I'm joining in with the Mercy Mondays linkup hosted by Jenn at Hang on Baby, We're Almost...Somewhere. This week's prompt is Motivation for Mercy. I'm reposting portions of a post from last June because they felt so relevant to this topic. I'll be back after the quote to analyze.

Her name is Maria, and she’s [thirteen] by now. I met her [three] years ago when I went on a spring break mission trip to Honduras with Birmingham-Southern’s RUF. I don’t remember meeting her on the first day we worked at the orphanage where she lived, but by the second day, she had latched onto me and even remembered my name. She seemed to like just sitting with me. We didn’t share a language, so we couldn’t converse in the ways that I was used to, but for some reason she seemed happy with me.

The third day at the orphanage was visitors’ day. You see, not all of the children at the orphanage were orphans. Some were teenage girls who had been seized by the state in order to keep them off the streets and out of prostitution. Others were children who still had family in the area but no one who could afford to take care of them. And still others were on waiting lists to be adopted, so they received occasional visits from their future families. I had a hunch from the way Maria was clinging to me that she had no one coming. As Maria and I sat in the gazebo, maybe singing songs with some of the others, or playing pattycakes, two boys about her age came around taunting her. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but I could see that she was bothered. We moved to another location, but the boys followed. Luckily, a translator was there and she helped me get a handle on the situation. The boys were teasing Maria for not having had any family visit her that day and bragging about the gifts that they had received–exactly as I had feared.

Maria stormed off and hunkered into a ball and wouldn’t unfold for me. The translator came and coaxed a few words out of her. She wanted to sit with just me and not talk–just sit. I sat there with my arms around her and fought back tears. She went into her casita (little house) briefly, and I let a few go for the unfairness of it all. Why am I so blessed, my heart cried, when sweet girls like Maria have so little? She had never known love like I have been showered with my whole life. Evine, a friend of Maria’s came by and asked why I was crying, and I managed to convey in pidgin Spanish that I was sad for Maria because of the boys who were not nice. Evine stayed with us when Maria came back and worked at cheering her up, while I struggled to tell them about how much God loves them. We went off to a corner of the playground and played hand clap games until finally Maria smiled again. When it was time to go, I told her “esta bien” and “te amo.” With a big hug, I assured her “hasta manana.”

And then I got on the bus back to our hotel and cried. No one had ever even gotten mad at those boys on Maria’s behalf. She was so tough, probably because she had always had to be. The only visible sign of anger I saw was her throwing a small rock at one point. But other than that, she just shut down. She put up a wall. And what words did I have, especially in Spanish, to break through that wall and convince her that God’s love and mine were real?

Eventually there was no manana, and my group flew back to the U.S. I promised myself I would remember Maria and pray for her. I’ve done better at the former than the latter, but I do think of her often. That afternoon left a crater on my heart for the brokenness of our system.

That crater is my motivation for mercy. Maria is my motivation for mercy. To do mercy for those who cannot do for themselves. To be mercy for those who have no one else to be mercy for them. And above it all, there is One who has done mercy for me, too. Sometimes it feels like my mercy has been so much more than Maria's and it feels so unfair. And so I go out and become the hands and feet, to make manana come.

I borrowed this picture from Facebook. If you're reading, thanks Hannah!

When fall comes around, I go pumpkin crazy. I’ve always loved the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure I ever thought about enjoying pumpkin outside of that one day a year until Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes came into my life. Now, I’m one of those people who gets excited when it’s featured on their menu again every year (though one of my coworkers reminded me that you can get whatever flavor drink you want at Starbucks all year round). Even though we don’t usually get much of a fall in the South, once the calendar hits September, I have pumpkin on the brain. When I realized I had a preposterous number of pumpkin recipes pinned, I decided to share them here. This is the third of 10 different pumpkin recipes for your gustatory pleasure!

Not too long ago, I got an immersion blender and thought that I would make smoothies for breakfast every day of my life because it was so convenient. Well, that hasn’t happened, but I do consider the smoothie more of a viable breakfast option than I ever have before. So when I saw a recipe for this pumpkin smoothie on Pinterest, I knew it would make it onto my fall rotation.

The recipe could hardly be simpler:

• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1/3 pumpkin puree
• 1/2 banana
• 3/4 cup vanilla almond (or soy) milk
• 4-5 ice cubes
• a few shakes of pumpkin pie spice (I was glad I had some left from when I had mixed it up for last week's muffins! I actually used a whole teaspoon.)

I think I was a little blender happy, because my smoothie came out really thin. But then again, it could have been that there wasn’t much to thicken it up in the ingredients!

It tasted great regardless, although the more I drank that more overwhelmingly I tasted the banana, so I’d recommend sticking to the half called for in the original recipe.

