I ran out of sugar yesterday.  I decided last night that, then, that I’d replace my bag of organic, fair-trade sugar in the morning. The last one had lasted me several months, but I was down to my last half-cup.

First thing this morning, I walked to the local Ten Thousand Villages – where I always get my sugar — with Lydia in the jogging stroller and picked up a bag, grabbing some fair-trade cocoa while I was there.

As the lady was ringing it up, she pointed out that the price had gone up. I looked at the price tag for the first time. Six dollars! For two pounds of sugar! That was quite a jump – it had only been $4.75 the last time I’d bought it.

I decided I was going to have to be even more sparing with my sugar from now on.

I refuse to buy conventionally-produced sugar, which is highly processed, and, more importantly, often brought to us through highly exploitative practices. I want to be sure that the sugar my family consumes was bought at a fair price, helping small farmers earn a decent wage, and grown in a sustainable way. But at that price, I just can’t afford to use much.

I already don’t use granulated sugar often. Even the organic, less-refined kind is not great for your health. More often, I use either maple syrup or honey, which at least have various vitamins, nutrients, and (in the case of raw honey) beneficial enzymes. Lately, I’ve been making a lot of sweets using only dates, and no other sweetener whatsoever.

All of these sugars are expensive. Like, really, really expensive. A one-kilogram bag (2-pound) of organic, fair-trade sugar is now six dollars. A 500g (pint) jar of raw honey costs the same. The best price on maple syrup I’ve been able to find is $12 for a liter (quart). So I have to use them all very sparingly. We just cannot afford to eat much of any of them. When I use them in recipes, I try to cut back as much as possible. With granulated sugar, I usually cut the amount by quarter or half of what the recipe says.

Fresh fruit is another rather expensive source of natural sugar, and unavailable (if you live where I do) for a good chunk of the year. So we’re limited to small amounts throughout the year.

And that’s why I’m rather glad natural sweeteners are all so expensive: they make frequent sugar-snacking prohibitive. We can’t afford to eat a lot of sweets.

It turns out, only buying natural sweeteners is good for your health because not a lot of people can afford to use them much.

The high cost of natural sugars has also forced our family to be more resourceful. My parents took up bee-keeping last year, so they’ve kept us stocked with free raw honey. (We just have to help with the harvesting). And we’re religious about tapping our maple tree every year and boiling down the syrup. And when sweet fruits are plentiful in the summer, we work hard to preserve as much as we can through canning and freezing.

We’ve found some very economical ways to source natural sweeteners. However, these sources are limited, so we have to carefully ration it to last throughout the year.

Which works out quite nicely, considering the way our bodies were designed. The reason we humans crave and love sugar so much is because we were designed to gorge on and enjoy sweet fruits just a few times a year when they’re in season. We weren’t meant to stuff our bodies with sugar every day of our lives. Sugar is a precious commodity that we are meant to enjoy only occasionally.

Because the real stuff is a precious resource, it’s expensive to buy.

And I’ve decided I’m okay with that. In fact, I’m glad. It puts a natural cap on how much sugar we’re able to consume. So bring on the six-dollar bags of sugar. It’ll make sweets all the more precious.

Related Posts:

Why I Don’t Read Nutrition Facts

Why I Choose to Spend More Money on Groceries

Today (May 13th) is the Feast Day of Julian of Norwich, one of my favourite historic female role models.

Julian was an English anchoress who lived from 1342 to around 1416. As an anchoress, she voluntarily vowed to remain permanently enclosed in a cell adjacent to the Church of St. Julian (from which she gets her name), to devote her life to prayer. When she was struck by serious illness at the age of thirty, she received sixteen visions that centered on the crucifixion of Jesus. She later wrote about these visions in the text now known as Revelations of Divine Love. She is regarded as one of the most important Christian mystics and the first English woman identified as an author.

I had to read Julian’s Revelations as a part of a seminar in Medieval Literature  for my Master’s degree. I had the privilege of reading it in its original Old English, which is fun because it’s so different from modern English that feels like you’re reading a whole new language, but similar enough that you don’t have learn a whole new grammar to understand it. Out of all the texts I studied in university, this book has probably had one of the most profound and lasting effects on me. Julian’s visions of Christ are some of the most soothing words I have ever received.

Julian is best known for having received these words from Jesus:

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.

She’s also well known for likening Christ to a mother:

And our Saviour is our very Mother in whom we be endlessly borne and never shall come out of him.

Julian’s vision of God is supremely loving and has no wrath in him whatsoever.

All in all, I just find Julian to be a kick-ass woman and remarkable role model. The first female English author! Devoting her life to prayer in a cell! Wow. What an inspiration.

If ever I were to get a tattoo (and I won’t — DON’T WORRY, MOM), it would almost certainly be that line from Julian’s Revelations about how all will be well. I even know where I would put it: along the edge of my foot, where I would see it every day as I put my feet on the floor to meet the morning. (The alternative text would be the passage from Revelation in the Bible where God says, “I am making all things new.”)

I am a person who needs regular reminders that this story of the universe ends well.  I am easily led to believe that the universe is a dark place and that God was careless when he decided to create anything, because there is just no way all this evil and suffering can be redeemed. I need regular reminders there is, in fact, a benevolent Storyteller behind the events of this world, and he has a glorious happy ending in mind, the likes of which we can barely begin to fathom.

Reflections on Julian’s Revelations: How Is it Possible that All Will be Well?

I don’t understand mysticism. Neither my Mennonite nor my Evangelical backgrounds leave much room for mysticism.

I don’t understand the visions Julian received. I have no way of knowing whether they were really from God, or just the mad ravings of a dying woman. All I can say is that they feel right. (And they don’t, in my understanding, contradict Scripture.)

Julian struggled with how it could be possible for all to be well when the church teaches that there are many souls who are eternally damned. I can relate to this struggle. She questions Jesus, saying: “There be many evil deeds done in our sight and so great harms take that it seems to us that it were impossible that ever it should come to a good end” (ch. 31).

