Going With Confidence?

Ps. 118:8 “It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man.”

Going with Confidence?

I say this amid a week of doubts and uncertainty. While I still feel assured doing what I’m doing is the right thing, there are those days that doubt creeps in like the mouse you never knew you had peeks his head out as a crumb falls to the floor. You didn’t know it was there but sure enough, his eyes meet yours and he scurries away.

Here I am five days away from Christmas. The weather has been unseasonably warm, the winds brutal and just like Christmas itself will arrive, so will old man winter awaken on the twenty-first of December to give us our first real winter cold spell.

I’m going to be honest here, I don’t think I’m ready for the family gathering. I’ve noticed here lately it is getting harder to pass up those sweet treats, drinks and toxic (to me) foods. I do, but it feels harder than when this all began eleven months ago.

I caved last week after going through the entire food store full of Christmas cookies, eggnog, sprinkle-topped sugar cookies of seasonal red and green colors, biscuits and breads, turkeys and hams. I rounded the freezer section and WHAM there it was – a pizza – Maximus Supremus it said, with a window to gaze at the topping filled pizza. It somehow jumped into my cart and to my husbands' amazed eyes he questioned my choice. “I want pizza!” I exclaimed with tear-rimmed eyes and made it to checkout with pizza in tow.

That night for dinner I gobbled five pieces of the delicious cheese-filled topping exploding pizza after shoveling the small slices in my mouth savoring every single bite. Not without guilt, I might add because yes, the measly two pieces that were left, I left for my son to eat. Eleven months of not caving and cheating on my protocol went out the window for a brief moment in time when I indulged in satisfying my flesh! I caved!

While my husband himself has remarkably slowly given up his addiction to sugar and Pepsi, not for me, for his own health, still can eat what he wants. Most of the time the Doritos, or cheese and crackers, or the three-flavored popcorn in a tin, doesn’t bother me, but here lately with the facebook walls lighting up with sugar cookies and toxins that would kill me paint the walls in hopes of satisfying the ones that they will only slowly kill. 

The holiday is all about food and family here. It’s not about exchanging gifts, it’s not about seeing family you haven’t seen all year, it’s about getting together and sharing a meal. I remember last year on Christmas we were hit with a torrential downpour with hail, lightning and thunder crashing all around the vehicle almost keeping us from the visit. But we made it to our destination safely and of course, we had a great time. Their concern (after seeing we all made it) was wanting to know how I was doing and I basically said fine and that I’d have a doctor visit and would know more. And boy did I ever learn more. At the time I thought I was suffering from MS but little did I know it was much worse.

This year we’re going to be hit with a seasonal cold spell! Twenty-three degree high is predicted for Christmas Day. While many across the nation have already dealt with the blustery cold and snowy season, the fifties have spoiled us. This tiny woman, forty pounds lighter, might feel the biting cold more than I have in the nine years since I’ve been in Nebraska.

While I feel I’m doing well, I don’t feel ready to be seated around a table full of delicious smelling food that in years past I ate and enjoyed. I have to watch as people overload their plates, go for seconds, complain about needing to lose weight as they head to the dessert table and proceed to get two helpings. I have to remain silent as people overindulge, laugh and chuckle as they fill their faces, while I can’t as I’m writhing, holding back tears. I am going to need iron strength not to carry the bitter taste in my mouth that I have right at this moment.

Will this stop me from fighting my fight with everything I have? By no means! I am not faltering just because a Christmas party declares I NEED to eat the toxic (to ME) food served. I declare that I have at least twenty years left in me, assuming the world even lasts that long. I have a spiritual family online that loves and cares that I succeed and will lend me prayers where I need. I know I may come off as confident and secure but know, there are times I break, I cry, I pout, then remember to whom this season belongs to and am reminded that my strength lies in Him! I will go in confidence only because I know I am loved. 

Prov. 3:26 “For the LORD shall be thy confidence, and shall keep thy foot from being taken.”

Merry Christmas my Spiritual Family! I am counting on your prayers to carry me through with confidence! God Bless Everyone!

Elaine DeBoucher made this for me

Paranoia Won't Win

Pss. 3:8 “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah”

Paranoia Won’t Win

The holiday season is slowly creeping up on us. While Sunday the fifth was a family event for me, it was basically a prelude to what I can expect at the family get together for Christmas this year.

