#turns out the journey to good mental health is full of hills and valleys and isn’t just a straight line

[me-beef]

sorry folks January hit me like a mallet to the gut B(

always terrified of what other people are thinking of me. but also always feeling guilty and ashamed of how self-absorbed my mental illness makes me

have to keep reminding myself I’m a normal person with flaws and I’m not ruining everyone’s lives just by existing

[arcticdementor]

In the summer of 2014, I gave birth to a baby boy. He was born with a perfect Apgar score, after a very easy delivery. But my labor had not been smooth—in fact, throughout the day and a half of contractions, I believed there was something decidedly wrong. I also felt that way as I held him for the first time, and he writhed violently under my hands. In a video taken about 10 minutes after he was born, he can be seen lifting his head up off my chest. “Ooooh, look at how advanced he is!” someone can be heard trilling in the background, before her voice is overtaken by my own. “Don’t do that, love,” I say. Then, to the camera: “Does he seem like he’s in pain to you?”

It took my husband and me three years to understand that in fact I was right that day in the delivery room. Our son was hurt. And it will take him years to heal—longer than it should have, and that is on top of the injustice of the original wound—though I thank God every day that we figured it out.

The first breakthrough came when my husband David remembered a book about brain science he had read a decade earlier, by a doctor named Norman Doidge. It changed our lives, by allowing us to properly understand our son’s injury (and to understand why we couldn’t manage to get a straight answer about it from any of the “experts” we had seen). It’s been a tough road, but from that moment on, we at least knew what to do—and why.

A year or so later, we met Doidge and his wife, Karen, for dinner, and it is here that the story may become pertinent for you.

After we ordered, I told Norman I had a question I’d been wanting to ask—and that I wanted his honest answer to it, even if it meant that I had done something wrong. I proceeded to relay to him the entire tale, from the very beginning to that very moment, of what felt to me like our Kafkaesque medical mystery journey.

How was it, I then asked, that it took my husband and me—both children of doctors, both people with reporting and researching backgrounds, among the lucky who have health insurance, and with access through family and friends to what is billed as the best medical care in the country—years to figure this out, and that in the end we only did so basically by accident?

Norman looked at us sympathetically. “I don’t know how else to tell you this but bluntly,” he said. “There are still many good individuals involved in medicine, but the American medical system is profoundly broken. When you look at the rate of medical error—it's now the third leading cause of death in the U.S.—the overmedication, creation of addiction, the quick-fix mentality, not funding the poor, quotas to admit from ERs, needless operations, the monetization of illness vs. health, the monetization of side effects, a peer review system run by journals paid for by Big Pharma, the destruction of the health of doctors and nurses themselves by administrators, who demand that they rush through 10-minute patient visits, when so often an hour or more is required, and which means that in order to be ‘successful,’ doctors must overlook complexity rather than search for it ... Alana, the unique thing here isn’t that you fell down so many rabbit holes. What’s unique is that you found your way out at all.”

I had barely started processing this when Norman moved to change the subject: “Now, can I ask you two something? How come so much of the journalism I read seems like garbage?”

Oh, God.

David and I looked at each other, simultaneously realizing that the after-school special we thought we were in was actually a horror movie. If the medical industry was comprehensively broken, as Norman said, and the media was irrevocably broken, as we knew it was ... Was everything in America broken? Was education broken? Housing? Farming? Cities? Was religion broken?

Everything is broken.

…

For seven decades, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was produced and protected by a set of institutions—universities, newspapers, magazines, record companies, professional associations, cultural venues, publishing houses, Hollywood studios, think tanks, etc. Collectively, these institutions reflected a diversity of experiences and then stamped them all as “American”—conjuring coherence out of the chaos of a big and unwieldy country. This wasn’t a set of factories pumping out identical widgets, but rather a broad and messy jazz band of disparate elements that together produced something legible, clear, and at times even beautiful when each did their part.

…

This was the tinder. The tech revolution was the match—one-upping the ’70s economy by demanding more efficiency and more speed and more boundarylessness, and demanding it everywhere. They introduced not only a host of inhuman wage-suppressing tactics, like replacing full-time employees with benefits with gig workers with lower wages and no benefits, but also a whole new aesthetic that has come to dominate every aspect of our lives—a set of principles that collectively might be thought of as flatness.

Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.

