The One About Motives

There's a pretty strong theme in the scriptures, and in the Christian faith in general, of checking your motives.  The Bible talks frequently about how God searches the heart, and judges by that, rather than the outer appearance.

There's a pretty strong theme in my life too - checking my motives too much.  Many times, I just don't make a decision I should make, for fear of making it based on the wrong motives, regardless of what might be considered right or wrong.

Should I be friends with this person I just met? Well, what are my motives?  Am I selfishly seeking a friendship for proximity to others, or social standing, or solid style advice?  Or am I selflessly seeking a friendship to be an encouragement to others, or to help somebody learn helpful life skills (knitting and efficient dishwasher-loading seem to be my areas of expertise, in case you were wondering), or to share this love that has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit?

Should I post this picture?  Well, what are my motives?  Am I selfishly posting this picture to get people to notice how cool my life is?  Or am I selflessly posting it to spread a little more love and light (and coffee, if we're honest here) in the world?

Well, Es.  How about you stop questioning so much, and just DO THE THING.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether you're doing it for the "right" reasons or not, befriending someone is always the right thing to do.
And, as far as pictures go, I can't think of a reason to ever not spread beauty in this world.  We always need more light.

Should I pick up this hitch-hiker?

Bet you didn't think this post would go there, did you?

The fact is, more often than not, what stops me from picking up random people on the road is not the fact that my responsible safety-conscious parents drilled it into my head that I should not pick up strangers on the road when I was first learning to drive.  It really usually just ends up being a question of motives, and, by the time I've finished questioning my motives, I'm five miles past the hitch-hiker, and it's not really a question at all anymore, unless I'm not late to anything (which is never, in case you were wondering)...

This past weekend, on my way to Austin for a lunch date that I was barely going to be on time for, I saw a man on the side of the road, standing in the rain, holding out his thumb.  He was an older black man with a short thick mop of graying curly hair.  He smiled, looking open and friendly as we drove past, the whole train of us stuck behind that one 18-wheeler going 10 miles below the speed limit.

I was the caboose of that train, and I felt an overwhelming urge to stop when I noticed the hope in his eyes, even as I, the very last car, drove past.  He looked like such a kind man, I thought.  But did I stop?

No. I didn't.  I began questioning my motives, because, evidently, that's what I do best.

I looked in my rear-view mirror and watched him slowly put his arm down by his side and drop his shoulders in what looked like utter defeat.  But did I turn around?  No.

Instead, I questioned myself further.

Y'all.  The man needed a ride, and I didn't give him one, because I was busy trying to decide if I was going to do it for the right reasons.  I'm pretty sure it didn't ultimately matter what my reasons were. I ignored the urging of the Holy Spirit, choosing instead to have a fruitless conversation with myself.

Then, on my way home from work tonight, I saw this lady huffing and puffing up one of the biggest hills in town, and thought to myself, as I really often do, "I should give her a ride."

And you know what I did?

I questioned my motives - am I only thinking of offering her a ride in some confused effort at redeeming myself from a bad decision made this weekend?

I bet you thought I gave her a ride immediately, huh?  No.  I'm not that great.  But I did catch myself - I thought, you know what?  I can keep doing this all day, or I can just listen to the Spirit in me, waiting to speak.  So I stopped, literally at a stop sign, and figuratively in my heart, and I listened.  A second later, I was rolling down the window and asking her if she needed a ride.  She did, and she hustled over to my passenger side.

You know, I really wish, for my sake, more than anything, that I could say it was the best experience ever - that I got to share Jesus, and help her feel better about life, and any number of other good things.

But, really, she just sat there, listening to Andy Grammer on my radio and enjoying my air conditioning, and we chatted a little bit about the weather, and how cute her little neighborhood was.  Then she got out, and I noticed that my car smelled like cigarette smoke, which invariably gives me a headache.  So, no, it definitely wasn't a glowing experience, but at least I finally just took action when it needed to be taken, instead of trying to figure out what my motives were for said action.

This is by no means a call to pick up every random person on the side of the road, or a call to start making rash decisions, but rather an invitation to believers to embrace the freedom of listening to the Holy Spirit inside of you rather than drowning Him out with your own arguments and opinions.

Sometimes you just need to do the thing, regardless of why you're doing it.

