What Portion Do You Believe

Pss 103:3 “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;”

If you’re a believer, then you believe without seeing. You believe because you read your bible and you believe the Word to be the truth. But how many believe that it is the full truth? Or do you only believe in portions? You believe God created the world, that Moses parted the sea, you believe Jesus rose from the dead, was it because the bible told you? You sit there believing He’s coming back again. But you have trouble believing Pss.103:3 where the bible states: “Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;”

It says he heals ALL thy diseases but we only trust Him to heal a few? That to me makes no sense. People can tell me until their blue in the face that ‘we need doctor’s to heal us’, but in my eyes, doctors are for treating symptoms never really addressing the underlying CAUSE. I believe God is the healer of the cause. You might find that one rare doctor who is willing to assist you in finding the cause but essentially it is up to you and God whether you find actual true healing. Maybe your doctor is guiding you in the right direction but I myself don’t believe God is a God of drugs.

“Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;” If you don’t believe He heals ALL diseases, in my eyes, you only believe a portion of the bible. It is so hard to truly trust the Word because we’ve been so conditioned to believe man for all he says and all that he offers. We take his word at face value and it holds solidity to our belief system. Then and only then do we truly rely on God’s word to heal ALL of our diseases. 

You might believe wisdom comes from man but wisdom cannot come from man it can only come from GOD! You might glean knowledge from books but wisdom to discern is solely from God; from the Spirit that dwells in you, the same Spirit that has you trusting in Him completely. Either the bible is true or it’s not. I don’t believe the bible lies in some places and suddenly exhibits truth in other places. Either the entire bible is the truth or none of it at all.

I mentioned yesterday that disease is first spiritual in nature not physical. This statement might need some clarification. Some children are born with diseases; obviously, they had no mind to spiritually bring about disease upon themselves. It is quite obvious that the environment, the foods that no one knew were toxic, the metals, the inoculations that toyed with our very cells all were in there playing a part of what makes our insides tick. Scientifically, DNA plays a small part meaning what your mom and dad did (ate, drank, breathed) formed the very strands that brought you to life.

I’m speaking of the cause of your (my) own disease; by holding tightly to false beliefs (fear, doubt, and shame) it enabled an attack that neither you or I were ready for. Anxiety, at a very young age, started us on the path of fear that you (and I) began and no drug is going to take away what we spiritually placed on our path. God did not place fear and anxiety on our path, God is not to blame for a disease taking over your body, only WE can blame OURSELVES for the CAUSE of any illness that holds us captive.

I think what happens with our anxiety and depression, mine anyway, is that we dwell and linger. We linger in past places that hold us prisoner and sometimes we’re not willing to let go because we’d rather remain bitter and angry than find healing; at least that’s what we tell ourselves. Yes, that was me for YEARS, for most of my life.

This disease that I brought upon myself basically is my wake-up call telling me it is time to change now or I will die. I can’t read myself into a healing place. I can’t keep telling you over and over of the bad things that happened in my life because that is my way of clinging to what little memories I have. I have to honestly and truthfully let it go! Reiterating my pain over and over is a way of not releasing the very things that got me to this point in my disease and remaining a prisoner of the past.

I know I’ve spiritually found a healing place. I sent my anxious thoughts away and replaced them with good positive memories. Here’s an example, on the 26th of April my daughter would have been fourteen years old. In previous years the grief strangled me to tears and led me to rehash her death over and over. The same goes for my son who would’ve turned 35 years old in December. This year was different, I only thought good of her and him and when my mother wanted to rehash the past I point blank told her, I’ve dealt with that pain already, I really have let it go, so please stop rehashing. I’m glad she remembers my son and daughter whom neither of us had a chance to know, but I don’t cling to that part of my past anymore. I’m in a healing point and it feels better than all years before!

I’m healing from the emotional baggage of a previous marriage. I’m healing from the child abuse, the molestation, I’m healing where things clung and tightly held on, and I’m releasing them from my present. This disease isn’t just about what has my cells in an uproar, it’s about forgiving all the wrongs in my past and not just at face value. I cannot heal just a portion of my soul just as I cannot believe just a portion of the bible. 

I myself cause my stress and anxiety by clinging to the embedded emotions that have no right dwelling in my being anymore. Being around positive influential people bring about a healing presence just as the negative influences bring about the non-healing ability. If you find yourself never healing from emotional stress, you’re not releasing the whole portion of events; you’re still clinging to the past. Don’t blame the medicine for not working. Don’t blame someone else for your retentive behavior because we are the sole heirs of who to blame. Our parents, siblings, and exes may shoulder some of the blame but they are not the reason we are so determined to allow the occasions to destroy our immunity.

You know, I hadn’t thought that my internal loving relationship with God could grow any further. I had become comfortable in my reading and believing and practically complacent with all I have learned over the years. Sometimes we think that memorizing scripture will bring us closer to God, or reading and studying so hard we forget what we came to the Word for. We came to learn and GROW right? Not to sit like an idle robot in one place repeating the same actions over and over again. No, to heal we need to understand the health benefits of the Living Water flowing through our veins on a different level that will carry us to our healing spot. The area where the past has no bars and the pasture is an open fortress to gaze at, not take up residence with. 

I am choosing to heal by believing the full portion of the Word in its entirety, not just a small portion. He said He will heal and I believe Him. He said He will return and I believe Him. I know I’m listening to God and not the enemy. How do I know it is God speaking to me and guiding me? Because He said so!

All praise and Glory to God! 

John 10:9 “I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”

John 10 is a very powerful scripture in its entirety.

Holy Week ~ Strength in Scripture

SACRIFICE

On this Holiest of Friday’s, the day a man recorded in history as being sacrificed on the cross. Not just any man, the Son of God. Why would a God allow His son to be sacrificed? Because of you, because of me, for the LOVE of sinful man. God became man so he himself could see what was so hard about not sinning. He found that man had to suffer a lot to not WANT to sin. He became sin, who knew no sin, so that we could be saved! I myself, have given my life to Him.

Isa. 53:10 “Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin, he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.” NIV

Pss. 51:17 “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

Pss.54:6 “I will freely sacrifice unto thee: I will praise thy name, O LORD; for it is good.”

Man worshipped false idols, the dark lord, the evil one, the god of sin. The world being overrun with sin needed to be saved on a spiritual level that for many years no one would grasp except the Lord's people. The sinner would go on with his ways gnawing and clawing his way through life while the innocent ones wanted to be saved from the darkness running freely.

Pss. 106:28  “They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead.
[37] Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils,
[38] And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.

