Daybook

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Out my Window: Crickets day and night, beautiful starry morning, hoot of an owl in the distance

Enjoying: Fall being officially here, looking for beauty to behold (I share this on my Instagram page inkblotlike.com_peggy),audiobooks, popcorn

Listening to: Driving with my son more so this week has been two Twenty One Pilots Blurryface and Vessel. Brique a Braq for background on Spotify. Finished Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers on Audible. Definitely has given me much to think about in terms of communication and human interaction. (Disclaimer: there is some strong language in clips that he plays, and I did have to skip ch. 6 and 9 due to re-enactment of court room transcripts from high profile cases involving child abuse, sexual assault, and a murder connected to sexual stuff. I am highly sensitive and could not listen… not sure if that was the whole chapter because I was listening, skipping to the new chapter was easier. I do not feel like I missed the points he was making by skipping them, but I needed to do that for my heart and mind.) So interesting about how we read people and interpret people, especially strangers versus how we explain ourselves. It was very interesting.  Picked up David Platt’s new one on Something Needs to Change on Audible. This is a bit different from his usual. He is sharing a journey he took in the Himalayan Mts. I appreciate his honest questioning of the hard. So far it has been a good listen, again another hard topic but with thoughts worth thinking about.

Reading: New book launch group… so excited to get on the launch team for Kelly Minter’s cookbook, A Place at the Table. I have done a few of her Bible studies and love the recipes she included in them. Looking forward to this different type of book to launch. Should be fun. https://kellyminter.com/a-place-at-the-table/.

Carrying around: Unhurried Leader: The Lasting Fruit of Daily Influence by Alan Fadling
By my bed: participating in a Bible Reading Challenge. Reading through the Bible by April, so when I sub I have been catching up at night. It has been good to read through larger passages at a time. It has been awhile since I have done this. I have also very slowly been working through Matthew Henry’s Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit.

Pondering: I was reminded of a situation at a study when a person raised their hand and said they very much agreed with what the leader had just said, then that person spent the next bunch of months doing the exact opposite of what they said they adamantly agreed with. I started thinking about what things I say I fully agree with and how my actions, thoughts, or words do not quite line up. I am pondering the simple like environmental issues or time management to the more complex thoughts about truth and God. Today that thought was added to as I was reading An Unhurried Leader, sacred echoes as Margaret Feinberg calls them,

“I listen to and perhaps agree, in theory, with something good I hear in Scripture or in a sermon, but don’t let myself believe and trust what I have heard. I get stuck between listening and buying. I fail to trust what I claim to believe. ” (51)

So I am pondering and asking God to show me where the disconnects are and help me to allow Him to bring things into unity. Pondering what this might look like.

Learning: After listening to Talking with Strangers, I am thinking about many of my underlying assumptions. This book is helping me to learn to be more gracious to those whose outsides do not match their inside feelings possibly. It is slowing me down from making assumptions based on certain expressions on someone’s face or action that they are communicating one thing when really something else may be going on. This has been helpful with my world of teens and young adults. Their outward and inward usually do not match. Anger sometimes means someone is frustrated, sometimes scared, other times anxious. Just because the body language is reading angry does not mean that is their actual feelings. I am learning to slow down, and trying to ask better questions. Many times teens, especially, are trying to figure out what they are feeling and a couple well placed questions can help clarify to me and them. It slows me down from reacting. This is definitely a learning process. When I am not in direct contact I am trying to be quick to ask for wisdom and discernment first to know whether I am to enter in or not.

Home: Well, last week I mentioned using a structured plan I found for October and see how that goes. https://cleanmama.com/free-october-2019-homekeeping-calendar/?fbclid=IwAR0aRWOueAcbl27mdobmc3f6tAWe-mYR0KNBwF1Zl_Pu1Oah6tIfHUfaoiA So Day 1 I didn’t get to it so today I did 2 things. Thinking I may combine my schedule with the lists and give myself freedom to make it work for me.

Fitness and Mental Health: Well, I know that most people develop habits in 21 days, apparently I can only stay true to a structure for that amount of time … this past week has been sporadic in the exercise realm, mostly schlogging. Planning on jumping back in tomorrow and not allowing the consecutive off days de-rail me. Still schlogging. Mental Health… Doing a Scripture Memory Challenge of Psalm 1, taking my thoughts captive. Practicing listening deeper. Letting go of structure as a task master, but keeping it as a helpful boundary and goal.

Giving Thanks: My older son’s car was fixed for the promised price and ahead of schedule, For all the people who offered cars to help us out if we got in a jam. Dinner dates with friends, God’s super personal gifts to them, For my younger son enjoying his job, My older spirit of exploration of new places and not held back from enjoying life when he is alone, My husband getting to visit his family, For his family and the connections we have.

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