Faith, Strength, and Determination

Side by side, me and my God

Zeph. 3:17 “The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”

Faith, Strength, and Determination

Again, after the diagnosis, I knew what I wanted and it wasn’t chemotherapy. The days following the Big C diagnosis I did a lot of talking to God and asking Him where it is that HE would have me go. I was listening, hearing, and leaning on his promise. I knew what I didn’t want and that was to be sliced open, radiated, and given chemotherapy for YEARS then be placed on meds until my imminent death. Or I didn’t want midway through the course of the treatments to change my mind THEN decide to go the healthy HEALING holistic route. No, I would need FAITH, strength, and determination!

I felt like this was a race of a lifetime. The race where I might struggle and fall at times and would surely need God to come and hold me up and help me finish each stretch of the journey. You see, I think people get the wrong impression of God being a punishing God, one who wants to take you out swiftly because you’re a sinner. They could not be more wrong. This is my take.

When God created the world and sin slithered into the picture God the disciplinarian stepped in to show mankind the path that we should go. We were aimed at leaning on Him and trusting that He knew what was right for us. Man didn’t want a Father to lean on; man relied falsely on himself to take care of matters. Selfishness and greed ruled and God in his eternal love for what he created gave discipline where discipline was due. Then he rested, He let man try and shape his moral dilemma and we failed miserably.

That’s where Jesus stepped into the picture. God, as man, lived on earth to feel the intensity of what sin in the world was in ‘real time’. What is so ironic is that God could feel the anger of mankind destroying all that He created, but he was never tempted to be like man. That is what set Jesus apart from the selfish greedy man. Man could not, then or now, accept the fact that there was perfection allowed to walk the earth. Man was and is still consumed with himself only allowing God into the picture when they need Him.

Prov. 3:5 “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”

I am deeply rooted in my faith. It is no better than yours and no worse, it is different. We are all allowed to think and feel differently about our beliefs as long as we know where to lean when times of trouble arise. Man still wants to do things for himself, a kind of not wanting to ‘burden’ God with his problems sort of matter. As for me, I always lean on God for even the smallest of things, seriously!

Well, this diagnosis was nothing small but I still turned to Him first. Was I wrong? In my mind, NO, I’m different. Some people take a doctors word as solid truth with no room for error. Some go for a second and third opinion for a reason, I like to think it’s because their gut instinct is telling them something doesn’t feel right. My gut instinct is God in me, holding me up and carrying me and giving me strength and determination in places where others might fall. He shows me the way in which to go and I follow with no doubt or mistrust in the midst.

1 Pet. 1:8 “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:”

I got a first and second opinion and what it felt like was that same small child who was on the playground being bullied. I felt like my opinion didn’t matter and I was supposed to lay down my life for this disease and adhere to the almighty doctor who doesn’t know one hair on my head but thinks he knows what is best for me. Bullies belittle and shame you into submission. Out of fear, you crumble and fall, it's the human thing to do.

Luke 12:7 “But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.”

I went that route of the bullies as a kid. It didn’t work then and I was led down the wrong path and only when I trusted with everything in me, God my Father, that is when my life turned around. At the doctor’s office, I felt the taunting fingers, pointing at me, screaming and telling me I’m wrong and that I was nothing, I was not committing to their plan and no, they were not happy about it. Just as it was when I was a kid and turned to God, I was shunned, the doctors then released me and would not claim responsibility if anything were to go wrong. No tests, no follow through, nothing. Like bullies who didn’t get their way, they stomped off into the sunset, onto their next victim.

I was scared and alone but everything in me told me to trust in God. As in the past, I knew the path, I knew the trust and faith I needed to put in Him. No, it would not be an easy task but it was a route that I trusted in my very being, my soul was in the safe familiar territory.

By the grace of God, I was now filled with strength and determination. Out in the small crowd of family and friends, there would still be wagging fingers, taunting and unbelieving of the idiocy. How dare I go against what they themselves found to be truth and trust in the doctors. Who am I to go against the grain? What makes me any better? Nothing, she’ll fall! I allowed the doubts of the naysayers to tinker in my mind for a spell. Not for very long as you can see. Almost one year has passed and I’m still going strong, feeling great, am forty pounds lighter, and people now want what I have! 

Trust, faith, strength, and determination. They’re all yours! They’re already inside you, you just need to tap into them. It is hard since we’ve been conditioned to trust our fellow man but let me tell you this, in all honesty. You know how you have a friend that you trust with your life? You’ve told the biggest secret to and they carry it with them without sharing it? Then one day it happens, you come home and find that the secret has been spilled? Yeah, God’s not like that. He is the ONLY One you can tell the secret to and trust He won’t tell a soul. As a matter of fact, He already knows the secret before you tell Him, He would just like you to claim it, put it out there for Him to carry for you. That’s me! I share with Him my deepest darkest secrets and trust Him to carry it to my grave. He does, with Light and Love.

As I go on, He is my strength and determination. My faith is in Him and Him alone. The taunters and teasers are silenced. The naysayer is drowned out, limping along the road in doubt and fear in a sunny oasis waiting for one dribble of water. Me, I have a fountain full of faith that I’ll shower them with if only they’d be open to receive. 

