Essential oils- why we love them!

Essential oils are fragrant little bottles of goodness. They are medicines, they are perfumes, they are deodorizers and aromatherapy. The most common question that I receive from people is- "What oil do I use for such and such". While there is often a specific answer to this question, the general answer is to just begin using the basic oils in your everyday life and let them have tehir powerful affect generally before focusing on specifics. It is like finding God's will for your life. To many, that seems like an elusive idea that may only be discovered by prayer and fasting, but the Truth is that God's general will for EVERYONE is contained within His word. There is enough of the genereal will of God for each of us to be doing that quite often if we are faithful to do that, He will take care of His specific will and not allow us to miss it. God's general will includes first seeking God with all of our hearts. talking to Him daily, loving all people and showing it by displaying patience, self-control, joy and other fruits of the Spirit. This alone could keep us busy for a lifetime! Sharing Christ with people is God's general will for all of us. If we make this our aim He will take care of our lives and lead us into the very specifics such as who we are to marry, where we are to work, if we are to work, what home we should live in, where should our children go to school, should we sign up for soccer this spring, or should I serve in that area of ministry at church.  It seems to be our nature to go looking for the specifics instead of giving our time to what we already know.
Our health and our bodies are very much the same.
Essential oils are not greasy oils like our cooking oils(olive, coconut, canola, etc.). They can penetrate the skin but do not clog pores. They are obtained by low pressure/low temperature steam distillation rather than being pressed from a plant. They have a shelf life of hundreds of thousands of years as they in themselves carry super ability to preserve and nurture life- they will do the same thing in your body! Look at some of the wonderful properties of these plant oils:
Antimicrobial- against bacteria, viruses and fungi
Insect repellant and used to treat bite symptoms
Antispasmodic- promotes muscle relaxation- menstral cramps, injuries, tension
Settling for stomach discomforts
Pain relieving
Increases circulation and oxygen to the tissues (we will come back to this one)
Stimulates the immune system
Hormone-like properties
Initiates regeneration of nerves
Assists in balancing psychological symptoms
Lessens anxiety

Increase alertness

Humans need blood to live and plants need their essential oil to live. The chemical structure of these oils is compatible with the human cells and tissues. They are compatible with human protein, therefore, our bodies readily identify the oils and accept them in. They have the ability to actually penetrate the cell membrane and diffuse through the blood and tissues and travel to all parts of the body within minutes. Essential oils can increase oxygen at the cellular level! As we will see later on, all disease growsbecause of an acidic enviromnet where oxygen levels are low and depleted. The ability to increase oxygen to cells is equivalent to giving life to the cells and enabling them to do what they were designed and created to do. Whether it is a heart cell, a liver cell, or a hormone cell- we want them all working at their optimum level! Click on the following link for a great explanation of how Young Living's oils are purely therapeutic and to see suggestions on certain oils and their uses.

http://www.nurturedfamily.com/blog/index.php/2010/11/essential-oils/

Abundant Living and Appreciating Assets

All of those titles would be sure to catch most anyone's attention- especially in today's society where we are busy, tired, run down, and yet more and more responsibility seems to greet us with each new day. Add in a marriage, three or so children, work responsibilities, relationships and...whew! We need Jesus! But we also need to take care of ourselves and our bodies. I heard a minister make the statement one time that " Our body is our greatest asset". That statement has stuck with me for several years now as I have mulled over whether or not I see the validity in it. As a believer, isn't our re-created spirit where Christ himself dwells our greatest asset? Isn't our mind renewed with God's Word our greatest asset? After all, right thinking equals right living, doesn't it? Well, each of these is an arguable point but I have observed and even experienced for myself that our body is, indeed, our greatest asset here on the earth. Without it, even the purest of hearts, even the wisest of minds still come up short in their ability to get up, move about and impact the world. Even the most mature and sagacious of Believers has to get his body up out of bed in the morning and enter into the new day. We can't travel if we're unwell, we can't serve others if we are sick, and we have little to give out when we ourselves are tired and in pain.We need hands to serve with, feet that take us somewhere, and the energy to boot. Our body is a great asset and we want to appreciate it a little more than we have been! My husband is leading Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at out church right now and we are undergoing financial reconstruction in some ways and fine tuning others. With financial planning it is common to hear the phrase "depreciating assets". Well, if you are a woman who is approaching 35 or can look back and see it in the distance, you begin to realize that, like your vehicle(only pay cash for your car- Dave Ramsey says so), your body begins to feel like a depreciating asset. I have recently come into this knowledge and I am determined to push my body right back into my assets collumn! For many of us, our bodies have gotten into debt. Our time and energy accounts are overdrawn, we are exceeding our spending limit every day and as a result our hormones are unhappy, our health is unhappy, and our husbands are unhappy! We can change this!

