HomeSpunHealers

I always love this when people bring it to church covered dish dinners, so I think I may make it as an easy dish for Thanksgiving.

We enjoyed our Reduced Calorie Lemon Icebox Cake  so much, I tried making another flavor.  If you love the taste of chocolate and cherries together, you will love this cake.

Packaged devil’s food cake mix

1/3 c. oil

3 large eggs

1 1/3 cups water

Small sugar free cherry Jello

1 cup boiling water

1 cup cold water

1 can sugar free cherry pie filling (if you really love cherries, you can use two cans since this is a large-surfaced cake)

Small sugar free chocolate pudding mix

2 cups cold milk

Small container of sugar free whipped topping

Prepare a devil’s food cake mix according to package directions.  Pour the batter in a 15 1/2 X 10 inch nonstick pan, so the cake is not too thick.  Bake it for 30 minutes at 325 degrees. 

Take the cake out of the oven and let it begin to cool while you prepare a small box of Sugar Free cherry Jello according to the package directions.  While the Jello cools down a little, poke holes in the cake with the end of a small wooden spoon.  Make sure the holes are evenly spaced.  Slowly and carefully pour the liquid Jello over the cake, making sure it gets into all the holes.  The cake will be extremely moist at this point.  Pat the top of the cake gently to even out the Jello. Then spread the sugar free cherry pie filling evenly over the top of the cake.

Mix a small box of Sugar Free chocolate pudding according to the package directions.  Let the pudding set up slightly by allowing it to sit for a couple of minutes.  Fold a small container of sugar free whipped topping into the chocolate pudding.  Spread this mixure over the top of the cake.

Store the cake in the refrigerator for at least three hours or overnight.  It will firm up as it chills, so you will be able to serve it in slices.  It’s wonderfully rich tasting and moist, and the combination of the rich chocolate with the tangy cherry pie filling and the creamy topping is to die for.  It’s delicious and reduced in calories since I used the sugar free ingredients.  I do not know the actual calories, though.

Tell your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your parents, your Dr office, the check- out girl at the market, everyone you run across: 

A lot of us are very lucky to have gotten the parents we were born to or adopted by.  Some are extremely lucky, such as Randy Pausch, author of The Last Lecture, who claims he won the lottery when it comes to parents!  However, most of us didn’t get perfect parents, and a lot of us got some extremely dysfunctional ones.  When my husband and I recently heard Randy Pausch claim he had won the parent lottery, my husband Jim put this spin on it:  “He may have won the lottery; I got a scratch off ticket that said, ‘Thanks for playing; try again!’”

We may as well laugh, huh?

These roses are also from my rose bush that just seems to be taking over the side of my porch.  It’s called a Don Juan rose, very romantic.  I am just amazed every time I walk by there.  Never having any success with roses in my yard, I am just so shocked that this one seems to love it.  I guess you just have to find the perfect place, and this seems to be it for this bush.

What about my perfect place?  This is it, too.  Right where I am, just who I am.  I’ve been through a lot to get here, but I wouldn’t have gotten here except that I came the way that I did.  I love who I am and, even more, who I am becoming.  I love this new beginning, this becoming.  It’s time for it now. 

I’ve been working on changing my thoughts and consequently changing my actions.  My goal, or at least one of them, is to be healthier and thinner. My knees and ankles and feet are insistent that they not have so much weight to support any longer.  So, I’m heading for that lighter place where all my body parts can function at their best level.  I don’t know where that is, but I’ll know it when I get there.

One thing I’m doing to change my thoughts and actions is hypnosis.  I completed a course in hypnosis, so I am certified to perform hypnosis.  The way hypnosis works is that you make direct contact with your subconscious mind, which believes anything you tell it.  And based on what my subconscious mind believes, so I act.  I’ve been acting in a way that is unhealthy.  So, the scientific answer is change the thoughts; change the actions.  I’ve written a very specific hypnosis script that tells me exactly what I want myself to hear and to believe.  I’ve done this before, with a lot of success.  So, I’m doing it again, but it’s important to me this time to get the script just right for the person I am today.  I’m not the same person as I was when I did my first script, about a year ago.  When I have it exactly right, I’ll record it and then listen to it several times until I feel I don’t need to listen anymore.

Another thing I’m doing to help change my thoughts is to discover what some of those thoughts currently are or have been that do not serve me very well.  I guess I have to know what they are, so I know how to change them.  This week, I’m considering this question:  What do I want that I am not currently having?  I wrote a few things down such as a thinner body, a healthier body, and more money.  But as I continue to think about the question, I don’t think those are the things I really want that I don’t currently have.  I think it really boils down to a life without fear.  And it has hit me for the first time, how truly fearful I still am.  I think fear dominates a lot of my behavior.  So, that’s what I want that I’m currently not having: a life free of fear.  Now, I have to figure out what I need to do to have that.

Another question I am considering is this:  What were the rules in my family as I was growing up about deserving?  I don’t really know if these were rules, but somehow I got the idea that I only deserved good things for myself if I was good.  Also, I got the idea that I never was good enough.  Never.   I’m not blaming my parents.  In the past, I’ve tried to blame my mother, but I know that she loves me more than anything, and she always did and does the best for me that she knows how to do.  And I also realize that my mother operates on the same rules:  She only deserves something good if she’s good enough, and she’s never ever good enough.  No wonder I learned that from her.  But that’s not true.  We’ve learned a lie.  Maybe if I can get my mind straight about the truth, I can help her get hers straight, too.  Wouldn’t that be the coolest thing in the world?  But I know when it comes right down to it, I can only change myself.  But I also know that if I change myself, then others will change in relation to my change.  So, that’s quite powerful, isn’t it?  By changing myself, I change the whole world, to some degree.

So, goodbye life of fear.  Goodbye idea that I don’t deserve the absolute best things for myself.  Goodbye idea that I am never good enough.  I am free of fear, I deserve the best things in life, and I am good enough right this moment to have whatever I want and need to live the most glorious life ever.

Deb