The year 2012 has had a lot of hype surrounding it. The world's going to end, and if it doesn't, we'll vote for president. No matter how much faith I have or how much I read my Bible, I am anxious by nature. For example, when H1N1 hit the scene a couple of years back, I briefly stopped letting any neighbor kids come play for fear that the children might catch it. So, when I started hearing about 2012 and all it's apocolyptic hype, I immediately felt fearful. Since my brain (and my spirit) tell me that God doesn't tell the Mayans FIRST about when the world will end, I have had to divert my attention to something hugely productive this year: growing our farm. My main goal for our family and our farm can be summed up by one big transition. This year, I pray we move away from being consumers and start learning to be producers.
Christmas is probably what prompted this idea to start with. We have four small children, and they are nothing if not consumers. We consumed cookies, pizzas, caramel popcorn, red ribbon, ornament kits, gallons and gallons and gallons of milk, and last but certainly not least, an inordinate amount of TOYS over the holiday season. In fact, I had to do a massive toy purge right before Christmas (4 giant boxes full!) just to make room for the new toys they were getting. And we still managed to end up with a radio flyer roller coaster permanently set up in our formal dining room when it was over. Don't get me wrong...I don't blame them for being insatiable little consumers. I made them that way. Every time I called to their attention a toy commercial on television to get ideas about Christmas presents, I fed this little monster that lives in each of their bellies called consumerism. My fixation with baking at a non-stop pace over the holidays in order to "make it feel like Christmas" might have been another thing that fed the consumerist spirit in our home. These days, all you really have to do is ride the culture wave, and you will find yourself with a purely consumeristic mindset that mirrors ours.
So this year, we hope and pray to move from that mindset into that of PRODUCERS. Sure, last year we started a small farm and began producing our own all natural pork and soaps. That was awesome and a huge step for our smallish large family. But this year, we are changing our frame of mind. We are setting goals. We are analyzing our model and making changes to reduce the inputs while maximizing outputs--and not in the context of quantity, but in quality. We are hoping to find some property that is our own and begin farming the way small family farms ran a hundred years or more ago. Pigs by themselves contribute a little to the land and produce a bit of pork to eat. Pigs with other animals work together and follow one another to contribute much needed nutrients to the soil and a well rounded meal for the family. They fertilize trees that produce nuts or fruit; they plow up ground to grow vegetables for eating and canning. Then, chickens and goats and sheep can graze the land under those now fertile trees and keep back nutrient-stealing weeds, while providing our family (and maybe someday yours) with eggs, chicken meat, goats' milk, and wool for spinning. This year, instead of buying another plastic dollhouse that is this year's version of last year's dollhouse that we'll be donating to goodwill, perhaps the girls will receive beginner's knitting kits. Perhaps we will all four (me and my three daughters) line up in a row in our kitchen and learn to can vegetables instead of renting another movie. And wouldn't it be great to use all my soap making supplies to make homemade household cleaners instead of spending all our grocery money on ready-made cleaners full of toxic chemicals?
In reality, I know that there are only so many hours in my day. Although I would like to sew a new wardrobe for Jack and teach the girls to can and raise pigs, chickens, goats, and sheep; I know I must choose wisely when setting our goals for 2012 so as not to overwhelm myself and become an eternally grouchy mommy. In response, I have come up with 2 personal goals for 2012: to learn to sew and to learn to can vegetables. Actually making something that's worth having might have to come next year.
For the farm, we hope to have three new products on the food side and three new products on the soap side by the end of the 2012 farmers market season. Stay tuned to further blog posts to see what those products are!
It occurs to me that 2012 really is the end of the world as we (the Wrights) know it...moving from being a family of consumers to a family of producers. Bring it on!
Friday, January 13, 2012
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
The Connection between Food and Depression
Recently, I ordered a book about recovering from postpartum depression through eating certain nutrients. I read many reviews of this particular book, researched some of the ideas that were supposedly in this book, and begged my husband to let me spend the $20 on amazon. I think he hesitates to okay these orders because they rarely contain one item; I start out wanting one book and end up ordering a few plus some toys for the kids and special Dora panties (or another similar, unneccesary item). Anyway, he agreed to the purchase and I excitedly clicked away until the book was confirmed to be on its way.
When it finally arrived, I sat down and read immediately. The book was full of interesting stories about this particular woman's journey through childbirth and depression. It was hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, and I found myself relating to many of her experiences. I, myself, have been pregnant for the better part of the last five years but had never really considered myself to be depressed. I did consider that I was "situationally depressed" during my 6 weeks of hospitalization in my second pregnancy, but that was--I had decided--only because I was heavily medicated and separated from my daughter who was then nine months old. Who wouldn't be depressed if they had to lay in a hospital bed 24 hours a day, separated from their child and only allowed to get up to use the invalid commode which was directly next to the hospital bed? It was a terrible way to live, and I refused to eat much of the time. Certainly when I did eat, there were few healthy foods going into my body, which was trying earnestly against the doctor's efforts to deliver the second baby in a year far too early.
