than I ever thought possible. 

I just wish that "love" would turn into action. 

I'm impatient. With myself, with God and 

well, everyone and everything else.
Today is July 4th and my pride is coming out when
I say this, but I'm resentful towards this holiday because
this country irritates the heck out of me and there's a
war going on and people are being killed and
"freedom" lacks justice in this country.
Fireworks remind me of bombs (I guess they are little bombs)
and all of these American flags send images of nationalism
and racism streaming through my brain.
None of this is well written, I'm just being honest.
I guess honesty isn't supposed to sound pretty. Sometimes
things that are raw are pretty ugly.

Vague post.