Flatness broke everything.

…

Today’s revolution has been defined by a set of very specific values: boundarylessness; speed; universal accessibility; an allergy to hierarchy, so much so that the weighting or preferring of some voices or products over others is seen as illegitimate; seeing one’s own words and face reflected back as part of a larger current; a commitment to gratification at the push of a button; equality of access to commodified experiences as the right of every human being on Earth; the idea that all choices can and should be made instantaneously, and that the choices made by the majority in a given moment, on a given platform represent a larger democratic choice, which is therefore both true and good—until the next moment, on the next platform.

…

“You might not even realize you’re not where you started.” The machines trained us to accept, even chase, this high. Once we accepted it, we turned from willful individuals into parts of a mass that could move, or be moved, anywhere. Once people accepted the idea of an app, you could get them to pay for dozens of them—if not more. You could get people to send thousands of dollars to strangers in other countries to stay in homes they’d never seen in cities they’d never visited. You could train them to order in food—most of their food, even all of their food—from restaurants that they’d never been to, based on recommendations from people they’d never met. You could get them to understand their social world not as consisting of people whose families and faces one knew, which was literally the definition of social life for hundreds of thousands of years, but rather as composed of people who belonged to categories—“also followed by,” “friends in common,” “BIPOC”—that didn’t even exist 15 years ago. You could create a culture in which it was normal to have sex with someone whose two-dimensional picture you saw on a phone, once.

You could, seemingly overnight, transform people’s views about anything—even everything.

The Obama administration could swiftly overturn the decision-making space in which Capitol Hill staff and newspaper reporters functioned so that Iran, a country that had killed thousands of Americans and consistently announces itself to be America’s greatest enemy, is now to be seen as inherently as trustworthy and desirable an ally as France or Germany. Flatness, frictionlessness.

The biological difference between the sexes, which had been a foundational assumption of medicine as well as of the feminist movement, was almost instantaneously replaced not only by the idea that there are numerous genders but that reference in medicine, law or popular culture to the existence of a gender binary is actually bigoted and abusive. Flatness.

Facebook’s longtime motto was, famously, “Move fast and break shit,” which is exactly what Silicon Valley enabled others to do.

The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few.

Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines.

So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing.

…

I’m not looking to rewind the clock back to a time before we all had email and cellphones. What I want is to be inspired by the last generation that made a new life-world—the postwar American abstract expressionist painters, jazz musicians, and writers and poets who created an alternate American modernism that directly challenged the ascendant Communist modernism: a blend of forms and techniques with an emphasis not on the facelessness of mass production, but on individual creativity and excellence.

Like them, our aim should be to take the central, unavoidable and potentially beneficent parts of the Flatness Aesthetic (including speed, accessibility; portability) while discarding the poisonous parts (frictionlessness; surveilled conformism; the allergy to excellence). We should seek out friction and thorniness, hunt for complexity and delight in unpredictability. Our lives should be marked not by “comps” and metrics and filters and proofs of concept and virality but by tight circles and improvisation and adventure and lots and lots of creative waste.

And not just to save ourselves, but to save each other. The vast majority of Americans are not ideologues. They are people who wish to live in a free country and get along with their neighbors while engaging in profitable work, getting married, raising families, being entertained, and fulfilling their American right to adventure and self-invention. They are also the consumer base for movies, TV, books, and other cultural products. Every time Americans are given the option to ratify progressive dictates through their consumer choices, they vote in the opposite direction. When HBO removed Gone with the Wind from its on-demand library last year, it became the #1 bestselling movie on Amazon. Meanwhile, endless numbers of Hollywood right-think movies and supposed literary masterworks about oppression are dismal failures for studios and publishing houses that would rather sink into debt than face a social-justice firing squad on Twitter.

[camwritesbooks]

         ↝ NANOWRIMO 2018 WRAP UP; Cursed Queen

Okay, so this is ten days late, I’m sorry. The past few days have been a much-needed chance to get back some energy and sort out my headspace. But here I am now to talk about how happy I am with how NaNoWriMo went this year! As some of you will know I set a goal of 20k words and didn’t *quite* make it (but that was a very specific choice made with my mental health in mind, I may add). However, I did get 18.5k, which is more than I’ve ever written for a WIP and the most I’ve got down in 2 years. My plan from now on is to attempt 10k a month and finish Cursed Queen by the middle of next year. I’m not sure that will happen, but I will try.

