I promise, you'll like this one!

O.K. I have found the fountain of youth!! Well, not really. But I have found the best chocolate cake recipe you will ever eat! It's located on the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. I've made it many, many times and every time Daron comments that it tastes better than the box kind. It's so easy to make and it's well worth the extra effort to make your cake from scratch. And the good news is that you probably have all the ingredients on hand so you can make it tonight. All you need to buy is some icing. I rarely make a chocolate cake from the box any more. Try it for yourself, you will probably agree!

A bit of advice: I tried the frosting recipe on the Hershey's box and didn't like it. It has a strong cocoa flavor. Also don't try and cheat and use self-rising flour. Tired it, it turned out gooey. Yuck!

Here it is:

Hershey's "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake

2 c. sugar
1-3/4 c. all purpose flour
3/4 c. Hershey's Cocoa
1-1/2 tsp. baking powder
1-1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1 c. milk
1/2 c. vegetable oil
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. boiling water

1. Heat oven to 350 deg. Grease and flour a 9in.x13in. pan or two 9-in. baking pans.
2. Combine dry ingredients in bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla: Beat on med. speed for 2 minutes. Stir in boiling water (batter will be thin). Pour into pan.
3. Bake 30-35 min. or until wooded pick inserted comes out clean. Cool 10 min. Remove from pan. Cool completely. Frost with icing. 10-12 servings. Enjoy!!

A Work in Progress

This is a typical conversation between Brianna and me:

Me: Brianna I need you to go pick up the toys you were playing with.

Brianna: Noooo, but mommy I’m busy right now, and I'm not done playing with them.

Me: Sweetheart, You haven't been playing with them for some time now.
I need you to obey right now and do as I ask.

Brianna: But, mommy I don't feel like it right now.

Me: Brianna, if you won't obey right now I'm going to have to spank you because you are disobeying me and the Bible says you have to obey mommy. That means you have to obey quickly and quietly.

Brianna: (With a sour look on her face, she gets up and slowwwwwly begins picking up her things.)

30 minutes later…….

Me: Brianna, it’s been 30 minutes and you have only picked up a few things.

Brianna: But, mommy I'm soooo tired.

Me: You just got up. How can you be tired?

Unfortunately, this is a constant reoccurrence in our home. She is a work in progress, as are all my kids and I should clearly add, myself as well. As I was thinking about this daily scenario, I couldn’t help but think how similar this sounds to my conversation with God.

This is a typical conversation between me and God:

God: Erica, I need you to go invite Mary to church.

Me: Nooo, but God I’m really busy and besides she’ll probably say no.

God: Sweetheart, you will never know what she’ll say unless you ask her.

Me: But, God I really don’t feel like it right now.

God: Erica, if you won’t obey me right now I can’t bless you. I want to bless you and you need to understand that delayed obedience is still disobedience.

Me: (I walk away from this conversation irritated because I’m asked to do something I’m not comfortable with.)

Several months later:

God: Erica, it’s been several months and you still haven’t asked Mary to church.

Me: But, God….

Sadly, I have had one too many conversations like this with God. Lately, God has been probing my heart about obedience. So many times I have excused disobedience with procrastination. It doesn’t matter how you look at it, but the truth is that delayed obedience is, and always will be, disobedience. That stings!! It amazes how my kids can be the perfect picture of how I response to my Father. Their typical excuses to me are my typical excuses that I give to God. We all do this. And what is crazy is that we don’t usually like to call it what it really is, disobedience. We prefer to call it everything else: procrastination, fear, laziness, insecurity, lack of time, distraction ect…

I have made an observation recently, that when my eyes are on myself the tasks God gives me are overwhelming and impossible. My weaknesses and inabilities are magnified and drown out my desire to obey the Lord. But when my eyes are on my Father, the task is doable and possible, because He has promised me that He will never give me more than He gives me the grace to do. He sees me as an instrument He can use to carry out His work. But the humbling reality is, that if I am not willing to carry out the work He desires for me to do, He has no problems finding someone else to do it! Wow!

We all desire to be blessed by God. But, I wonder how many blessings we miss out of because of our unwillingness to obey our Father. My eyes have been opened today and my heart pricked by this truth. This is something I will be thinking about for a while. The next time I am given an opportunity to obey Him (which will probably be any minute, since my kids are calling me as I write:) ), I will be reminded of this. I am a work in progress. But thank the Lord he has lots of patience which I know I need when I'm dealing with my own kids disobedience. Well, I thought I would share a little about what the Lord is dealing with me today. What is yours?

