Lisa, dear Lisa

Oh, lovely, fair Lisa!

Oh Lisa, who commented and voted on my "Pick the Best o'the Boonies" contest.

Oh, Lisa, who follows many blogs of other Sonlighters!

The only person who voted whose Sonlight username I cannot figure out.

You won the drawing - the Big Bison himself picked your name out of the bowl that contained every name of every person who voted.

But I can't tell you, because I can't figure out which Lisa you are from your comment.

Can you help me, and send me a private message over at Sonlight, so that I can tell you what your MAJOR AWARD is???? And get it in the mail to you?

Please?

Congratulations, by the way!!! I think you're going to love your prize!!!!

Best o' the Boonies: Funniest

As the year draws to a close, I like to take a few moments to think back over what's happened during the past year, and as I was doing that the other day, I had my blog to help me out! What a great tool! My highs, my lows, my calamaties, my triumphs, all are reflected here in these posts.

But some of you haven't been following this blog all year long, and may have missed some of the more entertaining gems. So, if you're up for reading a little more, I'd like to ask as many of you as possible to vote for your favorite post. Today's category is funniest, and I'm going to leave it up for a few days, and hope to get as many votes as possible. Vote by leaving me a comment.

And if you leave me a comment, I will enter your name in a drawing for a PRIZE I have to give away. I guarantee you, it is a REALLY GOOD prize, almost as good as a MAJOR AWARD, that you will love with your whole heart and soul, and brag about to all your friends. So you definitely want to enter to win.



Here are today's nominees for funniest post, and I have made each title into a link. So choose your favorite, and vote by leaving me a comment with the name of your favorite. Make an informed choice by reading them all again, if you possibly can. I had forgotten how funny some of these are.

Here are the entries in chronological order:


The Bunnies, Mr. Billy, and Mr. Billie's Beagles (January)

Vanity Fair (August)

Susan in the Boonies and The World's Sexiest Man (November)

Cookie Contest Queen (December)

I am also open to write-ins for your favorite funniest post, in case I left something out that you loved.

Vote for your favorite in this category, and in a few days, I'll have another category for you to vote on.

Oh, boy!!! Let the comments/voting begin!!!!!!!!

Over 10,000 Served!

I've reached a little landmark and just wanted you to know about it. This year, my "little engine that could" blog has had over 10,00 views. It matters not in the least that about 5,000 of those were done by me, checking to see if anyone was actually coming to read what I had written. Well, I may never beat McDonald's in regard to their number of customers served, but my blog is free, and their burgers aren't, so I do have that working for me. So there! And if I can call myself a Cookie Contest Queen when not another soul was competing against me, (see my last blog post) I can certainly trumpet 10,000 views of my blog, no matter who was doing the viewing.

In celebration of this fact, and because a few of y'all have been bugging me about this, I feel I owe my readers the recipe for the second cookie contest that I won where I actually competed against someone. The recipe is called Chocolate Caramel Treasures. It's more involved (read this as: more work) than the Raspberry Shortbread, but it has the "wow" factor in terms of appearance. You see these cookies, and if you love chocolate and caramel, you must have one. I got this recipe from the recently deceased (and much mourned in MY heart) Gourmet Magazine, Christmas of 1999. Beautiful to behold and delicious to eat are my





Chocolate Caramel Treasures

Ingredients

1 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup Dutch-process unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts


for Caramel Filling
10 plain caramels, unwrapped
2 tablespoons heavy cream


for Chocolate Drizzle
3 ounces fine-quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened) finely chopped


Directions

1. Beat together butter, sugar, yolk, milk, and vanilla with an electric mixer until blended well. Sift in flour, cocoa, and salt and beat on low speed until mixture forms a dough. Chill, wrapped in plastic wrap, until firm, at least 30 minutes.