The Crunchy Chronicles Continue

Evidently, despite my supposed problem with making resolutions, February has become my "big hygiene changes" month.

Last year, it was starting oil cleansing, and trying no-poo again.

The oil cleansing is still showing incredible results, and I could not be more thrilled with it, a little over a year later. I don't think I'll ever buy another bottle of face wash again.

The no-poo, however? Not so much.  I LOVED it for quite a while, but was never able to find a satisfactory way to deep condition my ends, and I knew they needed more than just apple cider vinegar to be healthy.  By August, I'd really begun to feel like my hair was in trouble - the ends were incredibly dry, despite the fact that I had even caved and begun using a commercial deep conditioner.  The rest of it was beginning to feel rather dry and brittle as well.  I eventually just decided to return to regular shampoo and conditioner.  My hair began to feel stronger, and I went to the salon to get the ends cut off.  I told the girl to cut off whatever was needed to make it healthy again, and she held up about three and a half inches and asked if I was okay with that much coming off.  I reiterated that I wanted her to take whatever was needed, and she said if I really meant that, she'd like to take off about five inches.

Yikes!  But I said yes, because I wanted my hair healthy.  Then and there, I decided no-poo was not for me.

Whew!  Maybe I'll never have to say "poo" on my blog again!

Shortly thereafter, a friend posted this link on facebook and tagged me.  If you've done your research, you know that I was thoroughly convinced that the science behind the original no-poo (Whoops.  There it is.) article I read was legitimate, and, really, who knows, maybe it was, and that girl is still thrilled with her hair.  If so, more power to her, but the science in this latest article seemed pretty legitimate too, and also happened to be corroborated by my own experience.  If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that we all have very different needs for our skin and hair care. (Seriously, why else are there sooooooo many different options in that department at Target?)

So, I began to get stir-crazy for a different way to take care of my hair without a ton of chemicals.  Then, Baby Sister suddenly announced that she was going to go a month without using any shampoo, so she did, with lots of dry-shampoo, baby powder, and corn starch usage.  I tried it along with her, and decided I really didn't want to do that, because I still felt like I was putting a bunch of unnecessary junk in my hair.

But then I did my research, and found a whole community of people who have stopped using shampoo, and have started using... Nothing!  That's right. No shampoo, and no replacement either.  This caught my attention.
It seemed that most of these folks would use apple cider vinegar every once in a while if they "needed" it.  But none of them explained exactly what constituted that need.  Many of them also conditioned with coconut oil, and quite a few of them washed with an egg every once in a while.

Yep.  They washed their hair with eggs.  Weirdos.

But hey, I'm a weirdo too, so I decided to try it.  Y'all.  My hair is amazing.  As you know, I'm not into selfies, but I posted this picture on instagram recently because, seriously, look at that fantastic un-washed hair!

20 days with no shampoo!

Alright, so I'm sure you want to know the actual routine.  Caveat:  I didn't go into this specifically trying to simplify my routine or save money, or anything like that.  I just wanted to get unnecessary chemicals out of my life as much as I can.  So this isn't the kind of thing that is going to make life easier because you suddenly just never have to wash your hair.  I still spend basically the same amount of time in the shower.  I just don't use shampoo.  Instead, I give myself a serious scalp massage under hot water - like I probably "scrub" more than I did when I was using shampoo.  And that's it!

I tried to use apple cider vinegar, I really did, because I felt like it was necessary since so many other people said they used it when "needed."  But every time I used it, it just made my hair oily really quickly.  I do like what it does for my ends, though, so I think I may try just putting it on them.

This is really just one big experiment, and I'll hopefully be putting more updates up here about what works for me.

One thing I've discovered is really essential to make this work is a boar-bristle brush.  I brush my hair with mine every day, and it helps distribute the natural oils through my hair so they can help it stay healthy.  And I'm talking a real brush-through every evening.  This takes time!
One bonus about a boar-bristle brush is that it works really well for pulling your hair back into a tight ponytail or bun, if that's something you like to do.  It just makes my hair lay so smoothly against my head!

I've also discovered a good way to deep condition with Coconut Oil!  Every 10 days or so, or whenever my ends begin to feel a bit dry, I take a tiny tiny bit, and massage it into the ends of my hair in the evening, then bundle it all up on top of my head in a high bun, and sleep on it, then I wash my hair with an egg yolk the next morning, and it washes the coconut oil right out. Crazy, right?

