A deeper cleanse

I have decided that the way I spend my time needs a re-evaluation as well. :)

I am tired of parts of days going by without being really spent intentionally. Things like Facebook, Pinterest, news, Youtube, etc. just kinda suck my time up if I let them. So, as I finish out this juice fast, I am going to fast from non-deliberate internet use. So, the above-mentioned things will be out of my picture. Replaced by things like taking a walk/hike/run, gardening, cooking, cleaning, visiting people, reading (I have quite a list!).

I don't seem to need to water my garden right now, so even that time can go elsewhere. Monsoon season has apparently struck Colorado. Never knew we had a monsoon here. :) It's lovely. Every morning is fresh and clean and every evening this week, we get lots of rain. We're sleeping under just a sheet and leave the windows open all the time. It's awesome. Reminds me a lot of the rainy season in Africa, but it's much MUCH cooler here and MUCH less humid.

Today already, I have gone out and tended to my compost pile (cardboard boxes have to be chopped up, so I leave them out in the rain and then they're really easy to tear into pretty small pieces), picked fresh kale and collards from my garden for juice for me, and picked onions for a meal I am cooking in the slow-cooker for Jason. I'll include the recipe for it later.

This cookbook is amazingly excellent. Most slow-cooker recipes seem to involve a lot of things I don't want to cook with like cream-of-chicken-soup. What is a creamed chicken anyway? What are those chemicals on the label? I don't like dumping cans of things someone else cooked into my slow cooker and basically letting someone else cook my meals. Somehow knowing what's in everything feels a lot better to me. This cookbook is for my generation and includes few canned or pre-prepared items. I like it a lot. And they're pretty easy. There's a series of "Not Your Mother's..." cookbooks and I kinda want to collect them all.

Today, my kitchen is making Provencal Garlic Soup and the recipe promises it's not as intense as it sounds. It smells amazing. The garlic gets blanched before going into the soup, so it mellows out a bit. If it is intense, Jason won't care. The man eats garlic cloves raw sometimes. But I think this will be something palatable to a wide variety of people. It's a complete thrill to have it just cooking away in the slow cooker. It feels like having it done for me. I am way more likely to feel like cooking in the morning than in the afternoon, so this is ideal.

After I am done with my cleaning for the day, I am planning to go to the gym and do some swimming, biking, and jogging. I am training for the Fort Collins Club Triathlon in September. Kinda nervous! It's my first triathlon ever. It's a short one, so it shouldn't be that bad. It's a sprint triathlon. This race involves the following: Swim 450 Yards (in a pool), Bike 13 Miles, Run 3 Miles. Not awful, but indeed worthy of training! I am hoping to accomplish it well, not fast, but finished. I've been slowly training for the last few months and now is time to step up the game and get really serious and focused about it. I am hoping to do some research about what runners should eat. My goal is to complete the Tough Mudder and a half-marathon next summer. I have a year.

The Tough Mudder is an obstacle race that involves some pretty extreme obstacles and challenges. From things like scaling walls and swimming in mud pits to running through electrical wires and carrying heavy things uphill. This is a challenge of mental toughness more than anything else, I believe. I want to believe I can take something like this on and win against it. Beat my own expectations of myself. That's what this entire time is about for me right now. I want to find out who I really am and what my best self can be and do and accomplish. I believe I can do this.

I am also in the process of losing weight that I have spent 10 years accumulating. In the last 5 years, my weight has fluctuated dramatically. I've weighed between 145 and 193 lbs at different times over these past years. It's actually a battle of overcoming mental blocks I have built and the fact that much of my weight gain has been a result of emotional eating. Not cool. I am working to learn the proper place of food (functioning as nutrition, not an emotional filler) and learn that I CAN beat this and I CAN do it. Each day is a new challenge and I am realizing that a lot of the emotions that helped me pack this weight on are going to need to be dealt with in order for me to lose it again. When I reach my first goal, I get to register for a half marathon and the Tough Mudder next year. I am looking forward to that. I feel like it's finally time for me to be the one running my life instead of letting it run me. YEAH!

Provencal Garlic Soup

Cooker: Large oval

Setting and Cook time: LOW for 6-7 hours

Ingredients

8 heads of garlic

2 large yellow onions (I used two smaller white onions from my garden)

6 teaspoons of chicken broth base

84 ounces of water

2 6-ounce cans of tomato paste

2 fresh jalapenos

1 fresh banana pepper

6 tablespoons of olive oil

Crusty bread to serve with it

*My recipe is doubled and edited a bit from the book. They used 6 14-ounce cans of chicken broth, I prefer to use homemade broth or the chicken broth base (Better Than Boullion brand) instead. I also added the jalapenos and banana pepper. We like spicy food and had a couple jalapenos on hand and I picked my first fresh banana pepper from our plant yesterday, so wanted to use it, too. I also thought about using fresh tomatoes instead of the tomato paste and then mixing some flour in for thickening, but I don't have any tomatoes today!

