Joy to the world…

I've been doing more baking lately - the captivity of ice storms and the push of cookie exchanges has seen to that. It's such a busy, chaotic, and even painful time of year - for lots of people, not just clergy - and there's something relaxing about putting ingredients together and waiting…waiting for them to bake, smelling wonderful smells in the interim.

I grew up baking Christmas cookies with my mom. We used the same recipe every year - a recipe she'd cut out of the Little Rock newspaper when I was very little - a cutout cookie recipe for lemon-honey cookies. Every year - the same wonderful dough that we'd mix and eat before putting it into the fridge to chill overnight. One year, we forgot to make the dough ahead of time, and we figured out we could chill the dough in the freezer for a while instead.

We'd flour ourselves up, pull out the yellow rolling pin, and get to rolling and cutting. We had plastic cookie cutters that had some detail to them - detail we never worried about too much. We had aluminum cookie cutters in very simple shapes - we gravitated more to these the older we both got. We'd eat more dough. We'd bake the cookies and let them cool and decorate them. And then for a while, anyway, we'd have this delicious pile of lemon-honey cookies that tasted the same every year.

After I moved out of my mom's house, baking these together got more complicated. Between my travel schedule and Mom's work schedule around Christmas (she was clergy, too), sometimes she'd mix up the dough and put it in the fridge, and there it would sit, awaiting my arrival.

Mom would do other baking, too. She'd put on the local classical music station that played lovely choral, organ, and orchestra pieces she adored, and she'd move around the kitchen, quietly pulling things from the pantry and putting things into the mixing bowl. The house would begin to smell fabulous, and at this busy, chaotic, sometimes even painful time of year, she'd find some peace making goodies for those she loved (and herself).

Today, I had some time and began making a batch of chocolate cookies for a cookie exchange. I began with some annoyance - it's a busy, chaotic, and sometimes painful time, remember? To bake cookies felt frivolous. And so I began slowly - I put on my own classical Christmas music, began pulling together my own ingredients, quietly moving in and out of my pantry. I put things together into bowls, tasting less cookie dough than ever before in my life. And slowly, I felt the knots unwinding.

Not lemon-honey…but still smelling great!

I also slowly became aware of an old grief re-emerging.

Even after eight years, this is the one time of year that I can scarcely believe that Mom is gone. At this time of year, her loss sits with me more heavily than any other time of year. She can't really be gone, can she?

And the grief comes back, surprising me with its force, sneaking up behind me like a thug while I'm putting towels into the washer. It crams its fist into my stomach until I am doubled over, crying. And all I'm doing is baking cookies and getting a load of towels into the washer, for goodness' sake!

And I begin to hear the words of the songs and they become more poignant than ever…

"O come, O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here…rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!"

Sometimes, I really want grab the joy and cast it away, into the outer darkness. Sometimes, the mourning in exile is so much more appealing.

And yet, the joy of God is a relentless thing. It comes to us, too, when we least expect it. It comes in the rising of a beautiful moon, or in the neighbors turning on their Christmas lights just as the darkness threatens to overtake us all.

Light, light, and more light.

Sometimes, joy is quiet. It moves around, putting things together with peace, until we realize that we are still OK, in both our grief and our joy. Until we realize again that Christ was born to make all things new, both our grief and our joy.

Joy to the world, the Lord is come…let heaven and nature sing!

#HappyThanksgiving

So, Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

And it was a happy one, even though it was my first Thanksgiving as a diabetic. Do you remember yours? Amazing how this disease is quite relentless - there are no breaks, even on holidays or vacations. It's. Still. There.

But I really tried to manage things a bit more this year - space out my eating - and definitely limiting my portions, although if I'm honest, I didn't limit today as much as I usually do. Eating a second helping of anything - let alone stuffing (OMG my favorite) (HELLO CARBS) - is something I've trained myself NOT to do. Except today, I did it. It felt weird.

I guess it's good that it felt weird, right? It's good that I'm now self-monitoring to a point where any excess feels weird. I might be over-indulging, but at least I'm aware of it. And in some weird way, I actually feel LESS guilty about it now than I used to pre-diabetes - what's THAT about?

I guess part of it is that now, a lot of the voices I've carried around with me are silenced, and so is that condemnatory guilt they used to shout at me. The guilt I feel now is more related to my actual health and well-being, rather than some sense of disappointing someone else. And so the guilt I feel now is less controlling in some way - less pushy - less noisy, for sure - less bitchy.

For many years of our marriage, Hubby and I have hosted Thanksgiving at our house. This year, we traveled to see family, so there was hardly any work for me to do today. I did a lot of sitting around and relaxing. I took two different mini-naps on the couch. We had a good, solid (not-too-carby) breakfast, a very light lunch, and ate our Thanksgiving meal mid-afternoon. 

After our meal, we had the obligatory round of "Who's ready for dessert?" and when I said I would need to wait (like, literally, NEED), the suggestion was made to take a walk. HOORAY! I found my spirits lifting at the thought of the fresh air, the exercise, and the scenery of this neat walking path near their house - I've heard all about it and have never tried it out.

A creek runs next to it and it was rushing today - water pouring over and around the rocks, adding a delightful and constant sound to our movement. One of my favorite sounds, making a beautiful Fall day even more gorgeous. 

Max came with us. And I was so happy that our little 14 year-old schnauzer walked 1.65 miles and barely missed a beat (or a tree to pee on). Often, he led the way, trotting along, greeting others who were also out in the beautiful weather.

And as we walked, I felt the few guilty qualms getting further and further away, left behind at the dinner table while we got a bit of exercise. When we returned home, I enjoyed our dessert all the more because it truly felt like a treat.

