We had a super fun ladies activity at church this week.  We had Pinterest party! We have many creative women at church and one of those young moms, Christina, took upon herself the planning and preparing of this fun event. Everyone was asked to bring $5 and a snack.  We enjoyed recipes that had been found or pinned onto Pinterest, but we spent most of the evening creating crafts that were found there.  We had a great time and came home with adorable fruits from our labors!

This was probably my favorite:

The instructions can be found here.

This is the recipe I took for our snack.  I can’t say I made it because my sweet daughter, Alli, made it for me.  It was a big hit! This is a White Pizza Dip. 

I took a little taste with a tortilla chip (I had to make sure it was good!) and that’s a great dipper.  But when I took it to church, I toasted French bread slices and that was really good with the dip!  A cracker would be good too. 

If you need an appetizer for a Christmas event, this will be a hit!  You might want to make two bowls, though, because you’ll want more than just a taste for yourself!  It’s easy and super good!

From my parsonage windows,

The Christmas cards are almost all made, but need signatures and address.  The laundry is washed and dried, but now sits cold and crumpled in the dryer.  Forty-seven Emails are waiting to be read. It seems that completing a task is impossible right now.  Have you ever been there?  It happens in a variety of settings – a new baby enters the house, you move into a new home and aren’t settled yet, or a crisis comes.  The “normal” routine is replaced with dysfunction.  The plans carefully written out on the planner are now only fleeting thoughts, never written anywhere. 

This is exactly where I found myself yesterday.  I felt like I was moving aimlessly from one little task to another, yet never really completing anything.  While I was folding the laundry on the unmade guest bed, I whispered in the empty house, “Lord, what am I supposed to do now? Please help me.”  I finished the task at hand, then moved on to cleaning the hardwood floor.  Once I was down on my knees, a song came to my mind,

To answer the question of this title, What’s cookin’ in the parsonage? I’d have to say, that this weekend, the best thing that was cooked up was encouragement.  Some of that did come in the form of  meals – cooked and presented by my daughters, and other thoughtful people at our church.  But I found encouragement stirred up in clean, folded laundry, and the orders to, “Go to take a nap.”  It came through a verse left on my cell phone’s voice mail, a basket of fruit, an errand run in our stead, or a bowl of soup delivered for lunch. Those that have come by to just pray with us or my mother-in-law have deeply ministered to our hearts. Encouragement also came through people who stopped at my pew in church to inquire how things are going.  It also came simply through a hug or a squeeze around the shoulders. 

I know that all the people that gave the encouragement to us would say that what they did was just a small thing, but often that’s the biggest way to let someone know you care.  I’m sure I would be as Anne of Green Gables today who found herself “in the depths of despair,” if it weren’t for the loving gestures of our friends and family.  Of course, as a child of God, we are never without hope, but in an  emotionally draining situation like sitting with a family member diagnosed with stage four cancer, it’s easy to lose a biblical focus without people cooking up some encouragement in whatever way the Lord puts on their heart.

We are so grateful for every kindness and every prayer on our behalf.  We know that For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, (Hebrews 4:15), but it’s a special blessing when someone “with skin on” comes along to remind us of God’s love.  Their kindness and words become His hands and His voice. God is at work in each of our lives, and we are truly blessed!

With love,

It was the time of day when the sun was low in the sky.  We had been waiting in the ICU room most of the afternoon, all personal items packed up, ready for my mother-in-law to be moved to a room on another floor.  Her situation had stabilized, and the time had come for her to go to a “regular” room.  She and I were the only ones in the room when the doctor came in to speak with us.  The doctor’s somber face told a story that her mouth would eventually speak – they found cancer, the inoperable kind at a stage four.

Those are words that no one wants to hear, but when they are filtered through the ears of a believer, what they hear instead is, I could be going home to see my Savior very soon.  Those are the very words I heard come from my mother-in-law’s lips as she shrugged her shoulders in surrender to whatever the Lord had planned for her. She added, “He knows what is best for me.”

I write this for your edification and encouragement, but also so I won’t forget.  Watching a mature child of God sift the news of cancer through the Truth of God’s Word that is tucked into their heart is precious.  After the doctor left the room, I hunkered down next to the chair that my mother-in-law had exchanged for her hospital bed. Opening my Bible to Psalm 34 I began reading to her the sweet words of David.

Not sure about why the block of color has appeared!  Oh well, chalk it up to another puzzle in my life!

Hospital rooms. IV drips. Waiting Antibiotics. Oxygen. Scans. Waiting. X-Rays. Lab work-ups. Pills. Waiting.