Dera's Diary

Good afternoon to everyone, In this holiday season, I find myself once again considering the importance of family. For me, I could be absolutely anywhere and it would be great if I had my family with me. So many things have happened and changed this year and so I'm glad to have the consistency of family. Americans recently celebrated Thanksgiving and I saw an amazing instagram post the other day in honour of it. Someone was talking about how COVID meant that he wasn't able to achieve some of his most highly-prioritised goals and he was feeling like he didn't have much to be grateful. And so he started small - the breath in his lungs, breeze in his air, family around him. And this might sound really cheesy and really old, but as long as we continue to reminisce over everything that did not happen, we will continue to sleepwalk through potentially amazing seasons of our lives. This is not to say that you are not allowed to grieve over what you have lost because you certai...

Hello everyone, How has your week been? In case you haven't had the opportunity this week to unpack how you're feeling or everything that has been going on, this is for you. What stressed you out the most this week? Why? What did you do in the moment to handle the stress? Did it calm you down, or just help you push through? Does that thing still stress you out? Is it something you can control? If yes (and maybe even if no) what do you think you could do to prevent that thing from getting to you in the same way again? Did you have anyone to talk to about it? What made you the happiest this week? Why? Was it something that happened to/for you or something you were able to for for yourself? Does it happen often? Is it something that you could make happen often? What is something very simple, that meant a lot to you this last week? There are a lot of things we cannot control. But what do you think you do differently as we approach a new week to best prepare you...

Hello... So this last week was a really long, really busy one for me and I know a lot of family and friends who felt the same way. It felt like everytime I finished a bit of work, I had like 20 seconds to enjoy that triumph before I had to start looking at the next set of work. I was talking to one of my friends yesterday about this and about how we were feeling about school in general and one thing that we concluded was that we had to be intentional about enjoying the small vitories. Even though you may have a thousand more things to do after you finish what you're doing right now, you are allowed to enjoy the victory of finishing one task. Another thing we were talking about is how important it is to let yourself rest and have downtime even if the to-do list is not complete. When I was starting out school, it may have been a lot easier to finish my to-do list, but right now the work I have to do feels endless. And so while I gradually cross things off my list, I am learning to ...

Hello... Today, I have decided to do something a little different. Recently I have been part of a lot of conversations that have made it clear that there is a global, widespread misunderstanding of the Bible and of Christianity generally. If we're looking critically at the way these things have been represented by some people, I completely understand where that confusion is coming from. I can't claim to understand everything and honestly, I don't think that's a bad thing. But I do think that I might be able to shed some light on how I understand these things with the hope that someone somewhere might gain some clarity. Okay, starting from the very beginning, I wanted to talk about the Great Sin - the Eve and Adam conundrum that I'm sure we're all familiar with in some way or the other. So in the beginning, Eve and Adam lived in the garden of Eden; this beautiful oasis with trees of every kind and huge rivers. They were told that they could eat whatever they ...