1. Fill a small, deep saucepan with water and bring to a rolling boil. Separate the garlic heads into cloves (leaving the paper on) and toss them into the boiling water. Blanch for 1 minute. Drain the garlic cloves into a colander and rinse under cold running water. Peel with a paring knife and remove stem-end of each clove.

2. Combine the garlic cloves, onion, broth base, water, tomato paste, and peppers in the slow cooker and stir to blend well. Use a wisk to make sure the tomato paste and broth base break down completely. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-7 hours.

3 Puree the soup with an immersion blender or food processor or blender. Before serving, add the olive oil. Serve with hot, crusty bread.

I'll post a picture tonight when it's done. Right now, my house smells divine. We are in the third hour of cooking.

Alright, thanks for reading, I am off to work my body into a triathlon-ready machine. Nerves and all, here I come, athleticism!

Cheers to a birthday without allergies

I went to my garden today and realized that I have sorely neglected it lately. I water it every day, but apparently, right now, it needs much more than a daily dousing. So, I drenched the thing. I spent like 2 hours digging and churning soil so it would moisten all the way through, I filled the trenches I've dug between the rows with water again and again and again. And I planted some new plants!
Most exciting of which is popcorn! I found blue organic popcorn on Amazon.com and decided to give it a go. I am expecting it to grow like regular corn (which I have at about my shoulder height right now just a few feet from where the popcorn has been planted) and then dry out and be harvested about the same time pumpkins are harvested and voila! I will have home-grown popcorn this winter. Tomorrow, I am planning to go out and water it first thing in the morning (6am) and again at night. If I take care of it, I hope it'll take care of us, too. :) It's been a little weird watering it lately because the person we share the house with was worried about the cost of watering. It's not bad, really, and when you plant more costly things (like artichokes, eggplant, tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, etc), it really pays off. But I don't want to be out there watering all the time if it annoys her. She has the primary access to the back yard, so it's me in her back yard. Oh well, she gets to eat from it, too, and enjoys it, so I should get over it and water my poor garden.

Tomorrow's a new day.

For my birthday this year, my wonderful, sweet husband got both sides of our family together to get me a VitaMix blender (professional series...the thing has a logo that says "Culinary Institute of America" on it...which probably means nothing, but makes me giddy inside just a bit) and a CrockPot slow cooker. Now that I have a slow cooker and realize the emense benefit of it, I can't really understand what I've been up to all this time without one. YAY! I now have the most amazing kitchen in the world. I can make fresh juice, amazing things in the blender, and cook sumptuous meals while I get other stuff done all day. Only one thing holding me back from truly basking in the glow of the new kitchen items.....my juice fast.

Oh, the juice fast lingers on, and every day, I tell myself that this is a two-month (relatively short) period of time in which I am resetting myself and after this is over, I can start living in a healthy, balanced way and enjoy good health. This is how I get through the day. It works.

So far, I have lost almost 20 lbs and have had no allergies this June. For me, that's HUGE. Since high school, every June has become increasingly more challenging. Last year, my birthday was an antihistamine-buzzed blur of sneezing and Jason making lovely plans which I could barely witness or experience through teary eyes, a red (raw) nose, and fits of sneezing that left me needing to sit down. My allergies have historically crescendoed on my birthday. This year, though? Nope!

I had a momentary itch in my right eye for like ten seconds on my birthday. Marked difference. I also decided to go ahead and eat some real food on my birthday. And a day later, I had a day of sneezing and hayfever. It was worth it, of course, but still, notable. So, this juicer has saved June for me. I am back on track with losing weight and have had NO allergies whatsoever in the last day or two since I re-started the juicer. It's amazing to really think about the fact that God gave us fruits and vegetables as food, and He knew that those things would provide our bodies with the ability to maintain optimum health. And we decided to "improve" on those food items and look where it's gotten us. The US has so many allergy problems, so many diet-related health issues, and such pained immune systems. We eat processed this and canned that and freeze-dried those and none of us know the actual source of our food. It makes me really sad.

This summer, I am on a quest to learn where my food comes from and to change the way we eat and begin consuming almost exclusively, only things we can trace to their source. This means a lot more cooking, a lot more legwork for every purchase, and a lot better prices, health, etc. Jason is excited because he has been on his own quest for the best-tasting food. He's found that through elimination of processed foods, and finding the most local, organic, fresh foods, we get the best products. Funny how two different quests lead to the same destination.