Ecc. 9:2 “All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous, and to the wicked; to the good and to the clean, and to the unclean; to him that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not: as is the good, so is the sinner; and he that sweareth, as he that feareth an oath.”

Isa. 43:23 “Thou hast not brought me the small cattle of thy burnt offerings; neither hast thou honoured me with thy sacrifices. I have not caused thee to serve with an offering, nor wearied thee with incense.”
[24] “Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities.”

Jer. 33: [11] The voice of joy, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the voice of them that shall say, Praise the LORD of hosts: for the LORD is good; for his mercy endureth for ever: and of them that shall bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the LORD. For I will cause to return the captivity of the land, as at the first, saith the LORD.

For the love of sin, man sacrificed the children of the future. 

Eze. 16: 20 “Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter,”

Dan 11:31 “And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.”

For hundreds of years, man relished sin. 

Hos. 3:4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim:

There were men and women who knew the Lord and the light of love that He offered and would do anything for this Lord of heaven.

Jonah 2:9 “But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that, that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.”

And the Lord prepared to come down to earth from the highest of heaven to save man from his own mass destruction. To finally put to rest the evil that was called to reign as god of the world for a time.

Zeph. 1:7 “Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord GOD: for the day of the LORD is at hand: for the LORD hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests.”
[8] “And it shall come to pass in the day of the LORD's sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.”

Mal. 1:14 “But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the LORD a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen.”

And God graced us with his presence after man was consumed with sin. Four hundred years passed between the Old Testament and the New Testament. His words were still known throughout the land as some were filled with God, not sin. The sinful man was the heathen spoke of in Malachi, the sinner in Matthew.

And God came to the earth as a man. An angelic spiritual birth is now known to man across the world, Jesus was born. God became flesh. Man had the opportunity to change from a sinner to a righteous loving man; to save the earth and its people from total destruction.

Matt. 9:13 “But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Mark 12:33 “And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

Acts 49:49 “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?
[50] Hath not my hand made all these things?
[51] Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.”

Rom. 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

1 Cor. 5:7 “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:”

Eph. 5:2 “And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour.”

Hebrews 9:9 “Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices, that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience;
[23] It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
[26] For then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.”

He asks of us:

Heb. 13:15 “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name.
[16] But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

And in the 21st century, we continue to fail.

Rev. 2:14 “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication.
[20] Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.”

He died for us and left us with these words among many:

Matt. 28:18-20 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

May the Grace of God reign in all of your hearts

so that you might be blessed by His coming.

All Scripture is from the KJV

Quotation Saturday: Health in the New Year

Prov. 16:24 “Pleasant words are as an honeycomb, sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.”

My year will be defined by this one word, HEALTH! 

HEALTH

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.” 
― Hippocrates

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.” 
― Winston S. Churchill

“The doctor of the future will be oneself.” 
― Albert Schweitzer 

“Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.” 
― Lao Tzu

NUTRITION

“While it is true that many people simply can't afford to pay more for food, either in money or time or both, many more of us can. After all, just in the last decade or two we've somehow found the time in the day to spend several hours on the internet and the money in the budget not only to pay for broadband service, but to cover a second phone bill and a new monthly bill for television, formerly free. For the majority of Americans, spending more for better food is less a matter of ability than priority. 
~ Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

“About eighty percent of the food on shelves of supermarkets today didn't exist 100 years ago.” 
― Larry McCleary, Feed Your Brain, Lose Your Belly: Experience Dynamic Weight Loss with the Brain-Belly Connection

“The healthy man is the thin man. But you don’t need to go hungry for it: Remove the flours, starches and sugars; that’s all.” 
― Samael Aun Weor

“Eating healthy nutritious food is the simple and right solution to get rid of excess body weight effortlessly and become slim and healthy forever.” 
― Subodh Gupta

PRIORITY

“Life is short. Focus on what really matters most; you should change your priorities over time.” 
― Roy T. Bennett

“Despite how utterly massive they might be, it is never the size of the arsenal nor the strength of the warrior. Rather, it is a heart bent on sacrifice that is the most potent weapon of all.” 
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“The needs of the people around you should be your utmost priority” 
― Sunday Adelaja

“Make eating healthy a priority and you will find living life more enjoyable!”
- Joni Zipp

RESOLUTION

“I will be generous with my love today. I will sprinkle compliments and uplifting words everywhere I go. I will do this knowing that my words are like seeds and when they fall on fertile soil, a reflection of those seeds will grow into something greater.” 
― Steve Maraboli

“Don't destroy yourself by allowing negative people to add gibberish and debris to your character, reputation, and aspirations. Keep all dreams alive but discreet, so that those with unhealthy tongues won't have any other option than to infest themselves with their own diseases.” 
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Resolve, and thou art free.” 
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.” 
― Winston S. Churchill

PAST

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.” 
― George Harrison

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” 
― Gautama Buddha

“We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.” 
― Rick Warren

"The present is clay, shape it. The past is excess waste, toss it away. The future holds tomorrow, make it your own victory!"
~ Joni Zipp

NEW YEAR

“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 
Whispering 'it will be happier'...” 
― Alfred Tennyson

“For last year's words belong to last year's language 
And next year's words await another voice.” 
― T.S. Eliot

“May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire 
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For, 
May your arms Never Tire.” 
― D. Simone

"January 1st is the flipping of the calendar year to me, a new month to mark the triumphs in little boxes for the next twelve months. Happy New Year? Of course, I’d never wish anyone an unhappy New Year!" 
~ Joni Zipp

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Standing Strong

Prov. 24:10 "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small."

Standing Strong 

Without even being aware of what tension would rise I thought a writing course would be a good soothing exercise. I thought wrong. I love writing for my blog as much as I can and it feels therapeutic. I’ve been moving along at a nice pace as healing is taking place. Feeling good about myself I wanted a distraction via a fiction-writing course from all the illness talk. I realized I don’t know how to separate my fact from fiction.

The writing course claims that you should have a completed fictional SHORT STORY by the end of six lessons. I’ve taken this course many times over the years so I knew what to expect, expect the unexpected I thought heading into the course. What I didn’t expect was a classroom of five to seven people working on their novels in progress. Writers are awesome people, as diverse as a bag of Skittles even more diverse when they’re mixed with a bag of M&M’s! 

