Freed of Fear - the battle continues

Fear is a debilitating enemy! Even when you think you have it conquered in one area of your life, it can still aim to pop up in yet another area. It can weaken us and cause us to act impulsively, contrary to Holy Spirit's guidance.

Just this week I was faced with a big ol' fear that left me feeling slightly sick. I experienced an overwhelming temptation to act entirely rash. The situation that instigated the fear was not nearly as important as the root issue which manifested as fear itself. Thankfully, a sweet friend, whom I was speaking with on the phone, heard it and said, "You know, it sounds like there is a lot of fear attached to this subject." In an instant I knew she was right. She offered to pray for me, and I said "Yes please."

As soon as she prayed, I literally felt the spirit of fear lifting off of me. I am not into wackiness, so when I say I felt the spirit of fear lifting off, I will try to further explain it as a heaviness that lifted. Fear can sometimes feel like a weight on our shoulders. For the first time in a few days I felt as if I could breath easier. Once it was gone I again felt at peace; light, energetic, and full of joy!

I thanked my friend profusely! It was only a simple prayer she prayed, but it was filled with a Truth that reminded my heart of the Lord's plans for my family and I. Truth always stomps out fear when we choose to believe it.

So I bring this to you. Is there an area of fear in your life? Are you acting irrationally about something and don't know why? Loot to the root. Chances are, it could be fear, and can therefore be dealt with by enforcing Truth over top of it.

Depending on the size of the root, repeated applications of Truth may be necessary. Speak the Truth out loud and repeatedly until the peace comes. Take as many times a day as needed. You can not overdose on too much of God. Remember, you are all children of the Most High God!

Who ever believes will be saved.......even from fear! For perfect Love (Jesus) casts out fear!
Be encouraged.

For some reason, this post made me think of this song.....enjoy! Live Free by Lecrae

Burning Heart

I think I mentioned last week that I had started to go to a Women's Intercession meeting once a week. Well I went again this week, and I am telling you what! I come home every time with my heart filled to overflowing with the Spirit, so much so that my heart burns. I walk around my house like I'm hyped up on some drug, and I just gotta say, Holy Spirit is better than any drug ever! I am sure of it!

After this weeks meeting I even had to call my mother and process through some of what had gone on, just so that I could calm down enough to carry on with the rest of my day.

Not only is the Lord speaking to me during the meetings, showing me and exciting me to pray for the specific things that are on His heart for that day, but He has been using me to speak some things out in the meetings. I do not usually like to speak out in meetings, especially when I am so new to the group, but after having completed the Song of Solomon study in June, I have begun to believe the things the Lord spoke over me out of that study.

One of the things the Lord has spoken to me through the Songs study and also through people who have spoken into my life, is that the Lord has given me the Word of the Lord in my mouth. Once, the Lord even showed me a vision of it.  In a time of contemplative prayer I asked the Lord how He sees me. He showed me a warrior, and I prayed for Him to make me a warrior for Him, and I prayed for the Lord to put the Sword in my hand. In the vision, He showed me as the warrior again, but the Sword was coming out of my mouth.

Well, it would seem to me now that the Lord is really starting to let some of that be manifested in the physical. I've known for some time that the Lord has called me to be a warrior in the Spirit. As an intercessor, I make war on darkness every time I engage in a time of prayer, whether corporate or personal. To be making verbal declarations in a corporate prayer meeting though, that is a bit more out of my element.  I think that is just how the Lord likes it too. He likes to use me in ways that I could never take the credit for. Keeps me humble.

Even in my humility though, I am constantly left dazzled by how He has used me, even the way He used me this week. I feel so grateful to see Him using me as a vessel to touch others. For the last several years, He has been teaching me things and molding me in the 'unseen'. And when I say 'unseen', I mean I have no platform or area to express all that He teaches or gives to me. Most of it is used in my home where no one by my husband and children see it, and the Lord of course sees it all!  Yet now He has used me twice to pray aloud in a meeting of women, and I am overcome by it. It excites me that He could use someone like me. It shows me how good it feels to be used by the Lord, and makes me want to please Him even more with my love and obedience.