I think I can say without a doubt that this year has been a year filled with paranoia where toxins, food, and family are concerned. Oddly enough (or maybe not) my faith hasn’t been shaken as I fight for my life out here in the real world. I am more concerned with the food that’s being served at get-togethers and being around his family who might have questions, but paranoia didn’t win in the end. I shrugged off the anxiety and faced the people and event head-on.

When we walked in the door on Sunday, the aroma began its assault on me but didn’t break me. Society breaks me more than the family gathering ever can. Empty plates spread out on the tables and the attendees just finishing up, now in the chatting mode as laughter could be heard throughout. When we walked further into the house, his aunt asked me if I wanted something to eat and I kindly said, no thank you, we had already eaten. My hubby wasn’t hungry either as he ate a nice big cinnamon bun before we left our house. He’s been trying so hard to cut back on soda, sugar, and sweets that he turned down the brownies that his mother offered him until she placed them right in front of his face and kept asking over and over if he wanted any until he buckled. The man cannot refuse his mother. No means no goes right out the window.

The only one that opened the discussion on my health was his cherubic aunt. She is eighty years old but looking at her wrinkleless face, you’d never know her age. I’m telling you, my face has more wrinkles and age than her beautiful smooth face. She has the face that I’d imagine that of an angel having, it also helps that she reminds me of one of my grade school nuns. She drives down to Nebraska from Sioux Falls South Dakota to see her family a couple times a year!

She wasn’t intrusive, she was compassionate and I have no problem at all telling her how my protocol is going and all that I’m doing to keep myself alive. She is very supportive and agrees with everything I’ve done so far and will continue to do. She told me she prays for me every night and adds me to her church prayer list weekly. 

I realized something this weekend. I have an iron will! After being bombarded with what I should and shouldn’t eat for nine months, gently nudged with every beat cancer newsletter out there, with aromas abounding from every direction, I’m being, to me, brutally attacked by the toxic invasion.

Speaking of toxic invasion, I use my writing as a safe haven. My blog is my corner of the world that no one can bully me into submission. I write what I want and when I want, typos and grammar shreds to pieces in my hands and I don’t give a flying fig! If people worried as much about their health as they do my grammar incapability, I imagine they’d be pictures of health. I’m out here fighting for my life and you’re worried about a run-on sentence, a missing comma, and lousy punctuation? Honestly, I think you need more help than me. Just saying.

I write my blog as a journal. I share my blog so people can see what I’m going through and maybe in some small way help just one person to change their life. I’m not writing to be published, I’m writing for ME, to share with YOU, and hoping along the way, you see a glorious God working in me. That’s it, that is all I’m doing.

I think I may just need a break, from writing, from sharing, and basically from the world. God has given me the strength to get through this year; He has helped me decipher the positive from the negative. He’s given me loving caring friends who walk this walk with me and had it not been for them, I don’t feel I could muster the strength to get through all of the paranoia that invades my comfy zone.

I have changed so much this year, inside and out. I’ve allowed paranoia to try and take hold of me like the toxic everything that surrounds me. I am gently moving into what is good for Joni phase as I weed out the ‘I don’t need that phase’ and what OTHERS want for me. This journey is about ME. If your doctor wants to load you up on drugs and you take it all in like candy, good for you. Me, I am adamant about not accepting drugs as a normal way of living. I’m on a journey of health. If that offends you or makes you cringe, I’ll pray for you, it’s all I can do at this time.

I told my niece this weekend, “I feel great! I feel alive!” She asked me what I was drinking. I said I’m high on life! For four years I could barely walk, I was, many days, walking with a cane, unbalanced and depressed that my life was descending into a bottomless pit. God pulled me out of that pit with CANCER! While some see that diagnosis as a death sentence, I see it as a life sentence. I will have this illness for the rest of my life, but I am embracing the change of seasons not being swept out by fear and paranoia. God has granted me the STRENGTH to ACCEPT the things I cannot change, CHANGE the things I CAN, and the WISDOM to know the DIFFERENCE! (and no, I never went to A.A.) 

As God has abundantly blessed me on this journey may He bless you also on your journey. 

Pss. 24:5 “He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”

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.”

Love!

1 John 4:8 “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.”

I LOVE YOU!

Three simple words can change someone’s day, make their life feel worthwhile, send out positive signals of endorphins to move you and motivate you to go and have a positive productive day. 

I found this interpretation of love extraordinarily spot on! A good read on understanding the different levels of love. 

While love seems hard to define, my simplest explanation is this; God is love! If you can feel an intense compassion for everyone and everything in this world without being wrapped up in hate and finger pointing, you have found God and know all that He is! He IS love!

2 Tim 1:7  “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

When someone asks me how I’m doing, I’m thinking to myself, ‘well, I’m getting through every day and every single moment in love.’ Love is my emotional blanket and the one thing I will carry with me to my death. God is my love. This might sound weird but Jesus is the first man I fell in love with and to this day I still love all that He is to me. 

God is not anger, God is not frustration, so when you feel these things toward people you are not feeling God or displaying all that He is. The past couple of days feeling those emotions sent me into a repentance phase. Anger and frustration are not me and if any of my friends know one thing about me is I’m all about love. They see God in me through the love I emit.

Angry and bitter people say, ‘I have a right to be angry’ and maybe they do but it is not of God. I understand being angry some of the time but to consistently every day spew hate, anger, and frustration is a negative aspect that really hurts innocent people. Is that the intention of the grumpy angry person? It is certainly not who I am! When I feel that way I feel utterly remorseful and feel a need to repent and search my soul.

Just like this disease I’m carrying around, I didn’t see what my bad eating habits were doing to my body until it was too late and inside smothering me. This is the same effect that anger and hatred have on the people around you, you won’t know the damage you’ve caused until it is too late.

This isn’t just about food and what I can and cannot eat. I may come off as being consumed with telling you all of my eating woes. It has some to do with the Season of Family gatherings. When you say very clearly I can’t go to a restaurant or a reception where meat, booze, and more unhealthy stuff abounds because I don’t eat meat, I only eat organic veggies and fruit. They say oh, I understand, but then turn around and ask if they’ll see me at the Memorial Day cookout they have (every year). Well, the answer is NO, but then I’m explaining myself all over again! And no, booze is never ever served at their family gatherings.

I don’t want people to change for me, I want them to change for themselves. But please don’t expect me to be the same person I was a year ago because guess what, my life HAS CHANGED DRASTICALLY! I am not the same and I am all the better for it, too!

People don’t understand when a person is consumed with love and trying everything in their power and the Higher Power to bask in a healing waterfall. They only understand love when the need arises or when it fits their life. Can you imagine if God only loved you some of the time because He has a right not to love you ALL of the time? How unrealistic is it to feel that way? Well God does love you ALL of the time so what is so hard for people to love all of the time? I know... they're human. 

The enemy is out there lurking, trying to turn the love in the world into hate. I strive every single day to bring forth love and when I can’t, I close myself off from the world until I can come forth in the Light of Love once again to share a positive reflection of God in me. 

This week I lost an uncle, in April his ex-wife (my aunt) passed, and in December his son (my cousin) passed. Their deaths, three in the same family, have left me wondering, why has God taken them and left me alive? In the thirteen years that I’ve been away from my hometown I have lost seven family members that I can remember, it seems they just keep going. I know we all must go but seriously, why keep me alive? Is this the reason He brought me out here?

Mortality is not what I’m consumed with, I’m drinking in LIFE and LOVE and if you’re of the life and love portion of my life, I LOVE YOU; three words that can mean the world to someone. If you’re reading this, I THANK YOU for being on this journey, accepting me unconditionally and truly understanding what I’m going through! 

Thank you for reading. I’m healing and loving the world and embracing LIFE! Praise be to God! 

1 John 3: 22 “And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”

Quotation Saturday

TRUTH

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
~ Flannery O'Connor

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

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

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.”
~ George R.R. Martin

SPIRIT

“There is a light in this world, a healing spirit more powerful than any darkness we may encounter. We sometimes lose sight of this force when there is suffering, too much pain. Then suddenly, the spirit will emerge through the lives of ordinary people who hear a call and answer in extraordinary ways.”
~ Mother Teresa

“My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”
~ Mary (mother of Jesus)

“We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.”
~ Hermann Hesse

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
~ Albert Einstein

 HOLIDAYS

“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”
~ Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

“How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, His precepts!”
~ Benjamin Franklin

“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

Snowflakes swirl down gently in the deep blue haze beyond the window. The outside world is a dream.
Inside, the fireplace is brightly lit, and the Yule log crackles with orange and crimson sparks.
There’s a steaming mug in your hands, warming your fingers.
There’s a friend seated across from you in the cozy chair, warming your heart.
There is mystery unfolding.”
~ Vera Nazarian

“The silent night takes on a whisper of God that only we hear during the bells chiming at Christmas.”

