Bringing Miriam into our Morning Routine - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey everyone i'm sorry it's been a while life has been a little crazy all the kids have been home on lockdown it's been almost impossible to break away to a quiet place to try to talk to you guys even for just a few minutes but here i am i've done it so in the torah portion we just read we heard about the splitting of the sea and one of the remarkable parts of the story in in my opinion is the song of miriam and the women so moshe and the people of israel are singing and praising hashem and then the women go out with musical instruments and they start singing not so remarkable at first glance because everyone's dancing and singing right but if you read it carefully they already had in their hands these musical instruments i was talking with the kids about this on shabbat and i said okay let's say you were running away from slavery what would you take with you so they said well you know we'd pack food and and water and we'd probably pack some animals so that we could have more food and and we take clothes and dishes and maybe some valuable jewels so that you can sell them and buy other necessities right those are the things you would pack if you're running away probably the least useful thing to bring along is a musical instrument but one of the kids pointed out pretty astute they said well abba probably would have forgotten something really important like the food or the baby car seat but he definitely would have never forgotten his guitar and i said fair enough good point why would he never forget his guitar because he's expecting to be singing he's planning on singing if you're planning on having an opportunity to praise hashem and sing then you're going to pack musical instruments so that's really beautiful right they expected to have a reason to have a cause to be singing and praising and that's really beautiful so okay they packed them but what's even cooler is is that you don't hear miriam say hey go over to donkey number 47 and go rummage through my kitchen gadgets and try to find those musical instruments i packed like mosha started singing and boom there they were the instruments it's like so you guys might remember this thing called air travel that we used to do before there was covid and people would fly from place to place in these airplanes so back in those days you could check on you know your your bags and then you would just bring with you your carry-on bag onto the airplane what would you put in your carry-on it's like the stuff you would need right during the flight so it's like miriam taught the women to pack their instruments not on donkey number 47 not to you know check it under the plane bring it right in your carry-on like stick it between you don't stick it between your crock pot and your pressure cooker you pack it right there with your with your toothbrush and your spare pair of socks so you'll have it right ready so that's what miriam is really teaching us and it's like and all the women along with her it's like to be ready at any moment to see hashem's miracles but you know it's interesting that it didn't necessarily have to be that way there's something really interesting about miriam's name in hebrew it can actually mean two things marine right miriam like with the different with different vowels actually means bitter like right later on in the portion when they come to the bitter water it's my marine right bitter water and if you break our names into two parts it would actually be mar bitter and yam the c like she had the potential inside of her name to just be really negative and bitter at the sea right but the other way of reading the word miriam is marine to lift up it's like she had these two potentialities in her and she chose to be the person that's going to lift up everyone and not the person to be bitter and bring everyone down you know in jewish mystical writings and i know this is kind of a generalization and it's not you know true for everyone but there's this idea that women are a little bit better at seeing the details they're a little bit more detail-oriented like the male aspect is associated more with having these kind of grand ideas whereas women often can see the details see where everything can go wrong like this is jeremy and me tell me if you guys identify with this jeremy will be like oh we should do this oh we should make a we should move to the farm we should make a fellowship like these amazing huge creative visions um so he had the inspiration to move to the farm and i'm like thinking yeah but i i sort of see everything that can go wrong like where would the kids go to school how will we take out our garbage where will we go to the bathroom if we move to the farm like women often have the ability to envision the details and how something would look in reality and now that can be a good thing or a bad thing right like you don't want people around you running around doing stupid ideas because they didn't think of everything that could happen right but on the other hand if you're a person who's always pointing out everything that can go wrong right you could sort of take the air out of people's tires you can kind of bring down the people around you it can be really negative it can be kind of bitter right no one really be able to do anything because you're always saying ah this will go wrong and that'll go wrong so it's a very fine art form to try to to be able to see the details to see what could go wrong and to use that to fine-tune the idea right to come up with solutions ahead of time to be the person in your family that's helping everyone be better prepared to you know to to bring into life their vision but without killing the inspiration in the dream it's like a really powerful potential that we carry inside of us to either be this bitter complaining force in our home or to be a source of faith that says yes i do see what can go wrong right i am going to try to plan so that we'll be better prepared for all the things that can happen but i'm going to lead the family to step out in faith even though i know how hard it can be right even though i know that might be really really challenging so it's kind of like this balance that we've talked about i've talked about with you guys a little bit in the past between faith and human effort like um you know miriam could have been on the you know been on the sea and said like i'm just going to be bitter i knew so many things could go wrong she's a person that could have seen those details right um she knows she knows how to see but you know with no escape route but she still chooses to raise up everyone with her instruments in her carry-on suitcase and that's very much like the idea of the well you guys remember we talked about this there's like the water pit in the land where it's just something you dig and rain just goes in and it fills up and it's just about your effort and then there's the spring where it's kind of magic it's just pops out of the ground and pure faith it's like hashem does miracles a well is a really special kind of water form where you dig it takes effort but you have to have faith that hashem put water there under the ground just waiting for you having a salvation waiting for you so i don't think it's a coincidence that miriam of all of the characters in the torah is most associated with the well our tradition teaches that there was a well that followed miriam throughout the desert with the israelites providing them with water that's why when she died there was a whole rock hitting fiasco with moshe because the well disappeared when she died so she's associated the well with the well because she makes the effort right she's in egypt she watches over moshe she strives to save the babies but she does it right like she combines her effort with faith and believing that hashem will meet her in her efforts and that's why she packs the instruments because she knows that with all of her efforts that's not going to be enough she's waiting to see hashem's miracle and she hashem's miracles and she teaches that to the people around her so i found that to be a really powerful life lesson especially for us women but really for everyone we all have the potential to face life with this bitterness there's so many problems or we can say yes there are problems but i'm going to step out in faith and hashem will meet me there hashem will be there to save us so you know it's amazing how these two opposite forces are embedded right there in miriam's name embedded right there in us teaching us so often that the characteristics that are our greatest challenge our greatest stumbling blocks can actually be the tools that we use for good in the world um so now on a kind of unrelated but kind of related note last week jeremy shared his morning routine we'd be getting such amazing feedback from all of you it's really cool to see people sharing their stories about how they started to get inspired to get up early and make their own beautiful morning routine and i got an overwhelming amount of questions about my morning routine so right now uh as jeremy just showed you guys uh during the coveted lockdown my morning routine mainly consists of trying to get as much sleep as possible um so that video that jeremy showed you guys was sort of a joke but sort of not a joke because the truth is is that um i've been getting a serious dose of humility in the last few weeks i kind of stretched myself a little bit beyond my limits uh knocked myself out a bit and the lesson that i walked away with is that there's a time for pushing you know for getting up early waking up the dawn exercising before the sun comes up um and then there's a time for recuperating and especially for us moms i think we may have a tendency to push ourselves a little bit beyond our limits and i've been trying to integrate in my own life the value of learning to accept myself even when i need a little bit of extra rest and relaxation that's been a journey for me not to get mad at myself for needing a little more time to snuggle under the covers in the morning before i get up and get myself a little bit of strength to brace myself for what's coming in the day so uh so you know there's a value in kind of having the times where you don't have the most strenuous morning routine but the same time i keep in mind that eventually things will get easier but as radhashan you know please hashem um and i'll get used to things or the circumstances will get a little bit easier so i bear in mind that i have my ideal of what i aim for as well so as for my ideal morning it definitely does look a lot like jeremy's it's something you know the judean morning is something that we uh developed together when we were uh first moving out to the farm um and when i used to have my judy and mornings it definitely made my day amazing i had a lot of the elements that jeremy talked about like prayer and exercise envisioning the day journaling even cold water when i was really extra brave but there is one thing i do in my morning routine that jeremy doesn't and i think it's super important as a mom and it connects to the discussion of miriam that we were just talking about um so something i try to do in the morning besides for journaling for myself is to actually journal about my kids lives it's something that jeremy can't really do because like if i would say to him like hey what did uh emunah do yesterday jeremy would be like ah she was cute i think his mom's we have a tendency to notice the little details about the kids and it's really fun to write those things down it's cool just to be able to look back and remember those cute little milestones but it's even deeper i think it does something really profound just like miriam's name that can you know you can either be like that bitter person or that person that lifts everyone up as parents and especially as moms we notice these little things about the kids and that means we notice the things that they do wrong which can lead to nitpicking and criticizing and i'm definitely guilty of that sometimes as my kids would know but it also allows us to notice those good things those little developments those places where they might have had a hard time with something maybe they just moved an inch better and by journaling about them with a focus on the positive we can orient our minds to notice and pick up on their little growths right and encourage them so you know because what you think about is what your brain focuses on so in the morning i love to take time and think about each kid and just notice a little good thing about them maybe you know write it down something that you notice them being a little bit better at you know and um you know you might be able to give them a little bit more encouragement because you're noticing those things and that helps them keep on growing and keep on developing and it feels really good for them to know that you're thinking about them and keeping track of them like when each of my kids turns bar mitzvah i give the bar bot mitzvah i think what i do is i give them their journal as a gift and i even record myself reading to them from it it really makes them feel special that i took all those years to notice the good in them so that would be my little miriam tweak of the morning routine to use our miriam characteristics that ability uh that potential to see the details um and taking that and channeling it to be marine right to lift up the people around us so with that i wish you guys a great week and uh everyone feel good be healthy bye shalom my name is jeremy gimpel a few months ago we started an online seminar teaching life-changing biblical wisdom revealed from the original hebrew and straight from the mountains of judea with global instability on the rise more and more people are turning to god realizing now they don't exactly know where to look for guidance the bible says the guidance will come from the land of israel what started as an online seminar has grown into a global fellowship with hundreds of members from over 30 countries we are participating in fulfilling prophecy as we learn the bible through the eyes of prophecy with a focus on what it's telling about us in our lives today what you will discover is that the wisdom transmitted thousands of years ago is speaking directly to us in our time right now instead of learning the bible as a religion it's the torah of israel the living guidance of god so please join us for our next online gathering and get access to the full library of teachings that the land of israel fellowship is offering join now and get an audio series on the prophecy encoded in the book of joshua absolutely for free just click on the link below or email fellowship at the land of israel.com i don't know how you found this video or what compelled you to click on that link but i don't believe in coincidence and i would encourage you to take the next step on your journey toward the land of israel i hope to see with the land of israel fellowship shalom