I love to serve muffins in the morning for breakfast or tea/coffee time.
When my little ones were actually little I usually had muffins in the freezer to warm up for snacks.
Their favorites were of course banana chocolate chip.
Mine were blueberry.
About 25 years ago my friend Jane served me the most delicious Blueberry muffin I had ever eaten.
She gave me the recipe and it is still in my recipe box.
Some of my recipes have been rewritten but not this one.
It is quite worn looking and is splattered with blueberry stains.. Nevertheless I cannot part with it.
The writing is still legible and I treasure it.
Not just because the muffins taste good but also because it is a reminder of sweet times over a cup of something warm.
I guess I am sentimental.
Over the years I have experimented with different recipes but I keep coming back to this well worn card.
If you enjoy blueberry muffins this is for you.
This is a picture of my Go To muffin spoon.
my muffin spoon
Nano gave it to me when I moved into my first apartment. I was 20. It has moved to seven different homes in 35 years and it is a treasured utensil in my kitchen. I don’t know if I could make muffins without it. The very best, perfect shape for muffin tins.
I spent the day out and about, visiting mostly, which is one of my very favorite activities.
A friend I haven’t seen often in recent years but we go back, a long way. It was good to catch up.
Lunch with two more. One I interact with regularly for which I am thankful. The other I see less frequently, but when I do we pick up where we left off. Easy! Friendly! Fellowship!
All three of these are sisters. Not blood of course. I have only one of those who I don’t get to see very often.
These are sisters because we are all part of God’s family. We have each decided, at some point in our lives, to commit our way unto Him. We realized a long time ago that we are most certainly sinners needing a savior. Thankfully we (and everyone He created) have a savior.
Phew! Sinners saved by His amazing Grace.
These others are people that God has seen fit to place, in His time, in my life.
God is my Refuge and my Strength
God is the cornerstone of all that I am
But graciously, He decided I would just do better if I had people to interact with. He in His great, Creator Wisdom, looked at me and thought I needed some extra exhorting. He knew I would live the abundant life more beautifully if I had friends to encourage me. Yep, I am a needy soul.
Friends are good. Sometimes they stretch me. My patience, my faithfulness, my joy and even my peace.
Friends require effort.
Friends are a blessing.
So, I was doing what I do and found myself rushing around at the last minute.
I get to do what I do because my husband does what he does. We are both living the life God is allowing us to live.
Thankful!
Part of my life is caring for him, this husband God made for me.
I try to keep his laundry clean (although at this time I have laundry machine issues)
I attempt to get a meal on the table for when he walks in the door, when we aren’t heading out somewhere to let someone else cook us a meal.
Last night I looked at the clock and had 30 minutes between when I walked in the door and when he was scheduled to arrive home.
Thankfully I had a few things in the fridge.
I pulled them out and thought about what I was going to do with them, while I was doing it.
That seems to be the way I fly. Literally one minute at a time.
I had some chicken tenders I had picked up two days ago. I usually don’t buy them because they are expensive, but when I see them on sale I jump on them. Tasty!
I took these fixuns and went to work.
Now, I was pretty much at the 30 minute mark when I had a dingle on my hand held and the message read,
“running late, leaving in 5”.
Oh THANK GOODNESS. I had an extra 15 minutes.
Well I think it all turned out quite well. Chicken tenders, salad with fruit and nuts, whole wheat fettuccine
finished off with a two day old piece of chocolate cake which was by the way, delicious.
I was so excited when I walked in the door and realized I still had some of that cake left.
Yay!
We had ourselves a meal
A meal to celebrate a special life and the menu was pork tenderloin, baked squash and a potato gratin of sorts.
Of course for dessert we devoured a substantial part of a “homemade” chocolate cake.
There’s a man working in my teeny tiny back yard. Leftover leaves are filling a bucket and soil from the back of a truck is being spread around. The sun is shining and Lady Antebellum is singing in my living room.
It’s good to be home and spending time in this kitchen, looking out. Soon I will go for a walk and breath in some of that blue sky fresh air.
