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Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

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“If nothing else, one day you can look someone straight in the eyes and say ‘But I lived through it. And it made me who I am today.”

— Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You

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cinnamon swirl chocolate chip pumpkin butter bread

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Pinterest • https://www.pinterest.com

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Honey Orange Blossom Baklava

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gluten free lemon poppy seed bread

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Oatmeal Nutella Stuffed Cookies

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wendy

https://www.instagram.com/theangrybaker/

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Josh Young

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International Rose Test Garden, Portland  by Erin DeFuria

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Brown Butter Chai Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

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Honey #5

Yes I know there is no 4. I began writing honey 4 so long ago. Thankfully I am not the person I was then, so to honor that I’m writing honey 5.

So let’s review::

||proverbs 16:24||

Gracious words are like a honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the body.

That was my verse for 2021. I didn’t know how much action that one sentence would get this year. But hindsight is always 20/20.

I have been incredibly awed and devastatingly broken this year. There have been insurmountable highs and low valleys. And, so what my mind says? Logic tells me each year is like such. There will be good times and bad times. So what.

In my heart I know each year when it comes to a close is magical. There is and will never be another year like such. There will never be another year in which I hold my niece for the first time. Or in which my best friend from college buys me spanks on the day of my wedding because I forgot them.

There will never be a sweeter moment than when tears stream down my face at 3a while I’m in a panic about a diagnosis. Wondering what will we do now? And God says, proceed.

When you plan and plan and plan and your plans blow up in your face. You proceed. When you pray and pray and pray, and get silence, you proceed. When you yearn for friendships that have gone sour, you proceed.

Plan, Pray, Proceed. You see my Ps were a bit jumbled this year. I planned so diligently thinking it would put my soul at ease. What I needed to do was proceed with God. What I needed to do was remain vulnerable, with God, with myself, with friends. In prayer and supplication making my requests known, God will always outdo you.

More than you can ask or imagine. His words are like honey. Mercy, love,justice, compassion, righteousness…all sweet like honey.

What I know to be true from this year, God will make a way. When there is no way. When you’ve been throwing a spiritual tantrum for 3 months straight. When you’ve just been praying “help” or nothing at all. When you’ve lost your patience with your family for the eleventh hundredth time. When your living situation changes and your enneagram six brain does not commute and is on a lag. How gracious is my Savior with me? Ten million times over.

It has become a known fact to me that God will use anything. Because He is everything. What saving grace. There is no where we can go He will not be there. Nothing can snatch us out of His hand.

That is sweet. That is honey. I especially like to reflect, I spend a lot of time thinking about thinking. As someone with an anxiety order you would think I would want to think less. But that’s not the case.

With God, I want to think more. More of His character, His grace, His willingness to love, His obedience even on to death. I sit and ponder and think of a verse each year, or wait for a prophecy, or a season theme to reveal itself.

But for next year, let’s not truncate God into a verse. Bring your whole self into His whole kingdom and be made new. I need all of His word, not just the book of Proverbs or Philippians.

Although the totality of God is so much larger than we can comprehend, He is El Roi. The God who sees. He sees you and me and everyone else. And His words are sweet, swift, and deserve to be honored. Even when you don’t understand them. He is always, always like honey.

Honey.

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Greenery by Evan Campbell

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tbh the fact that its almost 2022 is fine, like its fine whatever. the fact that 2012 was now a decade ago? life ruining. inconsolable etc etc