Monday, September 26, 2016

Outside my window...  

Rain and cooler weather.  The Fall Feasts are coming up very quickly!  

I am thinking...  

I totally missed blogging last Monday.  This whole shift in balance from being a WAHM to full time student has thrown me off balance.  I need to find a new rhythm.  I have reached into my past and dusted off my old Life Management for Busy Women so that I can refocus and get my priorities back in order.  

        

I am thankful...  

Friend Hubby gave a powerful testimony on Shabbat.  You can watch it on our website His Glory! HaMishkan.  I teach the first few minutes of the service and Friend Hubby teaches the rest.  Yah has done mighty things in our lives in this season.  We were talking about the change in spiritual season, Friend Hubby, Sanban, and I.  Yah always seems to clean house and shift our focus after a road trip.  This is one reason why our family loves them so much.  In a nutshell, this was what I had shared with a couple of my prayer partners.  "A few months ago, Friend Hubby Alvin had an interview with his department head to move up in the company he was in.  His boss told him that he needed to "tone down" his management style in his experience and his approach to problem solving.  Those words were intended to hurt him.  We prayed over that and rejected them.  That's not who he was created to be.  He was the most effective employee they had, as proven by his statistics, yet this supervisor rewarded her pet people, passing over him time and time again.  

This past Monday, he started his new job (this is the one Yah blessed him with last month).   He texted me pictures of his wonderful new office.  He was SOOOO happy he even took a selfie.  LOL!  On Tuesday, he was sharing about that interview with his new coworkers.   One asked what the department head's name was.  This person used to work there!  As a matter of fact, Friend Hubby's new office was this person's old office!!!  In a city the size of ours, what are the odds that he would move into the SAME office of the person who had tried to hold him down??  

We give Him all the glory, because Yah always seems to vindicate Friend Hubby when the enemy uses people to rise up against him.  We know that in our flesh there dwells no good thing, but like Aaron's budding rod, He always demonstrates His favor in powerful ways.  

   

I am wearing...  

The response to this never seems to change.  LOL

   

I am reading... 

 In addition to my textbooks, I have finished Back Channel and have started New England White.  I just started it an already the connection to The Emperor of Ocean Park and Palace Council has been established.  

I am watching...  

Following a prompt in my college history class, I watched a short film called The Legacy of Christopher Columbus on YouTube. I say watched loosely because it was way too graphic for me. ISIS pales in comparison. I don't know what they call teaching in my grade school textbooks, but it certainly wasn't the real one.  I am absolutely LIVID!  Before I had even watched this, a former neighbor of mine suggested that we just leave the day the same (as opposed to changing it to indigenous people day) just as a monument of what not to do.  I lived in Germany for 4 years.  I never noticed them having a Hitler Day celebration for what not to do.  Ugh!  
   

One of my favorite things...  

Spending time breaking bread with a culture not our own.  Friend Hubby and our family were invited to a cookout after service on Shabbat with some Brazilian friends Friend Hubby met on his previous job.  It stirs up our wanderlust.  We came back to the U.S. 17 years ago to give our children roots, but once I am done with my schooling, we are ready to travel to the world again.  We've never been to the Caribbean or to South America.  I would love to go.  We have a sister congregation in India.  I would like to visit them as well, though I don't look forward to the long flight.  A video made by the school that's run by our former pastor in Okinawa had me smiling the other day.  Don't be so super-spiritual to read so deep into it.  It is just lighthearted fun.  Our pastor is in the first seen.  He is a true missionary.  He and his wife have been in Okinawa for over 20 years.  I had never seen a black man speaking Japanese before him!  LOL  He has a true pastor's heart and I have learned so much from him about living by faith and sacrificially putting yourself out there for the congregation you serve.  In this still shot of the video, the assistant pastor is to the left.  He and I taught VBS together 20 years ago.  We painted our classroom to be just off the Sea of Galilee.  Our classroom snack was tuna and crackers.  LOL  To the right of our pastor is his son.  He had a miraculous birth.  He's one of the most talented artists I have ever seen.  

A few plans for the rest of the week...  

From the learning rooms... 

Back-to-school Mom:  I finished reading The Odyssey and answered the discussion questions for my World Literature Class.  I'm halfway through Oedipus and then I've got to start on The Aneid.  We've read The Odyssey and The Aneid in our homeschool so it was weird having to approach it as a student than as a teacher.  

On Shabbat, in the first part of our service, I reviewed knowledge versus wisdom and discussed the 4 sources of wisdom in the earth.  I also talked about our approach to Scripture based on those sources.  The same can be true concerning my approach to history.  I can read history and react in my flesh (usually with anger), I can react with a mob mentality just for the sake of sounding like everyone else.  I can pervert the truth to fit my narrative, or I can approach it with a spiritual mindset and discover how the will of Elohim was displayed throughout history.  Just as the Messiah told the Pharisees that if they would search the Torah and the prophets, they would testify of Him, I have to find Him and His hand throughout the study of human history, particularly in regard to the Atlantic slave trade.

These classes are distance learning.  This week, I will actually have to show up for my first Humanities class.  
  

Young Adulting:   My birdie is about to take flight again.  She is getting ready to move into her new apartment with her "grown-up" job.    

College Freshman:  Sanban had 4 tests last week, the first of the semester.  He's also finding his footing in ROTC.  I have started a new habit of getting his immediate prayer requests before our Monday night prayer call.  I'm thankful for that connection.      

High School Junior:   She had her first college test last week.  The first ones are always so hard because you don't know your professor's testing style.  The lady who has taught all my children college assessment test prep and is teaching Princess Butterfly as well, was in an accident last week and totalled her minivan at 4:30 in the morning.  She still came to class that day and she said that she had been picking up her students' papers off the highway.  If there is such a thing as TOO MUCH dedication, she would definitely embody it!

Noticing that...  

Facebook toxicity, if it could be measured, would indicate peace-of-mind threatening levels.  Best to proceed with extreme caution these days.  I hate election years.  

Honor where honor is due:  http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/