Today, I am thankful for eyes to see, ears to hear, tastebuds with which to enjoy fresh creations and fingers touching, this keyboard and the things around me.
Reminded
that some don’t have these luxuries. The senses I mean. I often forget that nothing in this world can be assumed.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I am seeing lots of it.
Thankful Lord, please keep reminding me of how thankful I should be and am not.
When I am and do, thank you, the blessing is beyond what I can ask or think.
Psalm 138 is David’s prayer from a full heart.
Two verses jumped when I read them
:1 I give you thanks Lord, with my whole heart
:7 Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life
My life, here in the city, is not in danger as far as I can see, but tomorrow is not visible and I really cannot proclaim safety as a For Sure. I am dependent upon the creator, the one who designed the path, to decide what tomorrow will look like.
I pray
I ask
never assuming.
Trusting and counting on Him to decide what is best, for me,
What will glorify Him in my life.
All the while asking that He will grant me another day to use these senses He blesses me with, to live.
Yesterday I celebrated life with a friend.
God decided to drop us right into the mess of each others lives about 27 years ago.
We have had our ups and downs. Tears shed, secrets whispered, much laughter shared. Life is a heap of all kinds of good and bad but when you dig around in it there is beauty.
Seeds of joy and love are planted and they grow, with the help of some feeding and top dressing.
Rich, fertile, dirty, smelly experiences grow beautiful maturity and wisdom.
Well
The life we celebrated last night is not the usual.
We celebrated New Life.
You see, she has been born twice and yesterday was the twentieth birthday of the second.
“What?” You ask
“No Way”. you say
Truth
There can be no second without the first so I am thankful God created her. Put her here.
She teaches me
I teach her
The second birth was her response to What God did for her on The cross. Remember last weekend we celebrated Jesus. His life, death and resurrection.
Twenty years ago my friend recognized that Sin ~ because every single person created is a sinner ~ had separated her from God.
He opened her eyes to her need and she recognized that life without a relationship with Him is really no life at all.
I was present that day twenty years ago and there was great rejoicing as God, His angels and I welcomed her into the family. God adopted her and she has never looked back.
So last night the celebration was pretty special.
She is thankful, still.
I am thankful, also.
God’s arms are wrapped around her.
He is holding all the details of her life and releasing them just a few at a time.
Today is a beautiful day to celebrate life.
The original, coming into the world.
The second, being brought into the Family of God.
1 Peter 1:8,9
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,
obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
And just like that it’s over.
This trip to desert beauty.
Working out details with my ‘soon to be’ relatives.
Birthday celebrations. Mine. With a little girl who loves to celebrate, just about anything, whenever possible.
Stuff and nonsense with that same little one who is all grown up and a husband who is full of just that, stuff and nonsense, whenever he can be and get away with it.
Dinners in favorite desert restaurants.
Sunsets over mountains.
Blooming flowers on top of prickly cacti.
Mama hummingbird sitting patiently outside this kitchen window and then feeding babies with open mouths.
Memories all.
And then Easter.
A song sung at this church in the desert goes like this
The Greatest Day in History
Death is beaten
you have rescued me
Sing it out Jesus is Alive
Oh Happy Day Happy Day
You washed my sin away
Oh Happy Day Happy Day
I’ll never be the same
The empty cross
the empty grave
Life eternal you have won the day
Shout it out Jesus is alive.
Oh Happy Day
…Forever I am changed
When I stand in that place
Free at Last meeting Face to Face
I am yours Jesus you are mine.
Oh Happy Day
Forever I am changed
Oh What a Glorious Day
What a Glorious Way
You have saved me.
We sang this song today, Easter Sunday.
Resurrection Sunday.
I tell you, it was impossible to stand with both feet planted on the floor while that song was echoing through the place.
Blessing beyond what I can ask or think.
Blessing pours into my very soul when I praise the one who has rescued me.
If you have never felt the joy that comes from praising God, do it. Praise Him no matter
How sad you are
How difficult your life is
How wayward your children are
How distant your husband is
No matter how much money you have or don’t have in the bank.
Do it!
