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Thursday, February 21, 2013

Being a Grumplestiltskin

calgon take me awayWhen my kids are cranky, I often refer to them as "Grumplestiltskin." Well, today it's my turn. Actually, it's been my turn for a while now. I've been quiet about my grumpies because I've felt like I've been unusually grumpier than usual. And as I tell my kids, "who wants to hear from a Grumplestiltskin?"

Grumpy number one: People who ask questions prefaced by, "I didn't read the directions, but here's my question."

I'm seriously ready to go postal on this one. I don't understand why people would ask a question before reading the directions. So far, in all but one case, the answer is specifically found in the directions. That's why we have directions!

Grumpy number two: The media in general

I'll be honest, if I didn't have to be online for  my job, I think I'd stay off the Internet for um, forever. Well, maybe not forever, since I pay a lot of my bills online. And I would miss seeing what's up with my friends on Facebook and Twitter. I wish I could become a computer genius so I could invent an algorithm that would keep all political and bad news stories off my feeds, even if they come from friends. I don't want to hear about it.

Grumpy number three: My house

Okay, I love my house, and I learn to love it more every day. But right now, it's really dirty and messy, and my family does not care. So if I want it clean I have to do it all myself or I have to get mean. I'm tired of doing it all and I'm tired of being mean. So I guess that's really what I'm grumpy about.

Grumpy number four: Exercise

I've been working really hard to get in shape. I'm doing my workouts, eating (mostly) right, and I am still not losing weight. I also feel worse, not better. Since I started working out more, I'm constantly exhausted. And I'm really discouraged about that. The upside is that I talked to my nutritionist, and we think I've got an undiagnosed low thyroid. The doc says mine is normal, but I have every other symptom of low thyroid, so I'm going to start some supplements and see how that does.

Grumpy number five: Not really having a reason to be grumpy

Here's the thing I am most fully aware of. I have a pretty good life, and a million things to be happy about. I am seriously blessed, and for the most part, I am very blessed. So why am I still grumpy? That's the million dollar question, and the more I think about it, the grumpier I get.

Am I just a Grumplestiltskin? Or is there hope that I can be transformed back into my true princess self?

What do you do when you're feeling unreasonably grumpy?

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Emotionally Healthy Woman: Eight Things You Have to Quit to Change Your Life by Geri Scazzero

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!
Today's Wild Card author is:

 

 
and the book:

 

Zondervan (January 2, 2013)


***Special thanks to Rick Roberson for sending me a review copy.***

 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:


Geri Scazzero is a teaching pastor and director of Marriage Ministry at New Life Fellowship Church in Queens, New York City, a multiracial, international church with over sixty-five countries represented. She is coauthor of The Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Workbook for small groups and also speaks regularly to pastors, leaders, and their spouses.
Visit the author's website.
SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:


Geri Scazzero knew something was wrong with her life and her ministry. After having spent 17 years trying unsuccessfully to fit into the traditional mold of "perfect pastor's wife," she finally threw in the proverbial towel. Making the painful decision to leave her husband's thriving church, she stopped pretending everything was "fine" and embarked upon a solitary journey of faith. Her emotional and spiritual trek not only established a revolutionary new paradigm in her life, but it also led her to a beautifully transformed life, marriage and ministry.

Within the pages of her latest book, author and popular conference speaker Scazzero shares deeply out of her own life, offering a seasoned and radical message for Christian women today. According to author Geri Scazzero, becoming an emotionally healthy woman begins by quitting eight unhealthy ways of relating. When you stop pretending everything is fine and summon the courage to quit that which does not belong to Jesus' kingdom, you will be launched on a powerful journey---one that will bring you true peace and freedom.

.Genre: RELIGION/Christian Living


Product Details:

List Price: $14.99

Reading level: Ages 18 and up

Paperback: 224 pages

Publisher: Zondervan (January 2, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0310320011

ISBN-13: 978-0310320012
My Review:


I really enjoyed this book. I thought it had a lot of great points and see a lot of areas where I need to quit!! I think I've always had such a negative view of quitting, so this book was a great new way to look at things.

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:



When You Can’t Take It AnymoreThis is a book about following Jesus and summoning the courage to quit anything that does not belong to his kingdom or fall under his rule.

Traditionally, the Christian community hasn’t placed much value on quitting. In fact, just the opposite is true; it is endurance and perseverance we most esteem .For many of us, the notion of quitting is completely foreign. When I was growing up, quitters were considered weak, bad sports, and babies. I never quit any of the groups or teams I was part of. I do remember briefly quitting the Girl Scouts, but I soon rejoined. Quitting is not a quality we admire— in ourselves or in others.

