The Story Continues

John 7: 16-17 "Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.

If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."

The Story Continues

The story continues. As you know I've been having side effects from Herceptin; pretty major ones too, and I was fearing to go to the doctor. Earlier in the month I had my issues, Hubby had his unending cold/pneumonia, the road crew had their issues with digging up the roads after the flood and my house had its problems with the toilet leaking water all over the floor, in the basement and also the roof needing a major renovation, not having been done in twenty years or so. Then there was the sale of the property and the takeover by the new landlord. Whew, what a month of May, and it isn't even over yet.

The month May blew in with winter still hot on its heels. Yes, winter, meaning 35 degrees at night, meaning heater clicking on during the day, meaning cold in this drafty old house. I don't even know what issue to tackle first. How about small to big? 

The flood. Washed out roads all over Nebraska and we being way on the outskirts of town saw our road dwindle and wash away. The graders who tried to grade the road saw there was nothing to grade so a new plan was in place and that was to the pave the old dirt road after I don't know how many years. I know it's been a wish of mine for some time. That was at the end of March and beginning of April but storms and cold kept them from work. A month later in the middle of May, we're now seeing signs of the paved road and people can almost go back to normal. Almost...still a five-mile detour routes and we wait.

The house sale. Sitting at my desk my husband turned to me from his desk announcing, "Well it looks like it's been sold." I knew he was referring to this, I think it was 124 acres of land, out here for sale with our houses on it. I didn't know whether to be happy or relieved that someone might finally come and take care of the place. 

Let me refresh your memory. There's my neighbor, who has a nice house but seeing she is hoarder, that niceness gets swallowed up by what we might deem as trash. Then there is the trailer she once rented but kept for her, at one time four dogs, which all have passed except for one. But pallets and empty blowing flower pots, cars and trucks ruin that of ever becoming anything but a trash heap. Hopefully, someone saves the dog.

The landlord came and introduced himself a week later and he seemed like a nice enough man with his wife in tow. I'll just call them Jed & Josie. Good Christian folks too. I don't know, there is something about Christians that exude a living God and well by no mention of religion but casually mentioned they attended church on Sunday, I felt they were good people. He said he'd like to have our dilapidated roof looked at right away before it ever becomes a problem. I like him already!

Year after year each time an internet guy went on the roof he informed us to inform the owner of the bad roof, but nothing was ever done. The old landlord would come around and plow the grass after it got waist high, and trim trees, but year after year the grass and trees came back in full force.

Not this year, this year would be a different year! It would be the year of floods, rain, cold, and nothing but my Salvia flowers survived. That's how cold it got, everything froze under there. May 19th finds us rising to 40 degrees with 38 windchills and our small space heater coming in handy. Mind you it was in the eighties all week.

And wouldn't you know it, this was the week that the toilet would leak, through the roof, to the basement and an ensuing mess followed. This landlord was not concerned with a patch job on the toilet, like the previous landlord had been for years, no, he wanted to rip up the floor, have the toilet fixed and new tile laid! He wasted no time!

Now the roof. What should have taken one day to redo, they were met with numerous patch jobs from the previous owner, and had a four-day job on their hands! They were going to come Wednesday but changed it to Thursday. Thursday at six am. they arrived. By afternoon it was quite obvious the job would not be done in a day and by Sunday after much death of plants and destruction of what little garden I had, was now gone.

And to top it off, the owner on Saturday decided to rip down thirty-year-old trees that were breaking up concrete in his huge shed. The trees needed to come down. But on the day of the roofers? My anxiety hit an all-time high and an attack ensued. I was being picky, wasn't I? I had tolerated the barbaric treatment of my garden for three days but this day hubby had to work. 

I was good the other days sleeping through much of the chaos but Saturday, the neighbor who was now roofer, allowed his kids over and the screaming kids and hollering men mixed with hammering, banging, and heavy machinery moving trees, yanking trees out by the roots, and 100lb. me in a wheelchair. The pain was at an all-time high, everything happening blindly overhead and the curtains weres drawn tightly closed so as not to see the animosity surrounding me. Hubby came home around two pm. to make sure I was okay and I wasn't. Full-blown anxiety attack!

I won't share the ugliness of it all but by Sunday I was feeling somewhat better, but guess what, by the end of Sunday it started to rain and they were ALMOST finished. Really just a matter of cleaning their mess which they would tie down and come for on Monday. Monday came...and they didn't.

The owner came Monday, in the rain and had his Bobcat move a lot of the material tied down, and a bucket to the roofers' other piece of equipment. One trailer still smashing my plants and garden ornaments stayed (about twenty-foot long) and another sits out in the middle of the lawn smashing the saturated grass.

Chin up, Joni! Two doctor appointments today and one tomorrow, you NEED your strength for the unfinished paved but muddy roads. The Lord has tossed me a cyclone and I'm making a small tornado out of the situation. I have no choice. I'm sick, the events are upon me and I have to move on. We still have two more days to get through and the weatherman says about two-and-a-half inches of rain before all is said and done, on a state that has already declared flood disaster. Lord be with me NOW!

Prov. 4:10-11 "Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many. I have taught thee in the way of wisdom; I have led thee in right paths.

25-26 Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee.

Ponder the path of thy feet, and let all thy ways be established."

Salvia

Stress and the Net

Psalm 124:2-5 (NIV) “If the LORD had not been on our side when men attacked us, when their anger flared against us, they would have swallowed us alive; the flood would have engulfed us, the torrent would have swept over us, the raging waters would have swept us away.”

Stress… and the net

There’s a little too much stress going around the internet these days, stress I can not tolerate at this time. I really try to put a handle on it, but in the state of this disease that’s ravishing my cells, I need to control what stress I allow in and what stress I contribute to.

I’ve always been intrigued by weather so when Harvey was headed for Galveston Texas, I kept up to date on when it would hit, where exactly it would hit and the damage. I take devastation very seriously and deaths are nothing to joke about. 

After Harvey pummeled Houston, I began to watch a couple more storms snaking their way through the waters. The jokes from people not directly affected by the storms kind of took a sick and twisted turn. I think damaging a soul for the sake of a laugh is not of good character. You might find it funny and humorous that people are losing not only their lives but also many have lost their homes, their livelihoods. I don’t find it humorous, I’m sickened and saddened by the childish acts of supposed adults.

I didn’t retreat from the social media world when I should have because that is where the majority of my friends reside. I like to read and see what everyone is up to and I also like to be informed about the BC group and what is going on in the lives of other newly diagnosed patients trying this here alternative method. I aim to help but I realize that I’m not as well informed as I thought. Well for me, I am as informed as I’m going to get for now. Apparently, my first month of this crud I inundated my system with some great information.

I look to aid others in this quest but more times than not my words and assistance are shot down by those who know more than I know. I think also because I’m not needy, I’m informative and that threatens people sometimes. You see, every crud is different so what works for me might not work for them and vice versa, what works for them might not work for me. If I try to contradict what they’re saying I feel badgered so I pull myself away and into isolation I go. I sit back and listen but then the overload of information gets jumbled. I’m done trying to dissect all the information as it comes into view. I slowly back away.

Then another hurricane, Irma, took aim after devastating the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean then the beast set its sights on the U.S.! Trees and homes were chomped away like fried chicken and taters as the monstrous hurricane chewed its way through not only trees and homes but also lives. Irma was now setting her sights on Florida, another state with friends of mine. I can tell you, they were not the ones making jokes before or after.

After I made sure my friends were all okay, I chose to step back and take a breather. Away from the word cancer, away from people, away from drama, away from the stress drama causes, away from ignorance and hate and just isolate me and build strength in the Word!

While I can’t do much more than pray for the victims of the hurricane's devastation, my prayers will have to be a sufficient enough form of caring for those who’ve lost so much. While it does take the focus off of me, it hurts me to read and listen to the tragedy everyone has had forced upon them. While my heart bleeds for all involved, I feel selfish in caring for myself. I’m battling a deadly disease, these people are battling a tragedy also but at least they’re alive, for now so am I.

And to those who find humor in this devastation, I pray for them and their lost souls. Next thing you know they’ll be joking about cancer, oh no wait, that more than likely has touched their lives so no, they won’t joke about that. Our world is being consumed by its own form of cancer and while I like laughter as much as the next person, death and devastation are not the place and time to find humor.

Hebrews 13:5b, “For God has said, ‘I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.’”(NLT)

The End is Near ~ Part II

2 Cor. 2:9 “For to this end also did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things.”

By Monday morning the news blasted across the screen that there were “43 dead across seven states after a week of devastating storms, flooding and tornadoes.” And now we can add California too with a wildfire. We can’t blame terrorism for this one now can we?

We can sit comfortably at home and laugh the hardy har har and politicize this, we can scoff and chuckle at the terms “Global Warming”, “Climate Change” or El Niño but you cannot sit at home and deny that SOMETHING is happening! Or is all this just ‘normal’ weather patterns for you? Tornadoes in December? A blizzard in El Paso? Normal you say?

On Christmas day as we were driving home, we were bombarded by pellets. Not snow, not ice and not rain but pellets. I felt like I was in the middle of a packing war because they looked exactly like the packing material used when shipping something. It felt strange because just the week before we were basking in the fifty degree range. Yeah I guess that’s normal for Nebraska in December. I’ve been here almost seven years and haven’t come to know this as a normal December for Nebraska.

Another strange event happened on Christmas. We arrived home in time for the sky to darken as lightning streaked across the sky. No thunder just lightning. In strobe like fashion it blinked as if the earth was being short-circuited. I knew that on this Christmas there would be a full moon, the first Christmas full moon in 38 years, so it kind of felt like a phenomenal climax to the season; the kind you never remember having in your lifetime?

Many will politicize this, laughing at the politicians who tried to tell us what they thought was happening. Some will try Biblicism and call on Bible scripture to say LOOK, it is written! Scientists will shout out that they have been warning us for years and everyone just seems to laugh it off!

My take on this is, and I’m no scientist, I think WE as a human race have done this to ourselves! Our earth was dependent on us as a species to take care of the planet but no, we had to go and ruin it with our greed for more, more, more; more cars, more planes, more materials, more houses, etc. !!

I think the earth is at war with us! All of the having more of this and more of that is having a detrimental affect on us as a human race. Just as we have been infecting ourselves with poison ie: think cholesterol, alcohol, drugs, (legal or not) and thinking there are no ramifications, we are injecting the earth with a poison and now we are feeling the disease running rampant on our planet. 

Science can PROVE this but we sit back and laugh because we’d rather politicize it and place blame on OTHERS, not ourselves! We can be like Chicken Little and cry out, “The end is near, the end is NEAR” until we are blue in the face. Until you start taking seriously that the sky is falling and not doing something about it, then my friend, this IS the end… of TIME!

And the year is not over…yet.

May God humble you in these darkened days and may you see the Light that lies at the end of the tunnel. God bless you all!

Rev. 2:26 “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations:”

Sick Of It All

Ecc.10:13 “The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness: and the end of his talk is mischievous madness.

I’m seeing the devastation all around, not just in my homeland; floods, earthquakes, riots, forest fires, drought etc.  It’s easy to point fingers when it is all happening to someone else but clearly there is nothing to joke about when people are dying! Devastation is NOT a political joke, nor should you feel good about yourself in sharing in the ridicule.

Some will laugh and blame witchcraft and ignorantly blame gays for the Houston, Texas area flooding (even in jest it is NOT FUNNY). But will Florida point the same finger when THEY are hit with devastation? Or California when that big earthquake hits or are they blaming these folks for their drought? We live in a pretty sick world that loves laughing and pointing fingers all the while touting scripture that they pretty much don’t LIVE or TRY to live but they go on in their ignorant fashion laughing and blaming OTHERS!

When will man look in the mirror and blame himself for not doing one daggum thing? Never, that’s when because they’d rather laugh, taunt and mock other people for the devastation hitting the world. It makes them feel good.

Like I said before, I’m not affiliated with any political party and I can see clearly every single day why I don’t affiliate with the moronic conservative crowd that thinks their poop doesn’t stink and it is ALWAYS the other parties fault for EVERYthing. I don’t affiliate with the other party because, well, their not the brightest bunch of apples hanging on the tree either.

People of BOTH parties swim in rude ignorant behavior, they are hate-mongers who bask lovingly in all the hate they spew and actually feel good about themselves? I’d be quite embarrassed if I were them but no, they enjoy the hate; they love wrapping themselves in a satanic type blanket and cover themselves in scripture-chocolate-filled parfait.

A sadistic nation of people who call themselves Christian, whom I turn from on a daily basis and just about delete my facebook account daily too because their sickness will not infect me if I don’t let them.

From Bible Gateway:
Revenge belongs to God. If vengeance is God's, then it is not ours. God has not asked us to settle the score or get even. Ever.
Why? The answer is found in Joseph's statement: "You meant to hurt me, but God turned your evil into good to save the lives of many people, which is being done."
Forgiveness comes easier with a wide-angle lens. Joseph uses one to get the whole picture. He refuses to focus on the betrayal of his brothers without also seeing the loyalty of his God.
It always helps to see the big picture.

So who gives people the right to lash out? To hate? To mock, laugh, taunt and tease? It sure isn’t God! They say they know, they say this, they say that. People who blow breath from their mouths because they read does not make a person KNOW! I’m sick of it all!

Do you realize that people split hairs on the things they claim to know but really know absolutely nothing about, in my book? Because I choose not to hate people, because I choose to forgive, because I choose to live as a Christian has me splitting hairs and not wanting to be anything! I’m sick of it all!

They say they know Muslim but they are lying, they know OF them and judge ALL of them as Islamic haters and killers, and judge them as such. They say they know atheists but they don’t know them, they know OF them, and judge them as people who don’t believe in God so they must be judged. They judge the Buddhists that they claim to know and they even claim to know some Christians. Well let me tell you, some of the so-called Christians I KNOW are no better than ANY of these people listed above; they are in the exact same category that they place on the people they are judging.

What makes them better; because their God is better than the other god or goddesses? I’m just sick of it all. This country is going to hell in a hand-basket and it is those very judgmental freaky know it alls who are to blame! YOU are the very reason this judgment is raining down on us. “Judge not lest you BE judged.”

I want to know whose God died and made man judge and jury over it all? (Spare me the "Jesus died." He died for your SIN not for you to JUDGE)

 It seems the so-called Christians feel THEY have a right, the Islam followers feel THEY have a right, name any religion and they all feel entitled to be judge and jury of their fellow man. Only God the Father has the right to judge! And it is because of MAN that all this devastation is showering down on us. Because of YOU and ME! Not because of THEM (whomever you put in a box.)

The real CHRISTIANS are a separate crowd of people. THEY are the ones sharing love, comfort, compassion and understanding. If THEY sit in judgment, it is NOT publicly or socially, it is behind closed doors in prayer! It is THOSE Christians whose words I listen to and turn to, honor and respect on a daily basis. I will not embrace the hate mongers of society as my fellow Christian just because they say this or that is so! Deceivers and deceived they are.

I need to go pray, a nation of beasts needs my prayer.

Ecc. 10:14 A fool also is full of words: a man cannot tell what shall be; and what shall be after him, who can tell him?