Rehab, the Story Continues: Santa is There

John 8:12 “Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.”

Three-and-a-half days! I made it. I made it to the weekend. But getting there was not without its many hurdles. This story is not all about ‘The Nursing Home’ ordeal, or the staff, this is about my journey, a fifty-two-year-old woman with stage four breast cancer, lymphedema of the left arm, radiation treatment to my bones and recovery of major surgery of my broken femur. Take for instance my Oral Chemo, it was running out, I did not have the wits about me to know how to reorder so I had to leave it up to my husband to take care of matters. The drugs I was on were pretty strong and keeping my mind busy and pretty much in a fog.

He called the Dr.s office, the nurse said she’d order it, no problem, he called back and Fay said it would be delivered Friday but needs a signature. Uh oh, hubby would have to miss work AGAIN, and miss seeing me all day to wait for meds! Not a happy gal but it’s okay, I’m tough and getting tougher by the day! Needless to say by three o’clock when the meds had not arrived hubby came to the hospital to visit me, even if it was only for two hours. He can’t drive at night, so we watched the sun (or lack thereof) very closely! A different story, the meds never arrived.

When Friday came I was happy to have made it to this day alive, although I had never wanted to give up more than I did this week. A loneliness had settled in, hubby knew it, and no amount of cuteness from Ray, or compassion from the staff could move me. It was a tough week on my spirit and soul. This was also the last day of radiation to my arm, and my son stepped up and said he could go to the CC with me. The weekend, I’d get a break, right? 

Then there was the day earlier in the week that they had to take my clothes to put name tags on them, even though we told them WE would wash them, they needed to be tagged. (I didn’t hand everything over but I stupidly gave them lounge pants, two flannels, brand new socks, and a pair of underwear. All were returned by Friday except my underwear and socks. When Kay, my occupational therapist heard this she set out on a search of my missing panties. She returned to my room waving them in her hand and said, “Hey, no wonder they wanted to keep them, they’re cute!” We both laughed but I through my tears. She hugged me!

Then there was Santa. Thursday had been a day of sunshine and warmth and I had even had a chance to open the window. Ray didn’t like the window opened because it gave her a chill. She was on the other side of the curtain between our beds and didn’t know it was open. The warmth, the sun, it was all I had to cling to. Yes, people, before you tell me to cling to God, please know, HE is the only thing that kept my breath in my lungs, He is first and foremost, but the sunshine and the warmth were for me on this day. 

Coming back from my radiation treatment that day found me in the sunshine. On the side of the entry to the hospital was a little area with a table and four chairs, lining a brick path were rocks, rocks of all shapes and sizes. Hubby and I followed the path, to the chairs and table and we sat in the sun, I in my wheelchair of course. We watched as nurses changed shift and a nurse had brought a resident outside to feel the warmth of the day. The table was back a little ways from the entry so hubby and I enjoyed the table and sunshine. I enjoyed the one monarch butterfly that landed on a rock not ten feet from me and my chair. Thank you, Jesus, I whispered out loud, as a tear trickled from my eye. 

Then he appeared, an older man hunched over his walker. He was taking tiny steps as he scooted to the path. An obvious Husker fan dressed from head to toe in his puffy red Husker slippers, his red husker lounge pants filled with the Husker team logo, all topped off with his white t-shirt with a big N for Nebraska, trimmed in red on sleeves and neck. His full white moustache and beard were reminiscent of Santa Claus. Steven softly sang… ‘here comes Santa Claus, here comes Santa Claus, right down Santa Claus lane...’. I smiled.

Santa stopped at the rocks and just stood there looking down at them. One minute, five minutes passed and he moved, inching closer to where Steven and I were sitting. Again, Santa paused to stare at the rocks. He was within earshot of me now, I said, “Do you like the rocks as much as I do?” I myself was eyeing one shaped like a heart. Yeah, I draw to me these kinds of people. 

He looked up at me, then back to the rocks before he answered, “Yeah.” He began inching closer to me again, and stopped, mesmerized by the rocks. He began talking without looking up from the rocks, “They’re beautiful. Back in my shop, I take CLR to clean them. It brings out their beauty, then I polyurethane them. Yup.” He began to turn around and looked at the other side of the path lined with rocks.

As he slowly turned, he made his way right to the edge of the path. I thought he was turning to go back in the home but no, he paused to look at this side of the path, too, before heading inside. Staring at the rocks he whispered, 

“Y’know, it’s like looking at a million mountains,”  he went on, “Y’know how the rocks are made don’t ya? The rain,” he paused a moment, “the rain cuts them out of the mountains and they all wash downstream, getting cleaned up through the river until we gather them and see them for their beauty.”

By this time I had tears in my eyes and Steven and I were both looking at each other in wonderment. I knew there was a message in there for me but I couldn’t see it through my tears. Santa looked at me and smiled raised a finger to tap his nose and he proceeded to slowly walk back to the door, with one last quick pause to gaze at the rocks, he went inside.

I told Steven that it was now time for me to go back inside too, I got what I came for, a message. I picked up a rock, and we went inside the home, to my room. It didn’t seem so small anymore.

The moral of the story to me is: We are all refined by God made perfect in His image as we go through the trials and suffering of being washed downstream until we’re seen in our perfection before the Lord.

Isa. 48:10 “Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.”

Always A Challenge

Ecc. 9:11 “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Always a Challenge

It’s not easy

It’s really hard waking up every single day in a peppy mood. I wake and am so grateful to be awake one more day but let me tell you, every day is a daunting challenge to merely stay alive. While my mind is focused on the positive the dark and evil of the world try too often to slither into my thoughts and screen.

While most wake, go on in a mundane fashion as if their whole life is in front of them because honestly none of us really know when the time will come, I wake to the challenging days before me. Life for me has changed so much in five months, I used to take for granted eating a slice of pizza, or eating something from Subway or placing food on my plate that, while unhealthy as all get out, was delicious. 

Each morning I look at the sunrise differently as if this was my very first dazzling one, the sunset as if it was my very last purple-glazed one, I fall asleep praying that all will be right with the off-kilter world. I wake to a new unblemished day and face challenges, minute after minute, hour after hour. Everyone else seems to be going about life in a ho-hum matter-of-factly manner.

