Sleep is Self Care

Confession… for the last many years and I have struggling with staying asleep through the whole night. Ironically I fall asleep pretty quickly. My husband says I set world records in how fast I can go from saying, “goodnight” to snoring, loudly.

But then the cares of work, parenting, money, etc, come a knocking at my door. I hate this, with a passion. Especially because my days are full and I am typically moving from the moment I wake up at 6:30am until I go to bed ideally at or slightly before 11:30pm.

I do realize that lack of sleep is not good for the physical or spiritual body. Continuous good sleep is a way to nurture and take care of ones body and life.

Here are few sleep statistics:

The CDC states on its website, “notably, insufficient sleep has been linked to the development and management of a number of chronic diseases and conditions, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and depression.”

“…a person who is well-rested is able to focus their attention and absorb material more efficiently, and new research shows that sleep and dreaming play an important role in the consolidation of memory, which is essential for learning new information.” Amherst.edu

Two years ago I started to learn how to increase the odds that I would sleep through the night. When I take time to get grounded and peaceful before bed, I am more likely to sleep all the way through and to wake up feeling refreshed. One key for me was the simple practice of reading an encouraging Bible verse before bed. I started to create a list of these verses and even shared them with family and friends. To my surprise, the verses helped other people. And if I did wake up I could read the verse again, and I would often go back to sleep.

I have placed these curated verses into a book called, Night Meditations, Words for Good Sleep and Good Success.

Though pretty unknown, readers are encouraging with comments on how the verses help them in the morning before leaving the house and at night with sleeping, or with pages to journal or color on. Some have even started to memorize these short phrases.

I have even taught a 4-week zoom-video class, at night (Sponge Bob reference) to share the “back stories” about four of my favorites verses in this collection.

As 2024 begins, this is a great time to think about ways to take better self-care and it is also a great time for those who want to do so – to build a more regular and systemic habit of reading the Bible every day. The Night Meditations book can be an easy first step to creating a process. You can find it at Amazon.com

I wish you a blessed new year that is full of good sleep and good success!

Kelly

Volleyball and Christianity: Keys to One helped me with Keys to the Other

I really enjoyed the Olympic games this year. I was on the edge of my seat on so many occasions. Simone Biles, choosing wholeness over possible self-harm do to the twisties. Alyson Felix showing the power of hard work and the pride of motherhood. I loved seeing how the US Women’s Indoor Volleyball Team worked as a true team, stepping up with different players when injury struck. They continued to fight through the tournament to become Gold Medalists.

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These moments reminded me of watching Olympic Volleyball during the 2016 Games. Back then I was viewing with a specific purpose. I watched intensely because I was having the privilege to coach my daughter’s fifth-grade volleyball team that year. Ironically, I am a short lady, and I hadn’t played volleyball since Junior High. But our school needed a third coach because a large number of girls wanted to play that year, so I grabbed the opportunity to serve and share the experience with my daughter and her buddies.

I watched every indoor and beach match, I could, whether male or female to try to figure out what would be the keys for our students to have a productive and enjoyable season.

And I prayed, asking God to make the keys to volleyball success obvious and allow me to communicate them to fifth graders well. At some point He gave me some patterns that made sense. The following is what we had to do:

1. Serve well.
2. Return well.
3. And volley as a team.

I spent weeks talking these concepts with our team, over and over. We would repeat them every practice. With support from many other parents, we taught them specific skills. If we served tough, at that level of volleyball the other team wouldn’t be able to easily return the serve and we could score lots of points. In many causes we could “ace” the opposing team, as they couldn’t return the serve at all. But in contrast, if we could return “tough” the serves of our opponents well, then we could keep them from scoring “aces” and potentially score a point if we volleyed the ball as a team. For us, that meant – obviously getting the ball over net in three hits or less – but also knowing who should be doing what and how to place the ball so that we could score points while having fun doing so.