I decided to center my SHORT STORY on Faith and Hope, characters of a fictional tale but too close to my nonfiction story for my taste. I realized I didn’t like writing fiction at all. I do have an entire novel sitting in my files untouched for years, still nestled in the first draft stages. I also have a couple of short stories in my files that I won’t take the time to send them through the rigors of being picked apart by critique. I did learn a lot this round of taking this course. Everything I taught at one time being a mentor was dismantled, I watched my work being shredded not guided in any way. I wound up rewriting my short story for a final revision and it lost all the poetic substance of the entire tale. To me, my story became do-do on a shoe.

Tension, that only I knew was taking place, began about the third week. I wanted to drop the course but I also really wanted to complete the beloved class where I originally met so many of my current dear friends thirteen years ago. I continued on being the trooper that I am until I finally completed the sixth lesson of my short story.

I wondered why I set myself up for this adversity but it’s not much unlike when I post something on facebook to get a reaction when it’s the reaction I don’t like, I tend to tense up completely. Why do I bother? That is exactly what I felt like by lesson six, why did I bother? Let me give you a bit of advice, when taking a trip down memory lane don’t expect the same sensation you felt originally. The memory is in the past for a reason, it is over and done with and cannot be recreated in any way, shape or form. Lesson learned.

I was taught that if you’re going to say something negative about someone’s work, reinforce it with something positive. I didn’t feel much of anything positive coming through my screen. The feeling may have just been my tension build-up and I, not wanting to continue, reflected the negativity I saw. In other words, it was more than likely just my irritated mind arousing the tension.

What did I learn from this session of the writing course? Anything goes. You can work on your novel in progress and you’ll receive pats on the back for defying what the true intention of the SHORT STORY course is about. You’ll be rewarded for going against the grain. You’ll be held accountable for not understanding proper punctuation and you might even feel shamed into taking a punctuation course so your writing can get better. Your words will be pulled apart like shredded cheese and tossed on the floor for you to pick up the pieces and put back together.

So basically my writing sucks. THIS is why I’m sticking to my blog writing! Fiction is not for me at this juncture in my life. Nonfiction writing whether misspelled or punctuated wrong on my blog is MY journal style writing that releases my tension and saves me days and weeks of unnecessary pressure. I thought I was ready for open criticism but I think I still have a way to go.

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." 

~ Albert Einstein

Yesterday to release a ton of tension I went shopping. As anyone who knows me knows that I’m not a person who splurges on things. These past ten months my main purchases were vitamins, organic vegetables, three pairs of pants from the Goodwill and that’s about it. I’ve never acquired a taste for spending money. I wouldn’t say I’m a miser, I just like to purchase necessities over extravagances.

My mother sent me a Christmas gift back in October and she told me to buy myself something nice. You also know that my mother has no idea I’m fighting this illness. My first thought was to use the money in my fight of this disease but yesterday I woke, putting on my twenty-five-year-old winter shoes, I realized I never splurge and buy myself anything. With hubby off of work, I asked him if he wanted to go shopping and off we went. I bought two pairs of winter shoes/boots and eight nonfiction books all for sixty bucks! I’m a frugal shopper. Yay, me!

Shopping, reading nonfiction, and coloring in my adult-aged coloring books I received last Christmas released much of my tension. I am now once again on a recovering path. I think I’ll just stick to my journal style writing for a while. Just so you know, I’ve had diaries all of my life and not once did I concern myself with restructuring, grammar etiquette or revisions. I wrote to release tension and that is what I’m going to continue on my blog. Thanks for any and all understanding.

Prov. 19: 25 "Smite a scorner, and the simple will beware: and reprove one that hath understanding, and he will understand knowledge."

They'll Never Know

Gen. 18:21 “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know.”

They’ll Never Know

They’ll never know the loneliness I felt, the emptiness that resided in me. They did nothing and could have done everything. They left me, isolated and alone, out in the pastures of life.

They’ll never know the hours I spent staring out the window, chasing birds with my mind wanting to fly away from the very sedentary life I live. I wanted to live but no one, nothing gave me options, they left me alone.

I am the plague that they fear catching. The disease that they’d rather keep away from their life; the very fear that festers inside of them that they’ll one day have to face alone. It’s no fun this solitude that haunts my mind. It saddens me to think I will die and they’ll never know of my life, my real life.

They’ll see the pictures I painted for them, the fragments as breadcrumbs dropped on the ground for them to follow. They’ll never find the real source of my pain because it is dwelling in them, they’ll never know. They’ll never know that the picture is false; the painter is never the painting it is just an expression of what they see. I am the artist creating an illusion of a world you’ll believe. I am the game endlessly played never to be won. I am your addiction, the one thing you need to be real.

Deep down I am the smear, the painting went wrong, the mistakes you’ll never see. I am the routine never to be broken. I am the vase sitting on the shelf with no flowers. I am the desert, dry and never to be rained upon. The hour never to be changed, the life day in and day out staring into a windowed world sharing a love for people I’ll never meet, a spiritual family that deeply cared from afar.

They’ll never know the turmoil I faced. They’ll think I was strong because I never allowed the shards of glass to cut them open. I only allowed the brokenness to shut me down to leave me vulnerable to what it is that surrounds me in my physical world. Alone, I am alone and pained by my surroundings. 

They’ll live thinking they did everything and knowing they did absolutely nothing. They’ll never know I was used, abused and diffused; a live wire with no connection to sustain the energy that thrives within me. I loved too hard, I shined too bright, and I was everything they were not nor ever could be.

There can be no healing as long as I’m demeaned, pushed down into the box and smothered. I spring forward like a jack-in-the-box daily with my polka-dot suit and painted smile I show everyone what they want to see. I make them smile waxing nostalgic over the times of their youth when they cranked the music and watched as the toy came bouncing into life. They never saw the real me, they’ll never know.

The blood, they claimed to love but they’ll never know that it was only I who loved and they shed me like dry skin to be swept away from the scene. I became the disease that they dreaded to see; they dared not look at. They went on in their fantasy playing charades and showing the world their imagined perfect life. They lived while I died, but they’ll never know.

To sum it all up, I was flourishing in the warmth of the sun, growing and turning towards the sunlight as the orb drifted overhead and I carried the rays like a candle into the night to show me the way. Then one day in all my splendor I was mowed over, severed and left in mere rubble, kicked about and wiped off the bottom of the shoe, I was done. To them I am nothing, to me I am all, to Him I am worthy. I am everything. In their obscured selfish bliss, they’ll never know.

Who are they? They are the ones who sat in their passive state and said they cared. They are the ones who did nothing as my body slowly withered and decayed. They are the ones who afterward wondered what they didn’t do carrying guilt like a different handbag of the week. They are the ones who went on, to live, to breathe. They know who they are but then again, they’ll never really know.