During my third pregnancy, Joel was out of work much of the time. Most of our food budget came from his day labor work that paid $6 an hour. Needless to say, I shopped for the cheapest food possible to feed us and our two little ones, which amounted to tons of canned tuna noodle casserole made with processed cheese. Gross.
Finally, during my last pregnancy, we were no longer struggling for money. Thus, I considered it a blessing that I could daily spend extra change at Dairy Queen to eat the only thing that didn't give me heinous heartburn: BLIZZARDS! By the time I was eight months pregnant, ice cream, candy, and peanut butter bagels were the only foods I would eat. Then, at 35 weeks, Bell's Palsy struck and I was reminded what it feels like to have your body fighting against you. The virus that caused the Bell's Palsy also made me very sick with flu-like symptoms and migraines, and I was desperate for Jack to hurry up and be born.
I give all of this background to say that the idea of your body needing to replenish nutrients in order to restore mental, emotional, and physical health really made sense to me. I had abused my body through four pregnancies in such a short time, never feeding it the nutritious food I needed to maintain good health. After Lizzie was born, I experienced nightly panic attacks and had to forego watching true-life crime shows because of total paranoia and despair that one of our children would be murdered. I would wake my husband up in the middle of the night, crying and insisting that if we didn't wake one of the girls up and take her to the hospital RIGHT THEN, that she would surely die before morning. He was patient with me, reminding me that none of the children were sick when we put them to bed and that it was unlikely that they had caught anything in their sleep.
The author of the book had experienced similar anxiety and labeled it depression. Suddenly, as I read this book a couple of weeks ago, I felt relieved that there was a more likely reason for these panic episodes than a remarkable ability to see the future. Thank goodness, I thought, that there's actually just something wrong with me, and not something terrible in our children's future. I couldn't put the book down; I read and read through her whole journey, feeling more and more convinced that I had been depressed because of my lack of nutrients.
As the week wore on, however, a new desperation came over me. Suddenly, I realized that if I was going to believe everything in this book, I had a huge job in front of me to totally overhaul the way our family eats. Our oldest daughter, now five, got diagnosed recently with reactive airway disease. I fretted over whether or not this was an accurate diagnosis, or if she was often sick with colds, etc. because I don't feed her the way the book details. Was medicine the way to go, or should I take it upon myself to ditch the idea of preventative medicine and instead just feed her nothing but whole foods? Keep in mind, we already had been eating with an eye toward health. We raise pigs for pork with no antibiotics, steroids, etc. We purchase non-homogenized milk from a local farm, and many of our fruits and vegetables were bought locally. So we had already come a long way from the tuna noodle casserole days, but we were not fermenting our own grains and making kefir water as the author of the book instructed. Perhaps, I thought, this was the problem. I agonized over our eating habits, Ellie Jane's medication, the kids' vitamins, and even the splenda I put in my coffee; until I was totally paralyzed. I suddenly didn't feel like feeding the kids at all, nor doing anything else, because no effort seemed good or healthy enough. Why go to the grocery store if they don't sell quinoa?
As in other areas of my life when I feel desperate and don't know what to do, I finally realized that it was time to ask God. Seek Him first, and all these [answers] will be added unto me also, right? Unfortunately, I don't usually seek Him first; I seek Him when I have sought all sorts of other answers and they confuse me. I thought about the claims the book made, such as the idea that every woman who gives birth loses years of their life to depression, induced by pregnancy. That these "lost years" are caused by nutrient depletion from pregnancy, and women who don't have children live longer and aren't depressed. Are these claims truth, according to the Bible? Immediately I remembered 1 Timothy 2:15, "But women will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety." I remembered that God created my body for (among other things) having precious babies. Yes, it's true that I did not feed and maintain my body the way I should have, but certainly He extends grace. The book I read said that I was depressed because I did not have all the nutrients I needed. But the Bible says "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:19). The book said that sometimes even early death can result when nutrients depleted from pregnancy are not replaced. The Bible says, "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction." (Prov.19:23). And on and on the Bible goes to remind me that, although He means for me to eat food that is healthy and close to the way He originally designed it, Jesus is ultimately the way to joy and life. When I am depressed, I only recover by feeding my spirit with the word of God. Feeding my body, no matter how healthy, will only lead to dissatisfaction and desperation if I am excluding Him from my soul. Jesus reminded me this week, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about your body...Life is more than food" (Luke 12:22-23). Lord, help me to seek You for joy, health, and answers about what I should make for dinner.
