Gratitude

It doesn't feel like over two months since I last posted.  Yet that is how long it's been.  Time is relative, right?

Life moves at a rapid pace and we end up watching life happen sometimes as though we were outside of it, watching ourselves go through it all.  I certainly feel that way.

Over the last few weeks I have decided to do something huge for myself;  I began to attend Al-Anon. For those who don't know, this is a group intended for the friends and family of those who are alcoholics, or have a problem of alcohol.  Those who are recovering may also find themselves in the program, because as they say, it is a family disease, but I personally am not one of these.

I have yet to decide if I will really speak much on this.  I think perhaps it is better to participate in a program like this for a while first.  The traditions state that it is important to maintain anonymity, and I think that this must be very important or it wouldn't be such a big part of the 12 traditions.  Still, it can be helpful to put things out there.  So for now, I am on the fence about what I might end up doing with this.  While I do believe this could and would help, that doesn't mean that my good intentions will have good results.

This has not at all been part of any New Year's Resolutions.  The fact is, I hate resolutions.  I find them to be tedious and fleeting.  The majority of people have dropped these before much time passes at all.  Rather than fuss over something huge, I have realized that it is often much better to take a good look at resolutions from a more measured and realistic stand point.  I think for now it is better to focus on small goals well done than large goals that feel forced or like some kind of ridiculous show.

We all fall into that trap, don't we.  Putting on a show for those around us, trying to make us look like something we wish we were or whatever.  Some are more inclined to put on the show because the want something, and it's less about wanting to be admired or revered, and more about wanting something from others: money, sympathy, attention, pity, fear, etc.

Some of us sit back and think that to be angry, jaded, negative or all around unpleasant is what being real is all about.  I disagree. To me, I can see the bad things that go on in the world, the negative things that happen around me, and I make a choice to see a bright side to life as a whole.  To mistake optimism for naivety is a mistake.  My thinking is that in more cases that you would even realize, this is not a naive way of thinking, but rather, it is a wisdom, and those who look down on it are often jealous or just straight out frightened of what may become of them if, heaven forfend, they should dare to hope or dream.

So for this year, it is my dearest hope so far, and this is all I have of it right now, is to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.  A grateful heart is a happy heart.  I have a lot to be thankful for.  Things are a little tense at the moment in some aspects.  For instance, I am stuck taking a bus to and from work when I can't get a ride right now.  This is resulting in my spending about 13 hours a day away from home between work and transit, and while this is frustrating, it will be alright in the end.

Bright sides, right? I choose to take this as an opportunity.  I get motion sick if I read in any vehicle with wheels.  I can manage it on trains, boats and planes, but in a bus, car or truck I often find I get dizzy and ill.  So instead I knit and I listen to audio books and sermons and music.  It works out for me.  It's something to be grateful for.  I may be stuck on transport for over 90 minutes each way every day, but I can be grateful for the time to improve myself, and make things to keep me warm in the bitter cold of the north all winter.

To paraphrase Jane Austin: It is only a weak character that is determined to be unhappy forever.  We have choices, and that I think is what I am learning the most lately.  I can choose to be grateful, and I can choose to make the most of a crap situation.  What is your choice?

Worth

It's been a long time.  A lot has happened in my life and honestly, I'm largely back.  Not only am I back, but I have plenty to share, and some stories to add to a whole separate space.  Buckle up, because this is going to be an interesting time.

Worth is something we all think about on an almost daily basis, though we may not realize we do.  It is a general perception of what we are willing to give for something.  This can be a person, an experience, an item, a feeling.  We don't even realize that we evaluate this sometimes.  When we meet new people, we are carefully weighing whether this person is worth giving our time to.  In the grocery store we are considering whether its worth spending that much money on what we are going to put in our bodies for fuel.  Going to our jobs, we are deciding whether this is worth giving our time to.  Not always do we think about this, but it is true.

Being that this is a perception, it is subjective.  Yet we miss something under this that most of us don't stop to think about; We are also considering or own worth when we are deciding these things.  "Am I worth this?  Do I deserve better?  Or is this too good for me?"  In all seriousness and reality we are putting a value on ourselves.

Why does this matter?  What could this possibly matter that it would seem worth writing about?  I'm getting there.

Looking inward, we have to understand a certain level of value that we hold.  Life is filled with duality and comparison, and we are holding ourselves up to these things to determine what is or is not worth our life or value or time or investment.

As a solid example, I am sitting down this Sunday morning, and I am giving my time over to a blog, a writing project, that I started some time ago.  It's something I love doing, and I have let it fall by the way-side, but I feel it is a worth while endeavor.  This, to me, is a labor of love.  In my real life, the one I spend away from books and pens and keyboards-for-fun, I find people sort of overwhelming at times.  I work a call center, and it has its ups and downs.  Folks, I'm not going to lie, the things some people call about, I have a hard time somedays with answering the question "What is this world really coming to?" These are the kinds of jobs that can in one call build your sense that this world is doomed and there are nothing but sociopaths the world over, and in the next call, you can come across the most genuine and amazing person, who has just a real and honest question.  Duality.  Contradiction.  It happens.  Often.

Away from this, I sit here this morning, on the first of my two days off for the week, and I write to the masses, though it seems I never even get 25 readers, I keep banging away on this keyboard, because I believe that someone will read this with purpose.  This is important, it is a valuable thing to me, because I can't save every starfish on the beach, but if I can move just one, then that is worth my time.  That and I just really do enjoy writing.

