What I leave Behind

Job.30:18 “By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat.”

*No poetry Sunday, I have too much to say

What I'll leave Behind

Being hit this week with the diagnosis of cancer has left me in an emotional state that is totally foreign to me. I’m a person of light, love, and hope and this week I was tossed out onto the battleground of a disease that has plucked many members of my family (whether blood or friends) away and out of my life.

It started with subtle signs about a year ago in 2015, the year my aunt succumbed to some kind of cancer and my non-blood uncle to lung cancer. The signs were there but I brushed them away trying to hide from them so they didn’t see me and begin to form on me. I do know they went the cut me open, spread the disease, and radiate me, only for the diseases to stay dormant a year or two and resurface, wiping them out entirely. This is the way it was for members of MY family.

I’m thinking that this is the unexpected earthquakes or avalanches, tornados or hurricanes that come in and rattle the very routine existence you live. Day after day we routinely wake, have coffee, shower, go to work, sit on facebook and many do it day after day thinking possibly this is all God has planned for my life.

I was asked what I’m feeling right now and honestly, I don’t feel. What is on my mind is what I might have to leave behind, then with this morning's sermon I was smacked with the reality that this is just God shaking up the routine I call life.

Have you ever lived through a tornado, hurricane or earthquake? Did you lose anything? Well for some, they lose EVERYTHING while some lose a little, and some nothing at all. Sometimes lives are lost and the ones left behind have to sit in wonder of what just happened and try to grapple with the reality that their lives were shaken completely off the axis of routine living. 

You may think that your life is going to end because you can’t live without routine but let me tell you, God does not like people to become stagnant and stuck in a routine for months or years on end and this is the reason we have shake-ups in life that come completely out of nowhere.

My routine life is going to be shaken up big time. I will no longer wake, sit at the computer, write and surf the web, nope it will be slammed with test after test, surgery and possibly radiation for days on end, week after week, then I’ll either be defined as a survivor or a victim. I choose survivor, but MY plan might not be God’s plan. My husband’s routine of waking and sitting on the web, playing his games, surfing YouTube will be massively shaken but I’ll see him trying to cling to what he thinks is HIS routine not realizing that God is in control of ALL OF OUR routines! Hubby will try to remain in control when basically we’ve never been IN control in the first place.

While I think about what I might leave behind, my husband, son and my family I also have to think of what lies ahead for me and that is the journey to our amazing Father. Yes, no matter what I am put through I will still see God as amazing. He doesn’t want me to focus on what I’m leaving behind, He wants to chisel away all routine brick and mortar and place my eyes on the spiritual route that my life has been and will continue to be in the hereafter. 

Day after day I wake and want to just wallow in a bucket of tears, and that’s okay because right beside me is my Amazing God saying, I can carry this load for you, I’m here for you. Isn’t that amazing? When we think we can’t take anymore, can’t cry one more tear, we have God, the Comforter ready to carry the weight of the load. We might think he’s forgotten us but no, it is during that time He is remembering all the beauty He created in you and looks and says, “I did good! She’s beautiful!” That my friends, is my solace, knowing God sees the beauty in me that he created and I gave to the world.

As much as you want to cling to that routine fantasy life, and hide from the reality that has shaken your world via tragedy or illness, keep in mind that it is NOT your life, it is God’s life. Just because you bought and own that new electric self-driving car it is not yours, it is in the hand of something more powerful and electrifying than you.

When a tragedy strikes and your comfort of a routine is gone, don’t fight to get the mundane actions of a day back, take this time to seize the opportunity to CHANGE your routine, because rest assured if you don’t, God will!

1 Cor. 15:51 “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,”

MTOC ~ Day Three ~ Choice

“When faced with senseless drama, spiteful criticism, misguided opinions, walking away is the best way to stand up for yourself. To respond with anger is an endorsement of their attitude.” ~ Dodinsky

I have laid my past to rest and crawled out of the darkened pit with my fingernails intact as well as my dignity. While I could have lashed out at my sister for her insensitive ignorant remarks toward me, my son and my husband, I CHOSE the higher road and continue on with my life that I have built for myself. Not with the help of any blood family members who remain anchors that weigh me down. I now look to my Spiritual family to lift me up on a daily basis. 

We ALL have a choice and while some will cling to the bitterness that shapes their life, I CHOOSE not to allow anger and bitterness to define who I am now. THAT my friends is God in me. It isn’t any scientific psychological mumbo jumbo, nope it’s that God mumbo jumbo that I keep telling people about. 

I have a friend who over reacted to something she had seen. Apparently Kirk Cameron is doing a tour giving HIS testimony of Christ. While he has the star quality that I don’t have, his words are going to be faced with pretty much the same criticism I’m faced with in my testimony. Us God people are just freaks of nature. I along with millions, and possibly billions are all wrong and all freaks of this ‘God’ we speak of. 

What did Kirk Cameron say that ticked my friend off? 

He said, "Wives are to honor and respect and follow their husband's lead, not to tell their husband how he ought to be a better husband," he says. "When each person gets their part right, regardless of how their spouse is treating them, there is hope for real change in their marriage."

