Picture of Purpose

I love art. Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Picasso...even modern art, such as Pollock, has a soft spot in my heart. My mother instilled this love in me at an early age. When I was in elementary school, my mom would take me on a mother/daughter date to whatever was on exhibit at the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth. I listened with excitement and anticipation as the docent discussed minute details, imperfections and hidings of paintings both old and new. I soaked up symbolism and color like a sponge. We also were fortunate enough to have art docents at our school. One of my favorite works, and one that was most fascinating to me, was "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges-Pierre Seurat. Seurat employs a technique called pointillism, where he painted millions upon billions of tiny dots of very distinct and contrasted colors. The human eye miraculously blends these hundreds of colors together to form a single hue of distinctive color. Each dot was meticulously placed, each color carefully chosen  for a purpose: to blend and manufacture a masterpiece.

Purpose is an interesting concept. To me, it answers the question "why?" it is the reason you're running down the road of life that you've chosen or been placed on. The dictionary defines purpose as "1. the reason for which something exists or is done/made 2. An intended or desired result or aim 3. determination; resoluteness." The bible has many things to say about purpose. I love the way Paul describes it in Ephesians 1:3-10:

Spiritual Blessings in Christ
³  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, ⁴  even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love ⁵  he predestined us^[a] for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, ⁶  to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. ⁷  In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, ⁸ which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight ⁹  making known^[b] to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ ¹⁰ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

God's ultimate purpose is salvation, as Christ came to save us all. (Romans 3:23 ESV, Romans 11:32 ESV)

Specifically, too, Christ has given each believer unique gifts to "be His hands and His feet." As Paul writes in Romans 12:4-8:

⁴ For as in one body we have many members,^[a] and the members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. ⁶  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; ⁷ if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; ⁸ the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads,^[b] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Verses 5b-6 have really been on my heart recently. The Holy Spirit has been relentlessly revealing to me the importance of us using what's been gifted to us, as the "body" both literally and spiritually speaking, cannot functions properly without each part doing what it's been created to do.

I've been focusing on ways to wrap my human mind around a God-sized purpose. The best way God has shown me is by thinking of life as "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." We are each one dot. One minuscule yet undeniably and incredibly important part of this enormous painting was can't yet fully see (1 Corinthians 13:12). Sure, we see those dots around us- we know their colors, if they're changing, what they're doing, but only the Master, the Designer, the omniscient Artist can see, and create, the masterpiece. Each of us dots has a purpose- to be the color He painted us, the color He created us to be. Whether it's red, yellow, green, magenta, cerulean, a color similar or different to those around us, in being this color, we fulfill our place, our purpose, in the Master's Masterpiece. Sure, sometimes we tint ourselves another color, we see others and turn into their color, a color we were never intended to be, but our Master painter is faithful and good to repaint us back to the color we intended. He is the Perfect Painter, which we also were never intended to be. We must surrender our control to Him, as He is flawless and faithful to paint us in the way we were intended. We must continue to have faith when it becomes difficult to not change color, trusting that He can see the whole picture and that, one day, we will see it, too.

I'm thankful to be part of the masterpiece. I pray that I fulfill my purpose in His masterpiece instead of trying to fit Him into my own.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust!!!

After being traumatized by cauliflower as children (thanks, Yvonne and Cynthia for trying to teach us to be healthy! :)), Jacob and I bought our first head of cauliflower as adults to try a new culinary quest this week-- Cauliflower Pizza Crust!

Jacob (and I) loves pizza. I try to avoid flour. This seemed like a good compromise to me! As I mentioned last night, Jacob made me promise that we would order regular pizza if this wasn't good! I had been excited all day, and finally late this afternoon I embarked on the Cauliflower Crust journey.

Our crust was found on pinterest and taken from Recipe Girl. I liked it because it had cheese in it, and I knew a cheesy crust was more likely to get Jacob to eat it! :)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Large head cauliflower (which makes about 2 cups of shredded cauliflower)
• 1 large egg
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon dried minced garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon onion salt (or onion powder + salt if you're me and realized in the process of all of this that you didn't actually have onion salt :))

1. Shred the cauliflower into small crumbles. We used a cheese grater. I grated half of it and my hand got tired to Jacob took over. On Recipe Girl, she says you can use a food processor, but we don't currently have one of those. This took about 15 minutes, but wasn't too bad! Again, you'll need about 2 cups of cauliflower crumbles. It took us about 1/2 of our head of cauliflower. Transfer the crumbles to a bowl and microwave for 8 minutes. Then let cool.

