Your Best You

Your Best You: Discovering and Developing the Strengths God Gave You

Have you ever wanted to break free from unhealthy habits or a negative lifestyle?  Then Your Best You by Bonnie Grove might be just what you are looking for.  Whether you want to quit smoking, overeating or storing up clutter, you will learn through this book how to use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses.

Grove clearly explains how to do an inventory of your strengths, likes, and goals (among other things) to enjoy living in freedom from the activities or choices that would entangle us.  She provides not only the forms to fill in right in the chapter itself, but she also includes her own personal form filled out so you can clearly see how it should be done.  Seeing her true-to-life form gives a glimpse into another woman’s journey to discovering her best self.

As you work through this 185-page book (which includes all your forms and hers) you will uncover your true goals and dreams.  A the same time you will recognize the goals and dreams you’ve been striving for that you thought should be yours or what others communicated you should own.

Throughout the book, Grove points the reader to Scripture, prayer and God’s active involvement in your life, your strengths and desires.  As you journey through the book, you will be engaging with God through Bible reading, prayer and journaling.  It is a valuable resource you will work through once and keep on hand to go through again and again.  It will help you see yourself, your friends and family with eyes that look for strengths instead of weakness as you break free from the things that entangle you.

Please enjoy the interview with Bonnie Grove about Your Best You in today’s TalkShoe podcast.

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Interview with Bonnie Groves

Your Best You
Carla Coroy interviews Your Best You author, Bonnie Groves.

To leave a comment:
• If you are reading this post in email form, click the article headline. This will take you to the article on MMCW’s website.
• Scroll down until you see the box entitled ‘Speak Your Mind’.
• Enter your name, email (it will not be published) and your website or blogsite if you have one (you do not have to have one).
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Blogging Links

Christian Bloggers
Faithful Bloggers is a community for Christian women bloggers. Their purpose is to provide a common ground where Christian women can encourage one another to use their blogs for the glory of God.

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A Woman’s Journey to the Cross and Beyond

Preparing My Heart for Easter: A Woman’s Journey to the Cross and Beyond

Celebrating Christmas involves many meaningful traditions. But what about Easter? Although Christ’s resurrection demonstrates the power behind the Christian faith, Easter is often overshadowed by Christmas. To discover the deep significance of Easter, consider Ann Marie Stewart’s eight-week Bible study, Preparing My Heart for Easter: A Woman’s Journey to the Cross and Beyond.

The study begins the week of Ash Wednesday (February 17  in 2010) and concludes the week after Easter. Taken primarily from the four Gospels, Psalms, and Isaiah, this 2007 release focuses on Jesus’ last week on earth and the women who followed him during his life and death. These included Mary Magdalene, Mary Mother of Jesus, Mary and Martha (sisters of Lazarus), the woman at the well, and other women who were eyewitnesses of Jesus’s miraculous ministry.

Each week of study includes five daily lessons plus two weekend devotionals that center on Easter hymns. You’ll also learn the significance of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Pentecost, and other holy days before and after Easter. Suitable for personal or group use, the book includes a helpful six-page leader’s guide with discussion questions, music suggestions, and more.

This well-researched, powerful volume comes to life with Stewart’s background in drama and scriptwriting. Her acting roles in the community passion play helped her experience the emotions surrounding the first Easter and challenged her to look at Jesus in new ways. Women who have completed the study say it challenged and inspired them, and Jesus became more real and personal to them.

Stewart’s ultimate goal for this study is to encourage women to do what many New Testament women did–meet, accept, and follow Jesus. As spring approaches with its promise of new life, enter this season by growing spiritually as you study Preparing My Heart for Easter.

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• Scroll down until you see the box entitled ‘Speak Your Mind’.
• Enter your name, email (it will not be published) and your website or blogsite if you have one (you do not have to have one).
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• When you are done, click ‘submit comment’.  That’s it!  We look forward to hearing from YOU!

Celebrating Food

Susan Gauen has done a tremendous service to those of us who have allergies and to all our family and friends.  In her recipe book, Celebrating Food: 121 Gluten Free Recipes for a Healthier You, she provides recipes for all the ‘normal’ food you’ve always loved but with no allergens.  Most of her recipes are adaptable to be egg-, dairy-, nut-, soy- and wheat-free.

