Written by Esther Kamoche Robinson
My greatest successes in life has come from the wisdom I gleaned from reading. The origins of that wisdom can always be traced back to the Bible.
Success begins with Reading.
For decades I had a classroom banner that had the slogan, "Read to Succeed." I loved this banner because it was yellow and blue with shooting stars. It reminded me and my students daily of the importance of reading. In full honesty, my wisdom in the practical sense comes comes from reading every day. I love to read anything and everything. When I read I get so many incredible ideas. Usually my inspirations are based on something I read or heard someone say that was based on research and evidence.
Reading has given me many insights into the human condition good or bad. I love theology and psychology because they are based on evidence. During my independent studies last year I learned that theology came first and psychology was an off shoot of it. This is particular fascinating to me because I love both theology and psychology. I truly love the integration of both because that is where things begin to make sense for me. I love words. I love curriculum planning, writing and researching, and I love sharing and teaching people wherever I go. Just ask my family and friends I rarely lack words. I am a collector of information and the simpler the better. I prescribe to the philosophy of why use big words when small words will do. That motto has worked wonders for me and the people around me who often ask me to interpret big ideas into smaller digestible chunks so they can apply it into everyday life.
Growing up my momma would often say Proverbs 29:18, "Without a Vision the People perished."
She would say it so often it left me often frustrated.
But it is true.
In my family it's vital that we make yearly resolutions. It is always an inconvenience to stop holiday festivities in December to stop and make our goals. However, it ends up being the best thing. For us it is not just wishful thinking when we write our goals down because we pray about them as a group. It is our Yearly prayer list. The last couple of years I have done it with just my family and there is so much power in having your goals written down in front of you. "It's not a plan till you write it down," I learned recently.
Growing up, my mom would often interrogate me, my siblings, and our frequent house guests regularly. She would ask us unexpectedly, "What is your 5 year plan? What is your 10 year plan? What are you going to do when you grow up?" Going up I didn't have a real clue. I had lots of possibilities, but truthfully I hated stopping to think about it. I had to stop whatever I was doing to answer those questions. But as adults I find myself along with my siblings asking others repeatedly what are your goals? What are you learning? Tell me about yourself. I have found that by reading and listening to people just like I read the Bible I can encourage, inspire, and challenge them to think beyond themselves. Which always leads back to God. I also learned that being able to dream is the key to unlocking your hidden potential and the key to making your dreams come true.
Often times real life crashes into me knocking me off my feet. I have found that if I don't have my goals posted in front of me, taped to the walls of my home, on note cards in my car, or placed in the front of my work binder I forget them. Sounds familiar, right?
I am the type of person that is constantly full of ideas, dreams, and ambitions for myself and for others. Which I can acknowledge, can be overwhelming at times for others, but for me it is exhilarating. I feel the most alive when I have ideas. Think, Einstein. I have been given a natural motor that powers through the BS in life. Which has allowed me to find success and achieve my dreams. I often fail to stop and enjoy the moment. Sacred moments like praying and reading causes my mental propeller to slow down. Helps me to pause and look around so I can be in the moment and be grateful.
In this season of my life as a busy wife, mother, and blogger. I find it so incredibly difficult and almost impossible on a daily basis to balance the needs of myself with the constant needs of others. I often get extremely angry and frustrated when I don't have time to dream or express those dreams to my love ones. (This is why blogging is so vital for me and my generation.)
When I was a young adult I was filled with dreams but somewhere along the way those dreams were pushed to the side as real adulting too more and more center stage. In this season of so much hardship God has given me a way to be able to access my dreams and allow them to flourish. These dream seeds began as a young girl are now blossoming and growing as I water them again. Things I had forgotten are now being remembered some good and some bad, but nevertheless they are there and I get to choose what that looks like for me going forward.
I am learning how to allow my dreams to flourish and reading is a major part of that. Whenever I read a magazine, a book, or listen to an audio book. I learn so much and look forward to applying and sharing what I learned and visiting the places I read about. Reading has the ability to connect you to the past, ground you in the present, and allow your imagination to take off. Reading gives you the wings and the engine power to achieve the impossible every day.
Ways that you can Achieve the Impossible in your Every Day Life
Over the past 30 something years, I have the unique and overwhelming privilege of participating, leading, and supporting many community and family activities and events. In this season of my life I am struggling with the idea that I have to surrender my dreams in order to follow Christ, because for me Christ came to fulfill dreams and to bring deliverance from day to day worries, anxieties, and fear. These negative emotions significantly dissipate when I help others in my communities. My goal is to serve God in all that I do and that begins with the greatest commandment to Love God and Love others. It is my daily act of worship. When I am sacrificing my core dreams I get so angry and that anger slowly over times bottles up, that I don't have the capacity to love other as Christ intended. For me the hard part isn't loving God or others, but loving myself. I often get lost in that commandment. As a do gooder Christian and a people pleaser I fall down a lot, on loving myself. Spending time with God reminds me of His great love for me.
During this lenten journey of learning more about Christ. I am learning how to pray, fast, and rest like Christ so that I can continue to do what He has empowered me to do. Learning and reading the scriptures is a big part of that for me as well as working on my dreams.
I have expanded on the educational model that I used during my teaching career to help me to achieve my dreams, at the same time as I discover hidden treasures in others. I use the A/B educational model in my personal life. I give myself A day unstructured activities and B day structured activities. I allow myself to be creative on my A days with minimum structure to my day and my children's day. This is where we may dance, pray, play guitar, sing, garden, make art, or do whatever makes our hearts sing. On my B days which are my structured days. I try to be more disciplined. I crack the discipline whip so to speak in terms of disciplining myself and my children, revisiting our scripted goals, and attending to real life responsibilities such as paying bills, managing household affairs, going to doctor visits for myself and my children, homeschooling my kids, and working on my writing. This structuring of my life allows my brain to rest, get new ideas, be creative, and to practice disciplined during the week which allows me to meet my goals.
This creative process majority of the time allow me to mentally rest throughout the week and to give myself the adequate mental self care that I need. Meeting my creative and business goals each week helps me to see God a little bit better. I'm living the Jesus Dream. In other words I living a combination of the American Dream and the Disney Dream.
During this amazing season of motherhood I am learning to do a better job of managing my dreams and responsibilities in a more healthier way using the limited resources that I have be granted. Is it perfect? "No, but it is progress, slow progress sometimes with setbacks. But progress nevertheless."
Yesterday, the demands of motherhood reached an all time high for me. It was like a spiritual crescendo as my baby daughter reached new heights in her screaming abilities. She screamed for hours. As I recanted my day and described in full detail this incredible and dumbfounding incident to my husband later that evening, I had tidal wave of incredible solutions flow through me. However at that moment when the mayhem was happing I felt extremely helpless to help make the situation better for my child. I just had to ride out the waves with her the best that I could. Nothing was working. Nothing. That evening my husband and I we were able to compile a list of researched strategies we could try going forward to make it more manageable.
Being a parent is often about riding out the waves of life with your child. Holding on to them and showing them and letting them know that they are not alone. That you are there. Right now, for them. Just like Christ.
My mom taught me that. She taught me and my siblings the importance of praying and reading. She preferred the Bible majority of the time. I love to read anything that is going to teach me wisdom so I read everything I could get my hands on. And even today whenever I visit the library with or without my children I am rushing through trying to maximize the short amount of time that I have. Trying to read and scan everything.
Why do I enjoy reading so much?
I love reading because it unlocks wisdom and incredible inspiration. It unlocks healing for me and those around me. Wisdom that has been passed down from generation to generation and has the power to break generational curses. When we read we see unlimited possibilities. We are learning a variety of strategies or tools that we can use to lead better and more healthier lives. We can place these tools in our spiritual toolbox so that we can activate them at any time. Most importantly by reading, writing, and sharing we can store up wisdom for the next generation so when they need it they can activate it by reading a book, reading an article online, visiting the library, and by doing simple things like looking at scrapbooks, photo albums, or viewing a blog. Activities like listening to a bible app, listening to inspirational audiobook or podcast are simple activities that are versatile. They allow us today to learn so much incredible information from primary and secondary sources. When we teach others how to access, acquire, activate, and implement meaningful information in real time that gives them the tools that will propel them into their destiny.
During my childhood I read so much. I loved reading the Bible, historical and realistic fiction, biographies, encyclopedias, and informational text. Through these stories and information I gleaned so much valuable information. The most important was how to love others, how to see goodness around me, how to seek and call out godliness in others, and how to find treasure in normal everyday life. I am learning the importance of storing up treasures in people, not just in things. I am learning the importance of the African proverb of it takes a village to raise children and when you educate girls you educate a whole community. You see, women enhance the value of their communities they allow information to pass through them to the next generations and it blesses and overflows unto everything around them. I am learning the importance as a mom of girls the importance of teaching them to lead by example and to continually follow their dreams. I want them to see God everywhere they go even in their dreams because with God the Sky is Not the Limit.