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the EVIDENCE of things not seen. (My motto by the way) Strength is the leaning not on my own understanding and trusting God implicitly. The determination is knowing there is an eternal reward at the end.

Heb. 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

May the Grace of God be with you all! 

A New Year

Psalms 116:8 “For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.”

A New Year

Winning! Victory! Health! Out with the old in with the NEW! 

This New Year is going to be all about health and what the mind can do to help you organize a mindset of winning, for your health. Healthy living is hard. Expensive? If you’re sitting there with cable television, internet, a new iPhone and other gadgets, is your internet use more important than your health? You say you can’t afford healthy food but again, there you sit with gadgets out the gazoo that you pay monthly for upkeep but why isn’t your health worth the same upkeep?

Then I see people trying to navigate their health with supplements. When this disease hit me I turned into a research guru on health and am certainly more knowledgeable than I was a year ago. 

Your health cannot be obtained by supplements and this year my journey is all about healing and health. This year isn’t about a disease or illness. It isn’t about how bad I’m doing, this year is about how GOOD I am doing! Not many people want to know about healthy living but if you do, join me on my journey.

You might be asking yourself where does my strength come from. I hope you know me well enough to know but if you don’t and want in on my little secret, again, join me on this wondrous journey of health and healing!

Many people are amazed at my willpower and I myself am kinda shocked at the will I have to want to remain alive and healthy. I assumed everyone was like me but as I’ve seen my husband struggle with giving up this or that I realized that not everyone has my iron strength. Don’t think this as me stroking my ego because I’ve said numerous times I don’t know where it comes from but I have a clue.

As the New Year unfolds and people are making fake resolutions that they know full well they’ll break in a month, try giving up something on a smaller scale. Not as a resolution to break but as a victory to gain your health! Make it a goal to finish by years end instead of in one night of wanting and wishing. This year I challenge you, strive to give up three things: sugar, dairy, flour/grains. I myself have given up these three things and more, like meat, unhealthy carbs, and toxic living.

My strength comes from what I think is a culmination of multiple things put together. Think of a brick, alone, it is just a brick but where two or three are gathered it becomes a protective wall one that the Wolf in The Three Pigs doesn’t easily huff and puff and blow down. So when asked where mine comes from I have to say, there is strength in the number of bricks I use.

Number one is faith. Walking a fine line between doubt and faith will not work. God was right, man cannot serve two masters. You either walk strong in your faith or you walk a line of doubt. Minimal faith doesn’t cut it when your life is on the line. Take the word ‘but’ out of your vocabulary. I ‘think’ I can do it with God, ‘but’. There it is, the fine line of doubt! Get it right to find success.

The second bit of strength I find is in support. If you don’t have support, anything you try, you will fail. When I was first diagnosed and told my friends I was going the holistic route and trusting in God and my faith, some were in shock and fled, others were extremely opinionated while others moved in closer to give me their full support. Unload the non-supporting crowd, they are not worth having in the first place.

The third portion of my strength is DETERMINATION! When you want to quit drinking, smoking, to lose weight and become healthy you MUST be determined to succeed! Have you ever taken diet pills to lose weight and they didn’t work? It’s because you thought the pill would do all the work for you. That’s not how it works. Your determination is the WORK you yourself put into your eventual victory.

Number four is CHANGE! To become healthy, lose weight, quit drinking or smoking you must change! Change your diet, change your habits, change your routines. To SAVE your LIFE, CHANGE your life! In the beginning, my husband was an obstruction but to me I saw it as a challenge. When he reached for a smoke, I took a walk. When he reached for a Pepsi I refilled my glass of water. When he ate candy I ate fruit! Over time, the weight melted off like butter in the sun and I felt healthy and the best I've ever felt in my entire life. I started feeling better, eating better and living better. Guess what happened? I was having an influence on my hubby and others. In just two months he has given up sugar and is actively changing!

His health is changing, his weight is changing and this wasn’t because he made a resolution in the New Year it’s because he was determined to stay alive! Isn’t that what we are all striving for? In the coming year, the majority of my posts will be about health, eating right, exercise, strength and determination! I might even toss in a few recipes. Live or die!  I wish someone had said that to me more bluntly in my early years, maybe I wouldn’t have shrugged off healthy living for the lusts of the flesh. A Happy, Healthy New Year to you! 

Gal. 5:16-17 “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

Quotation Saturday

James 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life.

