One Day

We've moved to a new state, house and job. There's clearly a lot going on. There have a been a lot of change. This move has been wonderful. We LOVE where we are, we LOVE our church, all 5 of us are making friends. God is good, and he has blessed us richly. And yet, things are not good. In the past month I have been having lots of panic attacks. On one occasion I called 911 to get to the ER to make sure everything was OK with my heart (David was away at a men's retreat...). I'm not sleeping well at night, I have very low energy, and quite frankly, I feel like I'm a hot mess. Right now we don't know what's going on. Right now we have way more questions than answers. Right now we're relying fully and totally on the Lord. Right now we're taking one day at a time. I am meeting with a sleep specialist to see if I might have sleep apnea--our family doctor seems to think this is the root cause of everything. We're praying the Lord gives the doctor ...

Change. It's hard. It's uncomfortable. It can be painful. It's rarely fun or looked forward to. Sometimes change is unexpected (like a death), other times it's expected and you have time to prepare (such as a new job). But, what about the changes you KNOW you need to make and you keep putting off? Well, my husband and I have been putting off change for a long time. We are fat. We are overweight. We are miserable. We must change. There's no other way around it. If we want to live a healthier and better life we must lose weight. We can't keep living the way we are.  A friend of ours introduced us to a weight loss program back before Christmas, I think. July of this year came and my husband said, "If you don't mind, I think I'm going to do it." Mind? Of course not!!!!! I don't mind at all!!!! He ordered his food and began his process of change. He's lost 35 lbs since he started the end of July!!  On the left is David's before ...

Since Bekah had her surgery back in February she has struggled with sleeping. And I mean, she's had night terrors, won't sleep for HOURS, has a hard time getting to sleep. You name it, they've written a chapter on it in a book. It's been a VERY frustrating 6 months. We have tried everything we know to do and still, sleep is not something we can count on. We have often felt like we have a newborn in the house again. We have cried, we have yelled, we have screamed, we have prayed, we have sought advice, we have read books, we have prayed and prayed and prayed. No, I have no idea why the Lord is allowing us to go through this season. During the early part of all this I had a friend share with me that she went through something similar with one of her sons. She shared with me that she spent those many hours in prayer. Yes, tears too, but prayer. I figured since she is wiser then me and had been through this I ought to take her advice. And so, I have. Prayer changes thing...

I am always trying to to find yummy, filling, and HEALTHY snacks for the kids. It's a tall order, as any mom can attest to. I mean, for like 1000 days they only want pretzels so you stock up and suddenly they don't want pretzels anymore. My kids like smoothies, but let's face it, making fruit and green smoothies gets costly. Especially when they want fruit for breakfast, lunch and supper! So, for something fun I decided to make them a chocolate "milkshake," which they excitedly said, "CHOCOLATE SMOOTHIES!!!!!" And, I think that's a much better description. They are easy to make and with the exception of the chia seeds and hemp seeds you more than likely have all the ingredients in the kitchen already. The chia and hemp seeds aren't hard to find either. I add them to add protein, omega-3s, fiber, and a lot of other healthy factors. My kids aren't dumb and if I were to hand them some chia or hemp seeds to just munch on they would quickly turn u...

I have been taking Plexus for about 2 months now. I talk about what it is  here . Let me tell you, the first month was rough. I had terrible detoxing. I felt horrible. I felt sick. But I plugged along because I've detoxed before and know it's bad before it's better. Then, we went on vacation, and I wasn't diligent at all taking my supplements. And we didn't eat very well. We ate more sugar and junk then we do at home. We came home, and I felt dreadful, and I felt even more determined to get back to taking my Triplex. All last week I was diligent. I was also diligent in drinking my water. (Side note: I can not stress ENOUGH how important water is for our bodies. It is SO important. And in case you're wondering how much you should drink, you need to drink 1/2 your body weight in ounces. That means if you're 100 lbs. then you need to be drinking 50 oz of water a day. For those of us who weigh more than that, well, it can seem like an awful lot of water.)  Yo...

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm taking some supplements which are helping with healing my gut and my insides. The hope is that as I heal inside this will lead to weight loss. What I love about this product is it is NOT primarily a weight loss product. It is a healing product. What am I taking? I'm taking Plexus , and taking 3 of their different products that are in the Triplex. Yes, I can sell it to others, yes I can make money from it, and yes, if this is something you would like to use I can help you in that! However, the money is NOT in any way, shape or form my reason for taking it. I'm taking it for health. I want to get healthy. I want to heal my gut in ways I can't with simple diet alone. I love Plexus! Why? Well, it's all natural. All of the ingredients are natural, from NATURE, from plants and the like. Not weird, synthetic (man-made) ingredients. There are no strange side affects that leave me wondering if I need to stop using it. The ingre...

I mentioned last week that David and I have been on a journey of health .  Because of my different dietary issues/needs it's been hard to find something to help get us over the hump and get us moving. Most things have a lot of fillers, preservatives, or other ingredients that would just make life worse. We aren't interested in any meal supplements because we eat quite clean. We don't eat processed foods so we didn't want to do so to lose weight. We had resigned ourselves to do this the old-fashioned way. With really getting down to business with our eating (we do great at meals...it's snacking that we have the most issue) and just get out of the house and be active! We've been doing a lot better in this regard, thankfully.  What we have come to learn/realize is that eating is just as much a drug as smoking or alcohol. It's our go-to when we're happy, sad, angry, stressed, whatever. And this is wrong. As Christians we need to be going to God for these...

Our family, mostly David and I, are on a journey of health. We've been on this journey for almost 4 years now. You might think, "Gee, you don't seem to be doing a very good job!" That is partly true, but what I'm learning is that health is, indeed, a journey. Our bodies are full of layers and as the top layer heals the one underneath can heal. Over the past 4ish years we have changed the way we eat. I am not able to eat grains of any kind, soy or dairy. As a family we pretty much each all eat the same, with an exception here or there for David and the kids. We HAVE figured out that the less grain, soy and dairy we eat the better we all feel. Cora is getting to the point of being able to read her own body and is getting good at knowing what foods affect her adversely, etc. We have eliminated processed foods from our house, I make everything from scratch. We eat organic eggs, use aluminum-free deodorant and fluoride-free toothpaste. We've also incorporated the u...