But Jesus tells her that he has a great secret “deed” in mind that we cannot fathom, but which will manage to make all things well. Julian hints at universalism (i.e. that all people will ultimately experience  salvation), but suggests that God will accomplish this without contradicting the church’s teachings on damnation.

“But what the deed shall be and how it shall be done, there is no creature beneath Christ that knows it, nor shall know it till it is done,” Julian explains. * She refers to this great deed as God’s “privy counsel” or secret plan.

There are two parts to God’s plan for making all things well: The first involves “our Saviour and our salvation,” and “this blessed part is open, clear, fair, light, and plenteous, for all mankind that is of good will shall be included in this part.”* In other words, this is the part that is revealed to us in Scripture, in the doctrine of salvation for all members of the Church. The other part, however, “is hidden and spared from us, that is to say, all that is beside our salvation. And that is our Lord’s privy counsel.”*

When Julian wonders how this can be possible, Jesus reminds her,”That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me. I shall save my word in all things (i.e. I won’t contradict my words regarding damnation) and I shall make all things well.”* He later promises her, “Thou shalt see thyself that all manner of things shall be well.”

I, too, am deeply comforted by this notion of a secret deed which Christ has hidden away, which will blow us all away and will make sense only when he has done it.

I don’t understand any of it, but I have decided to trust that however he does it, God will indeed make it so that all will be well.

And I’m grateful to that medieval anchoress for having the courage to share her revelations with the world.

*(All quotations are taken from Julian’s thirteenth revelation, and are my translation.)

(Note: this post was adapted from an earlier version I posted last year.)

Last year on Project M I wrote a blog post explaining why I dislike Mother’s Day and why I intend to discourage my kids from participating. I explained how I’m averse to obligatory gift-giving, and how it alienates would-be moms (i.e. infertile women, mothers who have lost babies, etc).

I guess I was naïve. I sort of expected a big round of “Hear, hear’s!” — especially from other women who’d had a hard time becoming mothers of biological children. Instead, I was frankly astonished at the response: moms everywhere were upset and offended that I could say such things against what they perceived to be “their” day.

Lesson #1: If a holiday is universally celebrated, it’s because it’s universally beloved. If you’re gonna dis it, be prepared for a backlash.

Many women mistakenly believed I was trying to take their holiday away from them. (Not only do I not have the authority to do that, but it’s not true: I only said I personally didn’t want to participate, or, that if I did, I thought we should celebrate all women). One commenter accused me of not wanting anyone to have a party if I wasn’t invited. Another said I was “dishonouring all mothers.” Phew! What a big accomplishment for a silly girl in Ontario with a tiny little blogging platform!

I wrote this post when pregnant with my first child after a two-year struggle with infertility. I assumed being pregnant put me into the mom camp, winning me the support of other mothers, while my experience with infertility would win the sympathy of other women who were currently enduring the same thing.

Instead, my not-here-but-not-quite-there position kind of alienated me from both sides. The infertile women saw me as a mom trying to throw them a pity card. Other mothers saw me as a non-mom throwing a tantrum because I wasn’t invited to their party.

Well, things are different this year. I gave birth to a child nine months ago and am officially and universally recognized as a mother.

Not much has changed in regards to my feelings about Mother’s Day, though.

In fact, when my husband reminded me that it was coming up, I stamped my foot and let loose a barrage of Christian-ified curse words. (Dang it! Frig! Frigitty-friggins!!”). I suck at throwing sentimental celebrations and thinking of meaningful gifts to give.

Here’s the thing. I absolutely LOVE being a mom. It is, without question, the most fun and interesting job I’ve ever had. Nine months into this gig, and I’m still not convinced my job is any harder or more important than many other women’s jobs. Sure, caring for an infant is time-consuming, frustrating, exhausting, et cetera – but so was earning a Master’s degree. I actually think it was harder. I got less sleep, and no one in my program was half as adorable as my baby. I imagine writing a book or running a business is equally tedious and taxing at times but also gratifying.

I got the distinct impression that those women who were most upset by my post criticizing Mother’s Day were the ones who most doubted the value of the work they were doing.

“No one appreciates us moms!” they protested, either explicitly or implicitly. “We deserve at least one day where someone acknowledges our work! Everyone else gets paychecks. Don’t we at least deserve some flowers?”

Our Cultural Ambivalence Towards Mothers

Our culture seems to have mixed feelings, and to send mixed messages, about motherhood.

On the one hand, motherhood is highly sentimentalized. Being a mom means you’re self-sacrificing, nurturing, and all-around wholesome, especially if you stay at home. Lots of career women feel judged for not choosing to procreate.

At the same time, though, many moms feel underappreciated, embarrassed, and inadequate. They suffer from what I call “just-a-mom” syndrome (“Oh, I’m just a mom . . .” ). They tend to feel defensive — they often feel the need to point out that unlike paid work, their jobs go 24-7. And their work is extra-important, because they’re raising the next generation of citizens. These feelings are legitimate, of course, in a culture that tends to value earning power over anything else.

(I’ve written more on our culture’s love-hate relationship towards being a stay-at-home mom elsewhere.)

Maybe my antipathy towards Mother’s Day is connected to the high regard I have personally experienced towards mothers and motherhood in my community. I feel like my choice to become a mother and stay home has been generally lauded and celebrated. I feel respected and valued by my husband, my extended family, and my church community.  In fact, I feel damn lucky to have been able to have this miraculous experience. Pregnancy, birth, motherhood? All incredible privileges. I don’t need a special day to exchange flowers, smiles, and saccharine cards and with other women who have been blessed with children.

Who is a Mother?

The other objection I have to Mother’s Day is the somewhat arbitrary demarcation between who is in and who is out.

Now that I am “officially” a mother, I can look back and see that I didn’t become a mother when I gave birth to my baby. I didn’t even become a mother when I got pregnant.

I believe my gradual metamorphosis into a mother began the day I fell in love with a child.

