Heather Holleman's Blog, page 91

A Great Recipe with Lots of Dill

I absolutely love finding recipes that make use of whatever I’m currently harvesting in my garden. As you know, I have an abundance of dill. I also have many green chives. So imagine my delight when I found this delicious Simple Lemon Dill Quinoa Chickpea Salad from Kitchen Treaty. 

The website: https://www.kitchentreaty.com/simple-lemon-dill-quinoa-chickpea-salad/

I replaced the scallions with my fresh chives. I let the salad sit for about an hour, and when I served it, my husband could not stop gobbling it up! I had two servings as well. So good! We served it alongside our fish and asparagus, and we loved it.

Gather your dill! Gather your chives! (about a half cup of each, chopped) Toss them into a bowl with a cup of cooked quinoa and a can of rinsed chickpeas. Whisk together 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1/4 cup olive oil, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Pour this over your bowl of quinoa, chickpeas, dill, and chives (or scallions). Let it sit–the longer the better!

So easy! So yummy!

Enjoy some dill this summer!

Daily Little Harvest for One

I confess to you now: I sometimes eat every raspberry, every ground cherry, and every green bean without even offering them to anyone else. It’s my daily little harvest for one.

For Some, This Blesses

I find myself complaining about the awful humidity here in central Pennsylvania. I feel like I’m walking through a bog, a swampland, a sweaty shower room, or a jungle. You get the idea. The air feels heavy and moist. It’s oppressive. It even feels hard to breath.

Ugh! You cannot take a long walk in this! I call out to the neighborhood, “This is Pennsylvania, not the deep South! What is happening!?”

But then I remember something. It’s funny I remember this at the precise moment of my complaining.

I remember these exact conditions I detest create the perfect environment for my gardenia cuttings to root and thrive. In fact, I’m growing them in my bathroom so they can enjoy the humid, moist air after everyone showers. Oh, the blessing of humidity to create this kind of beauty!

For some, the humidity blesses. I like to remember how the very thing I’m complaining about might actually mean something wonderful to someone else. I learn to think differently and ask under what conditions or circumstances my complaint would change to a blessing.

Finally, I recall how, in the depths of winter, the dry, cold air cracks my skin and lips. I long for humidity.

Consider humidity: it’s a practice in perspective taking.

Every Morning, a Fresh Start

I love a fresh, new morning.

We can start fresh with a blank canvas to turn this day into a masterpiece. God’s mercies are new every morning. They are right here waiting for you.

Think about it.  You can choose to hydrate, exercise, pray, and eat nutritious foods. You can choose to start or continue a project. You can start fresh with kind words, new mental habits, and novel ideas. You can start again. 

Forget what is behind (Philippians 3:13). Do not dwell on the past (Isaiah 43:18). Press on into the new. 

Anything can happen. It’s a new day.

Which Would You Prefer?

Today I learned that I often totally misread or misunderstand what others enjoy. I think because I love to do something that others will also love to join me in that thing. So when I approached a couple to see if they’d like to join my husband and me at a restaurant, I followed my husband’s advice. He told me that this particular couple might not enjoy dining out (what?!!!) and might prefer a hike or a campfire instead.

I pushed back. Who wouldn’t love a dinner out, especially if we were treating? I had a gift card to a fancy restaurant in town that I couldn’t wait to use. Wouldn’t this couple feel blessed and loved? Wouldn’t it become such a lovely evening?

But I listened to Ashley. Maybe he was right. He often is.

So I said to the couple, “OK, we’d love to spend some time with you! Which would you prefer: a dinner out–our treat– at this restaurant or a night around the campfire?” Of course I sounded much more lively when I described the dinner out, and I let my voice deflate when making the campfire invitation.

Much to my surprise, the couple said, “We actually don’t enjoy dining out at fancy restaurants. It makes us uncomfortable more than anything else. We love sitting around the backyard fire pit and talking! We are simple, country folks!”

I learned a great lesson in friendship. Ask your friends which they prefer when inviting them to outings. You’ll learn something about them and how to bless them. So now I say, “Coffee shop or hike? Shopping or talking on the phone? Lunch or running errands together?” Give a choice and see what happens.

God Presence Brings Success, Favor, and Blessing

When I read Genesis 39, I’m always so moved and inspired by Joseph’s story. I’m amazed at what happens to a life when God is present.

When God is present in our lives, we succeed. When God is present, God causes things to prosper. When God is present, we find favor with others. When God is present in our lives, the blessing we have extends to everyone and everything around us.