I made her Fudge Brownies for a large event we were attending where we asked to bring snacks.  They were so decadent, rich and flavourful with superb texture that not a single person could guess it was egg, nut and gluten free.

Susan filled her book with beautiful pictures, detailed instructions and tips for the allergy cook.  One of the things I love about her book are the baking mixes.  Instead of buying expensive pancake and bread mixes at the store, you can prepare her mixes and have them on hand for a fraction of the cost.  The drawback to them is that they are in large quantities, so you’ll need to have a large container to store them in, and plan on a bigger expense when you first make them.

The recipes include pie crusts, cheese-free cheese sauce, biscotti, pasta dishes, salad dressings, cakes, cookies, beverages, desserts, breads, sandwiches, and more.  Her main course meals are wonderful.  You can serve them to guests without any apologies!

Most ingredients are readily available in supermarkets or health food stores.  In Canada it is very difficult to find gluten-free oatmeal as the government does not consider any oatmeal gluten-free.  Although she uses it in many of her recipes, she does include a recipe to make a substitute for it.  At the back of the book is a very helpful resource that lists where to buy hard-to-find ingredients if you are unable to find them in your area.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an allergy, or to family members and friends of those who have someone in their lives with allergies.  I also believe that every cook should have one of these in the house.  I’ve occasionally been asked to bring a meal to a family with food allergies and the task can leave me baffled.  If you like to bless others by bringing meals to them, you need this book on your shelf.

To order this superb resource go to:  www.celebratingfoodglutenfree.com.

MMCW’s Note: Thank you to Susan Gauen for providing a copy of her book for our review.

Family Movie Night: City of Ember

City of Ember, DVDBy 20th Century Fox Jeanne Duprau’s best-selling novel comes to life in this heart-thumping adventure for your whole family. When an underground city’s generator fails, the glittering street lamps fade—along with the residents’ dreams. Following clues from ancient Builders, can two teens find a way out of Ember before darkness falls forever? Starring Tim Robbins, Bill Murray, and Saoirse Ronan. Rated PG. Approx. 95 minutes.

We recently watched the movie City of Ember as a family.  Although some of the younger ones were a little scared because of the tense adventure moments, we were pleased with the overall content.  There was no sexual content, no immodesty, no bad language, no real violence and no irreverent references to God.

Because the movie is set in a manufactured city totally sustained by a generator that is failing, the lights glow with a man-made yellow light that turns into complete darkness when the generator runs low.  These dark and yellow lights lend a bit of a scary tone for younger viewers.  There are also a few tense moments as pipes burst, corruption is revealed and over-sized moles come looking for food.

What I loved about this movie is how it can easily be used to talk to your kids about the things of God.  The citizens of Ember are going to die.  The generator is failing and when it does, their lives will end.  This is easily likened to our lives without Christ.  If we remain citizens of this spiritually dark world (literally dark in the City of Ember) we will die.

The Builders of Ember have left instructions for the citizens explaining how to get out of the dark world and into the light.  They’ve made it simple, yet hidden.  Just like our Creator has left instructions for us to find the Light.  He’s made it so simple, yet the Bible tells us that it will confuse the wise.

In the beginning of the movie you see a young girl drawing a picture with a crayon.  She draws a house, a tree and is about to color the sky.  She chooses the color blue, even though within her world of Ember the sky is black.  As the story goes on you see how people have wondered about real light, the color of the sky and that some have even believed so deeply in “the world out there” that they have sacrificed much to find it. Even this points to a Scriptural reference in which we are told that God has hidden eternity in our hearts.

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart.
Ecclesiastes 3:11 NLT

Each one of us at one time or another wonders if we were created for something more.  We all ask God-sized questions.  We inquire about our purpose and our longings.  In the City of Ember there are a few people who kept searching no matter the obstacle.  They pressed on, even when others around them attempted to shut them down or make the search impossible.

That reminded me of these verses:

You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jeremiah 29:13  NIV

And if you search for him with all your heart and soul, you will find him.
Deuteronomy 4:29b  NLT

If you haven’t seen the movie, I would recommend it for your family with children over the age of eight.  If you have seen it but missed the scriptural parallels I’d recommend another viewing.  Plan to ask some thought-provoking questions of your kids when you are done.

