Wowie Wicket!

While I was gone, an amazing transformation has taken place. My cat is sweet! She isn't bothering the other animals, she's giving me love and attention, she walks around the whole house. It's amazing considering how angry she was when we first got here.

We roughly have 17 days or so until we move into the house. I'm really hopeful that everything will work out. I've been trying to clean here as much as I can so that I can pull my weight around here. While it's been fairly easy to keep the kitchen clean, I can't find a vacuum, so I can't clean the living room like I wanted. I think it'd be really awesome if I could get a couch slip cover as a present for letting us stay here.

I'd really like to start making food gifts for people. I like the veggie breads where you layer the dry ingredients in a mason jar. The hard part for veggie breads is that the most time consuming step - grating the veggies - can't be done ahead of time. I think I'll make cookie jars, hot chocolate mixes, and breads. It might be nice to make herb mixes, too.

I'm a little bit slower on my reading of The Shack than I thought I'd be, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm really trying to take in the lessons this book is presenting. My favorite passage so far has to do with the garden. In this passage, Mack and Sarayu walk to a garden behind the shack. It is a mess and chaotic, but also pretty. Together, they clear out a section of the garden. Then, they dig up poisonous roots that corrupt the ground. It is made apparent that the garden is, in fact, Mack's soul.

I like the idea of the soul as a garden. I intend to meditate on this, visualizing the removal of poisonous roots for the growth of beautiful plants. Everyone has poisonous roots in their hearts, eating at them and preventing the growth of truth and beauty. My roots are centered around judgment, arrogance, insecurity, anxiety, and fear. In the coming weeks, I will work especially hard to rid myself of these poisons.