2.   Preheat the oven to 450. Spray a cookie sheet or pizza pan with nonstick spray-- this is very important or the middle of the crust will stick!
3.  In a medium bowl, combine the microwaved cauliflower crumbles with mozzarella, egg, oregano, garlic and onion salt. Mix well-- we just used a spoon and they mixed really easily.
4.  Pat the crust onto your pizza pan or cookie sheet. We made ours fairly thin. Spray the top lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Ours only took 10 but I've had friends who had a hard time getting the middle cooked through!

5. After your crust is cooked, you can add any toppings like a regular pizza. We used pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozzarella! Then we baked the pizza (still at 450) for 4 more minutes (since the crust was just out of the oven it didn't take much longer).

We let the pizza cool, then cut it and ate it. The crust was soft, so we needed a knife and fork to eat it. It was pretty good! We gave it about 3 out of 5 stars! Jacob liked it so we did not have to order another dinner!

We also made a pro/con list about the crust:
PRO:

• It saved a lot of calories-- at about 84 calories for 1/6 of crust, it cuts your crust calories in half!
• It didn't taste like cauliflower-- we don't like that taste, so this was good for us
• The pizza cooked SUPER fast because the crust was already hot. Total cook time for us for the crust and our pizza was 14 minutes!

CON:

• It took a little while to make-- about an hour from grating cauliflower to eating. We spend a little more time cooking in the summer, but during the school year I'm only in for 30 minute or less meals!
• The texture was soft- I think I had envisioned a crunchy crust and I think that might have tasted better. We are looking for a crispy alternative.
• We don't think it would have reheated well-- it just seemed like it would have been a soggy, cheesy mess! We didn't have a lot left over but we just threw it away.

Overall, it was definitely a success! I will keep you all updated on our continued quest to improve the Cauliflower Crust! Hope you enjoy!

Sweet and Sour Chicken (shockingly not from pinterest)

Hello friends! This week has been busy for us with birthdays/family meals, time with friends and a wedding! So, we are only able to cook 2 meals at home this week. Tonight we cooked Sweet and Sour Chicken from Food Network. We are always on the hunt for healthier asian food recipes, as it is one of Jacob's favorite type of foods. This was our first food network recipe, but we will definitely be trying more! Jacob thinks it's better than Pei Wei...it involves quite a few obscure ingredients, but it tastes wonderful!

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 teaspoon chili-garlic sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce (the website calls for reduced sodium... we had an unfortunate homemade fried rice experience with reduced sodium soy sauce so we use the regular kind :))
• 1 teaspoon ginger
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 teaspoons corn starch
• 4 teaspoons oil (the recipe calls for peanut oil...super targets in plano/the colony don't carry it...so we use oilve oil and add peanuts)
• 2-4 chicken breasts cut into 1-inch pieces
• salt and pepper to taste
• mixed bell peppers cut into 1-inch strips (the first time we made this we cut them up, this time we used frozen)
• brown rice (we still love Uncle Ben's Ready Rice)
• chopped peanuts (to make your oil peanutty and for garnish)

1. In a small bowl, mix honey, chili-garlic cause, vinegar, soy sauce, orange juice and corn starch. Set aside for later.
2. Coat the chicken with 2 teaspoons of oil and heat large skillet over medium-high heat. Season chicken with salt and pepper and cook for about 2 mintues. The high heat will help to brown it and make it look more like sweet and sour chicken since it isn't fried :) Transfer partially cooked chicken to a plate and reserve the pan.
3. Heat the remaining 2 teaspoons oil in the pan. Add in peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are crisp tender.This is usually when we add some peanuts
4. Stir in the reserved chicken. Whisk the sauce and add it to the pan. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the cauce is thickened and the chicken is tender.
5. Serve over rick and sprinkle with peanuts if desired.

Tomorrow we are trying the much anticipated cauliflower pizza crust. I had a friend try it earlier this week and she gave me a few tips. I also had to promise that we could order pizza if it wasn't good. SO if just a picture of Papa John's or Pizza Hut is posted, y'all will all know what happened! :)

I'm thankful to serve an omnipotent God. I'm thankful to serve a God full of love and grace, a God full of justice and conviction- a God who loves us too much to let us wallow in lives of sin. A God who isn't afraid and knows it isn't right to not let us know when our lives are out of sync with him. A God who isn't afraid to to yell "MOVE OUT OF THE WAY" or physically move us to where He wants us so He can work and be glorified. I especially love it when His perfect timing is so that only He, and not us, can receive the glory for his blessings.

We experienced just that this past week. Jacob and I went on the ultimate road trip (see previous post for details on that! :)). We had talked and planned for months, while still leaving enough room for spontaneity, as any road trip should have! We were even so excited that we left a night early. We though this was all us being spontaneous, but God had a bigger plan.

