Visiting Cara in Oregon

As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Proverbs 27:17

I met Cara the first week of school, my freshman year in college. We found out right away that we had both been dancers (Royal academy of Dance Ballet). Then we found out we were both Christians. I think we literally jumped up and down for joy! Later we realized that both our moms made bread with a Magic Mill and a Bosch mixer, and we were not allowed to play with Barbies! We had a lot in common back then.

Cara and I during our freshmen year!

Fast forward 16 years and several kids later. We are both homeschooling our kids using a Classical Christian method and growing in our love and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We also have one other very important thing in common now, soon to be two. Cara's brother Aaron married my sister Shauna in 2000 and we both get to be Aunties to CJ and his little sister (due Jan 2007).

Cara's husband Brian is in the Military so they have moved around quite a lot. After being away from the west coast for awhile, they are now back, building a house in Oregon. We had a wonderful dinner the first night we were there; Cara is a fabulous cook. We had a great discussion about her kids' food allergies which led to the topic of sugar. Many of you know my family recently concluded a study at UCLA regarding our son's Tourette's Syndrome. One of the things the psychiatrist from UCLA mentioned was that sugar and chemicals in foods can trigger ticks in Tourette's Syndrome or make them worse.

I had always thought of just the nutritional value of sugar (0), in comparison with honey and sucanat (very minimal). I simply thought if we cut back on sugar that would help. Cara reminded me that sugar is processed chemically and it's the chemicals that her kids are allergic to. So I have been inspired to read up about this and possibly eliminate refined sugar from our diet. Its actually not that drastic for us since we don't eat a lot of sugar anyway and our kids are already used to sucanat. In fact, Evan's favorite cookies are Peanut Butter made with whole wheat flour and sucanat. I took the kids to our local farmer's market to test the different types of honey. They picked out the ones that they each liked best and are excited to get to use that as their sweetener. Amy is going through candy withdrawals, but I figure it is better for her to go through it now then at my age! He he!

The next day we went to see the land that they are going to build their house on and went swimming. Sean and Brian took the older kids to see where Brian works while the little ones napped and Cara and I got to catch up. That night after another wonderful dinner we participated in their family worship. It was such a blessing to be with other believers and see what God is doing in their lives, and have them pray for us.

It is so incredible how God works sometimes. Right before our trip I had read a post from Leslie about being Bible Saturated. In it she talks about memorizing a large portion of Scripture, why it is important and a recommendation of how to do it. I had been praying about what portion of Scripture to start with and even more importantly, how to approach my family with this idea. We have never tackled more than a few verses in a row (other than Psalm 23) and I had an idea that it might scare them if I told them I wanted us to memorize a whole book!

During the worship time with Cara's family they recited the entire chapter of Romans 12 together. This has been the chapter they have been working on as a family. Sean was very inspired and spurred on to want to memorize scripture with our family in that way. I told him about Leslie's post and the books I thought might be good to start with. With God's help we are now purposing to commit to memory the book of Colossians. If we are able to memorize a verse a day (we're on verse 5 out of 95!) we will be done a week before Christmas. I am so excited! It has been fun to work on this together. And the way that God moved in my heart and then my husband's through the example of our friends just makes me realize even more God's goodness to me and my family. It also makes me love Him so much more, too.