Are you feeling better?

Are you feeling better?
I have come to loathe that question.
What exactly am I supposed to be feeling better from? Am I feeling better than when I was strapped to a backboard a week ago?  Yes, because I have yet to meet a backboard that is particularly comfortable.  Am I feeling better than earlier in the week when I lay out in the sun “doing homework”?  Not particularly.
How about better than yesterday?  Better than five minutes ago?  Better than a year ago?
It’s a question that I can’t really ever answer. I live with chronic illness.  I’m not going to get better.  Sure, I’ll have my good days and my not so good days and my-roll-over-and-stay-in bed-because-it’s-not-worth-trying-to-get-up-days (those don’t happen super often, but sometimes I need an extra hour or two to complete the getting up process).
I wish I could answer that question with an unequivocal yes. I wish that one morning I could wake up and say “yes.  I am feeling better” but, barring a miracle, that unequivocal yes won’t come until heaven.  Until then, it’s just one day, one moment at a time.
If you really want to know how I’m doing, asking me if I’m feeling better won’t get you far.  Asking about a specific trouble will get you further (is your knee better?  Have you recovered from the flu?), but the best question, the question that if you care enough to listen, will get you the most truthful answer is “How are you doing?”
That allows me, and anyone else really, answer with where they are currently at without having to make comparisons are feel guilty for not actually being better even though a “normal” person would already have been better.
“How are you doing?”  is a neutral question with no presuppositions of improvement or lack thereof.  It’s open ended and non-judgmental.  And that's how are the best questions are.

The Sermon That Wasn't

Late last fall I was asked to preach at the church I grew up in.  Naturally I said yes.  I am one of three seminary students from my home church and it was the first time I was asked to preach here and I was just as nervous as I was excited.  I have preached lots of times in my teaching church and other places in (little) Holland, but there is something different about being in front of people who have watched you grow up, through the good and the bad, the pretty and the ugly.
I was nervous, but as Mommy Glynis taught me through my years of drama in the MVPs, appropriate nervousness is a good thing.  If you aren't nervous you are too full of yourself.  This piece of wisdom was affirmed by my preaching professor last year.
I ate breakfast this morning and went off to church with my dad (sound tech) and Littlest Brother (playing prelude).  I got wired and did sound checks.  I sat on my stool behind the pulpit to get the feel for things. I talked with the person running visuals and got everything set for that.  I went downstairs and prayed with the pastor and elders.
I felt fine as I sat in the front pew next to the pastor waiting for the sermon time.
I got up, settled myself onto my stool, prayed, read the scripture, and started my sermon.  I made it through the beginning paragraphs.  Then the words on my page started to blur.  My head started to spin.  Pauses between be words and sentences became longer and longer.  Things became tunnel. The next thing I remember is coming to on the floor with people around me. I had passed out.
 First responders and nurses in the congregation revived me, and someone called 911.  The local fire department showed up first.  They put me on oxygen and I desperately wanted to finish my sermon.  They sat me up on my stool and I promptly passed out again.  Paramedics showed up and didn't give me a choice about hospital time.  I quickly found myself in a cervical collar and strapped to a backboard and in an ambulance.  I spent a couple hours in the ER getting IV fluids and blood work. We didn't get any real answers as to why I passed out, however the doctor suspects an electrolyte imbalance and if I keep watching my mineral intake I should be fine.
So in other words, my sermon never got preached.  I have yet to find a silver lining to all this or a purpose behind this. Perhaps satan didn't want the congregation to hear my message, perhaps it was just because I had been sick with an upper respiratory infection for the last couple weeks, perhaps it was random.
But I'm not giving up.  If they give me another chance, I will preach it again.  And I will keep trying until I get through it until it turns into the sermon that definitely was.

Allergy Friendly Lasagna

My determination to make tomato-less tomato sauce the other day was fueled mostly by the fact that I had been invited to a lasagna lunch after church on Sunday (which I ended up not going to). There was no way I was going to just eat salad while everyone else ate lasagna. It was just not going to happen. And to make lasagna, I needed to make tomato-less tomato sauce first. Then I could make allergy friendly lasagna free from gluten, wheat, dairy, egg, tomato, and any other nasty stuff.  There is soy in this recipe, so if you can't do soy, I'm sorry.  I can't keep everyone happy.

Now for the Joy-Friendly lasagna "recipe"*:

In one container mix: browned ground beef, tomato-less tomato sauce, spices (I use basil, oregano, marjoram, rosemary, and thyme), and sauteed peppers and onions.