He has rescued us. Oh Happy Day
Of course we should do it every day but just as we praise God for sending Jesus as a baby, at Christmas time,
And we thank Him for pouring out His blood when we share communion the breaking of bread,
Easter is that wonderful celebration time of thanksgiving for Jesus death and resurrection.
It is a designated time when we actually focus on it.
Oh Happy Day He washed my sin away.
I love Spring and Birthdays and Easter. New Life. The promises. The Hope of Life spent with Him. I call that “God Hope”.
Oh Happy Day He washed my sin away.
Jesus is Love. Real, true love. Like nothing we can conjure up or recreate. He is God and we are His creation. God tells us ~ Not told! Present tense, because we are supposed to keep reading it and listening and learning and doing. He keeps telling us. He is so patient and wise and He knew when He first told His people way back in the early days what He wanted them to do, that we would all need to read it over and over and over again. So He wrote it all down for us. That way He could tell us, over and over again, every time we read it, how to live and how to love and how to be like Jesus.
Oh Happy Day
Jesus is alive!
He was born, He lived (perfectly), He died a horrific, bloody, cruel, devastating, painful death on that cross.
He rose again. He lives now. I live in “God Hope” because of what He did.
As good as we try to be, as kind, as loving, it doesn’t compare to that.
Easter is not about being kind, or sharing what we have, or giving to the food bank, or turning the other cheek. Those things are good. So good that we should do them constantly.
But
Easter is about Jesus. Dying on a cross. Rising from the dead. To take our sins away.
Oh Happy Day
He washed my sin away.
All those years ago when I was living in the preacher’s house and he was reading his Bible and getting ready for Sundays, week after week and I was watching how he lived without even realizing I was doing it, God was teaching me.
The preacher shared constantly, daily, about Jesus and His love and my need for that love.
Our mother, Nano, listened and cared and watched over her little ones.
Easter approached and I was excited. Partly because Easter is also Birthday time and I told you a few days ago in Birthdays remembered how I felt about birthdays back then. Another reason for excitement was because Easter comes in Spring and I do love Spring.
I also loved the songs that we sang on Easter Sunday. Great old hymns.
*Up From the Grave He arose
*Christ The Lord is Risen Today
*Christ Arose
But truthfully part of the reason for my excitement was the new clothes. We did not have much money but we were always well dressed because my mom sewed all of our clothes. Dresses, skirts, jumpers, blouses. My new Easter suit, and blouse. I went to church always carrying a purse.
I was telling someone this week how we always wore dresses on Sunday morning and then after rest time and tea time we would get to wear a jumper or a skirt (dressed down) to evening service.
Every Spring I got new shoes. Sometimes they were black patent. If we could find a pair to fit me. Those terrible narrow feet of mine meant we had to drive an hour to the next town to the store that sold narrow widths. My dad the preacher was very particular about our feet. He had had to wear shoes that did not fit properly, for most of his life and he had the feet to prove it.
So, he made sure we had properly fitting shoes.
Which meant that mine were usually “sensible”.
But sometimes we found beautiful black shiny ones. Never slip ons. They always had a strap over the top of my foot so it would stay put.
We would buy the new shoes a few weeks before Easter but I never, ever got to wear them until Good Friday service. To be clear, the towns we lived in when I was little usually had snow almost until Easter. I am sure I prayed before many an Easter Sunday that God would PLEASE make the snow disappear and the roads become dry, so I could wear my new shoes.
Those prayers and the subject of those prayers, along with my new Easter outfit were enough to cause me some sleepless nights before Good Friday. Excitement.
Then with hair curled up to my cheeckbones, my new clothes on and the ham and scalloped potatoes in the oven, off we went to church.
We usually sat in the fourth row from the front. Close enough to be a support to the preacher and a good influence on the other parishioners, far enough back to let others sit in front of us if they wished.
The music was not what it is these days but even then it was sung with hearts full of praise and was, I am quite certain, a sweet aroma to the one receiving it.
We loved Jesus
We were thankful for His sacrifice on our behalf and wanted to do our very best to present ourselves well (after all, if we were going to visit an earthly king we would certainly wear our best duds, so why would we not do the same for our savior?)