This a happy, healthy woman. Everyone who wants to feel like this, raise your hand...or hold out both arms and throw your head back, that's even better!

 About 3 or 4 years ago I was invited to a friend's home where I was introduced to a line of Essential Oils and other health care products by a company called Young Living. Well, I was already praying and primed for a change that I knew my family and I needed to embrace in order to go to the next level of living that I believed God had for us. We had already made several changes in our diets, learning what it meant to eat organic, etc. but I knew there was more. As a nurse and a former Biology major, the biochemistry of the oils and how they related to the human body intrigued me. I began to study and as I did we gradually accumulated these little bottle of fragrant oils in bathroom drawers, kitchen cabinets and upon bedside tables until the use of them had become a way of life for us. My children didn't need antibiotics any more. My husband stopped having a bout with strep throat twice a year, my constant allergies began to disappear, and our energy increased. We knew that we were healthier and stronger. As my interest grew, I began to share my little finds with others and before I knew it I had women calling and emailing and desiring seminars so that they could learn more as well. Hence, this blog. This was a blog that I began with much ambition to chronicle the growings and happenings of my children but I faltered, only submitting an entry here and there. But the blog was still there. At my most recent seminar, while teaching on the oils and fielding a number of questions, one of the younger girls piped up, "You should do a blog!" and I liked the idea. So, I will attempt to keep this blog updated with teachings and information about the Young Living Oils and other products as well as lifestyle changes we are making toward a more abundant life. There may be a smattering of children pictures as well and perhaps I will be able to accomplish two things at once in this one little webby spot. I think I will start from the beginning with a teaching on what the oils are and what they can do...........

A Field Trip & Turning Six!

My little girl is six years old.  Just last week she was five years old and now she is six. Six sounds so much more grown up than 5 for some reason. She even looks older now. She wears blue jeans and rolls her eyes every once in a while.She makes her own bed, can take the wet clothes out of the washer and put them into the dryer, and puts her clothes back on their hangers. She climbs trees and moved up to the "big kids class" at church. Yet in some ways, she is still very little and I like to watch for those things. She still has a baby way of saying some words,  still wears her footie jammies, loves to carry around her baby dolls and asks for me to fix her hair up in buns. She still needs to be read aloud to and likes to be carried to her bed when we drive in late from somewhere and it's dark outside. William says that living things grow and that we should rejoice that she is alive and growing, too.(This was in response to my idea that we should freeze her exactly as she is right now. His ideas are always much wiser and doable than mine.) So, it really is a blessing. I think I will change my anouncement of her turning six........I will say: "My little girl is six years old! She is growing and strong! She has a sound mind, a peaceful heart, a born-again spirit and a healthy body! Hooray! She sailed through 5 and got promoted to 6! Her life is a great success! Next year she will be seven and it just keeps getting better!!!!! Yes, that is how it should be- a celebration.
 Here are the ways we celebrated  turning six:

We went to Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home just below DC. We got to tour the house and go through a beautiful museum gallery showing memorabilia surrounding the First President's life. The film on the Revolutionary War was a real highlight! This was our first official field trip and I thought is was a great success. The most fascinating part for me was a key that Washington had on display in his home. It was THE key to the Bastille in Paris that was stormed by angry French Revolutionaries. Apparently, LaFayette presented it to Washington as a gift in honor of him being the "father of freedom". I thought of Jesus who came to set not just a few free but all men everywhere, whether bound with natural chains or the fetters of sin. We serve the Father of ALL freedoms and he holds the keys to death, hell and the grave!
(P.S. Notice Josiah)

We had to wait in line for about an hour to tour the house at Mt. Vernon. Meanwhile, the kids could play "Graces" on the lawn. You pass a wooden hoop back and forth with two wooden sticks. It was called "Graces' because you had to keep perfect posture and let the hoop float up in the air and gracefully catch it. We obviously have to work on keeping our backside tucked in, but- hey.....we caught the hoop!

