This Clip Speaks For Itself

Dreams from My Father

I just finished listening to Dreams from My Father by Barak Obama. It was a wonderful audiobook! I really enjoyed hearing about his struggle to keep his worlds together. Born to a Kenyan international student and a white lady from Kansas, he grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, attended college in LA and NYC and got a law degree from Harvard. Through it all he had to deal with what it meant to be highly mobile and cross-cultural. Most touching to me was the description of his first trip back to Kenya. Having lived in Africa (Malawi and Kenya) I was able to relate in some way to the struggles he faced, especially with regard to the haves and have-nots. Please read this book!

A Demoralizing Recollection

At about 7:20 this morning, I was finishing up my ablutions and tidying up our bedroom. I was getting ready to go down stairs and have my devotion time. As I approached the bottom of the stairs, I had a very demoralizing recollection. Last night when we got home from prayer meeting, Hadassah and I needed to take out the trash. So I carefully took my Bible and prayer book out of the back seat of our Tracer and laid them on the roof. "That way I'll remember to take them in," I thought to myself. As I approached the bottom of the stairs this morning, I realized that I have forgotten to bring in my Bible and prayer book. Normally this would be not problem at 7:20am because Hadassah usually leaves for work at 9:30am. But this week she has been leaving at 6:00am.

So I frantically looked around the house for my Bible. In the loft... in the living room... in the basement... But my fears were founded. They hadn't made it in.

After a frantic call to Hadassah to determine if they had made it to work with her... I decided to go looking for them. I drove the route Hadassah uses to get to work and even decided to get on the toll way. As I went around the on ramp from i335 to i55, there on the side was my Bible. Pages bent and crumpled, but all fully intact. I said a thank you prayer and returned home. Then I said to myself, "If God blessed me one time, he can certainly bless again." So I repeated the trip looking for my prayer book. But alas... I didn't find it.

So I came home. It was windy last night and the trash that had been out all night waiting for the sanitary engineers to come by and blown all over. I took the empty recycle bin and cleaned up the trash. Then I headed to take our neighbors recycle bins up to her house like I usually do. And there, in her drive way, was my prayer book!

So I feel complete. I have been reunited with my Bible and my prayer book. Today I not only feel blessed, I am blessed! Thank you God!

Write, Just Write!

January 1 I was looking through some old journals. I'm a journaler and am collecting quite a stack of half filled journals. I'm lucky to get 150 entries in a year.

I found a poem that I wrote on September 17, 2002.

Get up!
Face the day
You have the energy

Look at yourself
Look and see
Who stares back?

It is up to you
It is your choice
Make the most of the day!

Get up, go!
God is with you!

Well it isn't much of a poem and it doesn't rhyme (My brother-in-law questions from time to time who it was that said poems didn't have to rhyme... since that fateful discovery, very few actually rhyme...). But it was enormously rewarding to read back through an old journal and find something interesting...

I guess the moral of this blog is journal! Get a book and write down your thoughts. Write down what you ate and what you did, just write!... If for no reason but the promise of opening up an old journal and reading something that reminds you of times gone by.