Ezek. 39:8 “Behold, it is come, and it is done, saith the Lord GOD; this is the day whereof I have spoken.”

Poetry Sunday ~ Memories

4 Ezra 4:45 “Shew me then whether there be more to come than is past, or more past than is to come.”

Memories

When tears leak from my eyes I find

a place of healing that’s no surprise,

I find I’m lost once being found is not easy

To mechanically turn life around.

The glorious light of which I cling to 

Allows me comfort waters to wade through

I’m not the one who lives daily in fear

Let me make it clear why I’m still here

The days are long often filled with pain

I’ll say it again in life I’ll remain

The one who finds God in all that I do

As I waddle through memories I once knew

The past is there for me to step around

Tiptoe through eggshells for all I’ve found

Religion and alcohol a cocktail of frights

I made it through the dark stormy nights

I didn’t have a mother who cooked and baked 

I’m lucky to have had the food that we ate.

A penguin filled schoolhouse was my only friend

That carried my memories to the rivers bend

With a concrete garden and asphalt street

My life in Baltimore was never complete

Crimson skies lined my sunset dreams

Away from home’s not as murky it seems

I’ll go and drown my empty sorrow 

For all I carry to every tomorrow

What’s done is done what’s gone is gone

I’ll live my life and carry on.

That Time Of Year...

Job 17:11 “My days are past, my purposes are broken off, even the thoughts of my heart.”

That Time of Year

Well, my friends, it’s that time of year once again. You probably think I’m referring to the merry and joyful time of year with the lighting of the Christmas trees, the sounds of Christmas carols ringing through the air, the aroma of pine scent wafting through the house, children anticipating the arrival of Santa Claus with a little countdown calendar to Christmas hanging on the fridge. If you think that is what I’m referring to, you’d be wrong. 

This is the time of reflection for me, that leads to my New Year in April (Easter is my New Year, for those who don’t know me). Reflection is sometimes one of the hardest things one must do because being faced with truth, direction, and discernment; one is pulled in many directions of an emotional roller-coaster ride.

For nine years I’ve been writing this blog and statistics show more than five of those years two hundred and some odd days a year were spent writing and bringing a Light to your world. You may or may not see it that way but as you scan over the years of posts, you will be hard pressed to find anything negative that I’ve brought to your world.

1 Cor. 14:1 “Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy.”

[12] “Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church.”

I take my faith, God and my gift of writing very serious as many of you know. I’m not judging you and saying you don’t take your God given gift(s) serious, on this blog I am defining me at ALL times and if you see YOU in my words, well then Praise Be, I’ve done my job!

Heb. 2:4 “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?”

I know some of you don’t see writing and not getting paid as a ‘real’ job, but let me tell you, it is the most richly rewarding ‘job’ of my life, and personally I don’t see it as a job unless you understand that all I do, I do for Him! This is why when I make a decision on something, I take it to Him and see what HE has to say about my decisions. It sounds crazy, I know, but it is my way of life and the way I’ve been since I can remember.

Last year the three deaths in my family hit me pretty hard, and a recent death of my too young to die, cousin. I know, all deaths take a certain toll on each individual but they hit me like I had not expected, scarring my heart and allowing a mountain of emotions and flashbacks to remain unmoved; an aunt, an uncle and my father all taken away from this earth. People say, “They’re angels in heaven now,” but you don’t know that for a fact and not even I can be certain that is where their souls drifted off to, thus leading me to a reflective and contemplative year, this one, 2016. (Please, this is not a debate on heaven and hell or a weakening or strengthening of faith, it is ME seeing to it that this mountain is MOVED! With God’s help of course.)

Hence my decision to shut this blog down, I did not just pull this decision out of my hat, I have been contemplating since the New Year began but the political infestation of negativity kept me writing to bring you LIGHT in an extremely darkened world. I’m sure you all know everyone was a victim of this political disastrous negative year. I watched as what I deemed pillars of strength in the ‘Christian’ community crumble and buckle to the negative impact of the role politics played in their lives. They were hurtful, hate-filled, anger driven, they stood on a higher than though pedestal, sweeping their voice around the social platform waving words as truth but realizing as they scraped themselves off the floor by years end, they were just victims of satan’s very cunning lure.

I don’t know if the people held any shame in their actions but I myself stood strong in the face of satan and spit in his face and walked with my Lord. There are repercussions with taking that stance just so you know. I AM NOT being judgmental here, lest I am judging myself, but the past two years have really given rise to ME and where I need to go. While my gifts of the Lord will continue to grow and soar, it might mean that writing for YOU may not be in the cards for the coming year, I don’t know yet.

Pss. 100:3 “Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.”

My Spiritual Family, I do not label you as left or right, nor does God; you have stood firmly behind me on my journey all of these years, some new to my world, some who have been here for the long haul, you know who you are, and God has BLESSED me with each and every one of you! I don’t take our friendship lightly and I take into consideration your sage advice always.

I have another health crisis biting me in the face and this coming year will be a challenging one as I face it with faith but I’ll need your prayer always as I endure, it’s what keeps me going. Will I blog in the New Year? Will I close this down? I go with God and what HE tells me to do because He knows that I have utilized my gift and done everything for Him. I will never change that and I don’t care how much satan’s minions attack me, my God is greater than him and THIS I am CERTAIN of!

While this isn’t the merriest of Christmas’, I must say first, God is still making His presence known in my life whether it is the lost packages we ordered being FOUND, one on my neighbor's back lawn where I would have NEVER looked but my stray dog Riley led me to it via her dragging off her water bowl and me searching for it and finding the Lost Box! All the way to the parcel my mother sent arriving on my doorstep as we watched A Christmas Carol, and right as the ghost of Christmas past surfaced so did Riley’s wagging tail hitting the door alerting me to the gift on my front steps at 7:00 in the evening. Many memories of the past were in that box! I thank God He sent me Riley, a stray dog who has a heart of gold. 

God is Good, God is ever present and life in the coming year will be welcomed. I thank you all for being a part of God’s plan for my journey and may all of our New Year be blessed! 

Pss. 95:7 “For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,”

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good life! 

Deut. 4:32 “For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from the one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it?”

Memory Lane

Annapolis Maryland

Pss. 23:3 “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.”

The Path Down Memory Lane

Last week was one long stroll down memory lane. I understand we’re not to live in the past but to move forward, but something about the season of fall makes me want to stroll down that path, at least once a year to revisit the good and bad that I left behind.

