God speaks to me at Walmart!

I was sent off on a mission today by my husband to finally buy a printer.  We have been without one for 7 or 8 years.  I also needed a new cord for my laptop.  The bill was going to be somewhat pricey.  As I was checking out a lady pulled her cart behind me with cat food.  As I am just getting over a fast of media, I noticed her.  I smiled at her and something was pulling me toward looking toward her. Before I would probably have been emailing or facebooking and too busy to notice her.  She placed her 2 things of cat food up on the belt behind my items.  It was then that I felt this amazing feeling saying, "Pay for her cat food," in my head.  I thought to myself why would I pay for her cat food?   Then I felt it again, "I am serious, pay for her cat food."  This is when I thought maybe God is trying to communicate with me. I thought back to God, "Look God I can't just offer to pay for someone's cat food, she is going to think I am a nut case, or slap my hand away if I try to grab it." I am normally too distracted to be reached I am realizing. I thought God doesn't talk to me like this, He doesn't talk to ordinary people like me.  I must be reading too many bible studies and christian books, my mind is finally completely off it's rocker.   That's when I noticed her start to dig through her purse.  She had that look I have sometimes when I can't find my debit card (my purse is usually too messy) she started looking through pockets and looked panicked. I heard her whisper over to her husband, my wallet is not in here, I can't find it.  That's when I heard it again, "see, pay for the cat food."  So I reached over as the cashier had just finished ringing me up and grabbed the cat food and said ,"this to." 

The lady looked at me with shock on her face and said, "no that's mine." 

I said "I know it is, it's ok!!" 

She replied "no, this can't happen, there aren't nice people in the world, why would you do this for me?"

Without trying to sound totally crazy I tried explaining, "I know this is going to sound crazy, but I felt even before you started digging through your purse that God was telling me to pay for your cat food and I didn't get it."

She said back, "I must have your name so I can pay you back, you should be on the news!"

I told her, "My name is Ginnie, but you don't have to pay me back, just thank God because He told me to!"  With that she had tears in her eyes and we hugged and her husband came over and hugged me as well.  I turned to leave.  I got to my car, unloaded my purchases and sat there in tears myself just praying and crying and thanking God for using me to help someone else.  I am so humbled by the way he works!  

The Seven Experiment: Staging your own mutiny against excess FOOD

So I meant to journal, but like all projects I jump in and forget to take before pictures, this is similar.  I thought I have been working on food choices for 2 years how hard can this be?

We have been working on The Seven Study at church in ladies Bible study.  It's been a journey, we went through it the first time studying it and then the next 8 weeks are all about living it out.  I think the living it out part is key as I have done so many bible studies and found good points or ideas but they easily wane over time. 


Week 1 is Food.  Getting back to a more farm to table food style that God intended, as well as picking only 7 foods to eat for the 7 days.  My food items were the same as the author, Jen Hatmaker:

Chicken breast
Spinach
Eggs
Avocado
Apples
Sweet Potatoes
and Bread (with as little ingredients as possible)

How many times have we stood in our kitchen with pantry's full, fridge, freezer and sometimes an extra freezer and claimed, "We have nothing to eat?"  Do we realize how many people in the world would be overjoyed at having such a luxury of choosing what to eat or that they get to eat something at all?

With farm to table being hard this time of year, seeing as we don't have many (ANY) farmer's markets in Michigan in the dead of winter, we did what we could.  Thankfully my husband joined me on this journey.  I will say I spent a TON more time in the kitchen this week, preparing.  Days 1-4 weren't so difficult it was new to me still and while I had NO COFFEE or sweetener or spices except the salt, pepper and oil in moderation it wasn't difficult yet. 

Days 4-7 were excruciating for some reason.  I believe that women tend to eat their emotions, or when making my kids lunches I would eat a handful of (Insert whatever here: goldfish, cereal, lick the peanut butter knife).  I had to really be even more conscious about what I stuck in my mouth.  I caught myself a few times and literally went over to the garbage can to spit it out. Only for God could I do such an extreme diet/fast.  My husband said as long as he had food, he was fine.  He even had to go out to lunch a few times with wholesalers and just ordered according to what he could eat. 

I tried to be thankful over the course of this week to have 7 healthy choices to feed myself and my husband and sometimes the kids. God has certainly blessed us abundantly.  My kids chose to give up dessert for my daughter and candy for my son but they had chicken with us each night.  They also found it difficult to not partake in eating sweets at events, church and birthdays.  

There are so many people in this world that are lucky to have any food or any kind of variety.  With a large amount of the world's population eating rice and beans I found myself sometimes feeling sorry for myself I couldn't have more.  I didn't think my heart would be tied up much in food, but I was wrong.  I am not sure what this is going to mean about our future with food.  We do plan on a garden and lots of canning this summer/fall.  We also are looking into more opportunities to give. Jesus calls us to bless the poor and hungry and we need to figure out what that means for our family! 

Next week: CLOTHES!!!