Chocolate Chip Cookies, More Than a Recipe

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In honor of all my friends who have requested my recipe and then, having received said recipe, have come up to me to inform me their version didn’t turn out like mine, I hereby present you with….

My Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe AND very explicit directions:

First off, the ingredients:

  • 3/4 C granulated sugar
  • 3/4 C brown sugar
  • 1 C softened butter (real salted butter, any brand – NOT margarine)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 t baking soda
  • 1 t salt
  • 1 t vanilla (you can use any, I prefer the real stuff, not imitation)
  • 2 1/2 C all purpose white flour
  • 2 C semi-sweet chocolate chips

Now for the very explicit directions:
Preheat oven to 375

  • I use my Kitchen Aid mixer for these, but any mixer should be fine. You can even just use a bowl and a fork which is the way I started out doing these.
  • So assuming you have a mixer, put the granulated sugar in the bowl. Take a look at your butter. If you haven’t left it out to soften for a few hours, then put them in the microwave (with the wrappers still on) for just about 20 seconds. You don’t want the butter to melt – just to be soft.
  • Put the softened butter in the bowl with the sugar. Turn the mixer on and let the butter and sugar mix together. With the mixer still going, add the brown sugar. Let it mix in with the butter/sugar. Then add the eggs (mixer is still going). Then add the baking soda, salt, and vanilla while the mixer is still going.
  • Now you are ready for the flour. You can do this while the mixer is still going, or you can turn it off every time you add the next bit of flour. What I do is this: with the mixer still going, I measure the flour into a 1/2 C measuring cup. I add it in 1/2 C at a time, kind of letting that 1/2 C mix in to the rest of the dough before I add the next 1/2 C – it doesn’t take long, just a few seconds. The main thing is that I don’t dump all 2 1/2 C of flour in at the same time. If you do, flour will fly all over your kitchen. Trust me on this.
  • Once the flour is all mixed in, add the chocolate chips. Let the chips mix in for maybe 20 seconds, then you are done.
  • The cookie sheets I use are nothing special – cheapies from Walmart. I have no idea what a high-brow cookie sheet does to these. You can try, I’m sure it is fine.
  • I have what looks like a little ice cream scoop that I use to scoop out the cookies. Before I had one of these (and I LOVE this) I just used my hands (clean, of course). The two spoon thing never really worked for me.

So scoop out your cookie dough on the cookie sheet. It is nice to have two cookie sheets, although I only bake one at a time. I’ll tell you why in a minute.
Put the first cookie sheet in the oven for – and this is VERY important – 9 minutes. When 9 minutes is up, take them out. They will still look doughy – they are supposed to. Do NOT leave them in the oven until golden brown. This is where folks usually go wrong with this recipe.

So after 9 minutes, take the first cookie sheet out and put the second cookie sheet in. The first batch of cookies need to stay on that sheet for at least 2 minutes. It can be longer, but the minimum is 2 minutes – they are still baking, but not crisping. After a minimum of 2 minutes, feel free to take the cookies off the sheet. I usually just put them on two big plates. I don’t overlap them when they are fresh out of the oven because they are still soft. I don’t mess with a cooling rack – the plates do the trick. Now you are ready to reload this first cookie sheet again.

Once the second batch has been in for 9 minutes, take those babies out of there! Same song second verse – cool them on the cookie sheet for at least 2 minutes. Then you can just pile them on top of the first batch of cookies – no need to pull out more plates.

There you have it my friends. I hope this sounded the way I meant for it to. I’ve just had too many ask me for my exact method and figured this was the simplest way to do it.

Happy Baking!

It’s okay to ask for help.

I suppose it should have been a sign that tears form almost every time I’ve tried to write something over the past five years. Maybe more. Rather than deal with what I need to deal with, I’ve elected to stuff it instead and stuffing it has also stifled the writing side of me. That’s okay. I’ve been too busy anyway. Too busy to write. Too busy to deal with things. It’s easier that way. Except that it isn’t.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been forced to face the pain of some things that I’d rather not, but really need to. And I need help. I’ve scheduled an appointment with a doctor to discuss mental health possibilities. I’ve reached out to a local church for counseling. Having initiated these first two steps, I think I’ve allowed myself to start thinking more critically about things and am beginning to realize that I place more weight on the rejection I feel from people than I do on the acceptance of Christ. And I do not know how to bridge that gap. But I’m starting the process of trying.

