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Prayerful Pondering

~ by Pat Luffman Rowland

Prayerful Pondering

Monthly Archives: August 2015

Buffet Decision-Making

24 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in making decisions

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

acceptance, direction, encouragement, focus wisdom, grief, healing, indecision, loss, loyalty, memories, pain, strength vision

I had a friend who said to me once “Treat it like a buffet. Take what you like and leave the rest.” I was trying to make a decision about going forth with something I wasn’t altogether sure I needed. This friend, Joanne, saw something in me I had not seen: that I was holding on to anger over a failed marriage. She wanted me to see her chaplain friend to get help letting go. The rest of the story is I did see him and he was a great assist in helping me identify unhealthy attitudes and behaviors and correct them. He helped me move on.

It was Joanne’s great example of how to treat counseling that made me act on her advice.  It was such visual direction. 20150109_181557I have never forgotten how effective it was and how it can be used in many scenarios.

I’ve been thinking about it lately as I’ve watched a friend do this with a tough situation in her life. There are many things that don’t work for her, but she is able to rise above and choose from the situation the things she likes—and leave the rest. She is cautious, but upbeat. She moves on with anticipation of good in every day and I admire her tremendously for handling her difficulty with a buffet approach.

I see the ability to “take what you want and leave the rest” as many things: wisdom, focus, staying positive, and going forward when you might otherwise stay stuck in emotional mire. By using the buffet method, one can build on the good and not allow the bad to control.

I’m still applying the buffet method in my life. I’ve used it in work situations. I’ve used it in matters with my house. I’ve use it with social affiliations and friendships. I’ve use it with memories—what to keep and what to discard—but I admit that’s the hardest of all for me. The thing the buffet method effectively does is release one from pain and regret that haunt. It releases one from indecision and disappointments—great and small. It can even bring levity to a piece of life that could otherwise be a burden too heavy to bear.

So to Joanne, my dear friend of long ago and at a time of grief and transition, I say thank you. Thank you for being brave enough to call my hand on something I couldn’t see and was tripping me up. Thank you for explaining how to take advice. How to sort through and keep only the parts that helps you grow.

We never know when something we say will become a building block in someone’s life, do we? It pays to be cautious with words, but it can also pay to be bold. file561270689520

 

Photos courtesy of morgueFile

My Comfort Zone–the Kitchen

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in Memories

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

baking, cooking, grandmother, great cooks, heritage, memories, mother, preserving, recipes

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.                                                Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

The kitchen is my comfort zone—my favorite place to be. I had 6 years of Home Economics—grades 7 through 12. Then, I had the day-to-day experience of my mother’s cooking. The kitchen was her comfort zone, too. I can’t imagine better meals than she put on our table. And then there was Mother’s mother, my Mama Dulcie. She was duly recognized as one of the best cooks around.

I don’t remember the first thing I ever cooked on my own. Maybe biscuits—a place many young cooks begin. My mother made her first pan of biscuits out of necessity when she was just 8 years old. Mama Dulcie cut her hand slicing meat for breakfast and it fell to Mother, the oldest child, to complete the meal. Mama Dulcie stood Mother on a stool to make her tall enough to reach the counter and then guided her through Biscuit Making 101.

I’m pretty sure my first credible baking was at about age 16 when I made the chocolate layer cake from the back of the Hershey’s Cocoa tin. Fudge Cake, they called it. Two layers of moist, delicate flavor covered with chocolate icing, also from the back of the box. It is still my preferred recipe for chocolate layer cake, though no longer found on today’s Hershey’s Cocoa containers. You will find one, but not this old and best one.

cookbook

My first cookbook –November 1960

From the beginning, I made my own pie pastry. That recipe came from my first Better Homes and Garden Cook Book, bought during those years of high school Home Economics.  I cherished that treasure trove of recipes from the moment it was placed in my hands. Through the years—late 50s until now—I still make the pastry for my pies, believing the pastry to be as important as the filling.

I reminisce over the kitchens of early years because it brings me such wonderful memories. I followed two masters of the kitchen and I like to think I get close to their expertise. There are many things I cannot do, but in the kitchen my creativity and confidence are unleashed.

Yesterday I spent hours putting up Squash Chow Chow.   squash chow chowAs with my mother, appearance is important so I hand dice and grate the vegetables. That alone takes 2 hours. When the pickled vegetables are at last sealed in jars, I have a great sense of satisfaction and I know my mother and grandmother would be proud.

I have some things from their kitchens: my grandmother’s flat, round sifter and her buttermilk pitcher. I have my mother’s potato masher, the small crock pitcher she used just for whipping cream for strawberry shortcake, and the crock she used to store bacon drippings. They are my treasures along with the memories that flood my mind and heart.

Mother's potato masher

Mother’s potato masher

It’s probably right on to say I enjoy being in my kitchen because of the closeness it brings me to my heritage. I feel Mama over one shoulder and Mother over the other, nodding their heads and smiling with approval. Turning out kitchen goodies is a way of keeping them nearby and remembering the heavenly aromas of their culinary art. I can drift for a moment back through time and join them at the stove and the dinner table. My heart thanks them for their love of cooking and for passing it on to me.

French Coconut Pie

French Coconut Pie, my mother’s recipe

The Value of Love

03 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Pat Luffman Rowland in love

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

faith, God's love, love, love for others, sacrifice, scripture study

“. . . and if I have a faith that can move mountains but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2).

Courtesy MorgueFile

Courtesy MorgueFile

I have a deep and abiding faith, a faith that has sustained me for a lifetime and I am now 72. It is a faith that has carried me through the waters and the fire, scripturally speaking, a faith that has seen miracles of healing come to be. Even so, my faith couldn’t move a mountain. It couldn’t move a rock in the road! I ponder on so great a faith, but I cannot get my mind around it.

My eyes go on to the last part of the sentence in 1 Corinthians 13:2: “. . . but have not love, I am nothing.” Even a faith that would move a mountain is not worth what love is worth to Almighty God. In His eyes, love has the highest value of all. In my earthbound thinking, it seems faith would be the greatest, but it isn’t so.

1 Peter 4:8 says “Most important of all, continue to show deep love for each other, for love covers a multitude of sins.”

Courtesy MorgueFile

Courtesy MorgueFile

It was God’s love for us that provided the blood of Jesus our Savior to cover our sins. And this alone should tell us all we need to know about the highest value being placed on love: the Father shed His only Son’s blood because of His love for us, a love greater than anything we will ever understand this side of Heaven. Peter declares that our love for others is of far more importance to God than all the wrongs we do. God prefers looking at our pluses, not our minuses.

Perhaps John says it best with this simple message: “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Not God loves, but God is love. So if God is love, then we see why He delights in our giving love to others. It is evidence to the world of our likeness to Him, that which speaks the truth of God.

Courtesy MorgueFile

Courtesy MorgueFile

“As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34).

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The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23 ESV

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9

God has not given us a spirt of fear, but of power and love and of a sound mind. 2 Timothy 1:7

Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations. Psalm 100:4-5

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

© Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering, 2010 - 2013.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Pat Rowland and Prayerful Pondering with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Hope must be in the future tense. Faith, to be faith, must be in the present tense. Catherine Marshall
Everything over your head is under his feet. Dr. Tom Lindberg
What an excellent ground of hope and confidence we have when we reflect upon these three things in prayer--the Father's love, the son's merit and the Spirit's power! Thomas Manton
Our Christian hope is that we're going to live with Christ in a new earth, where is not only no more death, but where life is what it was always meant to be. Timothy Keller

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