See, I was regularly caring for a friend’s child at the same that I was first toying with the idea of starting a family. (I didn’t know at that point how much trouble I would have with the first step, i.e. getting pregnant). I had never been especially fond of children.

I enjoyed the babysitting job, but it wasn’t anything magical. But one day, something crazy happened: the little boy leaned on me affectionately and I had the overwhelming urge to kiss him. And I exploded into tears.

Without meaning to, I had become a mother.

That’s why I found it so painful in future years when Mother’s Day passed and my arms were empty: just because my ovaries weren’t working quite right, I could not be acknowledged as a nurturer of children.

And that’s why I continue to insist: if you’re a woman with a love for children, YOU ARE A MOTHER. Even if you’ve never been pregnant or given birth.

That’s why I continue to insist: if we’re going to set aside a day to celebrate mothers, this day is also for those women who are nurturing children in any capacity.

Those who are seeking fertility treatments. Those who are working to improve their health and learning about their bodies in the hopes of conceiving. Those who are seeking adoptions. Those who care for their nieces and nephews and students and youth groups. Those who babysit and nanny with love and affection.

All of these women are mothering children, either future or existing.

From one mother to another, I insist that if we’re going to go around congratulating women for bringing forth children, you women who care for other people’s children or wait patiently for your own deserve recognition as well. You might be doing the hardest work of all.

Imagining a Mother’s Love

Last thing. There was a lot of stuff going around in the comments of my post last year along the lines of, “You just can’t imagine the love you have for your own children until you’ve had them.”

First, I feel these commenters underestimate my imagination. How do they know what I’m capable of imagining? I’m a writer. It’s my job to imagine feelings and experiences.

And second, I’m not sure they were right. I wasn’t able to imagine the specifics of how I’d feel towards my actual child, of course — I’m not clairvoyant — but I think I had a pretty good idea.

I had to spend two years of my life waiting and imagining what it would feel like to have a child of my own. And I’ve spent the last nine months saying, “Yep. This is about right. This is sooooo right.”

Mother’s Day and Me

I’m going to keep celebrating my own mothers (i.e. mom and mom-in-law) on Mother’s Day because I know it’s meaningful to them. But I don’t think I want to be a part of it in any other way, except to take the hands my sisters who feel like not-quite-mothers and to tell them, “You’re one of us. Thanks for being you.”

When Lydia was still a newborn, I was producing way more milk than she needed.

I felt – and still feel – passionate about babies being able to drink human milk in their first months of life. That’s what babies were designed to drink as they transition into life outside the womb. I feel certain there could be enough milk for everyone if we shared the burden of feeding our babies, rather than making every mother completely responsible for nourishing her child by herself (or resorting to an expensive, highly-processed, artificial imitation).

I felt so incredibly blessed to be able to give my daughter that perfect nourishment, and ached for moms who weren’t able to provide the same for their babies.

Since I had lots to spare, I began to research ways that I could donate my own milk to a baby in need. (For the record, in the future, I’d be open to nursing other people’s babies if the need and opportunity arose. I know that sounds weird, but I mean it.) I found one organization that accepted donations, but it was located in the United States. I figured that though my chances of being able to work with them were slim, it was worth a shot contacting them. (Geographically, they were fairly close. The only Canadian milk bank I could find was on the other side of the country in Vancouver.) I sent the American bank an email explaining my situation and my desire.

I got a response shortly thereafter. Sadly, they weren’t able to accept my donations.

“I suspect this will be a disappointment to you,” the responding nurse wrote. “Please know that you are helping other families by being a wonderful role model. There will be an increase in the number of women who choose to breast feed their own babies because of women like yourself who share their experiences.”

She was right. I was disappointed. But I was also stunned by the suggestion that I was already helping other families. Really? It didn’t feel like I was helping other families. I wanted to do more!

As I mulled over her email, I began to see the truth in what she said.

Every action we take makes a greater impact, beyond the people we immediately touch.

Since then, I’ve tried to let that bit of wisdom penetrate my soul: we are already helping others any time we do something good for anybody. We bless the world when we bless our own children.

Whatever good things we do, no matter the context and no matter how small it seems, they have greater consequences than what we can immediately see.

When we do good things for our children, we are doing good in the world in several ways: first, by living incarnationally – simply being Christ in the world – and letting God’s glory be manifest in our lives. I like to think of it as helping to bring heaven onto earth. And second, when we pour God’s love into our relationships, it gets passed along to others in the world and spread further. And third, we offer an example  of what can be possible, inspiring others to follow suit.

Often, when I’m feeling overwhelmed with the sorrow and pain of the world, wondering what I can do, I remember what that kind nurse told me:

I’m helping already.

A few months after I had that email conversation with the nurse, I read a story in an issue of Conspire magazine about a missionary family who moved to a slum in Cambodia. In that community, mothers fed their babies infant formula because the ads on TV had them convinced that their children would be smarter, fatter, and healthier if they used it. The trouble was, they didn’t have easy access to clean drinking water. They ended up feeding their babies contaminated formula which led to dehydration, malnutrition, and sometimes death.

One of the most profound contributions the missionary mother made to the community was breastfeeding her own baby. Her neighbours witnessed this and were amazed to see her baby grow healthy and strong. Just having the chance to see a Westerner choose to breastfeed, and then seeing the positive results, was enough to help these women overcome the lies on TV. With time, the use of infant formula decreased in that slum, saving lives. All because one woman decided to breastfeed her own baby.

* * *

My book club and I recently finished the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. It was an eye-opening read. It’s hard to believe how much harm we affluent white folks can do with our good intentions. I highly recommend it to anyone who is wrestling with questions of how we can really help the poor and suffering.

The thing is, we want to help. We see our own wealth and privilege and we feel so guilty. We have so much and others have so little. It’s not fair. We want to share.

But in our ignorance we can do so much damage. In our attempts to give back to people with less, we often injure their dignity, damage local economies, and weaken our own spirits.

I’m finding that helping out of guilt can often make things worse.