Confession: I had a leftover turkey sandwich this evening and I had a bit more dessert. But it's all OK because I'm still feeling good about the choices I made today. I've reached one of my favorite food holidays for the first time as a diabetic, and I've made it through.

Gobble, gobble!

The Firsts...

The extent of our Halloween candy this year.

I realized something in late October, and here it is:

I'm having a Year of Firsts.

What I mean is that I'm having my first year as a diabetic, which means it's a year of my first vacation with diabetes, my first church potluck with diabetes, and…my first Halloween with diabetes. 

OH CRAP.

I love Halloween, and I always have. My mom and I used to do some basic decorations, and we'd make these haunted houses out of construction paper and glue. I'd dress up, we'd go out trick-or-treating, and later, we'd dutifully hand out candy to neighborhood kids who came our way. 

Later, as an adult, I wonderfully fell into a group of friends that got REALLY INTO HALLOWEEN - but always in a fun way, not weirdly creepy at all. We'd have a big meal on an overly-decorated table, with cheese balls made to look like cute pumpkins and ice frozen in surgical gloves to make creepy hands. When Hubby and I had our first house, we got to a point of sitting out front, waiting for the trick-or-treaters, getting to know the neighbors in our cul-de-sac, snacking on our own candy.

Halloween and food, it seems, have always gone together for me.

So this year was a first. 

I can have a little candy, and I know that. But that's part of the problem - I can have a LITTLE candy. Quite frankly, I don't want a LITTLE candy - I want to sit down and eat half the bag of M&M's, please, and just not suffer any consequences like pesky blood sugar spikes. And so, Halloween this year became a battle of self control for me.

I made it through a whole Trunk-or-Treat and only ate one tiny package of Skittles. I stayed at my in-laws and ate two tiny boxes of Milk Duds and one tiny Kit Kat over three days. I came home, and Hubby had purchased peanut butter cups, which I can't have anyway because of a peanut allergy. I've been dutifully been ignoring the unopened package of Mint M&M's in our pantry since the day before I went into the hospital last March - went into the hospital dehydrated, with extremely high blood sugar, after binge-eating Mint M&M's. And thus began my journey with diabetes.

Halloween this year was a little different, but it was more than OK, it was wonderful. We went to visit family and had a lovely dinner out with dear friends, one of whom we surprised for his birthday. And so there was still this beautiful sense of celebrating and fun, but without bowls and bowls of candy sitting around my house.

The next set of firsts will be tricky ones - Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday…but it's all OK. I've made it through firsts before, and I'll make it through these, too.

What Fills the Void

My weakness...

It has been one of Those Days. It wasn't a terrible day, but it was one of Those Days because of the sheer number of details swirling around in my brain right now. We have a big weekend coming up at church, and it is all joy - really, it is. However, joy doesn't always come easily or without planning - and there are so many things to think about, carry out, remember, etc. that last week was one of Those Weeks, and I started off this work week with one of Those Days.

I came home late from the office, not expecting to have to make dinner. I ended up making dinner. The thought of it almost made me cry. "I wish I had a butler," I lamented to some friends online while waiting for water to boil. 

"I wish I didn't have diabetes so I could eat a bunch of ice cream," I added.

A-HA!

I thought about that as I worked on dinner. I thought about how I wanted to do what I have always done on Those Days - eat a big, fat bowl of ice cream, while ignoring the consequences completely. I then asked myself, "What is the void I'm trying to fill tonight?" And I realized I was tired and cranky and that I was tired and cranky because I was hungry. 

Well, then, Kathi, eat some damn dinner!

We ate dinner. A simple dinner, fairly balanced, pretty light, definitely easy. My mood improved. I felt a bit re-charged as I sat and relaxed a bit. Hubby and I bantered a bit. I cleaned up the kitchen a bit. I called a friend and chatted a while. I put away a bit of laundry (but not all of it!). And somehow, in all these bits of this and that, I realized I felt re-charged a lot more.

And that was when I went to the kitchen to get my small bowl of ice cream. I loved every bite. And most importantly, the void had already been filled.

In Which a Potato Flips Us Off

Dinner tonight had a message. Apparently.

In the never-ending quest to Eat at Home More, Hubby called me today wondering what he should pick up for dinner. He perused the meat department with me on the phone and we settled on steaks on the grill. Knowing we had various frozen potato options in the freezer that needed to get used, plus plenty of frozen veggies, steak seemed like a good fit overall. Nothing tastes like a good grilled steak, and Hubby can grill a steak, baby.

I pulled out the variety of frozen potatoes and spread them out on the baking sheet and this one caught my eye. Doesn't it look like it's flipping you off? If you disagree, flip the bird with your right hand, palm up, and hold your hand next to the photo.

OK. 

I called Hubby over to check it out, as if instead of a flipping-the-bird waffle fry, I had instead found an image of Jesus or Mary or St. Bartholomew. "Look!" I said, excitedly. "Do you see what I see?"

Hubby immediately picked up the fry and turned it around. Because apparently no one really likes being flipped off, even if it's by a waffle fry.

I started thinking about the waffle fry flipping me the bird and I thought, "You know, that's sort of what  it feels like carbs do to me now that I'm diabetic - they flip me off." 

WORK WITH ME, PEOPLE. 

My whole eating life now revolves around these damn carbs. How many? Too many? Not enough? What kind are they? Etc. etc. etc. Sometimes, it seems like the carbs are winning, running around me in circles like an impetuous child who's just learned how to flip someone off. 

But - haha, carbs! Not tonight. Tonight, I gave you and your middle finger to Hubby, and I enjoyed a few of a non-middle-fingered variety of potato. Plus some veggies. And a damn good steak.