Quotation Saturday ~ Holidays

Pss. 36:5 “Thy mercy, O LORD, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds.”

HOLIDAYS

“In the old days, it was not called the Holiday Season; the Christians called it 'Christmas' and went to church; the Jews called it 'Hanukkah' and went to synagogue; the atheists went to parties and drank. People passing each other on the street would say 'Merry Christmas!' or 'Happy Hanukkah!' or (to the atheists) 'Look out for the wall!” 
― Dave Barry

“Humanity has always conquered the flux of natural time by means of a rhythm between active and passive time-spans. To reconquer his holidays, to establish a new and better time schedule for life, has been the great endeavour of man ever since the days of Noah.” 
― Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy,

“This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?” 
― Zadie Smith

“It's not about presents but it is about your presence. Therein lies the spirit of the holiday season.” 
― Julieanne O'Connor

CHRISTMAS

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!” 
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.” 
― Tess Gerritsen

“Christmas it seems to me is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.” 
― Graham Greene

“When purchasing gifts becomes the focal point of the season, we lose focus on what's truly important.” 
― Joshua Fields Millburn

FAITH

“Is my faith so terribly pathetic that I have diminished God to the point that I doubt His ability to survive in the very world that He came to save? Indeed, I have done exactly that. And all I need to do to beat that mentality is to remember that a baby born in a manger with every disadvantage imaginable stills lives today.” 
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

Dreams come from that special place in our mind where our soul loves to spend its holidays.” 
― Anthony T.Hincks

“The Simple Path
Silence is Prayer
Prayer is Faith
Faith is Love
Love is Service
The Fruit of Service is Peace” 
― Mother Teresa

“There are times when solitude is better than society, and silence is wiser than speech. We should be better Christians if we were more alone, waiting upon God, and gathering through meditation on His Word spiritual strength for labour in his service. We ought to muse upon the things of God because we thus get the real nutriment out of them. . . . Why is it that some Christians, although they hear many sermons, make but slow advances in the divine life? Because they neglect their closets and do not thoughtfully meditate on God's Word. They love the wheat, but they do not grind it; they would have the corn, but they will not go forth into the fields to gather it; the fruit hangs upon the tree, but they will not pluck it; the water flows at their feet, but they will not stoop to drink it. From such folly deliver us, O Lord.” 
― Charles Haddon Spurgeon

GREED

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” 
― Socrates

“The world says: "You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more." This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.” 
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” 
― Edward Abbey

DEPRESSION

“Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying.” 
― John Green

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” 
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” 
― Laurell K. Hamilton

“Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.” 
― Ned Vizzini

Season of Depression

Gen. 26:30 “And he made them a feast, and they did eat and drink.”

The Season of Depression

The holidays are slowly creeping into the next two months, rendering many people depressed, more depressed than what they normally experience throughout the year. Thanksgiving and Christmas are supposed to be times of celebrations, times with family and houses filled with aromas of turkey, ham, apple pies and often, pumpkin pies. Imagine what its like for people who have no family, or who lost their family it can be one of the most suicidal depressing times of the year. Imagine the season as someone with an illness that renders them vegetarian (omnivore) surrounded by carnivorous beasts! 

On October 27 I marked my ninth month since this diagnosis that turned my world upside down. While I’ve always been a grateful person I find it hard to be grateful living with this disease that changed my world while everyone else around me basically stays the same. The 29th of October marked two years since my father’s passing and well, I found myself hurting when I didn’t need to be. I know he’s in a better place but I was hurting more for myself as his death took on the role of permanency. The first year, you mourn more for your mom and her pains but the second year you allow yourself to mourn your pain over the loss.

Then November sprung into action and that means family time. My family is all back home preparing or mourning in their own way not even giving me a second thought, so that hurts somewhat. Then there are the celebrations going on here where I live now, the place I’ve called home for almost nine years now. How I, the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, who rode the dysfunction junction her whole life, winded up with what I deem the Walton clan, the most perfect family in my eyes!

Yes, I know no family is perfect and yes this family has its hidden flaws but one thing they are, a family and everything that those families in the Rockwell paintings portray, get-togethers, gatherings, food, more food, love, and laughter. Although in my eyes, this family is short on the laughter. They do try but it comes off as mechanical and not real. Imagine Joni, always the laugh-a-thon-go-to-gal being plopped right into this more serious than normal family. Just imagine the challenges I have to face! (giggle giggle)

I’ve had to adjust my sails, so to speak, over the years to fit into this quiet, laid-back family. This year as you can imagine has been one of my most challenging years yet as the family has questions about my illness, about my decision in healing this disease, a decision they may or may not agree or approve of, I don’t know, it’s hard to read passive indecisive people.

Here’s an example, a couple of weeks ago my son gets a PM from his aunt (by marriage). It was a group private message asking the kids (fully grown kids with jobs) to take the day off  of work on November 5th so she could get a family photo session because a brother was coming in from Arizona with his wife and three kids and she thought it was a good idea and was making plans in advance.

My husband and I heard of this get-together at his moms a week ago, when she said she hoped we could make it to the gathering and that she’d ‘make me fruit’ non-organic, she retorted. I said I would try since I have good days and bad days, I never know how I’ll feel. 
“Well they’ll be here all week,” she offered, “but I hope you can really make it for the family get together.”
You see there? That is pressure (stress) I don’t ask for but it is slung at me anyway. I’m NOT a passive person and I’m like no! But his Walton family assumes we want to be a part of the happy, happy, love, joy event. And actually, my husband DOES want to see his brother he never gets to see (understandably so) and I, the good wife will support my husband with whatever he decides. Is passivity rubbing off on me? EGADS!

Needless to say, this year, I haven’t looked forward to these events but more times than not, I over think the situation and all turns out fine. Yeah, I wind up with unnecessary stress. But hey, it’s just me, the in-law. Believe it or not, these get-togethers only make me miss my family back home more, and the stress rises because I know that is not feasible. Visiting back home will not happen in my lifetime and what would I return to, a non-caring group of people I knew my whole life? Yeah, it’s not worth the stress.

