Peace Be With You

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Isa. 26:3 KJV “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.”

Peace Be With You

When I listen to Josh Groban sing, Oh Holy Night, tears puddle my eyes and begin the descent down my cheek. This is what happens when I hear songs of Christmas like Oh Holy Night, Silent Night, or Mary did you know. I’m not the jingle bells kinda gal when it comes to Christmas music. I want something that touches my soul from a voice and words who understand the meaning of what a holy night is.

Here lately it doesn’t take much for my eyes to water but it does take a lot for me to cry. Pain usually does that but during this season, some songs touch me so deeply I cry like a baby waiting the day I meet the Lord in His home, instead of the other way around.

This season calls out to me to share peace and love. While I can visually see the negative taking place in the world I’m like a horse with blinders on for this month and not seeing the darkness that will eventually smother the country. For this short time, I’m spreading peace and love to people so they understand the Glory of God in times of turmoil.

How can a person who’s been diagnosed with cancer find peace on any given day? I was telling my husband just the other day that people take life too seriously. I realized when I uttered those words that that is what makes me different. I don’t take life too seriously if I take it any way it would be in peace. The diagnosis may have come out of left field and I could’ve taken it so seriously I succumbed to the illness but in my eyes, I see it as just another hurdle and another day to share my Lord with my readers.

I know I said I won’t use the word for this disease, but sometimes I need to brush my face with a bit of reality, it really keeps me grounded and helps me to visually see the strength I carry with me every day. Some days I don’t feel like a strong person, I cry, I hurt, so I review my year and realize golly doggone it, I AM strong. It then fills me with the resources and confidence I need to move forward and to share my gracious words of truth with you.

When I speak to my mother she always asks what I’m doing or what I did on this or that day and I’m always telling her I’m writing. I told her I had a blog and I share my life story on a daily basis. I’ve told her this numerous times before but nothing sinks in unless it is negative then she holds onto it for years upon years. She said to me, “Well, you don’t share the bad stuff in your life do you?” I let her know quite bluntly (again) the same thing I bluntly tell my readers. “I am an open book! Good and bad, I hide nothing.”

I think she was shocked because after a few more words she said she was getting nervous and her voice was obviously agitated. I have told her numerous times that I'm a writer over the years but this time it sunk in for a brief second. This is the very reason she has no idea about my illness, she cannot handle the truth in any way shape or form and everything becomes negative. I sometimes wonder how I ever turned out. I know I shouldn’t badger my family and I don’t specifically pinpoint one person as the culprit of all the bad that took place in my life, I tell MY story.

Let me ask you this if you read my blog and day after day I told you how great and perfect my life is or my upbringing was, would my blog be worth reading? Honestly, don’t you like to read about someone who is just like you a sinner, having hard days, surviving a hard life against all odds just like everyone else on the planet? 

I’ve never been one to pretend or hide the truth of how I got to where I am today. I lay it out like an indoor/outdoor carpet and let everyone walk over the words and take them for what they need. I am who I am today not because of my mother and father, not because religion shaped me but because I found my God to be more trustworthy than any man walking the face of the earth.  I NEED to let you all know what He has done for me. The pits were pretty dreary and difficult but yes, we can all be pulled from the depths of hell and be carried into the Light.

I find a peace wash over me this holiday season knowing I am honest, loving, and caring. The stress that sometimes accompanies the holidays has not bitten me in the rear. I’m not even dreading the family dinner come Christmas day because my plan is to take for myself a mega salad that I’ll enjoy immensely. I may even eat a piece of ham and have a bun. They need to see God shining from me too as much as my readers need to see it. If you walk away with anything from my blog, walk away with seeing and knowing that God is ever present in this world, in me and through me, let the Light shine through.

All praise and Glory to God! 

Signs and Wonder

Pss. 71:7  “I am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge.”

SIGNS AND WONDER

I’m seeing the signs of healing and I wonder, is all of the hard work worth the time and effort to get to a healing point? I have to say yes because I know God has a purpose for everything. God uses pain and suffering to show you the miraculous. You might not see it as miraculous but trust me, to the individual the suffering is happening to, it is nothing short of a miracle.

It has been three months since the devastating blow to my ego, to my everyday life, to my harmonious routine, the blow to the core of my being. Why hadn’t I seen the signs leading up to this prognosis? Why did I ignore my instinct when any other time I listen wholeheartedly? I’ll tell you why I didn’t want it to be true. 

Back when I did a post Putting the Puzzle Together it made me think of those little pictures I used to do to connect the dots and in connecting the dots it formed a picture? Remember those? I used to have big thick coloring books filled with them. I loved putting puzzles together too and there is nothing worse than getting to the end of the puzzle and finding you’re missing a couple of pieces, or in connecting the dots you missed a number and the picture isn’t fully complete. 

I traced the puzzle pieces all the way back to childhood trauma of injury and the rancid acts of sexual abuse and have been mentally working on those elements to heal portions of me that need mending but I see I’ve missed a couple of pieces that were instrumental in completing the puzzle namely psoriasis. Why had I skipped it and left that major piece of the puzzle out? Shame? Embarrassment? 