When it finally arrived, I sat down and read immediately. The book was full of interesting stories about this particular woman's journey through childbirth and depression. It was hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time, and I found myself relating to many of her experiences. I, myself, have been pregnant for the better part of the last five years but had never really considered myself to be depressed. I did consider that I was "situationally depressed" during my 6 weeks of hospitalization in my second pregnancy, but that was--I had decided--only because I was heavily medicated and separated from my daughter who was then nine months old. Who wouldn't be depressed if they had to lay in a hospital bed 24 hours a day, separated from their child and only allowed to get up to use the invalid commode which was directly next to the hospital bed? It was a terrible way to live, and I refused to eat much of the time. Certainly when I did eat, there were few healthy foods going into my body, which was trying earnestly against the doctor's efforts to deliver the second baby in a year far too early.
During my third pregnancy, Joel was out of work much of the time. Most of our food budget came from his day labor work that paid $6 an hour. Needless to say, I shopped for the cheapest food possible to feed us and our two little ones, which amounted to tons of canned tuna noodle casserole made with processed cheese. Gross.
Finally, during my last pregnancy, we were no longer struggling for money. Thus, I considered it a blessing that I could daily spend extra change at Dairy Queen to eat the only thing that didn't give me heinous heartburn: BLIZZARDS! By the time I was eight months pregnant, ice cream, candy, and peanut butter bagels were the only foods I would eat. Then, at 35 weeks, Bell's Palsy struck and I was reminded what it feels like to have your body fighting against you. The virus that caused the Bell's Palsy also made me very sick with flu-like symptoms and migraines, and I was desperate for Jack to hurry up and be born.
I give all of this background to say that the idea of your body needing to replenish nutrients in order to restore mental, emotional, and physical health really made sense to me. I had abused my body through four pregnancies in such a short time, never feeding it the nutritious food I needed to maintain good health. After Lizzie was born, I experienced nightly panic attacks and had to forego watching true-life crime shows because of total paranoia and despair that one of our children would be murdered. I would wake my husband up in the middle of the night, crying and insisting that if we didn't wake one of the girls up and take her to the hospital RIGHT THEN, that she would surely die before morning. He was patient with me, reminding me that none of the children were sick when we put them to bed and that it was unlikely that they had caught anything in their sleep.
The author of the book had experienced similar anxiety and labeled it depression. Suddenly, as I read this book a couple of weeks ago, I felt relieved that there was a more likely reason for these panic episodes than a remarkable ability to see the future. Thank goodness, I thought, that there's actually just something wrong with me, and not something terrible in our children's future. I couldn't put the book down; I read and read through her whole journey, feeling more and more convinced that I had been depressed because of my lack of nutrients.
As the week wore on, however, a new desperation came over me. Suddenly, I realized that if I was going to believe everything in this book, I had a huge job in front of me to totally overhaul the way our family eats. Our oldest daughter, now five, got diagnosed recently with reactive airway disease. I fretted over whether or not this was an accurate diagnosis, or if she was often sick with colds, etc. because I don't feed her the way the book details. Was medicine the way to go, or should I take it upon myself to ditch the idea of preventative medicine and instead just feed her nothing but whole foods? Keep in mind, we already had been eating with an eye toward health. We raise pigs for pork with no antibiotics, steroids, etc. We purchase non-homogenized milk from a local farm, and many of our fruits and vegetables were bought locally. So we had already come a long way from the tuna noodle casserole days, but we were not fermenting our own grains and making kefir water as the author of the book instructed. Perhaps, I thought, this was the problem. I agonized over our eating habits, Ellie Jane's medication, the kids' vitamins, and even the splenda I put in my coffee; until I was totally paralyzed. I suddenly didn't feel like feeding the kids at all, nor doing anything else, because no effort seemed good or healthy enough. Why go to the grocery store if they don't sell quinoa?
