God Loves Beauty ~ that’s why He made you

I’m a huge Genesis lover

 

8 And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east, Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed. 9 Out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasing to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowldge of good and evil. 10 Now a reiver flowed out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it devided and became four rivers. Genesis 2:8-10 [New American Standard Bible, NASB]

I believe the Lord God planted a gorgeous garden for Adam and Eve, a garden so luscious in its magnificent beauty we can’t even imagine it. This proves to me that God loves beauty. Beauty and goodness, and kindness, and love was His original idea. And that was also His original idea when He planted each of us in our mother’s womb. He had not changed his mind about us. In His sight we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

The thing is, He gave humans free will. He did not want to be loved by a bunch of robots. He did not desire to be loved and obeyed by billions of ‘stepford people’. He wanted us to chose to love Him. He wanted us to see that His way for us is best. It leads to peace, oh and how humans need peace, God’s peace, the real peace…it leads to kindness…to love, the real love (not Hollywood transient romance, not fair-weather friends), God’s deep and abiding love.

It’s through God’s perfect love that we see how beautiful we are. As believers we are called to know how eternally beautiful we are.

O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: fear before him, all the earth Psalm 96:6. [King James Version, KJV]

The beauty of holiness is a different kind of beauty than the world offers. It’s an inside beauty. It start with one’s character, a loving nature, and one with kindness, but also with a sense of self-worth. I want to point out that “fear before Him” means to have deep and awesome reverence for Him.

We, believers, are children of the Most High God, and that’s something very big indeed. The beauty of holiness shines through our eyes and a genuine, caring smile. It’s transformative. When your eyes shine with warmth and your smile is the real deal, people see you as beautiful. And you yourself feel your genuine worth and you take better care of your body, and your health, and your presentation. You are presenting as a child of the most High now. Not any old thing will do, not any old sloppy way of going into the world is right anymore because truly…YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

 

Brookyn PI Veronica “Ronnie” Ingles has beauty and self-worth issues and it doesn’t get better when he husband leaves her for another woman. In HARMFUL INTENT, Ronnie finds herself in Texas (what’s a Brooklyn girl doing in Texas?) where her husband is murdered and the stalwart, coffee loving sheriff’s deputy has her as his prime suspect.

My New Pressure Cooker ~ also a slow cooker

Impulse purchase, but a good decision.

I had no thought yesterday of purchasing a pressure cooker while shopping at Walmart. However, the price was GREAT and there was only one left on the shelf. Nuff said.

Now mind, I have a pressure cooker, a classic T-fal that I’m leery of using only because I don’t use it often enough to be skilled at it, and they can be dangerous. I have it on my list to donate of a local thrift shop that supports several shelters for abused women in the city.

Of course the first thing I did, even before I unpacked the pressure cooker was to look at the enclosed recipe booklet…only a few recipes. However, the Chicken Cacciatore recipe caught my eye. It looked pretty authentic. The list of ingredients was exactly the same as my husband’s godmother’s recipe. We called her Aunt Anna.

To me this is really what cooking is about. The sharing of recipes, the enjoyment of the process of cooking, eating with family and/or friends, and having food centered memories. All good. Well…Aunt Anna made her own from-scratch marinara sauce. She might’ve used canned tomatoes, but in season she used fresh tomatoes for her sauce, and it took hours to cook. In Brooklyn (NYC) they have green grocers in all residential neighborhoods where you can get  fresh produce. Aunt Anna liked to make fresh marinara for Sunday dinner.

On the Sundays we were going to eat at her house, we’d go to Mass with her, then take her out for breakfast at the local Greek diner. After that, she’d cook and we’d watch TV until dinner was on the table. She always went out to the green grocer looking for a few pounds of ripe tomatoes on Saturday. With all the settings, bells and whistles on the pressure cooker, a fresh marinara sauce that took Aunt Anna hours to make can be made in about 30 minute. And I like that.  And I like remembering Aunt Anna and her excellent Sunday dinners.

If you like foodie fiction you might like to try HARMFUL INTENT, a fast moving murder mystery with wit, humor, and it’s also uplifting.

Calm Down And Shut Up ~ Joyce Meyer didn’t put it that way

Shutting Up and Calming Down wasn’t the easiest thing to do at that point.

At 8:30 this morning, I had to calm down before phoning my doctor. I also had to put a watch on my mouth…as in pretty much shut it…or communicate only essentials.

Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth;
Keep watch over the door of my lips. ~ Psalm 141:3 [New American Standard Bible, NASB]

After my chemo treatment yesterday which not only kills cancer, it kills white blood cells, they gave me an ‘onbody’ cartridge that will later give me an injection to rebuild those white blood cells. The nurse didn’t put the adhesive cover on it. After sitting in a chemo chair for nearly two hours, I had to badly use the restroom and wasn’t paying attention. When she said, “You’re all set. You can do home,” I made a beeline for the women’s room.

When I got home I was caught in a typical Florida northeastern coastal downpour and when I got into my condo unit dripping wet, the cartridge (without the cover) fell off my arm and onto the floor. It was unusable at that point, and I had white blood cells rapidly dying and was super susceptible to infection. Not good in the era of Covid 19. So, what did my lightning fast mind do? It started obsessing.

Thankfully I was able to sleep last night, but in the morning I was obsessing again. I knew I couldn’t call my doctor in that state. My solution to my mind problem was to begin hunting on YouTube for a Joyce Meyer video with a title something like “Calm Down and Shut Up.” I didn’t find one by that title. But I did find “The Disappointment of Unrealistic Expectations, Part I” which dealt mostly with our unrealistic expectations of others…such as that they should never make a mistake, or their should never be a miscommunication. After I listened to the sermon I was able to rationally phone my doctor’s office and get an appointment for that day to go to the treatment center and get an injection of the same medicine. I was right to be very concerned. I absolutely had to go get the injection, but obsessing wasn’t the right way to approach it. Now I have to point out the hospital that treats the rare cancer I have is an 80 mile drive from my house. So, it’s a big deal for me to drive, especially when I drove there yesterday for treatment and had planned to rest today.

But God had a divine appointment for me. I was bringing trash to the dumpster early this morning when a woman who lives on the other side of my condo complex stopped and asked how I was doing. She knew I was in treatment. I told her the story and immediately she said, “I’ll drive you.” And she did. We had a wonderful drive talking about church and the Bible…telling funny stories and laughing. All’s well that ends well, as the old saying goes.