I watch as people shuffle about, children laugh and play, parents doing what parents do and that’s loving on their children. People are hurriedly rushing from point A to get to point B. I feel as if I’m sitting high on the balcony overlooking a flurry of activity and me, just an observer biding my time.

I didn’t want life to change for my husband either but such as it is, it has. I try to continue to make home cooked meals but that in itself is a challenge for me. I stir the delectable sauce or check to see if the noodles I can’t eat are done and place a meal on the plate that I can’t partake of. No, I now make two different meals one for me and one for him. Yes, he says he is more than capable of making his own meals, and I get that. My duty as his other half for fourteen years is now shifted, like a planet off its axis, so I try to keep it as normal as possible and do what I can.

I do believe change is good in so many ways. Maybe that is what God had in store, to wake us (my husband and me) up so we could appreciate the smell of the fragrant roses or enjoy the simple fluttering butterfly more; to bow down to His gloriousness as many just pass the wonder of it all by without a second thought.

I thought I was the most appreciative person alive but now I’m even more appreciative if you can imagine that. But please take note; every single second of the day is wrought with a challenge. With three illnesses upon me, I’m not just facing one mind-bending dastardly disease; I have to be blasted with three, tiring, pain-filled, hurdles to coast over every single livelong day.

I’m not whining I would just like you to think twice before finding my journey somewhat lighthearted. I’m doing so much better than I was five months ago, feeling great and not knocking the hurdles over, nope, I’m soaring but it is not without its grunts and groans. To be honest, I feel as if I’m climbing Mount Everest in blizzard conditions, being tossed about by the winds; or crossing the Sahara Desert in a windstorm where the sand on my face feels like shards of glass being slung at me. 

If I disappear for a day or two, it is more than likely because I’m tired and beat. If I don’t write for a day or two, it is more than likely the Sahara has dried me up, words and all. If I seem distant, you’re not to blame, I am being challenged and am out here trying to do the best I can to overcome everything thrown my way. As humbling as this is, I have to bow down and admit first and foremost…it is always a challenge.

God bless each and every one of you! 

Heb. 12:1 “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,”

My Doctor Visit

Pss. 6:2 “Have mercy upon me, O LORD; for I am weak: O LORD, heal me; for my bones are vexed.”

My Doctor Visit

Yesterday, many of you know I visited with my General Practitioner (GP from here on out). It was all that I expected from a doctor who actually cares about her patient and she didn’t let me down. 

I didn’t wait long in the nearly empty office that is usually bustling and as my name was called my heart raced a bit. Of course, my mind thinks good things but there is always that one little part that we all have that wonders what this visit will bring. 

I stepped on the dreaded scale in anticipation of what my forced diet would bring and to my surprise; I lost seven pounds in three - four weeks. That’s normal since I’ve had no carbs, no sugar, no meat and no dairy and a gallon of purified water a day. I’m an herbivore these days and it is paying off with energy, life, stamina, and peace.

The doctor came in and we talked. We talked about not doing chemo, and doing chemo, we talked about my illness and what I’m currently doing with my diet and exercise. She and the assistant were impressed that in four weeks (since I saw her last) I had changed so much!

She’d really like me to do chemo. It wasn’t the pressure I felt from the oncologist this was a subtle conversation between doctor/patient with eye to eye contact and compassion. I understood everything she said. I told her about the bad experience with the onc. and that we just didn’t click and I in no way said I ‘wasn’t committing’, I said I needed time!

She did say right off that my Breast Cancer doctor (remember, they’re colleagues/friends) had told her to keep an eye on me. That was the honesty I seek in a doctor, not an evasive reply. She offered that, I didn’t ask. I knew, but I still didn’t ask. That was her fifth or tenth brownie point in my eyes. 

She asked if I’d like to see another oncologist and I said YES, I’m not NOT committing, I need time to gather all the information I can. Her honesty showed again when she said, “I’m not a specialist in the field of oncology and that is who you really need to see to explain it more.” Monday the 27th, I’ll visit the new oncologist. He may also recommend a PET scan and I’m thinking, radiation and all, it might be for the best to know if the disease is spreading. I welcome your positive thoughts! Positive only!

We talked like old friends yet this was only my second time seeing her. She went on to tell me that this is a very successfully treated type of BC and that they have made great strides in treatment. Still only chemo treatments, but this time I was actually listening because she was actually taking the time to come down to my level, not putting on airs and putting herself above me.

She told me that all I’m doing with the vitamins and diet would only enhance the success of the chemo treatment and not hurt, I’d have to ask the new onc., but she was pretty sure. She said my mind, and my positive outlook can only be a good thing. Too many people go into this with, like I said before, that cancer is a ‘death sentence’.

She was also honest about the holistic healing. I asked why doctors don’t know about these things that can save lives and she made sense in her reply where the oncologist just brushed me off. This doctor said because most holistic remedies haven’t been studied long enough yet or are still in the testing stages and as a doctor, she can only offer what is within her realm of treatment. Chemotherapy is tried and true. I got it, it made sense to me, I understood where the medical community was coming from. 

What we talked about didn’t change my mind on getting chemo but it did give me something to think about. Yes, we even talked about the bad side effects of chemo, and she sided with there is more good than bad and I’m sticking with there is more bad than good, for now. 

Ezek. 34:4 “The diseased have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought again that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.” (sounds like chemo - TO ME)

I live in a state where the next oncologist available is forty miles away. Remember, when my hubby needed a cornea transplant the only place in the STATE is three and a half hours away. I grew up in a tiny little state, where there were MANY top-notch hospitals available within miles of each other, University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins just to name two. And out here they have nothing but cows and farmland in such a BIG state; nothing innovative to write home about here. 

Nebraskans seem offended when I say stuff like that but I’m not saying it to offend anyone, I’m just AMAZED, in the twenty-first century, that the nearest airport is (besides those tiny plane ones) is over an hour away and oncologists are separated by forty miles or more!

THIS is the reason I’m doing more research. THIS is the reason I NEED to do more research. I can’t just up and move to a new state so I HAVE to take what is offered me here but *I* feel more in control when I can make the decision on my own and not be forced into something I don’t believe. I feel like they are trying to brainwash me and have me join their cult of beliefs, but now, I have more understanding of where they are coming from with this GP visit.