Since I am eating just juice, and Jason is being fed mostly fresh fruits and veggies, homemade (not canned) beans, fresh salads, etc, we aren't consuming much that we can't get at our local Farmer's Market in Golden. This week, I'll have to take pictures and post them. It's a beautiful menagerie. Once I am finished with the juice fast in August, I will begin buying milk and eggs and such things from local farmers. I've found a couple of sources for eggs (which I have yet to visit to compare) and am still on the hunt for a good dairy in our area. For me, it's important how the animals are handled, for Jason, it's important that the food is FRESH so it tastes the best. Both things mean finding people here who sell those items. We'll see where that takes me! I am planning to begin making and keeping my own yogurt, mozzarella, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, ketchup, etc. I have the most beguiling things growing in my garden and the hope there is that I'll have enough tomatoes, tomatillos, okra, edamame, corn, peppers, squash, collard greens, etc, to freeze and store over the winter that we can eat from our garden for a decent portion of the year. That means now is crunch time! It's a very back-in-time feeling to be planning to put away the summer's produce for winter when there won't be anything to pick in the garden. It's exciting and fun and a little thrilling. And now I have this incredible kitchen full of things that enable health to the fullest. I am so blessed to have a husband who sees the value in this kind of stuff as much as I do, and who believes in me. He views these appliances as investments in our future. Sweet man.

Food for thought. I am reading Michael Pollan's book, "In Defense of Food," and I am really loving it. A lot of new understanding of food and its relationship to our modern life has come about through my reading. If you're looking for a good read, give it a look. (sorry, no pictures today, I am not that organized)

To heal or not to heal

Really, it's my choice. I get to decide every day if I will embrace my life where it is and let God heal my heart, or if I am going to indulge in destructive or empty soothing. I can choose to open my Bible and read it, then work out, eat well, and pattern a healthy day, or to sink back into myself and fall apart.

Well, the last year has taught me that it is entirely possible to fall apart and not break. I am not the one holding the pieces together, God is. Sometimes, we have to break before we can really heal, too. I am used to relying on myself for most everything. I am pretty determined and motivated when it comes to challenges I perceive in my life. I've always pushed hard to be better than the standard and to rise higher than just enough. And I have finally reached a point where I cannot move forward on my own power any more. That's the best place of all to arrive. It means that you stop and let God have you finally.

We perceive loss as something terribly wrong. Really, it's part of life. Loss is part of existence. The past year of my life has been a momentous occasion leading to a lot of personal loss at one time. Counting the losses isn't important, but letting them mark you and make you stronger IS important. Letting God hold your heart and give you strength you don't personally possess is the key.

Today, I went to the OB-GYN and had a very interesting visit during which I learned that I have a single uterine fibroid tumor, and the lactating that began in September FINALLY stopped! The lactating started when I had a miscarriage and didn't stop for some reason (possibly due to the tumor, possibly something we'll never know). The doctor said the tumor probably won't prevent us from getting pregnant, but it's known that they grow more when exposed to estrogen...and I have plenty of that going on right now, so she wants me to get it checked out every year just to make sure it's not getting crazy. We're not trying to get pregnant now, but that doesn't mean we don't hope to have babies some day. I also know we want to adopt, and as one of my friends has said to me, "Maybe this means we're supposed to adopt more people than if we were able to have kids." It's true. God has plans and we live them out. His plans are good and we are meant to trust them. That doesn't mean it's not hard. The same friend also shared that she knows several women who've had fibroid tumors and also have had children. God brings encouragement when we are hard-pressed to move on.

I spent most of this week worrying about the news I would hear at the doctor today. I kept reading on medical blogs that the only cure for fibroid tumors (really) is to have a hysterectomy. You can have them removed before trying to get pregnant and you then basically hope the baby grows faster than the tumor and that the tumor doesn't take up the baby's space. That on top of still trying to process the miscarriage we have been through has been a lot. The thought that my body might just kill babies is heavy. But it doesn't mean I can't heal in the middle of it, and healing looks different for all of us.

I crank up my "inspirational" music category and I lie on the floor and listen to it, or I go to the gym and RUN because I am free to do so and it feels so amazing. I am going to process all there is in my bag of the past to work through and I am going to become stronger, more beautiful, more unique, and more wise from the experience.

How many people can say they moved around the world to find out they had reached the end of themselves? Well, that's my story, and we each have a story that makes us unique. Those stories can break us to bits, or we can become whole in the middle of them. That doesn't mean we don't break anyway and then become better than before. In my weaknesses, God can show through.