I’m beginning by reading this little book by Zack Eswine: Spurgeon’s Sorrows – Realistic Hope for those who Suffer from Depression. Perhaps for the first time in a long time I feel understood. Or maybe for the first time in a long time I’m allowing someone to understand me.

From Chapter 1

“We very speedily care for bodily diseases; they are too painful to let us slumber in silence; and they soon urge us to seek a physician or a surgeon for our healing. Oh, if we were as much alive to the more serious wounds of our inner man.” – Charles Hadden Spurgeon

This chapter begins with, “How do we get through them? The times that knock the breath out; when even our strongest and bravest must confess with desolate eyes, “I do not know what to pray,” … Words have no strength to venture with us into the heaving deeps that swallow us. And many of us who believe in Jesus don’t like to admit it, but we find no immunity here either.”

“We even wonder if we’ve brought this all on ourselves. It’s our fault. God is against us. We’ve forfeited God’s help.”

From Chapter 2

“Things in life can hurt us; circumstances we wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

“Let’s remind ourselves at the outset; In itself, sadness or grief is God’s gift to us. It’s how we get through. It is an act of faith and wisdom to be sad about sad things.”

“For some of us, we’ve been unable to live in any other scene but the one that crushed us.”

From Andrew Solomon in The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression – “Grief is a depression in proportion to circumstances while depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”

“Sadness is neither a sign of laziness nor a sin; neither negative thinking nor weakness.”

“In our fallen world, sadness is an act of sanity, our tears the testimony of the sane.”

“Broken hearted one, Jesus Christ knows all your troubles, for similar troubles were his portion too.”

From Chapter 3

“Depression can so vandalize our joy and our sense of God that no promise of His can comfort us in the moment, no matter how true or kindly spoken. At it’s worst, everything in the world looks dark.”

“Many of us feel that if we were more true to Jesus we wouldn’t struggle this way.”

“Therefore we sufferers of depression in Christ may grow terribly weak, even in faith, but we are not lost to God…Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace. It is Christ and not the absence of depression that saves us.”

“Our sense of God’s absence does not mean that He is so. Though our bodily gloom allows us no feeling of His tender touch, He holds on to us still. Our feelings of Him do not save us. He does.”

“Our hope therefore, does not reside in our ability to preserve a good mood but in His ability to bear us up. Jesus will never abandon us with our downcast heart.”

A Glimpse of Heaven

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Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. -Romans 5:3-5

For most people, the hike up to Emerald Lake won’t kill them. It’s not a strenuous hike, but it does take effort. And if you are like me, it takes quite a bit more effort than, say, the rest of the youth group whom you are hiking with. If you are like me, you will be the last one in your group to make it to the top. But you will make it. And it will be worth it.

In many ways, I think I keep viewing life as one long, tiring hike. It’s not impossible, but it is all slightly uphill and sometimes quite steep and there are plenty of spots along the way in which it seems to make more sense to just turn around and go back already, but that seems silly because when you’ve been hiking for so long, you are bound to eventually get there and what if there is just around the next switch back? Why would you turn back when you’ve gone so far?

The thing is this: we can’t see what’s ahead. There’s no way to know if we’re really almost there. When I was much younger, I had this idea that by the time I reached the age at which I currently am, I would probably be there. Now I’m beginning to wonder if there doesn’t get to be reached in this present lifetime, and instead of arriving, we’re called to continually climb, perhaps stopping occasionally to sit for a moment and take a sip of water, but to then get back up and continue.

The path is sometimes beautiful and sometimes really difficult, but still we climb. Sometimes it seems impossible, but why would we turn back now? We’ve come so far. There might be around the next turn. We can’t see it, we have no map telling us how far we still have to go, and yet we continue, trusting that when we finally reach it it will, in an instant, wipe out the struggle it took to get there.

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons from the Queen of Hearts

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img_0277“I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day.”
“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.
“Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.“

Six impossible things. I have a little notebook I keep in my purse. Sometimes I write down a quick grocery list, sometimes sermon notes, sometimes random musings. Always, though, I have my impossible prayer list in the back. These are the things that are not humanly possible for me to accomplish no matter how hard I try, how late I stay up, no matter how many hours I work at whichever place. I just can’t do these. And yet, they need doing. So I pray for the peace that passes all understanding to guard my heart and mind in Christ Jesus and I beg God for grace and mercy over these things and to send an impossible answer for each one.

I just opened my notebook and counted them. Currently there are six. And I’m wondering if I need to take a cue from the Queen of Hearts and spend thirty minutes each day before breakfast believing that God will take care of these things in some form or fashion in a way that will be unexplainable apart from His own intervention.

When the Church is the Church

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It’s been a bit of a fall and winter around here. We kicked things off in September when Maddie (17yo) suddenly had an onset of stroke symptoms one Sunday night, complete with no feeling on her left side, droopy left side of her face, inability to grab words in either speech or writing, and a tremendous amount of fear. We took her to the ER. THEY also thought she had stroke symptoms, which, when they start acting in a way that confirms the thing you were afraid of… I had to leave the room for a bit to have my cry away from Maddie. It turns out she didn’t have a  stroke that night, but instead had a hemiplegic migraine – something I’d never even heard of before – but will be constantly on guard for from now on. But to get to that diagnosis, she had to have two CT scans, one MRI, and a tele-consult with the stroke team from the University of Utah. We don’t question for a moment what all the doctors needed to do that night to rule out all possibility of actual stroke, but all of those things don’t come cheaply.

Fast forward another month. All the bills started coming in and we discovered that our insurance benefit didn’t cover as much as we were thinking it would, to the tune of our owing the hospital almost $5,000. At this point I felt really silly, since I ignored my friend’s advice to switch over to a plan from OneSureInsurance.co.uk. This was the same time Bozeman started the hiring process for a bunch of seasonal retail jobs. I knew it seemed crazy to take on another job, but a $5,000 bill doesn’t just pay itself, you know. In the meantime, we put in a financial appeal with the hospital and they waived 40%, so we were down to a more manageable amount of close to $3,000 between the two hospitals and various doctors and techs we had to pay.

I started sewing like crazy in a crazy attempt to tackle a portion of the bill that way. I also accepted a seasonal position at Target. And let me say this: I’m thankful for available work to help meet needs, even if it’s tough to do for a little bit.

But also let me say this: I AM tired. And I think you’d have to be blind not to notice that, though I’m always a little surprised when anyone does express concern or care for me, for us. I’m rather hard-wired to believe I don’t deserve either from anyone.

So that could be part of the reason why I cried when we got a surprise check in the mail from our church. The people in our growth group had noticed. And they helped. In a massive way. Between their check and sewing madness of 2016, we have enough to cover Maddie’s hospital bills.

And then Millie got a stress fracture. And two x-rays. And an MRI. And once again, I’m tired, but grateful the Target position is already in place to help. But then we got another surprise check in the mail from friends from our past and I’m once again humbled and undone. We haven’t even received the bills for Millie’s round of needs, but we should have enough in place to cover them right now.

The box of pillows in the photo above is representative of what we’re about to start delivering around town to those we know contributed. It’s a very small way to say, “You saved me from needing to make 181 of these, and we’re so very grateful.”

Sometimes you pray for provision and seek a job simultaneously because that’s the next logical step. And you’re grateful when you get it because it will help, even if it means a temporary sacrifice.

Sometimes you pray for provision and God surprises you with manna you never saw coming. And you pick up the portion you need for today and you say, “Thank you.”

And so here we are: humbled, grateful, and blessed.

Be Thou My Vision

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Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one

It’s October 17, 2016 and I’m sitting here in my living room. My 17yo just kissed me on the head and said, “Now don’t stay up too late, Mom,” in a funny turn-around of advice. And yet, I have that potential tonight. Potential to sit and ponder. Sometimes pondering is good for the soul and sometimes it just brings up the dregs of the past.

It’s funny to be in this new life with an almost totally different identity than I had before. Occasionally I will mention to someone that I used to homeschool the girls and they are usually surprised. Bozeman only knows me as the working mom whose kids all attend a 5-day Classical Christian school. They don’t know the me who directed a Classical Conversations group for three years or the me who was always available to do all the school things when the girls started in at the blended-model school, or the me who cried over giving newborns and preschoolers back to the state to hand over to someone else. They don’t know the me who spent all the weekends driving between two cities, two-hours apart, to help with my mom during her last months of ALS. They don’t know the me I think I am. And maybe I’m not that me anymore. Or maybe I’m not willing to let anyone else in on the me I think I am.

The me that I thought I was was seriously rejected. And, yes, it’s been 21 months now and you’d think time enough to let things go already, but I don’t know that you can ever let that kind of rejection go. It colors everything you do moving forward. Every conversation has a giant “what if” in the background. What if I say something to someone who ends up keeping a list of things I said. What if I confess a marriage or parenting struggle to someone in friendship-confidence and it ends up being used against us later as a reason to fire my husband? What if I trust people again and…later realize I never should have?

And I find myself praying again. Sometimes for vindication of the past, sometimes for the grace to move on. Sometimes for both.

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And then sometimes I lift up my head and take a good look around me and thank God for bringing us to this place. And sometimes I thank him without the qualification of the how we ended up here. Because if I believe God to be sovereign…and I do…then I need to believe he took us out of the one place and brought us to another. And I need to stop grieving over the process.

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art

High King of Heaven, my victory won
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heav’n’s Sun
Heart of my own heart, whate’er befall
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all

I Expected to Cry Last Night

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I long ago lost count of how many  graduations I’ve attended over the years. Suffice to say, I’ve been to a lot. There are the years of my own graduations and those of my friends – high school, college. Then we had students we worked with begin graduating. Then we went to seminary and another round began. Then Craig began teaching in a high school and the rest, as they say, is history.

I love the symbolism and significance of graduations, but, honestly, I don’t always love attending them. They can be long, tedious, and sappy. Sometimes you are forced to bear that burden on behalf of people you don’t even really know. Sometimes others are forced to bear it on your behalf. But the one we attended last night at Petra Academy, was both a joy and an honor. I can’t remember the last time I thought that after attending a graduation ceremony.

The speeches given by the Valedictorian and Salutatorian were excellent as was the faculty charge. I’m still kind of shaking my head at the wonder of it all and I’m tempted to ask the students who spoke if I can have copies of their speeches to share here. But I’ll respect their night of wonder and let it stay in my memory.

Even though I don’t know the eight students who walked across the stage and into the next phase of life last night very well, I expected to feel a bit overwhelmed by the nearness of this same experience to my own girls. Next year Maddie will make this trek, quickly followed by Chloe the year after. The older I get, the more freely the emotions show themselves in public, despite my best attempts to prevent them from doing so. But I didn’t cry last night and I’m still a little surprised by that.

I’m sure I won’t be able to say the same this time next year. Oh, 2016-2017, you are coming way too quickly. There’s someone in my house who is totally ready for you. That someone is not me.

 

Change. It’s Coming.

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It’s May 22 and schools across our newsfeeds are wrapping things up. We still have two weeks left and when I learned the Bozeman schedule last year I thought I wouldn’t love that this year, but now that we’re in the middle of it, I’m totally fine with things. Ask my kids, though… *grin*

Seriously, I think they are as well. Katie and I dashed out to Cold Smoke today so she could get a jump start on making finals study guides and I wanted to do some more digital work which I can do anywhere there’s a signal, so here we are. I have the perfect cup of English Breakfast tea and I’m working my way through blog entries from August of 2007, editing, cleaning, purging. It feels good.

The one big change this summer, other than the obvious one of school letting out on June 3 and, well, we’re in Bozeman, is that I’m working outside the home and that has never been our family scenario before. We Actually had a accident in the house the same day and called our window replacement CT to help repair the damage. And while I enjoy my job and I’m grateful for it, I’m already feeling a loss over what the summer could be and what it likely won’t because I’ll be out of the picture for 30 hours/week.

That said, I think we’re all experiencing a bit of a stage-of-life adjustment. Maddie and Chloe will be giving five weeks of their summer to Eagle Lake Camp and the closer we get to that, the more second-guessing I’m starting to do. My second guessing has nothing to do with trusting the camp (I do) or trusting my kids (I do) and everything to do with me missing them this summer.

This is the way things are moving and I know it’s normal and natural and still, it’s a process that has to be adjusted to. Millie and I were taking a walk around our neighborhood pond last night and she confessed to feeling it too. She mentioned that it feels like the older two would rather spend more time away from home than in it.

To be clear, we’re still some of the tightest parents around and our girls are home quite a bit. And we are one of the last families on the planet to hold to a physical and digital curfew. But Maddie is 17 now and will be a senior in high school next year. Chloe will be 16 in August and a junior in high school next year. I get the pull to start branching out. I remember feeling it myself when I was in high school.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t feel that pull. Being stretched is painful, even if it’s necessary.

So I’m thinking ahead to the three weeks we have with all six of us home at the beginning of the summer, and the three weeks we will have with all six of us at home at the very end of the summer and I’m going to make the most of them. We may never have another summer that gives us six weeks together again.