The really crazy thing is that I really don't see much difference in how the roots of my hair look after just scrubbing them, and actually washing with an egg - they're equally clean both ways!

A note about washing your hair with eggs:  You certainly can wash your hair with both the yolk and white, but I've heard that this can actually leave cooked bits of egg white in your hair if you use really hot water, so I'm not about to do it.

If you're at all like me, though, and really hate the idea of wasting anything, have no fear!  You don't need to throw out that egg white.  Just put it in an air tight container, and use it as a face mask.  Seriously, just smear that plain egg white all over your face, and leave it for 10-20 minutes.  (You will feel your skin getting tight!)  Then just rinse it off with water and a rag.  Your skin will feel so soft and moisturized afterwards!  You do need to store it in the fridge, and use it pretty shortly after cracking it, because it will start to smell truly rotten if you don't watch out.  I usually can get 2 or 3 masks from a single egg yolk.

While we're on the subject of faces and not wasting things, let's also go ahead and talk about exfoliating with coffee grounds.  Y'all.  It's seriously the best thing.  I sort of forgot about it because I had a semi-traumatic experience:
The fact is, I drink way more coffee than I will ever be able to use to exfoliate my face, but when I began this particular regimen, I got really excited about the prospect of not throwing out coffee grounds, and saved all of them!  They collected in a container in my fridge, and began GROWING MOLD.  If there's anything I hate worse than not wasting things, it's mold, so out they went, and I decided this just wasn't a good idea at all.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my life is basically a series of dramatic ups and downs...

Eventually, I realized I just had to resign myself to not using all of them, but just keeping them on-hand in small batches, and using up each small batch before I replenish them.

I've just had to learn the hard way that, when I'm using mostly natural things in my hair and body care, they're going to behave as natural things do without any preservatives - they're going to get stinky and gross if I don't use them quickly.

So, I'm sure now you're naturally wondering if, in reality, I'm stinky and gross.  Don't worry - I've wondered that myself quite frequently, because I've always heard that you don't really notice your own smell.

So, today, I did all of us a favor, and asked one of Baby Sister's friends to smell my hair.

She said it smelled like hair - not like shampoo, just like hair - but not bad either, so there!

Maybe I'll come back sometime soon and tell you about my homemade deodorant...

So There's This Mid-February Phenomenon

I have a friend who works at Starbucks, and last week, she expressed it quite nicely:
"On Friday, we'll be super busy, because everyone will be trying, up until the very last minute, to meet someone in time for Valentine's Day. And on Saturday we'll be super busy because everyone else will be treating their Valentines."

Every year, around this time, I get a little touchy.  I try not to offend people, because I totally support people who are happily in love and want to take a special day to celebrate that fact, provided they continue to celebrate that fact, perhaps in less elaborate ways, throughout the rest of their lives...

But, y'all, this problem of people having a freak-out or getting super down in the dumps because they don't have a "Valentine" is so troublesome to me. Let's just pause and think through the idea of a "Valentine" - he's actually a person.  Did you know that? I don't know a ton about him, but I do think I remember hearing that he performed marriages for people in the Roman army, who were technically forbidden to marry, which is, you know, incredibly romantic and all.

BUT the holiday bearing his name was not romanticized until Chaucer got a hold of it and made it a generalized celebration of romantic love.

You know what else Chaucer helped to generalize?

Yep, the fart joke.

If that doesn't help you understand my opinion of Chaucer, you don't know me very well.

To be fair to both Chaucer and Valentine, I don't think either of them really meant for people to get so incredibly sad about their lives on this day, but it is an unfortunate side effect of our Disney-saturated, Chick-Flick-watching, Diamon-ring-advertising, First-kiss-idolizing culture.

Believe me, I'm just as subject to this culture as anyone else. In searching through my February archives, I found this gem, and I have a feeling that some of that emotional instability I was feeling may have stemmed from the surplus of romantic imagery and themes that inundates advertisements and every corner of our little world during this time of year.

It's just basically unavoidable, and really, who am I (or any of us single people who all feel a bit of "poor me" this time of year if we're honest with ourselves) to take this day away from the lovers? So what we really need to work on isn't changing, or even "boycotting" Valentine's Day (as much as I am tempted to, some years), but investing in the people that we love on this day and always.  Whether they're technically a "Valentine" or not, is really beside the point.

You know who I love?  Baby Sister. Poor thing.  She's gonna be Baby Sister even when she's old and gray...

So, I took her to a concert of her favorite musician this Valentine's weekend, and we stayed the night with an extremely motivated writer friend of mine, who inspired both of us to start writing more.

We drove up to Dallas together, and got turned around more than once, because that's the way I travel - some GPS, mostly I-know-better-than-that-machine... She may or may not have thought I was about to drive off a cliff at one point, and also may or may not have been pretty close to correct.

She made us a road-trip cd, which was missing 5 songs, mysteriously, and gave us a good chance to listen to other music we both love.

We got to the concert early, and had 45 minutes to waste running around the cutest downtown you ever did see in Wylie, TX. (So many places were open, even after 8!)

We made some new friends in this little combination Coffe Bar and Antique Shop.  And, wouldn't you know, they were camp people too, so we had lots to talk about.  Of course they were there for the concert too, so we stood together.

After getting to my friend's house way too late at night, we went to bed and woke up to a homemade breakfast and 20 acres of woods, just begging to be explored.

Do you see what I'm saying? I refused to be quietly down in the dumps, and also to loudly protest.  I simply made memories with someone I love on a Saturday that could have been any Saturday, but happened to be February 14th.

I think this may have been the first time I got Valentine's Day right.

What's in My Bag, aka I Want a Diaper Bag SO Bad Right Now

When I became a nanny, I had no idea how difficult it would be to find a bag that would suit my needs.

Frequently, I go straight from work to run errands, or to exercise class, or to Bible Study, depending on the day, so carrying everything I need, plus the things I need for the kiddos has become quite the challenge.  And it only gets harder in the summer when we head to the splash pad, etc...

I started off with backpacks, but, y'all, I may be willing to wear shorts, t-shirts, and ball caps all day for work, but carrying a backpack on top of all that?  I honestly felt like I was 12, and probably looked like it too, thanks to my great non-aging genes, which I'm sure I'll be grateful for when I'm 50 or something...

So it became necessary to carry something a little more mature.  Plus, I realize it may murder my back, but I've always loved over-the-shoulder bags more, simply because they can be accessed without ever taking them off - just pull out the sippy cup and voila, you never even had to stop walking - look at me being all practical!

I found this Fossil bag, which I can't complain about, because I know it will serve me well for many years, and I scored it at the outlet for only thirty-something bucks, but it's better for carrying around a lap-top and a few books than all the things I need with the kids.

Sometime after I found this bag, I discovered Lily Jade, and immediately began jonesing over their beautiful and practical Caroline.  I mean, goodness gracious, the thing is red, not to mention exactly my style.

You can imagine when Lily Jade announced that I could make a blog post and be entered in a giveaway, I was all for it, so here you go - What's in my bag:



Notebooks of all kinds (planner, meal-tracker, sketchbook, you get the idea), and usually a few letters to reply to or a knitting project to catch up on in case I get the chance during nap or something. (Doesn't really ever happen, in case you were wondering, but a girl can hope, right?)

Tissues and Lotion for me, wipes for the kids in case of ice cream stickiness and what-not.

Honestly, there are usually way more kid's meal toys floating around in my bag than just those three, but most of them are in the back seat of my car right now along with last week's potato chip crumbs and fruit roll-up wrappers...

Anybody who knows me much at all, knows that I always have more pens than any one person has good use for, and it seems that I either have zero lip balm/gloss, or a ton.

I've learned that it's best to keep a smaller bag in my big one, packed with "purse essentials," (phone, keys, wallet, glasses, more pens and lip balm) so if I'm going straight somewhere after work, I can just throw the big bag in back of my car and carry my valuables around with me.

I also usually have a sippy cup or two, a water bottle if the big boy is with us, a special blanket, a diaper, and the toy of the moment (the size of which I heavily regulate). But I leave those things at work for obvious reasons, and this photo was taken at home.

Imagine adding all of those things, plus my water bottle, to this:

Yeah, I need a diaper bag.