In the past three months of researching the causes of this illness, I found a missing puzzle link in the fungal skin disorder psoriasis and another one in underwire bras. I know right, who would’ve thought? I’ve worn underwire bras my whole life and thought nothing of the warnings that they could cause breast cancer. I just thought they were trying to scare people but now I think differently. 

I have bought hundreds of bras in my lifetime and some have padding in them BUT there is a slot where you can slip out the padding? You ladies know what I’m talking about? Well, there are no slots to slide out the underwire. I hope by this posting and putting the thought out there, it will soon come to fruition and makers of bras will make slots to REMOVE the underwire, to protect women instead of worrying about making money off of them. 

As much as the Big C is a billion dollar industry, so are women’s breasts! We have organizations that fight for animal rights, for abortion laws, we have people fighting for the food industry but why are women not fighting for their dignity back? They continue to allow men to demean them in ways of Fredrick’s of Hollywood, where they are allowed television time to be displayed and flaunted all the way down to fast food restaurants like Hooters and Twin Peaks. It’s demeaning and degrading and women worldwide are allowing this to happen.

While I’ve made marked changes in my undergarment wearing, I’m seeing the signs of healing and no longer wonder. Rarely in my lifetime has my psoriasis cleared up, but now it has been clearing. I had irregular periods last year (due to being perimenopausal) but recently it has returned, when it would stop for months at a time. There are signs I need to look for since I have no doctor willing to do any tests to see my progress, I need to be vigilant and actually look and SEE the signs of changes. Hopefully, I’ll listen to my instincts this time if it tells me this alternative method is not working. Right now, it IS working and my healing is moving forward.

I’m aching in places that fill me with wonder. Every bump I feel, I wonder. Every bite of food that goes in my mouth, I wonder. Every day that passes I wonder. The difference is this, I don’t wonder out of fear, I wonder out of expectancy… the expectancy of HEALING taking place!  

Pss. 139:6  “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Truth, Respect

Matt 6:34 “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

RESPECT

“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

“I speak to everyone in the same way, whether he is the garbage man or the president of the university.” 
― Albert Einstein

“How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

ATTITUDE

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” 
― Marcus Aurelius

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” 
― Kurt Vonnegut

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.” 
― Seneca

INSTINCT

“In the name of being social, we learn to ignore our natural instinct.
Society keeps dictating do's and don'ts which we keep obeying day in and day out.” 
― Chitralekha Paul

“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. He has no automatic knowledge of what is good for him or evil, what values his life depends on, what course of action it requires. Are you prattling about an instinct of self-preservation? An instinct of self-preservation is precisely what man does not possess. An 'instinct' in as unerring and automatic form of knowledge. A desire is not an instinct. A desire to live does not give you the knowledge required for living. And even man's desire to live is not automatic: your secret evil today is that that is the desire you do not hold. Your fear of death is not a love of life and will not give you the knowledge needed to keep it. Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer--and that is the way he has acted through most of history.” 
― Ayn Rand

“If 'seeing is believing' what happened to taste, touch, sound and smell ? Did our creator really intend to favour sight over the other senses ? I don't believe so.” 
― Alex Morritt

“The Moral Law isn't any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts. (...) The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it isn't. If you leave out justice you'll find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity,' and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.” 
― C.S. Lewis

TRUTH

“Stop opposing the truths.The truth is truth no matter how you take it. It is not going to be changed for your inconvenience.” 
― Bikash Bhandari

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, "Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody." ... [My dark side says,] I am no good... I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved." Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen

“There is nothing that is going to make people hate you more, and love you more, than telling the truth.” 
― Stefan Molyneux

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.” 
― Michel de Montaigne

Pss. 25:5  “Lead me in thy truth, and teach me: for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Encouragement

Pss. 26:3 “For thy lovingkindness is before mine eyes: and I have walked in thy truth.”

ENCOURAGEMENT

“How would your life be different if…You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day…You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“You can get a thousand no's from people, and only one "yes" from God.” 
― Tyler Perry

“...You can do something extraordinary, and something that a lot of people can't do. And if you have the opportunity to work on your gifts, it seems like a crime not to. I mean, it's just weakness to quit because something becomes too hard...” 
― Morgan Matson

“Do not sit still; start moving now. In the beginning, you may not go in the direction you want, but as long as you are moving, you are creating alternatives and possibilities.” 
― Rodolfo Costa

ACTION

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.” 
― Jacques Derrida

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.” 
― C.G. Jung

“Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.” 
― Mitch Albom

DECEPTION

“Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” 
― Criss Jami

“People trust their eyes above all else - but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there” 
― Zoë Marriott

“When you look at the past without God’s eyes, you subject yourself to deception. The past no longer exists and God doesn’t linger there. However, Satan will show you whatever you want to see and believe, so you will be trapped in an emotion that cannot communicate truth, beyond what you want to remember.” 
― Shannon L. Alder

“People appear like angels until you hear them speak. You must not rush to judge people by the colour of their cloaks, but by the content of their words!” 
― Israelmore Ayivor