All dressed up, I sang my songs of praise and I remember Joy.
It was partly about Spring. It was partly about Jesus and His love for me and it was most certainly also about my new Easter Clothes.
Precious memories.
Since it’s spring, night will soon turn into sunrise.
I hear sleeping noises coming from above me and from down the hall.
My sister asked if I would maybe share some special birthday memories.
There really are too many.
If someone tells you birthday celebrations are for children, don’t believe them. Don’t agree. They are certainly wrong.
Some of my treasured birthday memories are from recent years. Well maybe not so recent but closer than childhood.
There was the 40th and the 50th. Milestones. Mother and sister flown into town by a generous husband, children brought back from the far reaches of our land and laughter and surprises and tears and good food. And Friends. Friends are such a gift.
But the sweet, precious recollections of the early days are of
sunshine, dining room tables filled with girls in (never white because that was just not practical at all)dresses. After school parties. I don’t know that I ever, as a child, went to a Saturday birthday party. They were just always after school. From the setting of the sun the night before until the final bell of the day rang the next afternoon, the excitement mounted. Such joy to be the center of attention. To have friends who bounced around in their desks and caused many a teacher to end her day with a headache and a hoarse voice.
I often received unwanted attention on this (and many other days)
“Pamela House I can hear you at the end of the hall”. “Sit down and be quiet”.
Some things never change.
At our house, The House house, there was a chocolate cake, hidden (although I always knew it was there), until just the right moment. It had chocolate icing of course and baked into that cake were treasures of nickels and dimes, wrapped in waxed paper to be discovered when you received your piece at dessert time. Oh the thrill of finding one of those waxed morsels.
But from time to time there was an angel food cake with 7 minute frosting that sat in thick, foamy curls. If you weren’t careful it left pink (always pink) bits on your cheeks as you ate it.
Of course there were ‘the bumps’ and it’s a miracle we don’t all have back troubles, as well as ‘a pinch to grow an inch’.
Loot bags were, a coloured paper cupcake liner at each place with a few penny candies inside. Of course these were eaten before the hotdogs or hamburgers were served so at the end of the party there was nothing to be sent home except smiles and happy memories of fun and games.
Simple days and great times. Another year lived. Reason to gather in celebration.
You are special. Let’s have a party.
No matter our age, we appreciate being honored.
It takes work to prepare a special day for someone but the joy it brings, the blessing for the future, is worth the effort.
Most good things are well worth effort.
This year I was here. I thought my little one was arriving at night but she was on the morning flight. I expected to do my day alone but she spent it with me. It wasn’t a huge birthday. A moderate one.
Two 5’s together. The ones that end in 0 are bigger and more troubling for sure.
I am okay with another birthday. As my father in law says, “it’s better than the alternative”. True!
I wish the wrinkles would stay away and the skin on my neck would not sag and the especially alarming one is my knees. For some reason they tend to remind me of the not so beautiful elephant. Good reason to be thankful for longer hemlines.
Here in the desert the hemlines are to the floor. Everywhere you look. This suits me. If you see me in this fashion trend, you will know why. It’s the knees!
We all get older and there’s nothing we can do about it except keep smiling and rejoicing that in fact we have lived another day and have made a few more memories, for us and for the ones we love.
This year my little one and I took ourselves on an adventure to my birthday dinner choice. A farm, half an hour from home in the desert. At this place they grow their own vegetables and use fresh local food. We had a wonderful time and watched the sun set and the lights come on. It was an evening to remember and that I will do. so many choices
beauty in the desert
a garden to eat from my girl
I don’t get to spend a lot of time with these little ones of mine. When I do, it is precious and I cherish it.
As I get older my children do as well. They leave and live and work and grow and learn and make mistakes and grow more and I watch and love and pray.
The one I pray to loves them more than I ever could and He has a plan for them. He doesn’t need my help to grow them and show them the way to go.
My job is to pray that they will listen and yes, obey, as He opens doors and brings people to live life with them.
This was a good birthday. I am thankful for another one and will live this next year listening for direction and thankful that God also has a plan for me. As He wills I choose.