These simple keys helped us have an outstanding season. Despite many twists and turns, we made it to the Championship Game. Though we were underdogs we ended up with the “silver medal” losing by one point in the third set to a team who was a local powerhouse.

This year, God brought my faith to my mind as I watched Volleyball. I kept wondering if there were three simple keys that could help believers grow and develop like our three volleyball priorities helped us. After some prayerful pondering, here are three for your consideration:

1. Read the Word (your Bible) every day.
2. Do what it says.
3. Be regularly integrated into a community of believers.

I think these are even stronger than the ones we used for the fifth-grade season.

Start by reading the Bible every day. The majority of believers who live in the United State are fortunate to have access to the Bible in its entirety. We can easily read or listen to the very Word that God has given to us as His set of instructions and inspiration for a godly life. And because there are so many other voices speaking to us daily from so many vantage points and motivations – we really need to hear from our Creator daily to get “tuned” to His voice. My routine is to read in the morning before I do anything else. I ask the Holy Spirit to help me understand what I am about to read so that the Words can give me life and whatever God wants me to have in that moment. I am a huuuugee fan of the One Year Bible (https://www.tyndale.com/sites/oneyearbible) and use it, but know this might not be everyone’s cup of tea. I would say that each of us has 5-7 minutes that we can take to read at some point in each day. May I suggest beginning in the Gospel of Matthew. Pray and then set the timer on your phone for seven minutes. After you finish, put a bookmark where you ended. Maybe take a moment to ask God what He wants you to carry forward and then you are prayerfully ready for the next task of your day. Pick up the next day where you left off reading so that you can read in context for greater understanding.

(Read through all four Gospels and then the book of Acts and you will have daily connection to the time when Jesus was walking the earth, what he said and did, and also you will learn in Acts about the early church and the move of the Spirit of God in it. If you are ready to read other parts of the Scripture that is fantastic and if you want to stay in the Gospels, there is great benefit to doing so.)

Once we begin to know what the Bible says, we should make it our practice to do what it says. God’s Words give us the information to live lives that are meaningful, productive, and have measures of peace and joy, even in challenging times. And maybe most importantly the Scriptures lead us eternal life, which is the wonderful life that last forever with God, after life on this earth is complete. 

I suspect obeying God’s instructions in the Bible are like when a child obeys a good-godly parent’s instructions. Toddlers, children, teens and young adults, grow and learn as we get rewarded and corrected. We gain self-control and honor the instructions that are set out for our good. By God’s grace we mature into well-functioning people who have lives that we are glad to have. Of course, there are stutter steps and wipe-outs along the way, but these are part of the process. Thankfully we can ask for help from the Holy Spirit, and He will do so, especially when we have a heart and desire for obedience to our Lord.

The last thing is to be actively engaged in a community of believers. Ideally, that is your church home. Or maybe this is more accurately described a small group with the larger church. It could be a Bible study group, your family members or a handful of faith-filled friends who do life together. These communities of believers will help you remain accountable to do the first two things and these relationships are going to give you opportunities to expand in your knowledge and experiences. Importantly, the people in your community of believers will ask you to pray about things and they will pray for you about things. Candidly, some of the encounters with them will likely force you to pray because you may become frustrated or annoyed. Prayer will be a natural outgrowth of being actively engaged in relationship with other believers.

Another great benefit is just the joy of having people to live life with; it is beneficial to be with folks who are headed in the same “heavenly” direction.

For many of us, Autumn is volleyball season for school-based athletics. The next time you see a match, I hope you will cheer for your favorite team and be reminded of the above three keys to growing in Christ that were cultivated from a special silver-medal volleyball season. If you would like additional tools on how to thrive in your life from Christian worldview, please visit https://www.betterdaybetterlife.com

A most effective deception…

Racism is evil. To hate or systemically oppress a people group because of the way we look is of the devil. For skeptics, the events of the past several months in the US, should be undeniable evidence that racism is very real.