I don’t wallow in the mire; I never cling to the dust, I just reminisce then brush it off like an over neglected attic. Sweep the lint, brush away the good and bad crud, filter what goes out and comes back in. Yeah, that’s the best way to deal with an unsavory past.

When people see me now they think, ‘oh it couldn’t have been all that bad, look how well she turned out.’ This statement might be true from your perspective, on the outside looking in, but from my perspective, life was not good in any way shape or form.  

I started writing my blog in 2005 but didn’t start taking the writing and expression of my thoughts seriously until 2008. In the very beginning the blog was just about my thoughts, most of which I deleted but by 2008 I turned the blog into helping writers and the craft of writing. 

I’ve been writing poetry all of my life and really didn’t get into writing fiction until about 2004 when WVU (Writers Village University) came into my life and changed my path forever. I was so excited with the new turn in my life, I shared it with my family who as always, never for one second encouraged me and didn’t really care about my writing unless I was famous and making tons of money. 

As years passed by my love of writing grew and my blog has been an important avenue of healing because it is here where I bare my soul and that’s why the name changed a few years back, I was healing and moving away from the painful past and moving into a new leg of the journey that God had carved out for me in my path to the future. 

My journey is not about making money, my journey is about healing and this is what you read, a sinner on the path of healing. I write from my heart and if my family read anything I wrote they would, I’m certain, be ashamed of not having more to do with me or they’d be angry and finger pointing but such as it is, they will only look for my writing AFTER my death.

Job 30:13 “They mar my path, they set forward my calamity, they have no help.”

I have written my mother and father poems since I was very young. I can honestly say I can’t remember the last time I bought a Hallmark card for them, I’ve always written my own. Maybe not Hallmark quality but it spoke to them and how much I cherished them in my life. My sister was always jealous of my ability to convey meaning to my parents via poems and she has tried writing a poem once but her one try in life came off as forced emotion; whereas my father adored my poems and looked forward to them with every Christmas, birthday and father’s day.

This is what started the stroll down memory lane last week when my mother was reading the poems I wrote to my dad and she told me that she cried with reading each one. She also said that my dad had kept a lot of them in his drawer, I guess so he could read them and feel somewhat close to me as I, his baby, was so far away from home. Then she said something that unknowingly hurt, she said my father read one and looked at her and said, “We’re never going to see her again, are we.” It hurt because he never had a chance to see me again or to hear the last poem I wrote him. (Thanks to my sister, he never got to hear it read. Bitter? YES! Admittedly so!)

While everyone is ranting and raging about politics, I’m taking a stroll, one that has me thinking selfishly about my healing, my growth and myself. Is that selfish? I don’t think so, I’m reminded of a childhood that was, I reminisce of the pain-filled life I left behind, and I look to a brighter future with my Lord by my side and Him whispering to me saying, “he (my father) heard the last poem you wrote, as did I, I am well pleased.”

Yes, He always talks to me like that. Always has and always will! The stroll down memory lane will end for now as I head into my future with my Lord and I walking hand-in-hand. 

Pss. 16:11 “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”

Heal Today...Gone Tomorrow

Fort McHenry cannon looking toward

the Francis Scott Key bridge

where my uncle took his life

Pss. 30:2  “O LORD my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me.”

Heels today… gone tomorrow

You ever have one of those days where everything is going along fine. Then you see something and reality smacks you upside the head? We’re doing some fall cleaning here; we get to the cluttered closet and there sits a box of shoes. Heels that I’ve never worn. 

I said, “I have to get rid of that entire box.” 
He replied, “Well when you can walk again, we’ll pull them back out of the box.”  

Tears filled my eyes and kept on filling. The reality is…I’ll never be able to walk normal again. Just thought I’d share that with you all as I release some of this anguish I’m lugging around.

I used to love wearing high heels, not real high, just a classy kind of heel with jeans or a skirt; then about four years ago, with too many Omaha trips (eight hours round trip) high-heel wearing came to a screeching halt. I remember going to the doctor and she sent me to the hospital for some x-rays and a day later it was explained that I had lower lumbar facet joint arthritis. Sure, some meds and a highly paid chiropractor could offer some relief, but that's just it, a false relief, not a healing plan.

Here I was, still enjoying my youth and am told that I have arthritis and as many of you know, that is a chronic disability that doesn’t just go away. I had tried to wear my lower heels and even they were awkward to walk in and the limp in my stride didn’t sync with a low heel. I was relinquished to tennis shoes and even they were getting uncomfortable mainly in the summertime heat. I did buy some comfy sandals by Earth Spirit (yes, WalMart brand) but don’t ya know, I can’t wear them in the winter now can I? 

I have my up and down days where I feel sorry for myself and the me I once was but have to learn to accept that this is the new me and whom God created.  But when we were cleaning out the closet and the box with my heels in it passed me by, I cried. I admit it, it hurt to see a part of myself shoved in the basement never to be seen again. I think my husband was trying to make me feel good when he said the words, “When you walk again.” The reality was and is, I’ll never walk normal again.

My dear friends try to comfort me, “there is Hope,” they say. My first thought was yeah when I get to heaven and can run free! They mean well, they really do and I won’t for one minute minimize the love I feel for them or from them, and the comfort they bring to my life but understand, I was one on the go woman all of my life. You don’t fit into the same jeans you wore twenty years ago by NOT being an overly active woman. Then yesterday…

Heal today… gone tomorrow.

I don’t know what the universe is trying to tell me when yesterday I answered my phone, thinking for one idiotic moment it was my sister calling to tell me about her daughter. No, it wasn’t her, it was an old friend who called me last year some time (he got the number from my mother) and wanted to rehash the past just like he did last year when I stopped answering my phone because I AM NOT ABOUT MY PAST!

I told him last year that I didn’t want to talk about that stuff but he just kept going on and on, “Do you remember…” You name the memory, I remember it with all its hurts and pains that I let go of, in vivid painstaking detail. His call started that way this time in asking where my ex-husband lived (they were friends) and talking about my abuse until I finally said, “I’m really busy right now.” (Joni is a terrible liar! Luckily I WAS busy!)

He said, “I better let you go or I’ll keep talking and talking.”
My instant reply was, “yes you will but call me when I have FREE minutes, like the weekend.” I seriously was trying to hang up without hurting his feelings because that’s just the way I am, then and now, I don’t like to hurt ANYONE. I just wish he had shown me the same consideration because I know I won’t be answering the phone this weekend. 

For thirteen years I wrestled with my pained past. When I first left Baltimore and left my family and past behind, I got caught up in a tornado of healing as memories whizzed passed and choked me into anxiety attacks where running off alone in the rain on darkened streets were my only solace. I would lie in bed cradling my pillow as tears soaked the very sheets where I slept. I was in a better place but it was a place of healing that had to be measured by agonizing sickened memories of the past.

Haunting is the only way to describe the lingering past. A ghost that would appear out of nowhere when I least expected it and scare me into a non-drug induced panic attack. I don’t take drugs for my pain and dealing with what I’m dealt in a meditative God loving fashion is all I’ve ever known to do. 

A close friend once told me that I needed to just let go of those memories and the people who hold those memories if all they’re there for is to hurt me, why hold on? Yes, that meant family and old friends who think rehashing an excruciating pain-filled past is what the future is all about. 

My now and my future is all about healing. My pain is washed away with every rainfall and I release the past as if it never existed into a tornadic funnel to be released wherever it may go. I will not allow thirteen years of healing to be scrubbed by one phone call of the bitter past. I face my tomorrows with the prayerful meditation that I have known to grow me into a hopeful tomorrow.

I woke this morning only to be hit with news of an earthquake where a dear friend lives. I prayed. The universe will leave something in my life called HOPE, LOVE and COMPASSION; he arrived to let me know he and his family are well. 

Praise be to God!

Mistakes

Pss. 19: 12 “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.”

I’ve made quite a few mistakes, I’m sure we all have and usually ones that we have to live with the rest of our life, like it or not. Since I began writing, well no, since I began blogging, my paintbrush of mistakes is in vivid color here. I hold nothing back and my truth is my healing place.

Some people deal with their mistakes, some timidly live with them, some take the mistakes they made in life by the horns and wrestle them to the ground and shed them from their life never to be seen or heard from again. 

To me, mistakes we made in our past shouldn’t be forcefully thrown in our face so that we have to live with the pain on a daily basis. Some people don’t deal with their mistakes very well and they live in denial as if the mistake is a joy in their life, never to be admitted as a mistake, but the pain, the pain is so evident when people live in denial. 

One mistake I made, was not getting an abortion at 16 and spending nine agonizing months pregnant only to give birth to a stillborn child whose memory still haunts me to this day, some thirty-odd years later; then marrying the guy at 17 and spending 20 years of my formative life owning up to a pledge I had made more to God than my husband.

Looking back at my mistakes helps me to see God’s hand in shaping me. I was the clay and he was the potter molding me into the woman I am now. I don’t have regrets in the choices I made and some may say I’m in denial but really; the CHOICE was mine, an act of free will that God gave to us all. 

Isa. 64:8 “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

Have you ever lived in a moment of should’ve, could’ve, would’ve? I normally don’t but as flashbacks come back to haunt me, writing about what could’ve been helps me for some odd reason. 

It helps me because with all of the looking back, I see myself exactly where I should be and any amount of changes in what ‘could’ve been’, only changes segments in the here and now. At this juncture, I would not want one thing to change. My pain and my suffering, (that of which no one understands except myself) is what helps me to be non- judgmental to others who are suffering through their own mistakes.

I do believe that our mistakes are little tools in our life that carve out who and what we become. I need to see that living with no regret is where my mind and body is supposed to be at this moment.

Job 19: 4 “And be it indeed that I have erred, mine error remaineth with myself.”

Mistakes should never be used to make people bend to your whim, they should be treated with the soft-skinned hands of a person who has grown and learned from their mistakes. A mistake can be seen as a work of art instead of a hold-over-your-head lifetime of remembrance.

I think what I’m trying to say in short is this: Mistakes are sometimes blessings in disguise. Not that they are rainbows and unicorns and should be seen as such but that they are clay and mistakes are what molded you.

Flashback

Baltimore, Maryland

“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.”

~ Cormac McCarthy

Here recently I’ve been struggling with flashbacks. Not the good kind with happy memories that follow but truly ugly ones I thought were dead and buried, never to resurface again; but here they are upon me in a tidal wave of emotion.

It all started a few weeks ago on my facebook family page. I was looking at friends of  friends and WHAM it hit me; flashbacks. I’d see a familiar name and think, Hey, we were friends once, I wonder why she/he hasn’t friend requested me? Then I remembered, maybe we weren’t really friends we were acquaintances. Maybe I’ll friend request them, then I said to myself, no, they seriously didn’t like me – then all of the bad memories flowed.

No matter how much I’ve grown and changed in life my past is always there to remind of the evil little witch that I once was and I realize pretty vividly why no one likes me or would like to catch up with me and see how I’m doing now. You know what they say, ‘Once a witch, always a witch’ so they steer clear of me.

I have struggled all my life to put the past behind me, forgive the evil-doers, move on in a walk with Christ but like a worm, the past just slowly inches its way into my present when I least expect it and slaps me upside the head. Sure I shrug it off and look at the writing friends I have now and how they help me to see the change in me but my past is a part of who I am today.

“We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it.”

~ Rick Warren

Sure I hear the whole spiel that people feed me. Look to the Lord -- Walk with God -- Read your Bible and quite honestly I’d like to slap THEM upside the head for not understanding one thing I’m going through.

Are they trying to tell me that if I walk with Christ, the past won’t resurface? Are they trying to tell me that if I focus on God, the past will disappear? Are they offering to me a safe haven in reading my bible and that the past will no longer be present in my mind? HOGWASH!

I have for many a year (not just a spur of the moment of caring about Christ) looked to Christ for my healing and yes, I have come a long way, some might even say I am a new person. Well I AM!!! BUT, and here’s the clincher, THAT does not change my past or make it miraculously disappear and make people from my past want to know me again.

I imagine that when people see on the sideboard of their facebook that little picture asking, “do you know Joni?” They look at it and shiver and tremble and say, “Yeah and I don’t want to know her again!” And don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to know them either only because of the ugly past that I need to leave behind to burn, but it doesn’t hurt any less realizing I’m not that likable because of who I was back then.

Then my traumatized childhood rears its ugly head and I remember the not so nice life I had growing up in a neglectful household. I didn’t have parents who cared dearly for their children, I had parents who dragged their young child into bars while the older kids stayed home or ran the streets getting into their own sort of trouble. I have to hear now that I’m grown, from my mother, “Why don’t my kids love me?” And I cannot and will not give her the God’s honest truth, “Maybe because you didn’t love THEM enough.”

I love my mother and father dearly and have dealt with the neglect and the non-neglect of me; after all my brothers and sister see it as me being the baby getting EVERYthing while I see it as me getting the traumatic events that they didn’t receive.

