Housecleaning

My Growth group is currently going through a study by Rick Warren called Life's Healing Choices. It's all about discovering freedom from "your hurts, hang-ups & habits".  We're going through the Beatitudes and looking at things like admitting need, letting go and making changes. It's not a support group - my group is a wonderful collection of people who really care about eachother.

The last chapter we went through was Coming Clean, focusing on the pure of heart. Blessed are the pure of heart, for they will see God. - Matthew 5:8

The study suggests taking a moral inventory. Search me, Oh God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. - Psalm 139:23-24. It's basically as frightening as it sounds. They kind of provide a chart to fill in, mostly focusing on people and actions that have hurt you, how the damage has played out in your life, and what your responsibility or part was in the event. We talked about making specific plans and setting a date to make sure we did this for ourselves. We planned on finding a person who we trusted completely to share our hearts and moral failings with.

Then we went home. And I forgot.

I forgot until last Monday when my group got together for lots of wonderful food and fun. One woman mentioned the written moral inventory and how she wasn't sure if she was going to do it.

I debated. And I went home and got busy doing other things.

Finally last night I decided I should probably spend some time reading the chapter over again and making my list. I'm not sure if I was doing it for myself, my relationship with God, or just so I could tell my group I did my homework, but in this case all motives bring you down the same road.

So first I did all the things I do before I have to do something I don't want to do. I checked facebook about 4.5 times. I cooked dinner. I cleaned the house. I cleaned some more. I went through every piece of paper on my desk.

Do you see where this is going? I didn't get too deep into the dust rags before I noticed the analogy. Housecleaning. You can vacuum around the furniture (and large purses or potted plants, for that matter) or you can drag the arm chair out of the way to clean behind it. You can sit down at your desk to dust around the mounds of books you won't be able to read until you graduate or you can go through every birthday card you've saved for years, every receipt for the gas, the groceries, the sweater that was much too overpriced, and you can throw them away because you don't want so many possesions when you have to move in a couple months. Moving has been on my mind, and I am getting rid of a lot of things. Purging, I called it last night. My roommate thought I was referring to eating disorders and I almost got a lecture, but I'm trying to get rid of all the things I don't want, need, or use over the next five months. It's cleansing, really, (and it allows more space in your closet to go shopping). It's a little exhausting - this mental, spiritual, physical, emotional purge. It's a work in progress - my closet and my moral inventory still have a ways to go - but I'm looking forward to getting rid of the clutter. I want to realize what I need, what I've never even wanted, and what I have only because it's convenient or I never considered life without it.

I'm looking for a new way of looking at things.

I bet the view is great.

This is not a Food Blog

...but if you know me, you know I really love food. And I write about what I love.

This week has been an adventure in the land of culinary delight, starting with a potluck with my Bible study Monday. The last dish I shared with this group was my amazing Perfect Hershey's Chocolate cake - you know the one - I usually make it two days in a row because the first one dissappears overnight. It's my secret chocolate glaze recipe that tops it off. (It's really only a secret because I don't measure or make it the same every time, it's just really incredible. Then again, it is chocolate. What more do you need to know?) Anyway. I really didn't know how to top Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Cake, so I went on an entirely different route.

I started with all of this

And I chopped and diced and mixed and tasted and chopped some more.

Mixed in a little hot sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. It was delicious but could have used pinto beans, I decided. Oh for the love of salsa.

The next night of culinary adventures brought us to HuHot Mongolian grill, where you fill up a bowl of raw meats, vegetables, tofu, noodles and sauces and the grill chefs cook it infront of you. My sister and brother in law met me in Rochester after work and took me out to a wonderful dinner of catching up and laughing. It was so great to see them.

Tonight I decided to tackle the artichoke that's been residing in my drawer in the refrigerator for the past seven days. Have you ever seen (or tried to cook) a whole artichoke? It's a little daunting, but turned out to be much simpler than expected. My superviser claims drinking the water that the artichoke is boiled in gives you wonderful skin. She's always got great Eastern remedies and food tips to offer. I'll keep you posted on the artichoke-water facial. (So far all I've concluded is that it tastes like sweet corn. And it's bright green.)

The semester where I learned how to throw a party

My internship has been a wonderful experience this semester. I could go on and on about what I've learned about program management, policies, chairing committees, staying awake through board meetings, and being asked to speak at the SASW meeting later this month. Wait, what? Yeah, more on that some other day.

But today I learned how to throw a party. I even got out of seminar (read: 3 hours of how does that make you feel?) to help plan and host this party. It was my agency's annual staff celebration for a job well done. IMAA's incredible staff had gone above and beyond all goals in 2009 and we needed to celebrate. Instead of taking the whole team to Hawaii, the executive director left us in charge of a Hawaiian theme party luncheon.

My supervisor and myself. I don't do theme parties, but when your boss (and therefore you) are the one hosting, you kind of have to. It was fun though, and the food tasted even better than it looked.

And if I do say so, it looked amazing.

Not shown: spring rolls, egg rolls, fried rice, sticky rice, chicken wings, fresh coconut, punch, sauces, and some sugary fried desserts that were pretty amazing. I probably won't have to eat for the next three days.

What a great group. We had a lot of fun and ate alot of food. I think the staff was really encouraged, and we got to forget about the snow and ice outside as we cranked the heat up to 75 and enjoyed a sunny lunch room.

Tomorrow is Vietnamese New Year and I'm headed back to Rochester to staff a booth and see the Lion Dance (I'll let you know what that is after I know) and eat lots more wonderful food.

Then I have Sunday and Monday to catch a movie and relax a little before the craziness begins again. Oh yeah, and write a speech for that engagement later this month.

Cheaper than a piece of metal

The city of Winona hosts the Frozen River Film Festival every year. It's four or five days full of speakers and independent films, mostly centered around a common topic. I think this year's theme was food, but I am never in Winona, much less attending festivals, so I couldn't tell you for sure.

What I can tell you was that on Saturday at 1:00 they showed a film about human trafficking. I was there. I was there with a row of friends in tow. A doctor from Mayo Clinic came to speak about the trip he took to India that opened his eyes to the horrors of the buying and selling of human beings - no, of children. James Levine told us about the commercial district of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) where streets upon streets are lined with booths selling metal, food, fabric, and women. Apparently one girl in particular caught this doctor's attention. She was wearing a sari with rainbow trim and writing in a blue notebook. Maybe this caught his attention because, as a doctor, James Levine had always believed that education was always the answer. Education is always seen as the step up to the ladder of success. And here was this little girl, being sold behind a booth on a dirty street, reading and writing, and still trapped in sexual slavery. She was thirteen.

Thirteen.

Dr Levine continued that it was often cheaper to buy a young girl for the night than to purchase a piece of metal on the next block. He went home from that trip but could never get this little girl out of his mind. He went on to write a book, called The Blue Notebook. It's a novel he wrote, inspired by the little girl in the rainbow-trimmed sari. This book is now available in 22 languages and being sold all over the world. He's never seen the little girl with the blue notebook again, but he can only hope that his words are speaking up for her and the 27 million others still in slavery today. Her message can be carried across the world without even knowing what it was she was saying.

I haven't read the book yet but it's on my list. Dr Levine was a fantastic speaker with a passion behind his message. I hope you'll check it out on your next rainy reading Saturday.

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Quick facts:
Traffickers made $31 billion in 2008 just by selling other people.
An estimated 8000-12,000 people are prostituted in Minnesota alone. - mcbw.org
731 women have been reported as sex trafficking victims in the last three years.
Minneapolis is in the top 13 cities for sexual exploitation.

Be informed.
Then become engaged.