I got a surprise today at the OB when I went in for the ultrasound. The woman asked me to drop my pants and put on a gown....for an ultrasound?! I thought that was an on-the-stomach kind of thing. Turns out, it's a whole lot more invasive these days and no one told me. The surprise was the final straw for me. I cried throughout the entire appointment. I mean like full-on sobbing. The poor technician kept explaining it was standard procedure and I kept telling her it wasn't her fault and wasn't even really just the single event. I finally just looked at her and said, "If you knew what my life has been like in the last several months, you'd know why I am crying. I just can't stop it." They wanted to know if I've been a whole lot more emotional lately and I had no idea, so much has been going on, it's hard to even know. (And, PS, for any of you who haven't had an ultrasound lately, if they say "pelvic ultrasound" go ahead and ask what that means, I was totally blown away and wished someone had told me. I think knowing would have made it not a problem.)

It struck me that in the USA, we are SO uncomfortable with tears. We don't know what to do, they just don't happen openly in our culture. I was SO embarassed that I cried and began to wonder why. I think I needed to cry, just get it all out there and let it go a little bit...but seriously, in public? Guess I had no choice. I decided to add it to part of how I am healing. Letting the tears go was the best thing today. Tomorrow it will be different. I think part of what we need to do is let each day be wholly different than the day before and accept that we need different things at different times and that's alright.

Today, I choose to heal. I choose to run, to work in my garden, to spend time in silence, and time with my music blaring inspiration into my ears. Thank God for His provision.

In this scatter-blog, I also want to say a word about Guinea-Bissau. It's a small country in West Africa that I am smitten with. God loves that country powerfully and I know it in how He's let me love the place. Today, they had a nasty military coup and our friends are there in the middle of it. We have dear African friends in the middle of it, as well as some who are out of the country and are as blind and worried as we are, and American and Brazilian friends there as well. Please pray for God's protection for the children of the orphanage. Pastor Felix is in the USA right now, he left Bissau yesterday for a chaplain training in Virginia. We know the church must be needing a leader and he must be concerned for his home. We know God loves Guinea-Bissau and wants to see it whole.

Thank you for reading, thank you for praying!
Erica

Getting right down to where I've been

Hello to all of you.

Before I really launch this blog, I should give some background and history. I intend this blog to be a place where I share my experience as I journey every day towards health and wholeness. I need to find who God made me to be. I need to sing when I am alone, I need to dance in the rain, and run races just because I can. I need to live my life instead of letting it fly by while I work in the wings. I've spent 27 years of my life slaving away to please some unknown factor. I think at the bottom of it all is me. I have been working to earn my own approval, and as my own worst critic, I have driven myself beyond reason to achieve something vastly and ultimately unachievable.

And I am done! I am free, but a change like that doesn't come easily.

My dog, Sheba and I in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa

This past year has brought me to the absolute edge of myself and beyond the brink of anything I thought I could survive. I'd actually had nightmares of this exact situation unfolding....and then it did. Several of my friends and family have followed my blog postings at www.thefeuchts.com and know what the last little while has been like, others of you probably have no idea.

When your bike breaks down in Africa, you walk.

Brief synopsis (as brief as it can be): My husband and I got married three years ago and basically immediately started working on plans to move to Guinea-Bissau, West Africa to work as missionaries. Since the time we decided to go, absolutely everything about our vision, project, and even the organization we went with has changed. We ended up moving there in September after long, hard work to produce the funding needed for such an endeavor and all the "normal" things you do when you're moving yourself, your spouse, and your 100lb dog (did I mention our "little" pup is a rescue pet?) to Guinea-Bissau as the first people on a project and first missionaries with a new organization. Everything was new, and everything was like wading through frozen molasses. We pushed through. That had been my outlook for a long, long time. Honestly, as long as I have been alive, I have expected to need to "beat the odds" in life and I have seen it as my responsibility to PUSH as hard as I could to make things happen.
In September, I finally made it to where I had been going for years. In September, my life felt like it took off and was just beginning. And then a couple weeks later in September, the unthinkable happened.

I     got      sick.

Not like a cold. Not like anything ever before. My body just refused to keep on going. I had been in West Africa for a month out of 48 months I was planning to spend there. A month later, I came home.  My life stopped moving.

The farthest West you can get in Africa

I have not ever had a moment where I didn't have a project, a challenge to overcome, a difficulty to push through, etc. I had FINALLY made it to Africa where I dreamed of being, and it felt like the continent had somehow spit me out and I was back home in a sad daze. The thing I had the entire time was confidence that I was not ever outside God's plan, no matter how far outside my plan I had arrived. Aside from that, I still know almost nothing, but I am certain that He holds me every day and that His plans for me are good and right and that He has never let me go.