She raged on, (I won’t share her entire post for privacy reasons) but this is some of what she said:

“If this is what being Christian means, then I don't want any part of it.” 

What she said, loosely, is that she heard Cameron say that women are to be servant slaves to their husband. His sister Candace said that she agreed with Kirk and is submissive to HER husband but what my friend missed was the CHOICE of the entire message. I think she missed the point that we, men AND women, are to love, honor, respect and cherish one another. Not be slaves but to honor one another.

I don’t judge her for her opinion on the matter because it is what I see as a national problem with the message that Jesus was trying to convey. People mix the Old Testament with the New Testament and make confetti of the words and dish out what suits them. They dissect the word to fit into their little world, they use the words like wet clay and try to form those words into a belief system that suits or doesn’t suit them. To ME, it looks like they’ve made an ashtray out of the Word of God.

They try going to church but again, they’re met with confetti and don’t understand what is being said. They’re looked over, gawked at and made to feel like an outsider so they flee from the church never to return. They hear people TALK about the Word of God but for some reason, they don’t SEE the word of God working in people. Is that because the Bible bearers ACTIONS are not equal to what they are saying? 

It’s a fine line sure, but also, it is a matter of CHOICE. When you look at the starry sky at night lit up like diamonds scattered on a sunny beach do you see a disorderly array of stars or do you see things like Cassiopeia, Orion or the Pleiades hiding within the astrological signs? This is the same thing when people hear the Word of God or people speak of the word of God. Others hear a disorganized message or they hear a divinely orchestrated message hidden in there. 

Last year when my dad passed away, I couldn’t make it back home and it gripped me for months, the guilt, the hurt, the suffering pangs I felt. My sister in her obvious dislike for me (I’m not going to pretend otherwise) had said, “Well YOU made the choice to leave here!” I rightfully said, “Yes, yes I did, I chose LIFE over death.”

I had suffered back home and nearly lost my life on more occasions than one, so leaving my husband WAS a choice of mine, a CHOICE of survival. Those people enslaved me and kept me bound by their misfit whims of dysfunction and I just assumed that that is how life was supposed to be. I prayed often for deliverance from the hell I was entombed in. 

It wasn’t until I found freedom in the land of Texas was I able to see the outside world and after months of suffering anxiety attacks nightly, running off hyperventilating on the dark streets of Texas, I slowly got a grip on what reality looked like. My years and years of prayers were finally answered; I was free from enslavement. 

God put me on a path and only because my choice was Him did my world start to turn around and I saw the light of day. When I tell people of Christ, it isn’t from a high and mighty pedestal, it isn’t from a wealthy sculpted upbringing, it isn’t from being shaped by a defective family, no, it is from a woman who CHOSE God over living to the conformity of man. Yes, the same men who wrote the Holy Bible, Old and New Testaments. 

I live for the mysteries of God. You’re right people, the Bible is a bunch  of words, supposedly the divine intervention of God Himself, but it isn’t until you CHOOSE the Holy Spirit to live IN you will you ever grasp the meaning of one word or message from the Holy Bible. 

Acts 15:7 “And when there had been much disputing, Peter rose up, and said unto them, Men and brethren, ye know how that a good while ago God made choice among us, that the Gentiles by my mouth should hear the word of the gospel, and believe.”

Poetry Sunday ~ O Soul of Mine

Isa. 42:25 Therefore he hath poured upon him the fury of his anger, and the strength of battle: and it hath set him on fire round about, yet he knew not; and it burned him, yet he laid it not to heart.

O Soul of Mine

O fretful soul of mine that grieves
Is it thou that freely leaves?
Lost amid the fruitful wine
Fleshing over such fragrant vine.

Will thou remain a mystery;
True divine I never see?
Or wilt thou rain on me with blessing,
Teach me yet another lesson?

Scouring through the murky mire,
Passion snared for earthly desire.
A valiant cross that I must bear.
My heart entwines in thy snare.

O earthly soul for all I gave,
Dwells within a darkened cave.
Allow thy shield of purity,
Seep in through my elegy.

Allow thy light to shine on me,
O soul of mine I thrive on thee.
Bequeath me in thy blazon glory;
Release from me this inner fury.

Pss. 11:1 In the LORD put I my trust: How say ye to my soul, Flee as a bird to your mountain?

Poetry Sunday ~ The Mystery

The Mystery
 All rights reserved: copyright © Joni Zipp
 ***
Within the snow capped dome I see
the mirror image looking back at me
Ice propels one to bliss
the wash of love I dare not miss.

The pine it lingers in my soul
fragments left to control
the gifts are but a vivid illusion
of life that struggles with confusion.

Christmas carries an air of mystery
as does the spirit throughout history.
Propels the thoughts of one who sleeps
into a place where cynicism weeps.

Allow the truth to never hide
Christmas day I will confide.
Hold out the hand of all you ration
within your heart the stem of compassion.
***
All rights reserved: copyright © Joni Zipp

author’s note: I have no idea where this came from! But read and gain what you need to. The message is there.