The blessings of bread

Recently I had the opportunity to go and visit Old Nauvoo. It was a wonderful experience for many different reasons!! But more on those in another post!

For this one I'd like to tell the story of Sister Hansen (: While in Nauvoo I got to go to the Temple on multiple occasions. The first day I went with a friend and met Sister Hansen. We visited and chatted about our interests and goals and after learning my desires in the baking world offered me a recipe for English muffin bread. She said she would bring it on Friday, our final trip to the Temple, however we didn't really make any plans beyond that.

Friday came and off to the Temple I went with my friends. It was quite the fiasco getting there that day and getting onto a session! We ended up attending another sealing session and right as we walked in there was sweet little sister Hansen sitting right there. We were able to visit with her and afterwards she introduced us to her husband, who was just as sweet as she is! It was wonderful to be reunited and was a sweet moment to be reminded of God's love for us. He truly does lead and guide us to be the places we need to be so we can meet those who need to have a hand in our lives. I truly believe we needed to meet sweet sister Hansen and feel her love for us.

Oh and don't worry I got her recipe! Thought I'd pass it on for all of you to enjoy.

Ingredients:
5 C. Flour
4 1/2 t. Yeast
1 T. Sugar
1 t. Salt
2 C. Warm milk
1/2 C. Warm water
Corn meal for sprinkling the pan and tops of loaves

Directions:
Mix together half the flour with yeast and sugar. Add the warm milk and water (approx 105-110°f), mix to combine and let sit for 5min, to bubble.
And the remaining flour and salt. Mix until well combined. Divide into two loaves.
Place into two greased and corned meal sprinkled loaf pans. Sprinkle tops of loaves also. Allow to rise until doubled in size.
Bake at 375° for 35-40min. Let sit 5 min and remove from pans allow to cool completely on wire rack.
Slice and serve toasted with butter.

Two steps forward, one step back

Two steps forward, one step back but DON'T STOP WALKING!

I took what feels like the 100th step back Monday of last week. After lots of stubbornness and determination and belief that everything was fine. I admitted to myself and my doctor that it's not, it's definitely not fine, right around the time I started bleeding again with each bathroom visit. Yup. "Two steps forward one step back." It wasn't a easy pill to swallow but I sorta saw it coming before my last infusion. Things just didn't feel right, obviously I was blaming stress and change and needing another treatment of meds. But I think I was starting to realize that this just wasn't quite the same y'know?

Medications fail for lots of different reasons, the medication I'm on in a biologic medicine so your body can produce antibodies that fight against it. That's what we think happened with me, as far as this particular med goes about 30% just reject it randomly. It's a high enough number and I just got to join it, lucky me. However this is tricky for me because the 2 main treatments for Ulcerative colitis have both tanked in effectiveness. Could mean lots of things; gotta be more creative in treatment, could be a problem with diagnosis, maybe we just missed something. So the Dr is having me undergo another colonoscopy.

A colonoscopy is where the Dr knocks you out and shoves a little camera into your colon. This way he can really see what's going on inside. It's messy and there is some specific preparation which is none too pleasant. The first time I had a colonoscopy I thought I was gonna die, no joke I really did. I was insanely sick and it was just an all around horrific experience. So I'm not too excited for this whole experience. But it does seem like the right course of action so there's some peace to be found in that.

Sometimes I just want to shout from the roof tops what's going on in my life and how hard it is and how empty I feel. But I don't.... instead I post a blog about it, and that helps. My advice for anyone else going through a 'one step back' moment is hang in there! Please, please hold on and don't give up. You can get through this and you will!! Even if it doesn't seem like it and it's hard to believe know that things will get better. In the words of one of my many favorite musicals remember, "the sun'll come out tomorrow."