This hatred and oppression is rooted in a most effective lie. The lie is that there is more than one race of human beings. Yep… I said it and I imagine many of you are scrunching your faces in disbelief.

I’m writing this post from the vantage point of being a black woman, a descendant of: people who were enslaved in the United States, and of Caucasians who had children with these people and of Native Americans who married and had children with these people and of at least one brown Cuban woman who did not marry, but had a child with one of these people. I am quite like the majority of black people, who are really brown in hue, that I personally know who live in the United States. We are people with a distinct and tragic arrival to the US. We are people with diversity within our broader culture. Because of our complex ancestry we have a multiplicity of beautiful shades of brown.

My statement about there being only one race of human being comes from what the Bible says. And there is plenty of scientific data that says the same thing. The Bible is pretty plain about this if you just read the verses. But I warn you – you must put on your thinking cap.

The Bible opens with this declaration.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1 NET

On day six of the creation story…

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, after our likeness, so they may rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move on the earth.” God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. Genesis 1:26-27 NET

Chapter 2 of Genesis puts a spotlight on Chapter 1, giving us more of the details on how this event happened.

The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.” The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

Then the man said, “This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one will be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” That is why a man leaves his father and mother and unites with his wife, and they become a new family. Genesis 2:18-24 NET

I know this is hard for many of us to fathom, but God fashions the first wife from the first man. It’s like He did a cloning of sorts. Did God give the woman Adam’s DNA but with female genetics? It is a miracle. But not as big a miracle as making a man out of dust and turning him into a breathing, thinking, loving human being.

Fast forward a bit and Adam and Eve have children. First there is Cain and then Abel. But later there are more children. And all would have Adam and Eve’s DNA. But really, all would have Adam’s DNA – because Eve was fashioned from Adam.

In fact everyone – at that point would have been coming from a very tight gene pool. Adam.

Now I personally cringe at the thought of the boys in the family marrying the girls in the family. But God either made that acceptable during the early years of the earth. Or maybe God fashioned a wife, from a husband on more than one occasion. Either way, there is only one “race” of human beings. And we don’t know what their appearance was when the earth was new.

Ironically, more evidence is found about Adam’s family in the third chapter of Luke as Dr. Luke gives a reverse order of the genealogy of Jesus.

…the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalalel, the son of Kenan, the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Luke 3:36-38 NET

I shared the bottom part of the genealogy list just to show that the connection between Adam, Noah and Noah’s son Shem, along with acknowledging all of the corresponding mothers that are still related in some way to Adam. I mention Noah and Shem specifically because there is going to be a big situation coming, but according to the list above, at that point there is still only one race of human beings who all came from Adam.

The big situation is called the great flood. It is described in Genesis 6. God was so grieved by the evil all over the earth that He choose to start over. (I suspect that God is grieved by evil today and I am so grateful that He promised that He would not send another flood of that magnitude.) Thankfully God saves an extended family to begin again. That family belongs to Noah, Adam’s “grandson.”

The Lord said to Noah, “Come into the ark, you and all your household, for I consider you godly among this generation. Genesis 7:1 NET

On that very day Noah entered the ark, accompanied by his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, along with his wife and his sons’ three wives. Genesis 7:13 NET

God showed great mercy and grace to those eight human beings. He kept them throughout the flood, allowing them to be the ones repopulate the earth. And… they were all pretty near descendants of Adam.

But wait… some of you say, what about the tower of Babel. So let’s read it together:

The whole earth had a common language and a common vocabulary. When the people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” (They had brick instead of stone and tar instead of mortar.) Then they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens so that we may make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we will be scattered across the face of the entire earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people had started building. And the Lord said, “If as one people all sharing a common language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be beyond them.

Come, let’s go down and confuse their language so they won’t be able to understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there across the face of the entire earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why its name was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the entire world, and from there the Lord scattered them across the face of the entire earth. Genesis 11:1-18

Because the human race was seeking to build for its own glory and purposes God gave people different languages and this did serve as a barrier. But, I still see no new “races” being created.