2. Preheat oven to 350 F.

3. Roll scant tablespoons of dough into balls, then coat with egg white, letting excess drip off, and roll in nuts to coat. Arrange balls, as coated, 1 1/2 inches apart on greased baking sheets and press your thumb into center of balls to flatten, leaving a depression. Bake in batches in middle of oven until puffed slightly but centers are soft, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven and immediately press centers of cookies again (we used handle end of a wooden spoon). Transfer to racks to cool.

Make filling while cookies cool

Heat caramels and cream in a small saucepan over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until melted and mixture is smooth. Spoon into centers of cookies and cool completely.

Make chocolate drizzle one hour before serving

Melt chocolate in a double boiler or a metal bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water, stirring until smooth. Cool to warm and pour into a heavy-duty sealable plastic bag. Seal bag and snip 1 corner to form a small hole. Drizzle chocolate over the cookies and let stand until set, about 30 minutes. Makes about 2 and a half dozen.

Cookie Contest Queen

I can't believe I haven't told this story on my self yet.

No, honestly, I really can't believe it.

For today's post, I will once again take off the mask, and reveal a bit more about the depths of my own depravity. Whatever. You might as well know. It's not like most of you haven't figured it out, anyway. I occasionally struggle a wee bit with the whole pride issue. (Please, if you know me, STOP clutching your guts and laughing hysterically. I am gifted and talented in the art of understatement. I know this.)

But I make mention of this character deficit in myself with the almost certain knowledge that most of you share my struggle. So with that tiny, tattered bit of consolation, I attempt to comfort myself.

It all started when my dear husband, the Big Bison, drug me out here to the Boonies to live amongst the wildlife about 4 years ago. We were kinda diggin' the idea of small town life, and so when we saw in our teeny local newspaper that there would be a cookie contest in conjunction with the lighting of the Christmas tree at the local library, we thought, "What fun! We can join in with the citizens of our new small town home town, and welcome in the holiday season!!!"

Now, I've won a pie contest or two or three in my time, and so obviously, I know how to work my oven. So, I thought, "Maybe I should bake cookies, and see how I fare in this contest! It's bound to be a fairly small pool of contestants. I might stand a chance of winning or placing, and it would be a fun way to meet some neighbors, too." So, I baked my cookies the morning of the contest, rushed them the 15 minute drive down the hill to town and dropped them off by the 3:00 PM deadline. While dropping them off, I took a look at the cookies dropped off by another contestant. These cookies looked like they were straight out of a bakery. Perfect in every detail, and expertly decorated. Mine tasted good, I knew, but I wasn't sure they had the visual appeal of these other beautiful cookies. It might come down to taste vs. appearance, and if hers tasted as good as they looked, I was a sure loser, I thought. Thoughtfully, I drove up the hill to fix dinner for my family. The lighting of the tree ceremony started at 7:00 that night, and it was my understanding that it would be accompanied by the community choir singing carols, and the announcement of the winner of the cookie contest.

It was a miserably cold and drizzly night, and we drove down the hill for the event, but arrived about 7:05. The Charlie Brown Christmas tree in front of our little bitty log cabin library stood shivering in the cold, wet mist, already lit, so we missed that....bummer. But I mean, really, it was kind of a sad little tree, so there wasn't much "Wow" factor involved in the loss of watching a string of lights get plugged in. All the folks who had turned out for the event, (my guess would be around a hundred or a hundred and fifty) were huddled on the porch of the log cabin library, blowing smoke from their noses and mouths and feeling their hair frizz or flatten, depending on their own hair issues. The choir was finishing, "We Wish You a Merry Christmas", so it seemed to me that this had been a pretty much "take no prisoners" kind of ceremony. It was all over except the cookie munchin' in other words, and people were lining up to do that.

