Oven Baked Chicken – Pat Enright
1/4 cup milk
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 cup melted butter
1 cut up chicken
Combine flour, bread crumbs and seasonings. Dip chicken in milk and then coat with flour mixture. Place on baking sheet and pour butter over each piece of chicken. Bake at 375 for one hour.
In this Passion & Purity christian bubble I live in, it’s generally frowned upon for a single girl to invite a boy to a church seminar on sex. But I did. Then again, there probably aren’t too many church seminars on sex (can I even write that word on a church website?!)
The thing is, last Sunday night’s seminar on Sexual Wholeness in a Broken World with guest speaker Sharon Hersch and our girl Christy’s very own Johnny LaLonde, was monumental on so many levels. Men and women. Married and single. Discussing sex. Together. At church.
And don’t tell the Puritans, but we also had fun. (And we’re having a dance at church in a few weeks, too).
In this Bible study I’m in, we’re talking about the Blessed Alliance–men and women doing theology together. Living life together. Ruling and subduing, you guessed it, together. So when our women’s ministry opened the monthly Simply Soul meetings to men, I was thrilled. Thrilled to see our church embrace a touchy subject with sensitivity, grace, and profound truth.
Which leads me to the point of writing.
Sex is about surrender. Exchanging my ideas and my history of hurt and loneliness for an even greater story. Hersch shared three ways we surrender, whether married or single:
We surrender our nakedness to another
Our bodies are disconnected from our hearts. We see our bodies as an object to be made beautiful, to be made thinner, to be tanned, to be plucked. We treat our bodies as a tool, but not our heart. No, our heart can betray us, our heart hurts. So we learn to disconnect from our heart. And if you read about my heart, you’d know I have years of duct tape fighting against being unwound. But growth and surrender happens when we become emotionally naked before the Lord and our spouse.
We surrender our differences to another
Just because Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus doesn’t mean one is better than the other. It just means we’re different. Surrendering our differences is acknowledging this and humbly putting the other’s needs in front of our own. It doesn’t have to be my way all the time (but secretly–and publicly, I suppose–I wish it was).
We surrender our shame to another
Sex is a mirror into which we see what we were made for. We were made to carry each other’s shame so we know we were made for forgiveness. Christ carried my shame all the way to Calvary. He hung on a cross and wore every scar. He surrendered His very life for me.
I want a man who will love me like that, but it terrifies me. How could my love ever measure up? The answer is, of course, it can’t. (and I will never find a man who will love me every moment of every day just like Christ). So instead, I cling to Christ. I put on Christ. And I go back to the beginning–I surrender my girlish dreams and Prince Charming hopes for an even greater story. A story where I am relentlessly and passionately loved by a King.
Tuesday the 29th is voting day. Don’t forget to get out there and vote. Every vote counts. Whatever your party affiliation or your beliefs, get out there and VOTE.
This is a privilege we have an Americans. There are many people in the world who don’t have the privilege we have.
I had these recently, and they were good (especially if you like Espresso.) Of course, Anna said she was up all night because she couldn’t sleep after eating so much espresso!!
Espresso Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Anna Limber
2 cups flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp instant espresso powder
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg plus 1 large egg yolk
7 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate coarsely chopped
Mix first 4 ingredients. In a small bowl, stir together espresso powder, vanilla and 1 Tbsp water. In another bowl, cream butter and sugars with mixer until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes.) Add egg and yolk to butter and mix thoroughly. Add espresso and mix well. Add flour mixture in small batches, mixing until just combined. Stir in chocolate chunks by hand.
Using a 2″ ice-cream scoop, scoop heaping balls of dough and place 3″ apart on cookie sheets covered with parchment paper. Bake for 20 minutes at 325. Remove from oven and let cool completely before removing from pan. Makes 18 cookies.
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