Rise Up!

[sisdr]

Need A Laugh?

I do. Last week a doctor challenged me to keep a food journal. I’ve frequently taken photos of my food for no reason I can fathom until now. Turns out, state of mind has a lot to do with what I eat and how much attention I feel able to pay to myself. Stewardship, like love (charity) begins at home. So, here goes something.

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[sisdr]

This Far By Faith

Who knew ‘streaks ‘ were a thing you could achieve with the bible! I hope to manage this and more with the old-fashioned bound bible in 2019.

And, speaking of roots and technology, watch for Instant Pot recipes as we lean in and on The Lord for this year’s Daniel Fast.

Here’s to the happiest New Year on record!

https://www.bible.com/snapshot/3044404d70ce993da51b4d92cf3ca36ffbfec21d/10860896?yea…

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[sisdr]

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Romans 15:13 ESV

https://bible.com/bible/59/rom.15.13.ESV

More than 20 years ago, at a teacher's workshop led by Russ Vernon Jones, I chose hope as the single thing I could do to make the greatest difference in every area of my life. I made it my email signature, voicemail greeting, cheque motto. I designed and delivered leadership workshops around the acronym H. O. P. E. = humanity overcoming powerlessness everywhere. Then, I understood that my hope was in Jesus. Though we'd never met, Barack Obama ran on that platform. Just sayin. Today, with a deeper understanding and fresh revelation thanks in no small part to Joyce Meyers devotional, The Greatest Gift, I know Jesus IS Hope. I can't wait to see the order of magnitude difference THAT makes! Go, Jesus, it's your birthday! And I just know You can't wait to get back here! I'm going to write in on my mirror... social media... whisper it in my baby's ear night and day...

[sisdr]

Next time you're looking for a rescue, put on your apron and remember, God didn't make lemonade. He made lemons. We've got to do the hard work of making sugar and mixing it with tears if that's all we've got in the middle of bitter circumstance.

~ Note to Self

[humansofnewyork]

“I’m trying to finish writing a book.  I’m on my fourth draft and have 70,000 words so far.  It’s an adventure tale set in Jamaica.  My main character is a twelve-year old girl named Kristi.  She’s the same age that I was when I left the island.  I really want to write something that resonates back home.  I’ve been researching the history and folklore of the country.  I’m trying to get the dialect just right.  I want Jamaicans to recognize themselves and be proud.  I’ve been working on it for four years now.  I’ve given up on so many other things.  I gave up on being a doctor.  I’ve given up writing other stories.  I lost sixty pounds last year, but before that I’d given up on so many diets.  So I’m determined to finish this.  I try not to think about other goals for the book.  Because the more I need from it, the more I freeze up.  I have a lot of debt.  I have a lot of relatives in Jamaica that need money.  But if I start writing to feel hopeful about my financial situation, the words won’t come.  So my goal is just to finish my fourth draft.  And if that happens, my next goal is to get a rejection letter that tells me something I can improve.”

[sisdr]

I left just before my third birthday. December 1, 2017 I earned a badge for writing 1 million words in my online journal alone. It feels like I can't feel hopeful but I keep writing words figuring one day the tipping point will come and they won't be just words anymore. They'll add up to something. I'm proud of you.

[sisdr]

Everything you need to be beautiful, successful, incredible, blessed, trusted, respected, honored, and happy are already in your life. It may not seem like it, but only because you’re focusing on the wrong things.

Sarah Jakes Roberts, Don't Settle For Safe devotional

[sisdr]

Practicing Surrender

"If we are trying to think something up, we are straining to reach for something that's just beyond our grasp, up there in the stratosphere, where art lives on high...

When we get something down, there's no strain. We are not doing; we are getting."

Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

[theoraah]

Due to lack of education, visibility and plain denial that asexuality exists, many, many people are subjected to emotional abuse, self hate and non consensual sex within close relationships as well as with strangers.

So out of all the things to argue with in this wider debate, please don’t go with ‘cishet asexuals haven’t been through anything’. Its just really insulting to everyone whose been through emotional abuse and rape, all because of the lack of visibility/understanding.

I’m making a autobio comic about being Ace (normally more light hearted then this lol) it can be read here: http://tapas.io/series/beingace 

[sisdr]

Thank you for your courageous, brilliant, and long-overdue addition to the mostly inane and needlessly binary conversation about "sex" for the lack of a more accurate, transparent, and meaningful word.

[sisdr]

Let It Be

But there’s no failing too far that it is beyond the reach of God’s grace, no mistake so grievous that it disqualifies us from His forgiveness. And if He can forgive us and use our failures to bring glory to His name, then we should be able to rest in that forgiveness, stop looking backwards, and fix our eyes forward towards Jesus. From The Beautiful Exchange A YouVersion devotional

[sisdr]

It was a simple moment of transparency. The hero said he couldn't stand up after rescuing the child. Many athletes and scientists would dismiss it as the body's normal response to similar levels of spontaneous adrenaline deployment. But the thing that made my nose prickle as I read is that a man without a country hoisted himself up four stories for someone else's son. He did the impossible for the unlikely in a gesture as supernatural as it was Christly. I believe it was the power of Love that gave him strength to do what he could not do otherwise. That the orphan in him rose to the abandoned child's aid selflessly, without hesitation, indifferent to the air of what must have been palpable fear of those gathered below, is the true miracle. May each of us so rise to the occasion and do what is required when no one else is around to record or witness as we meet every lesser need that makes itself known.

[sisdr]

Haibun #2

I don't know when she got there, but I know that she sat gently rocking in the branch of the Mesquite tree, swaying on the breeze for as long as it took us to eat our popsicles. Whether it was a vigil or a visit I know not only that it felt like a blessing. And then, she began to sing.

Almost as soon as

She began to sing, she stopped.

Sitting practice.

[sisdr]

She Kvells Seashells

Here, in the corner, beside the window, wind echos, ebbing and flowing through trees in against the wall, transporting us on its currents into The Presence of The One who created it, and all. Who can unmake even one second of such peace (Isaiah 43: 13)? No. Not one.

[sisdr]

One can barely discern the first flower head that came with the French lavender and wintered through the harsh desert winds. Why focus on the one when life more abundantly is not only promised but present. Perspective is everything.

[sisdr]

Where and how have you surrendered? Ultimately, liberation, like identification, are acts of unstinting surrender. They are never fully realized without feeling or thought. To be genuine and authentic, they must be intentional and come at great cost, like The Cross.

[sisdr]

Choose compassionately moment-by-moment

[sisdr]

Darkest Before Dawn

After the recent pincushion incident in the ER where two and a half bags of saline had to be pumped through Adelita's body in order to find a vein, she prayed simply:

Dear Lord, I'm sorry I have to ask, but could you help me drink more water - the easy way? In Jesus' name I pray, amen.

[sisdr]

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

W. H. Murray std in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way