So why am I writing about all of this. Partly because I am so excited and undone by the way the Lord has been speaking thru me, leading me in prayer (out loud) for others in a corporate setting. I'm also writing it as an encouragement. That nothing that is taught to you by the Holy Spirit in the secret times of our personal lives is wasted, and we can never know the full intentions of the Lord in the wisdom and revelations that He gives to us. When we take the time to 'seek' Him and know Him, then He responds by giving us more and more truth and revelation and wisdom well beyond ourselves.

I am not anyone special in the natural world. I am a stay at home mom with three babies and a husband that I strive to take good care of. Yet I love the Lord and I choose to believe the things the Scriptures say about Him and what He says about me (in relationship to Himself). Therefore I am His child. I am even His favorite one! He is willing to speak the mysteries of the universe to me because I am His, and I am attempting to live according to His will for my life. Does that make sense?

Therefore He uses me as one of His vessels, and I am able to touch others by the power of His Spirit that lives inside of me. All I have to do is be open and obedient. It helps, though, that I try to spend daily time with Him. It makes it easier to hear Him when He is prompting me to step out, when I know His voice well, and have the confidence that comes with spending that time with Him. I wrote about the importance of spending daily time with the Lord here, if you want to read more about how I pull that off as a mother of three.

Pretty much the whole point of this blog is to build up other women and mothers with the revelations and teaching I have received over the last few years. Things I have learned from just living life with the Lord and things He has shown me personally. Other posts are about things that I have learned from good Christian teaching and put into practice in my personal life. Things that I think would be helpful to other women to know about or consider.

The Lord loves to pour out wisdom and revelation on those He loves, and He loves you. Be encouraged.

The Game Plan

Okay, so in the last post, you can find it here, I talked about the importance of my schedule in direct proportion to my ability to function in daily life and still find time to spend with Jesus.

Today I am going to give you a glimpse of what my schedule looks like.  On the front end I will tell you how I came about this schedule and be as honest as I can about how I work this thing.

First off, I did not even have a schedule before I had children. I didn't see the need for it, I was so overly confident that I could run the world without any sort of organization in my approach. For as often as my no-plan approach to running a house failed me, I always excused the failure with the idea that the lack affected no one but myself. If my husband was inconvenienced by the failure, I silently argued that he was an adult and could take care of his end of things when I didn't get around to it. I was really selfish during that stage of my life. Just being honest.

It was when children entered the picture that I realized my foolishness at not having a game plan. Now my failure did affect others much smaller and much more dramatic than myself. Kids thrive on routine, and I had none. All that to say, my life was a mess. My house was a mess. My emotions were a mess.

My husband told me to make a schedule. I laughed, I cried, and told him all the reason why a schedule was not the answer for me. Then I tried it.

First schedule, with one baby, was only a partial success, but it was still more of a success than having no schedule. So I revamped it, made it rather flexible. Tried again, a small increase in the success margin.

Revamped it again, and again, and again, enter baby two. More revamping. Shifting things to make a way for me to work part time while still running my house successfully. More success, but with success came the lesson of saying no, even to good things. How did I know which things to give up and which to keep?

With my 'Mommy Manifesto'.......another topic for another day, but it is pretty much a list of life goals, life vision if you will. Wanna read about my beliefs in having a life vision....check it out here. Been there, wrote that post a while back. Enjoy.

So these goals in my Mommy Manifesto help me know what is important to me personally. Some are general, others are more specific, but they help me pick which things to put in my schedule. For example, if intercession is important to me, then putting time in my schedule for that is one of the first priorities.  I put in the things that are the most important to me first, then I fill in the gaps with other things in order of decreasing priority.

Something I started a few years ago was an attempt to start 'tithing' my time to the Lord. That equals about 18 hrs of God time a week. Since that is pretty important to me, I put that time in my schedule first, giving it priority even above cleaning.