This November, I made some great strides with Cursed Queen and my WIPs in general. I sorted out the overall plot of the first book and fleshed out the main characters as well as creating some new ones! I’ve just fallen in love with my shiny new OCs including Sasha, Petro, Mira and more. I’ve also come to adore the villain, Kaliannisse, and all her evilness. I just can’t wait to keep writing more of her (including the novella I have planned that tells her backstory). Del and Merrin and Kieran have become so much more precious to me too.

Thank you to all those who have supported me, left comments on my NaNo updates and shown me and my blog love recently, especially during this past month. I doubt I would’ve managed to get this far without the continued kindness you guys give me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Below the cut I’ve put the *entire* first chapter, not something I’d usually do, so uh... check that out if you want! I know it’s a bit shit, but it’s the start and I’m proud of it!

wip(s) page • characters  • intro post  • del & merrin edit

Read the (totally unrevised and kind of crappy) Chapter One below ↴

chapter one; Del

I can smell smoke. Somewhere in this forest, something is burning. There are a lot of things it could be. A lightning storm raging on the other side of the nearest hills might have set a flame, or perhaps some fire bubbled out of the earth in the valley. Either way, it’s not a good thing.      

I follow the trail back around, skirting the cliffs. I have a slightly unsettling feeling that I’m not alone in the forest, except that’s impossible. Nobody ever comes up here. Still, I swear I can hear what sounds like bracken crunching under feet some distance behind me.     

“Merrin?” I call into the forest. My brother is the only one who might be out here, though even he doesn’t know how to get to this side of the plateau. Besides, he’s busy preparing for this evening. There’s no reply – all I can hear is the faint rustlings of wind in the trees. I probably imagined the footsteps. My nerves are just high because of the council meeting tonight.     

I pause, resting a hand on the stone cliff beside me. The smell of smoke is growing stronger. If there is a fire, it could be close. After a moment of hesitation, I break into a run. The trees melt into a blur of brown and grey around me as I follow the track I’ve followed so many times back to the village. Wind rushes through my shoulder-length curly hair. Scrambling over smooth stone, I cross the crevice that cuts the plateau in two. I run and run until I’m gasping for breath. I stumble out of the trees and onto the wide open land of the plateau. The edge of the cliff is within sight, and beyond it is the mountains – two great ranges coming down on either side and converging in the middle, all of it lit up by golden late-afternoon sun. From up here, they seem so surmountable. I look out behind me and in the far distance I can see a small plume of smoke rising above the rocks and trees. There must be a fire somewhere. It’ll probably burn out before sunset though, so I’m not really worried.      

I follow the curve of the plateau, breathing in deeply as the wind buffets me. Everything is beautiful up here, in this moment. I can pretend that I’m not hungry and slightly ill and that the people down in our village are all slowly dying. From here, I can see all the world I’ve ever known – the mountains, the valley, the great cliffs of the plateau. I can try to imagine what lies beyond the snowy hills or behind me, on the other side of the cliffs. I have only ever seen desolate tundra in that direction, but I can’t believe that it goes on forever.      

Two or three years ago, I discovered a way from the smaller part of the plateau – the part the rest of the village knows of – and the forest-covered stretch of rock and earth beyond it. A deep ravine between the two sections, but I found a place where the walls of the trench caved in and you can get across safely enough. I didn’t tell anyone about it because there was little over there worth gathering, so it didn’t seem unfair to keep it as my place. If I did speak of it, the village leaders might not even let me go there anymore, saying I was too weak and thin to make it anything but a danger to me.      

I close my eyes for a moment, trying to think forward to the rest of the day. The town council. The ceremony. I have a nasty sinking feeling in my stomach every time I think of it. Within a few hours, I will have nothing or everything. Merrin will have everything – the town leaders like him. But they never really liked me.      

I climb down the crumbled part of the plateau cliff, following the path carved there by hundreds of journeys. From this side I can see my village with its dark-tiled roofs and great town hall in the centre. A part of me doesn’t want to go back tonight, and I’m almost thinking of just turning around until I spot Merrin standing at the base of the cliff, glaring at me. His arms are crossed.

“Hey,” I say sheepishly as I land on the flat ground.      

