a little jordan family blog: "Watch what I do through Matthew ..."

Sorry in advance for the rambling, but I feel like there is a lot to report.

I wanted to update people on Matt's first appointment with the naturopath since he started the Paleo diet. The visit was better than expected; Dr. Tony praised Matt for his strict dedication. He said Matt blew all of his expectations away in terms of sticking to the changes.

His physical assessment indicated that Matt's liver has significantly detoxed! His adrenal glands are working much better than at his first appointment. YAY Matt! So proud of you. He said Matt still has some work to do on the initial detox of all of the built-up toxins in his body, but he wanted Matt to feel like it was ok to have one or two gluten-free beers on our upcoming vacation to Black Butte as a treat. TWO beers ... Matt felt like he was saying it was Christmas :). Matt actually said he's not sure if he will even drink the beers ... it's just the *option* that makes it way easier to tolerate the discipline.

Way to go Matt!

I was alternately a bit defeated this week ... a found out that a coworker's husband has what Matt has, and she educated me that Matt no longer has alopecia areata but instead his total body hair loss is called alopecia universalis or alopecia totalis. Her husband has had the full blown disorder for 25 years. Apparently, once it progresses to this level the rate of remission goes wayyyyy down. She pretty much confirmed the dermatologists' comment of, "lost cause."

In honesty, I was pretty down hearing her news.

But you know what ... I have already seen SOOOOO many good things from our diet changes, not just in our lives but in many friends and distant acquaintances (thank you for all of the emails everyone). We are not just finding incredible energy from our new habits, but we are inspiring so many people who have been curious about some diet changes but have not known where to start.

Speaking of energy ... I can't stress enough the energy spike I've had. I thought it was high last week ... this week it's creepy. This is the tangent part of the post, so feel free to scroll down and skip it, but I just felt like describing my day because even for me, this was productive! For example ...

- last night I was up til 11:30 (bad, I know ... I need to get to bed earlier).
- Got up at 5:30, not tired, cleaned my entire house before the boys got up,
- Made to-do lists for packing for vacation,
- was at the gym by 9 and did a crazy crazy crazy workout class (the Klos' can testify; just to give you the gist ... 200 push ups in the first half hour)
- After the class we still had energy so we ended it all with sprints and pushing benches around a field). I told you, crazy.
- Showered and then headed to the farmers market with the boys and my mom and her sister, my aunt Linda who is in town for the day from DC
- Came home and made lunch
- Ran off to work for a 2 hour audit I had to do looking at patients' IV sites throughout the hospital
- Finished in time to do all my Trader Joes shopping for our Black Butte Trip
- Met Matt and the boys at my parents for dinner and while there, made an amazing Ragu with all of my farmers market veggies to freeze and bring on vacation
- Chased the boys
- I got a little tired right at the end of the night there, but ...
- When I got home we had to put them to bed and then unload the groceries which gave me another wind of energy so I:
- baked my first ever Paleo muffins (I never bake, so this is very out of character)
- cleaned it all up
- Now I'm blogging about it at 10:45 and am telling myself that it is not healthy to not get enough sleep so I need to go to bed but I'm just not tired.

I told you ... it's crazy. I used to have energy, but typically after chasing the boys all day, I'd crash about 8 pm and be done for. Now, I keep a steady pace.

Even before all of this, all of my friends teased me that I'm like Monica from friends. Well, this is Monica in overdrive. I am assuming it will taper off as my body gets used to the new normal. Maybe then I'll have to go on a processed-foods binge just so I can have this surge of energy when I go back to healthy eating (kidding!).

As Kelly texted so aptly tonight, "Jessica, back away from the kitchen ... slowly ... stay clear of anything productive." RIGHT!?!? I keep geeking out on my food preparation and taking iPhone pictures of my cooking. It's dorky, weird, a little hippie ... but, here I am, and I'm loving it.

I feel like I have been given new eyes to see the world with. A butterflies eyes perhaps ... ;)

One last but very important story before I post my geeked-out muffin pics:

When this first all was happening with Matt, his mom sent him a card in the mail. She said that she had been waking up in the night and was led to pray for Matt. What Jesus promised her was, "Watch what I do through Matthew."

No matter what the circumstance, that is a really cool word to hear about yourself or your spouse.

I have chills just thinking about that promise. We have had that card on our refrigerator for about 3 months now. At first, I was encouraged by it, but after Matt's hair was totally gone despite all of my prayers, I struggled and doubted that God really had any big plan for using this experience to impact others.

After all ... IT'S JUST HAIR.

It's not life or death. It's not what several of my coworkers are facing in their families right now ... standing face to face with the mortality of people they love the most. It's not the daily exhausting challenges of you or a loved one who has acute or chronic illnesses.

But still ... it is something. To us, it is a "thing" in our life for the moment. 99.96% of the time it is just a "thing" but .04% of the time I do mourn the loss of the full-head-of-hair-two-eyebrowed-with-eyelashes man I fell in love with and may never see again. Of COURSE, Matt is still so handsome as the hairless wonder, don't get me wrong. Truly, this is one handsome hairless wonder. But I know he misses his hair too, or at least his eyebrows. Again, I can't stress enough, 99.96% of me is just so grateful his autoimmune disorder is JUST hair loss. If you are going to have an auto-immune disorder, alopecia is the one to get. It's mostly cosmetic with just a few physical inconveniences with temperature regulation and dust filtration in your eyes/nose. It's not fatal. Thank you, Lord.

Now that we are making these huge lifestyle changes, and we are actually inspiring others along with us to make one or two or ten healthier substitutions in their lives, I am re-invigorated by that card from Mary. Mom, I'm so glad you were bold and shared God's word for us. Again, I really do have chills just seeing it all come together.

It's not about the hair. It's about living healthier, cleaner, more abundant, fruit-filled (literally and figuratively) lives.

And once again, if I know anything about Jesus (which thankfully, I know a few things) ... this is only the beginning.

"Watch what I do through Matthew ... "

~ Jessica

I hand picked my lunch for work Friday from our Garden

Here are a couple pics of the Ragu I made tonight while at my moms. I made it the other night, and it was incredible.

When I cook, I mostly just throw things together that I like. I have always made hearty spaghetti sauces just to add lots of veggies in to dinner. I used to add sugar to counteract the acidity of the tomatoes. I am now substituting cinnamon, and it's seriously the key to the sauce.

Here's what I did:

-Sauted organic ground beef in with 3 minced garlic gloves and 2 chopped big green onions and just a dash of olive oil
- After the meat was browned, I tossed in finely chopped 1 red pepper, 1 medium zucchini, 2 small eggplants, about 20 mushrooms, and a half a cup of celery and let this cook on low-medium for about 10 minutes, stirring often.
- You can seriously add almost any veggie you have. I meant to add Kale from my garden but since I ended up making it at my mom's house, I didn't.

I added 1 jar of Trader Joes gluten/dairy free plain marinara. I seasoned the whole thing with 2 more cloves of minced garlic, a couple dashes of each sea salt, pepper, and cinnamon and 1 full cup of finely chopped fresh basil.

Then, I turned the heat as low as it would go and let it simmer for 2 hours. Because this is such a huge batch, I ended up adding one more jar of the marinara after the first hour.

Sorry, it doesn't really look that appetizing in the photo, but I promise, it's SO SO SO good. We will serve this over rice pasta and Matt will eat it plain or over some greens. The sauce is more like a stew in consistency.