Smoked Tuna Salad Sanwiches

Today was an "I'm craving tuna salad sandwiches" day. Here's my favorite recipe:

2 Single serve packets of hickory smoked tuna (use your favorite flavor)
2 hard boiled eggs
1 T. Chopped dried onions
2 tsp. Dill weed
2 T. Pickle relish (we prefer sweet, but you can use dill)
1 stalk of celery finely diced
Mayonnaise 1-2 Tablespoons (use enough to moisten mixture, but not soupy)

In a medium bowl I start with the pickle relish, I add the dried onion so it can partially rehydrate. Then I put the peeled eggs into the mix and use a fork to chop them up. I add the tuna, celery and dill weed and mix well. This is where your personal taste comes in. Add just enough mayonnaise to pull the mix together and moisten. Some of you like wetter tuna salad so add to your preference.

Here are some items you can add if you want to change this up:

* chopped pecans or walnuts
* diced apple
* Shredded cheese for grilled tuna salad

This mix makes 3-4 sandwiches.

Enjoy

Love never fails...

Four And a Half Years

I woke up way too early for a Saturday morning and decided to blog. After writing and editing my work I tried to publish it. For some reason my iPhone wouldn't cooperate, so I got my trusty iPad and installed my blog app. I reread a bunch of old posts written the year after my first husband had died. I've certainly come a long way from those days. I am not ministering to very many people, I've remarried, and life has changed so much.

I remember feeling so lost after Jeff died, so very alone. I no longer suffer from night terrors. I still have no idea what my future holds. I am adjusting to marriage with a man very different from my first husband, and I have joy in small ways more often than not.

I think blogs are a lot like selfies, but more drawn out than a mere photo. Oddly, I don't enjoy taking photos of myself to share with the world, but writing about the internal issues I have dealt with in the process of living is another issue entirely. I'm an introvert with sporadic attacks of extroversion. That's what I will call it. Why I'm ok sharing intimate truths about myself is beyond my comprehension, but here I am compelled to do so?!

I'm hoping to be able to do this on a more regular basis. I know there are oodles of widows out there who are in various stages of widowhood. Perhaps something I post will help one of them. Being a widow is common, but it isn't an easy experience by any means. If you've found this blog and you're a widow, please respond. Share your thoughts if you will? Thank you.




Love never fails...

Why Wait?

Why Wait?

I was in the midst of a battle in flesh recently and I heard The Lord speak in my heart and say, "Why wait until the last minute or just before a battle to build up a stronghold? You can build and fight at the same time." As I thought about what he had said I remembered Nehemiah and his efforts to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem (the city of peace). The enemies to his project were using all their cunning and strategies to stop the work at hand and Nehemiah set men to building and men to guarding the work. Half of them were carrying weapons and the other half had tools to build with. So I set myself to create a "stronghold journal".

I'm a journal keeper from way back. I have hundreds if not more that I've written from my youth. I have journals with healing scriptures, journals with love verses, and journals with teachings on just about ever subject one can think of. Now I've begun compiling scriptures about things that help me build a wall of protection around myself, my husband and those I love. Each and every time I find a verse that makes me feel protected and strong I write it down. I've also started sharing with others and encouraging them to do the same. We live in perilous times and while we are pulling down the enemy's strongholds in our lives we need to building up the walls of God's protection as well. Why wait?

I will share my two favorites with you here. The entire 91st Psalm is a good one as well as Psalm 5:12 "For thou, Lord will bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield." Psalm 91 speaks of us hidden in Messiah Yeshua/Jesus. In HIM we are hidden and Moses spoke of what being hidden in the secret place means!

Yeshua/Jesus is the High Priest of our confession. We need to be using the power of life and death that comes in our mouths to defeat the garbage of the adversary. Every time the enemy attacked The Lord with junk he either said, "It is written" or "It is spoken". He told us in Mark 11 that we could have what we say! If we don't say anything we get nothing. If we line our lives up with the word and SPEAK it we create what God has said! So instead of running to God when attacked in finances, flesh or in your mind be ready with your own stronghold! You can build up walls of defense against the enemy WHILE you tear down his walls made of smoke and mirrors.

Selah


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Possessing Your Life

Just as Joshua had to go into the Promised Land and possess it, so must we. The difference being we must possess the dirt we occupy better known as our bodies. We are dirtbags with dominion.

1 Thessalonians 4:4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour.

The first place Joshua took was Jericho. He knew the land was full of enemies and giants. He knew he would need God's help to take the land. After he got God's direction he and his people followed it to the letter. They went in and took it, but Jericho was only the first of many strongholds they would take. They weren't always successful the first time. After Jericho they got a little cocky and had a dismal failure at Ai.

God loves us, His children, with all our flaws and failures, but He doesn't want us to stay that way. He has great and precious promises that He wants us to be partakers of. We must go in and possess the land we live in, and then go help our brothers and sisters to do the same. We are supposed to be overcoming the world, the flesh and the adversary. We are supposed to be walking in the love of God for those we come across each day. The ONLY way that will happen is if we put God's written word in our hearts. When we do this and begin to act upon what we "SEE" in the word, God will manifest Himself to us and we will hear His voice! Yeshua/Jesus died so we could hear the Father's voice for ourselves. He died so we could, as Adam, walk in the cool of the day with God in His garden.

Over the next weeks and months I want to share with you the things God is sharing with me to prepare us to go in and possess our vessels with sanctification and honor. One of those things is the healing of our bodies He promised in 1 Peter 2:24!

Walk with me as I walk with Abba Father in the garden. We will learn of His glorious love for us!