I’m continuing on my journey, I’m trying to remain positive and also trying to rid ANYTHING I deem as negative out of my life. I’ve done this spiritual cleansing many times over my life but now I need to put to use all I’ve learned. On we go, my friends! I’m so glad I have you along for the ride, this is one mountain climbing excursion that I’m glad to not be on alone. I can’t thank you all enough but remember where I FEEL the love, my prayers bounce back to YOU! Win/win guys…now journey on! 

Gen. 24:21 “And the man wondering at her held his peace, to wit whether the LORD had made his journey prosperous or not.”

Fear of Rejection

Pss, 40:3 "And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD."

Fear of Rejection

Since I was a child, I’ve always had the fear of rejection. It started when I was young being rejected by the first crush I had and every school aged crush thereafter until I finally settled at fifteen for the only guy that showed ANY interest in little old Bony Joni! 

Let me say first and foremost that God has NEVER rejected me from the day I was born until now, He has NEVER rejected me hence the reason for my lifelong dedication and commitment to Him. He has and will NEVER let me down. Not that he hasn’t told me that ‘now is the time to wait, or the time to be patient, or even not now!’ But He has always been my one and only constant in my life that never lets me down or rejects me in anyway.

With that said, I fear rejection. I give my everything to God but that does not stop rejection from happening to me over and over and as a writer fear of rejection should be the norm, it happens to the best of writers! It’s how we deal with it that matters. 

Okay with that said I have to say this too, I miss blogging! Writing my blog is sharing me with you and how I deal with things. If I don’t share, then the words all play scrabble in my brain trying to compartmentalize them and could very possibly keep me awake at night if I stop blogging completely. I’m wondering if that is what insomniacs suffer from, not getting their words OUT so they jumble all that is going on in their day to day life in a brainsoup that keeps them awake at night. 

I’ve never had trouble sleeping so I’m wondering if my writing is what has kept insomnia away from MY doorstep. Dealing with health crisis after health crisis should keep me awake at night but my faith that the Lord will carry me through any fire I walk through settles my mind quite a bit. 

Before I divulge my ‘new’ health scare, let me first say I have no health insurance, I have no money and I HAVE been rejected so many times for Medicaid, health coverage, anything, that I just walk this path day in and day out with the Lord and I’m certain that this is leading up to my next year’s blogging posts, my journey and my survival. Please, do NOT say, “I should do this, or I should do that.” I HAVE exhausted all avenues and here is where I am. My husband applied for medical coverage for me, and it takes time for it to ‘activate’. Yes, it will cost but this was what he wanted to do. January first I can make my first appointment (I think) to see just what is the matter. He’s also applied for medicare disability for me, but I KNOW I will be rejected from that too. I think he took action because 1) he’s seen all of the rejection, 2) he’s smarter than me, and 3) he might be a little scared. 

I waited until after Christmas to post this so I knew you’d all have a Happy Holiday. Not that you’d stress over my health crisis and me but I know some of you might because that is who you are, you love me! Being a woman you’ll relate, you’ll be concerned and you’ll want to see me through this with compassion, love and of course, prayer! And I’m certain I will need all of that to get me through each day.

Just what exactly am I babbling on and on about? Here goes… the ever dreaded lump! Yup, you know that lump you feel during a shower and you think , “Hmm… this is new.” You kind of forget about it and try to wish it away but it is there and it is growing and you then start to think, “Hmm… this isn’t normal at all.” That’s where I’m at. Then, what’s the next thing you do? Google of course because you know, it has all the answers and they’re usually dire and when you get checked out it was not as serious as you thought? 

Well let me tell you, my google search did not bring up anything dire and in some ways it was a comfort knowing but then again it scared me because google is always wrong! Yeah, I laugh and joke during a crisis! Smile with me people!

It doesn’t sound like the ‘C’ word that everyone is afraid of, it sounds more like the ‘c’ word that makes you go, “ewww, I got one of those and it needs draining?” In other words it sounds more like a cyst than it does cancer but it needs to be seen, touched, poked, prodded and looked at by a professional (other than google) to be sure that all is well with my already falling apart body. 

There I said it and I feel better already!

Heal Today...Gone Tomorrow

Fort McHenry cannon looking toward

the Francis Scott Key bridge

where my uncle took his life

Pss. 30:2  “O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.”

Heels today… gone tomorrow

You ever have one of those days where everything is going along fine. Then you see something and reality smacks you upside the head? We’re doing some fall cleaning here; we get to the cluttered closet and there sits a box of shoes. Heels that I’ve never worn. 

I said, “I have to get rid of that entire box.” 
He replied, “Well when you can walk again, we’ll pull them back out of the box.”  

Tears filled my eyes and kept on filling. The reality is…I’ll never be able to walk normal again. Just thought I’d share that with you all as I release some of this anguish I’m lugging around.

I used to love wearing high heels, not real high, just a classy kind of heel with jeans or a skirt; then about four years ago, with too many Omaha trips (eight hours round trip) high-heel wearing came to a screeching halt. I remember going to the doctor and she sent me to the hospital for some x-rays and a day later it was explained that I had lower lumbar facet joint arthritis. Sure, some meds and a highly paid chiropractor could offer some relief, but that's just it, a false relief, not a healing plan.

Here I was, still enjoying my youth and am told that I have arthritis and as many of you know, that is a chronic disability that doesn’t just go away. I had tried to wear my lower heels and even they were awkward to walk in and the limp in my stride didn’t sync with a low heel. I was relinquished to tennis shoes and even they were getting uncomfortable mainly in the summertime heat. I did buy some comfy sandals by Earth Spirit (yes, WalMart brand) but don’t ya know, I can’t wear them in the winter now can I? 

I have my up and down days where I feel sorry for myself and the me I once was but have to learn to accept that this is the new me and whom God created.  But when we were cleaning out the closet and the box with my heels in it passed me by, I cried. I admit it, it hurt to see a part of myself shoved in the basement never to be seen again. I think my husband was trying to make me feel good when he said the words, “When you walk again.” The reality was and is, I’ll never walk normal again.