They invited the crowd to line up and partake from the platters of cookies on the tables on the porch, and everyone was filling their plates and napkins as fast as they could. Because we were at the end of the line, all my cookies were long gone by the time my kids got there, but that was OK, I could make more at home. Still, no one was saying anything about who had won the contest. I ran into a neighbor I knew who greeted me warmly and said how glad she was that I had come for the little party. I thanked her, and asked her, "Um...have they already announced who won the cookie contest?" She nodded and said yes, she believed they had, but she hadn't heard the name. I asked her if she would mind going inside and asking the librarian who had won, and she said, "Sure! No problem! Hang on just a minute!" She made her way through the cookie crunching crowd, and into the library, where I saw her lean over the desk and speak to the librarian. She turned around, looked for me, and raised both arms in a victory salute, like Richard Nixon leaving Washington, D.C. for the last time before boarding Air Force One after the Watergate debacle. (This image was chosen for foreshadowing purposes, and to instill a feeling of foreboding. Remember that.)

Yes, indeed. I had won the contest. I was the reigning Cookie Queen of my little 'burg. My body clothed itself in chill bumps. The individual hairs of my remarkably frizzy head of hair (it was unbelievably misty and wet outside)puffed themselves up a little bit more with pride. I straightened my spine, (since I couldn't at that moment straighten my hair) and said, "Well! I won the cookie contest!" and wrapped myself in the joyous deliciousness of the moment.

We had errands to run in town that night, and so we hurried on our way. The next morning, the phone rang, and it was the librarian: "Susan! I was wondering if you would like to come down to the library and pick up your prize? We have a couple of things for you to choose from." "OK! Sure! I can come right down!" I responded.

"Hunh..."I thought, as I got ready to leave and drive to the library. "A couple of things to choose from. That's odd. Oh, well. Who knew there was a prize??? How fun is that!"

I entered the library and began to chat with the librarian. She said, "Congratulations, and welcome to -----ville!" (our town's name). I thanked her, and laughed and said, "Wow! Is this some kind of joke you play on new people who move to your town to help us feel welcome?" She smiled at me, a kind of funny little smile, and said, "You know, you get your name put on this plaque that hangs here in the library." And I thought, whoa! How cool is that!!! I'm immortalized for posterity someplace! And then I said, "You know, I saw that other beautiful platter of cookies when I walked in, and I really wasn't sure my cookies could compete with cookies as nice as those."

"Oh, yes," she said. "Those would be Mary Jo's." (The names have been changed here to protect the talented, but you get my drift) "Yes, she has won the contest every year for five or six years now." My chest, at this point, continues to swell with pride, as she continued her story. "Yes, she has won so many years in a row, that everyone else has dropped out - no one else even enters the contest anymore. But Mary Jo started working at the library this year, so she recused herself from participating."

Silence fell in the room, as I began to consider the implications of what she was saying, combined with the somewhat surprising fact that I had been offered a choice of prizes.

"So.....are you saying that I am the only person who entered the contest???"


She smiled brightly at me, and nodded her head.


How the mighty. are. fallen.

So, having said that.....

Here's my award winning recipe for Raspberry Shortbread.

This recipe comes from the 1999 edition of Southern Living, and despite my story, it really is a winner.

P.S. Two years later, I decided to enter the contest again. And THAT time, from a whole host of other participants, I won again. My name is now inscribed TWICE for posterity on the -----ville library Cookie Contest Plaque. Victory is mine!!!!!



Raspberry Shortbread

Yield: 6 dozen
Ingredients

* 1 cup butter, softened
* 2/3 cup sugar
* 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 (10-ounce) jar seedless raspberry jam, divided
* 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
* 3 1/2 tablespoons water
* 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Preparation

Beat butter and sugar at medium speed with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Gradually add flour, beating at low speed until blended. Divide dough into 6 equal portions; roll each portion into a 12- x 1-inch strip. Place strips on lightly greased baking sheets.

Make a 1/2-inch-wide by 1/4-inch-deep indentation down center of each strip using the handle of a wooden spoon. Spoon half of jam evenly into indentations.

Bake at 350° for 15 minutes. Remove from oven; spoon remaining jam into indentations. Bake 5 more minutes or until lightly browned.

Whisk together powdered sugar, water, and extract; drizzle over warm shortbread. Cut each strip diagonally into 1-inch slices. Cool in pans on wire racks.

