Monday Moment: These Earthly Bodies

 

This body that I live in decided to come down with bacterial tonsillitis. In June. The nerve! Super high fever in June in Texas= blahyucknasty. It also equals turning down the A/C to the mid-60s while sitting in front of a box fan hugging one of those frozen ice blocks you put in coolers to keep drinks cold. Yeah. I've left this view from my couch only to work, shove a few dishes in the dishwasher, keep the laundry going, and pet and feed dogs. 

These earthly bodies we're staying in, huh? They're incredible, perplexing, exasperating, beautiful things. I'm amazed at how age draws lines on our bodies. How injury and illness carve parting scars. How blood lines birth predispositions. I'm in awe of how vulnerable bodies are... how fragile breath seems, and yet how strong these bodies can be... how resistant to attack and how indomitable the spirit they house can remain.

I have a friend who believes war is coming. Hunger. Illness. Suffering unlike anything we've seen. I'm inclined to agree. Some days I give in to fear for my body... and those of the ones I love. So I drag my carved-fragile-resistant-indomitable body to the couch, sigh a sigh, and pray. And I read. And somehow, tonsillitis and threats from within and without and worry about these earthly bodies quiets and I am confident again...

So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies 

we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. 

Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, 

for then we will be at home with the Lord. 

So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please Him.

-2 Corinthians 5:6-10

 

The Unwritten Rule of Summer

It's the unwritten rule of summer: when it's warm and you're driving under a sky filled with lazy, puffy clouds, you must pull over at the country roadside stands. You must.

 

Especially when they sell strawberries you can pick yourself. And peaches they just picked themselves.

And especially when they have red new potatoes, still dusty from the soil. And jams they canned right there. And cold, bottled fizzy drinks from yesteryear. Then you really must stop. It's the rule.

If you're ever in Pittsburg, Texas, stop at Efurd Orchards. And when they offer you a free peach still warm from the tree, think of me.

No. Just...No.

Sauerkraut is tolerant, for it seems to be a well of contradictions.

-Julien Freund

Let me tell you about a well of contradictions. Because I can. Oh, can I!

First of all, sauerkraut is not tolerant. At all. Does it look pretty in the garden? Yes. Is it fun when you cut it open? Uh-huh. But I tried to make sauerkraut, y'all. I narrowed my eyes and cracked my knuckles and sharpened my knife and I tried. After carefully picking, washing and slicing my home-grown heads, I salted and pounded and cheese-cloth'd and waited and ... ... and...

 

...no. Just...no. Sauerkraut does not naturally happen like all those online recipes say. My batch sat for two weeks and never so much as changed color. Still green. Still crisp-ish. Still... odd. I threw it in the back compost before anyone discovered it and mercilessly teased me. Or, heaven forbid, ate it.

You know those girls who make their own poptarts and tea blends and such? You girls ridiculously rock. For me, some things are just better from the store.

Well of contradictions. Harrumph....