Half A Century

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Jude 1:2  “Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.”

All of my life I’ve lied about my age. When I was 16 I lied and said I was eighteen so I could get served liquor in the bar. When I turned eighteen, the drinking age was changed to twenty-one and wouldn’t you know it, I lied then too. Funny thing is, when I was nine and going to the bar with my mother and father I didn’t need to be a certain age and I was very good at being mischievously sneaky in getting a drink. 

It began earlier in life when I used to go to bingo with my mother and you had to be sixteen but at twelve I didn’t look sixteen and by the time I did look sixteen I didn’t want to go to bingo I wanted to go to bars. What a phase. 

Many people are ashamed of their dark past escapades but I can’t hold shame because it was the years that I was forming being shaped into the person I am today. Just so you know, I quit drinking at twenty-one because there was no more mystery and excitement and well I had already been married for four years at the time so life was steam-rolling ahead.

Even when I first entered this windowed world at thirty-seven I lied and said I was twenty-nine figuring I was the older woman to younger people, and the younger woman to older people, if that makes any sense. Even a few years ago, my nephew (by marriage) asked my age and I instantly replied closer to forty than I am to fifty. 

Even at CHURCH I told my friend whose wife is the same age as me that I was over forty and not near fifty. He replied, “Good because once you hit fifty, it’s all downhill from there.”

So why do we lie about our age? I have my guesses but the reality is, we are all too eager to be older then when we get older we miss being younger. Reality has a hold on me now, I’m NOT getting any younger and yes I’m getting older, just like everyone else. Maybe I’ll finally catch up to my friends who are all nearing sixty or older.

My friend said that it’s all downhill from here but darn, I’ve never started climbing uphill or had that moment of an uphill so why do I go downhill from here? I don’t. I stay myself and take what is tossed at me in the winds of change and embrace it for what it is, change! 

The year of change is taking on different hues and as I celebrate 50, and my mother celebrates the day back home with me, (yes, I was born on my mother’s birthday) and we keep climbing UPHILL to that stairway of heaven that awaits us at the end of this journey, I embrace the odyssey. 

To all the people who wish me a happy birthday, I thank them from the bottom of my heart. I have never in my fifty years had a birthday party for myself, my mother always had a cake that said happy birthday, Del and as a side note the cake would have ‘and joni’. My birthday was never a celebration of me and I learned to accept that. A birthday is just the day you mark yourself and shout out to the world I MADE IT ANOTHER YEAR! People are happy that you’ve made it another year and thanks to facebook many people get to celebrate your day in some way with you. 

While my life continues on and I can rejoice living another year, I’m not done climbing yet and the hill seems steeper and steeper with each step. I will move onward and upward no matter what limitations my body has and now when people ask my age instead of saying ‘over the hill’ I can say ‘still climbing’. I’m okay with that.  Teeheehee

As Holy Week this year includes my birthday smack dab in the middle, I will continue on the path of sharing all that God has filled me with in my life and through me you will see a spirit-filled woman who is truly blessed in every sense of the word. 

God bless each and every one of you as He has me!

Angel always…godspeed!

Jude 1:3 “Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”

The False World

Ex. 23:1 Thou shalt not raise a false report: put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness.

The False World

Did you know we live in a false world? A world that is made up of artificial people, with fabricated faces and bodies, walking around pretending to care what is going on around them; a simulated world that we create to our own likings. You know, where people buy into fake pics, laugh at people who aren’t in perfect conformity with them or their way of thinking, make fun of the less fortunate and again buy into the falsity?

The pictures you see on my blog are the things I’ve seen with my own two eyes (unless otherwise stated). I find it kind of funny how people are so quick to use fake-doctored photos to make a point at poking fun of people, all the while spewing lies. 

This is the new (or not so new) beguiling wave sweeping the nation. Women with altered breasts are swooned over while the natural woman is there to be laughed at standing in the corner being taunted. The ill-conformed butt is commercialized, liposuction is applauded, and a brutally fake tan is swooned over. We have become a world of convenience; everything we want right at the brush of our fingertips.

What is wrong with this country that we can sell ourselves out to the demon possessing this type of mockery? Please don’t justify this disgusting nature by saying that it has been this way since man was created.

The beautiful woman was once lauded for her inner beauty as well as her outer God given beauty, not this fake stuff that the media and its little followers buy into. Also, we’re left to live in a viral infested state of clicking. The once beautiful man/woman is now gone from the map, they have been relinquished to a viral video clip gone wild.

We click upon click news stories, hoping whoever is doing the reporting is being truthful, that is. We have become a nation of texting, sexting, selfies, and lies; men becoming women, murderers with alibis; we have religious hating religions and atheists hating God. We have satan running rampant and people scooping him up by every delectable deceiving mouthful; quite literally I might add.

Then we have Christians claiming Christianity and determinedly setting out to destroy the very foundation of Christianity. We have law against lawless; we have walls where they mock with deceptive lies, our bodies being used for graffiti markings, we choose to abuse rather than use nature and all it was intended for.

Ex. 23:7 Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.

No longer are words used as a form of expression. A pic or an emoticon have all replaced the written words of empathy. It is so much easier in this world to not appear to be human. We kill before settling; we accept before investigating; we abuse before understanding. We thrive in a fun-filled virtual world instead of facing the reality that is right on our doorstep.

We escape instead of being imprisoned; take the easy way instead of the hard route. We set about to live in this fantasy world created for us. I care when I shouldn’t and don’t care when I should.

Life has become a mangled heap of bones, mere shells of what was and will never be again. Skeletons clickety-clack all about in a deafening sound to be absorbed by the bogus beings that pass themselves off as humans.

I lay at the bottom of the rubble suffocating, struggling for a breath of fresh air that is not to come. An outcast in society, I’m alone and bewildered caught in the mire of pretense. I await the day I’m lifted from the ashes and taken to a place filled with light and love, where I’m a wanted participant embraced by the living spirits that will surround me. Thank you oh heavenly Father for the promise of eternity.

Isa. 57:15 For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones.