Believing with Courage: August 2020 Recap

 After so many months of slowness and stillness, this was the month of acceleration. This month, I started my online master's program for Christian counseling. It has been daunting in a lot of ways but also exciting. At the same time, Honduras has started moving forward in re-opening. The borders are now re-opened as are businesses. There are still restrictions as to what days we can go out, but now, the question is becoming how to construct my own version of normal. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready to come out of my cocoon. In so many aspects of this month there was a constant message of God's grace coming through in uncontrollable circumstances. I feel God's invitation has been to lean deeper into dependency on Him and to believe courageously that He will come through in the midst of circumstances that feel insurmountable and overwhelming. In the midst of challenging situations, I always have the choice to look for God and believe in His goodness or to see the negatives and drown in anxiety. I will always find what I seek. 

What I Ate:

1) Cabbage Steaks. I tend to forget that this is an option in the world of roasted vegetables, but they're good when seasoned well. So many different things can be done in seasoning a slice of cabbage. It's pretty much a blank slate, and a Google search can produce lots of recommendations for seasoning. 



2) Salsa Verde Chilaquiles. Every so often, our grocery stores here will have tomatillos. When they do, I tend to buy a few pounds to make salsa verde which I can use to eat with chips or to make Mexican enchiladas or as you can see, for salsa verde chilaquiles. These were really good. Chilaquiles have a lot of variations. This particular version was very similar to nachos. We made it with fried corn tortillas in a cast iron skillet. We added some ground sausage, salsa verde, mozzarella cheese, pickled red onions, chopped cilantro, and diced avocado. But, you can really add whatever toppings you want. I mainly recommend that you use pre-fried tortillas or fry or bake your tortillas first and cook whatever protein you wish to add ahead of time. Here's a salsa verde recipe I often use:
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/tomatillo_salsa_verde/
I always roast the tomatillos, onions, and jalapeños in the oven.  


Photo by Nrs. Kitchen 

3) Bobby Flay's Chicken and Rice Biryani Style. I rarely follow a recipe to a T, but this one was more complicated, so apart from some substitutions, I did follow it. I tend to like what Bobby Flay comes up with when I've seen him on the Food Network. So, I looked up some of his recipes because I was in a cooking rut. This recipe wasn't life-changing, but it was pretty good. Here's the recipe:
http://bobbyflay.com/recipes/recipes/150/chicken-rice-biryani-style
For the curry sauce, I used regular yellow onion. For the spiced rice, I used jasmine rice rather than brown Texmati rice and again yellow onion. For the casserole part, I used plain yogurt instead of Greek yogurt. I'm sure that makes a huge difference, but Greek yogurt is either way expensive or hard to find here. 

4) Greek Chicken Burritos. This meal came about because I had a ton of flour tortillas to use up. I cooked up some cubed chicken breast in olive oil, dried oregano and basil, minced garlic, salt and pepper. You could do that on the stove top, but I did so in the oven. I also made some buffalo sauce hummus (recipe below) and some tzatziki sauce. We heated up our flour tortillas, spread them with buffalo hummus, topped that with the chicken, sliced tomato, leaf lettuce, pickled onions, feta cheese, tzatziki sauce, and a sprinkle of za'atar. They were really good. Here is the website I used for a reference: https://www.melskitchencafe.com/simple-greek-chicken-burritos-or-wraps/ This website includes a recipe for tzatziki sauce. I would always prefer Greek yogurt to normal, but as you now know, that's just not something I get to use a lot here in Honduras. 

5) Buffalo Sauce Hummus. So I used this recipe: https://ohsheglows.com/2013/10/04/no-meat-athlete-buffalo-hummus-recipe/ But, the name of the recipe is really misleading. This is a tasty recipe and was a hit with my husband, but buffalo sauce is not the star of this recipe as the name would indicate. It takes like store-bought roasted red pepper hummus (which happens to be my favorite), but it doesn't have a ton of spice. So, maybe omit the red peppers or add more buffalo sauce if you want to make it true to the name? 


Photo by Samee Anderson 

6) Broccoli Cheese Soup. One of the restaurants I miss and always like to visit when I'm in the US is Panera Bread. One of my favorite things to order at Panera is their broccoli cheese soup. I had a surplus of broccoli to use up, so this recipe seemed like a no-brainer. This is a good reference recipe: 
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/235874/copycat-panera-broccoli-cheddar-soup/
I didn't use quite the same methodology since I like some of the vegetables to be blended. Just make sure that you sweat your celery well so that it softens well. This particular batch, my celery wasn't softened enough, and I regretted it. If you want to lighten up the cheesy soup a little, you can add some powdered mustard. Ground nutmeg also adds an interesting touch, but don't add too much. 

What I Watched:

1) Going in Style. This movie is not new, and this month wasn't the first time I had seen it. But, it is hilarious and was a welcome respite from a stressful month. This movie is a remake of a 1979 movie of the same name, and it was directed by Zach Braff, who I loved as J. D. from the TV show, Scrubs. It stars Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, and Alan Arkin. As financial injustices threaten to collapse their livelihood, the three main characters played by the aforementioned actors devise a plan to rob a bank. The movie is sweet and sincere and full of some great laughs. It's the kind of movie I can watch over and over. 

2) Harry Potter movies. As was my goal last month after finishing the books, I did manage to watch all seven of the movies. I am quite usually the snob who prefers books to movies, and this was no exception. I'm really glad that I read the books first because they were full of so many more details and side stories that didn't make the cut. But, I can appreciate the movies as their own entity, and I was pleased with the casting in general. The last three of the series were my favorite, though it was magical to see the world J. K. Rowling created come to life throughout the series. 


What I Read:


From Amazon

1) The Circle Maker: Praying Circles around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears by Mark Batterson. I had heard a lot about this book beforehand from numerous people. It's full of inspirational testimonies about the power of prayer, and it's also got some practice challenges to grow in your prayer life. I had never heard the story of Honi, the circle maker, so it was also interesting to delve into that story and ask myself what I would like to be praying circles around. This book had a lot of great points, so I wrote down a lot of quotations in my journal. Here are some of those: 

"There is nothing God loves more than keeping promises, answering prayers, performing miracles, and fulfilling dreams. That is who He is. That is what He does."

"The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered because they go unasked."

"We talk about 'doing' the will of God, but the will of God has much more to do with 'being' than 'doing.' . . . Success has nothing to do with how resourced you are; it has everything to do with glorifying God in any and every situation by making the most of it. Success is spelled stewardship, and stewardship is spelled success." 

"You cannot build God's reputation if you aren't willing to risk yours." 

"Your job is not to crunch numbers and make sure the will of God adds up. After all, the will of God is not a zero-sum game. When God enters the equation, His output always exceeds your input." 

"If we repent, God always recycles our mistakes." 

". . .we shouldn't seek answers as much as we seek God." 

"One bold prayer can accomplish more than a thousand well-laid plans." 

"The reason many of us miss the miracles is that we aren't looking and listening. The easy part of prayer is talking. . . . But two-thirds of praying hard is listening and looking." 



From Amazon

2) Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything by Anne Bogel. I really like Anne Bogel and the unique topics and perspectives she utilizes in her writing style. This book is about personality frameworks and how to use them for bettering self-awareness and relationships. She explores personality categorizations like the Enneagram, Highly Sensitive People, Myers-Briggs, the Five Love Languages, and some others. I am the kind of person that loves this kind of stuff, so I was thrilled to become acquainted with some frameworks I had never heard of before. I especially appreciated the information about Highly Sensitive People as it debunked some of my assumptions and also expanded my knowledge of myself. This is a great read that feels more like a down-to-earth kitchen table conversation than a college lecture. 


From Amazon

3) Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing by Andy Freeman and Pete Greig. I read this book because I enjoyed the book, Dirty Glory. This book is also about the 24/7 prayer movement that started in the UK, but it takes an approach of exploring how the team of people discerned their core purposes and how to carry out prayer and outreach in practical rhythms. I really enjoyed this book and the perspective it offer that the monastic/prayer/outreach movements are just as valuable to the Church as the congregational model. This is a great book for someone who wants to start a prayer room or be more intentional in making more space and time for prayer with others. There were a lot of quotes that made their way into my journal. Here are a few:

"While we tend to try to build communities around programs, the Celtic evangelists congregated around prayer." 

"Gandhi, the great Indian pacifist, told American missionary Charles F. Andrews, 'The trouble with you Americans is that you start doing before being." 

"As we seek to establish a life-dynamic that balances prayer and action, receiving and giving, being and doing, we must remember that the priority is always the inward breath." 

"The glory of God always shows itself in an empty space." 

"The Dominican abbot's argument was simple: What makes monastic life useful to God is the space it gives Him. Rather than filling our lives with ambitions, places to go and goals to achieve, a monk's or nun's life has meaning 'because of an absence of progression, which points to God as the end and goal of our lives.' No job or promotion or task takes the place of the Kingdom." 



From Amazon

4) The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.


From Amazon

5) Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.


From Amazon

6) Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. My plan had been to swear off fiction after finishing the Harry Potter series because I was starting grad school, and when I get sucked into a story, it can upend my life and sleep schedule. But, a friend told me that I should read this series next, and since I had already seen the movies and enjoyed them, I figured I'd breeze through this series before it caused me too much time management trouble. I was right. I was completely captivated by the story even though it was much more dystopian from the get-go which Harry Potter built to gradually and even though I did already know what was going to happen. I love the complexity of the story and the many angles the author is observing in relation to war, media, and propaganda. I also liked the complexity of the characters and how they responded to their difficult environments. I enjoyed the books because they were much more personal (being written from a first person perspective) than the movies, but I also really liked the most of the movies because the casting was so fitting. 


Playlist for the Month:
Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLERDDFsw5e_qQlHBVQl4e1PW0Owx0LKc-

1) "I Surrender" (feat. Lauren Daigle) - Hillsong United
2) "New Wine" - David Funk
3) "Confident" - Steffany Gretzinger and Bobby Strand
4) "Unraveling" - Cory Asbury
5) "My Confidence" - Iron Bell Music (feat. Stephen McWhirter)
6) "You Keep Your Word" - Austin and Lindsey Adamec
7) "You Have My Yes" - Steffany Gretzinger
8) "Seated in Heavenly Places" - Kelanie Gloeckler
9) "Así Será" - Elevation Worship
10) "One" - Sleeping at Last
11) "Fighting for Me" - Riley Clemmons
12) "Praise You in This Storm" - Natalie Grant
13) "Never See the End" - Mission House
14) "If You Want Me To" - Ginny Owens
15) "Is He Worthy?" - Andrew Peterson
16) "Take Courage" - Bethel Music feat. Joanna Finchum
17) "Dear God" - Cory Asbury
18) "Wonder" - Amanda Cook
19) "Yeshua" - Elani Baker

My prayer as August ends is that we'd all keep looking for God in everything. There are inevitably situations where He seems hard to find, but He is always there. May we start engaging with our weaknesses without shame but truly with the invitation to let God move supernaturally on our behalf. I can only see the fullness of Him when I'm willing to let myself be needy. I pray you'll continue to believe courageously that God is for you in spite of your circumstances. May all of our prayer lives develop with fervent perseverance and daring dreams. May we find strength in just being with Father God and receiving His grace. May we be confident that we can continue to say yes to God and trust that He champions His best for our lives. May we end our summer with a sense of wonder.