Thankful for Infertility

Yep...you read that right. This year, I'm thankful for infertility. 

It is around this time of year that people begin to reflect on the year past. Where you find more folks gazing off into the sunset pondering what went wrong and what went right these last 11 months. I'm no different, in fact, I'm likely queen of those people. I've always had a tendency to gaze...

This year I started thinking about the things God taught me. How different my life looks now than it did six and a half years ago when I asked Him to save me. And over and over my mind is taken to how thankful I am for my infertility. I'm not being facetious and I'm not pretending it hasn't been the most painful journey I've ever taken, but it has been the single most important thing God has used to grow me.

I always had a vision of how life would look. Grow up, get married, have babies. And every book or movie I ever read or watched made it seem like that was all so simple. Like POOF, you're married and now babies come. And I couldn't wait for babies! I've been picking out names for my children for as long as I can remember. My cousin and I have lists upon lists of boy names and girl names and we know each other's top favorites that we could never steal. Everyone around me seemed super fertile and pregnancies just popped up everywhere.

And then I got married. Like right out of a fairy tale. He wasn't perfect, neither was I, but he was perfect for me. We balanced each other out and mixed so well. Our day was beautiful, encompassed in love. And that night we began trying for a family. And three months later, I miscarried our first child. Suddenly, the illusion of that plan dissipated around me and I realized that I had no idea what this chapter held.

Fast forward six years, one more miscarriage, the big C word scare, and three years of no more conception. I can stand here today and say that I am grateful for this journey. I won't share the nitty gritty details. They're mine, and my husbands, and God's. They are raw and full of hurt and love and a sea of tears. But here is what I've learned- if my life is a greater testimony for God's glory without children, then I will never have children, and HE IS ENOUGH. 

I can peek inside my life and look around and see the dozens of children who I get to love and be loved by. The friends and family who lend me their babies, the sweet boys and girls I have the privilege to teach in Sunday School and Master Clubs, the snuggles I cherish in the church nursery, the connections I'm somehow able to form with strangers children.  There is no shortage of children in my life. And when I have moments of weakness where my arms ache to hold a child of my own, there always seems to be one of them who shows me extra love - whether a card, a picture, or a big old hug.


I am thankful for infertility because it taught me God's peace. His grace. His mercy. His love. I learned to not focus on myself or my circumstances but His glory. My story may be different than I thought it would be, or how others think it should, but my story is exactly how God has written it. And in His hands, I trust it completely.

Through this all, 2 Corinthians 12:9 has become the verse I repeat to myself. And I can say with honesty that it has become true in my life. I am content in my infertility. I am no longer seeking something better, something more. I am happy to allow Christ to work in me and through me. Teaching me along the way. 

Once you get past the slime...

When you go through something like infertility, you start to question what you're putting on your body, in your body, around your body....etc. And so you begin to research things and find so much YUCK in everything you use!

I began changing the way our family eats a couple years ago. I did a Whole 30 and have never felt better in my life. My body was fueled and recharged by the most organic food I could find. Why had I been stuffing chemicals into our bodies?! And then in dawned on me, I don't REALLY know where the food at the grocery store comes from. So, we began a garden. And we got some chickens. My husband took up hunting and began getting our own meat. And slowly we have become more mindful of what we are using to fuel our bodies.

Enter...Kombucha.

When I first started hearing the word, I thought it was some kind of weird Asian tea. I don't know why, but that's what I thought. And then I started researching it because a close friend began making her own from home. Anything you can make at home is pretty much like gold to me, so I wanted to know what it was and what it was used for. Imagine my surprise and excitement when I found out that it is essentially used to aide in digestive and gut health and PACKED with probiotics! As someone who is a firm believer in the importance of gut health and researches it on her free time, this was pretty close to Christmas! So I reached out to my friend and asked her to teach me the process. And because I love sharing, I'm going to spell it out for you!

What you need:
- a scoby
- a 1 gallon container
- 1 gallon of distilled water
- organic sugar
- green or black tea bags (I used 10)
- cheesecloth or a very thin kitchen towel
- a rubberband


First, you need a scoby. "Scoby" is actually an acronym: Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. And friends, that's exactly what it is. It is a living home for the bacteria and yeast that will transform your sweet tea into tangy, fizzy deliciousness. And it is funky. Honestly, I reeeeallly had to work to ignore that this funky slime was the key to my kombucha.

Here it is, in all its funky gloriousness. My scoby. 