My dear friends try to comfort me, “there is Hope,” they say. My first thought was yeah when I get to heaven and can run free! They mean well, they really do and I won’t for one minute minimize the love I feel for them or from them, and the comfort they bring to my life but understand, I was one on the go woman all of my life. You don’t fit into the same jeans you wore twenty years ago by NOT being an overly active woman. Then yesterday…

Heal today… gone tomorrow.

I don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me when yesterday I answered my phone, thinking for one idiotic moment it was my sister calling to tell me about her daughter. No, it wasn’t her, it was an old friend who called me last year some time (he got the number from my mother) and wanted to rehash the past just like he did last year when I stopped answering my phone because I AM NOT ABOUT MY PAST!

I told him last year that I didn’t want to talk about that stuff but he just kept going on and on, “Do you remember…” You name the memory, I remember it with all its hurts and pains that I let go of, in vivid painstaking detail. His call started that way this time in asking where my ex-husband lived (they were friends) and talking about my abuse until I finally said, “I’m really busy right now.” (Joni is a terrible liar! Luckily I WAS busy!)

He said, “I better let you go or I’ll keep talking and talking.”
My instant reply was, “yes you will but call me when I have FREE minutes, like the weekend.” I seriously was trying to hang up without hurting his feelings because that’s just the way I am, then and now, I don’t like to hurt ANYONE. I just wish he had shown me the same consideration because I know I won’t be answering the phone this weekend. 

For thirteen years I wrestled with my pained past. When I first left Baltimore and left my family and past behind, I got caught up in a tornado of healing as memories whizzed passed and choked me into anxiety attacks where running off alone in the rain on darkened streets were my only solace. I would lie in bed cradling my pillow as tears soaked the very sheets where I slept. I was in a better place but it was a place of healing that had to be measured by agonizing sickened memories of the past.

Haunting is the only way to describe the lingering past. A ghost that would appear out of nowhere when I least expected it and scare me into a non-drug induced panic attack. I don’t take drugs for my pain and dealing with what I’m dealt in a meditative God loving fashion is all I’ve ever known to do. 

A close friend once told me that I needed to just let go of those memories and the people who hold those memories if all they’re there for is to hurt me, why hold on? Yes, that meant family and old friends who think rehashing an excruciating pain-filled past is what the future is all about. 

My now and my future is all about healing. My pain is washed away with every rainfall and I release the past as if it never existed into a tornadic funnel to be released wherever it may go. I will not allow thirteen years of healing to be scrubbed by one phone call of the bitter past. I face my tomorrows with the prayerful meditation that I have known to grow me into a hopeful tomorrow.

I woke this morning only to be hit with news of an earthquake where a dear friend lives. I prayed. The universe will leave something in my life called HOPE, LOVE and COMPASSION; he arrived to let me know he and his family are well. 

Praise be to God!

Grateful To Be ALIVE!

Tears from Heaven

Matt. 16:3  “And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

I’m Alive!

After last week’s heat wave with the heat index topping off at 108 and my body deciding to have a meltdown both physically and mentally, I’m alive, I made it through the week. This week promises to be a little cooler with the eighties and lower nineties across the grid. We’ll have to wait and see on that one.

I woke to find in my news more nightclub shootings, more death and destruction, more disagreements over politics and more friends wanting to bail out of facebook over the political hysteria running rampant there.

My prayer list has grown to the length of my arm (maybe longer) when I go to facebook. Friends that are sick, friends in the hospital, people who need prayer for their loved ones because of illness or death in the family and the list goes on. I can’t complain or gripe about my petty disability when so much is going on around me; no, I’m grateful to be alive so I can lend my heart and soul to prayer for all of those in need.

I have to pray for all those lost souls who think they’re doing the right thing yet you see them wandering aimlessly with hands groping in the dark and you have to pray that they find a peace and stop with all the hate. They’ll get around to seeing the light, one day, maybe not soon, but one day. I pray.

A lot of the problem is that people are ungrateful. They’re angry that they’re not getting their way and they take it out on an already unstable society. Condemnation – a nation enraged, rising to condemn his fellow man. When we have adult politicians acting like children themselves, how are we suppose to have hope in their leadership? I see people condemn the right, hang the left, hate the sinner, love the sin, despise the Muslim, degrade the Christian, on and on and on, the world lacks gratitude.

The republicans hate their pick of a leader, the democrats hate their pick of a leader and America is surprised by the rise of mass killings under the present politician? We are a selfish nation and we only think and pray for what will benefit us. I see prayers for France, prayers for countries struck by a disaster, prayers for whoever you pick and choose, but forget the innocent victims and families because… why? Are they not of your religion or faith? Shame on you!

Job 8:13 “So are the paths of all that forget God; and the hypocrite's hope shall perish:”

We are no longer grateful to be alive! We’re not happy that we can use a bathroom to take a hot or cold shower. We don’t appreciate water or the fact that we can go to our freezer and get ice for our warming drinks. We certainly are not grateful for our delicious food choices here in the free country. 

No, none of those things are free and many work long hard hours just to obtain water, food, gas and electricity but that does not stop man from hating his fellow man. Even though they boast ‘hey, look at me, I go to church’ you seriously have to wonder what church is doing for a person so full of hate and a person who lacks a sincere compassionate heart?

Job 17:8 “Upright men shall be astonied at this, and the innocent shall stir up himself against the hypocrite.”

A dear friend said something like “…if the last your loved one sees or hears from you be your rant, is that really what you want . . .” 

I was already writing this post before she wrote that (great minds think alike and all that) but that was exactly what I was thinking when I began this post, do people even care if their rant hurts ANYone, even their family? Their mother possibly, or again, do they not CARE who their rants hurt or affect?

I am disheartened this morning. There was a mass killing in Japan at a handicap facility and this morning I woke with not one single meme exclaiming PRAYERS FOR JAPAN! What is wrong with this picture? Ask the so-called Christian why he can pray for America and France fatalities but not for Japanese or Muslim fatalities. Are the Muslim victims killed by ISIS any different than a Japanese victim stabbed by a disgruntled worker? They, my friends, are MAN! The fellow man you are called to pray for. Go ahead, ruffle your feathers to feel better about yourself.