The smoothie absolutely had all the flavors I love about pumpkin things! It was really like drinking a pumpkin pie, unless that sounds gross to you, in which case it wasn’t like that at all (because it wasn’t gross). It was creamy and warmly spiced. This would be a great way to get your pumpkin fix if you live in a place that doesn’t cool down enough in the fall for baked goods or warm drinks to become appealing! It was a nice start to my Thursday morning.

And now, I have most of a can of pumpkin in the refrigerator, since this only used a portion of it. Oh, whoa is me…

I do not have an obsessive personality. Wait, that might surprise some of you. Let me expound: I have some friends (you know who you are!) who discover a new musician, TV show, or author and MUST READ/WATCH/LISTEN TO ALL AVAILABLE OPTIONS AND FIND OUT EVERY BIT OF POSSIBLE INFORMATION ON THE INTERNET. While I am obsessive about many things, this does not usually end up being one of mine. Sure, I have shows and movies I enjoy following, and I have authors whose books I read regularly, but I can usually stop at will. Case in point: I read the first Twilight book in college after eschewing the series for ages. I was disgusted that I enjoyed it but wanted to know what happened…so I got my roommate to give me a synopsis of the middle books and skipped to reading the last one so as not to waste any more of my life on them than necessary. (Though in a fit of boredom my senior year, I did eventually go back and read them.) I went to see the first Twilight movie in theaters but only watched the rest of them this year on DVD. So while I often enjoy things that are popular, I usually dive in only grudgingly and sparingly.

Cue seeing mention everywhere on the internet about an author named John Green. Several blog friends said they were reading his books, and his name popped up all over NPR’s list of top 100 teen novels. Who is this John Green fellow, I thought? As I read the descriptions of his books on Amazon, I found myself adding several of them to my wishlist. Wanting an engrossing novel to read, I recently checked out 2 from my local library, which I devoured. I was hooked. So then I checked out the other 2, one of which I read in a single day (a day on which I also worked and slept, I might add). And finally my dad gifted me the most recent one on my Kindle, because it had an indefinite wait at the library and I couldn’t stand it!

After reading all five of his published books, I have to say that I think John Green deserves every bit of the hype he’s getting right now and then some. The books aren’t a series; each one features totally distinct scenarios and characters. But I absolutely could not stop after reading just one or two!

But wait, you say, isn’t this Three Book Thursday? Why yes, yes it is, which is why, without further ado, I’m going to expound on my three favorites of John Green’s books.

1. The Fault in Our Stars This is Green's most recent book, and it was absolutely devastating and beautiful. It follows a group of kids who have or had cancer, for whom just about nothing is normal. The characters are unabashedly smart. They use big words. They read. They have conversations I could never imagine real teenagers having but would want them to. Green evidently spent a few years as a chaplain in a children's oncology ward, so he is intimately familiar with the situations he outlines in this book. The love in this book is so raw and true. I found myself sobbing through about the last 25% of this book, but I would read it again in a heartbeat. That's when you know a book is good.
2. Will Grayson, Will Grayson This book was a collaboration between John Green and David Levithan, with each author tackling the story of one of the Will Graysons (yes, there are two, and yes, they meet in the novel.) Some people told me that this was their least favorite of Green's books, but I was charmed by it. The best way I can think to describe this book is as delightfully improbable. In fact, I'd describe most of Green's books that way! I don't know that I've read a book with a gay protagonist before, but Tiny Cooper won me over. This was a refreshingly modern story that I think would bring a lot of hope to some high school students who feel like outcasts.
3. Looking for Alaska This was John Green's first book, which means I read it first. I always had a soft spot in my heart for the first Harry Potter book, and I think I love this one for a similar reason: the magical world was so new to me that I couldn't help but fall head over heels. I also liked that this one took place at a) a boarding school and b) in Alabama. Though my MSMS experience was nothing like the one these pranksters had at the fictionalized version of Indian Creek, it still brought back some nice nostalgia. And if you didn't go to boarding school, this might make you wish you had. I've struggled before reading books with male main characters, but this one sucked me right in. I love the very specific quirks Green assigns to his characters; Miles' is that he memorizes famous people's last words. The quirk is not necessarily a plot element, but it weaves itself in there and makes itself memorable.

What’s your “sick person” personality? Do you rush to the doctor at the first sign of a sniffle? Do you tough it out? Do you like being doted upon or left alone? Are you stoic or whiny? Do you rely on over-the-counter treatments?

I’ll admit, I can be a pretty whiny sick person. I think being an only child can do that to you. :-) I basically like to be treated like a princess when I’m feeling awful, and I like to take everything off my plate so I can laze around and feel sorry for myself. But if I’m not feeling full-blown sick, I can be pretty stubborn. Last Wednesday I went to work and was blowing my nose every 5 minutes. By the end of the day, I had decided that I probably shouldn’t have gone in at all! But until I hit that “I feel absolutely terrible” point, I tend to persevere.