This is worth my time and my investment of energy because I believe that it could do good.  I also believe that it serves a purpose for myself.  An opportunity to get things out of myself.  To share the things I have learned and observed.

So, why does worth matter?  What does this have to do with saving anyone?  I will tell you.

In my life, I have been told things that are awful.  I've been called names and told I am all manner of nasty things by people who claimed they loved me or were suppose to watch over me.  This is an experience which goes all the way back to my mother.  Don't worry, I won't go into the gory details.  Just know that it got plenty bad through various times of my life.

For the last few years, however, I have started to look at what truth is.  The truth is that these were sad lies told to me by people who had a very poor concept of their own worth.

Worth is far more than just a concept of self and only effects the person holding the idea.  What we see in ourselves absolutely and definitively effects how we treat other people.  It effects how we interact with the world around us.  This is an idea which defines our experience, but also the experience which others have of us.

When we understand that we are valuable, that we have worth and importance in this world, we behave differently.  The motivation that this worth springs from, though, is also a factor.

I have had occasion to reconnect with someone very dear to me lately.  It is a person who has spent an extended period of time in the presence of a person that used exorbitant energy to build themselves up by tearing this person down.  Daily.  Constantly.  This is really hard to live with.  A way of life made harder when you start out believing that this person cares about you, because they have chosen that you are worth the investment.  Suddenly you come to the realization that this person had done so in an effort to not only change you, but to make you also look back so they look and feel better.  It's a sad experience. Not only is this a horrible way to live, but it is also all too common these days.

Experience is tough to live down sometimes.  We see it in every day life and it takes time, and effort, a deep well of energy and a desire to persevere to overcome such a bad experience.  Somewhere along the way we were taught this was somehow acceptable.  The warning signs were all there but we over ride these thinking it will be okay.  Sometimes the chance we take in jumping into these things is worth the risk!  Other times, it ends badly, and we may never really understand or know how the effect will play out in that person's life.  I believe that even when you are only part of someone's world for a short time, you have the ability to leave a mark on them and that mark can have effects long after you are gone.  These things have the ability to change a person's whole life if we are genuine and very, very lucky.

What's the point though?  Why does any of this matter?  Why share all of this on a Sunday morning with friends and strangers?

If we spend more time looking inward, and we understand what our own worth actually is, and understand that this has the profound ability to effect all those you come in contact with, it can absolutely change the world.  The work of one person can have all the change.

To understand your worth, I have to say this; You have deep value based on the very fact that you exist.  This life is also a gift that we are inherently unworthy of, except that we have been given the gift.

Its a good time to remind you that what you are reading is the thoughts of a Christian woman, a thinker, a person who has spent a lot of life in dark and ugly places with unhealthy people and come out of it wishing to be a warrior and a champion for others.  Someone who wants people to live like they have the worth and value that I know they have.

I believe in a very simple truth; You and me, and the person across the way, we were all made, deliberately, by a Creator.  This alone gives us worth and value.  The problem of people out there, doing bad and ugly and evil things, is not something I want to address much in this post.  I just want to illustrate the fact that not only do you and all of us have worth and value, but that people who behave this way are often damaged similarly to yourself.  Sometimes they are simply born missing something, but this is not only rare, it doesn't change that these are still human beings, created, and with value.  Far more often, the negative and ugly we encounter is the result of people having a skewed sense of self and self-worth.  They don't understand their value.  Someone, or more likely many someone's, taught them that they aren't worth much, or anything.

Today, I want you to hear that you were made with an intention, that there is a purpose in your life that can and will matter.  It does take work and effort.  Me, for example.  The same dear friend who is leaving such an ugly situation, has remarked at my sheer willingness to put out there the things that other's won't say.  I am willing to hold that mirror up to the scared and the disfigured and let people know that not only is it okay, but it can become the most beautiful thing about you!

There is balance.  We are at once invaluable, and unworthy.  This life, all we have and hold, it is a gift.  These are things given to us because someone made us, and looks on us with such love, and by virtue of our mere existence and the fact that He made us and saw us through the whole of our life, that He chose to give us so much.  Yes, bad things happen, but these are as often the results of choices we and others make, and again, these are things that can serve to become beautiful! IF we are willing to look at it so.

I choose each day to see the ugly of my life as a gift I was given to help other's who have gone through similar events.  Sometimes even worse.  Sometimes less awful.  The choice is still to make gold from straw, silk from a sow's ear.  We all have our off days, and we need to be able to allow ourselves this, and we need to let ourselves have time to cope with things.  No one can or should be "on" at all times.  It is part of my coping strategy that I give myself time to rest and to be sad or to mourn things lost to me.  To feel the days that the world has lost its color and all I want is to be sad.  I have learned this is not only okay, but it's necessary, and if I don't allow myself to go through it sooner rather than later, then what happens, at least for me, is that I end up experiencing a massive hurricane, rather than just a little thunder storm.

All of this, it started with a simple truth.  I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  I have value because I was made by deliberate hands with a deliberate purpose.  I have a Father who will talk to me of the things I need and want.  I have been given things in my heart that are real, and true, and good, because this is the kind of person I am.  What I understand today that I didn't get 11 years ago, is that I am here with purpose, and I am a delight to Him who created me.  And He is large enough that He can love us all so much.

