About 4 years ago, I felt God start nudging me to pray.

I got into using Gina Garland’s wonderful prayer notebook (check her out on youtube). But my prayer life was small. And God wanted more.

For years, He simply nurtured the desire, the readiness to pray. And at this point in my life, He’s starting to bring it all into fruition.

First of all, He taught me more about Himself, a depth to our relationship, to my understanding of Him that didn’t exist before. And this helps me now, to be able to grow in a relationship to Him in prayer– to see prayer as much more than just going through lists of requests. Even more than ACTS, for example. That it’s really a conversation with an utterly desirable God, through the Spirit of the Friend.

Second, He put resources around me. I tinkered with reading Becky Tirabassi and Andrew Murray …. about four years ago. But I set them aside, because it wasn’t time. I didn’t understand why, the all the pieces were not in place yet. But, the resources, the teachers were there.

The third piece I see right now, was teaching me self-discipline. First through dieting and exercise, then in fundraising and home schooling, and now, in prayer.

What I’m doing right now is Becky Tirabassi’s plan to pray for an hour a day in writing, and using her journal.

It’s taking my relationship with God to another level. Coming to God with an open heart, asking Him what I should praise Him about today, what do I need to confess (THAT has been the most transformative so far), asking faithfully and expectantly about needs and life issues, and learning to listen to Him, to His ideas for me.

I start by reading a chapter in Becky’s book and in Murray’s book, With Christ in the School of Prayer. Then I start my phone timer for an hour. …

Wow. Thank you, God.

So, last week, I had a day or three of my depression cycle where I start thinking about 2 life dreams that I’m pretty emotionally invested in that … Aren’t Going To Happen (most likely). And then I start getting all poophead, wondering why I’m even alive, thinking accusatory thoughts towards Vitaliy (hello?), and being plagued by the question: What is the value of my life??

Going through this cycle is like peeling away the layers of an onion. It burns. It makes me cry. But I get closer and closer to it being gone. It’s gotten pretty small, actually. I’m surprised it even came up again. …. But it did.

And this time, just maybe?, I found the best answer. The answer that closes the issue and frees me to think new things.

What is the value of my life?

Stop asking that question.

Just stop asking it.

You are not capable of answering it.

I imagined some life where I was fulfilling these two dreams, and you know, I’d have the same question, the same struggles. WHAT I DO doesn’t answer that question.

God is the judge of it. He assigns value. And, walking in His Spirit, I do my stuff every day, and GOD GIVES VALUE TO IT. It’s valuable because I’m doing the will of God for my life.

….

I could go on.

I will spare you.

But, I’m nixing that question from my cycle– that question IS my cycle. It’s a dead-end question for me. For me, it is, I think, a question that arises from my pride, some desire to be *important* in the way I consider importance. God gives truer thoughts and better questions in its place.

Now I’m thinking about how to make a Third Thing— a life that is not Vitaliy’s, not mine, but a Third Thing that only the two of us together could make together. I will think about this quite a lot.

I’m also thinking about how to keep rechannel my emotional investments. How to see my future without feeling the loss of these two things and seeing something bright and good, something Other.

…. It’s interesting…..

OK, not a whole day, but most of it.

A day consists of 3 meals and 2 snacks, eating approximately every 3 hours.

Here is my food journal. In the back, I choose a formula for each meal/snack, and the portions are by weight.

Example:

For breakfast, I chose the formula 2 Starches (50grams of oatmeal), 1.5 Fruit (strawberries) and 1 Protein (2 eggs).

Weighed out my oatmeal and strawberries together, then poured hot water over it

I recently tried cooking scrambled eggs on my crepe-making pan,and I love the results!!

By the time I ate breakfast (about 9am), I had drank 1/2 a liter of water (I currently drink 2 liters/day).

At 11, I had my snack. I chose 2 Nuts/Seeds, which for me was 30 grams of natural nut butter (I have peanut, almond, or a great marzipan with caramel).

I also drink sugarless coffee (sometimes with milk, sometimes black).

For lunch (13:00), I chose the formula 4 starches (88grams noodles), 1 protein (100 grams -raw- chicken breast), and 1 Milk (28 grams cheese).