So we’re back to the depression season. I’m grateful I landed in a loving family that actually knows what the term means. I’m grateful I get to celebrate another Christmas with these folks even if it is for food, food that I will have to watch them shovel in their mouths as I sit away from them trying to act like I’m enjoying myself. I have mixed emotions about this Sunday's event also when the family convenes.

In nine months I have aged ten years and appear very thin and gaunt. I don’t WANT my picture taken but as much as this family is about food and get-togethers, they’re about pictures, hundreds of pictures, not one or two. I don’t look forward to Sunday, and they’ll say they never knew, but Monday morning I’ll write and tell you how well it went, and so begins the Season of Depression.

Isa. 1:14 “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.”

The Sacred Plant

God's Sense of Humor

this flourishes in my backyard

Ecc.  7:3 “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”

The Sacred Plant

Used for centuries as a medicinal plant that has healing power. It is sad to me that the stigma surrounding this plant has us, the people, brainwashed. I at times feel like a part of a herd of cattle in a pen all waiting for slaughter. I’ve used this term metaphorically before but I can’t bring it home enough for people to understand and let it sink into their head. 

When I say I am all for the legalization of Cannabis for medicinal purposes or other, I’m called a pothead, even jokingly, the term hits hard because I’m suffering and the oil is out of my reach. As of right now, if being a ‘pothead’ would heal this disease, then bring it on. If I were to ask a doctor to help me retrieve medicinal cannabis to heal this disease, they would tell me there is not enough scientific proof to back up what I’m saying. Yet there is proof, and no one wants to aid the healing of a human race smothering in disease and illness. This plant above is called 'Ditch Weed' and it grows wild in Nebraska.

Legalization is allowed in a few states but the other states are behind on the cattle drive. If cannabis could be harnessed, we’d have no national deficit, but the high and mighty powerhouse, Federal Government, and the pharmaceutical companies only think of the billions that they can be made. The doctors would rather prescribe oxycodone, methadone and morphine and other drugs than to SAVE LIVES. Are you brainwashed by them too?

Endocannabinoid system - The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a group of endogenous cannabinoid receptors located in the mammalian brain and throughout the central and peripheral nervous systems, consisting of neuromodulatory lipids and their receptors. In other words, our bodies are wired to the healing of cannabis 
You'll have to copy and paste this link because, for some odd reason, blogger won't allow it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system

God created a beautiful system that makes up our bodies as a whole. To heal the inner body we would need to touch the Trinity aspects of the mind, body, and soul. You cannot just heal the body via drugs, you cannot heal your soul of sickness without healing the mind. While my aunt (by marriage) stated clearly that it was pharmaceutical drugs that have kept people alive. She holds confidence in the medical field. I hold no confidence in them. They want to kill me, drug me, and lead me to slaughter.

The past five days I’ve been pretty much down in the dumps. Depression had me in its grip and I needed to claw my way out through mud sliding through my fingers as I neared the top. I didn’t want to write, I didn’t want to express any joy or sorrow, I hit a roadblock and there I was in the grips of desolation.

Honestly what hit me was seeing people so happy. Freely living life content and sound. My mind plays tricks on me and I see those people living a false life because no one has a perfect life but that is what they portray. They’re not sick with a disease that threatens to take their life. Some are, I’m not minimizing your suffering. I see them eating, drinking and being merry, and me, I’m out here fighting for my life with herbal supplements and being shunned because I’m not in the same pen as all the rest of the herd of cattle.

Gen. 1:29 “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.”

Cannabis is a gift from the Creator for us to heal ourselves. Before big pharma came along, people treated ailments with herbs. Ancient cultures have healed for thousands of years before drugs were used, so telling me I’m ‘off my rocker’ for wanting to heal holistically, I’ll call you quackers for wanting to heal with drugs. Drugs don’t HEAL, they pacify, herbs HEAL! They are natural God given healers taken away from us and replaced by thoughts that DRUGS heal, herbs are for ‘quacks’.

Advocates for the Sacred Plant:
Julius Axelrod - 

Dr. Sanjay Gupta - 

Alice O’Leary Randall
Robert Randall - 

Irv Rosenfeld –

Cannabis patented by our government – the same people patenting cannabis are the same people filling our jails deeming it an illegal drug, the same people feed the herd toxins to survive.

Deception, greed, and fear are what rules this nation. Our choices in what we do will determine not only our future but the future of mankind. I’m watching a new series (yes, I’ve watched many in these four months) titled The Sacred Plant, this was the first one with a serious disclaimer:

“Disclaimer: This message is confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please either destroy this e-mail immediately and don't rely on its contents, or return it immediately to the person named above. Thank you.”

It’s pretty sad when there seems to be a healing potential being repressed and kept from us in the pen so we’re not released to our own will of free thinking. You might think you’re a person with your own free will and thinking capabilities but you were programmed to think and believe that. The ones out here taking seriously our own free will and acting on our own, are being met with stigmatization until we’re thought to be ‘whacko’ because we don’t follow the massive herd being led to slaughter.

Our veterans are being used as guinea pigs and that doesn’t upset you? 
But the Government is sabotaging those medical studies. Read this to see for yourself how they (the government) supplies bad cannabis to Johns Hopkins University for PTSD studies on Veterans. The government is having a hard time harnessing a weed that could make them trillions of dollars. 

Ditch Weed

Thank you to all of the advocates who stand up for what you KNOW and believe in! Thank you for staring in the face of the enemy (our government) and quite bluntly spitting in their faces. I pray that I have the strength that you have and can become a solid activist for a cause I believe in. I WILL overcome and be back to myself, I just needed a wake-up call.

To think, I could eliminate twenty supplements for this one highly priced, illegal healing oil that is a natural herb. Thanks, Nebraska, for nothing! 

Wake up people, we’re a brainwashed species being led to slaughter. “Heil Hitler”

Seasonal Change

Pss. 90: 6 "In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth."

Seasonal Change

It seems like a seasonal change is going on in my body and mind. In the Spring I’m flourishing and growing, writing until my fingers hurt then by fall I’m ready to go dormant and wither into the sunset and put my year long trek of blog posts behind me. It’s not even the New Year yet. 

