Creamy Salsa Ranch Chicken

So I feel I owe a fun recipe for the summer that won't involve a stove as the weather is hot and people want to avoid heat at all costs, and live very busy lives.

What you will need:

• 1 jar of salsa whatever flavor or heat you like
• 1 packet of ranch seasoning
• 1 bottle of ranch dressing
• 1 block of cream cheese OR 1 cup of sour cream
• 4 to 5 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1  box of rotini pasta (or any kind you prefer I do rotini)
• 1 onion diced
• 1 family sized can or 3 regular cans of cream of chicken soup

What to do: 

1. place crock pot on high
2. stick boneless skinless chicken breast in crock pot and cover with ranch SEASONING
3. spread cream of chicken soup, and sour cream or cream cheese on top of chicken
4. pour salsa in and spread through out
5. toss diced onion in
6. Let cook for 4 hours
7. Boil box of pasta
8. Pour a quarter of the bottle of ranch dressing in and stir
9. pour in pasta (drained of course) 
10. let cook for another 10 to 15 minutes
11. Enjoy and eat :) 

Understanding Anxiety

So after a recent (this morning) phone call with my dad I realized that for the first time it was ok to talk about having anxiety. We were simply talking about how the kids were doing and how everything was going up at my house (I live a state away) and then I went into the conversation of having a week for once where my anxiety doesn't overwelm me. That's when it hit me I need to talk about my anxiety because talking about my anxiety allowed me to feel some pressure within me release. So here it is my relieving pressure and being even more honest about the anxiety that I feel and go through.

I never really knew what anxiety was, I never really had anxiety issues growing up that I am aware of, it didn't start till after I got married I was about 3 months into our marriage and I started waking in the middle of the night unable to breathe (but breathing), my chest was tight like someone had put tons of rubber bands around it waiting for me to explode like a watermelon, I'd be sweaty but cold, and couldn't get back to reality for a minute, my head would spin in all sorts of natural disasters that could occur and what would happen to my family, what would happen, to my husband, what would happen to me. That was the first of what I would soon learn to be many. It started happening once a week then it went to having them almost every single night, to the point that when bed time came anxiety would occur over what would happen when I went to bed (I know double whammy).

I being a very religous person through all of it prayed, and prayed unceasing, my husband if woken would pray with me till I fell back asleep. Every morning when he gets up to leave for work at 430 in the morning he prays for me in hopes that I go without any anxiety. I firmly believe that anxiety is a mental illness but if caught in time can be relieved with natural remedies and I know that my God can deliver me from anything. Some would say that having anxiety and what not is just a spiritual attack on my peace which to some extent I would agree however anxiety is also something that many people within my family have had to deal with some with medication others with natural remedies. One thing I think we sometimes get wrong in the mental illness field is that because the illness isn't physical doesn't mean it's automatically spiritual. You wouldn't look at someone with cancer and tell them to forget the doctors and the meds and treatments because its all spiritual you just have to "pray harder" you'd expect them to take the doctors help because after all God created them to.

Then something broke within, my sister moved in and I started to feel a purpose other than myself, I was able to not just solely focus on myself and my husband and somehow having one family member made all the difference it was a grounding seeing her ok, let me feel like my family is ok. I still had anxiety but instead of it being every night and sometimes twice in one night I started to only have anxiety two or three times a week. Then she went home and at first I was still ok but it didn't take long for the anxiety to come back harder and stronger.

Now my sweet nephew is here and my sister is back visiting for a little while and it made the world of difference. So far I have had 1 anxiety attack this week and for me this is good, it only lasted 15 minutes and that is a grand difference to 2 attacks each lasting about an hour before.

So I guess with that being said please be mindful of the people around you, if you notice someone is off, if you see that someone is withdrawn consider the setting they are in, consider what is going on with them, consider that the person you think you know or the person that is a stranger on the street may have something more going on.

As for what I do with my anxiety when I have them:

• First thing I do is point out: 5 Things I see, 4 things I can touch, 3 things I can taste, 2 things I can smell, and 1 thing I can think of that is off topic from what I am having anxiety about
• Once I have gotten some grounding and a break in my mind I pray, and I pray unceasing till I am calm
• Then I go to the bathroom and wash my face with nice cold water to really bring myself back to earth if you will. 
• One piece of scripture I found once after an anxiety attack in my devotions that the Lord really gave me and I have held onto ever since was "Though I fear, I trust in the Lord." and I repeat this over myself whenever I start to feeling a slight amount of anxiety coming on and sometimes it works to stop the anxiety attack to ever come to flourish. 

I hope my honesty helps, and I hope that it is received well. 

Fragility Of A Pressure Cooker

Sometimes I feel like a pressure cooker, full of amazing ingredients and items that make me so unique and flavorful as a person. Pending on the things in life and the pressures and stress pends on the temp low, high, warm, off. When it comes to the amount of time I'm in that season in life well thats dependent on a few things most importantly being my relationship with God. Am I pursuing God enough? How are my devotions? Is this a season that God is walking me through to learn something great at the end? Most always the answers lie within those three questions.

Some people forget that each person has their limit "there maximum capacity" when it comes to handling stresses of life. We forget that each person we come into contact with is human and that they to have feelings, they to feel stress, they to have hurt they are currently working through, they to have their own battles they are facing sometimes facing alone shaking scared and worried. When it comes to my pressure cooker sometimes I hit a point where I feel like I could either explode and hurt all around me from the amount of feelings that are being piled in and mixed together, and other times I feel like I am going to implode on myself, and destroy all that I am and all that I was working hard on. When I get to both of these feelings it's important in those moments to pray, and to genuinely seek God. To know that His hand controls the time of which I am standing in, to know that He is the one who can raise a hand to the storms and the tornados and say "Enough" and calm the seas.

I have been very raw in previous posts about the things in my life and I have also been very private. One thing though that I wear with great love and respect is my relationship with God, over the years of my life God has been my standing ground of which I stand on. I speak with authority that God has given me from the testimony of my life and the events I endured and came through to the events that I will endure and go through. Do not get my words twisted here, I am not perfect I am not one of those people with my nose in the air to think that I am above what the world has when it comes to hurt, trust me I hurt deeply, I love with an unending line of love, I have nothing to lose when it comes to my heart being open.

From a very young age God impressed on me the compassionate heart to love, to love those who didn't love me, to love those who did love me, to love those who didn't love themselves. Most importantly He gave me a gift to see the fragility in life. The fragility in a young baby looking to be safe and to be held with great care and love, the fragility in a toddler looking to have their self worth defined, to see their roles being outlined in life, in family and in this great big world they've just started to open their eyes to. The fragility to a young child in school learning the hardship of "trying to fit in" and finding the voice inside them that says "your better than that" even more so seeing the picture that their role is in life becoming clearer. The fragility in a teenager who is yearning and looking to have respect, but at the same time so fragile in wanting love and attention and that affection and compassion they received as such a young child. The fragility in an adult in the real world, seeing the hurt and devastation and yet trying to keep their hope from breaking, their light from dying out, their picture from burning, and then the fragility in the elderly, who lived through the world, learned the rawness that life has to offer them, looking for the compassion yearning for the love that they had when they were a child, aching for the respect and ear to listen to the role they played in life, for someone's eyes to notice their picture, and for their picture to be hung on a wall to never be forgotten.

My life currently in all honesty is a pressure cooker of lovely flavors of things, however the temp that its on at this point in my life is high and the amount of time it's been cooking is much to long. I pray that God will lift the lid and say it's time to cool down, it's time to change the recipe that life has been cooking, and I pray that God refreshes my fragile spirit in this time of overwhelming tides.