I’m definitely not one to rush to the doctor (I’m skeptical of overusing antibiotics, plus it’s a big time suck), and I’m also hesitant of resorting to medicine. The one area where I’ve learned to make an exception to the hesitancy is with headaches. I think I read somewhere that with a headache, there’s really no benefit to struggling through. If you’re prone to them, you’ll usually learn to recognize the signs, and so you might as well take something at the first twinge of impending pain.

I get pretty wicked sinus headaches–really they’re more like face-aches. I can feel the pressure building in my forehead, and by the time it erupts, my cheeks, teeth, and nose often feel like they’re going to explode. (I know that’s a lovely image.) Once one hits, I am basically useless. It’s probably not as crippling as a migraine would be, but it’s definitely no fun. Thankfully, though, I’ve devised my “magic cure” for a burgeoning sinus headache: 1 Sudafed and 2 Ibuprofens. Sudafed is a nasal decongestant, so that takes care of the stuffiness that ends up causing sinus pain, and Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory, so it brings down what I guess is essentially swelling in my sinus passageways that causes the pain.

I’m still stubborn about it sometimes. I don’t know why it is that I feel like taking a pill is like a sign of weakness or something! But if I’m diligent and take this pill combo as soon as I realize I’m getting stuffy, the headache crisis can be totally averted. (It usually helps if I take it after the headache starts, too, but it’s not as dramatic.) Works for me!

I’m linking up to Works for Me Wednesday at WeAreThatFamily.com!

When fall comes around, I go pumpkin crazy. I’ve always loved the pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving, but I’m not sure I ever thought about enjoying pumpkin outside of that one day a year until Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes came into my life. Now, I’m one of those people who gets excited when it’s featured on their menu again every year (though one of my coworkers reminded me that you can get whatever flavor drink you want at Starbucks all year round). Even though we don’t usually get much of a fall in the South, once the calendar hits September, I have pumpkin on the brain. When I realized I had a preposterous number of pumpkin recipes pinned, I decided to share them here. This is the second of 10 different pumpkin recipes for your gustatory pleasure!

You know I love pumpkin, but did you know that I love cream cheese, too? Really for me a bagel is just a conduit for the cream cheese, and cream cheese icing is far and away my favorite. So when I saw this recipe from Gourmade At Home for Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins I knew they had to be my on my fall to-try list.

They’re more complex than the 2-ingredient cookies I featured last week, but not so complicated as to be intimidating.

The cast of characters:

minus the oil and sugar because I spaced out about including them

1 cup all purpose flour 1 cup whole wheat flour 2 tsp. baking soda 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder 2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice, or to taste 1 tsp. ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp. salt 1 cup pumpkin puree 1/2 cup white sugar 1/4 cup canola oil 3/4 cup buttermilk 1 egg + 1 egg white 3/4 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup whipped cream cheese 1 TB confectioners sugar

I didn’t feel like paying the extra for a tub of whipped cream cheese, so I bought Neufchatel cheese, which is my go-to replacement for cream cheese. It comes in the same type of brick and supposedly has 1/3 of the fat. I used my hand mixer to whip that with the confectioner’s sugar for the filling:

Then I mixed the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the wet ingredients together in another.

I didn’t have pumpkin pie spice, but I knew I had most of the elements, so I mixed up a little on the fly. I used cinnamon, ground ginger, allspice, and nutmeg. I didn’t have any ground cloves to add. The original recipe says to add the spice “to taste,” but I never like tweaking recipes on my first go ‘round, so I just used the listed amount.

Once the wet and dry ingredients came together, I had a beautiful orange batter:

The instructions say to fill the muffin tins and then “place a dollop of the cream cheese mixture in the center of each muffin.” Well, I don’t know if it was because I didn’t use the whipped cream cheese, but I had a little bit of trouble with those dollops! I also had more batter than my 12 muffin cups could hold, so I improvised and put the extra into 2 oven-safe ramekins.

The muffins baked up and rose beautifully! However, the cream cheese didn’t really integrate into the middle of the muffin to act as a filling. In fact, it puffed up and sort of looked like a toasted marshmallow on the top! I don’t know exactly how the original chef got hers to come out so perfectly.

The consistency of the muffin was great! I probably could have mixed a bit less, as it was a tiny bit dense, but it was a pleasant muffin consistency. However, I thought they needed to be sweeter or more heavily spiced. Next time, I will take the advice of the original recipe and add more spice! I feel like the spices bring out the pumpkin flavor, and that was a bit lacking to me in the final product. However, for being only one of the few times I’ve made muffins from scratch, I was pleased with the outcome! This may not be my ultimate pumpkin go-to recipe, but it made for a pretty tasty muffin.