I am grateful to be alive! If I am only being kept alive to wake and pray for my fellow HUMAN BEING, then I am grateful for the chance. My fellow man needs me. 

Praise be to God!

Matt. 6:5 “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Ego, Vanity, Empathy, Truth

1 Sam. 12:24 “Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.”

EGO

“The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.” 
― Criss Jami

“The Ego is a veil between humans and God’.”
“In prayer all are equal.” 
― Rumi

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.” 
― Bill Bullard

“Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.” 
― Shannon L. Alder

VANITY

“The wise do not buy into other people’s perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of. Instead, they bypass a person’s public persona and see who they are in their highest expression. When you see actions taken with integrity, instead of words only, you will then know a soul’s worth.” 
― Shannon L. Alder

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” 
― Jane Austen

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” 
― Dale Carnegie

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.” 
― Blaise Pascal

EMPATHY

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” 
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” 
― Andrew Boyd

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” 
― Daniel Goleman

TRUTH

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” 
― Jim Morrison

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” 
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.” 
― Joss Whedon

“The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies” 
― Jodi Picoult

Pss. 51:6 “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”

They killed him... to save a child

Concordia, Kansas

Matt. 10:38 “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.”

I’m sure you’ve all heard by now about the seventeen-year-old gorilla Harambe.

Defending what they [officials] did because of the uproar of an innocent gorilla being shot to death, "That child's life was in danger. People who question that don't understand you can't take a risk with a silverback gorilla - this is a dangerous animal," Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard said.

The unattended child climbed through a protective barrier then fell fifteen feet and the fall didn’t kill him my guess is because he landed in the water below. That was the water of the endangered gorilla’s home. Harambe saw the child and ran over and the humongous gorilla looked like he was petting the boy, then he dragged him around the exhibit as the much watched video shows. He wasn’t aggressively shaking the boy and showed no signs of hurting him but quick action called for this almost extinct gorilla to be killed.

This is just another uproar since the demise of Cecil the Lion was inhumanely killed, by yet another Doctor, of a different field, but a doctor nonetheless. What has me bewildered is the reason for this post. Why did they kill the gorilla when he was not showing aggression? They couldn’t distract him? They couldn’t steer the screaming people above AWAY from the exhibit? I do understand that the child’s life matters but is this any different than the police officer who shoots first, explains later?

Anyway, the media spinmasters are doing their turn on the wheels of the matter. I see people posting memes about abortions? That people care more about some gorilla than the hundreds of babies killed everyday in abortion clinics? I’d like to put my spin on the matter: People care more about pointing fingers at others than they do pointing a finger at their own self?

I don’t know why this issue called to my mind a time where a man was being hung on a cross. Some cried out in disbelief, some were shedding tears of sorrow, and some were just standing around gawking waiting for the man to die. We claim to have come so far in thousands of years but essentially we are right there in the crowd, pointing, gawking or crying. 

I’m the one shedding tears of sorrow that human beings have not learned how to be civil to one another and we are still to this day hanging people on a cross when they’re right or wrong. Children die, people are careless, men are trigger happy all in the name of justice? Whose justice?

While you are all busy pointing fingers and gawking, allow me to ask you this, if you believe in heaven and that you have a slight chance of making it there, who do you think will be there with you? You think you’ll have a seat next to Mother Teresa? Saint Patrick? Peter, Paul, Mary? Let me enlighten you a bit, that person you’re laughing at, making fun of, taunting and lashing out at will be there right beside you. You might have to look him/her straight in the face and explain why you hated them so much before you enter heaven. That will be justice; the sweet smell of justice in the umpth degree!

THIS is the very reason we are to love our enemy as we love ourselves. It’s not to make ME feel better it is to make Him know and understand the reason He died on the cross for you. If you don’t practice what He preached, then He died in vain. 

1 Cor. 1:17 “For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Mercy

Luke 1:50 “And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.”

Compassion

“A human being is a part of the whole called by our universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” 
― Albert Einstein

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” 
― Tahereh Mafi

“Compassion is the basis of morality.” 
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.” 
― Steve Maraboli

Empathy

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” 
― Milan Kundera

“It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” 
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Mercy

“there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eyes of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.” 
― Khaled Hosseini

“The Lord's mercy often rides to the door of our heart upon the black horse of affliction.” 
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

“What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature when he had a chance!'
Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.” 
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Animals

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Man is the cruelest animal.” 
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“You can judge a man's true character by the way he treats his fellow animals.” 
― Paul McCartney

A Not So Merry Christmas

Job 17:7 “Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow.”

Well yesterday I wrote about people being offended by the term Merry Christmas, but today I’m going to write about the not so Merry Christmas. When I was younger I had joyfully wished an older woman a Merry Christmas. She blurted out, “It’s not so merry to me, I just lost my husband.”

I almost cried because I in no way meant to intentionally hurt her feelings but how was I to know she had just lost her husband? I know we don’t mean Merry Christmas as a bad thing but to others who are mourning a husband, or grieving the loss of a child or who are just alone at Christmas with no family, to them it is not a ‘Merry’ Christmas. We need to be sensitive to them, not because we want to be politically correct, but because we need to have a compassionate heart for people and what they might be going through during the Christmas season.

If someone was to wish me a Merry Christmas, I’ll just nod my head and say thank you and wish them one but only I know that this isn’t going to be the merriest of Christmas’ for me, it just isn’t. I’m definitely not going to blurt out, “I just lost my dad, what’s so merry about it?” 

My husband lost his father over twenty years ago and the death of his dad isn’t as fresh to him as the death of my father is to me. I’m not minimizing his loss in any way but he never talks about his dad or the love that they shared, it’s just a mute point. He still has his siblings and mother to share the season with and I have no one. I have his family, I know, but understand it just isn’t the same as hugging MY mother in her time of need.
My mother is back home going through the days of loneliness without me there and it is going to be a very sad Christmas for me not being home. This will be her hardest Christmas ever.

I’m not trying to bring anyone down with this post, by no means. I want to see people happy and celebrating the season for all that it is; a joyous season. Just because I’m not going to be decking the halls and prancing around singing Ho! Ho! Ho! doesn’t mean that you, if your truly happy, shouldn’t be celebrating the joy of the season.