Next, you want to make sure that you are not contaminating your bacteria (I know, oxymoron, right?). So you want to be sure that everything is clean. Wash your hands, wash your container, use fresh distilled water, organic sugar only, and wash and dry the pot you will boil the water in. You want to do everything you can to make sure you're not introducing bacteria outside of that which is already in your scoby. Here are the ingredients I used:

                                                   

Pour your 1 gallon of distilled water into a pot and heat until you see a rolling boil. Remove from heat and pour in 1 cup of organic sugar. Stir until dissolved completely and add your tea bags.

I usually let my tea bags steep for no longer than 5 minutes. If you let tea steep too long it releases tannins which can give it a bitter taste. 

Once you remove your tea bags, let the tea sit and cool until it is room temperature. If you pour the tea on your scoby when it is still too hot it will kill the bacteria! When the tea has cooled, pour it on top of your scoby in the container that you will be letting it ferment in. 

You will need to cover your batch to ferment, but it should have some ventilation to let air in. My first batch I used this kitchen towel, but I wound up going and buying cheesecloth to give it more room to breathe. You will want to secure your covering with a rubberband to make sure it doesn't fall off. Probably the single most important element to making kombucha is to keep it warm enough. 80 degrees Farenheit is the recommended temperature. My 2nd batch I made I wrapped a towel around the tea to keep it warm. You will find that the cooler it is, the longer it will take to ferment- and also, if too cold, it can grow mold. That unfortunately happened to me the first time! The warmer it is, the more quickly it will ferment so you will want to check it more frequently if you're brewing in the summer months.

And that is it! Just let it sit on the counter, tasting it every couple days or so to see how it tastes. This is totally up to you- if you want it sweeter or more tangy. After it gets to the taste you like, you can remove the scoby- make sure to put some of the tea in it as well and store in an air tight container in the refrigerator. Your scoby will last up to 3 months in the fridge! By the way, a 2nd one will form each time you brew! Perfect for sharing with friends! Then, pour your kombucha into air tight containers and store in the refrigerator (this is where the carbonation will happen).

OR- you could do what is called a "second ferment". This is where you will add fruit or juice to flavor your kombucha. I decided to use Naked Juice Mighty Mango at the recommendation of a friend.

For your second ferment, you will separate your gallon into 4 quart-sized containers (ideally- or if you're like me, multiple mason jars you have on hand lol). In researching how much juice to use, the general rule was 1 tablespoon of juice for each cup of kombucha. I will be entirely honest in saying I didn't measure, just eyeballed it. Add your juice and seal up the airtight containers and let them sit on your counter for another 2-3 days.  

Now, after that 2-3 days, put them directly in the refrigerator. Don't open them, don't taste them, just trust the process and believe they are done. This will help your carbonation tremendously!!! 

 Now, when you open your jars from your second ferment to drink them, you will notice that ANOTHER scoby forms! I just throw those ones away, but you could keep them if you wanted.  You will want to filter it through a collander before you drink it because you may have some floaties from the scoby.


And that's it! You can certainly double or triple the recipe if you wanted to make more. And kombucha will never go "bad" per say, but it will continue to ferment in your refrigerator, albeit at a much slower rate. This means that it will be more and more sour the longer it sits in there, and of course you run the risk of mold. I personally will only make batches that I know I can drink in a week or two.

So get to brewing, friends!! Gut healthy goodness is at your fingertips!

Stay Knot Sew Fancy, 

                                                                                                                           Cryssi

Dryer Balls

I am on a mission to remove chemicals from our home. This began with food - that will be another post- but eventually moved on to products in our home. A sweet friend began selling Lemongrass Spa and she shared great information about how chemicals affect our bodies and a fact that got my wheels turning was that things that touch our skin are absorbed into our bloodstream in 26 seconds! I downloaded ThinkDirty and all was lost. I was instantly on a mission to remove chemicals from our home.

Those who know my family well know that my husband is anti-doctor. He's got to be knocking on death's door in order to even consider it. Which, obviously, isn't the best. So I started thinking of ways that I could care for him at home that wouldn't require him going to the doctor. It was around that time that I was introduced to essential oils and began dabbling to see if I could find things to help him. I now don't go a single day without using oils and they have helped us both in numerous ways!!

Switching over to chemical free products is not a one-and-done deal. Especially if you're like me and don't like to waste money! So it has been a continuous process, one thing at a time. And one thing we hadn't yet switched over was dryer sheets. We were still using chemical death sheets from the grocery store (kidding- kind of). And I had remembered seeing something about dryer balls made from wool (which we all know I have a large supply of ;) ) and I thought well, now is as good a time as any! So...here we go!

Step One

You want to make sure that you have 100% wool (you'll see why later). What you are doing is "felting" the wool. Have you ever washed your favorite wool sweater and accidentally dried it? That's exactly what we're doing here!! 

Step Two

Wind your wool into a ball. You can start by wrapping your index and middle finger and just going from there until you have a ball. You will want this ball to be larger than you think it should be. It will shrink, that's the point! So make sure that if you think it's big enough, you make it a little bigger! 

Step Three 

- not pictured

Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of this step. Perhaps because my hands were wet and covered in soap lol. Anyway, once you create your ball, you will turn your sink to the hottest water you can stand. Soak the ball until it is sopping wet and wring it out a little. Take dish soap, and saturate the ball until it is a soppy, soapy mess. You will work on shaping the ball into a circle. 

Step Four

Find a pair of pantyhose or knee highs that you don't need anymore. I rip mine more often than I care to share, so that wasn't hard for me ;) .  You are now going to place your soapy ball into the knee high. Tie a knot just above it, making sure it is snug and won't move. 

Step Five

Repeat the above process for as many dryer balls as you can fit. Remember to tie a knot above each ball to secure them. 

Step Six

You will then place your stocking filled with dryer balls in the dryer on the highest heat setting. After about 5 minutes, the dryer balls should still be damp, but no longer soaking wet. You will want to remove them from the stockings now. If you don't, they will felt through the stocking and it will be very hard to remove. Once you've removed them from the stocking, you can toss them right back into the dryer to finish out the cycle. 

The Finished Product

Now, add a few drops of your favorite essential oil and pop these into your dryer for fresh, chemical free clothing! You can add safety pins as I did above to prevent static electricity! 

Remember when I said make sure you use 100% wool? Well as you can see the beige finished dryer balls weren't felted very well. They stayed together, fortunately, but they definitely weren't a good finished product. I had some 100% wool roving (very colorful lol) laying around and so I added another layer on top of the beige ones and ended up with the above. When you are making these, you can get creative with the center. You can just begin winding them around your fingers which works perfectly well, or you can begin with a ball of yarn to create a core, or what I did with a couple sets was use large wooden beads and wind my wool roving around those. The possibilities are endless! 

                                                  Stay Knot Sew Fancy,

                                                                                                                             Cryssi

Not Made For This World

I wasn't made for this world.

Even though I didn't know the Lord until I was 26 years old, part of me always knew this. I have always felt different. As if something was brewing inside of me that was dangerously close to boiling over.  I was uncomfortable in my skin. As if the very flesh and bones which my soul inhabited had somehow become a cage that I was longing to be freed from.

I am an "old soul". I have been since I was a little girl. Though back then it was called being "weird". I used to "capture memories" in my mind. I recognize that now as a tendency to appreciate the moment. I would try to absorb the beauty of the woods when my family would go hiking. I would linger a little longer in a hug. I would laugh a little too loud at a joke. I would soak in every minute of family time. I would memorize the words on the page of my favorite book. I would sing freely and love deeply and you know the cliche- dance as if no one was watching.

And then the world broke me.

There was the time where I was 9 years old and I was "fat". Then the time when I was 12 and told I was a "baby" for still liking my American Girl dolls. Then the time when I was 14 and I was a "loser" because I didn't know about some sex act. Then when I was 16 and I was a "prude" because I wouldn't have sex.

And I started to hate who I was....piece by piece.

And piece by piece, I became someone who I wasn't. Layer by layer, I painted my outside to hide my inside. Day after day I compromised what I thought and felt to please everyone else around me. And as I became more and more popular with the masses and the "life of the party", I became more and more miserable and disgusted by myself. Hating who I was, hating who I had let them make me.

It would be easy for me to look back on those years with regret. Lord knows I have many of them from that time in my life. But I am grateful for the experiences that lead me to the exact places they did and for the wonderful way in which God saved my soul. Every single day is a learning process. He won't be finished with me until I get to Heaven one day. But I am so grateful to be that "old soul" again. So grateful to know who I am and Whose I am. The peace which I find in Jesus Christ is something that could never be fully explained in words. The true joy that shines so bright within me that I feel like I am glowing on the outside is indescribable. I find myself lingering too long in hugs again. Trying to absorb nature into my flesh. Singing freely, laughing too loud, loving too hard.

This world is not my home...I'm just passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from Heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.
- Albert Edward Brumley

Stay Knot Sew Fancy, 

                                                                                                                               Cryssi