I did have a goal at the beginning of this year and that was to surpass last year’s posts. So far I beat the 112 posts mark pretty easy. Now to surpass 2013, not so easy as September has arrived and I just want the year to be over already. Maybe the cooler temperatures arriving next week will whisk me away into a writing frenzy and my goal will surpass 2014! Hey, I can dream but the one thing I can’t do is give up!

2013 – 162 posts, 2014 – 182 posts, 2015 - 112 posts, 2016 – 155 so far. A grand total of 1699 posts thus far – Definitely surpassing my goal from when I began this venture. 

~  Amen  ~

Topics – the elusive thought for a topic is becoming harder and harder as sources become overwhelming to my little brain. Then there is the reality that I must live life and not just sit behind this windowed world because things need to be taken care of around my home.

I feel lost amid a sea of falling leaves that are slowly being taken from their tree source and left to lie on the ground waiting to be raked and put into a pile on my almost ready to be sleeping garden. Even my flourishing garden wants to rest from a heated summer where little has fallen from the sky to quench the thirst of the dry land beneath.

I thought I’d at least make my blog writing to the November election when the chosen one will be hung out to dry on the social media clothesline.  The news media will spin their web of deceit just in time for Halloween when all the masks will be evidently seen from people and politicians alike and I get to be here at center stage to watch the show. Yippee, how depressing.

I think about giving up writing all the time but I won’t allow the phase to suck me down the drain with all the mask-wearing people. I actually have a goal set and I don’t like giving up. I don’t care how depressing the world around me becomes or how hard they try to tighten the noose around my neck with their gibberish; I can’t give up!

I sometimes feel like my posts are coming off as peeved or angry but I have no intention of writing from anger. When something bothers me, like lies and deceit, I write about the liars and deceivers so that maybe, just maybe, everyone else can see that people they know and trust are misleading them also. Maybe they don’t even care if the bullring hanging from their nose is leading them around. This is why I feel like discontinuing my writing so I can just have a break from the grammar-etiquette police and the judgmental masked socialites, who know who they are. 

I don’t have all of the answers and I surely don’t pretend to know it all. I lost my ego years ago when reality swallowed me up as the social media frenzy was seizing control of the world. I am not a pretentious person putting on a show for you all to read, what you see is the real me that some of you like but some are taken aback by my over-the-top honesty.

“Did she really just say that?” Yes, yes I did. 

Sometimes my openness corners me into a cage, leaving people to poke sticks at me through the bars, feed me their delusion or ready to pull their shotguns out because they see me as a big gorilla trying to save a small child. (Think Harambe, the almost endangered species) 

There you have it, the truth of this entire post, I’m an endangered species being forced out of existence by an all too willing mass that would rather shoot me down rather than lift me up. I’m telling you here and now, I will not go out quietly. I will look down the barrel of your gun proclaiming HE IS ALIVE! I AM ALIVE! All the capitalizing in the world isn’t big enough to make you HEAR the WORDS (or see) because blindness is an epidemic that is sucking the life out of the living.

Seasons come and seasons go

Dreams may come and dreams may flow.

No one knows from where I grow

As seasons come and seasons go.

Ex. 23:20 Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared.

Peeve Of The Day ~ "Just Get Over It."

1 Pet. 4:12-13 “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

My peeve of the day? People minimizing pain.

“Just get over it.” 

“Suck it up, buttercup, life goes on.”

Yup, those words right there grate on my nerves like screeching nails on a chalkboard. Telling someone to just get over their pain, depression, or anxiety, whatever burden they bear or cross they carry is minimizing what they are going through on a daily basis. 

If you’ve been through the depths of hell and have come back to tell the world about your experience that’s just great, you’re the one human God has chosen to break the gates of hell but if you’ve suffered in similar pain as someone else, don’t minimize what they endure daily by telling them to just get over it because YOU survived a similar pain.

You don’t know the pain someone is going through unless you’ve walked in his or her shoes and I’m pretty sure no one has walked [metaphorically] in another person’s shoes. No, we are on our own path in life and while you may have comparable pain, similar circumstance, identical health issues, you need to know that the person enduring the affliction owns what is happening to them, it can’t be borrowed or stolen it has to be LIVED.

Offering sympathy is one thing but comparing your incident with their daily struggle takes away the healing that they have in place and the prayer that they utilize by making their illness seem like they will just ‘get over it’ when that is not the case at all. They need time to drink in the healing that they are going through so they can make plans for what they need to change (if anything) and possible routes they might take.

Can you imagine if we were all on the same exact journey? Life would be no fun that way and would we all arrive at the same destination? Of course not. Just because the journey was ‘similar’ does not mean they are the same. Life is like that sometimes, we all think we’re headed to heaven but we do nothing in our life to get us there.

Reading and believing the bible isn’t going to get you there. Attending church isn’t any assurance that heaven will be your end destination. People tend to be misinformed when they think that the outward appearance of being a Christian is going to get them into heaven. 

All Christians may ‘appear’ to be the same but that is the farthest thing from the truth. We all are different in our journeying path but the one thread that unites us in a genetic strand of life is the blood of Jesus Christ running through our veins. 

Our disability isn’t what bonds us together. Our illness doesn’t define who we are in the living world. Our outward appearance isn’t the link to an eternal heaven. The only thing from the physical realm that is universally ours that we carry into the spiritual realm is LOVE. Love binds us all. Without love, the path will lead straight to hell and there will be no coming back to tell us about it on twitter, or facebook or through images on Instagram. 

So before telling someone to just ‘get over it’, or to pray more, hope for more, be more to the world; dig into the depths of your soul and find the love that lives there. When you want to hate…find love. If you feel the need to compare…do it with love. When you find a burning fire in your soul…douse the flames with love. 

Love is one of the hardest paths to journey on. You might think it is a simple task but tapping into the well of love on a daily basis is a struggle we all must face. You can give someone directions but that doesn’t mean they’ll follow them. Just as life and the trying storms we muddle through; we own our journey, it is ours alone. We might all strive to get to the same destination but we’ll all take different routes to get there.