Now that I have confessed to something as radical sounding as 'tithing' my time to the Lord though, I should go ahead and mention that my schedule is not a cruel task master to me. It is more like a game plan, an overall goal for the week. More often than I care to mention, I do not get all 18 hrs in for the week. Heck, I don't even get all my scheduled cleaning in for most weeks. It is a goal people. I'm not perfect yet and neither is my schedule. If something doesn't happen though, I no longer beat myself up over it, I just shrug my shoulders and try again the next week.

I also leave a lot of flexibility in it. I have laundry on Wednesday and Friday mornings and I have a play date time slot on Thursday afternoons. If my friends can't hang out Thursday afternoon though, then I can switch one of my laundry mornings for that week to Thursday aftrnoon and have a morning play date instead. Or if I allot myself an hour for making dinner, but we have lots of left overs, then my girls and I can do something extra that afternoon because dinner will not take that long to prepare.

Making sense? I hope so.

So now that you know how I have developed this schedule, I am going to show you my current schedule. I have had this new schedule for about a month. My previous schedule I had for about three months. I would have to say that three months is about how long on average I have any given schedule before I need to make some changes to it. I usually re-evaluate my schedules every three months because with little toddlers, things just change that quickly. With a new baby, who knows how long this current schedule will last. Here is is anyways.

8/1/2012	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
7:15 A	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls	wake girls
7:30 A	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast	breakfast
7:45 A	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up
8:00 A	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer	computer
8:15 A	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep	prep
8:30 A	prep
8:45 A	prep
9:00 A	MSF
9:15 A	MSF
9:30 A	MSF	prep	prep	Laundry	prep	Laundry
9:45 A	MSF	prep	prep	Laundry	prep	Laundry
10:00 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:15 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:30 A	MSF	errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
10:45 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Coffee	Laundry
11:00 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Interc.	Laundry
11:15 A		errands	Coffee	Laundry	Interc.	Laundry
11:30 A	prep	errands	Coffee	prep	Interc.	prep
11:45 A	prep	errands	Coffee	prep	Interc.	prep
12:00 P	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	Interc.	clean up	clean up
12:15 P	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Interc.	Lunch	Lunch
12:30 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	Interc.	prayer	swing cl
12:45 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:00 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:15 P	make up	prayer	clean up	prayer	clean up	prayer	swing cl
1:30 P	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading
1:45 P	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading	reading
2:00 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:15 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:30 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
2:45 P	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer	school	Prayer
3:00 P			school	outing	school		school
3:15 P			school	outing	school		school
3:30 P			school	outing	school		school
3:45 P				outing	clean up
4:00 P				outing	clean up
4:15 P				outing	clean up
4:30 P				outing	clean up
4:45 P				outing	clean up
5:00 P	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes	dishes
5:15 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
5:30 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
5:45 P	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking	cooking
6:00 P	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
6:15 P	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner
6:30 P	clean up	clean up	clean up	clean up	Sm. Group	clean up	clean up
6:45 P					Sm, Group
7:00 P	MESH/MOMS				Sm. Group
7:15 P	MESH/MOMS				Sm. Group
7:30 P	MESH/MOMS	clean up	clean up	clean up	Sm. Group	clean up	clean up
7:45 P	MESH/MOMS	reading	reading	reading	Sm. Group	reading	reading
8:00 P	MESH/MOMS	Bedtime	Bedtime	Bedtime	Sm. Group	Bedtime	Bedtime
8:15 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
8:30 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
8:45 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
9:00 P	MESH/MOMS	Prayer		Prayer	Sm. Group	EGS	prep sch.
God-hrs	5	2.5	1.5	2.5	4.5	2.5	1.5
							20

Please take note of all the blank space. I no longer feel it necessary to fill in all the gaps with something. The blanks are free time, places to stick extra things that pop up from week to week. Some of my other scheduled entries are rather general, like 'reading'. I would like that to be my Bible most of the time, but sometimes it is a really good Christian book instead.  You will see my totals for tithed time at the bottom, which totals 20 hrs. instead of the 18 that I told you. That is so if I miss a few hours a week, it still comes out to 18 or so. If I get all these hours in, then I give the Lord a bit extra. No harm in that, right?

