Today we got to see and hear the little one for the first time, it was pretty amazing to hear and watch the heart beating. Thank you God for your good gifts. Just in case you want to hear it too, you can click here.
A house built without hands
It also snowed today so there was no new progress on the house…
Snow day!
Snowy yard!
I have never anticipated that i would share recipes on this blog but i am going to now.
The background/introduction:
This morning was my groups turn to distribute food and preach the gospel at Shepherd’s Heart, the local food pantry. It was a great morning and we go to pray with a handful of people after I was spoke from John 6. That was over at 10:30am and we cane back to the church to eat lunch. In the spirit of the day I decide to get creative and not just make my frozen pizza.
The recepie:
Cook the pasta and mix all the canned stuff and corn together. Make the mashers, (we didn’t have milk so we used a mixture of ranch, water, and sour cream—it worked. Crush the crackers in the bottom of the pan and pour some butter over them and then put the noodle stuff on top of that and then finally the mashers on top of that. Top it all off with some chedder and asiago cheese and bake it for a while till you can’t wait any longer. Season to taste with Tony’s and call it good.
So in case you were wondering that is my new lunch creation, I call it ‘Irish i had something else to put in this casserole’ or just ‘Irish casserole’ for short. The recipe can be easily modified by doing anything you want with whatever you have as long as you wish that you had something else to put in it an bake it in casserole fashion.
Cheers!
I feel like i was just walking along and all of the sudden i stepped on a merry-go-round and then i got smacked by the bar and fell to the wood chipped ground. But before i really understood what was going on i was standing back up and my face hurt… I have a feeling that this is going to leave a mark. So here is an update on what is going on now in the first month of the year of our Lord 2010.
Let’s go back to Tuesday, January 12th. Tuesday was going to be just like any other day except that Ej and i had to get up extra early before the sun and go to Round Rock for her to have a few simple procedures done. The procedures were in regards to her issues with UTI’s that she has dealt with since she was a wee little lass. The first one was nothing but smooth sailing and then it was time for the second which was going to be a little more intense. I was waiting in the room designated for such an activity and succumbing to my boredom i had just published a ‘Random Mobile Post’. Although i was bored i was really relaxed because it is always easy to be relaxed at the doctor when you aren’t the patient and the one just waiting to leave. Well much to my surprise a nurse comes out to the quick filling waiting room and calls, “Mr. Ripple?”. I was engrossed in reading headlines from my phone but i immediately looked around to see who else shared the Surname Ripple. Well no one got up and at that point it was quite obvious that i was the only possible Mr. Ripple that she was looking for.
“Yes thats me?” I said as i sheepishly walked toward the door to “the back.”
“Come on back with me, your wife wants to see you.”
“Ok”
At this point i have no clue what is going on because the nurse doesn’t seem to be acting weird or anything (like i would know what normal for her was). She opens the door to where Ej is sitting in a hospital robe balling her eyes out. Quite honestly she looks devastated (coincidently what she looked like on our wedding day), i walk in and the door shut behind me, i’m waiting for her to say anything and mentally trying to prepare for her to say she has cancer or something.
I get settled in to the chair next to her and finally she says,
“We’re pregnant!”
I was speechless and quite frankly didn’t really believe it. We just sat there for a moment and talked about how bizarre and unexpected this was. We are excited and thankful for the gift that God has given us. I can’t wait to make their acquaintance.
That was Tuesday morning, now on to evening. Our camper aka current home, has apparently been the intense breeding ground for a cute little black mold family. And apparently they enjoyed our bed more than we did. Although i have always been one for diversity, i could no longer tolerate these sneaky unwanted and uninvited guests. I trashed our “mattress” and we slept on a big pile of blankets, which turns out isn’t as fun and comfortable as i so vividly remember. This immediately turned out to be a blessing because upon a brief investigation the next day, i found a perfectly sized mattress up in my brother’s room and this one was leaps and bounds more comfortable than the one we slept on for over a year.