In another container mix: 1 package (12oz) firm tofu, a variety of daiya cheese

Have ready: oven ready rice lasagna noodles, extra tomato-less tomato sauce, spinach, extra diaya cheese, vegan parmesan topping, a 9x13 pan

Get started:
Spread a layer of mixture 1 (meat mixture) in the bottom of the pan.
Put a single layer of lasagna noodles over it.
Add a layer of spinach
Top with a layer of mixture 2 (likely all of it, unless you have a really deep pan)
Add a layer of noodles spread rest of the meat mixture over the noodles add sauce to cover any exposed noodles
Sprinkle with diaya cheese top with vegan parmesan topping stick in the oven and cook according to the directions on the noodle package.

Enjoy your lasagna.

It tastes even awesomer than it looks.  I'm not the best food photographer.

*I'm not sure I can actually call this a recipe because I don't actually measure anything.  I just guess and go with what looks good. 

Tomato-less Tomato Sauce

At some point last year, probably in an attempt to find something to do with all the beets we had from our CSA, my amazing roommate LDK found a recipe for a soup that we dubbed "red hooker lipstick soup". It tasted a lot like tomato soup, despite the fact that it was tomato-less. Shortly thereafter a recipe for marina sauce was found, which led to adventures with chicken parmesan, again, with no tomatoes. After these discoveries, my head went wild with possibilities. If I could use these same principles, I could recreate all my favorite tomato type dishes. Without the tomato. And I could make them for my little brother who is also tomato free. So many possibilities! Since then I have successfully made chili (okay, mom helped me with the chili...I have bad experiences with cooking dried beans...it's a long story) and my little brother has successfully made, canned and dried "tomato" sauce. This particular day it was my turn to make "tomato" sauce. 

I don't do things in small quantities. I purposely made a whole bunch so I can freeze some and have it when I need "tomato" and don't have time or energy to make any. So I started with about 60 oz (2 cans) of pureed pumpkin, 30 oz (2 cans) of whole cooked beets, 2 cups of chicken stock, 3/4 cup of lemon juice, 4 TBSP of balsamic vinegar and 4 tsp of salt. I was a little heavy on the salt. Next time I think I might cut back on the salt a bit, but in the end it was all okay. 

I pureed all of that together with my immersion blender. It was a delightful purply mess. At that point it was basically the equivalent of tomato-less tomato paste. Since I don't use tomato-less tomato paste very often I decided to go ahead and process it all the way to tomato-less tomato sauce, a product I use much more frequently. To this purple puree I added about 2 cups of lightly sauteed onion along with about 3 cloves of lightly sauteed garlic, 1 1/2 a tsp of oregano, 2 bay leaves, 1 tsp of pepper, 1/2 tsp of red pepper flakes, and 1 tsp of sugar. I then added about 4 cups of water and mixed it all together. The amount of water isn't important. It just had to be enough to make it liquid enough to let it cook so everything could cook together. Otherwise adding things like the oregano, bay leaves and red pepper flakes would be useless. I let it simmer on the stove top all afternoon, stirring frequently. As it cooked it went from purple to red, until by the end, when it was the right consistency for tomato sauce (all the extra water had boiled out), it looked just like tomato sauce. 

Here's a picture of my tomato-less tomato sauce all ready for use in yummy recipes.

In summary: puree together: 60 oz of pumpkin puree 30 oz of canned (or fresh cooked) beets 3/4 cup of lemon juice 4 TBSP of balsamic vinegar 2 cups of chicken or vegetable stock 4tsp of salt

Sautee: 2 cups chopped onion 3 cloves minced garlic

Add together: the puree and sauteed vegetables 1 1/2 tsp oregano 1tsp peper 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes 2 bay leaves 1 tsp sugar about 4 cups of water

Bring to a simmer and let simmer for many hours, stirring on occasion to prevent sticking. When it has reached the right consistency for tomato sauce, it is done. Enjoy your tomato-less tomato sauce! (and clean up everywhere it splattered while cooking...)

Please Help

Dear Friends, especially those in the Holland, Michigan area, the long short of things is that I'm going to be off my leg for awhile yet.  I've started physical therapy and we are hoping to get me up and moving sooner rather than later but I did a lot of damage to my leg and it's going to take time.
I'm frustrated by it.  Some days I'm frustrated enough that I want to cry.  I want to be out and able to do things that I used to be able to do on my own, or with very little assistance.  Right now I can't even get outside of my house by myself (Huge shout out to Andy for being so faithful in getting me out for class every day!).  I feel stuck and I feel like a burden to those around me, and I hate feeling that way.
Once again, this is a plea for help with some things that I just can't do on my own right now and that need to happen.