This will be the first year that I write a solo poem for my mother for Christmas and I already told myself that it isn’t going to be a sad one that will have her crying and missing my father and also missing me being there. Nope, I’m going to try and write a sappy, funny limerick to make her smile! I’ll share it with you, my readers and see what you think of it before sending off, assuming I get it done in time. 

My mother already sent a ‘gift’ for Steven, Adam and myself but the real gift will be ‘The Box’! The box I am anticipating like a kid waiting for Santa. The box will be filled with memories of my father and just a couple items that he treasured. I long to hold a piece of him in my hand one last time, to allow the aroma of him to sink into my nostrils and know that he touched the items and loved them. It will be a tear-filled day for sure.

My mother was waiting for a necklace with my dad’s fingerprint on it to put in the box, which she bought from the funeral home, but it wasn’t ready so she’s sending me the box anyway and will send the necklace at a later date. She bought one for my sister and me, and my brother bought her one with my dads ashes in it that will be worn close to her heart where my father will always remain. 

So there IS some joy in my season yet to be had and that is feeling my dad close to me as I sit missing him. While many of my siblings are dealing with guilt of not knowing my father as well as they would have liked, I don’t have that guilt because in my heart I know we had a special father/daughter relationship where I told him I loved him, frequently when I called home. My last words to him were, “I love you, dad!”

Pss. 69:29 “But I am poor and sorrowful: let thy salvation, O God, set me up on high.”

Epiphany

Pss. 109:15 “Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.”

An Epiphany

It has been an interesting ride into an epiphany or intuitive insight into the essential meaning of something. In this case, I know why I’m here in Nebraska!

As a kid growing up, my mother and I were the best of friends. We share a birthday so I was considered special from day one AND the fact that that I was the baby helped that position along.

Living in the city without a car left us shopping in the locality best known to unknowns as Light Street. No seriously, that was and still is the name of the street lined with shops and stores. As we would walk past the glass lined buildings with the picture window shops and apparel, my mother would always reminisce of what that store was many years ago; it was a quite nostalgic trip on weekends for my mother and I.

We’d often go into Epsteins, (locals pronounced it Ep-stines while non-locals called it Ep-steens). Epsteins was like an old day version (only smaller) of WalMart. They sold everything from clothes to curtains, carpets to furniture, vacuums to hardware; Epsteins was the weekend hubbub of Light Street. We’d pass jewelry stores, a fish store that sold bunnies in their front window, the more expensive clothes stores for men, shoe stores, café’s and diners.

We’d often (and I do mean often) go to George’s Lunch where they had orange padded booths and a few tables lining one side of the wall and the streaming aroma of the grilled onions and Coney Island hamburgers, steamers for buns and hot dogs along with fresh baked pies where slices sat perched in front of a mirrored shelf! Their specialty was a rice pudding with a cream on top with a dash of cinnamon that I would get every single visit!

I loved the old time look of the place with the individual spinning stools that separated the cooking being done, the waitresses and the small aisle where the booths sat always filled with hungry patrons. Often we’d have to wait for a seat because the place was the highlight of Light Street and everyone just loved the food.

In the summer months, I would always meet my mother for lunch and George’s is often where we’d dine. Sometimes we’d head to Polock Johnny’s or The White Coffee Pot but there we were off doing stuff together.

My sister and brothers resented my closeness with my mother always claiming that she gave me everything. I won’t deny it, she DID! She gave me anything and EVERYTHING I ever wanted. BUT, to clarify, I did everything FOR my mother. Whether it was cleaning, cooking, washing dishes, painting or hanging wallpaper, I was an actual participant not an observer feeling neglected like the rest of my siblings.

The way I see it, it went both ways. She didn’t give me everything because I asked for it, she gave everything to me as an appreciative act for all I did for her. There IS a difference.

As years would pass I was now dragging my (ex) husband into the mix and had him doing all sorts of handyman work for my mother and father. I lived next door to my mother in my grandfather’s rental house for thirteen years. When the rental house was sold, my parents sold THEIR house to move right around the corner from where I had moved.

They just wanted to be close to me and near to my son. I surely didn’t mind because they were basically my best friends at this point. We continued with taking mother shopping on weekends, I always cleaned her house, and she was always giving me soup, spaghetti and whatnot.

I was close to my siblings too, helping my sister out with her six kids; when she went away I would clean her house spic-n-span! My brother would invite me to his house, much to the chagrin of my sister who was now HIS neighbor.

My sister and brothers all longed for the relationship I had with my parents but none of them were willing to put any effort into the rapport. No, they just wanted my parents to show THEM attention but as always, I was the only one who received the attention they longed for.

Then I left Baltimore and all of my family behind. Quite suddenly I might add. A two-week notice and I was well on my way to happiness. My sister invited Steven and I to dinner the night before we left for Texas and she invited my brothers but no one showed up. My mother and father did!

With me gone, they could have my parents all to themselves but no, that wasn’t the case. Weeks would pass before my sister ever called my mother and often it was my father who called and told HER to call my mother sometime. The only time they showed ANY attention to my parents was when my mother would tell them over and over again how “Joni calls me every night and twice a day on weekends!” It irked them into caring!

Back to the epiphany I began with, the why I am here and not there? It was not meant for me to be there. My siblings had to step up and actually DO something for my mother and father. When my father was in the hospital I literally had to goad my one brother into going to see my dad before he died.

Had I been back there, they might have seen too much love for me and not enough attention focused on them, they needed that. My sister is now calling my mother every day, taking her out of the house, inviting her to dinner, taking her to the doctor, you name it; my sister is now sitting at a diner (not the same one that me and mother frequented) and is now being given the attention that she needed all those years; the attention that both of them needed.

My brothers are paying attention, my sister is paying attention and it sure is sad that it took my father to die for them to notice that time on this earth is not guaranteed it is precious! With me out of the way, they can now focus on what needs to be done and that is to give my mother the attention she so richly deserves!

Pss. 145:7 “They shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy righteousness.”

Poetry Sunday ~ An Ode to Eyrline

Acts 26:13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.

