Climbing Life's Mountains

The first thing we did last February when we decided to go Keto or Low Carb was to clean out the pantry. I buy groceries ahead when they are on sale so I had a lot of food to get rid of. I gave food to our son and daughter-in-law, I donated food, and yes I even took unopened food back to Trader Joe's and to Kroger. We got rid of all the beans, soup, white flour, wheat flour, white sugar, brown sugar, rice, pasta, crackers, popcorn, boxed mac and cheese, Hansen's root beer, taco shells, tortilla chips, kettle chips, red potatoes, white potatoes, yellow potatoes, honey, and even the oatmeal. Then I went to the freezer and got rid of frozen corn, lima beans, french fries, sweet potato fries, garlic bread, oatmeal bread, and wheat bread. It all had to go! The garlic bread was the hardest thing to give up. We then cleaned out the refrigerator. It was hard getting rid of the pure maple syrup. We started reading the labels and we were shocked at how many carbs we were eating. Once ...

Have you ever felt like God was going to do something and He didn't. The stage was all set. The circumstances were lined up and you were ready for God to answer that prayer you had been praying for so long. Then it doesn't happen. Why? You know God can do it. You've seen Him do it for other people. Why isn't He doing it for you. Our pastor recently preached a sermon from John 11 -- the story of Lazarus. Mary and Martha waited and expected Jesus to be there when Lazarus was sick. In verse 21, Martha is upset because Jesus didn't come. "Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died." I can sure relate to what Martha is saying. Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died in that car wreck. Lord, if you had been there, my dad would not have died of throat and lung cancer. Lord, if you had been there, my oldest son would not have made those costly mistakes. Lord, if you had been there, my daughter would not have had her hear...

I knew nothing about Newfoundland Canada until a few months ago when I started planning our vacation. Mike has been telling me for the past several years that he wanted to go to Newfoundland. No reason, he just wanted go. So I took him serious this year and I started my google search for "hiking in Newfoundland." Come to find out, Newfoundland is a great place for hiking. We flew into St. John's and started hiking our first day. We hiked mostly along the famous East Coast Trail where we saw towering cliffs, visited two lighthouses, saw a few whales off in the distance, and walked across a suspension bridge. When we left St. John's, we drove to Gros Morne National Park and we flew out of Deer Lake. It was a 7 hour drive to the little cabin we stayed in and nothing on the way except a great hike on the Skerwink Trail. Mike was not happy with me when I walked away while he was taking this picture but it was so windy, I thought I was going to blow off the cliff. ...

I went for my annual physical in February 2018. Thankfully I am pretty healthy and normally the doctor and I just talk about hiking – he must have a note in the file that I like to hike because I know he doesn't remember me.  This year however was a little different. My cholesterol was higher than ever and he didn’t say it, but my weight was higher than ever. I admit it, I had been lazy and inactive over the winter months. I felt like I was eating fairly healthy (for someone who doesn’t like vegetables) but I knew some things needed to change. My numbers were high enough this time that the doctor wanted to put me on  a statin drug. I really struggled with this but I refused to take the prescription. So then I did what anyone with a computer would do, I started my online research and I began to make some life changes. #1 Change – Exercise I started taking two 15 minute breaks at work (not every day but most days) and I started walking. I call it my walk break! I then...