Thank you, Aunt Hannah for telling us about the wonderful Lego exhibit at the National Building Museum in DC! We took the kids for their first ride on Washington's Metro rail system to see this great exhibit. After seeing the huge Lego replicas of famous skyscrapers(like the Sears Tower), you could stay and build your own. Here's Jon Langley with the start of his creation.

Daddy and Josiah try their hand at it, too.

Shaisy building-- see the exhibit in the background? Since this is the only place I photographed a glimpse of the actual Legos on display, I obviously thought the real feature of the weekend was my children! (:

Keeping Life Colorful

Sometimes things at the last minute work the best...sometimes. This year for Hallelujah Night (our alternative to Halloween) I had not prepared any costumes. Usually, I get really excited and inspired and sew cute things and paint faces and plan my theme, only to snap a quick picture and then the moment we arrive at church my very cute, well-executed Adam, Eve & the apple costumes get stripped off, torn up, and quickly discarded in exchange for bouncing up and down on the huge blow-up games and sliding down the monster slide. A week of planning results in 5 minutes of glory... and I think most of it was for me, anyway. (Kind of like those birthday cakes I make "for the kids"...) Well, this year my lack of ambition turned out just right for everyone on Hallelujah night. When the kids realized mommy had no costumes made they were stricken with grief. So, I dug deep for some creativity, still thinking about functionality and what would survive 3 hours of ecstatic jumping and candy eating. Blue jeans, a turtleneck, a construction cone hat and a crayola wrapper blown up on the copier and....voila! The costumes were still quickly discarded and trampled but I didn't care! Jon Langley actually wore his cone hat for quite a while but that's just him. The next day they wanted to be crayons again- this was  a hit!

The Highlight of My Day

I just got a phone call. It is the highlight of my day- each day. It's what makes me scurry around to get things picked up, run the vacuum, put supper on the table....and be ready for the big moment. I love to hear the phone ring because I know that it will be him, my favorite person, my best friend. My husband is coming home!!

My Big Little Girl

Shea is my hero. She is a big girl. She is responsible. She thinks about others. She brings people cups of water when they're outside working. She unloads the dishwasher because she knows that I don't like to. She likes to take baths with me. Now she is blowdrying her own hair. She is very into stylish things- feather boas, furry pink pocketbooks with rhinestones, multiple patterns and headbands. All of these are at the top of her list. Her most endearing quality, however, is that she loves to be with me. When I was her age I had to fix my own hair because I tormented my mother and pitched a fit until Daddy said that mother wasn't allowed to do it anymore and I would have to learn how to for myself. Shea does it because she's responsible and wants to be a help to her mommy on Sunday mornings. I want to be just like her when I grow up.

Solitude

This is every mother's dream- just an hour or two alone. We go to the bathroom with an entourage, fix supper with one attached to our leg, and have to go through the slight invasion of privacy of having to try on outfits in the handicap TJ Maxx dressing room while 3 pair of eyes are fixed on us and our mommy figure. Time alone is a bit lacking. Daddy can escape "outside" but mommy- well, being mommy is another story. Maybe I'd watch a decorating show, maybe I'd go through my closet, maybe I'd lay in my hammock, pray or play the piano. Solitude- it's more than a luxury. It is a necessity.

Solitude

 Oh Solitude, bleak and grey

If some love has flown away

If another takes your place

If you've wandered far from Grace

Solitude- a lonely word?

One that's rarely ever heard

In a home of padding feet,

screeching voices begging treats

Solitude- the great unknown

Quite extinct in modern homes

Perhaps within but not without

Might one tend to have a bout with

Solitude- neither bleak nor grey

Let one have a sunny day

Day of leisure, day of ease

When there's only one to please

This type repose will surely do

Oh, Solitude- I welcome you!