I made up noodles with little hamburger patties of ground chicken, spiced, with cheese. That’s a jar of homemade ketchup Vitaliy’s mom is supplying us with– I put it all over the noodles– it’s so yummy, and didn’t count it as calories.  My snack (16:00) was again a spoon of two portions of nuts/seeds. This time I had 30 grams of almond butter with black coffee.

I’m eating on the Phase 3 of the diet, the maintainance phase which is 2000-2500 calories. It helps the fat/muscle ratio to keep shifting (gaining muscle, losing fat) and the frequent eating keeps the metabolism working.

Dinner hasn’t happened yet, but … you get the idea ….

As I was praying about fundraising tonight, I had some insights I’d like to record and remember.

I was asking God: How is asking others and being dependent on others through fundraising being like Christ?

And God brought an interesting detail to my attention from my Bible reading: John 19:26-27

When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple He loved standing there, He said to His mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then He said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

Jesus “asked” John to take care of his mother in his place–He gave the physical care of his mom to another person. He depended on John.

I also noted this: Mark 14:33-34:

He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he became deeply troubled and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

It’s encouraging to see places where Christ– though he was fully complete and sufficient in all things in God the Father– displayed humanity moments of asking others to support Him, even emotionally.

Luke 8 says:

After this, Jesus traveled from one city and village to another. He spread the Good News about God’s kingdom. The twelve apostles were with him.Also, some women were with him. They had been cured from evil spirits and various illnesses. These women were Mary, also called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out; Joanna, whose husband Chusa was Herod’s administrator; Susanna; and many other women. They provided financial support for Jesus and his disciples.

So. I’m grateful for the example of Christ in this lifestyle of interdependence.

Would YOU pray about supporting us? It’s investing money into evangelizing and discipling amazing people on this side of the world. God is doing His powerful work in, through, and around us. Please pray about this. You can get to know us more by clicking below:

So, tomorrow (today, as I’m writing this after midnight our time on Saturday) is Zhatva at church! It’s the annual harvest celebration. This year I decided to get even more emotionally involved, in a good way.

I’ve been praying for specific ways to show love to our church. Not that they need it— I need it. I need to love our church.

So, it came together right now in baking and cooking for Zhatva. I have so enjoyed this process of making all this stuff! It’s rainy, fall weather, I turn on Christmas music, get the kids playing with flour, and here we go!

I will admit that not everything has turned out. But a lot has! … I love cooking for holidays 🙂

So, here it is in photos:

Setting up Andre to make his own flour-water dough

Here’s Una, saying hi to the world as she plays with her flour

The messy table with a thousand projects going at once

I made four chickens 🙂

I made pumpkin bread from real pumkin puree– real pumpkins are everywhere right now, so here is some, after it’s been boiled (in chunks) dripping out the excess water in the cheese cloth (like we do with tvorog).

Wow, these kids are cute!

Some pumpkin bread

All around, an awesome day!

This week, I switched to the third phase of the Curves diet. This is the final phase, where you maintain (or lose) and keep shifting fat to muscle.

I stopped losing on the second phase, the weight loss phase, so that’s a signal that my body needs some change-up. I’m very happy with what I lost during that phase– very obvious weight loss, and very obvious muscular changes– Like I don’t have flab on my underarm any more– that is amazing.

This is me, in October, 2014, two years ago:

Me now: 

I’m also happy that I’m not eating sugar any more. And I stopped frying foods. So we are all eating healthier. I like how my clothes fit and feel, too. It’s fun to shop for clothes now, but I’m trying to control myself there J

I’m at a moment where I’m trying to avoid some traps. Well, one particular trap: Becoming focused on losing weight and getting more and more skinny. That’s really not the point, but it’s an easy road to go down. Oh, I don’t like that place on my leg. Oh, I don’t like my stomach flab that’s still there. Oh, oh, oh….

I have to consciously shut down those thoughts, because those goals take me to the wrong road and the wrong end.

I’m working to just be healthier. To replace unhealthy habits with healthy habits, come what may. To enjoy food for the good it’s doing my body, and as fuel.

This is really good.

