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.

Process

At this point in my life, some pretty serious things have happened.  Its hard to say whether I really want to share all the gory details here.  For now just trust me when I say, its been a long journey, most of it has been pretty ugly, and plenty of it has been my own doing.

Truth be told, I think I have to take a little time to create a plan for what to say and when.  Planning is a good thing for writers such as myself who have the tendency to ramble.  For now, there are a few things I want to declare.

First, I am absolutely without a doubt a believer in The Lord, Jesus Christ and what all christ-walkers believe He did.  There, you know the truth of it, and you probably already knew this but its important to be right out with it.

Second, I have no desire to make another pretty blog or whatever I end up doing with this of some perfect christian who never does anything wrong, who has every answer, or who did everything right.  I am what many would call born-again.  I lived plenty of life and made a LOT of bad choices along the way, frankly at some points even after accepting Christ into my life and my heart.  This will absolutely be something I am open about.  Because frankly, no one cares for a liar, and no one needs a perfect specimen of how to do everything perfect.  I don't trust those who act that way.  With good reason, too.  They are most likely not being honest.  That or they simply don't wish to share their life with the world, and that's fair.  Truly, not everyone wants the world to know every dirty detail of their life, and that is alright, too.  My experience is that the more you try to keep things quiet or secret, however, the less you control those things and the more they control you.

So, a lot of ugly things may end up being shared here, stories and history.  The prevailing tone I would like you all to keep in mind, however, is that the point is things can be different, even if bad things and stupid choices are made.  What I hope for is that the over arching point that will shine through is that no matter what has gone on, there is a chance for home and a new choice to be made right now, in the moment, and that entirely resides with YOU.

Third, I am opinionated and I will express that opinion in rather flat and unforgiving terms sometimes.  Be that as it may, I want people to understand that the biggest point ever is the celebrate God's creation!  YOU! ME!  The whole place we reside here.  However harsh an opinion may seem, I want you, the reader, to understand that the fact is Love will prevail, and it should prevail.  That I do not mean to ostracize anyone, and I do not mean offense.  I want you all to take a long look at yourself if you find yourself offended at something said and examine what you have to in yourself.  I ask this because offense and anger are far more to do with the person feeling the emotion than the person saying whatever it is that has triggered the response.  Basic psychology, nothing more.

Perhaps not the last thing ever, but certainly the last thing for now; I am on a mission.  Right now, it is through healing.  My intention is to help people who read, and it is to bring a different light to how people approach the whole idea of faith and Jesus.  There are a lot of things that are not really addressed or talked about and it would be amazing to offer that up here.

Things will get messy.  I won't be perfect.  I'm making a firm decision and statement here saying that I will not apologize for things being messy or imperfect.  I will not apologize for stating things as they are.  If you're plan is to have an idol, you will want to choose someone else, because the fact is, I am no marble statue of perfect anything, I am very human and very broken and very flawed in my very nature.  Nevertheless, I am also a person of logic and reason.  I do not condone violence, and I don't condone ignorance.  I don't agree with a lot of things going on today.  I disagree with they way so many people have us out there chasing our tails instead of being real and true.  I have no intention of hiding my life or my past.  I won't say I'm sorry for it.  Although I will very likely express some regret at times.  I won't say I'm proud of everything.  Not ever.  But I own no one anything but God.  I don't say this out of pride or haughtiness.  I say this because I will not answer to any reader for my life.  It happened and it is what it is.

It is my hope that all I put down here will be genuine, it will be honest, and it will help people.  It will teach people.  That is my fondest hope.  Nothing more or less.  As the plan develops, you may hear more from me.

For God, and His glory. (I pray)

Many blessings.