I have the wonderful job of making food, experimenting, organizing all our new possessions and cleaning through old stuff, and spending time with TJ. Our life is set before us and we have each other. This is the best.
*Note: In my ponderings of marriage I have considered that while I was single, the struggle was wanting to be married, but knowing that marriage would not "complete me." However, being married, it is the happiest place I have ever been in. It is the most wonderful time with a friend, lover, and provider - how could I help but feel completed? Well here is what I have come to understand, it is not the marriage itself, but God's call upon my life now being fulfilled. The past year was a struggle and fight within myself of trying to understand where it was God wanted me. As soon as I chose to believe Him, I was one step closer to that complete joy, yet I still had to work to get there. Deciding to marry TJ was a freeing decision, but it took patience, trust, work, and much prayer to get there. Marrying TJ was the easiest thing to do, but to get to that point I had to sacrifice much of my own will and independence. I had to sacrifice much of what I thought made me who I was. Yet after marrying him and coming wholly and completely under the submission of God's will working in my life - there is a peace which passes all understanding. The struggle within is gone. Therefore, it is not marriage itself that "completed" me, but being in the will of my Father. And could He be more loving? That this is His will for me amazes and humbles me. What a gift! What joy!
Though I don't think anyone but maybe my Mom reads this, if anyone single or searching or struggling reads this - please do not misunderstand me. Every phase of our lives is a gift from God. Some phases are times of trials and some of pleasant meadows (Pilgrims Progress) in which we walk together in delight. C.S. Lewis in A Grief Observed said that "happiness" and "sadness" are not points that we reach, but rather our happy and sad times are made up of both happy and sad moments. We are not usually only in a happy or sad place, but there are often moments of sunshine during a storm and dark spots in the meadow. (I hope my paraphrasing was not too confusing!) Wherever God calls you, though perhaps frightening or life-altering, it is the greatest freedom to submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.
Well that went in an entirely different direction than tortillas!
Yesterday I decided to experiment in the kitchen. Since we have been going through our tortillas and bread quickly, I thought I would try my hand at making them! I'm married to a wheat farmer, so flour is not a problem. I have been using allrecipes almost three times a day, ok not that much, but a lot. And I found recipes on there for my experiments. The one for tortillas used shortening. Since I didn't have any and didn't really want to use any, I followed a comment that recommended using olive oil instead and she cut the salt in half, "Works perfectly!" When I rolled up the balls though, they were very hard and sort of crumbly, but I didn't worry about it and just set them on a tray to rest.
I had the dough rising for the bread and the little tortilla balls resting when TJ came in. "Hey babe! Pack your bags! We're going to Canada!" (A side note that often my quotations are summaries and not direct quotes.) He had some things to do and wanted to wait till the bread was baked, so I commenced rushing around like a mad woman for the next hour. Really it wasn't a big deal to leave, but I wanted to do 100 things in an hour and be ready to go! Thankfully I'm married to a very relaxed man and he didn't mind running a little late or that not everything was done.
However, there I was trying to roll out these hard brown balls into tortillas, they didn't look like any tortillas I had ever seen but sad flat brown and completely misshapen dough blankets. I was trying to fry them and check the bread and prep road trip snacks. I couldn't do all the tortillas because they were so difficult to work with! When I had made some I realized that it would be dinner time by the time we were on the road, so I pulled out my skillet and began cooking meat, onions, and peppers for quesadillas. I used my new tortillas (which tasted like communion bread) and it was a hot mess! Not the same size and therefore spilling out, burning meat, and just messy.
When we were driving I was saying how the tortillas were a fail and tasted like communion bread. "They don't taste like communion bread," TJ said thoughtfully, "see those taste good."
We both started laughing and he tried to correct what he said, in that they tasted differently - but I understood. They were what Matthew would call, "So-Called Tortillas."
This story pretty much ends there. We got out about a half hour later, I ended up having plenty of time to clean up, I cut up the best pieces of the quesadillas so TJ couldn't tell that much, and the bread turned out pretty good. TJ loved the bread, so there was some success. Our trip to Canada was to look at an air drill for seeding. It was 8 hours away, we stayed in a hotel, swam in the pool, ate lots of Tim Hortons and drove back after he looked at it. Anti-climatic trip, but the spontaneity and the hotel were fun!
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