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I am also learning the importance of survival strategies. These strategies were helpful during the covid pandemic. Reading and praying was my ultimate survival strategy. I have a collection of incredible collection of christian resources, cookbooks, and movies. This library of resources has helped me developed a variety of techniques that has helped me manage my home effortlessly which is important when crap hits the fan. I try to think of my home like a ship and if anyone is down for the count due to sickness or exhaustion the home can still functioning with minimum effort. Is it foolproof? Absolutely not. But it helps me to have a vision and keeps me in step so that I can focus on following the beat of God's drum and not the little distractors and life draining activities that can steal my joy on a daily basis. It helps me to be able to support the communities that I love.
These sacred moments, opportunities, and tasks have given me the space to find my way back to God daily. They help me to see God's vision a little bit more clearly. These sacred moments allow me to maximize the time that I get with my family day in and day out. They provide me with opportunities to teach my children and others on the way like the good book says, "Train them in the way they should go and when they get older they won't depart." The same way grandparents and parents have been doing for generations. Taking time to spend with people. Taking your children to baseball games, talking on the phone, eating ice cream or popsicles on the front porch, storytelling with loved ones, picnicking at the park, taking long walks or drives. By doing this we are filling up our children with the word of God, we are giving them moments and rest to regroup, time to reflect on God's blessings, allowing them to dwell in His presence.
It is important to read the Bible so that we can get God's vision and His perspective. When we include it within our normal everyday life. We get a double opportunity to not just tell our children but we get to show them about Christ too. We all learn by doing and by having productive struggles and by giving our loved ones plenty of opportunities to struggle, to talk and share, and give them meaningful experiences so they can experience the presence of God so they can mature in their faith and see God for themselves. It's important for them to be able to activate God for themselves.
When they are children we provide the necessary age appropriate support so they can find their way like the training wheels on a bicycle. We as parents are there to help support them with the goal of removing the training wheels so they can flourish and gain a sense of accomplishment which develops self confidence and maturity. I often have to ask myself if I am enabling or am I supporting? Am I challenging or am I pacifying my love ones? Sometimes this is hard to figure out that is why praying, reading, and learning are so critical to our human development. We must never stop learning, growing, expanding, and developing because our Heavenly Father is a creator. He never stops creating and we should demonstrate that daily when we follow Him, since we are made in His image. God is the ultimate innovator. After all, He is the Creator of Life.
wix pic
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Citations:
Practicing the Presence of God by Brother Lawerence
Sacred Influence by Gary Thomas
700 Club: Focused on the Importance of African American History to American History.
Betty Crocker Cookbook
The Circle Maker by Matt Batterson
Movie Link: The Princess and the Frog Disney Clip
Kid Connect Music via Youtube:
Your Power Will Pull Us Through Rocky Railway VBS
Never Let God of me Shipwreck VBS
God is Good- Cross Culture Norway VBS
Recommended Places to Visit
Bible Museum
Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in America Washington D.C.
Washington Monument
White House
US Capital
Supreme Court
Smithsonian museums
Annapolis State House
Mount Vernon
Fort McHenry, Baltimore
Baltimore Museum of Art
Fort Niagara, New York
Forest Lawn Cementary, Buffalo New York
Albright Knox Gallery
Buffalo History Museum
Central Park
Cheers Bar in Boston, MA
Cleveland Museum of Art
Mall of America
Kennedy Space Center
JFK Memorial, Dallas, Texas
Oklahoma City
Disney World
Disney Land
Sea World
Downtown Los Angeles, California
Grand Canyon
Rocky Mountains
Washington National Cementary
Empire State Building
Statue of Liberty
One World Trade Center
Times Square
MOMA Museum of Modern Art, NYC
Liberty Bell
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Pittsburg Pier
The King Center
Key West
New Orleans
Napa Valley
My Favorite Things to Do
Walking and Talking and playing sports
Taking photos and making art and music.
Discovering, Learning, and Sharing
Visit new churches and libraries throughout the year.
Visit Zoos and museums
Loves food trucks, picnicking, and visiting parks
Loves baking especially when I mess up.
Cruising
Thriftying
Shopping at the Dollar Store
Planning and taking trips
Singing off key with my loved ones.
Breaking a move in my own way (with my two left feet)
Day Camping and Traveling
Learning something new, meeting new people, or doing something new.
Acquiring new reading material in fun and innovative ways.
Curriculum and Lesson Planning and Meal Planning
Talking about the meaning of life.
Laughing and Celebrating
In Memory of
Original World Trade Center
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