May the God of love bless you all!

1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

Amen!

My Own Little World

My Own Blessed Little World

1 John 4:16 “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

Out here in the middle of nowhere, I sit in my own little world. People expect me to be absorbed in the virtual world but no, it serves no purpose in my life so I sit in my own little world tapping on keys writing to my hearts content. 

The mornings here in this springtime world are bathed in sunshine, after almost a month of gray clouds and rain. The crisp cool mornings are still upon us where a light jacket is needed in the morning but by afternoon, no jacket is required, just sun, grass, and endless fields.

The pivots are making their morning stroll releasing a mist to the newly planted fields. Big-wheeled tractors are making their morning rounds discharging a fertilizer to protect the greenery from insects. Then there are the cottonwood trees freeing the clumps of cotton-like substance landing on the ground looking like a newly fallen snow.

Then there is the insect world. The spiders have been awakened from their winter slumber, the flies are mounting an army to attack any living creature in their way, and the hummingbird moths have made their appearance on my Salvia bush. Butterflies flit off in the distance inspecting the newly bloomed Marigolds that resurface every year. Note that marigolds are not perennials but the mild winters have been protecting the seeds as they fell from last year and so I am blessed with hundreds of marigolds each season.

I was in a bit of depression a few weeks ago and my one friend asked me what was wrong. I didn’t really give him any clear answer but sure enough, a week later he prodded further and I told him I was healing. I had been down for who knows what reason but I was now working on myself and finding healing. That’s a friend, who senses when you’re down and actually cares enough to poke in your business to see what the problem is and checks up on you to make sure you’re doing okay. 

He assured me that I am blessed and it hit home. I began counting the blessings in my life instead of focusing on what I can’t do. You see, I’m not an idle person; I always like to be moving whether planting in my garden, digging up weeds, mowing, cleaning, and doing laundry or whatever. I type/write in the few minutes of rest that my disabled body needs, then I’m back up moving around. 

My disability gets me down a lot of the times. I don’t even know what the disability is but I do know if I was pulled over and asked to take a sobriety test I’d fail for my inability to walk a straight line and not from alcohol either. My vision isn’t too good either so I stopped driving for my safety and the other drivers, too. I was diagnosed with arthritis in my back but after reading the M.S. symptoms, I’m not going to rule that out.

After I throw myself a pity party, I find a healing place in counting my blessings. I know this doesn’t sound like a blessing but my neighbor finally mowed down her waist high grass. Her riding mower needed blade repair and a push mower that she bought (so that she could lose weight, she told me) was too hard for her so she had her riding mower repaired and spent four hours for three days out there in the sun, stirring up my allergies, but I was feeling blessed by not having to see the eyesore any longer.

On the cooler days, I take advantage of getting outside, in my own little world. Sometimes I mow (carefully, knowing my limits) sometimes I just sit out there watching trucks roll by, other times I’m out there, counting my blessings.

While many people are consumed with what they don’t have, what they HAVE to have, what they WANT and what they’ll spend their money on, I’m here in my own little world counting my blessings of all that I HAVE! Cherishing the fact that I have all that I NEED and want for nothing but cool nights so I can continue sleeping with my windows open and the breeze chilling me so much that the quilt is pulled up to my neck!

I know spring will end and summer will arrive, and in my own little world, that will be fine by me! I’ll just continue to count my blessings!

Deut. 28:2 “And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God.”

Healing Through Prayer

1 John 2:1-2 (NIV)

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense -- Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Healing through prayer

The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. It may be just me, but I do not feel an emoticon is righteous and should not be used in the place of prayer, real earnest prayer. I have learned through watching and seeing, feeling and knowing that prayer encourages healing and this is where I’m at, for now.

Who are the ones paying when I don’t pray? The negative influencing people could care less about me or whether they are hurting me or they wouldn’t post what they do and consider the pain they might inflict on people. No, they continue spewing their hatred, flaunting the ego in laughter and using God’s word for their own feel good show. 

When I can’t make it onto facebook and see the prayer requests, the only one paying for my lack of prayer are those in need of prayer and thus satan thinks he is winning the game. As I find healing it is only through prayer that the power of prayer is realized. While satan was wielding his pitchfork and laughing at my seeming demise, I prayed. My God has always been stronger and more powerful and I knew I’d find healing.

I need to stop taking everything people write and post as a personal attack on ME! I need to know that people are human and going to act accordingly in the search for their egos survival for without their ego, they are nothing. To me, they are the Legion referred to in Luke. Men of many faces, hiding in the armpits of satan, wearing the many masks that evil offers.

Luke 8:30 “And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him.”

The darkened days are clouded over with an air of mystery as night after night, day after day storms erupt from the sky unleashing damaging lightning, gusting forceful winds, trembling thunder, and torrential rains that leave the newly plowed fields unrecognizable. The sun is hiding behind the darkness waiting to warm the moistened soil just as God is waiting for me to embrace the light that is hiding within me and to override the negative influence with the Glory of Him and Him alone.

While depression will lay dormant I will get on the horse and ride into the sunset that I know is there and it will cradle my thoughts. I will not make light of the darkness that covers my eyes, no I will see the sun lurking behind the cloud waiting to pierce the ground in the light beams that will eventually devour the gray murk of the days.

I don’t use pills to heal my daily pain, I don’t use alcohol to hide behind a storm inside, I don’t abuse food because it serves me no purpose. I won’t go to a doctor who is only there to tell me what I DON’T have wrong with me and can only confirm what IS wrong with me when the tally of the doctor bill reaches the thousands, THEN they’ll find what is wrong and will medicate me for the problem instead of finding HEALING for the problem.

Each day that passes, I will slowly emerge the victor of the storm stronger because the darkness didn’t win, this time, yet again. A flower will unveil one petal at a time. Buds will emerge and the winds will strengthen the stem. I will continue to write, as this is my God-given path that I must pursue. While my immediate family could care less if I write, I know there are people out in the world seeking that one person who is suffering with them and wish to read how they handle such circumstances and maybe THAT is why so many storms take hold of my life so that I can weather them and share my healing with others like me. 

I'll weather this storm and find my healing through earnest prayer. All praise and Glory to God. 

Phil. 4: 6-7 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

I'm Alive

Photo by: Adam

Rom. 12:2 “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

I’m alive and I’m okay with that. Depression sucks the blood right out of your veins until you feel like a shell of skin with nothing in between to hold it together.

“Sometimes you are satisfied with your life while many people in this world are dreaming of living your life…
A child on a farm sees a plane fly overhead and dreams of being a pilot. But a pilot on the plane sees a farmhouse and dreams of returning home.
That’s life! Enjoy yours… if wealth is the secret to happiness, then the rich should be dancing in the streets, but only the poor kids do that.
If power ensures security, then officials should walk unguarded, but those who live simply, sleep SOUNDLY.
If beauty and fame bring ideal relationships, then celebrities should have the best marriages.
LIVE SIMPLY, WALK HUMBLY AND LOVE GENUINELY. All good will come back to you.” ~ Healing Journey posted this to facebook. I don’t know who the author is but I like it. 

I need things like this to lift my spirits so I don’t feel so isolated in an over-populated world. I see the outside but gusty winds that nearly topple me, and continuous days of rain keeping the ground saturated and the cool temps of springtime are keeping me basically housebound. My extremely unfertile soil is keeping me from growing anything that resembles something edible and the scorching sun will devour my flowers that do make a comeback soon. 

You’d think I’d be writing like crazy but no when I get depressed, writing is the farthest thing from my mind. It’s a good thing I don’t eat like a mad hatter or I’d be as big as this house we live in. I’ve never really been into chocolate and junk mainly because when you’ve suffered from toothaches the size of Mt. Etna throughout your life, it does keep you in check of what you CAN eat and what you avoid at all cost. 

Even with my tooth problems taken care of, I’ve built a dislike for things that just aren’t good for me, to me, a blessing in disguise since heart problems and type2 diabetes and other health problems run rampant in my family. Taking care of my internal health hasn’t been a problem but it still doesn’t stop maladies from cropping up to attack me.

The world has me depressed. Not so much the world but the cunning people of the world, the hypocrites, the liars and deceivers that I truly believe are working for satan and not God. I have one or two friends that are children of God. You can see Him working through them and everything that they put out into the world glows like a meteor flashing across the sky. They shine brightly. 

I’m hanging onto my faith in God as tightly as I can as the wine bibbers and deceivers prowl around as if they are working with God but I can see right through them. They’re the once a week Sunday dwellers. The rest of the week they’re partnered with the likes of satan manipulating their lives so that people THINK they’re the children of God but clearly they are the workers of satan defiling the world we live in today.

We are too close to the end to be toying with the rights and wrongs of society. You think you have time because hey, God will forgive you, right? No matter what you do, God is the all-forgiving God who allows you to sin and sin and sin and keep on sinning until the last day when you say, oops, forgive me God and he whisks you away to the pearly gates in the sky? 

Yes, we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God and I strive every day to not continue in sin because I want myself clean before God, not a dirty rag that has been washed over and over in sin and at the last minute begs for forgiveness. I live to be who God wants me to be, not who * I * want to be in a selfish ego driven manner.   

I will fight my way through depression. I will pray for those who walk in the dark and are alive being a contortion of this world. I will ask for myself to be healed and cleansed. I will continue in solitude, grow in obscurity, bathe in the glory of monotony and focus on my inner qualities that God is shaping into His life form. I am a child of God not a child of this world.

A word from Charles Swindoll:

If you are reading me today, I hope it is because you have me bookmarked and look forward to reading me and my crazy thoughts. I have to stay away from facebook as one or two light-filled people don’t outweigh the many dark ones. I go now and wait for yet another storm to come and this one has a tornado watch attached to it, so be good people, I’m not going to be around forever to keep you in line. 

May the Light of the Lord shine from within you and carry it for the world to see. 

God Bless…

Rom. 8:29 “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”

MTOC ~ Day Two: Laid To Rest

Job 22:29 “When men are cast down, then thou shalt say, There is lifting up; and he shall save the humble person.”

My Testimony of Christ

Okay, where was I? Read yesterday’s post.

My mother and sister had a disagreement this weekend and in dysfunctional familyesque form, my sister told my mother that she died when I was born. Mind you, my sister was three years old when I came along. I was the sixth child to be born and better yet, I was born on my mother’s birthday. I ruined my sister’s life by being born and paid for the anarchy that ensued in the following years.

My sister felt slighted from that day forward. She was no longer daddy’s little princess because this new baby came along with a shining smile and stole all of her limelight. I guess I was THAT cute from birth. That was sarcasm. 

I’m not here to tell my sister’s story. But I will say that when my mother told me what my sister said it hurt; another wound on my skin, another scar to add to the fold. I was angry, enraged, bitter and wanted to go on facebook and announce to the world that my sister was a total piece of …

I stopped, “Dear God help me!” It’s all I could do to calm down. I said yesterday how He took me in and saved me, so in my times of distress that is all I know to do, turn to Him. I sat and prayed and as I did memories came flooding back; memories I would have rather laid to rest but they resurface anytime my sister takes out her sword and stabs me with her jealous needles.

I have a friend who told me once, “You have to put the past behind you and leave your blood family behind. We’re your family now, your spiritual family!” No truer words were ever spoken. My family doesn’t know me anymore, I’m the kid (I was thirty-seven) who left home and left them to pick up the pieces of the family puzzle that I left lying on the floor. 

A twenty-year marriage shattered because I listened to God; not to the family or husband who wanted me bound to their whim. I catered to them and weaved them together so that we formed some form of semblance of a family but when I left, with two-weeks notice, the puzzle burnt in a flame of fire. No one spoke to me, no one reached out to see if their little sister who went almost fifteen-hundred miles away with a total stranger was okay. They were glad to be rid of me finally so they could get the attention they didn’t receive in their lives because of this baby who ruined life for them. 

They were then mad; mad because the family was left in pieces without me. They resented the fact that I was going on with my life, never to see them again. I tried the phone calls, I tried with blistered fingers to stay in touch but the calls became farther and fewer in between. I was now bitter with my family but on a road of healing. 

All of those years I was blind to the way I was treated. Not by my mother and father who yes, treated me with the utmost respect and loved my son and showered him and me in love. My brothers and sister didn’t receive that love. When my father was sick, he’d call my husband in the middle of the night for a ride to the hospital, we jumped. We took my mother food shopping weekly, we took care of her house when she went away, we respected one another and THAT is all that I miss now. I can’t say I miss my siblings because I have a lifetime of resentment built up inside of me of abuse: physically, sexually and mentally. 

Why am I telling you this when some things should remain private? I have to heal and God wants me to release this story to the world. Had I not found God, on my own mind you, had I just stayed in the dysfunctional life I was living and breathing, I would not be a writer, I would not have watched my son graduate high school, I would have never found a family that knows what love truly is.

I was a stone cold alcoholic by the age of sixteen, married at seventeen, and on a road of struggling to survive this thing we call life. At twenty-one, I found myself needing sobriety to continue living. As you can imagine going alone, I had only one resource and that was the very being who had been beside me all of my life guiding me.  

I took on a new role, I became a spiritual light for all who came in contact with me. As you can imagine this newly changed person was even LESS accepted by a dysfunctional family let alone the messed up world. I was illuminated by His Word and carried the torch out into the troubled world wherever I went.

I thanked God daily for my struggles, for my suffering because I knew through every step I was finding a place of healing for ME. God had handed me a flashlight to carry into the darkest of caverns in my life. The batteries never ran out as long as I kept my focus on God and the Light he instilled in me to carry.

The very core of my spirit was strengthened. I was clawing my way through skin and bones to find healing. You might say I was alone; no sugar-daddy to pay my way through the gravel, no medical intervention to drug me up and save me, I had nothing but God. Nothing, no one, just God and me on the journey!

Why did God reach down and save me from the pit I was obviously in; abuse, depression, anxiety, alcoholism and drug addiction? Why did He choose me to be a light to others who might be struggling with their path that is full of darkness? I often ask why but inside I know why. This world is covered in utter darkness and He needs people like me, just as Jesus needed the downtrodden of society to get His message across, God chose me because I am a humble servant giving all Glory to Him!

I have lain my past to rest. To be continued…

Matt. 11:29 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”

Comfort Zone

Isa. 49:13 Sing, O heavens; and be joyful, O earth; and break forth into singing, O mountains: for the LORD hath comforted his people, and will have mercy upon his afflicted.

Through prayer people find the comforting arms of the Lord surrounding them in their time of need.

These past few weeks I have been down, depressed and not wanting to go on in life and the only thing that got me through was prayer. Even us good people have our moments of darkness shrouding us but we MUST go on and in prayer I find healing. 

Lam. 1:16 “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.”

I spoke the other day about our loss of electricity due to a substation malfunction and me being ever the optimist saw light in those many hours of darkness. Here I was, at a low point and who would have thought that hours without electricity and the unknown return of the electricity could spring optimism and hope?

We were sitting at the kitchen table with a kerosene lamp and candles lighting the room but it was the Lord’s presence and warmth I felt the most. As I looked at the shadowed faces trying to pick a card to throw out as we played Rummy, I smiled. I felt comfort and loving arms hugging me and allowing me to see a light in this darkness.

Facebook for some is a game room where they play their games and have fun, for some it is a place to joke around and have fun while for some it is a political pedestal that they can stand on and promote negativity. The U.S.A is a pool of negativity these days and I can’t wrap my arms around it or swim in the cesspool of hate. 

Facebook to me has become an ocean of prayer. There is not a day that goes by that someone isn’t in need of prayer; whether it is an illness they seek out prayer for, a medical procedure, or a death in the family. People seek out prayer because of the healing that they feel wash over them.

While I sat at home, wallowing in my own self-pity, I was still drawn to the power of prayer and continued on my facebook journey to see who needed prayer on any given day. Through praying for others, I felt an emotional healing within myself, and the day we lost electricity it became a God-slap moment.

In the previous weeks I had cried, I ranted and raved and sang the woe, woe is me plea. I didn’t know if anyone knew of my predicament but I do know that I have a friend on facebook who prays daily about the downtrodden and on this occasion, these prayers were for me. I could feel them holding me in place.

I used to use facebook as an avenue for writing and my writing friends but it quickly became a place of prayer for me. I can be fun and jolly with the rest of the playmates but my focus is on prayer and those in need on facebook and outside of facebook. 

Take for instance my mother. The other day she informed me that they might be raising her rent. Knowing she and my father have limited income and are swimming in medical debts, she was worried. Instead of worrying with her and adding to the worry, I chose to pray. Yesterday when I spoke to her she said that they DID raise her rent by forty dollars BUT and this is a BIG but, she was okay with the increase. I feel in every fiber of my being it was because of prayer that she was comforted. My mother, the worrywart, was comforted!

I end this week from a different perspective. I’m not down, I’m not up, I’m right in the middle seeing hope at the end of the tunnel. I see that life is not about religion, or how one practices their religion, it is not about judging people for the way they practice their faith, it is about strengthening people in their walk of faith and being a prayer warrior that they can turn to and trust and hopefully find some comfort. When all is said and done at the end of the day, I’ve found my comfort zone… in prayer.

God bless you all!

Matt. 9:22 “But Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. And the woman was made whole from that hour.”

Flashback

Baltimore, Maryland

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

~ Cormac McCarthy

Here recently I’ve been struggling with flashbacks. Not the good kind with happy memories that follow but truly ugly ones I thought were dead and buried, never to resurface again; but here they are upon me in a tidal wave of emotion.

It all started a few weeks ago on my facebook family page. I was looking at friends of  friends and WHAM it hit me; flashbacks. I’d see a familiar name and think, Hey, we were friends once, I wonder why she/he hasn’t friend requested me? Then I remembered, maybe we weren’t really friends we were acquaintances. Maybe I’ll friend request them, then I said to myself, no, they seriously didn’t like me – then all of the bad memories flowed.

