An Ode to Ulcerative Colitis

Wow, sorry for my lengthy retreat from Blog Land. I have this pesky disease called Ulcerative Colitis and I have been recovering from a pretty bad flare. The positive of this is that I've had a little time to read an amazing, very lengthy book that I'm excited to tell you about. Also, I've been doing a lot of baking, which is always top on my "ideas of a good time" list. Since my recent flare, I've been doing some research on UC and diets that might help me stay in remission. I found the holy grail of diet blogs, written by Danielle Walker. It's basically Paleo, and a lot of her recipes are SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) friendly. If you have no clue what I'm talking about as I throw out these terms like "SCD" and "Paleo", consider yourself lucky. Having a severely restrictive diet is, well, I'm not going to sugar coat it- it sucks. 😆 For now, I can not partake in what I consider to be some of the yummiest things in existence. Thank goodness I can still eat seafood!

Some days I would honestly trade my left foot for a hot, steamy cup of coffee with a gigantic dollop of cream in it and tons of sugar. But enough complaints out of me. Instead, check out these delicious muffins I made today, recipe here.

Banana Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Onto the book:

I just finished a lovely book called In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. Soooooo good. A little backstory: When I was a little girl, I decided I wanted to be a nun. I was pretty convinced of this until my teenage years. I was completely fascinated with stories of the lives of saints, and they had a major effect on me. Any time my brother and I got into a tussle, a little guilt would pop up in the back recesses of my mind, because someday when they wrote my saintly biography, fighting with my brother wasn't going to be considered a "saintly act." However, I admit I still fought with my brother on a regular basis.

 Clearly, God had other vocational plans for me in life, but I still have a serious fascination with nuns. While reading this book, I felt like I got to peep into the lives of a bunch of cloistered nuns, regardless of the fact that they were fictional characters. There were so many important areas touched on in the book- the spiritual battles certain nuns had to go through, lessons about trusting that God will provide, forgiveness, and overcoming pride, just to name a few. The book is over 600 pages long, but I breezed through it because I couldn't put it down. I loved all of the characters, esp. Abbess Catherine. The plot was so well written. When I started the book, I was sort of afraid it was going to be something I had trouble "getting into" but after the first 20 pages, I was hooked. Highly, highly recommend it.