A few of the entries you will not know what I mean, like 'make up' day and 'swing clean', which both deal with my specific cleaning chores for the week. Hey, it's my schedule, it makes sense to me. Yours will make sense to you when you make it!

Now, if you have questions, let me know. Seriously, if you have questions, I want to try to answer them. Post them on here, and thanks for taking the time to read about me and my schedule.

The Lord is a God of order, He can help you be more so. Be encouraged.


*Note, after posting this I realized that part of my schedule is cut off.....but is mostly just more of the same format as the portion you can see. The only thing to note is most of my Saturday is wide open on my schedule because that is my Sabbath. You should always try to protect your sabbath and really try to rest and keep it low stress. :-) It's healthy.

Fresh Water & Salt Water

After another absence from blogging, I am back and I want to write about a very candid topic; looking at some of the inner workings of my own heart and life.

As a Christian, I desire daily to work toward a life that resembles Jesus' life. That make sense, right? Since that is what He said to do. Yet, how one goes about doing that is easier said than done.

Recently I just had my third child. So now I have a baby boy in arms and a whole new season I'm walking into. One that includes caring for three children, homeschooling my first born, potty training my second, and attempting to organize my life to make sure laundry, dishes, and dinner all get accomplished at different points throughout my week. Where do I fit Jesus into all of that?

This is where I mention my amazing beliefs in the power of a well thought out schedule.

People, especially mothers, wonder how I can have a schedule. I look at them and say, I don't know how you can survive without one. Nothing would ever get done around my house, and I would constantly be filled with anxiety over all the things that were being left 'undone'. Let me not waste this post on how to make a schedule though. I will maybe blog about that later.

My real reason for coming on here today to write was to show you how I try to find a bit of Jesus in my every day in a practical way and one of the main benefits I have noticed.

I have heard people tell me over the years, "Oh, I just want more of the Lord, you just have to hunger after the things of the Lord....."
Okay people, how does one hunger after the Lord in a realistic type way? How does one actually get more of the Lord?

For me, it looks like setting a daily prayer time for myself. When you want more of the Lord, genuinely, you have to make time for Him. Which in a realistic way means scheduling time for Him and there is nothing religious about doing that. I try to meet with Him even when I don't feel like it, because I know in the long run it is going to feed my heart and time spent with the Lord is never wasted. I am constantly reminding myself that God is not a feeling. Even when I don't "feel" Him, that is irrelevant, He is there, and talking to Him is always beneficial.

So, back to the point. Out of that daily time with the Lord come all kinds of fruits. Like I have more revelation into the hearts of my children, and more joy, and when things do go wrong (which they do plenty of the time), then I have more grace and peace to handle them. I accept criticism better, and am able to glean truth from the most bizarre places because I can hear the Lord's voice more easily. You wanna know why? That time helps to retune my ears to Holy Spirit's voice. Being able to hear the Lord's voice is tantamount to my life being full of grace, peace, and all those other fruits.

Now on from here, I have to also mention that I have incorporated a corporate time of prayer once a week in my schedule with some other ladies. They meet to pray over the women's ministry at our church. It is women praying for women, and let me just tell you, it is some powerful stuff being accomplished in the Spirit in that room on Thursday mornings. Powerful.

In fact, I come home from those meetings and catch myself singing to the Lord while I make my girls lunch. I catch myself laughing out loud as I feel the Lord recall to me some of the things He has spoken over me that day.  I marvel at His kindness toward me. In other words, I am on cloud nine.

Then, in the next breath, I yell at my four year old for bringing rocks in the house and my two year old for waking up the baby.

Fail.

It happened today. I came home glowing in the Spirit, then came crashing down as reality hit and I reacted in the flesh. Flesh equals my sin nature, my earthly side, the side that doesn't readily magnify the Lord, etc.

Immediately I felt the guilt, shame, and even anger well up. Then I heard the Lord whisper to me the scripture about 'can fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?'

