I'm Alive

James 5:16 (ESV) “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” 

I’m Alive

Everyone draws concern when I'm away from the social media platform for a week. I imagine they all think the worst and have me dead in the still of the night. But I digress they all might just wonder whatever happened to me as my daily postings come to a halt. I love you all immensely!

I wish I was well enough to bring you great news, but no, I’m down and don’t want to bring others down with me. It’s hard visiting the social media world and see everyone happily moving along, portraying the perfect life while I’m out here miserable. And I know, they all have imperfect lives also they just like portraying the facade. I just could never do that in all honesty. I like dripping truth onto the page and sweeping up the mess as I move along.

I’m now housebound for the summer. I was housebound for the extensive, extremely frozen over winter and now that we've jumped right into summer with a day or two of a spring feel to it, I'm housebound again. I'm grumpy and not liking anything these days so I figure if I stay away from my friends and the social media, I can try and mend without hurting anyone with my snide lashings.

My inability to walk came to a complete standstill last week when I had finished mowing. I used to walk with a limp but now I can't even make it down a pair of stairs, and before you start telling me to see a doctor, that's easier said than done. If you're willing to come and shower and clothe me and place me in the vehicle and take me to the doctor, (if you can find a wheelchair when you get there) then attending a doctors office is not in the picture any time soon. Yeah, it's gotten that bad in just a week. 

My writing has come to a standstill, my walking to a halt, my mowing at a deadlock, my showering when I can, my joy on hiatus. I now write in Yahoo notepad since my MS Word is malfunctioning. My walking, what little I can do, is done with a cane in hand, my mowing is now my husband's fun. My joy? Well, that's taking its sweet old time in resurfacing as the enemy thinks its time to hit me full force!

I thought my riding lawn mower was going to be my welcomed joy this summer, heat or no heat, I would be out and enjoying SOMETHING in the world, but no, it just wasn't meant to be for me. Last week when I got off the mower my legs nearly crumbled. I came in the house to sit down and sitting felt like I had just sat on an ice pick and no one could remove the steel point hitting the nerve in my back. I was in pain worse than I had been in a few weeks ago when I didn't want to visit family but I did. I could not lie down (still can't), I could barely sit, cooking was out of the question so I just sat, and cried, a good long sobbing cry. The uneven land out here and every jostle the mower took, so did my already damaged back. 

I've rested this week staring out the window at the squirrels, bunnies, and birds. We've had pretty intense heat in the upper nineties so peeking my head out the door even became an unbearable task. This is not the kind of heat that arthritic people can endure. I'm here and I'm alive. I don't have my peppy optimism and inspirational spring in my step; negativity from the outside world seeps in whether aimed at me or not, so avoiding the social world helps. I just can't bear to see people happily enjoying the very thing that will kill me in the foods they eat and post happily because well, it's not killing them, yet. YET!

I do like seeing people happy and changing the very way they view their obesity. To overcome weight problems is a chore and one that deserves high-fives and demands hugs! I hope in some way that my testimony of healthy eating has impacted many peoples lives so that they WANT to live and not just live meal to unhealthy meal. Death is final! No, we're not going to take our bodies with us afterward but I feel what we ARE taking is our negative unhealthy thoughts. They don't just go, poof, because we die, they shape our very soul in the here and the hereafter.

If we remain positive, feed on health and nutrition, maybe, just maybe when we face the Lord, we can share the joy we had living with him, our Father who wants nothing but the BEST for us! Forgiveness isn't about doing wrong and treating your bodies bad all your life then when you get to heaven say, "Oh, by the way, forgive me for not cherishing the very sacredness of what you created in me." You knew all along your body is a sacred temple but spitting in the Lord's face is easier than self-control, I get it.

I'm alive. Even though I don't have much to do in a day, I pray, hours on end. It seems like everything has been taken away from me and all I have to do is pray. So if you don't see me for a spell, know that I'm out here, alive. If anything drastic happens to me, I've asked my husband or son to inform you so you will never be left not knowing what happened to Joni. To stay positive, I need to stay away from the negative, please understand that. I need to reclaim the joy that lies out in the dry fields buried. I will be back. You need patience as much as I. My love to you, my friends!

All praise and Glory to God! 

Ephesians 5:11-13, “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible — and everything that is illuminated becomes a light.” (NIV)

Mistakes Part II

Jas. 5:16 “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

Let me make something perfectly clear. In yesterday’s post I was going over mistakes I made in my life and I don’t want my reader to misunderstand me. I in no way regret not getting an abortion. Sure I was young, many would jump at the chance, but I CHOSE not to get an abortion because I don’t believe in them. I clearly was given a CHOICE and I chose life but God, for only reasons He knows, chose death. 

I didn’t make a mistake in getting married at seventeen either because low and behold, thirteen years later I would be blessed with a beautiful baby boy, living, breathing! My whole point in these mistakes posts is a chance to look back and see that they weren’t really mistakes after all just learning experiences. I learned I had a CHOICE as to what to do with my body and soul, no matter what age I was.

Granted, at such a young age my choices weren’t that great but I did learn from them and am a better person because of them. Many people make mistakes and live a life filled with regret; why didn’t I do this, why didn’t I do that? I’m here to tell you from experience that your life will be a living hell if you live a life of regret!

Maybe this is why I’m an optimistic positive person, because I see the glass as half full not half empty. I don’t live a life of regrets, I live a life of promise. My hope is that when you read my words, sitting there full of regrets, you think to yourself all of the good things that came out of what seemed like mistakes in YOUR life.

The only way to find healing, short of therapy, is writing; if not to the world then to you and you alone. Coming to grips with a hard past is a long road and one worth taking if you are ever to heal. Healing is a process, sometimes a long slow process but a process nonetheless. It’s a painful process too and there is no humor in going over the most painful parts of your life. Pain will resurface, tears will fall, loneliness will embrace you but it is all a part of the healing on the path to a better you.

What you have to try is this: Write down what you see as a mistake and right next to it write down a positive slant like what good came from that mistake. You might be the kind of person who is afraid to admit you made any mistakes and that’s okay too, I guess. Take note: Living in denial will hurt more than heal. You have to come to terms with the mistakes you made, your mother might have made or your father in rearing you and I tell many students to write, write, write and get it off your chest and onto paper! Granted you may have had the perfect life and made no mistakes. To me that is like saying, “I’ve never sinned.” 

Jas. 5: 20 “Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.”

I have to admit, writing is one thing I will NEVER regret doing. It has become an emotional healer for me whether in writing my story or writing poetry it has been a healer of all sorts on so many levels.

These things you write down can be for your eyes only and when you’re done they can be deleted or burned, if you wrote them on paper. That’s just one step in the healing process to make you SEE that you’re a better person because of your mistakes. You’re not a BAD person, you’re a healing person! Own it!

With the grace of God may you all find the healing that you seek. 

Acts 4:22 “For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.”