The kind of quitting I’m talking about isn’t about weakness or giving up in despair . It is about strength and choosing to live in the truth. This requires the death of illusions. It means ceasing to pretend that everything is fine when it is not. Perpetuating illusions is a universal problem in marriages, families, friendships, and work places. Tragically, pretending everything is fine when it’s not also happens at church, the very place where truth and love are meant to shine most brightly.

Biblical quitting goes hand in hand with choosing. When we quit those things that are damaging to our souls or the souls of others, we are freed up to choose other ways of being and relating that are rooted in love and lead to life.

For example . . .

When we quit fear of what others think, we choose freedom .

When we quit lies, we choose truth.

When we quit blaming, we choose to take responsibility.

When we quit faulty thinking, we choose to live in reality.

Quitting is a way of putting off what Scripture calls falsehood and the old self . As the apostle Paul writes, “Put off your old self . . . and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore each of you must put off falsehood” (Ephesians 4:22 – 25). When we quit for the right reasons, we are changed. Something breaks inside of us when we finally say, “No more.” The Holy Spirit births a new resolve within us. We rise above our fears and defensiveness. The hard soil of our heart becomes soft and ready to receive new growth and possibilities .

The Bible teaches that there is a time and season for everything under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1). That includes quitting. But it must be done for the right reasons, at the right time, and in the right way. That’s what this book is about.

Cutting the Rope

In 1985, Simon Yates and his climbing partner, Joe Simpson, had just reached the top of a 21,000-foot peak in Peru when disaster struck. Simpson fell and shattered his leg. As the sky grew dark and a blizzard raged, Yates tried to lower his injured friend to safety. At a certain point, however, he accidently lowered Simpson over an ice cliff, where he hung helplessly. Straining to hold his partner’s body in midair, Yates was faced with choosing life or death for his friend.

When he could hang on no longer, Yates had to make a hellish decision: cut the rope and save his own life, sending his partner plummeting down to certain death, or face certain death trying to save him.

Yates later related those painful moments, “There was nothing I could do. I was just there. This went on for an hour and a half. My position was getting desperate . . . I was literally going down the mountain in little jerky stages on this soft sugary snow that collapsed beneath me. Then I remembered I had a penknife. I made the decision pretty quickly really. To me it just seemed like the right thing to do under the circumstances. There was no way I could maintain where I was. Sooner or later I was going to be pulled off the mountain. I pulled the penknife out.”

Yates cut the rope moments before he would have been pulled to his own death.

Certain that his partner was dead, Yates returned to base camp, consumed with grief and guilt over cutting the rope. Miraculously, however, Simpson survived the fall, crawled over the cliffs and canyons, and reached base camp only hours before Yates had planned to leave. In describing his decision to cut the rope, Yates articulates the core inner struggle for each of us in doing I Quit!

I had never felt so wretchedly alone . . . If I hadn’t cut the rope, I would certainly have died. No one cuts the rope! It could never have been that bad! Why didn’t you do this or try that? I could hear the questions, and see the doubts in the eyes of those who accepted my story. It was bizarre and it was cruel . . . However many times I persuaded myself that I had no choice but to cut the rope, a nagging thought said otherwise . It seemed like a blasphemy to have done such a thing. It went against every instinct: even against self-preservation. I could listen to no rational arguments against the feelings of guilt and cowardice . . . I resigned myself to punishment. It seemed right to be punished; to atone for leaving him dead as if simply surviving had been a crime in itself.

Quitting can feel like we are severing a lifeline, that someone, possibly even ourselves, is going to die. For this reason quitting is unthinkable to many, especially in the church. It appears “bizarre” and “cruel.” Who wants to be unpopular and rock the boat or disrupt things? I sure didn’t.

But there comes a point when we cross a threshold and we can’t take it anymore. Like Yates, we know we will die spiritually, emotionally, or otherwise unless we quit and choose to do something differently. We finally step over our fears into the great unknown territory that lies before us.

Yates was criticized by some in the mountain-climbing community for violating a sacred rule of never abandoning one’s partner — even if both died in the process. Joe Simpson himself passionately defended Yates’ choice. Ultimately, Yates’s decision to cut the rope saved both their lives.

The “Unfree” Christian

When I fell in love with Christ, I fell hard. As a nineteen- year-old college student, the enormity of God’s love over- whelmed me. I immediately began a passionate quest to know this living Jesus, and I was willing to do whatever it took to please him.