Here is the whole scripture:
      "With it (the tongue) we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessings and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and salt water? Can a fig tree, my brothers, bear olives, or a grapevine produce figs? Neither can a salt pond yield fresh water."
     - James 3: 9-12

In fact, that entire passage on the power of the tongue in James always chaffs me pretty badly. If there is one member of my body that causes me more trouble, it is my tongue.

That whispered scripture to my heart was my gentle reprimand from the Lord. It convicted my spirit and I repented.

What does this have to do with my blog post today, you ask?
Everything.

How many of you can relate to spending a great time with the Lord and then in the next breath utterly failing Him by yelling at your kids (or some other sin). So what do you do now?

When I repented to the Lord, I then went and called my children to me and asked for their forgiveness. I apologized and loved on them a bit and made sure to explain to them what I did that was wrong.

Humbling. Yes. To be sure.

Healthy. Yes, all the way.

Wholeness. Yes. That was my reward.

When we repent, there is always wholeness and peace that follow for those who love the Lord. I had to first be able to hear His voice though. That comes with spending time with Him near daily. It is a benefit of that time spent with Him that I was able to hear Him so quickly and correct the behavior. The quicker we are able to repent, the quicker we are able to carry on with the rest of our day in wholeness with the Lord.

People may look at my life and see the time that I spend daily with the Lord and think something like, "Wow, she must have it all together." Now you know, that is not even close to the truth.

Or maybe they think, "She seems overly religious, I wonder if she is some kind of hypocrite." Yes sometimes I may be a hypocrite, but then there is repentance for that too. As for religious. That isn't the word I would use. I am going for holiness, and that is not quite the same thing. Holiness is a lifestyle that brings us closer to the Lord, it only becomes religious if your heart motives are wrong.

Or maybe they think, "Wow, if she spends all that time with the Lord and still sins that easily, what good is all that prayer doing for her." Ha! I would be worse off I didn't have all that prayer time. I might not even recognize my sin and go on doing it, all the while, wounding my children and myself. It is a gift that I can hear the Lord's correction so clearly, and it comes from spending time with Him and knowing His voice.

The point is, I'm gonna sin no matter what, until the day I die. Spending time with Jesus keeps an open line of communication between me and Him, so I can hear Holy Spirit's voice more clearly. Sometimes He needs to speak a reprimand but when I can hear Him clearly, it is a blessing because I can correct the behavior quicker than if I didn't have my ears tuned into His voice.  It takes a lot of practice in hearing Holy Spirit to recognize Him over all the other voices that would try to talk to me.

The other voices try to make me feel like a failure. Or they try to convince me that I am justified in feeling the way I do, or they feed me excuses on why it was okay to act a certain way.

Yet, Holy Spirit's voice is always gentle, and when I walk away from a time of being reprimanded, I always feel empowered to do better. Empowered to make war on that sin in my life. It is worth the time invested in daily prayer and fellowship with the Lord to be able to know the difference.

Hope that all makes sense.

And the Lord always corrects those He loves. Be encouraged.

He has Arrived!!!!

So I am back to the blog world, after finally having my baby boy. Which I will say up front, has thus far helped to restore a certain amount of brain function to me. Sleepless-ness is still something of a factor, but the level of physical fatigue has mostly abated. For which I am entirely grateful.
Heard of the pregnancy fog? Well I had it bad for the whole last three months.
I lamented more than once to my husband and friends that I was worried they would no longer find me a good companion since I was barely able to make intelligible comments in response to their conversation. More than once I would have to stop mid sentence because I had completely forgot what I was going to say. Embarrassing?
Yes.
So what did I do in the last few months instead of blogging?
I watched British classical period romances like Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Daniel Deronda, Wives and Daughters....just to name a few. Some I watched multiple times.
Sad.
I know.
Something in those British feeds me though, their wit, their romance, their dry humor, their silly way of saying a lot without saying what they are really trying to say.
To feed my thirst for period romances, I even went so far as to sign up for a free trial of Netflix for my last month of pregnancy.....with absolutely no intention of keeping my membership. Gasp. I'm sure Netflix knows that people like me exist, and are secretly hoping I forget to cancel my membership in time so they can at least reap one months worth of dues out of me. Alas, that hope failed with me. Knowing my own disposition to forget such details, I wrote down the day to cancel in my day planner and thus got away without paying a dime.