This world will be a better place, the more that more of us understand that not only do we have value, but also what true humility actually is; a balance between both knowing you are valuable, but also that you have been given a gift for no reason.

Strange ideas

For some reason I feel very much as though I hear often in television and in media about such themes as "Where was God when _______ got sick/went missing/left/died/etc," and the responses to this question are often weak or not at all addressed at all by anyone in the show, movie, or program.  This, to me, is a little bit flummoxing, and perhaps just a little frustrating, because there are answers to these questions.  Additionally, there are good solid responses to these thoughts that simply seem to be rejected by people often.

Sadly, often times those who fling these questions out there aren't really looking for answers, they are looking to be angry.  I do want to say that it is okay to be angry.  Anger is a natural human response to all sorts of events in life.  Pain, loss, injustice, fear.

Let me say this: Being honest, most of all with yourself, is the biggest thing.  Its like two drivers in a race, and they are neck in neck.  One driver is happy to let the outcome be an honest one, they are satisfied with the truth.  Driver one is okay with loosing, with wining, or with it being a tie, because they are interested in an honest result and if they are worse than driver number two, they would rather know that honestly.  However, driver number two feels differently on the topic.  Driver two is willing to swerve to make driver one flinch if it means they might take the lead.  Driver one wants to win, true enough, but again, honestly, and doesn't feel its worth loosing his life or taking serious career ending damage to do so, and thus does driver two win by cheating.

The joke is on drive two, however.  Willing to cheat their way to the winner's circle, driver knows that they will never really know what the outcome of that race might have been had they simply been genuine, followed the race through, and faced the outcome knowing that if nothing else they were real.

This is often us.  The two sides to our own selves, the part of us willing to let life be honest and honestly lived, and the part of us that wishes to "cheat", if you will.  Pretending something doesn't bother us when it does, making excuses for our responses, blaming others for things that are either our own fault or are simply the way the cards fell by chance.

So I would like to address this today.  At least, to some degree.

"Where was God when X got sick?"

Often this is the re-curser to a further question about why that person died or was allowed to die, as it seems less likely to be in spiritual or emotional crisis if the person or their loved one took ill and survived.

Still, perhaps someone took ill and either the effected person or someone who cared for them took it as some sign that either there is no God, or God is some sort of horrible being willing to allow us to suffer.

When those we love get ill, whether its the common cold, or cancer, or other illnesses that leave their victims void of life in some way or literally, take away their mind, or their body in whole or part, God is with us.  We may wish to be angry and reject Him over it, but that, truth be told, is our choice.  We decide to let these things be barriers to clear thinking or be doors to deeper roots. (Please forgive my mixing of metaphors.)

My thoughts and opinions are that some times its not about us, its about them, the ill person, and what they need.  A sports star loosing the use of an arm or their legs now has no fame or fortune to them and it is a tempering in fire in many ways.  The years best singer looses their voice a year after an award was won, and now they have no talent to bring them to stage unless they wish to pursue an instrument.  Perhaps they use their talents behind the scenes, perhaps this is enough, or perhaps they feel as though they are forever robbed.

Another thought is that the person may very well give all the glory to God in public, but when it is taken, they change their tune.  Maybe they needed to make wiser choices.

In short, life, all of life, illness included, is a tempering, a lesson, then another lesson.  I think it is meant to build our character.  Or show our colors.

For the record, this is not coming from some privileged girl who has never known loss.  Indeed I have known more loss, much different loss, than many. Loss of freedom, loss of a child, even if it wasn't to death, it was as good as for me in many ways, worse in some, too.  I've known what it is to be hurt, abused, violated, damaged at the hands of those who said they loved me.  There have been times when I have experienced what felt very much like betrayal.  Sorrow is an old friend, and I do not say these things lightly, as platitudes from some well-meaning and inexperienced hack.  I say this knowing what it is to be tempered.  I know what it is to loose and to understand it was one part just chance, and it was one part me not learning the lesson the first time it was put to me.

"Where was God when X died?"

We do not exist in this life, in this world, so that it can go on forever.  This place is temporary for us.  All the things we experience here, not to sound like a broken record, but I truly believe they are lessons.  It prepares us for whatever is next.  Truthfully we only have a hint of what that truly is.  I think it must be very big, and rather important, for what some of us go through in this life.

When someone dies, if we are to be believers, we need to understand that God knows what He is doing, and we really do need to lean on the parts of the bible that describe Heaven.  It is important, so important, to remember that whether the person dying is an infant, some great person on the brink of something great and world changing, someone who maybe wasn't important to many people, but they were never the less loved by us, or someone very old, that they go on to a better place.  This does not mean that this life is unimportant all together, or that we should treat this life with a cavalier attitude because it is less than the next place.  Do not misunderstand me, I want no cult behavior to stem from these words, this life is precious and important because this is the first place we are given life.

The good sometimes do die young, and the wicked live on, and perhaps it is because the good person is truly ready for what is next, while the wicked person needs time.  Is it really so unjust for a good person to go on to Heaven and for a wicked person to have another chance to live a better life?  If we are inclined to say that it is unjust, understand that this life is not the piece of cake that Heaven is, and that person who did wrong may yet turn it around and save many hundreds more for good things, while the good person was good, but was ready for the next step.

