The Joy of Juicing, The Joy of Doughnuts!

We took the first drink...  My family and I made the Mean Green juice recipe today!  I LOVED the aroma of green apples, lemon, fresh ginger, celery and so on.  I found myself excited at the idea of opening a fresh-juice kitchen or to garden as a lifestyle.  It was that wonderful!  I'm very thankful for a husband who presses me to try life-giving endeavors like this!
We prepared the kids, boys, ages 7 & 9 by watching the documentary Dying to Have Known.  Similar to Fat Sick & Nearly Dead in that it shows the benies of eating "green" as well as all the other colors of the rainbow, but, is different in that the premise is to prove or disprove the Gerson Method for curing cancer.  This had the nine-year-old's attention.  He tried the apple-lemonade and loved it!  Not-so-much for the seven-year-old  "I only eat (fill-in-the-blank-on-any-given-day)" kid.  "To each his own" and "Rome wasn't built in a day!"
Then came the trip to the new Dunkin' Doughnuts.  We live in a very small town, one that just opened a Dunkin Doughnuts.  No Starbucks for 30 miles in any direction.  (Now you know I'm on a mission from God, right?!  I've proven that a citified woman can live without Starbucks.  For heaven's sake, even my language has assimilated to the culture! "Citified!") 
Ahem, feeling so good after my fresh juice, I headed to Dunkin Doughnuts to get some research accomplished.  Dear friends and owners of a national engineering firm have asked me to do some writing for their website!  My mind is aflutter with quippy-quips!  "What goes up, must come down" Naaaahhh.  NOT for a civil-structural engineer's website!  As soon as I sat down I met the nicest older couple and low-and-behold, the husband was a chemist and patent attorney for Dow Chemical, among other nameable companies, in the 60's.  He shared a remarkable story of working conditions in a lab where the scientists had liver problems and were dying.  (Remember the movie Erin Brokovich?!) ...How when he walked outside his place of work, the pollution in the air was so thick it burned his eyes...And how "the men in suits would walk in and out of the lab very quickly."
As we drank our free coffee and yes, even ate doughnuts as we visited I could not help but question what happens to those who cannot choose a different career, those who cannot go back to college?  That makes me thankful to oversee my kids' education.  But ultimately, my hope is not in what I teach, or eat, or not.  My hope, if built on the foundation of my efforts, will be like a ball in the air.  What goes up must come down.  I pray that my hope will be in a sovereign God, in his plans and purposes that exceed my ideals and my life span.  Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.  Ora et Labora.  Work and Pray!
Or eat wisely and pray?  Love graciously and pray.  Think about the goodness of God all around and in new friends at a coffee shop.  God is calling.  Let us be found listening!

The Book of John, Chapter 1, verses 1 through 4
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men."

Soli Deo Gloria! ~K. De La Cruz

OUR CAUSE?! Interview with New York Times Best Selling Author Matthew Barnett

"Can you hear me now?"  So many say it in jest, or at least they did before cell towers graced every horizon!  Many more have called out sincerely in need and desperation.  God is listening.  Are we listening?

Pastor and Best-Selling author of The Cause Within You,  Pastor Matthew Barnett, called-in to affirm the weary. YES!  God is indeed listening and speaking.

But what is God saying?  What can you do with your weariness?  What about the tired and needy around us?  What can they do?

 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

Jesus Christ, in the book of Matthew 11:28-30, said we are to rest in Him and his faithfulness!  Jesus Christ also said,  “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Sounds like a story of redemption!

Pastor Matthew shares his own experience resting in God's promises to guide and provide!  His Dream Center in Los Angeles houses 700+ of the most needy.  It’s a dream from Matthew’s past come true; one that has changed the “City of Angeles”!

You and I have a role in “change”.  The “rest” Jesus offers is to know by faith that we are saved! And that faith without those good works is worthless, dead. 

So I ask, “have we heard from God?”  Are we forgiven our lack of perfection before a perfect God?  If we answered yes, then Jesus says come and die to your dreams, I’ve got something better!  Take up my cross, my plans for this broken, cursed world!  Be about what I am doing!  Then you will truly live!

We are to be about knowing God, and telling, caring for the needy and the marginalized.  I hope this interview breathes new life into old dreams, and new visions for the once-blind!  God has a "work" perfectly suited to you and to me!  Pastor Matthew's book and interview will help us SEE OUR CAUSE WITHIN!

Soli Deo Gloria! K. De La Cruz

NY TIMES #15 Best-Seller List!

THE CAUSE WITHIN YOU Resources

The Katie De La Cruz Show, Fridays at 3:05PM

WYXI Radio, 1390 AM, Athens, Tennessee

Christian Regretting Motherhood? My Response to This Motherhood Post: http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/motherhood-is-a-calling-and-where-your-children-rank#.Tiht6q53jzs.facebook

I didn’t have to read the entire article to clarify something for myself and… just in case anyone is looking, for them, too.

I am a mom.  It is the hardest thing I’ve ever accepted.  The cross my husband and I carry is that we are called to parent our children.  One must be present to parent…  So, I don’t have a career.  I have an itty-bitty radio show that I excel at the on-air stuff but drop behind-the-scenes stuff.  A lot.  Just ask my station owners...  And I wish I didn’t.  I hate not being perfect-especially in front of others.  But my priorities dictate that a few balls can drop.  Just not my husband, son #1 or son #2.  Not the family.  I've been doing this "christian motherhood, wife gig" for 11.5 years and I'm beginning, BABY STEPS  to understand what and who and how.  I heard this excellent thought last night,  "You can't be about the Big Picture when you are consumed with the needs in front of you."  So, who is our faith really in?  Christ has already promised to take care of our needs.  That reality should free us up to raise our kids with "big picture" perspective!  I pray that it does!

We drive old cars, borrowed cars and any car that will go, because our ministry tithe to our family is very, very high!   I'm not bragging about that.  We live in a once-upon-a-time cute house that-is-no-more.  (Use your imagination, lol.)   Because you may be struggling with your calling, I share this reality to encourage you,  really!

I have a radio show and for the summer, while the kids are with Dad, I get to put more than 10 hours a week into it; because motherhood is my first cross, my first act of obedience each day.  I couldn't do the show as much as I am without my husband.  My husband is called to teach, coach and preach and has the summer off from teaching.  But his first calling is as my husband.  And I am called to motherhood.  So he teaches and delivers pizza and is the kids' teacher for the summer.    Because I’m called to motherhood, because we're called to parenthood.

Sure, I hope my radio show will be a commercial-success.  It would be great to have money left at the end of the month.  But if it isn’t, I have pleased the One who matters most, the one who obeyed His Father and died for me.

Soli Deo Gloria! ~K. De La Cruz