As in other areas of my life when I feel desperate and don't know what to do, I finally realized that it was time to ask God. Seek Him first, and all these [answers] will be added unto me also, right? Unfortunately, I don't usually seek Him first; I seek Him when I have sought all sorts of other answers and they confuse me. I thought about the claims the book made, such as the idea that every woman who gives birth loses years of their life to depression, induced by pregnancy. That these "lost years" are caused by nutrient depletion from pregnancy, and women who don't have children live longer and aren't depressed. Are these claims truth, according to the Bible? Immediately I remembered 1 Timothy 2:15, "But women will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety." I remembered that God created my body for (among other things) having precious babies. Yes, it's true that I did not feed and maintain my body the way I should have, but certainly He extends grace. The book I read said that I was depressed because I did not have all the nutrients I needed. But the Bible says "And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Phil 4:19). The book said that sometimes even early death can result when nutrients depleted from pregnancy are not replaced. The Bible says, "The fear of the Lord leads to life, and he who has it will abide in satisfaction." (Prov.19:23). And on and on the Bible goes to remind me that, although He means for me to eat food that is healthy and close to the way He originally designed it, Jesus is ultimately the way to joy and life. When I am depressed, I only recover by feeding my spirit with the word of God. Feeding my body, no matter how healthy, will only lead to dissatisfaction and desperation if I am excluding Him from my soul. Jesus reminded me this week, "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about your body...Life is more than food" (Luke 12:22-23). Lord, help me to seek You for joy, health, and answers about what I should make for dinner.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Thou Shalt Not Covet
The other day when I was talking to our children about the Ten Commandments, not coveting your neighbor's house was one of our items to discuss. My heart immediately felt pricked; I have been known to covet almost anyone's things. I covet their decor, their organization, their tidiness, their appliances--even their wall color. I think to myself, "If I could just get that color in my dining room, I think I'd be much happier." Really!? What an absurd idea, and yet it frequents my mind.
When we were first married, Joel and I would come back to Statesboro to visit, and I would covet almost everything in my grandmother's home. While growing up, I hardly noticed anything about her home except that it was huge and comfortable and always clean. She remodeled often, and these projects interested me. But for the most part, I did not really come to appreciate the beauty of her home until I had our own, very modest rental house, with which to compare. It strikes me now as silly that I would come home and compare a home that was assembled over a lifetime to a rental house that we had lived in for a couple of months, but such is the nature of sin. You don't realize how ridiculous the sin is until later.
Now we live in her home, and I am constantly brainstorming of ways to reinvent it. The same white couches that I coveted are now the subject of much contemplation, as I think of ways to cover or brighten them or introduce pattern so as not to show kool-aid stains. It actually keeps me up at night. And the dining room furniture that I drooled over is another current obsession: I am trying to figure ways to dress down and cover up the chairs so that we can actually eat at the table with four small kids.
I have known that coveting is a sin for years; yet somehow, it seems to be a sin that I don't mind committing. This morning as I was sweeping the kitchen floor, however, something occurred to me. I realized the one and only thing I ought to covet when thinking of home is God's blessings. This morning I read, "He blesses the home of the just." Proverbs 3:33. I thought to myself, just for today, I would love for God's blessings to rain down on this home. I'd love to be full of energy to sweep, iron, scrub showers, make soap, cook dinner, change a ton of diapers, read many Bible stories, and still have the urge to laugh out loud with the kids. To experience that today would be to know God's blessings were on our home. That I covet.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Paring Down
I've recently become interested in paring down our possessions. Perhaps it's the mountains of laundry I did yesterday, which literally took me all day and still didn't get totally done. Or maybe the total embarassment I feel every time I open the doors to our car and PILES of junk fall out--maybe that's what brought on this idea of paring down. Or it could have been the fact that we could never park in our garage even if we wanted, because it is full of boxes of outgrown clothes, toys, and baby gear. Whatever the straw was that broke this camel's back, it has been broken. Hopefully the result will be a more organized and simple life by this time next year!
This process of paring down won't be easy for me. I love to shop, and four growing children provide the perfect excuse to mindlessly browse the internet whenever I have a chance to sit down. Not only is it like eye candy to me, it also makes me feel like I am multi-tasking. I tell myself, I'm not really vegging out...the baby really does need yet another outfit. This, of course, is not true. He is the only one in the house that has an appropriate amount of clothes. Every other person who lives in this house has so many clothes that we could each wear a different outfit every day for a month without having to do laundry. Sounds good, except that for some reason everyone but me seems to change clothes two and three times a day, which results in a month's worth of laundry piled up for me to do once a week. And just in case I thought about trying to keep up with it daily, my house reminds me that there is no place to put the clean clothes unless the rest of the clothes are dirty and in the hamper. There's simply not enough storage for them all at the same time! I know at this point you're probably thinking, just get rid of some of them. Why haven't I thought of that before? Well, I do get rid of the girls' clothes; usually about once every two or three months. A couple of weeks ago, I even went through some of my favorites of their clothes and ironed them all meticulously to take to the consignment store. Most of them even made it there, and I'm hoping to reap the rewards sometime soon.
So, my new plan is to pack suitcases for our chilren full of their favorite outfits. Two weeks' worth of play clothes, and the rest of the play clothes go to Goodwill. That's my challenge for the week!
My challenge for today is to get our Suburban cleaned out. This will be no small feat. It literally overflows with coats, toys, fast food trash (I know, I know), and papers. My husband has asked me to complete one task today, and that is to drive to a nearby town and purchase ten 50-pound sacks of pig food. They should easily fit in the back, except that there's everything from chicken wire and tools to a Graco stroller and "pink potty" back there. This cleaning operation could take all day! Better get started...
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