TRUTH

“I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.” 
― Abraham Lincoln

“I quote others only in order the better to express myself.” 
― Michel de Montaigne

“The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.” 
― Ayn Rand

“There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.” 
― José N. Harris

Thought for the Day: "Just as we can always find an encouraging word from God when we need one, always try to have an encouraging word for someone else in need. A well timed word of encouragement can change someone's day or, in some cases, their entire world." (see Ephesians 4:29) I hope you have an incredible day today my friends! – Elmer Laydon

Quotation Saturday

TRUTH

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
~ Mark Twain

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
~ Oscar Wilde

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
~ Winston Churchill

HONESTY

“We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.”
~ Robert Louis Stevenson

“ It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
~ George Washington

“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi

“Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”
~Jenny O'Connell, The Book of Luke

“Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?' have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avaoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you.”
~ Maya Angelou, Letter to My Daughter

DICTATORSHIP

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
~ George Orwell, 1984

“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”
~Bruce Coville

“Within a system which denies the existence of basic human rights, fear tends to be the order of the day. Fear of imprisonment, fear of torture, fear of death, fear of losing friends, family, property or means of livelihood, fear of poverty, fear of isolation, fear of failure. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity. It is not easy for a people conditioned by fear under the iron rule of the principle that might is right to free themselves from the enervating miasma of fear. Yet even under the most crushing state machinery courage rises up again and again, for fear is not the natural state of civilized man.”
~ Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution”
~Aldous Huxley

VICTIM

“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“You are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor. You have a history of victory.”
~ Steve Maraboli

“You can either be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It all depends on how you view your life.”
~ Maria Eleven Minutes

“As a victim of dictatorship, I will not cower in fear, I will face the battle alone and cease all pain endured.”
~J

Quotation Saturday

TRUST

You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough.
~Frank Crane


I trust everyone. I just don't trust the devil inside them.
~Troy Kennedy-Martin


People ask me why it's so hard to trust people,
and I ask them why is it so hard to keep a promise?
~author unknown


I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you”
~Friedrich Nietzesche


Trust is like a river. Sometimes you can go with the flow. At other times it drives you downstream at full force, spitting you out on the shore!
~ Joni Zipp

TRUTH

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson


I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart.
~Peter Altenberg

Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes


Truth is hard for some people because it shows an inner vein they don’t want exposed to the light.
~ Joni Zipp

HONESTY

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
~William Blake


Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.
~Josh Billings


I never lie because I don't fear anyone. You only lie when you're afraid.
~John Gotti

Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie.
~Robert Brault


Honesty is like a warm blanket wrapped around your body, layer it with a lie and it becomes a blanket of thorns to your skin.
~ Joni Zipp

LOVE

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry


When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks. ~Natalie Clifford Barney

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.
~Robert Browning

Love is the fire in the soul that burns for eternity. Allowing the flame to go out is certain death.
~ Joni Zipp

Quotation Saturday

HEALTH

The best six doctors anywhere
And no one can deny it
Are sunshine, water, rest, and air
Exercise and diet.
These six will gladly you attend
If only you are willing
Your mind they'll ease
Your will they'll mend
And charge you not a shilling.
~Nursery rhyme quoted by Wayne Fields, What the River Knows, 1990

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
~Mark Twain

Diseases of the soul are more dangerous and more numerous than those of the body.
~Cicero

In minds crammed with thoughts, organs clogged with toxins, and bodies stiffened with neglect, there is just no space for anything else.
~Alison Rose Levy, "An Ancient Cure for Modern Life,"
 
Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.
~Thomas Browne

HONESTY

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.
~Mark Twain

A half truth is a whole lie.
~Yiddish Proverb

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
~Aristotle

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread. ~Josh Billings

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
~Edgar J. Mohn

We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
~Tad Williams

“A lie is just the easy way out of things, but it hurts when TRUTH comes back and smacks you in the face!”
~ Joni

SELF-RESPECT

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.
~Jane Haddam

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
~Joan Didion

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
~Frederick Douglass

Never violate the sacredness of your individual self-respect.
~Theodore Parker

Quotation Saturday

HONESTY
We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. 
~Tad Williams

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain
 
Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. 
~Austin O'Malley

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

TRUTH
God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both. 
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart. 
~Peter Altenberg

Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was. 
~Robert Brault
 
It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. 
~Oscar Wilde

MORALITY
Morality is a private and costly luxury. 
~Henry B. Adams

It is with flowers, as with moral qualities: the bright-coloured are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet-smelling. 
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare
 
The Seven Deadly Sins are a litany of victimless crimes, compiled to distract attention from the bloody felonies of the righteous. 
~Robert Brault
 
Children lack morality, but they also lack fake morality. 
~Mignon McLaughlin

TRUST
 
I think we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. ~Henry David Thoreau
 
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough. ~Frank Crane
Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. 
~Booker T. Washington

I trust everyone. I just don't trust the devil inside them. 
~Troy Kennedy-Martin

In my life, I have trusted many, only to be let down. I am NOT always morally correct, which is a real bummer. But I know the TRUTH of MY God and will carry Him with me until we meet. ~joni zipp