The concept of race as it is used today, began with the colonization of the United States. It was established to allow one group of people to treat another group of people as less than human for personal and corporate gain. It would have been impossible to treat an equal human being as an animal if they were not of a  “different” – really meaning “inferior” race. Just as with many recent examples one could not murder another human with malice and no just cause, unless his or her skin color or hair color or way of being, were not of a different, meaning inferior, race.

And the devil wants nothing more for us human beings to keep behaving this way because it grieves the heart of our Maker.

One of my favorite verses is written by the Apostle John as he sees a vision of the heavenly realm. He writes about this in Revelation 7:9.

After these things I looked, and here was  an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe,people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. (NET)

In this passage God is confirming that even in heaven we will be able to tell what people look and sound like… and these distinctions are certainly real and maybe even create challenges on earth that we must work through. But race is not listed, though we have accepted and talk about this concept often. It is lie that there is more than one human race.

As I finished this post… I am including an excerpt and link to a blog post from Vivian Cho, a Ph.D. candidate in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences program at Harvard Medical School.

She writes, “The popular classifications of race are based chiefly on skin color, with other relevant features including height, eyes, and hair. Though these physical differences may appear, on a superficial level, to be very dramatic, they are determined by only a minute portion of the genome: we as a species have been estimated to share 99.9% of our DNA with each other. The few differences that do exist reflect differences in environments and external factors, not core biology.” Science is consistent with what the Bible says. http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

We are all Adam’s children.

And because of such, when you ask, you don’t want to know my race. You can assume I am a human being. But you may want to know my people group, tribe, nationality or language. And I lobby now to change every document that asks for a person’s race. Let’s assume the person is a human and then ask the other questions.

We can fight racism more effectively – if we can bring truth to the lie.

More food for thought…

If there are different races of humans, why can people receive a blood transfusion from anyone who has the same blood type?

The same for organ donation… shouldn’t a person need to get a kidney from a person of the same – ethnicity?

If there are different races of people – why can they successfully have children together? And then those children can have children?

For the Bible scholars who are thinking, what about Nephilim; these beings are listed in Genesis 6 which occurred before the flood. I am thinking that God called Noah’s family “godly” and they did not have any Nephilim genes to take forward into the new world.

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I close this long post, using words from the Apostle Paul as a prayer… For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you. Galatians 3:26-28 NLT

These words don’t mean that the distinctions don’t exist – or shouldn’t be seen. Instead they should be seen and valued knowing that Christ brings us together into His and Adam’s family.

Top Draft Pick

Today, April 23, is the first day of the 2020 NFL draft.

Ironically I happen to live in a suburb Cincinnati, Ohio and the Bengals have the first draft pick. But draft day is also personal to me because my dad – Allen Tyrone Smith, Sr. – was drafted by the New York Jets in 1965.

A photo of daddy’s draft letter. It was sent by mail way back then.

The J-E-T-S, Jets, Jets, Jets! were part of the American Football League back then. Maybe we didn’t even use that chant yet. I was about 13 months old and my daddy left Findley College early to make a living for my mom, his young wife, Lorraine and me. In a sense we were his first draft picks.

Daddy & Mom. Daddy looks stressed…

Though my dad wasn’t the top pick of the draft, like Joe Burrow is expected to be for the Bengals, I bet he was thrilled to be chosen. As will every young player who will be chosen.

Today also reminds me that I have been chosen to be part of a different team. This team has an amazing record. We could be called the Tribe… of Judah.

You see I am a draft pick of Christ. 1 Peter 2:9 says “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Jesus gave all, so that I could be a member of His Eternally-Winning team. And this is true of all who ^“declare with your mouth that, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” Romans 10:9-10 NIV.

Perhaps this idea is the answer you are seeking as we all walk through this unprecedented season of living during the COVID 19 pandemic.