I wonder, sometimes, if we’re better off not poking around in other people’s business, looking for people and places to help. We often don’t understand the situation, and can do more harm than good.

I mean, by all means, if an opportunity arises to help, or we feel a specific call to help in a certain place or time, we should listen to that voice and offer ourselves to our neighbours.

But sometimes, I wonder if we’d better serve the world by loving the people already around us.

I get inspiration from people like Mother Theresa, who told us to Do small things with great love. I have to remind myself often of her injunction to Help one person at a time, and always start with the person nearest you.

When Mother Teresa received the Nobel Prize, she was asked, “What can we do to promote world peace?” She answered, “Go home and love your family.”

Really, these small acts will save the world. I have formulated my own ways of thinking about these things:

Your love spreads further than you realize.

Loving those closest to us is good for the whole world.

And finally: we help make the world a better place by doing what we can.

* * *

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive. – Howard Thurman

**Please note that none of this is to say that bottle-feeding is not an act of love. I just happened to learn a greater truth in relation to my breastfeeding experience.**

Image courtesy of  Pink Sherbet Photography.

Disclaimer: I’m not a health and nutrition expert. I’m just a mom who loves to do research about health and nutrition, and I’m simply sharing some of my thoughts and opinions.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m a new young mom, and this is the terrain of young moms, but it seems like everybody is calorie-counting these days. Everyone is flipping over their cellophane-wrapped granola bars or tilting their cartons of yogurt to read aloud (in alarmed or disgusted tones) the fat and sugar content.

“Wow, look at that! Ten grams of fat!”

“These are supposed to be healthy, but they still have eight grams of sugar!”

I always have a hard time knowing how to respond to these kinds of remarks. I hate to be the nerd pushing up her glasses and stammering, “Well, I dunno, I think it’s actually more complicated than that . . .”

See, I don’t read nutrition facts. I don’t think they actually tell us anything very useful.

My Guiding Questions About Food

When I make food decisions, I try to answer two major questions:

(1) Is it nourishing?

(2) Does my consumption of this food contribute to the flourishing or the degradation of our environment?

And neither of these questions can be answered by looking at the nutrition facts.

The Trouble with Nutrition Facts Labels:

They don’t really give us enough useful information to judge whether something is nourishing to our bodies.

Consider sugars, for example. We all know that too much sugar is a bad thing. But some sugar is necessary in our diets.

However, nutrition facts lump all sugars together, as if they’re all the same. But the truth is, there’s a huge difference in the ways our bodies metabolize sucrose, fructose, and lactose (And a huge proportion of our species can’t tolerate lactose at all). Our bodies also handle these sugars differently depending on what else is in the food, particularly fiber and fat. (Fiber and fat slow down the absorption of sugars. That’s why I believe it’s always good to eat fruit in their whole state, and accompanied by some kind of fat. Strawberries and whipped cream, anyone?)

The nutrition facts will tell you, for example, that a serving of plain, whole-milk yogurt has about as much sugar in it as three Oreo cookies. What they don’t tell you is that your body will treat these two kinds of sugars totally differently, because one is made (hopefully) with natural ingredients, and the other is made (definitely) with industrial ingredients.

And then there’s fat. You already know that I’m all about the saturated fats. I think they’re essential for growth and development. But the nutrition facts still don’t give me the most important details about the fats in the food. The important question, for me, is where that saturated fat came from. Does it come from a natural source, like butter, lard, tallow, or coconut oil? Or is it from an industrial source, like corn oil?

And that’s just the start.

Most nutrition facts labels these days give you a “% Daily Value” rating, which is based on the ludicrous assumption that everyone’s nutrition needs are the same – as if the needs of an adolescent schoolgirl, an athlete, and a nursing mother are all comparable. Ridiculous. Our needs vary tremendously depending on our sex, our age, our stage in life/the reproductive cycle, and our activity level. So I find those number almost meaningless.

And research is increasingly showing us that calories are not all made equal. As this article puts it, “The effect of a calorie in sugar is different from the effect of a calorie in lean grass-fed beef.”

Therefore, I believe the calorie count – along with the sugar and fat count — are pretty much the least valuable, relevant, or meaningful ways to measure the quality and merit of a food.

The nutrition facts don’t come close to addressing the real questions: is this food nourishing to our bodies? Is this food contributing to the degradation of our planet (i.e. the source of all future foods?)

In Search of Good Food

Some of the deeper questions, related to the above, which I also try to consider, are as follows:

• Was this food grown locally? If not, is there justification in having it shipped here for me? Is this the most ecologically-sound source of nourishment I can find?

• Were poisons (which are harmful to me as the consumer, the farmers working with the crop, and the land and water in which it grows) used in its production?

• Is this food close to its original form/state, or has it been significantly altered, in ways my body wasn’t designed to accommodate?

• Were the farmers fairly compensated?

• Were the animals treated well, living decent, healthy lives?

• Is it overly-packaged, creating unnecessary waste?

Again, none of these questions can be answered by reading the nutrition facts. (In fact, if it has a nutrition facts label, chances are, it’s overly-packaged!)

I prefer, in general, to eat foods that come without labels (by which I mean, foods I either helped harvest myself or foods I got from someone else who did – preferably a small, local farmer). But of course I still eat a certain number of foods from the grocery store.

When I do eat food from a package, I do generally examine one thing: the ingredients list. There, I can at least get some idea of what’s inside. I can look for whole, natural ingredients, and be alerted against sneaky fake foods. That store-bought, organic, plain yogurt might be high in sugar and fat according to the label, but I can see in the ingredients list that it doesn’t have anything unnatural in it – just milk, cream, and bacterial cultures.

I also check the labels for answers to my other questions: I check to see if it was grown in my home province, or else a neighbouring state or province. I look for organic certification. I look to see if it’s fair-trade. I also try to look for free-rang/cage-free, though these labels are less meaningful than I’d like. These all help me to decide whether it’s nourishing, and whether its production is contributing to the flourishing or degradation of the planet.

