Reconsidering long held beliefs...

I don't know where I ever got the notion that being a vegetarian meant that one simply ate plain vegetables. Like, a meal would be a salad and a can of green beans. I never considered that vegetables might be made into actual main dishes, such as lasagna.

 We have had some nights lately where we have eaten vegetarian. Not totally on purpose, but because it happened to work out that way with some hearty vegetable dishes.

(LOL, maybe I should work on this... and then make a cookbook- "The Accidental Vegetarian".)
(Or perhaps, "What was I thinking?!!!! .... What Can I Do with 20 lbs. of fresh spinach, ten zucchini plants, and three bushels of Green Beans")

Not that the green beans have begun coming off yet... but any day now!
I had never thought of  making lasagna using zucchini instead of noodles... but Tommy tells me the Zesch's did, and that it is awesome! (At the moment I am cooking fresh tomatoes, onions, and garlic into a sauce to use making the lasagna tomorrow. The boys brought home three- fourths of a gallon of fresh sliced tomatoes from work Wednesday, saving them from being tossed out.

I was running out of squash ideas, but this should be good! I am considering trying to make refrigerator pickles using squash instead of cucumbers.

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Now, I venture into (religious) beliefs.
Thinking about losing a child, as compared to losing a spouse or a brother... This has been on my heart.
I have been thinking there is a reason that God sent Jesus as his SON. The relationship between a parent and a child is deep and powerful. It is a love you don't really CHOOSE, but that you accept. If you have lost a child, you know how rending it is to your very being. Yet, God sent Jesus... his SON... to die.
The Bible refers to the church as the "bride" of Christ. It is a different kind of relationship than that of a parent and child. It is a developed love, based on choice. Often, when a spouse passes away, a person chooses to love again- and to remarry. This doesn't lessen the value of the first relationship... it is its own unique blending. Love of a husband and wife is a choice... love between a parent and a child is blood... it is very LIFE.
I don't know that I am expressing myself very well here.
Grief from loss is grief, no matter the relationship. But the bonds that come from the blood of parent and child are, to my thinking, deeper than that of marriage. Which is why God sent his son... not his wife... as the ultimate sacrifice.