A Written Scrapbook

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I’m experiencing a bit of a blog homecoming, if you will. Knowing that my hosting fee was due for renewal this month, but not wanting to pay it again since I haven’t been doing ANY paid blogging lately and very little personal blogging, I decided to just bring it all back over to a wordpress.com site. In the process of transferring 10+ years’ worth of content, though, I remembered why I started blogging in the first place. I have right here a written history. There are gaps, yes, but there are a lot of sweet family memories that I want to save…and add to.

So I’m doing an overhaul. It will take time to get it all cleaned up the way I want it to be, but I’m back in one spot and I think I’ve come full circle on what this space was initially intended to be for me, for my family.

As such, I’d like to introduce you to Andrew Carneige. He looks kind of jolly in the eyes, much like a certain 12yo girl who lives in my house. Today was our school’s 3rd-6th grade History Fair and it was fun to see all of the hard work of all the kids and to also hear some of the history of their friends here. We participated in other versions of school events, but not exactly like this. I’m glad Millie was able to get in on the end of it before joining the ranks next year of the upper school.

Bozeman kids go to school clear through the first week of June which is a bit of an adjustment for us, but since the weather is still generally pretty cool, I understand it. We will have three full months off and not begin again until after Labor Day in September. And we’re really looking forward to all that the next three months will bring here.

Indeed, Bozeman is a beautiful place. God has done much to redeem what was broken. I think we very well might be experiencing a time of relational jubilee. For that, I am grateful. Exceedingly.

 

Vengeance is the Lord’s

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I’m not super good at participating in group discussions. I’ve always been the attendee who *maybe* has something to share, but usually waits………..to see if there is a reasonable pause before sharing it. ProTip: There is rarely a pause like this in Bible discussion groups, so I’m usually off the hook because I just assume what everyone else has to say should be heard and what I *maybe* might want to share probably shouldn’t. There’s my introvert group discussion therapy session for you. So, even though I had two opportunities this week to share this, I didn’t. So I thought I would now.

On Sunday one of our pastors, Jeff Hamling, preached on the vengeance of God (and, incidentally, I now know that the word vengeance has an “a” in it – this could come in handy the next time I want to throw some vengeance around) and, as usual, there were some things I was aware of, as well as that one thing that it seems was just revealed to me for the first time ever. That thing for me on Sunday was that if I’m to be perfectly frank, I know I’m supposed to leave vengeance in the hands of God, but, if I’m honest, and I mean HONEST, I don’t really trust God to do a very good job with that.

*gasp*

Confession, it’s good for the soul.

But, I think this is why I don’t really trust God to exact justice the way I think it should be meted out – I’ve talked myself into thinking I have a better plan and that better plan includes not only forgiveness and restoration, but first exposure and vindication! That’s right and fair, no?

But, no. It’s neither. And God does not need my help in developing the plan of restitution for wrongs done. He never has.

On Sunday, I think the light bulb moment came for me not in hearing that my place isn’t to condemn and pass out demerits (blast…my ISTJ loves doing just that) – I know those things. The moment of realization came when Jeff said that God IS a God of Justice. And he WILL act on our behalf. And he WILL restore all things. And…here it is: The way He enacts his justice will ultimately be satisfying for me.

Seriously? I can trust God to do this? To not just ask me to forgive and move on, but that He will take care of wrongs done in a way that I will say, “That is exactly what I was hoping for.”

Because maybe He will change my own heart in the process to move my desires to be more in line with His, hence ushering in the perfect plan of restitution that leaves me wanting nothing more.

Psalm 51:10, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

A Sweet, Sad Tree

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I stare at my tree. It’s not a real tree. It’s artificial. It’s not super tall. It’s not super wide. But it’s super full of memories…memories in knick-knack form hanging from a hook next to the remaining candy canes and two humble strands of lights. My tree would not win any decor awards (are there even awards for trees? probably…I actually have no idea), but I’m not going for any anyway. What it does do, though, is worth more than any awards could give. I can look at any given ornament and remember.

Years of good. Years of bad. Years of growth. Years in Oklahoma. Years in Colorado. Years in Missouri. Years in Oklahoma again. And now a year in Montana.

And soon the fullness of my tree will start to shed a little as one by one my girls start their own lives and pack away the memories of our tree that belong to them. My heart already aches at the thought of it

And so I’ll treasure this tree and it’s bursting branches for as many more years as I’m able. And I’ll thank God for the memories it holds both now and for the saplings that will form in the future.