And I admit: I do sometimes look at the nutrition facts, but mostly the bottom portion which examines vitamins and minerals. For example, I was delighted to notice on my package of dried black beans the other day that it contains sky-high levels of folate and magnesium. Excellent. And I was encouraged to note that the organic extra-dark chocolate I sometimes give Lydia has large amounts of iron and fibre (as well as low sugar).

But this information doesn’t guide my decisions to the extent that other factors do.

* * *

I have personally concluded that the best foods are the ones that don’t come in packages and thus come without nutrition facts. And they’re best prepared in traditional ways.

I want my food to keep me healthy. Just like anyone else, I want my food to keep me slim and energized. But I also want it to keep my planet healthy, too. And I just don’t think nutrition facts will help me achieve those goals.

I believe that if I commit to eating a variety of real, locally-grown, unprocessed (or minimally-processed) foods, and if I live an active lifestyle, I don’t have to worry about fat and calories. I’ll be healthy and fit. My food will be nutrient-rich and satisfying.

What do you think? Do you believe there’s merit in reading the nutrition facts?

carrot photo courtesy of Ed Yourdon.

Lydia reading to her babies

April has been disappointingly yucky. Rain, cold, rain, cold. Besides our fun farm day last week and a few walks to the park, we’ve been mostly stranded inside. Boo.

But I have had the chance to discover a few wonderful books, bands, and recipes that I can’t wait to share with you!

Books

I only read one book cover-to-cover this month, but it was a superb read:

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life by Barbara Kingsolver. I picked this one up from the library after I saw it on one of Fiona’s book lists. It sounded like the kind of book I just had to read. And now I simply must own it!

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is an absorbing memoir documenting the author’s and her family’s experimental year of eating locally — only eating what they could grow themselves, or else acquire from farmers within a few miles of their home.

Kingsolver is, I believe, primarily a novelist; and her skill with narrative comes through in this beautiful memoir. Her prose is gorgeous. But she also knows her stuff: at the same time, the book includes plenty of more journalistic passages in which she explores — quite scathingly — the dominant food systems of America, and why we so urgently need to change it if we want to keep our families fed. (I know Canada’s situation is not that different.)

I found the book enormously fascinating, informative, spunky, inspiring, and convicting. I’ll never look at a banana the same way again. I never would have imagined I would find the sex lives of turkeys so surprising (Did you know that nearly 100% of the turkeys we eat have been bred in such a way that they can no longer reproduce themselves without technical assistance?). The final chapters, which follow the author’s journey trying to get her turkeys to procreate, had me sitting up in bed way past my bedtime, reading anxiously to find out whether it had a happy ending. (Spoiler alert: It does. Oh, so happy.)

Most importantly, this book had me re-committed to eating locally and seasonally. I might still eat the occasional banana, but it will no longer be a staple in this house — nor will green salads, except when they’re unavailable locally. Lots of thoughts and ideas are brewing.

I’ve also been browsing through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which I took out of the library on a whim. It’s been fun. I particularly enjoyed the section on sauces. I never knew what a hollandaise sauce was, or how it was related to mayo (the major difference? Melted butter instead of salad oil. Mmmmm). I haven’t made it yet, though. Turns out, dozens of different sophisticated-sounding sauces can be made by just adding or substituting a few ingredients in a basic mayonnaise or cream sauce. Cool, right?

I also came across an adorable kids’ book for Lydia: One Cool Friend by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by David Small. Lydia’s a little young to fully appreciate it, but we adults loved it! This story of a “proper young man” named Elliot who takes a penguin home from the aquarium is charming, handsomely illustrated, and has a funny surprise ending that Ben and I both found delightful.

 Television

We’re still just watching pirated episodes of Parks and Rec here and there when we have some time to relax. Light and funny entertainment, which is, most importantly, broken up into convenient 20-minute segments. We’ve all but given up on movies during this chapter of our lives (i.e. with a toddler who only goes to bed when we do.)

 Music

So I haven’t been into much music lately (mostly since we don’t have any media devices on which to listen to music. I know, right? The only piece of technology we own that can play music, aside from the CD players in our vehicles, is our desktop computer, which is in its own room off the toy room. Yeah. We’re that out of touch.)

But this month we finally bought a new album because it is the BEST THING I’VE HEARD in FOREVER: Walk off the Earth’s R.E.V.O.

Do you guys know this band? I understand that they got quite a bit of attention when this video went viral, where all five band members are playing a single guitar simultaneously. Their music videos are all crazy-unique. Apparently they’re quite popular already, and I might be the last person in the universe to have discovered them. Anyway, I am CRAZY IN LOVE. (I feel like I can’t use ENOUGH CAPS LOCK to convey my enthusiasm for this band.) This music is happy, clever, complex, and original. Love, love, love it. I tried to pick my favourite song but it’s hard because I love them all.

Also? They’re Canadian! Hooray for my fellow Canucks!

So if you’re not familiar with the band, here’s a funvideo to introduce you:

ACK! Wasn’t that so great?? I love everything about it. You should watch the “Making of” video, too! It’s so cool!!

And if you haven’t gotten enough, I also love this song and video:

Again, watch the incredible “Behind the Scenes” video to get your head blown up. Amazing!!

The only flaw that I can find with this band is that the girl is so incomprehensibly cool that every time I see/hear her do anything, I immediately begin to hate myself a little bit because I’ll never be a fraction as awesome.

I could go on, but I’ll stop there.  I highly recommend Walk off the Earth.

 In the Kitchen

I already bragged about this homemade cinnamon ice cream on Facebook. I made it using raw, pastured cream from my aunt; pastured eggs from my mom; and maple syrup from our own front yard. Since I was just reading Animal,Vegetable, Miracle, I felt especially pleased that I was able to enjoy this nourishing, indulgent treat without giving a single penny to a major corporation.