Understand that it is not only the righteous who are called, and who reach their hand out.  There is a sense of guilt in all of us, and that drives us in strange ways sometimes.  Me being as sullied and un-pristine as I am, another person may well look at what my life has been and say to themselves "Woah, she's been foolish and not always as good as she seems.  If she can figure it out, why can't I?"

The good and the called are not always the same.  And the good will have their own rewards.  While those of us who toil will find our ways, whatever we choose for that way to be.

"Where was God when tragedy hit me/my family/my loved one?"

Again, the infuriatingly simple answer is that He is right there with you.  Waiting as ever for you to turn to Him, to cast your burdens on Him.  Offer up your plea, emotion, bargain, whatever it is.  He sits with us in those dark places, all too familiar with what and how they are.  What we do with those times is the choice we get to make for ourselves.  The thoughts we give way to, or the actions we commit ourselves to.  He walks through it with us, waits, sits with us.

The sad truth is that free will is only real if we are all allowed the full breadth of action.  The unimaginably kind, and the unspeakably evil.

As anger is a natural human emotion, it is healthy and normal, it is also ours to control, not to let reign.  Emotions, as anything else, are indicators, and we loose when we let them ride run over us.  The only one who gets the bad end of things is the one who is not honest.

So, too, is it us who loose when we point the finger at God and cast blame, or try to say we are abandoned when we are in pain or afraid or in danger.  We do those we love no good by our unpleasant attitudes.

Sickness happens.  People make bad choices every day, and every day some of those bad choices result in loss for someone who doesn't deserve to loose.  No one will ever say life is or should be fair, but death is fair, and what comes after it.  To blame God for giving you the freedom to love the color of your choosing, to decide for yourself what your favorite food will be, to pick the shirt you put on your back today is the same as blaming him for someone making the choice to drink and drive, or to out right murder someone intentionally.  It is allowed but it does not mean it is approved of, any more than it is approved of when someone loves and often wears a color that they may look awful in.  It is not approved of when someone slowly waists the life they have been given in front of the television any more than it would be if someone spends their whole life seeking thrills or all sorts.  It may well be approved of for someone to give and give and work hard for others and charitable causes, yet the motivation is what God looks as, and that is not to say that the person being given to is not being enabled.  Like wise is it better or worse that a good person be taken to a perfect place or endless joy, a place where they know they will only wait a short time to them and then they will be joined by their loved ones?  Yet those loved ones have a choice, as well.  Those I know to have been wonderful people and that I will look forward to seeing again are not lost to me forever.  It is only "see you later".

This entire world is fleeting.  Fashion changes by season these days,  and selfies are posted sometimes by the minute.  Do we really think its that worth while to force someone to be forever stuck here?  I'm not so sure...

An odd realization

This morning I was going about my daily routine before I head off to work, as for the time being I work weekends as well.  As I was rinsing my hair of the shampoo, something occurred to me.  I have no idea why it hadn't come to mind before, and I know this is something I have seen and/or heard other places.  Additionally, as with anything else I write, I do not believe that I am the only or first person to think of this.  There are thousands of years of theological thought preceding my tiny life.  Understand, I do not think myself some amazing wise woman for this thought.

The thought I had was simply this: What if the devil tempts us for a reason beyond simply being angry and hateful, with a desire to rob God of us, and us of God.  What if the reason for this is not just jealousy, anger and hate.  What if the reason he does this goes a little further: He wants to prove to God that we are unworthy of Him, of His love, and His attention.

Why this came to mind this morning I am not sure.  I wasn't considering the devil and his war against us.  There was nothing on my mind to do with why God gives us His love and attention.  Considering things is something I often do, and perhaps I was thinking of my gratitude for all the amazing love He does give us, but I always consider it the love any perfect parent would have for the life they give to another being.  For God I always considered it natural.  Just as I believe that God, in spite of all that the devil has done, still loves even him and His heart breaks knowing the way the devil rails against Him.

The idea that the devil would see us as unfit is something that I honestly think I have heard before, through sermons or TV shows or movies or music.  Thinking of this concept this morning was simply interesting because it seemed to come out of now where.

We are meant to be greater than the angels, and our prayers aid them.

Still, I had to wonder why this would matter.  I'll be entirely honest, I am still not sure there is only one reason.  What I can say is having this realization gave me a new angle on this war the enemy wages on us.  To me, having this perspective in mind gives me another tool to use in times of temptation and when things become a struggle.  Another thing that I think it may eventually lead to is to help others in their struggle in different areas one day.  This is something that may not matter to some.  Yet to some it may help them to fight if they understand this perspective.

For some reason I find myself wondering today, now that this has occurred to me, if some of the things spoken of in C. S. Lewis's work, and I'm sure other's besides, leads back to the reason for the great rebellion in the heavens was that the enemy was told by God, was shown by His hand, what his designs were for the earth and what Man would be, and the enemy, feeling jealous, decided that this was a mistake on the part of God.

This entire idea leads to a still further set of burning questions and concepts to me.  However, the only thing here that really matters to me, truly, is this: God made us, in His image, with a plan for us, and the devil may or may not think of us as a mistake.  Some, not all, but a portion of the wicked things that happen to us, the way some of us go off the rails entirely and act out in violent and unthinkable acts, or even in small acts of shame and wickedness, may be due to the forces of the evil one trying to push us to ever greater acts to prove how unworthy we are.  To show God that creating us was a great mistake.

I believe that we are no mistake.  I believe that even one of us choosing God over the world, just one in one thousand, or even one million, or even one billion, to God, is a victory.