“Where’ve you been? The council meeting is about to begin,” he says.      I shrug. “I was… around. I couldn’t deal with everyone staring at me.”     

“They were staring at me and Sasha too, and Lorrie and he’s not even a part of it! Father was worried about you – people were saying you weren’t even going to show up.”      

I feel bad for considering doing just that. “Of course I was,” I say. “I couldn’t miss this.”      

“You know nothing bad is going to happen, right?”     

For you, no. The story’s very different for me. There isn’t honestly much between me and Merrin, but that’s not how the town leaders see it. Sasha’s their golden girl, but they love Merrin too. Who they don’t love, is me. I’m too thin, too sick, too slow. Anything I do right is never enough. Which is why tonight, at the town council, Merrin and Sasha will be made full citizens of the town – adults – and I won’t.      

I follow Merrin back towards the village, lurking behind. The streets are empty, which tells me I’m later than I thought. Sasha is waiting for us outside the town hall. She doesn’t have anything to worry about, the town leaders like her.      

“What took you so long?” she asks, grinning.      

“Sorry, sorry,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I lost track of time.”      

“No issue, nothing starts till we go in,” says Sasha.         

Merrin gives my hand a quick squeeze. “Well, shall we?”      

I enter alongside Sasha, tucking my hair behind my ears nervously. Sitting at the great table at the end of the room is the town council, the rest of the town crowded around in the hall. The town meeting happens once every moon but today will be a special one because the ceremony is happening today. Me, Sasha and Merrin. Next year it will be Lorrie and possibly me again, if I don’t pass today.      

“Ah,” says Ren Bell-Lu, the leader of the town council, as we enter. “Here they are.” I don’t like Ren very much, he was never kind to me.      

We follow Merrin to the front of the crowd and people move out of our way. Silence falls over everyone. My father meets my gaze as I pass him and I look away quickly, feeling a heaviness on my shoulders. I don’t want to disappoint him.     

Ren leans forward as we arrive before the table, smiling. “Sasha, Merrin and… Del,” he says, disapproval on his face as he says my name. “You are brought before the council today to be judged. You have all reached the age of eighteen and are now given the chance to be full citizens of the town. Are you ready?”     

The three of us nod.     

Ren raises his hand, making the sign of our village – palm facing the sky; middle, ring and pinky finger together and index finger curled up to meet the thumb. “Then, we shall begin. Merrin, step forward.” My brother steps out from beside Sasha, hand on his heart. “Merrin, do you accept the responsibilities of adulthood and swear to uphold the traditions of this town, forever and always until your death?”      

My brother grins as he speaks. “I do.”      

“Do you stand by your name?”     

“I do.”      

Ren dips his head and Merrin returns the gesture, stepping back into line with Sasha and me.      My hands are shaking as Ren’s gaze moves to Sasha.      

“Sasha, step forward.” Sasha moves towards the table, her long blonde hair swishing. “Do you, Sasha, accept the responsibilities of adulthood and swear to uphold the traditions of this town, forever and always until your death?”     

Sasha’s eyes sparkle. “I do,” she says solemnly.      

“Do you stand by your name?”     

“From this day forth, I wish to be Sasha Blue, if you will grant it,” Sasha says. A flurry of whispers rushes around the room. I can’t remember a time in my life where someone requested another name. Of course it would be Sasha. I suppose she deserves it.      

Ren looks surprised but recovers quickly. “Due to invaluable service past, present and future, we grant you this name. You are now Sasha Blue.” He and Sasha nod to each other before she steps back into line.      

Ren’s gaze moves to me and I feel my cheeks burning. “Del,” he says tightly with none of the respect he showed Sasha. “Although you have proven herself to be a competent member of this town, we do not believe you are yet ready to be a full citizen.” I cringe. “I’m sure,” he continues, “by next season, you will be successful.”     

But you hope I won’t be. Horror and shame melts over me. I can’t bear to look at Merrin or my father, fighting to keep the tears out of my eyes. I saw it coming, but some part of me didn’t want to believe it.     

Ren looks away from me as if I never even existed. He starts going on about the crop yield this month and I try to merge back into the crowd.      

Sasha follows me, furious. “How can they do that?” she hisses. “It’s completely unfair!”      “Yeah,” I say dejectedly, staring at the floor.      