That is not what I got on here to write about. My mind may have partially returned so I can form complete thoughts, but it still is a rambling sort of business for me to tell a story.
My boy has arrived.
Keith Wesley arrived June 27th at 4:20am, and he is beautiful. For all those people out there who aren't on facebook, but would be on my blog....
Hahahaha, I'm not sure there are people that fit that description who actually exist, but anyhow.
Here he is, the same photo I used on my birth announcement project for him.... from Shutterfly.com. You will see my previous post with a link to my birth announcement project. I got 10 of those announcements practically for free with a promo from Pampers.
Wow, a lot of name dropping from me today. Netflix, Shutterfly, and Pampers all in one post.
Without further ado though, here is:
My boy.

Stationery card

Polka Dots Boy Birth Announcement

Personalized cards for babies, Valentines, Easter and Mother's Day.

View the entire collection of cards.

Ideas for Mommies

With my last few weeks of pregnancy staring me in the face and the realization that my spirit of grace is lacking more often than I like to mention. It has caused me to look in my 'bag of mommy' tricks that I have picked up over the last four years that help me cope with stressful days/weeks and keep my sanity.

Number 1: Keep schedule sanity.
If I know I am having a hard time keeping my cool, then I don't over schedule myself. Sorry friends, but if you don't see me much for the next six weeks, it is because I need as much focus as possible keeping my cool at home. I have a rough set limit of one out of the house activity a day. Thursdays is my exception to the rule. If I push myself beyond that at this point, my hips hurt, I don't remember to drink enough water and I turn into 'mean mommy' well before it is time to put my children safely in their beds.

Number 2: Treat yourself.
This could could look like an extra nap if my husband has the kids under control. It could be drinking a favorite fruit drink (or even just ice water with lemon) out of a fancy glass. It could be hiding my face in the pantry to shove a handful of dark chocolate chips in my mouth while the kids aren't looking. It could be taking a walk. It almost never costs money.

Number 3: Plan a Picnic.
When I am feeling stressed or tired, the last thing I want to do is clean up a big mess at the end of dinner. So every so often, when I want a no-brainer kind of meal, I plan a picnic dinner. My kids love it, are pre-occupied with the change in scenery (I find the scenery therapeutic as well), and at the end I didn't have to clean up much of anything.

Number 4: Early baths & then a movie.
The name says it all. When my kids are up in my business and I need them to chill out and leave me alone so I can pull my sanity back, I give them a bath. They love it, they are self contained in the bathroom, I don't worry about the water mess (mine are girls, maybe if you have boys they make more water mess?), and at the end they are calmer (and clean) most of the time. Or maybe I'm just calmer to have had that 20+ minute break while they splashed around. Then, to take it a step further sometimes. To keep them from making a big mess before bed, we just have movie night. Since we don't watch many movies, they love this and we snuggle and by the end of the movie I again feel like maybe I am a decent mommy.

Number 5: Simple Dinners.
When it has been 'one of those' days, then I always have a back up plan for dinners. Ingredients on hand that are simple and quick to throw together; something the kids will eat and I can enjoy too. Nothing worse than being at your wits end and then have to come home to cook something that takes an hour. When I can't bear the thought of standing at the counter chopping/prepping dinner, I pull out one of my no-fail recipes. My two favorites: eggs and toast & 30 min. tuna casserole.  I also use hot dogs and homemade mac n cheese (if my husband hasn't eaten all the hot dogs). These are recipes that are not focused on health per say, so much as they feed my mental health with their simplicity.


Hope these were helpful to you. If you have any creative ways you keep your sanity on days when you feeling it slipping, please post a comment. I'm always happy to add more tricks to my bag.