Ode To Eyrline

She loved to dance, she loved to sing

A song of love or most anything.

Always a tune humming in her heart

Sincerely wise and extremely smart.

This ode of mine to which I write

For sweet Eyrline who knew not her plight.

Inspiration flowed from her fingertips

Encouraging words streamed from her lips.

To loving Eyrline we are giving praise

For lighting up our dimmest days.

E, Lee, Eyrline; endearing names that we know

Sickness tried to cripple her but there she did not go.

She walked with us down a path, a nit or crit or two

A gem among the rubble; she always saw us through.

Eager she was to lend a hand to the young and old

No signs of her frailty; she was fashioned of fine gold!

A vessel among humans to shower her rays of light

A watering can of wisdom that she sprinkled with delight.

I’ll miss the stories of her mother, her family and her pets

Her life held many battles; but she clung to no regrets.

To you my friend, you’ll be missed so much

For your heartfelt words without a single touch.

For the laughter and smiles you brought to our face

How your presence lightened the entire place.

Your passion for God to all of us shone

‘Round about your being you were never alone.

Dedication to music gently carried you away

To the Glory of Heaven is where you now play.

I do not know where you were led to roam

But our Heavenly Father has now called you home.

Be at peace, E. We love you!

Pss. 23:1-6

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

 

*** ~ *** ~ ***

A Friend to the End...

John 15:13 Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

A Friend to the End…

I first met Benning in 2003 during my first F2K class. We were not supposed to wander the rooms but the rebel in me had me wandering and I run into him. He called me ‘toots’ our very first meeting and I’ve liked him ever since.(an endearing name he calls many)

He didn’t chastise me for wandering, instead he said I’d make a good mentor and that is when my mentoring days began and a friendship blossomed! My writing was taking off but I was finding more joy in teaching, helping and learning along the way.

I eventually became a lifetime member of WVU thanks to Mr. Hembree and by this time more and more friendships were just the seeds I needed to add to my flourishing garden. Benning and I were mentor’s on many levels, sharing tips, pointing out each others wrongs and rights but each day, each passing week, our friendship was growing forming a special bond.

Something happened a few years back that I won’t regurgitate, but I was no longer a mentor and instead of Benning just letting me go and wallow in my own self-pity party, he joined me and stood by when it was one of the most difficult times in my writing career. That’s just the kind of guy he is though. I thought I was special but guess what, each and every person who knows him thinks they’re special too, and I bet they are to him, in their own way.

Through PM’s, emails and facebook we never let our friendship go sour. We’ve had bickers and bites, and many food fights, but at the end of the day, we each wished each other well and rose the next day to banter all over again.

I never took him for a ‘bible’ toting kind of guy, but a year or so ago, like me he began posting scripture. I always got on him about before you post it be sure you live it first. You know, a sort of practice what you preach kind of thing? I think this was his way of getting in tune with God. I was really glad to see this growing change in him.

I remember a time when he went almost a year without the internet, did THAT hinder our friendship? No way. He’d go to the library almost everyday, to get a book of course, AND to drop me an email asking me how I was doing and letting me know how he was doing. Yup, our friendship just kept growing and growing.

So here I sit today missing my friend and his banter. You see, he had a heart attack a little over a week ago and it called for immediate surgery. A week after his surgery he is still on oxygen after being incoherent for a week and just yesterday he was taken out of the Critical Care Unit and put into his own room.

Still not running the halls and causing a ruckus, (which I’m sure he’ll be doing soon!) this is a step in the right direction and I await the day I get an update from his family saying, “He walked and talked today.” Or better yet, “He’s out of the hospital and is resting at home.” Well he won’t be resting at HIS home but his folks’ place since he needs SOMEONE to take care of him.

This is a man who always goes out of his way to make everyone else smile, a man who shares happy faces and emoticons as if it was bread for the day’s meal. He’s a happy go lucky guy now in the hands of the Lord who is walking him through a healing journey. One we’ve all taken at some point in our lives but now it is his turn.

After he returns to the virtual world (six weeks or more) and he weeds through the many, many well wishes on his facebook wall, sorts through emails and Get Well cards, he’ll come here and read this blog post and know that I will not give up on him and allow him to wallow in any form of self-pity, I am his best friend and his friend until the end. It’s amazing to see what a little writing journey for me brought into my life for a lifetime. I miss ya, Ben! Get Well Soon!

Thank you Lord.

Mark 5:19 Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.

 

 

Lent: Day Thirty-seven ~ God is Not a Religion

Luke 2: 40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

God is Not a Religion

Pss. 86: 13 For great is thy mercy toward me: and thou hast delivered my soul from the lowest hell.

“Religion is for people afraid of going to hell…Spirituality is for people who have already been there.” ~ Vine Deloria – Sioux

I hear so many times people saying, “Don’t shove your religion down my throat.” Maybe they are misinformed but scripture from the bible is not a religion; God is not a religion so when I post a scripture and you’re offended and tell me to stop shoving my religion down your throat, allow me to enlighten you.

Scripture is not a religion. Faith in God is not a religion. Now when a Jehovah’s Witness knocks on your door and tries to shove a pamphlet in your face, THAT is someone trying to force their religion on you.

I’ve been approached many times in the parking lot by a JW and as you’re trying to unload all your groceries, they run up and try shoving a pamphlet in your face. Now THAT to me is trying to force a religion on you. When someone physically approaches you and feeds you their religion as if it is the only one and the only RIGHT one that exists.

Spirituality is not a religion either and TO ME that is just what God and all His biblical testimonies are, primarily. The Buddhists don’t own spiritual awareness, the Native Americans don’t have the market cornered on spirituality. Spiritual experiences are for all whether faith in one God or not.

My spirituality is a deep rooted faith in one God. It is rooted in there being only ONE God, who had a Son through a divine Immaculate Conception, who then died for mankind and all his sins, thus bathing us in the Holy Spirit!

If religion is defined as the worship of One God, then yes, I am religious. I will walk with the Holy Spirit and share with you all that that entails, but I will not say that this is the one and only faith that you must adhere to in life or that it is the only RIGHT one. 