As I continue my journey and heal I AM walking with Christ because I know that it is only through Him I can truly heal. Make the past disappear? Probably not because by looking back into my past I can see how far I have come and also see it as a blessing that I am still alive today.

While I lock the hard-to-deal-with-flashbacks in a secure trunk, I will send it up a river never to be seen from again. I WILL heal and continue to create positive memories that I’ll enjoy looking back on.

“It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't know if there is one.”

~ George Harrison

~ Nebraska ~

Poetry Sunday ~ My Mind's Eye

Job 8:16 He is green before the sun, and his branch shooteth forth in his garden.

My Minds Eye
***
In the garden of my mind,
I till, I hoe, but never find.
The beauty that I’ve planted there
the seeds all gone with deep despair.

In the memories I can see
little seeds gazing back at me.
All the ones I forgot to plant
I comb the land and begin a chant.

“Little seed it’s you I sow,
wake up and sing as you grow;
bursting from the dormant soil
may you bloom with little toil.”

Putting all the rows in order
around my mind the visions border.
Full of new things that I’m shown,
plants will thrive once fully grown.

The past is gone, no seeds to mend
new blossoms in my soul I’ll tend.
Forgetting all that's gone before
My new year holds an open door.

Out with the old; in with the new
all the threads that I hold true.
My God is alive and all will see,
fruits of my garden, shine through me!

Learn from the Past!

If you read good books, when you write, good books will come out of you.
Natalie Goldberg

I know as a child, had it not been for the mistakes that my parents made, would I have ever learned right from wrong. We learn from other people on the road of life, and it is through them that we decide what we’re going to do or where we’re going. Right or wrong, we’re going to step into the unknown, make a choice, and stand firm in our decision.

I read something that was quite funny yesterday from a student. “What can we learn from the ancients. Times have changed. Move on.” After I readjusted my jaw after it dropped and hung there for a spell, I replied gently, but firmly. This person wants to be a writer, but doesn’t want to learn from writers that have gone on before him/her??? How logical is that?

This person’s exact words were this and I quote: “You know what? I thought this class was to help us become better writers. Not, to learn how to intrepert writers from hundreds of years ago. Hello, times have changed. Our understanding of ancient writers is NOT going to help us attract the interest of that potential agent. Are you REALLY here to help us??? We're not here to be impressed by the accomplishments or knowlege of your experience.”

After you get over the grammatical errors, learn something quite pivotal from this statement. This person is in writing for the money. Not the knowledge they can gain from writers and accomplished writers who came before them who achieved greatness because of their skills in the writing world. How does this young student EXPECT to attract that potential agent, if that person has not gained one bit of insight from from those ancients such as James Joyce, Shakespeare, and Sorry Mr. Bradbury, but you’re thought of as an ancient tool in the writing world.

I cannot imagine a world of learning not being shaped by the thoughts and techniques of men and women who have gone on before me. I learned to write poetry, not by some new aged rapper, but from the elders in the field. First Shakespeare, Frost, Tennyson, Byron, Dickenson; just to name a few. They didn’t teach me, but reading them and dissecting their work, I gained knowledge of the flow, the artistic stance in their words, the paint they used to place a portrait in my mind. Had I not read them, where would I get my information? Knowledge? Know-how?

Are we expected to learn from the new age and times? Sure times have changed, and I haven’t seen much in the way of, for-the-better, either. So what am I to take away from the statement, “What can we learn from the ancients?” You will learn this my friend, just what your FUTURE holds!

Memory Lane Part II

Pss. 90:4 For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.
***

That post was longer than anticipated yesterday and I thought it warranted a continuation.

As writers, what we are doing in our stories, whether our fictional work or our non-fictional work, we are bringing our past into a character, a scene, an emotion, or maybe a dream.

When I read novel, as a writer, I know in some part there are pieces of the author strewn all about the pages like confetti on New Years. Take To Kill a Mockingbird for example, you can not write something like that without knowing the intricate depths of a situation.

Even authors  like Stephen King has laid pieces of himself in the pages of his stories. He has said about while writing The Shining, he felt like a mad man, drinking boozing it up, life getting out of control, and the Jack Torrance that we (most of us) have all come to know, was born. In his later works after King sobered up, his story Duma Key took on a new color as a new phase took over Mr. Kings life.

I find in my writings, I like to dip into the spiritual pool. My early childhood was shaped by spirits, whether good spirits or the dark nasty ones that you really don’t want to talk about. You’d rather lock them in a closet in the back of the basement somewhere and pretend that they don’t exist.

As a writer, all the doors of your past are open wide, even the little nasty stuff that you buried comes spilling out onto the page. Things you hadn’t remembered for years comes to the surface, you grab your net and scoop up the memory like a fisherman on a good day. You’ve dipped, you now have caught, you own it and you place it on the page.

My childhood was shaped by experience also. Images of the men, the smoke-filled bars, pool balls clanking, men cheering or arguing, the tapping of glasses, the smell, the awful stale aroma of beer that lay in the taps basin. The music, the jukebox that was probably my savior at nine years old.

Ask my brothers if they were sitting in bars at nine years old. Ask them if men felt them up in places that drunken old men thought was playful but to a child felt dirty. Ask the boys, ask one of them, or my sister for that matter, did they sneak drinks of vodka and orange when they were mere babies? Eight or nine year old's belong home not in a bar sipping drinks, sneaking from the glass that was okay for mother to drink from. But then again, home wasn’t much different from the bars.

Yeah that was me, spoiled rotten and given everything. A drinking, toking, smoking child is what shaped my past. Do I long for what was? Never! I bury it in my stories. I was saved by the grace of the Lord. When I write, I write from heartfelt true-blue experience. My inspiration comes from the only thing that has ever grabbed onto me and stuck and that is God!

And that is a piece of MY story.

Memory Lane

Make today great. We may be products of our past but we are also architects of our future. ~Pastor Tim Clowers

***

Are you the kind of person that likes to stroll down memory lane, remembering the old high school, the old friends, the past that eluded your future you thought would manifest?

I’ve never been one who held onto the past like a warm cup of tea. You know, cradle it in my hand, coddle the thoughts as if they were precious and needed to be gently stirred whenever the feeling arises?

No, I’m a writer. I’ve stirred all my emotions with a pen. Laid them onto paper to be read by some unsuspecting reader of the future who happens to like pain and misery. They’ll drink the tea of my past, swallow it and either regurgitate it for the simple fact that the truth can not be stomached, or swallow the warm drink and find that it has become poison in their system.