Susan in the Boonies and the Sexiest Man Alive

Now I KNOW y'all think I am talking about my Big Bison, and in point of fact, with a title like this one, I should be! There is no sexier man alive than my gorgeous hunk of a husband, and if you don't share my opinion: well, good! More for me!!!

But, since lately I have been discussing on this blog "living without a mask", I think it's high time I unmasked myself, don't you???

I thought you would.

Well, I was standing in Kroger on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, having gotten up early, early to make an early morning grocery run before the masses of humanity descended on the store. I must say, it was a pretty good time to do my shopping (7:30 AMish). Not too many other folks in the store, and room to push my shopping cart without getting too frustrated.

So, when I had finally accumulated all my stuff, I went to the checkout line. And, with my usual skill at choosing checkout lines, I chose the line that ended up going the slowest. So, I waited. And waited. No forward movement. So, I looked for a magazine to help me pass the time.

What I am about to share with you next is a true, completely uncensored REAL LIFE PEEK into the inner workings of the mind of a Boonie Woman. Here are the totally uncensored thoughts that went through my mind at the checkout counter at Kroger:

"Anything interesting to read while I wait? Hmmm....not really...:nothing much but National Enquirer and rags like it. But wait: what's that??? Ah! A copy of People Magazine! And what's that headline? The Sexiest Man Alive? Hmmm....wonder who they've picked this year....let's just take a quick look/see... "


"Johnny Depp....hmm....well...he's handsome, alright....just saw him in our Chick Flick the other day, "Chocolat"....lovely brown eyes, and high cheekbones.... of course....he's really not my particular cup of tea....hmmm....what else is in here.....hmmm....Sexiest Men through the decades....Who are these guys...hmmmm....there's like 50 little head shots here on one page of....hmmm....sexy men through the decades......hmmm....there's men in their 20's....I've never heard of most of these guys.... 30's , 40's.....say, there's some cute ones there....ooooooh, that Matthew Fox....50's....they're a little old looking in this line....Maybe I'm more of a cougar than I thought....., hmmmm....what's on this next page....Oh, my gosh, it's some guy in a Speedo mowing his lawn....at the office.... good grief...he looks RIDICULOUS...."


Long about this moment, as I am cracking up at the various pictures of Jerry McGuire all around town in his underwear, a voice breaks into my consciousness:

"Well, Susan, have you decided which one you like yet?"

Oh. My. Gosh.

Blood rushes to my face as rapidly as sweat rushes to my armpits. It's Debbie! One of the ladies from my BIBLE STUDY!!!!

She carries on, undaunted: "I've been standing here watching you for the loooongest time, waiting for you to make up your mind which man you liked the best....."

(There is a roguish twinkle in her eyes. Debbie is the Queen of DropDeadDry Delivery.)

Well, we hooted aloud together at that point, and brought the cashier in on the joke, because she was FINALLY ready to begin checking out my groceries, and she seemed to get a pretty large charge out of me being caught by one of the ladies from my Bible Study as well.

I may be married - but I ain't blind, kids. And a fine looking man....is, well, absolutely a fine looking man. God created beauty, and it's lovely to behold.

And the Bison himself remains The Sexiest Man Alive in my own personal magazine. But, that's not for public consumption.

Sin Mountain

I'm still reading the book TrueFaced, written by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol, and John Lynch. And, I'm still sharing concepts and illustrations that come directly from that book. This is not original stuff of my own. You should buy the book and read it. Why am I doing this? Writing it helps me to further process what I am reading. I want these things to go deep down inside of me and become a part of who I am. Second, just in case somebody is reading this who would not have bought the book: well, I want to extend the ripples of the good stuff these men have written just a bit further.

I'm in chapter 3 now, and here's the illustration that I read today that grabbed me. Imagine yourself standing in front of a lake. On the other side, maybe a hundred yards or so across, stands a person that you are longing to see, to talk to. The lake is wide enough that there seems no possible way to walk around it, and besides, all around the shore of the lake grow bushes, teeming with thorns, preventing you from finding a path. You have no boat, and just in case you're thinking of wading or swimming, you discover that the water is disgustingly polluted and filled with poisonous snakes. What can you do? Your only recourse is to yell, back and forth across the lake, resulting in flawed communication, and ultimately, complete frustration.

The lake represents your sin, and the person to whom you long to be close is God. And this is an accurate picture of how we were before we came into belief in Jesus, and we were adopted into the family of God. Yet, disturbingly, this is also the way so many of us who have been adopted into the family of God still feel. Because we continue to sin on a regular basis, we see our sin as just adding to the poison of the lake, and deepening the impossibility of living in relationship with a holy God. It's as if God declaring us to have His righteousness never took place.

Primarily focusing on Pleasing God rather than Trusting God leaves us chained to our unresolved sin and immaturity. If we are living in the Room of Good Intentions, we see the piles of our sin, (to modify our analogy a bit), that separate us from a holy God, who is supposedly on the other side of that pile. And if moral striving can save the day, then we chip away at that sin pile, all the while shamefully aware that the sin of today only adds to the pile that lies in front of us. If we manage to knock off a chunk of bad behavior, well, then, we think that we've done something pretty big! And we rejoice in what our effort has accomplished, and in so doing, add a lump of pride to the sin pile in front of us.


Now, though, here is the change in the picture that resonated deep in my heart, that I wanted to share. What if I am all wrong in that picture I have created in my mind of how that sin pile separates me from God? What if what He says is true: that I have been adopted into His family, that I am connected to the Vine - remaining in Him? What if I really am IN Christ Jesus, like He says I am? What if He's NOT on the other side of that sin pile? What if He's standing right there beside me, with His arm around me, looking at my sin with me, and wanting to enjoy His relationship with me, ready to address my sin that is right out there in front of both of us?

Here's a quote from the book, of the Believer, talking to God, as they look at the sin pile in front of them: "Once, I thought that this particular sin would fulfill and satisfy me. But, Father, as we look at it together, I am learning to trust your assessment of what will satisfy and fulfill me. So, what do you want to do about this sin? I am not going to try to manage it or throw it to the ground. I trust you for the next step." "In the Room of Grace, Jesus Christ is honored, depended upon, and submitted to for the resolution of our sin issues."

"What if our sin doesn't affect how close we are to God? What if God meant it when He said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'?"

What if God could walk around that impossibly high mountain of our sin, walk right up to us, put His arm around us, and enjoy us right now - no matter how much unresolved sin we have in our lives? What if we could stand there together and look at my sin together, not for the purpose of condemnation, but for the purpose of solving it together in relationship?

See?

Grace changes everything.

For Such A Worm As I

If you have any history whatsoever of growing up in church, you may have sung a hymn that I also sang in church as a child, whose original lyrics have fallen out of favor. In fact, they are so politically incorrect that some hymnbooks have changed them. The hymn to which I am referring is entitled, "Alas! And Did My Savior Bleed?" and was written by Isaac Watts, and the old lyrics are as follows:

"Alas! And did my Savior bleed?
And did my Sovereign die?
Would He devote that Sacred Head
For such a worm as I?"

Later versions have changed the objectionable lyrics "for such a worm as I" to "for sinners such as I?" Because nobody in this day and age of promoting self esteem and positive self images really gets off on being called a worm.

But I would submit to you that this "objectionable" choice of lyrics is not really so very objectionable.

And maybe, after you hear my thoughts on this topic, you, too, might find yourself thinking that being a worm is not such a very bad thing, after all.

My dear friend Hannah loaned me a book she owns, called TrueFaced. This book was written by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol and John Lynch, and the thoughts I am going to share today came directly from their writings, but I'll retell them in my own way. So, if anything I say here today resonates with you, go buy their book if you can afford it, and help those guys pay their mortgages. (I couldn't afford it: but maybe you can!)

Hannah brought the book to our Friday Friends group, and read to us a portion of Chapter Two that deals with how Christians make a choice in their lives between two roads.

