Cucumber Salsa and Jumper Cables

I was inspired to make some cucumber salsa for "Smiley", my work buddy, because she is so sweet and helpful and she loves her snacks!  She is always bringing snacks to share at work, and is just a bad, bad influence with all her snacking ;)  She even helped me try to jump start my car even when we clearly did not have a clue what we were doing, but I convinced her that I did.  You can read that story below, but first The Recipe:

Cucumber Salsa
Ingredients:

• 2 Cups finely chopped cucumber
• 1/2 Cup finely chopped seeded tomato
• 1/4 Cup chopped red onion
• 2 Tbsp minced fresh parsley
• 1 hot pepper, minced -I used Fresno, but you can do jalapeno, Anaheim, chili,...
• 2 Tbsp minced fresh cilantro
• 1 garlic clove, minced or pressed
• 1-1/2 tsp lemon juice
• 2 drops Lime essential oil
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp sea salt (more or less to taste)
• ground pepper to taste

Directions:

Chop and mince all the stuff, mix it all together. Taste and eat with chips of your liking.

**Optional: mix in 1/4 Cup reduced-fat sour cream or serve over softened cream cheese

After a long night at work I tried to use jumper cables to start my dead car. 

I read all about it on "Jump start your car for dummies" online; I even paid attention to the process as my husband jump started my car the night before so I could get to work.  I gave myself a pep talk, saying "you can do it" "you're not afraid of a little electricity" "what could go wrong?" "You are already at the hospital".
My sweet coworker, I will call her "Smiley" to protect her privacy, even pulled up her car right up to mine, we popped our hoods and retrieved the jumper cables from my trunk, and then,... we looked and looked but we couldn't find the battery in her car. She pulled out her owners manual, but it didn't help much. We could see the red positive towards the front of the motor, but the negative was nowhere to be found.  Maybe someone with more mechanical experience would be able to figure this out, but not me, not my first time playing with jumper cables, and definitely not after working all night long.

I played it safe and called hospital security and the sweetest old man in his security uniform and security vehicle came right up and like it was nothing hooked red to red and black to black, I turned my key and like magic, my car turned on.  I drove the 45 minutes or so home,parked in my driveway and turned off my car. Then I turned they key again to start it, just to see if it would. You want to guess what happened next?

Yeah, nothing. No sound, no roar of the motor, not even enough power to put the windows up or unlock the doors. The car was dead, again!  The only thing that would fix this problem was a new battery.  Husband to the rescue!  While I went to bed, he took care of it all, bought a new battery and put it in and I woke up to a car that started on the first try and got me safely to work.

Isn't our life like this? There's a problem and we try to fix it, and sometimes what we do works temporarily.  We enlist the help of our friends and even strangers, and it works for a while, again, but if all along the problem is in our heart and our source of power, it's all just temporary fixes.  Until we identify the main problem and then decide to exchange our old, tired, powerless heart for a new heart, our problem is not solved. While I slept my problem was fixed because I asked the right person to do what I couldn't do.  

Have you realized what your problem or issue is?  The answer is always the same... there's no way around it, you need a new heart.  

Only God can replace your wandering, treacherous, selfish heart with a pure, clean, new one that inspires you to get to know Him as your Creator and worship Him everyday with everything you do.  How about...you ask Him? Right there, right now, just you and Him.

Your new heart, and your relationship with your Creator and Savior will make you want to do things you never thought possible. Like, help others out even if they can't repay you, do the right thing even when nobody is watching, forgive people even when they have not said they were sorry, use your talents to serve others and make new things out of old ones.

Living this way is definitely something new, like cucumber salsa, try it, you might just like it.

Typical night shift "snackage" when Smiley is around.

“ I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God." Ezekiel 11:19-20 NIV

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