I’ve also been making batch after batch of these grain-free multiseed crackers. They’re much simpler than many of the other (wheat) crackers I’ve made. I make my own almond meal by grinding almonds in my Ninja food processor (it doesn’t need to be “blanched”). It only takes a minute. I also sub onion powder for the “dried minced onion.”

They’re so tasty — everyone who tries them demands the recipe. I love them with bruschetta-seasoned goat cheese.

We’ve had an unusually long, cold, wet winter around here.  It’s put a delay on our gardening, which has made me grumpy and anxious for the last several weeks. But at last we had a nice day, and my mom and I got to work.

(My and Ben’s property isn’t suited to growing things — our back yard is surrounded by tall trees which block out the sun and suck up all the nutrients  and water from the soil. So I garden with my mom. My family lives on a 5-acre farm, eight minutes away from where we live. I help pay for seeds and help with the gardening toil in exchange for unlimited fresh produce throughout the growing season. Yeah: it’s a pretty sweet deal.)

That’s why I’ve been a little quiet on the blog. Here’s what I’ve been up to.

We planted some cool-weather seeds.

We butchered a few chickens.

We covered the strawberries with straw.

We looked at the new kitties. (That was HARD WORK.)

Built a new raised bed . . .

And added some — ahem — fertilizer.

And here are some other pictures I couldn’t resist including:

The tractor, stuck in the mud. (Too much rain!)

One of the bulls. As my sister put it, “I love their stoic gaze.”

Narnia enjoying farm life.

Lydia on the trampoline (in her rubber boots, of course. Always the rubber boots.)

What have you been up to? Any gardening?

The other day, I got the thrilling, heart-squeezing news that a friend – who’d been struggling for years with infertility — was finally (finally!) pregnant. You guys: there is no better news in the world that I could ever hear. I’m smiling again just thinking about it.

What made the news so much more exciting was the fact that I’d been actively praying for this couple for years. And you know what? This was one of a fairly long string of couples for whom I’ve fervently prayed – often for years – and who have finally conceived.

(My favourite story is about a distant relative who’d already been unable to get and stay pregnant for close to ten years. She’d had multiple tragic miscarriages already. I helped her get connected with a Creighton Model FertilityCare medical consultant,* and after treatment and lots of prayer support, she finally conceived and gave birth to a gorgeous little girl. I’m crying again just writing about it.)

In other words, nearly everyone I’ve prayed for has eventually gotten pregnant and delivered a healthy baby. (Some, I’m still praying for. I’m not losing hope.)

I permanently house a special place in my heart for infertile couples. My personal experience with infertility unalterably changed me in that respect. It affected me so deeply and profoundly, I will never think about pregnancy the same way. Because it was so hard for me to achieve, pregnancy feels especially miraculous, elusive, and sacred. The subject is not one I take lightly. I feel like it must always be discussed in either reverent or wildly celebratory tones. I feel immediately and deeply connected to anyone who has carried or continues to carry the devastating burden of infertility.

As a result, I’ve never prayed for anything so earnestly or with so much passion as my own pregnancy, and the pregnancies of other struggling women. I’ve never wanted something so profoundly and urgently – for myself and for other women — and for such a long time. I prayed for these friends almost daily for years. It’s just so close to my heart. My supplications always turn to those whose wombs and arms are tragically empty. Their desire is so dear to me.

And so far, God has been answering those prayers. They’re getting pregnant. Not right away, but eventually. And it makes me ecstatic every time.

I feel silly admitting this, but I’ll just say it: I sometimes feel like I’m a champion of prayer when it comes to pregnancies for infertile couples.

I have never prayed for anything so intensely as this, and I’m almost always met with a miracle.

And for this reason, I’m asking you to let me pray for you.

Of course, I know that the stats are stacked in my favour: MOST infertile couples will eventually get pregnant, even if it takes a decade. So I’m praying for a miracle that already has pretty good odds of happening. I know that.

But still. It doesn’t make it any less exhilarating or feel any less miraculous when it happens.

I also know that prayer doesn’t work like magic or a mathematical equation. It’s not a matter of just doing it the right way for the right amount of time. There are no guarantees. I can’t promise you that if I pray for you, my prayer will be answered. Of course, there were many other factors involved in my own pregnancy and those of my friends (including other people’s prayers!).

To be honest, I really don’t understand prayer much at all.

I don’t know why some prayers are answered and others aren’t.

I do believe that God is actually unable to answer some prayers, and that it breaks his heart. For a variety of reasons – because he gave us and angels free will; because he put natural laws into play; etc – God’s will is not always manifest in this world.

If you yearn for biological children but haven’t been able to conceive, it is probably not God’s doing. He longs to grant you your desire. There are other things at work which are keeping you from your heart’s desire, and God is always working against them.**

God can, and does, perform miracles (i.e. enter into the natural realm and suspend the laws of nature for his own purposes); but sometimes – for whatever reason – God cannot fulfill a particular request. So I will pray anyway, knowing that somehow there is power in continued and passionate petition. God responds to our persistence (Lk 11:5-13; 18: 1-8). Jesus tells us time and time again that if we ask, God will give us what we seek (Matt 7:7, 11; 18: 19-20; Jn 14:13-16; 15:7; 16:23).

I also know that God and will eventually redeem all suffering.

Before I got pregnant, the words that comforted me (for some reason) were these: I am making all things new (Rev 21:5).

Things in the world aren’t right. But they will be. God is making all things new.

I also want you to know this:

God is not purposely withholding children from you to punish you or teach you something. He doesn’t work like that.

He does not hate you or your uterus. He has not cursed your ovaries. (I bring this up only because it’s what I felt at the time. I can’t count the number of times I demanded from God, “Why do you love everyone else’s uterus but hate mine?”)

We can never fully understand why we suffer, why good things are withheld from us. But we can know that God does not desire it. He’s on our side. He only wants good things for us.

And if the prayer of a righteous person really is powerful and effective (James 5:16), I will do my best to be righteous and to pray without ceasing.

* * *

So please: let me pray for you. I promise I will pray often and with much passion. It means so much to me.