The first road is labeled "Pleasing God", and the second road is labeled "Trusting God". These roads represent the primary motivation of our hearts, and as they both appear to be good roads to a pilgrim traveler, it is difficult to choose between the two. But whichever road we as fellow pilgrims choose will determine the actions we will take, so the choice is significant.

Without retelling that whole excellent section of the book, the point the author makes is that if, as Christians, we choose the path labeled "Pleasing God" as our primary motivation, we set ourselves up for a life of striving - striving to be good enough to please God. Striving to overcome our sin. It is a performance driven path. And even more dangerous, if we surround ourselves with like minded performance driven people, we all eventually end up wearing masks, almost before we know it, because we can't let the other people who have also chosen the "Pleasing God" path know how terribly far short we are falling. Likewise, we have no idea what our brothers and sisters in Christ are really going through, because they all have their masks on as well, so that we cannot see their struggles.

It is NOT a bad thing in any way to want to please God. It is a lovely thing to want to please the heart of God. But if that is our primary motivation in life, as fallible human beings, we are doomed to failure, for we can never be perfect enough, never holy enough, and all our self-effort leaves us despairing in the end.

The other road, marked "Trusting God" focuses not on effort, but on grace, on believing what God has said about us to be true, and trusting His grace to enable us to mature.

To illustrate its point, the book gives the example of a caterpillar: those green, squirmy, and I hate to say this, but kind of ugly little things that just look like, well, worms.

But if you examined the worm/caterpillar's DNA, any scientist would tell you that this, my friends, is indeed, a butterfly. True, it doesn't exactly look very much like a butterfly at this point in its life. And so, if I spent time berating the caterpillar for not being very pretty, or not flying, or for its very worminess, well, he wouldn't fly any sooner, would he? I might end up hurting his little caterpillar feelings, and causing him caterpillar angst, guilt and shame, but he would fly no sooner.

In II Corinthians 5:17, God tells me that I AM a new creation, because I am IN CHRIST. (Despite my wormy appearance.)

And I know that I am in Christ, because Jesus tells me so. He says in John 5:24 "if anyone hears my words and believes him who sent me, that person has eternal life, and will not be condemned. That person has crossed over from death to life." And I've done that.

So, because I am in Christ, I want to take the road labeled "Trusting God". I am going to choose to absolutely trust Him, that what He says about me is true: that I ALREADY AM a new creation, with the brand new New Creation DNA that He has given me for who I am in Christ.





That (and here's been the sticking point for me in the past) DESPITE EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY (because in many ways, I still look and act very much like a homely caterpillar/worm/sinner - I sin, I stumble, I'm selfish, prideful, arrogant, etc.,) my New Creation DNA says that I am a beautiful new creation! I am who God says I am, despite evidence to the contrary!

Hebrews says, "Without faith, it is impossible to please Him". And it's easy for me to fall into the trap of trying to please Him by being good enough. By trying with all my might to get rid of my caterpillarliness. By believing the lie that because I still stumble and sin and mess up and very much resemble a worm, that I probably AM just a worm, secretly. "Why, oh why, oh why can't I fly??? I'm so ashamed, God!!!" When all He really wants out of me is a little faith, that what He says about what He's done for me is the truth. To trust Him, and His grace, as sufficient: He really doesn't need all my self-effort. It is my very FAITH that pleases Him, my trust in Him that He is able to help me mature. So "Pleasing God" is a by-product of "Trusting God"!

"For such a worm as I"...well, I DID used to be a worm. But now, no thanks to me and all my efforts to please Him, I'm a new creation. And my heart longs to travel the path marked "Trusting God". I want to trust Him to complete the good work He's begun in me. To grow me up to look like my big brother Jesus. I want to walk this road of trusting Him with other pilgrims who are also tired of trying to look good enough, and who are humbly thankful for the work that's been done in us, Who are willing to tell it like it really is, and who are ready to shed their masks..



I can't tell you how grateful I am that God is, in fact, providing me with people who are ready to make this walk with me. Friends who are ready to leave their masks behind, and show their true faces.