Thursday morning we woke up to the sobering news that the loyal family dog, Skeeter, had finally kicked the bucket after a fairly long life. It made me trust in God’s strength and goodness all the more. You may think that i am over-reacting a little but God cares and knows when the sparrow falls to the ground and dies, so of course i am going to believe that He knows and care and is sovereign even over Skeeter’s death. The Lord gave us a member of the family, and the Lord took one, blessed be His glorious name.
Saturday night i got a call right before i was getting into bed that my friend had a blow out on the side of the highway and needed my help, i rounded up Spencer and we were off to her rescue. We finally got the tire unstuck from the rotor and an hour and a half later i was back in bed warming up.
The next morning while siting in Bible study i went to play with my wedding ring and realized that it was gone. I must have lost it while changing the tire. My hands were really cold and i must not have felt it come off my hand. Ej handled it much better than i expected. We will see how it goes with her being prego and me not having a wedding band.
On top of all of that, these last two weeks have been some of the most fast paced and visibly productive in the whole homestead project that by God’s grace we are undertaking.
I am thankful for His grace and faithfulness… To say the least, “I’m so freakin’ excited!”
When you feel like just shutting it all down, closing the doors (imagining of course they’re mine to close). People are so ungrateful, so selfish and self centered, i see it so clearly in myself and even more clearly in others. Humanity is so lazy when it comes to all the right things and so zealous and motivated when it comes to all of the wrong things (or so it seems). If i am able to see it, if we are like that towards those we can see and physically interact with then how much more severe is the problem when it comes to the One we cannot see, we cannot always feel, or cannot physically interact with (or so it seems). This complacency is a cancer destroying us from the inside out. This lack of satisfaction in the One Thing. The One Thing that matters, the one thing that has any weight of glory or worth. This is the One Thing that constantly goes unnoticed, goes purposely ignored.
We are such a stiff-necked, rebellious people. We revel and pleasure ourselves inside our houses like filthy swine rolling around in the filth we eat and have eaten and will soon eat again. We demand that our entire existence and the surrounding universe revolve around those pleasures. The only problem is our existence and this universe thankfully cannot ever, not even for but one moment, facilitate those pleasures. The moment we think we have manipulated the order of the universe, that we have ‘got one by The Man’, is the moment that we sowed our corruptible seed and we immediately reaped our corruption—our conflict began. We will always reap death and destruction; it makes no matter how beautiful the seeds we sow look like, how pleasant they feel or smell or even how wonderful they taste. It doesn’t even matter what they sound like accompanying the music in their hollow homes.
We are dying of starvation and malnutrition while we sit at a banqueting table. Are we blind or are just not willing to see? Does the answer to that make any difference?
We often don’t like what we see and assume we are just reading the wrong script. ”Um, excuse me, stop everything, I believe I have the wrong script, I must have picked up someone else’s part. This couldn’t possibly be my role.” We’re pretending to be in an imaginary theater all the while sheepishly standing on the stage (the only stage) as the extra, the casualty, the butt of the joke wanting nothing more than to simply run off the stage, escaping the spotlights and hide behind the curtain in the shadows. But escaping the stage isn’t going to be as easy as you may think, go ahead and try but you will soon find that the stage transcends you because the story transcends you. You’re always in front of an audience.
N.D. Wilson observes from a tilt-a-whirl: Complain. Whine. Be a fusser. The story needs those as well, because every butt needs a joke, and the audience must laugh. Whether they (and God) laugh at or with is up to you.
The curtains have already been torn away revealing the stage. There is no other theater and no alternate scrips to be the wrong ones to read. There is one stage—one story. You are a part whether you like it or not, all of creation is. You can kick and scream but you are here now and the story needs that too, consequently the author cast you even though you didn’t make the audition—you didn’t even sign up…
Jesus says His yoke is easy and His burden is light, i believe this wholly and i also know that in this world we experience tribulation and suffering. Both equally and simultaneously true… The necessary response: Thank you God that your grace is sufficient even though you aren’t removing this unrelenting, persistently painful, troublesome and irritating thorn in my flesh.