~ Joni Zipp

A Time for the New Year to begin...

Ecc. 3:1-8 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
***

We’re three days away from the old year ending and and a new one beginning. I normally celebrate my New Year around Easter, when not only the calendar is marking a new beginning but the season of growth blooms into beauty, souls become redefined, and newness of life is being ushered in!

But the calendar demands me to flip the month over and start a new year. Although, I don’t feel it will be a new year unless I personally make the changes to make it a new year. So what am I going to do this year that’s different from last year?

I’m a woman of honesty, if you are my friend, I love you with a part of my soul that you can trust and depend on. I don’t do lip-service and call you friend, hence the reason I have a select number of friends on facebook. They are people who actually know me and want to be a part of my life, to accept someone just to accept them, is to me, not friendship at all.

So this year I will:
ONE, continue my selective few friends that I can bring into my bosom and call friend. That means I will embrace new friends in the warmth of my heart who would like to be my friend, in the truest sense!

TWO, I will continue to write my blog and keep the new writer’s of today abreast of all the new things going on in our writing community.

THREE, I will continue to pursue a publisher for my poetry. If not I will go the self publishing route, determined to get my spiritual uplifting words into many people’s hands.

FOUR, I am determined to grow in love. Even if I feel isolated and lonely, I will give all that I am to whomever is willing to embrace me and be honest and trustworthy! I need this in my life. I’m too old to play games of secrets, lies, mischievousness, and downright disloyalty. Betrayal is my enemy.

FIVE, I will cling to my spirituality even more so than I’ve already done this year. I have given my heart and soul to God and I expect respect from others who share in the same Glory as I. Don’t judge me and I won’t judge you.

These are just five of the new and improved me things that I will wholeheartedly pursue in this coming year. I had a blessed Christmas holiday with the love of beau’s family, and although my mother spent Christmas in the hospital back home, I was blessed that she healed and returned home to the warmth and loving arms of my father. Maybe this will be the year I finally make the trek back home to see my family. One can dream can’t they?

Off Topic...life

Prov. 14:13 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.
***

Today I’m going to go a little off topic. I mean after the exhausting week last week, I think my blog needs a break from all this writing biz. Sometimes it’s a welcome relief and I know you, my reader, you all like to see what’s happening in my life every now and again. Which not only makes me feel good, but it also makes me feel loved.

I never realized how depressing the holiday’s could be. I mean, in years past, living in Texas, I was down around the holidays because I missed my family back in Baltimore. I’ve been away almost eight years and only got back home once to see my mother and father. It’s around the holidays I miss them most. Not just Thanksgiving and Christmas, but holidays in general.

Back before I gave up my old life, my family was my life. Mother, father, sister, brothers, my son, hubby, nieces and nephews. The seasons of love, sharing and caring were all shared as a family. Sure I have a dysfunctional family but they are mine, and I loved the holidays with them.

Six years of loneliness and healing in Texas’ grand warmth, I started to get used to being alone and possibly never seeing my family again. My niece and sister came to visit me in Texas once, and beaus mom visited a couple times along with his aunt and uncle. But again, the holidays were just us three in our tank tops, putting up the tree, eating turkey and celebrating being alive. We did make a few trips to Nebraska in that interim.

My how much life has changed in two years. Beau went blind and life took on a whole new meaning. We both went through transitions of healing our hearts and souls and even Adam had his set of adjustments. Money commenced, warmth of the Texas heat was left behind, replaced by snow and wind and a life out in the middle of nowhere, except there was a difference here in Nebraska; family.

The holidays have a new shape to them now, spent among family, sharing the joy and laughter, but something is missing. As Adam (who did all the work) and I put our Christmas tree up this weekend, and beau sat on the sidelines moping, I realized life has changed all around for all of us.  Although we have his family surrounding us and special times are being had and memories are being wrapped in our hearts, we are still three people, in search of something we know we may never find.

Adam is off at school, I sit here writing and beau is absorbed in audiobooks and listening to movies. The holidays are upon us and it can be quite depressing. All I do know now is that I have the love of God in my heart and his plan is in action, and we all move with the fluctuation of the life energy that sustains us.

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