I came across Exodus 14:14, which in its entire context is medicine to a hurting soul. Just the verse says,

"The Lord will fight for you, you need only to BE STILL."

I have never EVER been still in my life. I finally hit a junction where I had literally no other choice and I fell into stillness that began to heal my heart.

Poor large dog doesn't really fit in that space. She's a trooper. This is on her way home.

At the beginning of December, with doctors completely stumped, my husband and I decided he should come home. We spent a total of two months on separate continents before we were reunited. He began the process of leaving a life we'd only just set up. I continued to remember being a prospective missionary and being told a story of someone who had done all their fundraising and got to the field and shortly thereafter had to return home because of the wife's health. I remembered hearing that story and feeling my heart flip and squirm and stop for a second at the thought of that happening. That story had haunted my fundraising and my sleep and everything until it actually became MY story and I watched the fringes of my own life come unraveled and break away in a strong wind that surrounded me.
At the end of December, my husband, my father (who had gone to Africa to see this country we loved and to help my husband with the process of moving back home), a great friend, Fernando, and our 100lb dog were in a car moving between the borders of three African countries in zones currently torn by guerrila warfare. My husband got out of Guinea-Bissau a DAY before the country's roads were closed down because of a coup attempt. At the same moment, I sat at a doctor's visit that radically rocked my tattered world to its core.

In September, I'd had a feeling, like a whisper, in the back of my head that said something terribly wrong had happened inside my body. In December with my family strewn across the globe and out of communication, two different doctors confirmed that the whisper had been the truth. I had been pregnant....about two months along....and lost the baby in September. We weren't trying to get pregnant at the time, but so many things haunted me; some strange, some standard, all areas deeply hurting. I had flushed my baby down a toilet in a country that doesn't have a sewage system and I had no idea where the pipes I flushed had taken my child. Had my ambition, my insane inner drive to accomplish something, been the thing that killed my own child? How does someone tell her husband over a bad Skype connection that she miscarried his child. And is there any way to KNOW months later and across the world if this is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what really happened.

No.

 I haven't shared that with the world publicly, but it's freeing to have it written down. It's one of the truths of my life and it makes me who I am today. I don't owe it to anyone to share that, I want to share it because I believe that our weakest, most painful moments make us stronger in the end. I believe that sharing this with other people who have had similar experiences is healing for all of us. Why is it that when our hearts break, we seek isolation? Why is it that when I hurt the worst, I don't reach out and ask for help? I don't know.
I am moving through stages of acceptance of many things. I spent years driving my entire existence to move to one of the world's poorest, most underdeveloped countries so I could make a difference. I had lived there in 2007 for half a year and vowed to go back and change the place. I had faces, names, and known needs in my hands just 8 months ago and I walked out. Had this been God's will, or my own? Was it God's plan all along for it to go this way? I don't know. I may never know and that is alright.

Back on the same continent again after 2 months

Meeting my husband, my dad, and my dear world-traveling dog (who saved our lives in Guinea-Bissau, and for whom I am extremely thankful) at the airport was surreal. I remember feeling so disconnected and so unfamiliar. My husband lost over 40lbs in Africa and when I saw him again, it was like meeting a stranger. My Dad had returned my family to me and it meant the world to know he would literally go to the end of the earth to help bring us home. I saw God the Father reflected in my dad's heart for us.

Since then, we spent a month (the sixth month out of the last year and our ninth since getting married) without a home; living with parents and friends. We bought a house in 2009 about 9 months after we got married, and it took us about 3 months longer than we expected to get the house, so we were "homeless" then, and then again for 6 more months while we left the country and then tried to settle in West Africa and then moved home. We had months of having a home in there, too, but it was a long (and circular) road.

This house we bought (I will have to tell you about it in another post some time) is a tremendous blessing. We live in our home again and are enjoying simple things like watering the plants and not working feverishly on projects. My husband, Jason, is still looking for a job, and I am confident he will find the right one at the right time. Right now, I am recovering, I am spending time looking for things that bring me health and wholeness. Everything from learning how to eat to feed my body to planning house projects and a garden. I plan to post my experiences as I journey to wholeness and joy here. I intend to share my garden, my home, my cooking adventures, new yoga experiences, my life lessons and experiences and I hope you'll read along and share your life with me as well.

This is my mantra lately:

"Each day, I am a little more whole, a little more settled and a little more myself. It's a baby-step process and I am getting where I should go in no particular hurry. Each day is a gift and I am thankful for it." ~ From me.