It's a First!

Happy Sunday!  We have sun out here in Cobourg and got hardly a dusting of snow overnight, compared to a few inches elsewhere, but that’s great.  It has been a very gentle winter here and although Cavan is disappointed that we didn’t get a great dump to tackle with the monster of a snow blower that we have, I am quite happy that  we got so little.  It makes getting around much easier.

Today, I sit with three Bibles on my desk.  I actually own six I have discovered, although one is truly Alysse’s from camp one year (it is a Precious Moments Bible in pink!). I’m working on my first sermon.  In some ways the prospects of delivering my first sermon frighten me, but it is at least to a sympathetic group--my fellow students and teachers on the priest course.  I, of course, volunteered to give my sermon on the first of two nights we are presenting.

I can’t believe how much there is to know and understand in putting a sermon together.  You have to choose and understand a Bible verse of course, that is a given. But I never knew the structure that went into the sermon, although understanding that goes a long way to putting it all together.

To prepare for the sermon, aside from choosing the verse, I realized that I hadn’t actually heard a sermon in a few years, because I hadn’t gone to a church for a couple of years.  So, as I mentioned in the last blog, I went to St. Peter’s Anglican Church here in Cobourg last Sunday.  I also read the sample sermon in our book “The Practice of Preaching.” We also have a few sermons to listen to that our bishop has given in the Sunday services that she records.  That gives me lots of audio samples.

I have several pages, handwritten for the moment, as I did a page for each section of the sermon and am working on jotting down points as I think of them. I’m hoping that it all hangs together, when I am done.

Cavan has to go into the city Wednesday night and won’t be back until Friday morning, so that gives me lots of alone time to go over the sermon.  I can get quite wordy, so I am hoping to make sure that I stay within the 10 to 12 minutes.

I also mentioned in the last blog that this is the most challenging part of this course so far, but a necessary part, of course.  I don’t have an actual physical church to preach in, but knowing how to prepare and present a sermon is really important.  I do have a bit of an advantage.  I don’t actually mind public speaking.  I used to do a lot of it, either at work, or through the MS Society.  I haven’t done it recently though, because I do have some memory difficulties.  Because I always was well versed in the topic of my presentations, I didn’t have notes, slides perhaps, but never any notes.  This is very different.  I’m not sure if I should go with point form, or actual sentences, but since I don’t want to forget anything, I need to have something on paper.  I will start with point form and see if that is enough, I think.

So, this is my challenge for the week.  God willing, I shall rise to the occasion! It would be nice if it was something really epic, but then again, I’d best not get too ambitious. I shall settle for meaningful and understandable. I do need to get the point of the sermon across and if I do nothing else, I must accomplish that.

Well folks, this is my challenge for the week.  I pray that you rise to meet all of your challenges.  We’ll meet here again next week with the results of the challenge.  God bless!

Shameless Flogging

Happy Sunday! It’s a beautiful sunny day here in the resort town of Cobourg. It feels like spring!  Should we be so lucky?

I was at church this morning, at St. Peter’s Anglican Church here in Cobourg.  It is a beautiful old church and will be 200 years old in 2019.  This is only the second time I have been there and they have a new priest who has only been there three Sundays, including today!  I was there for three reasons, I guess.  One, I hadn’t been to church for a while, two, I had a book to drop off (more about that later) and three, I am studying to write sermons and I thought I should really hear a few, which I hadn’t done for a while.

I think the study of writing sermons is the most challenging of the priest course, at least so far.  I am learning so much, though and I actually look forward to presenting one day.  It will be nerve wracking, I’m sure, but it will be fine.  I have the study book to get through and a lovely mentor to work with, as well as the classes. How could I not possibly succeed?  I’m not expecting to knock my first sermon out of the park, but I believe it will go well.

So, back to my thought about the book at St. Peter’s.  As many know, I have written four books. They are children’s books based on stories in the bible.  I have donated copies to a few places, including St. Peter’s, but it was at the time when only three of the four were published.  So, essentially, I owed them a book, which I handed over to Jan, the Sunday School teacher today.

In light of my shameless flogging, I am shamelessly flogging my books, which are selling at a trickle at best.  I did sell one of each of the four yesterday to a friend, who wanted them for another niece or nephew.  At this rate, I shall not sell all of the ones I have in my lifetime, but who knows, if I keep plugging away, I may find the right group of folks who will buy a bunch of them!  I am the eternal optimist, after all.

For those of you who don’t know, the books are for children from about the ages of three to six.  Each book has four stories from verses of the bible.  Each story is from an animal’s point of view, which makes the story memorable for the children.

This blog is to remind folks about the books and, hopefully, entice you to purchase one or two, or all four!  You can find them at my personal website:  janetkwarren.com or the book website animalsofthebible.com.  They are sold online at Amazon and Indigo/Chapters, as well as quite a few other online booksellers.  You can go to any online bookseller and do a search on ‘Janet K Warren’ and you should find them.

The books are really good for teaching the bible stories to small children.  Because of the animals, they are more likely to remember the story.

Hey, another blog at an end!   Have a great week everyone.  God bless!

Something New!

Happy Sunday!  I pray that everyone is well and enjoying a relaxing day. It’s snowing quite a bit here, but I have nowhere I need to be except home.  I pray that all who need to travel in this weather arrive at their destination safely.

I wasn’t going to blog about this for a while yet, but there’s no time like the present, right? I have started yet another diet.  This will come as no surprise to anyone, I’m sure, as I have blogged about my paleo journey and the Whole30 that I attempted.

I have been dieting on and off all my life, going back to when I was a kid and wasn’t allowed my peanut butter on toast, because I was the only overweight one in the house. Unfortunately, that only made me want it more, so I got into sneaking food. I was also the only one that was required to attend the YMCA every Saturday for an exercise class and, on my list of chores, had ‘exercise’ listed and no-one else did.  I’m not saying I was hard done by, but the one thing I learned from all of that was that my size was unacceptable and so I have beat myself up about it all my life.

I lost weight in college because I couldn’t afford to eat much, but gained it back bit by bit when I started working, so I joined Weight Watchers and got down to 123 lbs. It, of course was not possible to maintain. I lost weight for my wedding, I lost weight before I got pregnant, I was too stressed out as a single mother to do anything for many years after that until I did the cookie diet with Cavan and we both lost 60 lbs. That diet is far from maintainable, so much of that weight came back on, although I have never again hit my heaviest.

I tried paleo and I did lose some weight and, better than that, I felt better, staying off the grains.  It could have been maintainable, but I got lazy.  I then tried to kick start it with the Whole30, twice.  The first time lasted about 15 days and the second lasted about 22. I do think I was on the right track and if I stick to the lifestyle, I do fine.

Then I was talking with a friend in Calgary, who started her family on the keto diet.  She sent me some information and I did quite a bit of research myself. It is very similar to paleo, except it is low carb and high fat, so still no grains or legumes, but out with root vegetables and fruit, and add back the dairy. The idea is to get your body into ketosis, where it uses fat for energy rather than sugar (and I have fat to spare, so it makes sense!).

I started on Monday and today being Sunday, this is day 7.  I have lost about 5 pounds so far, so it seems something that makes sense for me.  Cavan is on it too because he has hit the heaviest he has ever been.  A couple of observations:  I kind of miss my fruit smoothie in the morning and I seem to dirty way more dishes.  We have bacon and eggs in the morning and make sure that we get lunch, which we were skipping, which may have been part of our problem.

We have also added other things to this mix.  I know from my programmer days that you shouldn’t change more than one thing at a time because you won’t find out what fixed the problem, but I have this stuff in the house, so let’s go all out.  We are also having a cup of warm water first thing in the morning with 2 tablespoons each of apple cider vinegar and lemon juice.  I had been doing this for quite a while anyway and it’s supposed to kick start your metabolism for the day.  We also have Dr. Gundry’s Vital Reds, which are just plain good for you, and with breakfast and dinner, we have two capsules of apple cider vinegar and two capsules of coconut oil.  Also good stuff.

We have had some delicious dinners and I am finding some wonderful recipes online. I have yet to find a good chocolate dessert that we both like (without flour, the consistencies aren’t great), and I need to find a hot chocolate that Cavan is happy with.  He is still getting sugar with his daily hot chocolate, that I need to fix.

All in all, this is going well, but it has only been a week.  It needs to be a life style and it takes at least two weeks to get your body into ketosis, so we have a while to go yet. I have had failure after failure, but who knows, this might be the one that sticks!  It’s manageable and Cavan isn’t hungry on it.  I rarely get hungry, so any diet works for me from that respect.

I’ll do an update in a few weeks and we’ll see where we are at!

In the meantime, stay safe in whatever nasty weather you may be having!  God bless!

Hi, It's Me!

Happy Sunday! We’ve been having some snow fall today, so it seemed a good day to get a little crochet project done, blog and finish the laundry.  I’ll read if I get to it, but I seem to be so good at just puttering and not accomplishing much of anything these days!  If I actually schedule it, it does get done, but the rest I putter my way through.

As for the blogging, I was having trouble coming up with a topic for today, but had pinned a bunch of social media ideas on Pinterest, so I went there for an idea.  Most of them don’t apply because I’m not trying to make any money off this--although I would like to sell some books--I’m not reviewing products or websites. I’m not interviewing anyone, or doing any how to stuff.  I’m just trying to write something that might be of interest to folks and I don’t actually think that I’m much good at that.

It seems that I began blogging in February of 2014, so I’ve been at this for three years.  It started as part of a public relations thing with my publisher, to sell books.  I have to say then that the mission has not been accomplished, but then it is also true of the other social media I got into.  I’m just not into trying to make a sale.  Not that I was arrogant enough to believe that my books would sell like hotcakes on their own.  I mean aside from the fact that the demographic for the books is pretty specific--Christians of ages three to six--it’s tough to sell any books unless you are a well known author.  I don’t think that a blog, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest are going to do that, but then I’m also no marketing genius, that’s for sure.

So, let’s start new.  I am Janet K. Warren and I live in the little town of Cobourg on the north shore of Lake Ontario.  I’m retired from the IT world, having spent about 35 years doing computer ‘stuff.’ I have had multiple sclerosis for over 22 years and raised two lovely girls on my own since their father left me about 23 years ago.  I love to read and crochet, although the MS does slow down the crocheting a bit.  I am a deacon for the Community Catholic Church of Canada and studying to be a priest.  For those of you who are Roman Catholics, the Community Catholic Church separated sometime around 1860, and yes, we have women clergy members.

I think that covers the basics.  For family, I obviously have two children, but I am also the second oldest of eight children, six of whom are adopted (including me!), so I have a fairly big extended family. My hubby, Cavan, comes from a family of four boys, of which he is the oldest.  Cavan and I have been together since 2003.

Cavan lost his father in 2010 and I lost my mother in 2005 and my oldest brother in 2009.  It is never easy to go through loss, we have decided, but as a wise friend once told me; ‘you never get over it, you just learn to live with it.’ I have also lost three cats, since I got my first one in 1985.  Even losing a pet leaves a hole in your life.

So life goes on and you set goals and work at achieving them.  I have recently taken training on palliative care, which is where I would like to see my ministry going.  Oddly enough I feel most comfortable with young children and rather old people.  It was suggested to me that perhaps I feel most comfortable with people who have either just come from God, or are returning home soon.  Interesting.

Spirituality and religion have always been part of my life and these days, I am feeling like I need it to be a bigger part of my life, hence the studies.  If all goes well, I shall be ordained a priest in June.

Well, folks, that, in a nutshell, is me. I lead a rather unexciting life, but I like it that way and I prefer that there not be too many demands on me time, as I do get worn out fairly quickly.  I am blessed that my MS is not much worse, but fatigue is a challenge.

I pray for all, that you have the life that resonates best with you and that perhaps you will pop into my blog and see how I am doing from time-to-time.  God bless.