Vitaliy’s started thinking about his health, too, which is nice so we get on the same wave together. He’s so fit-looking anyway, and loves outdoor, extreme sports. But now he’s trying to find ways to exercise himself more regularly. He prefers non-repetitious exercise that requires skill that you get more and more advance at, though. But he bought an exercise ladder and installed it in the kids’ room, for them and him. So there you go—we’re rubbing off on each other again.

I’m playing with the idea of going to black coffee. I can’t stand the taste, but I hear it’s acquired. I tried stevia for a while. I’m trying cinnamon and other no-calories things…

God really convicted me of something about this whole thing. I’m reading the Gospels, and I read where Jesus says:

I assure you: If you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.

And I realized that I had stopped having faith that God could change me. My years of experience with my weight and health taught me, not perserverance, but disbelief (that God could change me). So I confessed that to God and asked Him to help me believe, to show me other areas where I don’t believe.

Vitaliy’s new exercise ladder:

The story of my life right now is self-discipline and consistency. I have always royally stunk at these two things. Though not in every way. When I was in school, and I had external guides (teachers’ expectations, homework, etc.), I was great at accomplishing things.

But motherhood is kind of a structureless thing, in many ways. I have to create and maintain my own structures. This is terribly hard for me to do. And for years, I was pretty terrible at it.

Lately, it’s been my life lesson, and God is teaching me consistency and self-discipline in several areas of life.

So, this year, we do school consistently. And that is what I want right now. I’m learning consistency, so I’m not looking for bells and whistles and exception days and gobs of creativity. I need to learn the lesson of consistency.

Here we are reading aloud:

And we’re learning Ukrainian! It’s really taking me a lot of power to be consistent with this because we’re doing this voluntarily and it can so easily get crowded or complained out, BUT NO! We’ve got a teacher coming, so let’s learn stuff!

One thing that we’re enjoying is this Young Peacemaker course about handling conflict. Oh. My. Word. Talk about relevance to daily life– for ALL of us!

It’s been a great year so far!

In downtown Kiev is the Circus. It’s a big, very big, permanent building.

We’ve never gone to a circus before, that I remember. The only circus I remember is watching Dumbo, which is a pretty cool circus.

After sitting through 3 hours of circus, I was exhuated. Here’s what I realized about circus. The circus is all about novelty. It’s baited breath, it’s sitting on the edge of your seat, It’s gasping. It’s one surprise after another. It’s hoping someone doesn’t DIE as they dangle over your head held by a thread….

It’s exhausting.

It’s also exciting. Thrilling! Amazing! My personal favorite were the Mongolian acrobats. They were skillful, lept, flipped, jumped, and they landed solfly like deer. It was an amazing style. And I loved how they combined safety with skill. It was breath-takingly beautiful.

I had Skyla and Vika write paragraphs about the circus. Here they are:

we went to the cirus a cuple dase ago, and it was fun! there were tirgers and liens. first we bout popcowrn! we sat in the 5th row and ther was a camel that jumt over bars. the tigers were juming through a ring of fire! and there were 2 funny clowns doing silly tricks. The acrobats jumped on each others shoulders.

We went to the circus! It was amazing! We sat on the seventh row and ate popcorn. We saw horseback riders, clowns, and acrobats from Mongolia. We saw many animals like alligators, tigers, lions, and porcupines. It was fun!

So, that was the circus! I could stand to go maybe every other year….

So, if you remember (those who read here regularly), I was wanting to lose a decade of gathered up baby weight before I turned 40 last December.

I started at 195 lbs (I didn’t weigh myself during my last pregnancy or for a few weeks after, so I was more than that).

For the year I was 39, I lost to about 145lbs. That’s about 50 lbs! I mostly did it on my own, eating oatmeal, fish, salad, eggs. I would do a cycle of good weight loss, then stop when I lost interest, then go back to a cycle of loss, then stop. It helped me to do it in strong spurts.

But then I turned 40, and I lost all desire to diet and exercise. I still wanted to lose all the weight, but I didin’t have enough desire to actuallly do it. So I regained to about 167.