No matter how much I’ve grown and changed in life my past is always there to remind of the evil little witch that I once was and I realize pretty vividly why no one likes me or would like to catch up with me and see how I’m doing now. You know what they say, ‘Once a witch, always a witch’ so they steer clear of me.

I have struggled all my life to put the past behind me, forgive the evil-doers, move on in a walk with Christ but like a worm, the past just slowly inches its way into my present when I least expect it and slaps me upside the head. Sure I shrug it off and look at the writing friends I have now and how they help me to see the change in me but my past is a part of who I am today.

“We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.”

~ Rick Warren

Sure I hear the whole spiel that people feed me. Look to the Lord -- Walk with God -- Read your Bible and quite honestly I’d like to slap THEM upside the head for not understanding one thing I’m going through.

Are they trying to tell me that if I walk with Christ, the past won’t resurface? Are they trying to tell me that if I focus on God, the past will disappear? Are they offering to me a safe haven in reading my bible and that the past will no longer be present in my mind? HOGWASH!

I have for many a year (not just a spur of the moment of caring about Christ) looked to Christ for my healing and yes, I have come a long way, some might even say I am a new person. Well I AM!!! BUT, and here’s the clincher, THAT does not change my past or make it miraculously disappear and make people from my past want to know me again.

I imagine that when people see on the sideboard of their facebook that little picture asking, “do you know Joni?” They look at it and shiver and tremble and say, “Yeah and I don’t want to know her again!” And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to know them either only because of the ugly past that I need to leave behind to burn, but it doesn’t hurt any less realizing I’m not that likable because of who I was back then.

Then my traumatized childhood rears its ugly head and I remember the not so nice life I had growing up in a neglectful household. I didn’t have parents who cared dearly for their children, I had parents who dragged their young child into bars while the older kids stayed home or ran the streets getting into their own sort of trouble. I have to hear now that I’m grown, from my mother, “Why don’t my kids love me?” And I cannot and will not give her the God’s honest truth, “Maybe because you didn’t love THEM enough.”

I love my mother and father dearly and have dealt with the neglect and the non-neglect of me; after all my brothers and sister see it as me being the baby getting EVERYthing while I see it as me getting the traumatic events that they didn’t receive.

As I continue my journey and heal I AM walking with Christ because I know that it is only through Him I can truly heal. Make the past disappear? Probably not because by looking back into my past I can see how far I have come and also see it as a blessing that I am still alive today.

While I lock the hard-to-deal-with-flashbacks in a secure trunk, I will send it up a river never to be seen from again. I WILL heal and continue to create positive memories that I’ll enjoy looking back on.

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

~ George Harrison

~ Nebraska ~

Tis the Season to be...

Depressed?

Neh. 2: 2 Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid,

While many of you find this the season of joy, sharing and caring with family, there are so many others out there that don’t see it as the season of joy. Depression hits an all time high during the holiday season and thanks to massive commercialism we’re hit with, it doesn’t help.

It seems like as soon as Halloween hits, Christmas is here in the blink of an eye and we wonder where the time went. I saw Christmas commercials BEFORE Halloween so the media coverage of joy, joy, joy begins in October thrusting what is deemed normal upon people, people who don’t feel the joy of the season; we’re left behind with a burst of depression.

I’m taking a course on Writing the Personal Essay and this has brought a joy to my life. I can now hone in on the craft of telling my personal story, hopefully with more concise precision. The class has hardly begun so don’t expect perfection right away. Why am I telling you this? Because of something I read in one of the books for the course.

Take little bits of memories and write something that comes to mind: Thanksgiving, turkey, family, food. From those four things it will lead you to more of the memory surfacing. In my case, nothing really great surfaced from the memory.

I have four brothers, a sister, a mother and father. Thanksgiving was the only day we sat around the table to have a feast of a meal. We said grace, but again, it is the only day of the year we EVER said grace. I remember wine being served. Did I remember the joy of the day; the celebration of being with my family? No, I remember the jell-o for dessert.

I’m wondering if never having family joy is going to be a catapult of some pretty ugly stories as I venture along this six-week class? I’m also wondering if this is the reason for many people to see this as a season of depression. Maybe they lost a loved one who can’t be here with them, maybe they have bad memories of their childhood and as the season gets underway, memories, not all good ones surface and take over creating a ‘Season of Depression’.

Sadness swells up inside of me right around thanksgiving. Not only for the non-memorable memories but for the more memorable memories that creep up like worms out of a hole.

One memory at the forefront is the loss of my unborn child. Eight and a half months pregnant my child was STILL born. That hung an ugly memory around my neck and has clung there for thirty-two years now.

Grief is not something you just get over and I believe there is no amount of time that can whitewash the event. Whether it is through death, or the loss of a husband or friend that is no longer a part of your life. The holiday becomes the season of grief.

I don’t allow the grief to ruin the holiday for others, instead I carry my grief like a sponge, absorb everything alone, smile and remain appearing happy on the outside but tightly woven grief is wrapped around my heart.

I can’t help it, I miss my son, I miss my mother and father back home in Maryland, I miss seeing and talking to my sister, I miss hugging my nieces and nephews who grew up without me in their lives. As warped as they are, I miss my family!

Now don’t get me wrong, I am extremely thankful that God saw to it that I was placed in a loving family so I could actually experience what a family does on any given holiday, a normal family anyway. I’ve had the love of this family for 11 years now, but only six years of actually being around them on the physical level; that was when we moved to Nebraska.

I had always wondered if I made the right decision in taking my son, Adam Omega, away from my not so normal family and placing him in Texas then moving to Nebraska. I got a somewhat confirmation last week when the mailman asked about my sons name. Low and behold, he shares the ‘unique’ name also! Adam never thought in a million years that he’d EVER meet another person with that name and there he was, delivering mail with the exact same name! I don’t believe in coincidence, so there was more to the meeting than meets the eye. I know now I made the right decision, but I can still miss my family.