Selah (Hebrew for "chew on that" or meditate on these words)

Cerise




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Love Is In The Air

Here in West Texas we know when spring has arrived by the greening out of the mesquite bushes. It's clear to me by all the brilliant green in the chaparral that Spring has arrived. We also know by the extremes in temperatures that Spring is here. Yesterday it was 91 or so and today it's 47degrees and it was even cooler when I woke up. We are all praying our fruit trees aren't hit hard by this cold snap.

In all truth I'm barely aware of the weather these days. I have to have someone else mention it to be even slightly interested. Why? Because in one week it will be 19 months since my husband passed and I have a new man in my life. I hoped it would happen, but really wasn't overly confident I'd ever find love again. We are past all the really crazy love stuff and are dealing with everyday issues at this point. We aren't kids so in spite of the fact we were a little crazy the first three months, and even remarked that we felt like teenagers in love, we are moving into the more comfortable stage of new love. We move back and forth in each others' lives. I go to his home and know where the plastic wrap is. I know how he folds his towels and he knows that I roll mine. Both of us are pretty practical. He folds to fit a shelf and I roll because my tiny bathroom calls for it.

It's nice to have someone to wait for. It's nice to have someone to care about. It's nice to have an excuse to stay home, to go out, to go shopping for, and a thousand other things. There are challenges to new love: fitting into one each others' lives can be tough. We have both lost spouses. Our kids are mourning as well. Our grandchildren are struggling with their losses. Even though we have our share of challenges, we are very happy.

I'm a pretty private woman. I don't feel a compulsion to share deep secrets or private details, but it's nice to simply share that for us, "love is in the air".

A Prosperous Journey

The path of my life seems rocky, unsure and filled with potholes of varying size. It has innumerable cutbacks, detours and rabbit trails. I never know who I will travel it with or even when or if I will have a companion. Just when I think I know where it's going to take me I find myself going in a completely different direction. When I am sure it's going to be unpredictable it becomes drawn out and mundane, even boring in its predictability. I've come to the conclusion that the chaos theory is most definitely NOT a theory, but the reality we know on this side of eternity and heaven. There most definitely is an unseen adversary attempting to pull strings in my life, but being that he is a created being as are the angels that follow him, their influence is limited in scope by the unseen hand that sculpted them.

I have a little secret that I want to share with those that will read this. Right now in this very second I am not afraid! If I didn't know what I know about my Creator I probably would remain afraid all the time. I don't know how those who aren't intimate with The Most High, His Precious Holy Spirit and His Son and our Messiah Yeshua live through a single day. To live in such blindness and self sufficiency goes beyond anything I can imagine or care to consider. To trust in the frailty of flesh and the corrupted natural world seems foolish at best.

I have chosen to put my life in the capable and loving hands of my Creator. He imagined what I could become and that is what I dream of becoming. Why He has given to me all that I have is beyond my understanding, but I'm learning not to question His ways, but simply walk led of His Spirit. I have His unchanging promise that He will never leave or forsake me. I have His eternal promise of provision, direction and protection IF I will trust Him with ALL of my being. The enormity of that commitment might overwhelm me had I not learned that it is HE that works in me both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Yeshua told us that it was the Father that did the works in his life. Even our precious Lord relied completely upon Abba Father to work in him both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Yeshua lived completely by faith. He heard the Father's voice and did only what the Father told him to do! While he hung on the cross halfway between heaven and hell, he chose to do so by faith. He had no doubts while he suffered sin, death and the grave. He still suffered, but he did so without a single doubt! That gives me supernatural faith!

Though my life's pathway may be rocky and rough, God is the strength of my life and my portion forever.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A Million Miles

There are days when I wake up and remember that I am all alone (naturally speaking). I turn over and the place where my husband used to be is empty and not because he woke early to make coffee or let the dog out. He’s really gone! Then there are days when I wake up and I am so accustomed to being alone that I just get up and get about the routine of my “new” life. How to find joy in such changes is a daily challenge. Women throughout the ages have faced these same issues, but it feels brand new and still unfamiliar and uncomfortable to me.
I find myself grilling other widows about their lives and their experiences. Some have similar stories, others not so much. It’s common to feel lost and to ache for one’s spouse, but to have as many struggles as came my way is not so common. One gal had her stepchildren take all her belongings, the family business and leave her out in the cold. Another just came home from Alaska after her six years of caring for a sick and then dying husband. She and her husband had a ministry in Anchorage, but after a heart attack and subsequent discovery that he had been exposed to huge levels of lead as a youngster, stood for him as his mind slowly disintegrated. I’d say she suffered a great deal more before his death than after. God’s grace saw her through. Another gal lost three husbands. I don’t know how she could go back a third time after suffering so much loss. I have one story after another running through my mind, but one thing I know there is no real preparation for widowhood or much help for widows after they are thrown into the fiery trial that is about to accost them.
Folks say I’m an inspiration. I feel like a blob of emotions looking for a place to “go off”. If it weren’t for the love and grace of God and my devotion to the word of God I’d be in a nice padded room with a customized jacket as my sole companion. Many of my “friends” absolutely stopped speaking to me; others came out of the woodworks to be there for me. My family though many miles away has been very supportive. My mother-in-law calls at least once a month to check on me. She’s more faithful to call me than I am to check on her. The congregation I belong to is so supportive. I had been out of the organized church for more years than I can remember, but God directed me where to go and it has been part of my healing.
Writing is my way of walking through the changes I experience in life. I know when I read someone else’s experience I normally find something in their words to help me understand my own life and path. So I hope will my words be. I don’t understand a lot of what I’ve experienced, but God has been with me every single inch of the way. It seems as if I’ve come a million miles and have another million to go. Through it all my faith has sustained me and the ever present Holy Spirit is with me comforting and healing my broken heart.
- love never fails.