I was kind of thinking and praying about what to do. Sometimes I would try to motivate myself. But it was short-lived. Then my mom and dad came for a visit in June of this year, and mom had been losing weight, too, and we were talking about how we wanted to keep losing. So we decided, why not start now, and we joined the Curves that’s on the third floor of our mall.

During that month, we exercised faithfully 3x/week. We both gained a little weight still, from all our eating and special times, but I lost fat. At Curves, you really focus on shifting your muscle/fat ratio, so your body becomes more and more able to burn calories (because it’s more muscle) and it becomes easier to maintain weight loss.

By the time mom was leaving, they were announcing their 8-week Food School starting early July, so I joined that. It was a weekly group/class about eating and weight loss, and overall, a healthy lifestyle. I was ready to join because I was tired of motivating myself and really wanted someone else doing that, I like getting more education, and I met ladies at various places on the same road of weight loss.

It was really, really fun! And the important thing is that I really committed myself to doing their eating plan with little to no exceptions (even when we traveled) and exercising very regularly and faithfully.

It’s now September, Food School has been over for a month, and I’m still going strong. I’m still on the weightloss part of their diet, because my body is still willing to shed weight. I’ve lost 20 lls (back around 145), my percent of body fat is 31.9% (I started at 38.1%, and the norm is 20%-30%). My muscle mass has increased from 27.1% to 30.3% (norm is 35%-38%). And I love the beautiful, muscular curves in my arms and legs.

I haven’t eaten sugar for over 3 months now. I can’t believe it. Sugar in my coffee was an absolute must–otherwise, why drink it?? But the Food School teacher said she loves lattes without sugar, so now that’s what I’m doing, too.

A few major lessons from this:

1. I’m trying to make a life-change, not just achieve a goal weight. Lord willing, I will keep up my exercise and good dietary changes for the rest of my life.
2. I’m noting times when I would, before, have eaten in order to help myself. Times of fatigue, stress, Vitaliy being gone, emotional fatiuge or frustration, boredom … and I’m finding other ways to comfort and strengthen and busy myself that don’t involve food. It’s a good thing. When I want to eat for no good reason, I remind myself that I love how my clothes fit and how my body looks, and that’s worth more to me than this temporary, often non-physical craving to eat.
3. God used this to start a wave in my life of learning self-discipline. This diet and exercise requires a lot of self-discipline. It’s stressful, even in a good way, but it breaks down, into small steps, a huge task that I can’t accomplish in one or a few bursts of energy. So I’ve started applying this to other areas of my life– currently, fundraising and home schooling. It’s helping me break down those huge jobs into small steps and tasks and do them consistently to accomplish a huge job in good time.

I should post a photo sometime soon 🙂

I guess this blog and birthinukraine.wordpress.com are nice (sometimes-not-nice) chronicles of my parenting journey. What a wonderful and deep way to know God, to be tested, to build one’s character, be sanctified by the enjoining work of the Holy Spirit.

The other day, I was writing a bit in Russian for the gals in my church about my parenting journey, and I wanted to record that here.

One of the ways God drastically changed my view of childrearing is found in Philippians 2:13:

For it is God who is working in you, enabling you both to desire and to work out His good purpose.

Starting out, I pretty much knew how to make things a battle of the wills. My will versus my child’s will.

But when I started learning from God, He gave me new questions, particularly about teaching obedience:

• How can I be ‘on my child’s side’ in the process of teaching him obedience?
• How can I, through the power of our relationship and intimacy, teach my child to obey, even to make it not that hard to do?

Like God does those things for me….

Asking these questions changed me a lot and changed the way I viewed my children, and the process of teaching them.

How can I constantly have goodwill towards my child, as God does towards me?

What is the big picture of my “good will” for my child in particular areas where I’m asking for compliance? Can I (at some point) explain that fuller picture of the good things I am willing for my child when I am, for example, teaching her not to hit? (Big picture of my good willing: I am willing (desiring) for her to become a good friend and sister who is self-controlled and able to be full of love.)

It’s just all so very fascinating.

Can I, as God’s child, become aware of, explore, and enjoy the greatness of His good will/desires for me as He is teaching me to obey in this area or that? Rather than just focusing on certain motions of obedience (though that is a step)?