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~DETERMINATION~

“In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer.”
 ~Albert Camus

“I think I’d like to be remembered as someone who beat the odds through just plain determination… that I persevered. Because I think that being somewhat of a pest to life, constantly plaguing and pursuing, will bring results.”
~Sylvester Stallone

“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
~Ella Fitzgerald

“Have the dogged determination to follow through to achieve your goal; regardless of circumstances or whatever other people say, think or do.”
~Paul Meyer

A realistic assessment of my strengths usually turns up several weaknesses also. Becoming more self-accepting involves not only awareness of strengths but also the acceptance of my weakness not in the sense of not wanting to do something about them, but in the sense of not letting them block the use of my strengths.
~David G. Jones


I grew up in very difficult times. I observed and learned. Nobody was preparing me, I was preparing myself. I was trying to get the most out of life.
~Will Robinson

~Perseverence ~

I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.
~Christopher Reeve
 
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
~Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

~Journalism ~

To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter. ~Aleister Crowley (1875 - 1947)

But what is the difference between literature and journalism?...Journalism is unreadable and literature is not read. That is all.
~Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Critic as Artist, 1891

The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.
~Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

A Determined Writer

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

There comes a time in a writer’s life when you become determined to succeed. Success is never put into a measuring cup and told X amount of writing is just right. No, you need determination to keep on going even if the fruits of your labor are not paying off.

Writers need to read and they need to read a lot. I don’t just mean to read fiction from the classic genre to the contemporary authors of today but also they need to read about the craft of writing.

You might ask, "What can I learn from someone else who is already published?" Well for one you can learn style, rhythm, and all sorts of good things like suspense, how they built up a character, introduced a character and how they brought the character to life for you, the reader.

From your fellow author you can learn what it is in your writing that will carry a novel or short story. You might learn that your story is not going anywhere and by reading, you might see where you’ve gone wrong. "Did I give enough suspense?" " Did I build a conflict?" "Did I give a satisfactory ending?"

All of these questions can be asked if you read! Become a detective and dig up all of the clues that make this author so special. Reading is an essential part of becoming a writer. Why did you become a writer to begin with? Was it because you read a book and thought, "Hey, I can do that?" Or did a novel leave you unsatisfied and maybe you said, "I can do it better?"

Once you’ve mastered reading, you then become an analytical reader. You’ll find yourself liking and disliking certain things that a writer does with their writing. Find what his/her style, metaphors, too much imagery, not enough imagery is keeping you reading. Maybe take notes of what you liked and keep them handy for when you write on your own.

If you’re hitting stumbling blocks in your own writing, look to other writer’s to aid you in accomplishing this dream of yours. It is through the authors, published or not, that will move you toward your goal. And then it is time to really sink your teeth into writing and have the determination of an athlete. Imagine yourself going for the Gold in an Olympic dream.

Be determined to not only be a reader but to be a writer, a PUBLISHED writer. Homework people, it’s all about doing your homework. You can’t just write for a year and give up. You’re not showing determination in giving up. You need to daily, and I do mean daily, work at bringing this dream alive. I won’t allow weekly or monthly writing. A true writer KNOWS what he needs to do. So what do you say?

JUST DO IT!

Determination

Now that we’ve had our dose of inspiration to get us writing our fingers off, I think we need to put our writing into high gear and give a swift kick in the rear to DETERMINATION.

Determination (ie: fixed direction or tendency toward some object or end)
is another way of persevering. Perseverance means the steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., esp. in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

Did you read that? In spite of difficulties; in spite of obstacles or discouragement you need to show the teeth of determination. You have been given a purpose, you’ve found your direction and now you need to jump full throttle into action to see your dream realized.

I know some writer’s who give up. Sometimes life throws a hardball at them, they have kids, and everything gets lost in the vortex of living. But writing isn’t about, leaving and coming back to it again. Maybe today I’ll write kind of attitude. Writing is about determination in seeing the dream that began as a seed inside, flourish. Don’t allow someone or something to discourage you!

When you wake up, live and breathe writing, you know you’re a writer. Sure there is time for walks, jogs, swims, dog playing and child rearing, but interlaced in the day has got to be a determination of allowing yourself to bloom. Writing, whether it is journaling or story telling, article writing or novel writing, if you are not determined to bring your words to life then the dream withers, the bud dies. All water will be drained from the dream and no persistence will carry you through this stage.

I say wake up, have that cup of coffee, tell the world your coming and drink in the sunshine as you tap on the keys. Be determined to succeed. Tell yourself you can do it, envision the picture, paint the picture and display it for the entire world to see.

If you can see the road ahead that you want to take, don’t allow the heat to cause a wavering mirage so that you lose sight of the road. Keep the picture of what you want to become clearly in focus, tell yourself over and over that YOU ARE A WRITER, be determined in seeing your words spill onto the page like liquefied dew.

Once you have a point A clearly in view, point B will follow with determination and perseverance. Whatever you do, don’t give up! Even if you write 100 words a day, keep at it, keep positive thoughts always front and center. Save the revisions for another time. Right now it is important for you to bring this dream to life and allow it to take hold of your being.

My son sees me write so much that he is now writing. He has three stories in the works and for some reason he is determined to be a published author. I keep telling him to keep at it. He is only twelve years old and new ideas spring in his head all the time. I try to explain that he needs to finish the ones he started before he can leap into another one, but at least he is writing the ideas down and getting them out if his system.

Maybe being a home school mom wasn’t such a bad idea. Everyone told me that he would never adjust to the world and here he is with the determination of a tiger hunting prey! That’s my boy! :-D

Be peristent! Be determined! Make your dream happen!

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne