A News Free Sunday

Many shall run to and fro and knowledge shall increase. Daniel 12:4 

Your assignment for this weekend is to turn it all off. Just for Sunday skip the news. Not just on TV but on radio and social media. I got you with the social media didn't I? If you have news notifications on your phone turn them off. I was already trying to do this when I saw musician and influencer, Zuby recommending it. He calls it Twitter Sabbath. Though now that it's X it might need a new name. 

Suggestions? 

Touch Grass Sunday?

As a lifelong news junkie I feel your pain if this is tough for you. Especially right now when it seems like there's a month of news every day. It's like news inflation.  A year's worth of 1980 news is now only worth a day. A lot of us feel the need to keep up. I certainly have major news FOMO.

 Trust me, if WW3 breaks out someone will text us. 

I take the extra step of really trying not to pick up my phone at all because once you have it in your hand it's too natural to open the app your fingers know to go to on their own. 

I'm not always successful in my effort to do this but it's a goal I'm working on and just like fasting is good for our bodies from time to time, letting our minds rest from the constant influx of info is too. 

I do one last news check before getting into bed on Saturday night and try not to check my phone or willingly take in news until around 6:00 PM Sunday evening. 

We are the first humans alive to be able to take in everything happening all over the world while it's happening. Things we have absolutely no control over. So let's take Sunday as a God prescribed day of rest and let the anxiety of information overload go. 

At the top of this post you'll see a verse from Daniel I saw myself in when I came across it recently. Isn't this us on our phones? It's certainly me sometimes. Flitting from Facebook to Instagram to X, often while sitting in front of a TV screen with even more information flowing out? And knowledge is definitely increasing! Read the entire chapter or better, the whole book of Daniel for context. 

It's just something to think about and sometimes I like a little challenge to keep myself in check. Let me know if you're going to try this. 

And hey, if you see me on Instagram Sundays before six PM feel free to ask me what I'm doing on my phone. 

Why You Are a Historical Miracle

Have you ever watched these shows where they trace the geneology of celebrities back to some amazing ancestor? Maybe you've thought "Wow, of course Cindy Crawford is descended from Charlemagne!" (If you are descended from Europeans chances are he's in your line too)

After my husband took me back to my hometown in Indiana last year I did some research of my own. I followed a line back to Governor William Bradford and another back to the Lord Mayor of London. I was feeling pretty special. Here's the thing in case you haven't done it yourself, go back far enough and you're related to someone cool. For instance, the 102 passengers who came over aboard the Mayflower have about 35 million descendents. It's a big club. 

If you trace your ancestry back 12 generations, about 400 years,you'll have over 4,000 people who have contributed to making you who you are. 

Think about it for a moment. For you to be here just as you are, exactly as God intended for you to be, your bloodline had to remain unbroken since the beginning of time. 

For God to "knit you together in your mother's womb" He also would have made sure your ancestors averted deadly disease, survived or avoided accidents and illness, and procreated with the precise people who delivered the DNA you have to you make you his perfect design with the abilities to do whatever it is that he has in store for you. 

He did not just throw you together at the last minute to arrive on the scene when you did. He planned millions of decisions, moves, and interactions. People destined to be in your lineage were destined to survive floods, wars, and famines. The carriers of your genes were protected by God long enough to reproduce. 

We marvel at the vastness of galaxies and our microscopic mitochondria and so much of creation that reflects the mind boggling power and omniscience of God. When we read the Old Testament we are in awe of His plan for His nation and we see Him perfectly orchestrating events concerning them. In the New Testament we see individuals encountering Christ at precise moments as we watch the story of the Gospels fall into place. 

He has also been working miracles throughout history on your behalf. He has woven your story in and out of tribes, nations, plagues, and travels to bring you to the exact place and moment in time you find yourself right now. You are not an accident or random person who just showed up. 

Your story has been unfolding all that time, hidden in the dark depths of history through faceless ancestors long forgotten but by God. 

Your being on the planet at this exact moment in history is cosmically relevant in ways you cannot begin to understand. If you are feeling small and insignificant then know dear one, that is a lie of the enemy. 

Any of us have a very small idea of what our role is in the playing out of history for the glory of God. Do not be disheartened by the trivial things of this life. You are part of the epic story being written and are affecting things you cannot imagine with every action and prayer. 

The woman in the photo is my great grandmother Nannie Barham who got up before dawn one cold Mississippi morning and struck match after match to light the stove. She asked her husband what was wrong with them as none of them would catch. He had seen all of their bursts of flame as she lit them. She had gone blind overnight. She was known for her sweet spirit and kindness. She lived to be 76 years old and was blind most of them likely with nothing other than a country doctor and no services. 

That’s just one story of strength and determination in an endless line of countless people God put in my lineage. There are plenty of scoundrels too including a hog rustler and a murderer. But everything that Satan meant for evil God used for good. 

Every day of your life is a miracle on so many levels and the Lord has a plan for your life. Nothing about you is an accident. Never feel unimportant or unloved. History has been waiting for you. 

 

Building Your Morning Routine

I have good news and bad news. Your morning is going to determine how your day goes. 

In every interview, book, or article you’ve ever read by or about any successful entrepreneur, thought leader, or athlete when asked how they start their day, not one time have you ever heard anyone say they hit the snooze button or drank a Coke with a doughnut. Successful people from the world's most successful CEOs to the most on top of it moms know that a morning routine is key.

Win the morning and win the day.

We want to be at the top of our game whether we are homeschooling moms or corporate executives so let's dive into what the world's most successful people all seem to agree make for a great morning strategy. The number one most important thing is to have a routine.  

“Routine is a condition of survival.” ~ Flannery O'Connor

Most people do have a sort of morning routine but let's break down key components for a daily regimen to get us into a mental and physical state of mind for a positive and productive day.

Building Your Morning Routine:

1. Get up early.

I know. I know. I can hear the night owls groaning, but it's what every single person at the top of their game does. According to billionaire and owner of Virgin, Richard Branson, in order to get a head start on the rest of the world he gets up at 5 A.M. every day no matter where he is in the world.  If you are a mom you know that having your feet on the floor first is a survival tactic. That first hour or two when your house or your part of the world is still asleep is a magical golden time that is incredibly productive.

I'm not saying you have to wake up at 5:00, I let myself sleep later than that sometimes in winter, because we're empty nesters, but you do need to have a regular time that you get up and try not to deviate from it too much on weekends or vacations.

So we're up. Now what? 

2. Hydrate. Drink a full glass of filtered room temperature water with a squeeze of lemon.

Your body has been without water all night and most people are mildly dehydrated anyway so start here. I do this when I take a CoQ10 supplement. This falls between brushing my teeth ( the very first thing I do) and feeding dogs and letting them out. This is literally the easiest thing you can do to improve your health and wellbeing immediately.

3. Move your body. This is probably the hardest one for me because I'm most creative when I first wake up and if I'm going to write I'm playing beat the clock to get any writing done. For me, moving my body initially looks like some stretching and deep breathing. Later in the morning I lift weights and walk. I'd love to say I am religious about the weights and walking. It's a struggle. But the stretching is non-negotiable.

4. Read something positive. This can be your spiritual reading or any personal development book, whatever gets you in a good headspace for the day. Every successful person reads. It's a common denominator. This year for me it’s the entire Bible along with the Bible Recap. 

5. Organize your thoughts. Journal. Morning pages. Intention for the day.

I've made this list as simple as possible for people who may not have any kind of regular routine other than getting coffee and turning on the Today Show. 

DO NOT start your day with the news. Guard your newly awakened mind and body for a while before letting in the troubles of this world. Just doing these things will absolutely transform the rest of your day. 

You may not get to hit everything one hundred percent of the time but what we do most of the time is more important than what we do once in a while. The effects of these small changes are cumulative. The more you do them the more results you'll see.

Let me know how you use your morning routine to impact your day! 

What Standard Are We Navigating By?

 

A few days ago I took a walk after dark with the dog. The moon was full and the weather was unusually pleasant for this time of year though windy. The thing about walking the dog is that there's a lot of stopping and waiting, looking around. He thinks his job is to prevent cardio of any kind. Whatever, dog. 

I love to look at the night sky and while I was scanning it during one of our many stops, through the clouds I noticed a light that looked like a star. But it seemed to be moving so I thought maybe it was an airplane but it was far too distant to be a jet. A satellite maybe? Whatever it was it was moving rapidly. I stared at it for a long time trying to reckon its strange velocity in my mind. The ghostly gray clouds were drifting across the sky. I fixed my eyes on the light to see what direction it was moving. It was moving, right? 

It suddenly dawned on me. The light was stationary and the clouds were being blown by the wind and I'd been using them as my reference point. The light was a star that likely hadn't moved much in thousands of years. 

How often do we do this? We look around at events, or culture, or our own emotions and make judgments based on shifting vapors.  But the plumb line of truth remains unmoved and unwavering. We try to adjust the standard to the shifting thinking and beliefs of our day. In our culture truth has become a dirty word, something to mock and question instead of something to rally to. Many rail against the fixed point holding its place outside of time, civilizations, and empires. A fruitless battle that leads to nothing and nowhere. A fight that leads to exhausted delusion and eventually the inability to even see that the shifting is a vaporous lie confused for truth. 

We cannot navigate by clouds. They are too easily tossed about by swirling winds and the change of season. Our hearts and minds are created to search for that which is decidedly fixed. We are imprinted with the desire for what is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. But our world is corrupted and fallen and easily led astray and we are often invited to step onto the shifting sand of popular opinion. 

It's when the furious swirling is at its most intense that we should take a reading of where we are in relation to the unchangeable truths of life. While many people delight in confusion and take daily readings of the situation to determine who they are and what they think. Let us fix our beliefs, behavior, and values to the unchanged and stand firm whatever the clouds may do.

How to Make Soap at Home

If you are like me you are increasingly alarmed while reading ingredient list for not only food but all my beauty products as well. So what are we to do? There are plenty of places to buy soap without all the added garbage but if you want to make your own, it's very doable. 

If you want to make the simplest version of soap possible you can start with melt and pour. For that read Goats Milk and Honey Soap. 

However, if you want to make the most cost effective from scratch recipe like grandma used to make, well she was probably using tallow (we'll be doing that in an upcoming post) instead of these fancy fats, here's how to do that. 


Often people see lye in the ingredients and ask if this is a harsh soap. Well, this is the only soap we use and my husband whose skin used to be so irritated by commercial soap loves it. I use it on my face. What makes commercial soap so harsh and drying isn't the lye which is necessary to make soap its all the detergents and other things added to it. As you'll see the fats and oils added to this recipe are very soothing.

Now let's get started!

But first...

 SAFETY. SAFETY. SAFETY. 

Lye is an extremely dangerous thing to work with. Especially when it is mixed with water. Always wear eye protection, rubber gloves, long sleeves, pants, and shoes for your protection. Do not make soap in the presence of children or pets! 

Now that I've scared you silly, let's have some fun. You can use a lot of things for molds. Boxes, milk cartons, and silicone ice cube trays.

 Some of my most popular soap is the little honeycomb ones. It's made in a silicone cake pan available on Amazon. 

Ingredients: 

distilled water

 lye

 coconut oil

 olive oil

 shea butter

 stearic acid (optional)

 melted beeswax (I don't always add it and even then it's like a tablespoon. Totally optional)

Equipment: 

Eye protection

Rubber gloves

Digital scale

stainless steel thermometer

large glass container 

large stainless steel pot 

non-reactive spoon or spatula

stick blender

mold

oils or scents

color

The Process:

Lye + water + oil/fat = soap

Lye (sodium hydroxide) is a salt. When the lye is combined with the oils/fats a the process that takes place is called saponification. Though lye is caustic in its original form once the saponification process is complete, no lye will be left in the finished product. 

Measuring: 

Because a chemical reaction is taking place is it important that you carefully measure all the ingredients. It's best not to use kitchen measuring cups or spoons for this but a digital scale. 

The measurements I use for this recipe are: 

16 oz. coconut oil

2 oz. olive oil 

2 oz. shea butter

3.4 oz. lye

7.1 oz. distilled water

1 oz. stearic acid

Making the soap: 

Carefully and slowly add the lye to the water (never the water to the lye!!!) and stir. Let cool. 

Melt the oils and fats together in a glass container in the microwave. I add the shea butter last because it can get a little grainy if overheated. 

Measure the temperature of the lye mixture and the oil mixture until they have cooled to 10 degrees of each other and are both below 130 degrees. 

Pour the melted oils/fats into a large stainless steel pot. Carefully (are you wearing your goggles and gloves?) pour the lye mixture into the pot and stir. Next, insert the stick blender and begin blending your soap mixture. Gently, not vigorously. You don't want to introduce air bubbles. Continue blending until you achieve "trace." 

Trace is when you can see a trail where you have dragged the blender through or when you drip some soap on the surface and it doesn't immediately disappear. Add colors and scents at this point and give a quick blend then pour into your mold. If you want to put anything in it that will remain solid now is the time to do that. I like to encrust my soap with herbs or flowers. To do that just add your dried ingredients immediately after pouring it into the mold)

Cover with a towel and either let cool at room temperature overnight. (Covering allows the soap to cool slowly and prevents cracking.)

The next day pop it out of the mold and cut if necessary. Place in a cool dry place with good air circulation for 3-6 weeks. The process of making soap isn't finished until it has fully cured. 

After that enjoy your luxurious homemade soap!

It's "Back To" September

 

It's the time of year for back to. Back to school, routine, healthy eating. Post Labor Day is like another New Year's Day. Have too much fun this summer? Let all the routines slide? It's a big boat. I saved a space for you. 

I did accomplish a few things along the way like becoming much more familiar with preserving food and all but eliminating any kitchen waste. Inflation brought my casually tossing food in the compost to a screeching halt. My house got one really good deep clean for a house full of company. I learned to play Canasta and had an intro lesson to Mahjong. 

Do you feel the pull of getting back on track this time of year? It's the second chance every year to get it together, which we can all do any day of the year but it seems to be easier when there's momentum around us. 

One thing that happened this summer was that I met a great group of Millenials and Zillenials some of whom are looking for life away from social media. I'd moved away from blogging toward shorter more image driven Instagram posts thinking that was the trend but then had a young mom ask if I could do a newsletter. A newsletter, y'all. 

I was inspired. I know I waste a ton of time on SM and if you and I are being honest we know it's shortening our attention span and wasting our time. 

But this is where the market place of ideas is! I say to myself. 

Though I often wonder how much is just noise even as I contribute to it. Sometimes a reader of the blog will tell me they miss the way I used to post more regularly. Me too, friend. I miss the quiet time writing to reach across the void (is that from You've Got Mail?) to share ideas and encouragement with readers even if it's just one. Is it you?

Often anymore instead of writing something thoughtful and putting down words worth reading (I hope) I search for the snarky meme or article quote. The amount of time I spend doing that is ridiculous. 

Did you just check Instagram to see if I posted? That's just what I would have done. And for my Zillenials, same, girl.

And worse than time spent searching is just, well, time just spent. You know what I mean. You pick up the phone to see if you need a raincoat this afternoon and 45 minutes later are somehow shopping for property in Belize. 

So here's the plan: 

This blog is going to be the soft place to fall and will post on Wednesday. More words, hopefully ones you'll find worth reading. 

Instagram grid is what's going on in real time (mostly) and pretty pictures.What are the bees doing? How's the garden going? Light. Pretty. Fun.

Instagram Stories? Snarky and political because I can't help myself. Choose wisely. 

I wrote a book! Click on the picture that says The Curious Letters of Baroness Wren Gardener to start reading Part 1:Winter.  I'm posting it on here because I wrote it for myself and for friends and am not in the mood to chase down literary agents but if you know someone at Hallmark I'd take the call. It's in five parts, one to be posted roughly each month wrapping up around Christmas. I did say Hallmark, right? If you like it feel free to share it with a friend.

It would be fun to read with your bestie or as a mother/daughter read.

So that's it! One thing the blog does is force me to sit down and write, to sort thoughts and connect ideas. To breathe as I click "post to blog." 

Let me know what you'd be interested in reading or learning about most!