Share as much information as you feel comfortable with – a name, how long you’ve been waiting. (Even if it’s been just a few months. I know that even a few months of trying are devastating.) If you don’t feel comfortable talking about it in the comments below, please email me at kathleenquiring(at)gmail(dot)com.

Here’s what I’m going to pray: that you achieve pregnancy, and bring to term a healthy baby.

And if, for whatever reason, that simply IS NOT possible, I will pray that you and your partner find peace, fulfillment, and joy. That God will lead you down another path – whether it’s adoption, fostering, teaching, or another future entirely that may or may not directly include children – which brings you deeper into mutual love and understanding. That you are comforted, and that God never feels too far away. That you find peace in knowing that all your questions will not be answered, but that God’s love for you in never-ending.

I wish you so much peace and joy.

* * *

*By the way: I have another friend who was also able to conceive with the help of NaProTECHNOLOGY and the Creighton Model FertilityCare System.  If you are struggling with infertility, I highly recommend looking into this amazing medical institute. For fellow Ontario residents, there is a doctor in Toronto who I personally saw who might be able to help you. Feel free to email me if you have any questions – I’d be happy to help.

**I am not a biblical scholar, and I don’t have the time, space, or desire to expand much more here on the subject of suffering in the world and why God doesn’t answer every prayer. However, I highly recommend Gregory Boyd’s book on the subject, Is God to Blame? Moving Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering which delves deeper into this matter. It is the most brilliant and easiest-to-read treatment of the matter I’ve come across.

Image courtesy of courtneycarmody.

In my last post, I told the story of how we finally were able to ditch the diapers just before my daughter turned 19 months old, after practicing elimination communication from her birth.

I wanted to just offer a few more reflections on the experience, and share whether we would do it again, and if so, what we’d do differently and what we’d do the same.

I figured now was probably the best time to consider the pros and cons, now that we’re done with the worst part but not so far removed from the experience that we’ve forgotten what it was like. Now that we’re out of it, my opinions aren’t under the influence of crushing frustration, but neither is my memory clouded by nostalgia.

Because, as I mentioned in my last post, there were LOTS of times when I regretted ever having started. It felt like way too much work for not enough payoff. I still had to wash just as many diapers as anybody (since I had to change her diaper after every single pee, rather than letting them accumulate in her diaper), but I was also putting way more thought and effort into caring for her elimination overall. We just didn’t seem to be getting the hang of it. It felt like I was wasting my time.

There were plenty of days when I just wanted to call it quits. To just strap on a diaper and forget about it. Nobody else bothered to pay attention to their kids’ elimination for the first 2-3 years; why was I doing it?

But then I would remember why I’d started in the first place:

• I just couldn’t let me kid sit in her own waste, knowing that there was another way. It just felt gross and wrong.

• Sticking with EC would still mean fewer diapers in the long run, because she would (hopefully!!) be done with diapers much sooner than if we took the conventional route.

• I rarely had to clean up poop. We at least had that part fairly down-pat.

On those bad days, I had to remind myself that it was working, and I was succeeding, in many of the ways I’d hoped . . . even if it didn’t feel very successful sometimes.

Even on our worst days, I had to acknowledge that I was experiencing many of the benefits of EC. I had sidestepped a whole host of common diapering and potty training problems:

• My daughter knew, from the very start, that pee and poop belonged in the potty. That’s not something I ever had to teach her. The potty was never a source of confusion or anxiety. It was a natural part of her life from day one.

• Because she never, ever sat in her own urine for longer than a few seconds, she never had a speck of diaper rash her entire life, and I never used a speck of diaper cream.

• I never had to deal with diaper leaks at night. She was dry through the night starting at four months. (I think we just got lucky here. I pottied her at night for the first four months, but then after that, she just didn’t pee at night any more.)

• From 3 – 18 months, I probably had to change about one poopy diaper a month. All the rest went straight into the potty. I don’t think I have to expand on why that was awesome.

And finally: I was completely done with diapers before she was even 19 months old – a full year earlier than the national average. How many parents get that? Not only is there the obvious advantage of not having to personally handle another person’s waste, but this is so much better for our bank account and for the planet (the same planet that your kids and mine will have to live on, I might remind you. You’re welcome.)

But like I said: there were plenty of days when none of this felt worth it. I got so very, very tired and frustrated some days.

So the question remains: would I do it again?

 Probably, yeah.

The thing is, I don’t think I could not do it. I just can’t see myself ever being content to let a baby in my care pee and poop herself. I couldn’t be one of those moms watching her baby and laughing in a sing-song voice, “Are you pooping?” and then just sit around and let it happen, only to have to clean it up later. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It boggles my mind when I see other moms do it. If you know she’s pooping, why don’t you do something about it? Do you like wiping poop off her bum? Do you like throwing out your money? Do you want your kid to grow up in a world piled high with toxic garbage? (My inner monologue can be a little melodramatic.) You want her to think her diaper is a toilet?

So yeah – I don’t think I have a choice but to practice EC in the future.

However, I would do a few things differently.

1. I wouldn’t start from birth. Newborn babies just pee and poop way too dang much. I remember Lydia wetting or dirtying all 24 diapers in one day when she was a newborn. It was just way too much headache to try to keep up with that. I would maybe start with pottying around 3 months, when peeing and pooping slows down significantly.

2. I would lower my expectations DRAMATICALLY. Gone are my expectations to be done with diapers before my baby’s first birthday. That’s just crazy. It might work for some people, and in other cultures, but it didn’t work for me. I wouldn’t ever place that expectation on myself or my child again.

Instead, I would aim to just get some or most pees in the potty, and to keep using diapers until two. If we managed to be done earlier than that (as we did with Lydia), that would be an amazing bonus; but I wouldn’t count on it.

With Lydia, because I assumed we’d be able to go diaper-free so much earlier, I felt like an utter failure when we weren’t. I went so crazy, wondering what we were doing wrong, why we sucked so bad at it.