“I wouldn’t have taken another name if I knew they were going to do that to you,” she whispers.     I shake my head. “No, you deserve it. It’s a lovely name.”     

Ren seems to have stopped talking and chatter begins to sprout up around us.     “Thanks,” Sasha says, “I’m glad you like it.”     

“How did you choose it?” I ask, trying to direct the conversation away from me. I just want to pretend that none of what just happened took place.      

She shrugs. “It’s not that deep, I just like the colour blue.”      

Liz Bell-Lu, Ren’s wife, appears at Sasha’s side, who happens to be her niece. Like Ren, Liz was one of the lucky few people who received a second name. Ren Bell and Liz Lu married several years ago and have ruled this town ever since.     

“Ah, Sasha, congratulations on the name!” she says in her usual simpering tone. “Del, I’m sure it’ll be your turn next time.”     

I do my best to force a smile.     

“All you need,” Liz continues, “is just to put on a bit of weight, dearest. You are such a skinny little thing.”      

Sasha looks embarrassed but I shake my head at her. The last thing I need is to be on Liz Bell-Lu’s bad side.      

“Well, we’ll see,” I reply with as much charm as I can muster.      

“Your mother was quite the same, if I remember correctly,” Liz goes on, completely unaware of herself. “Thin as sticks and always rather ill. I’m surprised she lived long enough to bear a child!” She laughs as if making fun of my dead mother is somehow an appropriate thing to do.      Sasha grabs my arm and drags me away with a hasty, “Let’s go talk to Merrin!” We make our way across the room. “I’m so sorry for my aunt,” she says once we’re out of Liz’s hearing.     

“It’s okay,” I say.     

“It isn’t, though. Nothing tonight is okay.” Sasha sends a death-glare in the direction of Ren, who’s speaking with another member of the town council.     

I sigh. “Look, I’m sure they’re right and next year I’ll join you and Merrin as full citizens. It just wasn’t going to happen this year.”      

“Excuse me everyone!” calls out a voice and the room falls silent. Standing on the elevated platform before the town council table is Vrin, the oldest person in our village. He’s one of the most knowledgeable people in the town and spends his days transcribing old texts and tutoring children. He taught me how to read and write which I’m decent at, but he also showed me healing herbs and survival which I took to immediately. He taught Merrin and Sasha too, though unlike nearly every adult I know, he always liked me best.      

“My good friends,” he says, raising his arms. “It is with the greatest joy that I announce to you that I have finally completed the translation of the old books.”     

The crowd applauds – this has been Vran’s project for years.      

“Aha, thank you,” Vran says, smiling, “but that is not all I have to say. I discovered in the texts the existence of another town – a city – beyond the mountains to the north.”     

What? A heavy silence falls across the room.      

“I will read to you the passage, if I may,” Vran continues, squinting down at some papers he holds. “We passed by the city of Veneficia on our journey into the continent. We were greeted warmly by the High Empress, who provided us all with rich meals and supplies for the road. This place is heavenly – the streets are lined with strange shops and market stalls. The people here are endlessly kind to us and I am honestly sorry that we must leave soon. I hope one day we shall return. The city is located at the west end of the mountains ranges and we aim to move only eastwards from now on.” Vran looks up, clearly delighted with the effect he has had on the room. “That is the final entry in the book we found underneath the floor of this very hall. Somewhere, only weeks away, is a city of people who could help our town,” he continues, punctuating each word. Whispers start up throughout the crowd.     

“You think it’s true?” Sasha murmurs to me.     

“I don’t know, Vrin’s pretty smart so I can’t imagine he’d get this wrong,” I say, not taking my eyes off the stage. I’m grateful to Vrin for finishing his translations coincidentally at this time to take the focus off me. Besides, this is the first time our town has had something actually newsworthy to talk about.      

Ren steps back up onto the stage, raising his hands for silence. “Vran and I have spoken extensively on this matter and we agree that while our town is one of beauty and tradition, we would do well to remember that a hard winter is on the horizon. If we can find this city, it might be of great advantage to us. Before I continue, are there any questions?”     

“Who wrote the book?” calls out someone.     

“Someone who was a part of a group travelling in these parts. We know very little of them, but they are a trustworthy source,” Vran answers.       

“How do we know this city is still around, if it’s even there in the first place?” asks Kit, who’s a few years older than us.    

Ren and Vran share a quick look. “We don’t,” says Ren, “but if it is, the resources there could save lives. We will not be abandoning our home here, only looking for some stability. We will be sending around 7 or 8 members of the town on a journey to find the city. And that is why we’re here today.” His eyes scan the crowd and rest on me for an uncomfortably long time. “Em will be leading the group and will take Orla and Gram with her. Petro too will go.”     

I look around to spot the people he mentioned. Em leans against a table, grinning, her lackeys Orla and Gram standing to the side. Petro is expressionless, standing in a corner with his arms crossed. I’m not surprised they chose Em, she’s one of the most respected young people in the town. Petro is a bit of a strange choice, but maybe he put himself forward.      

“As for the other places in the group,” Ren continues, his voice hardening, “there will be some places for volunteers. However, I think it only fair that people get the chance to prove themselves after past failures.” He looks at me. “For this reason, the fourth member will be Del.”     

My heart stops.

Thanks for reading! I hope you all have a good day and a fulfilling 2019. The future is bright <3

[dailyaudiobible]

02/09/2019 DAB Transcript

Exodus 29:1-30:10, Matthew 26:14-46, Psalms 31:19-24, Proverbs 8:14-26

Today is February 9th. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is great to be here with you for sure as we end another week. And yeah, they just…they just don't slow down…they just kind of keep coming day after day and we have accumulated another week together. So, well done! We've been reading from the Amplified Bible this week and we’ll continue to do that today since this is still this week and then we’ll switch to something else tomorrow. We are gonna go back out to Mount Sinai where God is speaking to Moses and establishing the ground rules for a new culture that is being formed in the wilderness. Today, Exodus chapter 29 verse 1 through 30 verse 10.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. Every day we basically thank You for Your word because it is a gift and we are grateful and we thank You for bringing us through another week and we thank You for all that You have spoken to us through Your word during this week. And today the voice of wisdom told us that she loves those who love her and those who seek her early and diligently will find her. Holy Spirit lead us on the paths of wisdom, that we might seek it early before there’s a problem and diligently so that we are living wise lives. We don't propose that we can do this on our own. We need Your Holy Spirit's guidance. So, come, we open ourselves to You. Lead us into all truth. Lead us into wisdom. Lead us on the narrow path that leads to life we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here. So, of course, stay tuned and stay connected.

I've mentioned, yeah, just a little over a week and we’ll be heading towards the land of the Bible. So, continue to pray over that. I mean when we do these kinds of trips I wouldn't dare get on a plane without knowing…without knowing that we were surrounded by this community because this journey is for this community, it's about this community. And, so, raising up a canopy of prayer and intercession over all that goes on in this kind of travel is so deeply appreciated and so comforting, it's like a blanket around us when we’re so far in distant. And, so, thank you for your prayers for this upcoming journey.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There is a link, it is on the homepage and I thank you humbly and profoundly for your partnership. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, of course, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today and that’s it for this week. I'm Brian I love you very much and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning DAB family this is Walta the Burning Bush that will not be Devoured for the Glory of our God and King. I’m  __ this morning…that’s my 11-year-old knocking on the door. Anyway, I’m back. We’re getting ready for school…and…I’m here family. I’m gonna pray. __ I heard your prayer on the program a while ago and wrote them down, he’s sick and this is impacting his marriage. Father God I pray for his salvation and I’m praying for him. I pray oh God that you will give him a Job like restoration in the name of Jesus. Pray for Jackie from St. Louis. Jackie I heard your request, your prayer and I wrote it down as a person problem with financial __. And Father God I pray that You will restore what the __ has __ . I pray oh God that You will hold Jackie’s hand and guide her through this valley of the shadow of death Lord and take her to the other side in the name of Jesus. Protect You as His Name called praying for her dad’s salvation and restoration and relationship with her Father. Father God we know You are the ultimate Father and a relationship between a Father and a child is precious to Father. So, whatever’s causing the separation between the two Lord, I pray that You will remove it in the name of Jesus and restore it and God I pray that You will bind them together in Your love Father. God, I pray for the salvation of all our family members __ that don’t know God. Lord, we pray that You will reach out and call them by their name. So, Holy Spirit, call them to Yourself. In Jesus name. Amen.

Hi family, this is Kim from Kentucky and it’s Tuesday, February the 5th and I just listened and I’ve been wanting to call and several times over the past several weeks with people’s prayer requests and things and I’ve just not done it, but jazz, I just listened to your praise report passing your boards. I’m a pediatrician and when you called a while back asking for prayer, I mean, I know how hard that is and how much worry and ache there can be while waiting for those test results. And, so, I just praise God for that. And I thought about calling in because I have a son that is just out of PA school last month and I thank you for praying for those that are facing challenges because he failed his first test in physiology but I’m praying for a turnaround that he just rises up and continues to excel from here. And my daughter is studying for the MCATs, to take it in April to apply to med school. So, you know all about that. And a couple of days ago Brian talked about Moses and the battle and sitting on the rock and Aaron and Herr and just reminded me of this community. Jesus is our rock. Brian, reading out the word every day is what we sit on, it’s our foundation, it’s what we stand on. And we and Aaron and Herr __ and sometimes we’re the Moses in the battle and we need others to be our Aaron and Herr. And we’re a good community for that. Everybody that feels hopeless, listen to those Christmas program. Love you all. Bye.

Good morning Daily Audio Bible family or whatever time of the day it is where you’re at. This is Andrea Delane from Kentucky. Just wanted to say it’s so good to hear from you. I’ve been listening to your prayer requests and I just wanted to encourage you today if you’re lonely or if feel socially isolated. I read something the other day on Facebook from a neuroscientist, a __ neuroscientist and she wrote, “did you know that loneliness is one of the leading causes of death in our world today. Isolation is no joke. Loneliness actually increases the risk for premature mortality amongst all ages while one recent study indicates that social isolation and loneliness kill more people than obesity.” So, I just wanted to come on here because I know that this is definitely something that I have struggled with through the years and as I’m listening to a lot of the prayer requests I really feel the root of it is feeling alone, is feeling isolated. So, I just want to pray for you today, right now. I’ll just go ahead and pray for you. So, Father I just ask You right now…I just want to thank You, first of all, for Your friendship, that we can run to You, that You are closer than a brother, that You will never leave us or forsake us. That’s Your promise to those who believe and trust in You. And, so, Father I ask right now that the Holy Spirit would remind Your people that You are with them, but secondly that You would also like for us to reach out to one another and to visit the widows in their affliction, to visit the orphans. And Lord that the timing, time is so important even more important than money. And Father I ask that we would be able to have wisdom in knowing how to increase our relationship skills, being able to increase in developing deeper meaningful relationships so that we are not suffering in the needless thing of loneliness or isolation that affects our brains, that causes our mental health to decline. Father I pray a release of Your spirit and a release of Your wisdom in building new relationships all around us in Jesus name. Amen.

Hey everybody, this is Pelham from Birmingham apparently. So, now I’m looking for a place in Birmingham. Real quick getting that out there, that I need prayer for that. I’m calling because of you Prodigal. I’m calling cause your call played today. I couldn’t even get through your entire call in. I gotta go back and finish it. Dude! High-fives from Birmingham comin’ at you bro. You’re at war man. You’re at war man. He’s liftin’ you up though, he’s liftin’ us all up and the wheel turns. Man and we forget where we are often, don’t we? Woo. This last weekend I was in darker place than I thought I could go, more lonely, more afraid, more separated from my family, and isolated from my friends than I’d ever been, like out on a branch. And that’s all he wants to do is isolate us so he can get us alone with our thoughts and get us to turn against ourselves. We start agreeing to things that would never agree with if Jesus was standing right there next to us. And sometimes we forget that He’s always standing there. Sometimes we need an actual person to stand there. Prodigal, good job man. I’m salutin’ you over here. Guys pray for Italian ice because I’m gonna be the Italian Ice man apparently. __ Italian Ice wants to hire me full-time to run his truck in Birmingham, which is really good timing. I don’t know how that’s gonna work. Help! I’m calling out. I need help. Pelham needs help. I need prayer. Thank you.

Hey family this is Josh from Indiana a.k.a. Employed by God. I just want to call in and give a quick encouragement. One of the things that God’s been dealing with me on is sometimes having the feeling that I’ve missed my calling but that I’m reminded that we’re not bigger than God. He knew when he called you exactly the path that you would take. He knows how he will fulfill your calling. So, remember that promise and begin working towards your calling today.