Then ask yourself some hard questions:  Are you searching for God with all your heart?  As if your life depends on it?  The truth is that your life does depend on it.

Movie Review Links

Bookmark these movie review sites for easy reference.
Plugged in Online
Screen It

Molly’s Favorite Sites

Food Tidings exists to simplify the process of organizing meals for friends or family members in a transitional time of life. Food Tidings allows you to post days needed for meals, your friend’s address, allergies, likes, etc. and is a common site where people can sign up to bring meals. Food Tidings will even send participants a reminder a few days before they are scheduled to deliver their meal!

Crockpot 365 is another new favorite. This blogger made a New Year’s Resolution to use her crockpot every day for a year. I’ve already used some of her recipes, including the Chicken Cordon Bleu, which got rave reviews at the last church potluck.

My family spent the summer gathering all our favorite educational public domain audio recordings together in one easy-to-navigate spot.  If you like listening to unabridged classic audio books or old-time radio theater, you’ll love our new website My Audio School!

Another great site for audio downloads is Blue Behemoth. They have a large selection of Christian sermons available for download, as well as two free downloads every single day.

I use Talkshoe frequently for all my recording needs.  Talk Shoe is professional enough for my teaching podcasts, and simple enough for my everyday recording needs, as well. .  I record all my children’s Scripture memory onto Talk Shoe, then download it to the computer and burn to a CD.  The only equipment you need is an internet connection and a telephone. It is fast and easy!

Vision Forum is another favorite website.  I purchase a lot of books and sermon CDs from them, and their All American Boys’ Adventure Catalog is a favorite source for toys and tools to inspire my boys’ imaginative valiant play.

Bible Gateway is my favorite Bible online thesaurus.  I also like Classic Bible Commentaries, where I can find several commentaries in one spot.

As an avid birdwatcher, my favorite birding site is All About Birds.  With links to a free online field guide, tips for beginners, conservation news and more, I like perusing this site.

Share Flair

Dress up your blog or website for the new year with share flair. Share flair are decorative buttons MMCW has created just for you. To grab our flair simply copy/paste the flair code you like and paste onto your site in your Html editor.

We currently have two scripture flairs along with our logo flair. With our focus in 2010 on walking in wisdom you’ll be seeing a lot of flairs featuring scriptures from Proverbs. When you’re on MMCW’s website be sure to check our Share Flair page for new buttons.

Help us spread the word about MMCW by placing our logo flair on your site…

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Sneaky Chef

Can You Keep a Secret?

I’ve been hiding something from my family for the past year.  It’s something that falls under the category of “what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”  In fact, it could actually help them!

They don’t know that I’ve become a “sneaky chef”, thanks to Missy Chase Lapine’s cookbook series by the same name.  The Sneaky Chef cookbooks rely on the use of several basic recipes for pureed foods which are rendered tasteless and invisible when stirred into food items.

For the past year I’ve been adding pureed white beans, zucchini and cauliflower to the Kraft macaroni and cheese I serve my kids.  It looks and tastes exactly the same as always, but I find it stays with them a lot longer.  They couldn’t tell that the yummy banana muffins we ate for breakfast yesterday  were also full of pureed carrots and sweet potatoes.  And they would be shocked to know that their favorite brownies are packed with spinach and blueberries.

It has been pretty easy to incorporate Sneaky Chef methods.  By mixing wheat germ and wheat flour into my white flour I can easily fortify all my baked goods without a difference in taste.  The author does not assume we all have hours to spend in the kitchen, and she shares methods for boosting everything from store-bought barbecue sauce to jarred spaghetti sauce.  I spend a couple hours every other month (after the kids are asleep, of course) cooking the vegetables and preparing the purees.  I freeze them in ½ cup portions and can easily add them to my recipes throughout the week.

I’m still feeding my kids recognizable vegetables at meals, but I’m thrilled to know they are getting a double dose!  My veggie-hating husband happily chows down on everything from chocolate French toast to refried beans, never suspecting they contain healthy ingredients he wouldn’t otherwise touch with a 10-foot pole.   I enjoy adding some healthy items to our menu while still turning out crowd-pleasing meals.

The Sneaky Chef: Simple Strategies for Hiding Healthy Foods in Kids’ Favorite Meals

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