We are not mistakes.  The bottom line here, I think for today, is that if even just you, sitting and reading this today, chose God, you alone in all of history and time and space, know that God will consider it victory.  Always.

It is my opinion, in the face of this, that Job is an illustration of this point among others.  The devil wanted to tempt a righteous man to wickedness.  In no small part, perhaps this was to prove that even the best of us are simply unworthy of God and His love.  The great commission was to love.  Perhaps today, with this in mind, we can choose to prove the devil wrong, one act, one thought taken captive, one unkind word left unuttered, one change of action or response at a time... May I be better today than before.

The Infirmary

It isn't easy to be sick or broken.  So often the well look on the sick or the hurt like they are so fortunate to be given such attention.  The point that is missed is they need that attention to get well again.  Logical, right?  There is nothing glamorous about being broken in spirit either.

Healing is a process, and it gets messy.  Realistically, no one comes to the Lord well.  Not really.  All who come to the well are in need of healing water.  Some more than others, some sooner than others. Yet all needs are important.  Still further, all needs give us time to better understand our creator and his purposes.

When a sheep, usually a very young one, or goat, or whatever, is willful and keeps on wandering off and getting lost so the herder has to keep going and finding it, what happens, well what use to happen, was the Shepard would take and break one of the legs of the wanderer, then reset it.  Then, as this painting depicts, he would place the sheep around his neck.

What this did was create a dependance.  The sheep would grow so use and comfortable with the Shepard, and it would come to depend on him(her) for feeding, and get use to being fed by hand, the relationship would become such a bond and such a need that when the leg was healed that sheep would no longer stray.  Archaic, right?  I don't really agree any more.

A sheep who would stray would find themselves a lion or wolf to contend with.  They would often wind up dead as a result.  Granted the sheep in this case ends up dead anyway in most instances.  Depending on the purpose of the Shepard and their family.  Still, the point remains.  When we are prideful, when we get ahead of the Father, when we try too hard to get off on our own, there is need.  In this case the reason for the broken leg isn't really the Shepard.  Its our own fault, and possibly someone else's, or even the devil's, or all three or combination thereof.

We need to understand that it is not God who caused the brokenness.  God allows it, but we also have to learn, to understand and realize, that the chances are pretty good He sent more than one opportunity to turn away.  By letting us go pellmell into it, He merely respected our wishes.  When teenagers rebel, we can only stand in the way so long.  If we can't reach them, we can't stop them.  Not all the time.  The result is sometimes broken limbs... or egos.  Or what have you.

Ultimately, we really sort of do a lot of the damage to ourselves.  Sometimes it is done to us by outside forces.  That is real.  Loosing a loved one, getting abused as a child, having a crime committed against you, in many cases these things are things that are done and we have little or no control.  That is very real.  How we choose to deal with it after that is a different story.

Long story short, we have choices and we make choices.  How we choose to deal with things matters.

At last, we are brought to the end of ourselves and the end of whatever we have left, and if we haven't managed to mortally wound ourselves in the process we find ourselves in such a way as to need a sort of doctor.  THE Doctor.  And I don't been like on the BBC.

Moving on.

Here's the the away I'm driving at, folks:  We get broken.  The way this world is, it happens.  Some of it we do to our selves, some of it is done to us.  Some times what get's done to us is the result of poor choices putting us there, sure, but still, ignorance doesn't necessarily mean we deserve what happened.  It's easy to blame.  Often it's even easy to feel guilt when we didn't do anything wrong.  To grasp at a sense of control we cling to ideas of how and why we should have known better when the reality is we just didn't at the time and we must let go.

All of this leads back to one solid fact.  If you are in the infirmary, if you are at that point now where you have tried it your way and you're so broken that you are just down and waiting for God,  you're just on your knees and there's no where to go any more, its time to dig into the books.

This time of being broken, this time of healing, it is a time to know your Creator.  God has a character and a posture toward us.  God has all manner of things to share with us.  We learn so much about Him and who He is through the Word.  Through teachings from people out there calling out to us of the Love of the Father.  For any of us that are in hospital right now, it is time for us to dig into all the Bible and come to understand.

I hope very much to follow this with probably a few posts about the nature of God.  Old testament God and New Testament God.  Its so important to understand that this is the same God we are looking at.  And learning to read it and understand the why of it all is so important.  There is a lot of ground to cover.  So have patients with me as I forge ahead into the next set of entries.  I wish to encourage and I hope that it isn't too long in the coming.  Its going to take some time to plan, and to write it all out.  It is a LARGE topic to cover...

Princess/Prince

It feels important to me to start this with a passage that we really do need to pay attention to.  We often see God as a vending machine.  I put in the coin-prayer, and out comes stuff.  Yet this isn't entirely how it works.  There is a character to God.  This is something that will take a very long time to outline, to be truly honest.  For now, however, let us focus on God as our King, and Father, and what exactly that makes us.

Indeed we are all inheritor's of the kingdom of God.  This is exactly what the word tells us.  Paul writes it in his letter to the church planted in Rome.

Romans 8:17 specifically states we are co-heirs with Christ.  This tells us so many things.  To start with this tells us that Christ's character is on of generosity!  He does not wish to horde the whole thing to himself but to share in it with us!  Yet the thing I want to point out here is the word "heir".

As we are heirs with Christ, we are the children of God.  God being a king this makes us absolutely Princes and Princesses of the Kingdom!  If you take the prayer, you say you accept Jesus, and you go into the fold of that membership in this family, you are automatically royalty.  Royalty means responsibility.  It means, my friends, that you are meant to rule!

What do we rule over?  That is a question that is easy enough to answer honestly.  We rule here.  We rule in heaven.  As Jesus said, "What you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."  Stewardship starts right then.  The very second you say yes to Christ, you are a steward of this world and the next. You are not the ONLY steward of these places but you are certainly A steward of these places.  From that moment on, it would behoove many of us to realize that now is the time of our training begun.

An odd thing to talk about after confessing to the readers, the world really, the way things had been going for me.  Fact is, it is this reality that has begun to sink in that is starting to help me to realize that this life is so important and so worth living.

It has also helped be to understand to what extent the devil is happy to try to keep me down.  Suicidal thoughts are, I believe, often there because the devil takes the weak nature of the flesh, and he pushes things that our body is inclined to think at times of trouble and distress.  Then he comes in with whispers of all sorts.  It happens to be for me that it was to not talk about it.  To stay silent was better. No one would look at me strangely if I didn't talk about it.  How awful I felt inside didn't matter, because it was how people perceived me that mattered.  Well, to some degree perhaps it can be good to know that you are well thought of, but in general I have to go back to the reference I made to the house plant and the pet.  We have value because we exist, period.

To accept Christ, however, is to become a whole other level of this.  We were always princes and princesses.  Some of us choose to accept the crown, however, and some of us push it away, wishing to be ruler of our own domain.  That is a choice.  Let's pray that more find it is better to be steward of something eternal than king or queen of something finite and momentary.  But!  I digress.

The point I am trying to make is much more important actually, for those of us who DO believe and HAVE accepted this.  We now have responsibility.

Right this second I want to point out that some of us do not realize this right away, and that is alright. Do not consider the time waisted.  It may be used as a way to teach us if we will look on the past with eyes and mind to learn rather than to be hard on ourselves.

Another thing to point out is that if you are a new christian, and you look inside and find you are damaged, as I am damaged and had been and am actively working on healing now, do not expect yourself to get it all perfect right out.  Additionally, do not push yourself too far too fast.  When you have a broken limb, or in some of our cases several rather important bones being broken, or for that matter being so spiritually broken you may well be in a spiritual full body cast right now, understand that this is a time of healing, a time of resting, and by that measure, the verse I started this all with in the image at the top is that much more important!  You, and me, must learn to depend on HIM now.  Understand that right now is a chance for YOU to learn more of God, to get close to HIM.  Being in the infirmary is time for you to understand your healer!  When we get out of a doctor's care, we should know that doctor, and there should be a very healthy level of respect built between you and them.  Such is the case here.  You may very well end up back in that doctor's office again.  And again. And again.  Many times of your life time!  Yet when we are injured we go TO THE DOCTOR.  This is necessary.  We need not be ashamed.  Understand that if you need the infirmary before you can get to boot camp and training, then so-be-it!  This is time you can use to make your mind strong with knowledge of the Character of God.

In short ladies and gentlemen, this is a time for you to discover who God is, what His nature is, and for you to understand that you are valuable.  Literally whatever it is that you have done, it is okay.  Because God can use that.  The bad, the ugly, the good, the weird, it can all be used by God to do His work through your hands, mouth, actions.

Being in the spiritual hospital is a time for you to know that God sees all the things that make you who you are, all the things that are in your past, and all the things that need to change or be healed.  This will be a time for you to come to terms with these things, and to understand that you do not need to be ashamed any more.  What your job is during these times is to understand that not only do you have value but because you exist, but that you are now a member of the royal family, and that makes you so valuable that God went to extreme lengths to win you for keeps.

This is very hard to get into our heads.  Yet it is so key to our lives as Christ-Walkers.  We need to start seeing ourselves as the princes and princesses we truly are.  Not because we are going to be catered to.  Not because we are not entitled to all sorts of things.  Because it makes us important to Him, and it makes even that basic value ten fold to us.

Think of it this way:  You think of yourself as a rock.  You don't really have a name you call what you are, you just are.  Then you come to understand that you are a rock in something that matters, life.  That makes being a rock more bearable.  One day, along comes someone much bigger and much wiser and much more full of love, one who in fact knows you to your very genetic code.  If you will listen, this someone will tell you what you are.  In listening to this someone, you discover you are a rare jewel.  You and those around you just think your rocks.  Come to discover that you are infinitely more that just stones.  You are precious gems that other's come and seek.

As with any precious thing, we must guard ourselves to some degree.  I will maintain that openness is often the best defense.  Another great defense is in knowing who you are and being at peace with yourself.

Knowing what your flaws and defects are is important.  We do not need to flog ourselves for these short-comings.  That is so far removed from the point it's laughable.  Knowing our weaknesses and our flaws is part of being real, of being aware.  A good leader, even just in a stewardship role, must know their own short comings.  This is critical.  Being blind to such things, denying them, or just ignoring them, leaves us wide open to so many things, mockery is only the start.  Self awareness is important.  I find that when I own my flaws, and when I own who I am, the good and the bad, I am a calm and rational person.  Which is very important when facing an enemy.