I’m thankful Steven only has to work four hours on Thanksgiving (as the previous years he worked a full day AND Black Friday). This year he works 9-4 turkey day and is off Friday giving me the hope that he’ll help Adam and I get ready for Christmas.

I’m so not ready for Christmas. It’s going to be a lot different this year and it will just get more and more different in years to come. It looks like once again my writing will be the saving grace to a more memorable holiday.

So if you’re the kind of person who is surrounded by a family during the holiday, embrace them, be joyful and celebrate the love you are fortunate enough to have surrounding you. Also remember the people that have no one and nothing, remember those who are grieving, remember those who are missing their families. It’s not all about joy, joy, joy to them. We’re grateful for every little morsel of love that is bestowed upon us. Be a light of love for others.

This doesn’t have to be a season of depression, I CAN and WILL make it a memorable season of joy. With the upcoming season of Advent, I will reflect on the true meaning of the season.

God Bless…

Job 6:10 Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

Alone

Num. 11:14 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.

I think I’m being selfish here.

I have no desire to live and every time I have these thoughts God places something on my heart to keep me here.

Is it Nebraska I’m tired of? Is it the life I made for myself that I’m tired of? Is it just me throwing a pity party for myself?

I think I’m tired of being alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone watching football, alone in my world where the only people I have to communicate is my son, and my internet friends who sometimes are the only thing that keep me alive. Yes, I know, with God I am never alone but I need a physical, emotional kind of love in my life that I’m not getting. Is that being selfish? Wanting to be loved?

The enemy has placed himself here in this house and I have no way of ridding him when I myself am hanging in the balances. I feel like a failure as a mother, a writer, a wife (when I was one) and definitely a failure in the relationship department. Anti-social is not me but out here in the middle of nowhere, one can begin to feel a little isolated from the world.

So where did the road start to twist and turn.  Well right after Adam graduated I felt it shift, then a month passed and we quit going to church. That was a depressing time, but I pulled myself out of the hole with the help of Bob offering me a place back in the writing world and I took that as a promising sign but the world around me was still crashing.

I continue to slowly spiral down with a few puffs upward mind you, but still, plummeting down. I completed a six-week fiction writing course and it was good, but I realized I’m really not cut out for fiction writing. I was seriously considering self-publishing until someone said, “Make sure you get it edited, your grammar is lousy!” This as my book of poetry was to be handed in THAT day. I backed out.

Then I fell. I tripped over my computer wire and didn’t have the ability to catch myself and I went down hard injuring my already throbbing back, the fall turned it into a bass pounding thumping that had me clinging to my cane for a day. Yes a cane, go ahead and tease me how only old ladies use canes, it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. I only use it for emergencies and this was an emergency.

Then there was the three days off. He had three days in a row off and I knew what to expect, a thirty-hour plus marathon of You Tube. Yeah, that’s real communication isn’t it. Uh oh, a dangling participle, sue me someone!

Then there was the news of our Christmas. Yeah, no exchanging of gifts, just a day of food and family. While it is HIS family and not mine, I’m sorry (selfish moment here) the exchanging of gifts, all sitting around, taking turns in opening them was a highlight of five years of Christmas’ here, all to be silenced by food. Joy! I’ll enjoy a few nibbles and savor every moment I have in a FAMILY atmosphere. Something I NEVER had or have in my life.

Can you tell I’m at the end of my rope here? I’m dangling and there isn’t one soul who is reaching out to comfort me, here in the pit of isolation. Then to top it off, a friend lost his mother, another friend lost his daughter, and yet another friend lost their father. Then there is this whole scare with Ebola and I’m clinging to the only light I had in my life these past few years, Pastor Mike. I listened to his sermon and I felt the fishing rod pulling me back to shore.

On an okay note, Medicaid sent me an application to RENEW? I had it the first year I came to Nebraska, but then the next year I became ineligible. Apparently living with someone means I make too much money (even though I don’t see or have a dime.) It came out of the blue and since there’s no guarantee I have nothing to lose, right? Right! I either get it or I don’t. That’s like saying I either live or I die, no biggy, I’ll take either one.

Will anyone read this? Will anyone care? Probably not. If I don’t post in on facebook, no one will even know this posts exists.

I’m sounding like an ungrateful whiny brat, I know. But I’m done. I’m not anyone’s doormat and I have to be done.

I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Even in my darkest days, He assures me I have a REASON to be alive.

Poetry Sunday ~ Fiery Pit

Isa. 13: 8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

Fiery Pit

Alone in the fiery pit

No one near to see

Flames licking at my side

The walls that smother me.

Heavy eyes raised to glance

The yellow, orange and blue

Holding me within its grasp

Feet cling to the floor of glue.

I cannot move; no hands reach out

I’m caught in the raging flare

The sound is all but deafening

In its race to singe my hair.

Is this a dream I can’t wake from

The abyss alarmingly real

My limbs are numb as the blaze erupts

There’s nothing for me to feel.

Why do people pass right by

Not hearing the harrowing screams;

Is a smile enough to make them think

All’s normal or so it seems?

Alone am I in the fiery pit

While people are blind to the pain

They’ll live the fantasy that all is well

As I dance in the fan-flamed rain.

Move on you sleeping nation

Your hypocrisy is wearing thin.

Pretending to care and moving on

As I peel my melting skin.

 

 

Quotation Saturday

"The heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy" ~ Proverbs 14:10

I have chosen these quotes in light of the death of a beloved man who always made everyone else smile but was really crying on the onside. I know too many suffering with depression and maybe now is the time to bring this illness to the light of day. No more hiding!

SUICIDE

“…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
~ David Foster Wallace

“A lot of you cared, just not enough.”
~ Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain.”
~ Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star

DEPRESSION

“As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
~ Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

“Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.”
~ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
~ Sylvia Plath

LONELINESS

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
~ Maya Angelou

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

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
~ Mother Teresa

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

JUDGMENT

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”
~ Galileo Galilei, Frammenti e lettere

“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
~ Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.”
~ Criss Jami, Venus in Arms