I eagerly structured my life around key spiritual disciplines such as reading and memorizing Scripture, prayer, fellowship, worship, fasting, giving financially, serving, silence and solitude, and sharing my faith with others. In my pursuit of Christlikeness, I absorbed books about the importance of spiritual disciplines by such authors as Richard Foster, J . I . Packer, and John Stott. They were helpful in broadening my understanding of Christianity and inspiring me to keep Christ at the center of my life. However, I failed to grasp the truth that a healthy spiritual life includes a careful balance between serving other people’s needs and desires and valuing my own needs and desires. Instead, I put most of my efforts into caring for others at the expense of my own soul.

The accumulated pain and resentment of this imbalance led to my first big “quit” at age thirty-seven. After seventeen years of being a committed Christian, I came to realize that excessive self-denial had led me to a joyless, guilt-ridden existence. Jesus invited me into the Christian life to enjoy a rich banquet at his table. Instead, it often felt like I was a galley slave, laboring to serve everyone else at the feast rather than enjoying it myself. In my relation- ship with Jesus, I’d gone from the great joy of feeling over- whelmed by his love to bitter resentment at feeling overwhelmed by his demands.

My identity had been swallowed up in putting others before myself. I constantly thought of the needs of our four small daughters. I worried about Pete’s responsibilities. I filled in wherever needed to help our growing church. These are all potentially good things, but my love had become a “have to,” a “should” rather than a gift freely given. I mistakenly believed I didn’t have a choice.

A renewed understanding of my own dignity and human limits enabled me to place loving boundaries around myself. I soon realized this was central to offering a sincere and genuine gift of love to others. Like God’s love to us, it must be free. And the extent to which I valued and loved myself was the extent to which I was capable of loving others well.

Dying to Live

Quitting is about dying to the things that are not of God. Make no mistake, it is one of the hardest things we do for Christ. But the good news is that quitting itself isn’t just an end; it is also a beginning. Biblical quitting is God’s path for new things to come forth in our lives, for resurrection. And yet, the path that leads to resurrection is never easy.

Internal voices alarm us with fears of quitting.

“What will people think?”

“I’m being selfish and not Christlike.”

“I will mess everything up.”

“People will get hurt.”

“Everything will fall apart around me.”

“I will jeopardize my marriage.”

Everything inside us resists the pain associated with dying — the nonnegotiable prerequisite for resurrection. As a result, we often cave in to our fears as a short-term anxiety-relief strategy. Sadly, this usually leads to painful long-term consequences — ongoing inner turmoil, joyless- ness, and festering resentments. As a result, we become stuck and ineffective in bearing genuine fruit for Christ. In my case, it resulted in a shrinking heart that sought to avoid people rather than love them.

Yet, it is only through dying that we can truly live. In the words of Jesus, “who- ever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). And that was what happened when I quit — I got my life back. And what followed were even more transformations that not only changed me but also brought new life to Pete, our marriage, our children, our church, and to countless others .

Quitting has purified my heart. It has demanded I admit truths about myself that I preferred to bury and avoid. Facing flaws and shortcomings in my character, my marriage, my parenting, and my relationships has been scary. At times, I felt like I was cutting the rope that kept me safely tethered to the side of a mountain. But God has used each free fall to purge my heart and to give me a more intimate experience of his mercy and grace. Thus, along with a deeper awareness of my sinfulness, I have become increasingly captured by God’s passionate and undeterred love for me.

Quitting has led me to a dream-come-true marriage with Pete. Over time, as we began to eliminate unhealthy ways of relating and practice new emotionally healthy skills, our marriage has become a sign and experience of Christ’s love for his bride, the church. And quitting impacted the rest of our relationships as well, including our relationship with our children, our extended families, and the larger community of New Life Fellowship Church.

Quitting has taught me to be loyal to the right things. Although “I quit” might sound like it’s only about leaving something, I actually gained a renewed commitment to persevere for the right things. I learned how to serve others sincerely rather than begrudgingly. The apostle Paul offers this vivid description of the paradox of quitting:

What happens when we live God’s way [when we quit]? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard — things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. (Galatians 5:22 – 23 MSG, emphasis added)

I never dreamed quitting would lead to this kind of freedom and fruit. I used to try to produce, through my own efforts, the fruit of the Holy Spirit. But I found out that when we do life God’s way, fruit simply appears in the orchard. It is a marvel to behold. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. What I ultimately discovered when I quit was a path into the true purpose of my life — to be transformed by the love of God and, by the Holy Spirit, to slowly become that love for others .

The pages that follow explore eight specific “I Quits.” While they do build on one another and are meant to be read in order, each chapter also stands alone. You may wish to begin with a chapter that speaks most urgently to your present circumstance. Once you’ve read that chapter, I encourage you to return to the beginning and read how that content fits into the larger whole .