In the future, if I let go of these expectations, I would be able to enjoy the benefits I was already granted.

It would have made the whole process immeasurably easier and more enjoyable if I’d known it would take as long as it did.

Any thoughts or questions? Have you tried EC? What was your experience?

Linking up with Your Green Resource on Red and Honey.

It finally happened. We’ve been practicing elimination communication since her birth, and at a year and 7 months, Lydia is finally using the potty full-time. We are done with diapers.

And no, we never “potty-trained.”

Being done with diapers is ah-freaking-mazing.

I never though I minded diapers all that much (we used cloth) until I was done with them, and then I realized how GREAT life is without them.

I can’t decide which is my favourite part about being diaper-free:

• Being able to put regular pants on her, instead of the leg-warmers I used to facilitate easy pottying and diaper-changing. Pants are so much cuter and don’t leave her upper thighs bare.
• Not having to do laundry every other night.
• Not having to fight with a squirmy kid who doesn’t want to lay still for a diaper change.

But I think this is my ultimate favourite: not having to bring a diaper bag with me everywhere I go. I just keep a small wet bag and and extra pair of pants in my purse, just in case. Minimalism at its finest.

* * *

As happy as I am to be done, I have to admit that I still feel like it took way too long, since we started at birth. I honestly believed we’d be done with diapers a long time ago. After reading all the literature on elimination communication (EC), I thought for sure we’d be done by a year — at the latest. In fact, I even contemplated NOT BUYING DIAPERS after we were done with the first pack of newborn disposables we’d been given at Lydia’s birth. Can you believe I was that crazy?! That’s how much I believed in EC, though.

So when you look at it from that expectation, taking all the way to 19 months actually feels kind of humiliating. Talk about an epic failure. It took between 6-18 months longer than I anticipated.

So many times throughout our journey, I wanted to give up. I felt like a complete failure. I regretting having ever started — it took way too much mental energy. I was an idiot and a washout.

Now that we’re here, though, I think I’m glad I did it.

So here’s the story of how we finally finished up with diapers. I’ve written about earlier phases in our EC adventure: at two months (really optimistic), and here’s a more recent one at 15 months (really frustrated).

A Happy Ending at Last

This part of the story starts with Lydia at about 18 months old, and me LOSING MY MIND. She was still peeing in her diaper several times a day. She still never signaled that she had to pee — EVER. This was something I’d been led to believe she would have started months and months ago. The only reason we ever got pee in the potty was because I relied on timing — she generally peed upon waking, and then about every hour she was awake.

She still peed 10-12 times every day. (Note: my research suggests that this is not typical. Most toddlers pee closer to 5-6 times a day, which would have been a lot more manageable.) So even though we got half the pees in the potty, I was still changing diapers and cleaning up puddles constantly. (I almost never had to clean up poop, though. It was usually obvious that she was starting to go, and we’d just whisk her to the potty).

She didn’t seem to be even slightly bothered by sitting in a wet diaper, which went against everything the literature told me.

I tried putting her in underwear, since everyone said the dramatic wetness would be so alarming and uncomfortable she wouldn’t be able to help but start signaling. Wrong. She just soaked her pants without a word and kept doing what she was doing. She would even pee on my lap without a sound — another thing all the EC-ers said babies didn’t do.

ARGH.

I felt like a dupe. Either someone had misled me, or I was some kind of moron who couldn’t figure it out. This whole EC thing was a sham.

Finally, in desperation, I contacted one of the only EC-ers I know — a fellow (former) blogger. I asked her how things were going with her daughter, who’s about 8 months older than Lydia.

Turns out, her little girl hadn’t been done with diapers until she was about Lydia’s age, either. And she mostly still relied on timing, too (though it was a lot less frequent than Lydia’s).

That conversation made me feel a little better about where we were at. I was able to relax a bit.

She lent me her copy of Oh Crap: Potty Training to look over, in case it had any helpful advice.

I started reading it, and was really thinking I’d like to put it into practice as soon as we got back from our Tennessee trip in a few weeks.

And suddenly, for no discernible reason whatsoever, we went a whole day without a single wet diaper.

I continued to be diligent about putting Lydia on the potty every hour (and upon waking), and for the first time ever, she peed in the potty every time. It was a miracle.

We had a few misses the next day, but then we had another miss-free day after that.

I was feeling super-optimistic. I started putting her in pants without a diaper. We’d go to the store with just training pants. As long as I stuck to the schedule, we stayed dry.

But the real magic happened while we were on vacation. We were driving for 6 hours at a time to our destination in Tennessee. We had her in just pants — I was that confident in our abilities now.

Suddenly, at one point a few hours into the drive, she yelled, “Peepee!” We hurried to a rest stop, but were too late. Just as we were pulling in, she peed her pants.

But we were still in good spirits. She’d told us she needed to go!

This happened one more time before we headed straight for the nearest Ikea and got her a little potty to keep in the van.

And from then on, she has told us when she has needed to pee or poop (sometimes getting the words mixed up), and we’ve helped her do it in the potty or the nearest toilet.

We’d done it while on the road, while in the grocery store, when walking by the library. She’s usually going commando, but sometimes I put on her training pants as a safeguard.

We’ve been out of diapers for about a month.

We still have occasional misses — sometimes once a day, for a couple days in a row — and it usually happens because I’m in a different room or (*cough*) on a different floor in the house. Sometimes she forgets until she’s already peeing, in which case she yells out just as a puddle is forming at her feet. After all the pee I’ve cleaned up, that’s nothing.

And other times, we manage to stay completely dry for several days straight.

So we’re done with diapers. They’re packed away in a closet for some other baby to use.

But not this one. This baby is no longer a baby.

I still want to wrap up my thoughts in a short follow-up post, where I reflect on what I’m glad I did, what would do differently next time, what I regret, etc.

Have you tried EC, or early potty training? What was your experience? Do you think you’d give it a try, after hearing our experience?

Linking up with Your Green Resource at SortaCrunchy.