• The bank on 8th street.  If the weather is gross, a car would be good, if the weather is not gross, it is walkable.
• Physical therapy appointments.  My PT is on Douglas street and I go Tuesdays and Thursdays in the afternoon. I have a 1:30 appointment this Thursday and I don't know how I'm getting there yet.
• Walgreens on Washington to pick up a prescription
• grocery shopping at Meijer

I typically have class in the mornings, but most afternoons are freer (Wednesdays involve church, later Monday afternoon is my therapy pool time).

If you can help in any way, please let me know.  leave a comment, e-mail me, send a carrier pigeon, find me at school... 

Thank you in advance!

How to help

After my blog post about mounting frustrations and some facebook posts about frustrations I’ve had a number of people asking how they can help make things easier for me while I heal.  I’m not usually very good at asking in the moment.  I’m notoriously bad at asking for help.  I try to be independent, I try to not burden other people, but I’m trying to learn to be humble and accept help.  So, if you genuinely want to help, here are some suggestions on you can help. *Note: this will be ongoing.  Doc says I might be off my leg for 6 weeks or more*

• As long as there is snow and ice on the ground I can’t get in and out of my house to get to class.  I need to be at school at 8am on Monday and Thursdays.  The other days it’s roughly 9:30 that I need to be at school. 
• I can get my laundry downstairs and wash it, but I can’t get it back upstairs.  Right now there is a load waiting down stairs to come back up. 
• On February 19 I am preaching the evening service at First Reformed Church. I can’t get there on my own and need a ride.  I will also need a ride home.
• I need to go to the bank on 8th street.  Again, too far for me to get on my own
• I'm going to have to start physical therapy soon to try and rehabilitate my knee. I don't know where for sure yet or how often, but I know it's going to have to be happening.  The doctor hopes to have me up and walking on my own by the beginning of April.  We'll see if the physical therapist agrees.  
• Being able to get to the therapy pool a couple times a week at the aquatic center would be excellent for my knee.  Normally I ride my bike to the aquatic center, but with my knee all messed up I can’t get there.  The aquatic center has free wifi, lots of swimming place, a workout room etc, so if you want to bring me so that I can work on my knee, there are lots of ways to amuse yourself (if you want to swim or workout I can even give you a pass).  Here’s a link to when therapy pool hours are.  There are not always regular swimming hours during therapy hours.
• I can't get to the grocery store on my own. Even being there is a bit of a challenge. 
• I'm sure there's more, but that's what I've got for now. 

4.5 out of 5

It's not very often that I give a restaurant 4.5 out of 5 stars, but it happened Friday.  My mom arrived just as I was finishing class on Friday and we headed to Grand Rapids to meet my cousin for lunch.  The drive was horrible.  We hadn't had much "weather" all winter and then sure enough as mom is driving into Holland we get an icky icky storm.  Go figure. My cousin had recommended that we stop by a little place called "Marie Catrib's", so I'd googled the the address and that's where we headed.  It was a little crowded in the store, so we had to wait a moment and then we were seated at a cozy table (we could have waited longer and sat less cozily, but we're all family and have been even cozier before).  The waiter brought the menu and I began to look over it.  I saw some information about gluten free bread and the next time the waiter came back we inquired further into it. The initial screening on all four types of gluten free bread came back positive. I had choices. I probably should have inquired further, but I didn't want to jeopardize anything, so I took a bit of a leap of faith.  I actually cried as I looked over the menu and realized I had choices.  Lots of choices.  I ordered a roast beef sandwich without the cheese and without some sort of sauce that had way too many vowels in it because the sauce was not Joy-friendly.  The sandwich came and I just looked at it. Here was an honest to goodness sandwich, made in a restaurant, that was safe for me to eat.  I didn't look at it long before I dug in.  It was delicious. Phenomenal.  I even got to get up and look at the dessert  case, but passed on desserts because they didn't have an ingredient list handy and Marie was at the doctor and couldn't be reached.
The service was excellent, the food was delicious.  The only thing that would have moved this restaurant from a 4.5 to a 5 would have been to have ingredient lists handy so I could have thoroughly checked things. I really wasn't supposed to have that many carbs at that point in time (I'm still paying for that!), but if I get a chance to go there again, carb restrictions or not, I'm going!