I underline in my Bible every time God moves in Joseph’s life. We read this:

The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man. . . The Lord was with him . . . and caused all that he did to succeed. . . So Joseph found favor. . . the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had. . . The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love and gave him favor in the sight of [others]. . . The Lord was with him. And whatever he did, the Lord made it succeed.  

Genesis 39 reveals to me something about what happens when God is with us. And it offers a great prayer for us: May we become like Joseph to know great success, to find great favor, and to enjoy God’s blessing that extends to others. If you notice, it doesn’t matter where Joseph is. Even in prison, Joseph enjoys the steadfast love of God.

The story of Joseph also teaches me to know the truth that God is working behind the scenes in our lives. I never want to forget Joseph’s words as Genesis concludes: “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”

Whatever God is doing in our lives, He means it for good. Much later, it might bring about a great deliverance. We cannot know now what everything means. But later, we will rejoice in a great story God is writing in our lives.

As Everything Is

It’s time. Finally, it’s time. I can finally venture to the garden each morning to pick a bowlful of ripe raspberries.

What a simple pleasure that connects my soul to all the things I treasure: simplicity, nature, and grace!

Yes, the raspberry reminds me of God’s favor on our lives and the grace we enjoy every day. I didn’t invent the raspberries. I didn’t even do the work to make them amazing; my neighbor donated her canes to me, and then my only job was to wait for the blessing and then catch it in my bowl.

I don’t even water these. Pennsylvania receives more than enough rainfall to make these raspberries healthy. And the soil is so nutrient-rich that I don’t need to add anything to it unless I wanted to. If I did anything at all, it was an act to protect the undeserved blessing from predators. I know how to fence them in and keep the pests away.

But really, that’s the work of keeping the unearned gift.

Everything about raspberries is undeserved and unearned. Yet here I sit, gobbling them up as the gift from heaven they are. As everything is.

There’s nothing here that wasn’t given.

 

Finding All the Baby Turtles

I’ve always loved turtles. It’s a great day when you find a turtle.

Yesterday morning at White Lake, I stumbled upon what seemed like a nest of baby turtles freshly hatched. I felt like I was in heaven! I counted at least 8 little turtle hatchlings swimming near the shore.

Yes, it’s always a great day when you find a turtle!

All There

Back in my 20’s, I loved this quote from missionary Jim Elliot: “Wherever you are, be all there! Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.”

Wherever I am, I want to be all there.

Being “all there” means so many things to me: it means not always wishing for a different situation; it means fully embracing the gifts God gives in every place; and it means actively seeking to discover those gifts that sometimes come hidden or disguised. It means loving others fully without focusing on myself. I want to be “all there” for other people around me.

I’m all there to observe the nature around me.

I’m all there to listen to others and really see them.

I’m all there to receive what God has.

I’m all there with finding friendship with God all day long. He’s “all there” all the time.

Being “all there” also means to learn new ways of living and to try on new ways to live a life.  I thought of Jim Elliot’s quote when I laughed about all the different foods I love while traveling in North Carolina. I’m “all there” for the fried okra, BLT’s with Duke’s Mayo (people in the south are serious about their mayonnaise), coconut cake, fried chicken, and, of course, pimento cheese sandwiches (if you know, you know).

Yes–I’m all there for southern food. I said it.

I’ve also learned to be “all there” in taking on the rhythms of relaxing at the lake house we visit every summer. Here I am at White Lake. I’ve learned to relax on the water and do nothing. Yes, I’m “all there” for a few days where the core values aren’t efficiency, productivity, or impact. The core values involve finding turtles, eating great food, playing cards, and putting on sunscreen for the afternoon boat ride.

I’m all there.

Settled Down

This morning, I read about the idea of “[keeping] ourselves in God’s love” from Hannah Whitall Smith. She writes that keeping ourselves in God’s love “does not mean, as so many think, to keep ourselves loving Him. It means to settle ourselves down, as it were, into His love as an absolute and unalterable fact, to take up our abode in it, and to stay in it forever. It means never to doubt His love or fear losing it, but to believe in it and trust it, despite all seeming to the contrary, utterly and steadfastly forever.”

When we settle down into God’s love, we have a new home.

It doesn’t matter where we go, with whom we find ourselves, or when. There’s another interior reality of being settled into a new region where love operates at all times.

In this abode, love rules. In her other writings, we learn about God always operating from a ruling power of love and goodness on our behalf. Think about that love, goodness, and tenderness.

Settle down into it.