Never thought I'd say that at this point in my life, but I guess you never know where you'll be...

Recipe: Candied Grapefruit Peels

So, a little while back, I was eating a grapefruit for breakfast, because I'm healthy like that...
Suddenly, I thought to myself that I should candy the peels.  I have no idea why this idea came to me, but it did, and it was stuck once it got into my head.
So, of course I googled "Candied Grapefruit Peels" and came up with three legitimate looking recipes.  I combined those, and came up with this:

Basically all you need is plenty of fresh cold water, and 3/4 c of sugar for each grapefruit you're using.

All the recipes I read gave very specific guidelines for how to peel the grapefruit to make your peels uniform in size and shape, but since my main goal in peeling a grapefruit is to keep it edible, I just peeled it like I normally do, and sliced the peels up into approximately 1/2 inch wide strips.  I thought they were perfectly presentable.  As long as they're fairly close to bite-size, you should be good



Place all of your grapefruit peels in a saucepan with enough cold water to cover them by about an inch, and bring it to a rolling boil.



Drain all the water off.  It is very important that you get rid of all the water, because it absorbs a lot of the bitterness from the peels.



Repeat this process three more times.  You should have boiled and drained the peels four times by this point, and they will look something like this:



Finally put them back in your pan, with half a cup of sugar and, again, enough water to cover them by about an inch.  This time, simmer for about 2 hours.  After the simmering, your syrup will be thick, about the consistency of the syrup you find in canned fruits.  Let the peels cool in the syrup.*

If, for some reason, you're stopped in the middle of the process, like I was when I was taking these pictures, you can store your peels in an air-tight container with that syrup for up to 2 or 3 weeks.

When you're ready to serve your grapefruit peels, whether right after cooking, or after storing for a few days, take them out of the syrup (if you hate having sticky hands as much as I do, you can use a fork for this step) and let them dry for a few hours on a wire rack with a cookie sheet under it to catch the syrup that will drip off.

Make sure you put them on the rack peel side up, since the pith will hold a lot of syrup, which won't drain off if you leave it facing up - I didn't learn this from experience or anything...

After they've drained for a few hours, put about a 1/4 c of sugar in a soup bowl and roll the peels around in it about 4 or 5 at a time.

You can store them in an air-tight container for about a week, but if you're anything like me, they certainly won't last that long!  Eating these things is kinda like eating grapes or potato chips - eating one just makes you want another.
In the interest of full disclosure, they're not necessarily sweet like candy.  they do still taste like grapefruit, but kinda like when you eat grapefruit with sugar sprinkled on top.

The good news?  This is a treat that you'll most likely enjoy, but your kids most likely won't, so no guilt about not sharing.

*I think I made a mistake the first time I made these, and let them simmer too high.  The syrup boiled completely away before 2 hours was up, so I didn't really need to drain them much, and they were actually easier to coat in sugar, and much less messy that way...

How's the No-Sugar thing going, you ask?

Well, its up and down.

Actually, it's definitely not a no-sugar thing anymore.
It's more a general-life-adjustment-dragged-out-over-a-much-longer-time-than-just-a-year.

I learned a few very valuable lessons from the earlier part of this year.  That no-shopping resolution in 2013?  I had no idea at the time, or even until half-way through this year, that it really wasn't me keeping that resolution.  That was the Spirit of the Lord inside of me, keeping me from spending money I would need so desperately at the end of that year, when I took the most giant, terrifying fall of faith (because it wasn't anything near as elegant or smooth as a leap).

It really was no surprise to me when I learned that I was just going to continue to fail at this self-control thing I thought I had mastered.  I should have known myself better than that.

For a while I sat in a corner and pouted because I was embarrassed by this huge proclamation I'd made to the world that I was going to be this awesome, totally put-together girl, who was going to do exactly what she said she would, because she was strong enough.

After pouting for a while, though, I realized that it's okay to fail, and we all go around proclaiming that we're cooler, stronger, wiser, more in control than we actually are.  The plain truth is that we aren't strong enough alone.  The Lord had a reason to help me with my 2013 resolution.  My 2014 resolution came from a deep-seated place of pride in my heart, and needed to be broken for so, so many reasons.

I made a decision when I started this blog, that I was never going to delete anything I wrote on it, no matter how much I may hate returning to those things.  So, as much as I hate to return to that incredibly prideful post from this January, it's staying, simply to remind me of what I've learned.

I did make a valiant effort to keep that resolution for the first few months, and, who knows?  I may eventually be able to transition to a life-style without processed sugar.  I would be so happy to do that one of these days, but I'm putting no prideful, legalistic time-limits on it this time around.

In fact, I'm slowly collecting recipes I come across that will be helpful when that time does arrive, because I do intend to do it one of these days.  Now is not that time, though.

An interesting side-effect has arisen from that failed resolution, though.  I've established a few significant, chemical-free habits, like my new hair and face washing routines.  I've also experimented with Oil Pulling, and been pleasantly surprised.  I still haven't fully converted to that from brushing my teeth, but I am so close to it.

I've also discovered that I like Agave nectar in my coffee better than sugar.  Definitely a surprise, but certainly a pleasant one.  So, I guess it wasn't completely a bust?

How Do I Look?

Right now, I'm wearing really mis-matched work-out clothes (complete with blue and orange argyle socks, and two different shades of lime green).  I feel gross and sweaty.  I also feel great, because I just finished a good workout.
You won't see me post a picture of myself in this state anywhere on social media.

This weekend, on Saturday, I was wearing a fantastic dress my mom made for herself shortly after she married my Dad.  I had the perfect jewelry to complement it.  I felt like a million bucks, as they say.
You didn't see me post a picture of myself in that state anywhere on social media either.

While I do post a lot, and I mean a LOT, of pictures of the world around me, I post "selfies" very rarely.  In fact, I used to joke about posting an "annual selfie."
I also rarely post pictures of myself in general - "group selfies," so to speak.

A friend recently shared this link on Facebook, and it resonated with me.

I don't know anything about this girl, or if I would agree with anything else she's ever said, but my heart responded to "I guess this is human nature to give feedback on our appearances..." and "Easiest way to [cater to the Facebook algorithm]?  Share pictures of my face, body and things based on my appearance."

I immediately knew she was right.  Despite the infrequency of selfies I post, I have noticed that I get considerably more likes on them than almost anything else I post.  This alone has been disturbing to me, so I decided to do a little research on my own Facebook profile:

Since March, the average amount of likes on any picture that I've posted, which features my face, body, and/or things based on my appearance is 19.
The average amount of likes on any other picture I've posted is 10.

There is something wrong with this.

I've never been sure how to put my thoughts on selfies into words, but this experience helped me to process through some of them at least.

I haven't struggled much at all with insecurity about my appearance, and I am so so so thankful for that.
I am just as affected by "likes" on my pictures as is the next person.  I'm not proud of that.
I find myself obsessively checking to see if anyone has liked the latest thing I posted, and I also find myself obsessively making every picture of anything "perfect" so as to appeal to the most people.

Let's just be honest, maybe there are a few people in the world who don't make their selfies "perfect" before posting them, but in reality, most of those nonchalant look-at-me-all-sweaty-and-smiling-after-a-great-workout pictures were taken from something like 12 slightly different angles and sent through at least 5 different filters before they were posted.  And the same goes for the perfectly posed look-at-me-all-gussied-up-and-celebrating-my-friend's-birthday pictures.

You guys!  If I analyzed pictures of myself as much as I analyze my other pictures, or even as much as other people presumably analyze their selfies, I'd go insane, and probably start having all those insecurities I just established that I am grateful to live without.

No thanks. I'd prefer not to open Pandora's Box.

It is indeed human nature to give feedback on our appearances, and I think (hope?) maybe a lot of the likes on selfies are simply an acknowledgement of bravery, because it is seriously brave to post a close-up picture of yourself on the internet for everyone to see, regardless of how many re-takes you took.

But we are so so so much more than just what we look like, and I personally kinda like who I actually am outside of my appearance.  I also kinda hate the idea of people deriving their worth from how much other people like the way they look.  I try to be careful about what I "like" from people, and what I complement them on in real life.  Yeah, I tell people when they look beautiful, or that I like their clothes, but I try to also tell them how beautiful their heart is, or how much I love the way they smile at strangers on the street.

Personally, I don't want to be known for how I look, but for how I look at the world around me.