Jewels in the sky!

I have been learning how to be a bird watcher. I used to wonder what you actually do? Just watch them? How boring! Now, I'm learning it's much more then just watching. You listen, trying to distinguish bird calls from the others. You observe their feeding rituals, you learn what they eat and how they eat it. You study how they look and read about their behaviours. You take notes about when they arrive in your area and when they migrate. Where do they go when they migrate? I just learned that hummingbirds can live up to 10 years and they come back every summer to the same location year after year looking for food. Also, I just learned that my own hummingbirds in my backyard fly down as far as lower Central America and Panama every fall to migrate. How fasinating is that!

One of my favorite memories is when I was visiting my grandparents when I was about 10 years old. They lived at the base of the mountains in Alamogordo, New Mexico. One morning as I was getting ready to eat breakfast I observed the most wonderful site! My Grandma was outside hanging clothes on her clothesline. She began singing and all of a sudden, from no where, about 15-20 hummingbirds flew in and perched themselves on the clothesline right in front of her! They were just sitting there quietly enjoying the serenade. This went on for about 30 minutes. Come to find out, this was a morning ritual for her that had been going on every summer for years. I love this memory! Since then hummingbirds have been a precious reminder of my grandmother. They will always be a special bird to me. So, I decided to mount a hummingbird feeder in our back yard and what fun it has been. This is when my bird watching endeavors started. It has allowed me the excuse to just sit, watch and listen to all that goes on around me each morning. I love it! I have slowed down some and started just enjoying life going on around me. I'm on a mission now to soak up as much as I can.

Those love birds!

One reason I love to homeschool my kiddos is that I get an awesome opportunity to learn right alongside my kids. Today we were having a nature study time on Cardinals and discovered some very neat things about them. Like, did you know that during nesting season the male cardinal feeds the female. BTW: the red ones are male, females are brown. It's a beautiful site to see. The male works very hard to gather food for her and then walks over to the female and spits it into her mouth. How romantic! Well, not really. But for bird romance I think it ranks right up there for the most romantic things to do for your bird mate.

Well, I got to witness this today with the kids and this started us on a mission to learn more about them. If I wasn't homeschooling I never would have given this transaction between these birds a second thought. But because I had three inquiring minds asking me questions that I could not answer, we began on a quest to find out. One very neat thing we found on the Internet was a recording of bird sounds and calls. We were able to hear what a Cardinal sounded like. We also read that they are very territorial birds and will chase away any other Cardinals from the area. This information got us intrigued. We figured we would find out how territorial they really are. So...We flew open the back door and cranked up the computer speakers full blast and pressed play. Oh! What fun we had! It took the Cardinal about 30 seconds to come flying right up to the back porch ready to charge this other bird away. We were all laughing and having fun with this bird. Of course, he probably didn't think it was so funny. Then he began repeating the sounds from this other bird on the computer, and before long the female bird was in on it too. This went on for about 20 minutes. The kids had so much fun, or rather I should say, I had so much fun today learning about a bird I didn't know much about before. Next week's nature assignment is Blue Jay's. I can't wait! I wonder what they will do?

Video of kids

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Boy, that makes me squirm!

I was reading the story about Mary and Martha the other day in Luke 10:38-42 and the Lord used this story to speak loudly to me about relationships. Relationship with Him as well as with my kids, husband and friends. I so often take on the role as a serving wife and mother. I have no problems in this area. I love to serve! I find it fulfilling to be able to serve my family. But that has been my problem as well. I have noticed a pattern in my life. At times when I'm serving, I have noticed that I also have neglected my family. I get so caught up in the "doing" that I have forgotten the most important part is in the "being". I have had to stop and ask myself "has my serving become self-serving?". Ouch! Sometimes it probably has.

Martha's desire was to serve Jesus, but she failed to recognize that she was actually neglecting her guest. I don't know why but this story always makes me squirm. It's probably because I'm so much like Martha, but deep down inside I want to me a Mary. I want to let the worries of this life go, like Mary did, and just sit, relax and enjoy what is in front of me. I find that I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to just sit and enjoy the company around me. It might be that I have used the excuse of serving to keep close relationships at arms length. Serving sometimes has become my safe haven. It's so much easier to serve than it is to develop relationships. It takes so much more effort to do this.

Jesus told Martha that Mary chose what was better. She chose what would never be taken away from her. Martha was worried about the temporal things of life while Mary enjoyed the lasting things of life, relationship. I've often wondered what lessons and stories Martha missed when Jesus was talking at that moment while she was busy around her house? It's obvious he was saying something very interesting for Mary to want to just sit at his feet and listen. Martha was so distracted with "doing" she forgot that just "being" was what Jesus wanted most from her. It's also very interesting that Jesus let Martha run around, never saying anything to her until Martha expressed her frustration to him. Then he lovingly put her in her place. Why did he not say anything to her, once he noticed she was distracted? He waited for her to voice her frustration about her sister before he shared his observations. What really gets me is that Martha was not sinning. She was just distracted. She took her eyes off of what was most important. Relationships. On the outside she appeared to be serving, but on the inside she missed it altogether. What I love most about this story, is that He never threw it at her face but gently, at the right moment, showed her what her weakness was. I love it when God uses the perfect moment to show us where we are wrong. He never yells at us, never shakes His head in frustration. He just waits. Waits till we are ready to hear from him, usually its in the middle of our frustration. This has been an eye opening truth for me this week. Does this story make you squirm too? If it does, it could be because Jesus has been waiting to show you your own weakness. Don't pass up the chance for the Lord to gently put you in your place. I'm sure glad I didn't!!

Devotional

A great place to read some awesome devotionals including the one I'm reading by Selwyn Hughes is www.oneplace.com. The devotional is called Every Day Light. They post a new devotional everyday. Check it out and be blessed!

Good Quote!

I love to read and hear good quotes from people. I think it's awesome that someone can say a few words and in those few words they can speak volumes. Here is a good one I heard recently:

Mercy is not getting what I deserve.
Grace is getting what I don't deserve.

Ah...! Why can't life be easier?

On my "Words to Ponder" section of my blog, I have a quote my pastor once said that has stuck with me for many years. He said: "Frustration is you, not getting your own way". This quote hit me because at the time in my life I often felt frustrated with circumstances going on around me. It was then that I realized that if I did not let my frustrations go I was going to live a very discontented life.

I have been reading from my devotional "Everyday light" by Selwyn Hughes and today it really spoke to me. BTW, (I just learned what "BTW" means. It means "By the way". Thank you, Kyleen!) if you have never read his devotionals, think about reading them. They are always so good and to the point. I think you can read them online too. Any ways, I wanted to share what I read today. Here it is:

"Taking every project prisoner"

We continue looking at things we can do to stay spiritually fresh. Another suggestion is this-learn how to deal with frustration. Time and time again, I have sat with people who have said: “What’s wrong with me? I feel so low spiritually. I am not involved in sin. Why does my Christian life feel so stale? On many of those occasions, I have observed that the problem contributing to their feelings of spiritual staleness is an inability to cope with frustration.

One of the most radiant Christians I have ever met was a seed salesman in West Wales. He was crippled in both his lower limbs by poliomyelitis, he drove a hand-controlled car and would make his way to outlying farms to sell seed to the farmers. Sometimes it would take him an hour just to get out of his car and open a farm gate-but he persevered nevertheless.

One day I said to him: “Don’t you get frustrated by your condition? How do you keep going like this when many others would have settled for a lifetime of invalidism and inactivity?” His reply has lived on in my heart for over thirty years: “I take every project prisoner to make it obey Christ-even the project of poliomyelitis.” He had learned how to make his frustration fruitful. When you and I can learn how to make the ugly into the beautiful, the evil into the good, then frustration will never get a hold on us. The secret of living is the secret of using. Learn that and you will never be frustrated again.

For further reading I read in 2 Cor. 4:1-10 that I am a fragile being "a jar of clay". And in this fragile being I have a treasure- His power. Some might say why put a priceless treasure in something that is fragile and knowingly break? God said that He purposely did this to show that this power is from Him and not from me. How humbling! It also says that I will be hard pressed on all sides. I will feel the pressures of this life, but this jar (me) will never be crushed! I will be confused, but I will know that God knows what to do. He will "father me" through all my confusing situations! I will be knocked down but I will know that God has not left my side and I will get back up. He will carry me through! The "for sure's" of life will always be there. But the flip side is that everything will be O.K. in the end. I will be O.K. because God's power and presence is in me. All my trials, risks and humiliations are perfect opportunities for Christ to demonstrate His power through me! What a powerful and freeing truth to know. I pray the Lord blesses you today with this same truth!