When I say that we face an enemy we do.  It is important to know who you are and what your value is when you face him.  He was the original liar, and murderer.  He dared to tempt even Jesus.  We would be foolhardy indeed to think for a solitary moment that some how we are immune.  Being a prince or princess is not fun and games.  It can be.  Jesus enjoyed his life.  Food, laughter, drink, prayer, people, healing, he reveled in so much of it, and he had emotions, and he lived life!  We are supposed to enjoy this life, this place God created with the intention of being a place for His creation, His beloved!

What I am saying is along with this we have responsibilities.  We must take who we are and what we are here for seriously.  To do this, we must know who we are.  What we are.  Co-heirs with Christ Jesus himself.

That can be a lot of pressure.  I am aware.  It was an awful lot to handle for me for a long time.  Its been nearly 9 years for me.  I have being under the new covenant that long.  Yet it is only recently that I have started to pray, and pray, and pray to surrender.  My natural self wants to continue to pick up the earthly.  To continue to carry the bondage, the baggage, the chains.

Our flesh is stupid, folks.  It doesn't have much of a brain, and it needs to be retrained just as the mind does to get way from seeking the comfort of old bondages.  The prison is known.  If you've never seen Shawshank Redemption, there is a part where they have to calm down a man who ran the prison library.  The man had been in prison for so many years.  He didn't want to go out to what he didn't know.  They calmed him down.  Yet in short order he writes a letter to his old prison mates, and he hangs himself.  The flesh and the body cling to what is known.  Unless we take up to train it, to let it get use to something better.  An effort made a bit more difficult by the fact that we are also going to have an enemy who will try to whisper in our ears and poke and broad at is as well.

Sounds daunting.  But there isn't any easier way to put it.  Other than for you to know this:  The body of the saints is here for exactly this purpose (among others).

A few years ago I have a woman I had known when we weren't even out of middle school yet a book and encouraged her in her faith as best as I could.  What I told her was to ask lots of questions, and if the people she was asking these questions with were discouraging her from asking, find another body of believers to be a part of.

We ARE Princesses and Princes, heirs and heiresses of the Kingdom of Heaven.  We require training to do good work.  Not all of us are called to do big things, and that is alright.  There is just as much value and importance in the person who only ever helps one person to Christ as there is to the person getting up in front of the world and declaring Christ is Lord.  Kevin and Sue up the road are every bit as important to the King, they are every bit as much heirs to the exact same Kingdom as Billy Graham and Joyce Meyers over here or there giving their big talks and so-on.

Our value is not determined by what is outside.  It is determined by what is inside.

It is this lesson that I am most wanting to get across to all of you right now.  This lesson is the one lesson that is still going to take me weeks or months to fully get in my mind, and to fully understand myself.  To turn the lens inward, rather than placing so much more emphasis on what the world says of me.  It says in the world not to be concerned with what the world says of us.  For me, this has been a particularly hard lesson to understand.  Anyone who has lived their life trying to get by, to please others, who has had a hard time growing up because they had a parent that was difficult to please, or perhaps seemed impossible to please.  Understand this, my friends, you are reading the words of one who has lived exactly this life.  Believe me when I say that is not only doesn't work, but it is entirely possible to change it!  And you will change it.  I believe in you.   But that isn't as important as this:

HE BLIEVES IN YOU.  If He didn't, you wouldn't have turned to Him in the first place...

God bless you.

The truth is...

I'm very bad at editing.  I am terrible at taking my own words and looking at them objectively.  Honestly, I don't even want to go back and re-read the things I write.  More often recently I find that I do exactly this because I need to for the sake of quality and making sure I don't go repeating myself over and over again.  Although, with things like this, like a blog and an attempt to reach out to the masses, it requires some repetition.  It also requires some going back to previous topics and picking up a thread you may not have been able to cover at the time...

So writing is something I have always loved doing.  Only now I think it really is time to be serious about it.  Through my mission to get right with myself, I believe it will be possible to reach other people.  Picking up on the hind end of where I left off, and in an attempt to explain a little, I think that some back-filling of what has gone on is in order.

For the last 34 years I have had a problem.  This actually manifested itself when I was about 8 years old.  Trapped in a situation that I was powerless to get out of, I started to consider suicide as a way to get away from the whole thing.  Thankfully I didn't do it then.  However, I did tell a therapist, which lead to a lot of freaked out people.  It also lead to my teenage years being filled with my parents dragging me through therapists offices and trials of medications that frankly were horrible to deal with.

At one point this also ended up leading to me going so far as to fill a baggie with pills (I believe this was 10th grade) and considering taking them at school.  Again, I didn't.  I tossed the baggie, and I didn't even go that far again.

When I was pregnant with my son my situation with the father was so bad that I would sit and look at a bridge on a walking path I would often go to when he was upsetting me (which was nearly every day) and I would consider climbing up and jumping.  At the time I thought it might be a mercy to my child as well as myself, not to have to deal with the person that was the father.  Believe me when I say it was pretty bad.

All of these situations did resolve.  I got out of my mother's custody thanks to my father.  I got better by increments in high school by talking to doctors, though I am sad to say my family never really did understand what I was dealing with, and that is alright.  It is what it is, we can't have everything.  Thank God, as well, that I did get out of the relationship I was in that was very abusive and toxic and I have managed to keep my son and myself safe from harm, fed, clothed, and happy for the most part these nearly 14 years.

We can now add to this the latest bout of trouble.  I am realizing some things as a result of which.