In January, God really put it on our hearts to serve. We had both served in the church and in our respective Bible Study classes before we were married, and suddenly not serving just didn't feel right. I felt as if I was taking and not giving, eating and not exercising, stealing without paying. I also had my fair share of moments where I tried to take God's job into my own hands and find places. God so kindly and gently closed doors, whispering to me, "Wait on Me, my child."

On our drive (which wouldn't have been "on the drive" if we had left when WE planned), Jacob received an email. God was dropping the perfect opportunity into our laps-- delivering it to our doorstep at His perfect time. As we though through, talked through and most importantly prayed through the opportunity, we saw how God had been preparing our hearts for this very time since before we were dating. We were overwhelmed by His sovereignty and grateful for an opportunity for Him to be glorified through us. We were in awe.

But, God wasn't done yet. That's one of the most astounding things about God-- While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, and while we deserve nothing, His blessings never seem to run dry. His plans for HIS glory are bigger and better than we could ever begin to fathom. When our plan is a small hole we dig with our hands, God's plan is the Grand  Canyon.

We had also been looking for somewhere to live, as our lease at our current apartment is almost up. Although it wasn't something we had been good about in the past, we brought that request to God and asked that He provide a place of us to live. We knew of a house that was up for lease, but after talking with the owners, we didn't think it was going to work out. We continued praying that God would provide a place for us to live. On the way home from Vegas, God delivered the house that we had written off and didn't think could work. Again, God proved Himself and provided in a way that He would be so magnificently glorified. We know it is exactly where God wants us and are excited to see how He can use us in our new home!

I think that's the most wonderful and overwhelming part about God's plans- He is glorified despite us. Humans sin, we mess up, we are not dependable. But God and His purposes are sovereign. He reigns and redeems even our mistakes so that He is always glorified, so His character is always proven and true. I'm so thankful to serve a God like that.

Vegas Vacation

Jacob and I were blessed to go on a really fun ROADTRIP last week to LAS VEGAS! We had planned to leave on Saturday to drive to the Grand Canyon and spend the night, spend Sunday morning at the Grand Canyon and get into Vegas that day, stay until Friday morning and take Friday/Saturday to drive back to Dallas. We got really excited at 6 on Friday night and decided to start our jouney early! We packed and were on the roady by 6:30! We drove off into the sunset for our vacation!

We got up bright and early to drive to Williams, AZ and the Grand Canyon, where neither of us had been before!

We got to Vegas on Sunday night and just explored our hotel and the strip.

On Monday we layed out at the pool and saw Murray, Celebrity Magician at the Tropicana. We were on the 1st row, like 3 feet from the magic! We could see some of his secrets, but we are still talking about where some of the items disappeared to!

On Tuesday we saw Spiderman and ate Burgers and Barbeque at Excaliber! Our feet were tired of walking so we needed a rest!

On Wednesday, we learned how to play Craps, ate at the Monte Carlo buffet for the second time and saw Cirque de Soleil's Ka. This was probably our favorite day, so it gets 2 pictures.

 Below is the stage for "ka."

On Thursday we went to Old Downtown Vegas for the Freemont Street Experience.

Then we drove for a really, Really, REALLY long time back to Texas!

We had a great time getting away and making lots of memories! Hooray for our first married vacation and roadtrip!

Smashing Smashed Potatoes

After our Vegas Vacation last week (look for that in our next post), we are trying to eat healthier! We revisited a recipe for smashed potatoes. They satisfy my craving for french fries but are much healthier because they are baked.

Our recipe is adapted from Caramel Potatoes recipe! It's not super exact but it's never turned out poorly! :)

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs (or desired amount) of small red potatoes- we usually buy the bag and if they are too big I cut them in half or quarters
• 6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• garlic powder
• rosemary
• salt & pepper

1. Scrub the potatoes (and cut them if necessary) and lay on a foil lined baking tray. Add 3/4 cup of water to the potatoes and cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes at 500 degrees.
2. When the potatoes are done, remove them from the oven and let them cool- I usually let them cool for about 30 minutes because they are really hot!
3. Toss the potatoes in a medium bowl with 3 tablespoons of olive oil until completely coated. Lay the potatoes back on the lined baking sheet.
4. Take a cup and "smash" the potatoes until they are about 1/4-1/2 inch thick. This is harder than it looks-- Jacob always has to do this job!
5. Drizzle the remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil on the potatoes. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper, garlic powder and rosemary.
6. Place your potatoes back in your 500 degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until crispy brown. They are kind of caramelized when you take them out and they are DELICIOUS!

Enjoy! :)