We don’t make the decision to quit just once; each “I Quit” is a lifelong journey. One never really finishes with any of them. I wrote I Quit! to prepare you to walk through this new journey for the rest of your life. As you continue your journey of quitting, know that you don’t have to figure out everything by yourself. I encourage you to find and rely on wise, experienced mentors to guide you through the complexities of quitting well. Knowing when and when not to quit are equally important!

Let us now begin to explore the first “I Quit” — quit being afraid of what others think.

Thursday, February 07, 2013

Chicken Dreams... Coming True?

[caption id="attachment_4300" align="alignleft" width="225"]These are old pics, but can't you see how much my girls love chickens? These are old pics, but can't you see how much my girls love chickens?[/caption]

Many of you know my desire to have chickens. And if you don't, well, I want chickens. And bees. In my backyard. I've become more and more interested in Urban Homesteading- partially for environmental reasons, partially for nutrition reasons, and partially for faith reasons. However, in our area, we're not allowed to have chickens in our backyard. Many of my friends do it anyway, but I'm not okay with setting that example for our kids. So I've been pounding on doors (and mostly being ignored) trying to find out how to change the law.

Fortunately, other people must have been doing the same thing, because the county is FINALLY considering measures to allow backyard chickens. I received an email from one of the county planners with information on the proposed regulations.

For those of you who live in my area, would you consider sending a letter of support to the county, letting them know that it's about time we got to have chickens!!

Here is the text of the email I received:


[caption id="attachment_4301" align="alignright" width="225"] She wants a chicken![/caption]

Hello! Jefferson County Planning & Zoning is processing several revisions to the Zoning Resolution. In general, the revisions allow backyard chickens and bees and consolidate the agricultural, commercial, corridor, industrial, mobile home, mountain residential, residential, and suburban residential districts. A draft of these changes is available for public review on our website. The direct link to the changes is http://jeffco.us/planning/planning_T59_R65.htm, it can also be navigated to by going to the main Planning & Zoning page (http://planning.jeffco.us) and then following the link under the “Zoning Resolution Revisions” announcement.  Please email comments to Heather Gutherless or Nina Ruiz by February 20, 2013. More information regarding these changes is outlined after the Hearing Dates.

 

Hearing Dates:   

Planning Commission: Wednesday, March 6, 2013 at 6:15pm

Board of County Commissioners: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 8:00 am.

Both hearings are held in Hearing Room 1 of the Jefferson County Administration and Courts Building, 100 Jefferson County Parkway, Golden. Public testimony is welcomed.

 

Bees and Chickens:

The proposed regulations regarding keeping chickens and bees on residential properties are located in Section 5 – Accessory Uses. These revisions are a result of many inquiries and requests to keep chickens and/or bees on residentially zone properties.  Currently, chickens and bees are allowed in the County’s Agricultural Districts and chickens are allowed in the Suburban Residential Districts, Mountain Residential Districts and the Residential-One District.

 

The main changes to this section include:

  • Ø Allows for the keeping of bees and chickens on single family detached, two-family dwelling or duplex residential lots through a miscellaneous permit.

  • Ø Maximum number of chickens allowed is 6. No roosters allowed.

  • Ø Allows one bee hive for each 4,000 square feet of lot area.

  • Ø Permits for either bees or chickens may be revoked at any time for failure to comply with the provisions of the Zoning Resolution or any other local, state or federal laws.


 

The Planning Director discussed the benefits of keeping backyard chickens in a blog post on November 20, 2012. You can view that post by going to: http://jeffco.us/roller/jeffcoblog/date/20121120

 

District Consolidation

The Zone Districts are currently broken into one section for each specific zone district. For example, the Agricultural-One District is its’ own section, Agricultural-Two District is its’ own section, and Agricultural-Thirty-five District is its’ own section. Planning Staff has consolidated all related zone districts into one section and has reformatted the information on uses, setbacks, heights and lot sizes into chart format, rather than in paragraph format. So in the consolidation, all Agricultural Zone Districts are shown in the Agricultural District section, rather than being split into 3 different sections. This consolidation was completed for the agricultural, commercial, corridor, industrial, mobile home, mountain residential, residential, and suburban residential districts. For the most part, the consolidation did not change the uses and standards in the districts, however, there were some instances where language needed to be changed.  Additionally, other changes that staff felt were minor, housekeeping-type changes are also included in these revisions.

 

All changes are outlined in the “Summary of Proposed Changes” sheet that is on the same website as the draft text.

 

Please contact us if you have any questions.

 

Heather Gutherless and Nina Ruiz

 

Heather Gutherless

hgutherl@jeffco.us

303-271-8716

 

Nina Ruiz

nruiz@jeffco.us

303-271-8732