I was asked if I missed my past life. Which one? The one prior to me being born? Yes, because it was heaven. The one prior to me coming to Nebraska? In my honesty, I have to admit, no. I miss a few family members but that’s about all that I miss.

I went back home a few years ago to Baltimore. Thinking foolishly again that I might have been missed to some extent. I was there because of my mothers medical problem, she had had a stroke and mis-communication from everyone had her on her deathbed, when in reality she had a stroke and wanted me there to be with her, just in case.

Did everyone come out of the woodwork to see me? No, just my sister, who I saw at the hospital a few times and my  niece who found her way to my hotel to visit with me. She was living at  her dad’s home with her husband and five siblings. Going through a ton of her own stuff, I made my way to see her and her brothers and sisters.

Memory lane was a hard stroll. I visited my bro and his wife and she berated me for the way my mother treated me like a precious gem and my brother got the treatment of a bullfrog. This is not quite how I remember it, but I took it all and brought all the agony of the visit back to Texas where I went on a healing binge.

Unfolding in my memoirs is the story of a young girl, who was taken to bars to sit with a bunch of men as mother and dad drank, the brothers were all off on their own escapades. I’ll go down the lane and talk of the many nights we sat at neighbors houses because of parental arguing and small daughters clinging to the mother by her housecoat as she fled.

I’ll also revel in the many joyous Christmas’ that the children were given. Were our parents perfect? No! Did the children have everything they ever needed, yes. But we needed love and that was the instrumental element that was missing in all of the kids life. Did I get more love than the others? Maybe because I was the baby, and clung to my mother like a wet noodle to a ceiling.

Each of us has a different tale to tell. My past is where I want it, in the past, not part of my future. It molded me and shaped me, but as I let it go, I release my pain, I am healed as I walk down memory lane, the one I create, to become my future.

Thought-filled Thursday

Job 14: 13  O that thou wouldest hide me in the grave, that thou wouldest keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldest appoint me a set time, and remember me!
***
Reflect on your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.
Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870)
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Today I’m filled with thoughts. I’m sure you love coming here and reading about my thoughts, don’t you?

Have you ever had the past come back and bite you in the tush? Never? Well dang! My past seems to haunt me wherever I go. Some would say, “Oh just let it go.” Sorry friends to tell you this, but that is easier said than done.

I would love nothing more than to lay MY past to rest, but things creep back to the surface like mushrooms in the wet grass. They appear here and there, one day they’re plentiful but during dry spells you’re hard pressed to find one surfacing. That’s what the past has been doing to me lately. Memories, feelings, shadows dancing, all in my face.

In a novel, the past of a character is called back story. And if we laid the character’s past to rest, you’d barely have a story. Or you might have one that doesn’t make much sense to your reader.

What has brought on this rush of memory lane for me? A bunch of stuff, but most notably, this week is Father’s Day. I’m here in Nebraska far away from my dad and it would be so nice just to put my arms around him, hug him and let him know he’s loved.

My father wasn’t a perfect man by any means. He was no Ward Cleaver for sure. He worked, drank, and lived, rarely batting an eye at any of the six kids he fathered, so why do I love and miss him so much? Because I let the PAST GO! I’ve forgiven all the wrongs that my parents did, and embrace the them that is now.

My colorful past might be one for the books and novels of the non-fiction genre, but so is my tale of healing, forgiving, moving on and facing each new day. I embraced Christianity when I was 14, and even though my parents don’t understand what that means as they call themselves Catholic, by name and prayer only, I move forward in life, not backwards, if I can help it.

A Christian is not someone who attends church and thus says, “I’m a Christian, I go to church!” That is just wrong. For many years I called myself a Christian and hadn’t stepped into a church, only for the lack of Christianity teachings going on in churches.

A Christian, walks the walk as much as talks the talk. I don’t profess to be Christ-like (in my actions, words,  and thoughts) I try my best to ACT like a person of Christ.

I’m not perfect, I don’t forgive in the snap of a finger. I don’t overlook things and pretend nothing ever happened, I don’t lie, keep secrets, hide things, in hopes the discovery is only between me and my conscious. I embrace the past, wash my pain with words, color my world with love. I am working on me, the me that I am. My past is a part of me, it’s a part of your characters. Never let it disappear because there is a beneficial amount of healing to come from the popping up of memories.

Did you ever hold onto the negative and overlook the positive? Yeah, we all are guilty. Now lets move ahead in trust, faith and prayer, and keep God growing in our future so we have strength to deal with the past.

“I’ll move from the past to carry me into the future and hope one day my future has you in it.” ~ joni

Flashback Friday

Psalm 79:13 So we thy people and sheep of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever: we will shew forth thy praise to all generations.
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Flashback to a day in your past of peace and harmony. What? You can’t remember any? Well let me tell you... I can’t think of any either. ha ha

A flashback in the story is the one place where you will connect with your reader. Either they will relate to an incident or be blown away by the illusion. But we need the flashback so the reader will become one with the character. We can’t overload our work with flashbacks or we’ll lose the reader. They’ll get bored stiff if your character lives too much in the past.

We need to move on and by showing flashbacks and the here and now we can show how the character has moved forward in life. Fiction is a lot like real life and this is where you will drink your knowledge from the pool of reality. Sure we’ll embellish our fictional tale but if we’ve had no experience in such an event then we need to dig into the pond of research.

I like the non-fiction tales also. This is where we drink from our fountain of the past. Your past may be haunting, it may be a testament or it may just be like the guy next doors. Whatever the case there is a story there somewhere.

I myself have a strong testimony to my faith, but I think I might bore you stiff with it, so I won’t go there. The road of drugs and alcohol, the drowning in the abyss, the saving hand reaching down for me to pull me from the depths of hell, the death, the dying, the defeat all wrapped up in one life. Maybe Friday's will be my stories in flashback form? *wink*

When I read or hear others stories, I think mine was way off the boards of the norm and it comes across as fiction. But the flashbacks continue, the memories soar, the past haunts and the future awaits. The one thing I have is my Father in heaven’s arms wrapped around me, consoling me all the way, comforting me and carrying me.

I like for people to feel Him themselves because my words are just that, words. I won’t preach, I will only be a presence...hence the terminology Angel...always...godspeed.

Flashback...there was a time I floated in the midst of all encompassing love, soaring to heights forever unseen. In a display of arcs and wondrous colors, there I was immersed in the rippling waves of the universe only to find in an instant I could breathe air. My birth, oh what a glorious day.

Remember the flashback in a story. It will take the reader places, trust me.