At the end of this year’s draft, there will be some young men who have yet to be drafted. Of course they will be disappointed and prayerfully their football dreams will continue is some way. But none of us need be left out of the most important and in the end – winning team. We only have to ask and believe in the One who is Number 1.

Have a blessed day and enjoy the draft tonight. Welcome to Cincinnati Joe Burrow!! I’ll be praying for your success on and off the field!

Kelly

Who Dey!

Passover for Gentiles?

As I start to write, I hope to write carefully and gingerly… I don’t want to create aggravation like I promised my friend Patty that I would not do way back in 2005. At that time we each had a 4^th grader, who is now 25 years old and we got to teach their class about the connections between “Passover” and Communion.

Patty is a Messianic Jew and she made sure that we would be reverent and accurate and true to Jewish culture. Since then, I have loved this celebration and had studied it so that we “gentiles” can celebrate it in a way that would honor Hebrew traditions, but also connect to Christ. So yes- it can be for non Jewish people.

Passover 2020 will begin on the evening of Wednesday April 8 and ends on the evening of Thursday April 16. Many people in Israel will eat the special meal, called a “Seder” meal on the first night. In other places people will eat the meal on the first or second night and maybe any night during these days.

The Seder meal is meant to commemorate the first “Passover” that is described in the Bible in Exodus 12:1-20. That first Passover occurred as God emancipated the Israelites from Egypt and gave them the freedom to worship Him as His nation.

I was fortunate to teach this celebration again at school when my daughter was a third grader in 2015. A group of mom’s each prepared one of the traditional items and we let the kiddos sample them. It was an absolute blast and they learned so much about the connection between Communion and Passover.

Jesus celebrated Passover with His disciples right before His death and resurrection. This is described in Luke 22:7-22. And ironically in 2020 Passover is a few days before the Easter/Resurrection Celebration which is Sunday April 12.

Because of the corona-virus spread around the world, most of us won’t be at our regular church services…

But I’d like to encourage you to commemorate. Prayerfully you have at home some grape juice or wine along with bread or crackers that are made without yeast. In the original Passover there was no time for the bread to rise because the people were leaving quickly and also in many places in the Bible “yeast” is used as a symbol of sin. It spreads fast and people might not even be aware that it is lurking to take them off path. Hmmm…. sounds like COVID 19, but I digress.

May I encourage you to take communion on Wednesday evening and Sunday morning to celebrate the first Passover of death but also to remember Jesus, who is called “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” in John 1:29.

This Lamb gives us freedom from slavery to sin and gives those who believe in Him adoption into His family and life that is eternal.

If you are interested in learning more about celebrating Passover as a non-Jewish person, please let me know at

https://www.facebook.com/A-Better-Day-A-Better-Life-420286064802994/

One last thing… I read the following this morning in Luke 12:8-9 NLT. Jesus says…

“I tell you the truth, everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, the Son of Man will also acknowledge in the presence of God’s angels. But anyone who denies me here on earth will be denied before God’s angels.”

I had never connected this passage to the Passover until now. In order to be passed over by the angel who would be delivering God’s judgment, those who sought protection had to make a very public declaration.

They had to place blood from the lamb that was sacrificed and eaten, over the door frame and side posts of their homes.

This would be a show of total dependence on God. It would show humility in that they needed God’s protection and favor. It showed that they would do things His way – even though it didn’t make sense in the non-spiritual realm. It also that they were turning away from the provision and protection of Egypt, a symbol of the world’s power and system.

So as part of my celebration – I am placing some red tulle on my front door as a show that I am trusting Christ for everything. (It’s not sophisticated. I’m using a CHRISTmas wreath holder to secure it.) But my red covering declares that: He will protect and provide for me and my family; He will care for and rebuild our community, city, state, country, world, when the comes; He will heal the sick; He will strengthen and encourage believers all over the world – and He is inviting anyone who wants to come – to come into His Kingdom – by the pathway opened by the Lamb.

Blessings to you and yours-

Kelly