On December 22nd, 2016, just over a month ago, I found myself calling the suicide prevention hot-line.  A couple months before this I had called a prayer hot line as well, though I had made no mention really of wanting to just lay down and die.

The fact of the matter is mostly I simply prayed that God would take me home in my sleep.  Me and my son as well.  It was bad enough.  To some extent I had also started to consider the things I might need to do in order to get my son on his own two feet and then just quietly fade away after he was able to take care of himself.  Needless to say, this was not okay.

What I know is that I didn't want to feel this way any more.  I didn't want to do these things really.  One of the health professionals I spoke with told me that suicide is something that all human beings think about from time to time.  The truth is that even if we consider it and reject it immediately out of hand, we do consider it and what it would solve and what it wouldn't solve.  It is sadly a natural human inclination.  She also stated that while it is common, it is not meant to be something we act on.  Rather, this is an indication that something is wrong!

There was another friend who actually went so far as to state for me that it was indeed not my fault.  For some reason this brought tears to my eyes and was such a relief to hear.  The idea that this wasn't my fault, that things had been done to me, and that there may be something broken that I didn't realize or understand and needed help fixing, this just hadn't occurred to me for some reason.  Indeed, I will go so far as to say that I have wondered what is wrong with me often when these bouts have occurred though my life.  Whether there have been things that are my fault that have happened and brought this about, or the reality truly is that this isn't my fault, that its an imbalance, or that its a result of abuse I couldn't have stopped, or whether its because of foolish choices I have made, and treatment I have chosen to put up with that has contributed to the damage, the fact remains that I am here now, and some of it was not my fault, which other things I cannot now change.  Which means there is only one direction to go: Forward.

December 23rd and 24th found me making a lot of phone calls.  I ended up with appointments to two therapists.  I also needed up with several resources.  Phone lines I could call if I was having a particularly bad time and needed talking down.  Now I have a therapist.  This is a woman I think will do me a great deal of good, and will help guide me to healing.

These days and the weeks that have followed have also found me talking about this all very openly.  Understand that prior to this I kept it all very much to myself.  I was afraid of what it would mean if I told anyone how I truly felt.  Discussing it with just that one doctor had resulted in a lot of people being scared.  It has also resulted in my mother confronting me.  My mother terrified me at that age, and when she confronted me I lied and told her what she wanted to hear.  I didn't know that my father was going to get custody at that time, and I didn't want her wrath on me if he did loose.  Additionally I had to live with her in the mean time and that was scary enough, let alone her being angry at me for wanting to kill myself.

As time passed, however, my reasons became more about the stigma and how my family seemed to mock and look down on people who had these issues.  They also seemed to be insensitive to my emotions as I got older as well.  Who knows why.  I don't know that they meant anything by it.  Now I look back and think they most likely just didn't have the tools to deal with their own emotions let alone mine.  It became hard to handle.  There is a whole other story there I won't get into.  Suffice it to say I don't entirely blame them, I feel sorry that they are the way they are now.  They are good people, and they deserve far better than what they have done to themselves.

All that being faced, and knowing that plenty of damage in plenty of ways has been done, this is what I am starting to realize:

For too many years I have placed more value on what other people have to say about me than I ought to.  This is frankly something I couldn't help learning to do, but it is something I can make effort in changing now for the better.  What is helping the most is that I have started to lay some ground work for myself to look at what GOD says my value is.  For now, I will leave that alone, but it will be something I will further discuss later.  Bottom line: God says I am so valuable that Jesus died so I could be with Him in heaven.  That is kind of a big deal.  Just saying.

Through learning what God says about it, I am coming to terms with some things.  As those things are addressed and looked at, other things are coming up, that is very true.  It is common and I am sure a couple other things will come up as time goes on, but it doesn't change that reality that what God says about me is far more valuable.

Another thing that is helping is to understand that how other people choose to treat me speaks to them and who they are, not who I am.  What speaks to me and who I am is first, what kind of treatment I choose to accept from others, second how I choose to react to others, and third, how I choose to treat others, no matter how they treat me.  I will be looking at this more than anything I think.

The fact is, we cannot control anything but ourselves.  This is a very very hard thing for a lot of people to accept or understand.  There are so many people out there who work really really hard at manipulating and forcing and arguing to get their way.  Some times these things can make us successful.  Though in most cases it actually results in us feeling like we don't deserve what we just fought so hard to obtain.  Sadly, that would be our conscience telling us that we did something wrong to get something that won't last, and its right.

I read in a book recently, and I will go into this more later, when I have found the source and can site it, but the book said this: We give value to plants and pets without thinking much about it.  Without that creature or item having done anything to deserve the value we place on it, we simply see the thing as valuable.  In such a way we must also learn to see in ourselves the fact that we exist and therefore have value! I am not valuable because I can sing, or because I do things for another person, or because I bake a great cherry orange scone, or anything else.  And so I should do such things because I know I have value, not because I believe that I will only be valuable for doing those things.

For many people this is difficult for us to imagine.  We have such a shallow society these days, and there is constant imagery and messages being whipped at us to tell us that we are only as valuable as what we offer.  It's no wonder we suffer in this country so much...

Over the next few days I hope to spend a good amount of time focusing on this topic.  I hope to be able to come back to this and publish further thoughts on this matter.  Starting with what it means to be a princess of the Kingdom.  For now,  I need a nap! Blessings to you all.