We are all of different creeds and I respect that. I cannot judge someone whose only faith is in spiritual awareness and I would hope that I am not judged for believing in the trinity.

When I was a child, I was raised Catholic and very much wanted to be a nun and dedicate my life to Christ but be it as it may, God wanted a different path for me and in every breath I took, He guided each step. He is the one who put me on this spiritual path. He did not sink me into a religion and guide me in the way of becoming a nun; He had different plans for me.

Spirituality is hard to find a definitive definition. Scientist define it “the search for the sacred”. There is a definition on spiritualism that is defined as: the belief that all reality is spiritual. Metaphysics: any of various doctrines maintaining that the ultimate reality is spirit or mind. If God did not want us to be spiritual beings why use the word over 600 times in the Bible?

Why did God take me on this journey? Why did He set my path on the spiritual aspect rather than a religious road? I think it is because He wanted me to know the differences in life based on spirituality.

Being called a Jesus freak is okay with me. I’ve already stirred up thoughts with this Lenten series and some have been good, while others I can sense are tired of it all already. I’m not called to please you, I’m called to please my Lord and Savior who is guiding my fingertips. I am guided by the warmth washing over me by the Holy Spirit and what comes out in these posts are for all to walk away with and think about.

You can walk away in agreement or disagreement that is for you and where you are in your journey of life. All I know is that God is my divining rod. I can choose one way or the other, I can believe in all He has shown me, or I can shrug off all He has conveyed and take a different path. That is free will.

If you pick up a bible and read it, do you walk away with questions, enlightenment, doubts or unbelief? Enlightenment to me is an AHA moment where a lightbulb goes off in my head. And when I read the bible, I walk away enlightened by the knowledge that God has placed on my heart. I have read many different doctrines and the Holy Bible is the only one that gave me clarity.

God is not my religion, He is a way of life for me. I am a very spiritual person who sees God in everything, and I do mean everything. The land, the trees, the soil, the animals, and yes in human beings whether they have the Light of the Lord in them or not, I see them as spiritual beings set on a different path than me.

My religion is my church (Christians) and my church family (where I go to praise and worship) where we are all set on the same path walking hand in hand with the same beliefs. You can poke fun at me, laugh at my pain, correct me because I’m not grammatically perfect, scoff at my imperfections but please, don’t make fun of my spiritual beliefs. I judge no one and don’t care to BE judged.

God is not a religion, He is a spiritual journey. Embrace it.

1 Cor. 16: 18 For they have refreshed my spirit and yours: therefore acknowledge ye them that are such.

Lent: Day Twenty-nine ~ Coincidence?

Pss. 104:2 Who coverest thyself with light as with a garment: who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain:

Coincidence?

Was it coincidence I was born on my mother’s birthday? Was it coincidence that has been the ruler in my life throughout the years? I can’t name ALL the things that people would deem ‘just coincidence’ but like ‘luck’, coincidence holds no weight with me.

I think people blame coincidence on things they can’t explain. God forbid should they think that the Almighty God reigns supreme in their life. Sure the great universe works in threads, threads that tie instances into happenings, weaving a blanket called life that covers you.

Nature plays a part too. Some call it Mother Nature I call it Father God. The only Great Spirit out there with a needle and thread is the Master Creator himself, God. There isn’t a slew of gods out there in the cosmos directing your paths. There is no Mother Nature or Father Time there is only One true God. Coincidence? I think not.

Now a lot of times people accept explanations of the scientific nature because they have been so absorbed with finding the truth (or proof) of a situation that they never find  real answers due to blindness. If you don’t believe in the trinity, you might not get my meaning.

God the Father is the Son and dwells in your life daily via the Holy Spirit. There it is, the word Spirit. In the bible it states, “No one comes to the Father, except through Me”, (John 4:16) Not believing in the Son of God as man flesh, you’ll never come to know the Holy Spirit and will always be searching for some great scientific truth whether it is in Astrology, Astronomy, prophets or religious leaders; you’ll search endlessly seeking some great Spirit all because you don’t want to accept God, Jesus and the HOLY Spirit.

It is not some grand coincidence that the world was formed. Not one ounce of coincidence knows you by name, knows the hairs on your head and calls you blessed. It is not by coincidence that we exist and seek continually to find an answer as to why we are here and where we go afterwards.

I love to think of us as a blanket put together one thread at a time making us all different but all part of the same blanket. Each seam brings us together and this is why people, certain people, enter your life. Whether through friendship or a divine draw that places you as a thread to make up ones blanket in life.

I am a part of your blanket as you are a part of mine. You read me so then you too become a thread tying together the quilt that makes for a comforter to cover you when you’re cold.

We are all part of the collective conscience that brings together two beings. God is the weaver of this blanket, Jesus is the thread that knits us into each others life, and the Holy Spirit is the warmth of energy we feel when relationships are formed. We become a blanket for each others soul connected by the One and only master Creator, not by coincidence.

If you are bound to trees, to animals, to love, to compassion then it is not a coincidence that we have met or have been woven together. God is the force that binds us together through the love of nature, animals and all things created. Did you ever wonder why we’re friends? God saw to it that our lives intertwined. He saw to it that we formed a square in the blanket.

Was it coincidence when Steven and I needed a place here in Nebraska, this house, totally affordable, was available? Was it coincidence that two years my man was blind and he finally got his sight back? Was it coincidence that found him a job that was willing to work around him not being able to drive in the dark? Was it coincidence that an affordable car was right there on the parking lot where he worked? Was it coincidence that two weeks later his truck would be totaled and he’d walk away without a scratch?

I think I have the secret to what people call ‘luck’, I have the key that will open the door on the mystery of coincidence and it is simply defined as blessings. If blessings don’t fill your cup to overflowing then you believe in coincidence. If you do not feel rich beyond all meaning (and I don’t mean money) then you are wrapped in the belief of luck.

My cup over flows, I’m rich beyond all measure, and my Spirit is filled with the love of God! I am a part of a blanket that is here to offer you warmth. My friends, we are one with the Spirit of Christ. Whether you believe that it is just a coincidence that we met, I’m here to tell you, there is no such thing as coincidence.

God be with you all!

Pss. 91: 4 He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Isa. 3:1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: