The Struggle Is Real

Prov. 16:1 (NIV) “To humans belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the proper answer of the tongue.”

The struggle is real...

In the past year since my diagnosis, I have a totally different perspective on life, as you can imagine. I don’t live aligned to the world like everyone else, eating what I want and not caring about my health because simply put, my inner health is as vital as my outer health. The sooner we all learn that, the more in tune we’ll be with the God within. 

I was a lot like you all in that I ate what I wanted whether it was unknowingly toxic or not (ie: fluoride in drinking water, microwaving plastics, processed food, and GMO food) I ate what I wanted and didn’t care if it was killing me. Food tasted good and everyone else was doing it and they ‘appeared’ healthy, somewhat overweight (is that healthy?) but appearing like all was right in their world, health-wise and otherwise.

Then it hit me, I have the disease everyone dreads hearing from their doctor. The fear-of-death laden diagnosis came out of left field, but if truth be told, I knew cancer was a possibility but I did NOTHING to prevent it. I was swimming along with the school of fish enjoying the plastic and oil spills being dumped into my living space; I didn’t care, like you, I just did not care!

Please, don’t tell me that you care about what you eat and drink and what goes in your body. Don’t tell me you care about yourself while slowly killing yourself. What you can do is jump on the scale and look me directly in the eye and say, ‘I am healthy and where I (and my doctor) want me to be! I CARE about Me!’ I wasn’t even overweight and I told myself that on a daily basis, and look at me now. I know the struggle and the struggle is REAL!

I came out from under my rock and peeked around at the world and it is not at all what I remember or care to see. I asked God a few things and this [similar] post popped up on my newsfeed on facebook.

A reworded, rearranged meme: 

God Said No

“I asked God to take away my nasty habits. 
He said NO. It’s not for me to take away but for you to give up. 
I asked God to make my handicapped body whole again.
He said NO. Your Spirit is whole and your body is only temporary. 
I asked for patience and he said patience is a byproduct of tribulations, it isn’t granted, it is learned.
I asked for happiness and He gave me blessings,  my happiness is up to me. 
I asked for my pain to be spared and He said NO, pain draws me AWAY from the world and brings me closer to Him! 
I asked Him to help me grow. He said No, I'll prune you so you’ll be fruitful. 
I asked God for all things to enjoy this life and He said NO, I’ll give you LIFE so that you may enjoy all things. 
I asked God to help me LOVE others and not be judgmental. Again I was told that is for me to learn so I can count every day as a blessing.

Sometimes we ask for so many of the wrong things in our walk of life. Our eyes are not turned toward God but away from Him and focused on the things of this world that pleases our eyes. When you are so consumed with the world, you shouldn’t make fun of others who have God as their focus. I'd like to help you, but again, you don't CARE to help yourself, so my words fail to you. I don’t make fun of you as you’re consumed with food, media, and the world that a box presents to you. I accept that we're all different. So please, don't make fun of me!

While others are consumed with life and living I’m consumed with dying and where I want to go afterward. My daily consumption is the Word and all that He is preparing me for. I won’t go from this world to the next with nasty smelling baggage. When I was consumed with the world it got me nowhere but sickness, illness, and destruction. 

While someone might find it okay to tell me to go back under my rock as I’m in the throes of fighting cancer, I have to accept that being hurtful is the new norm from a world gone wrong. I peek out momentarily from ‘under my rock’ as was so inconsiderately spoken, and I see a world consumed with food, gossip, media headlines, and fantasy. And nothing of God dribbles from their mouths. Oh, on occasion they utter a word or two to God to make themselves feel good but really, is that what this life is all about nowadays?

Not for me. These days I HAVE to be consumed with God because my perspective on life has changed quite dramatically over the last year. I don’t live on the playground with other kids, frolicking in the physical toxins that deplete life, I am living in the Spirit-filled world where the bountiful beauty resides in nature. I am me, you are you. If you are happy with who and what you are then KUDOS to you and your accomplishments. Now respect me enough to allow me to dawdle in what makes ME happy, and that is God! 

The struggle is real! This is the time that God says YES! 

Job 31:5-6 “If I have walked with vanity, or if my foot hath hasted to deceit; Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may know mine integrity.”

Pss. 9:2 “I will be glad and rejoice in thee: I will sing praise to thy name, O thou most High.”

The Struggle Is Real

2 Cor. 5:17 KJV “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

The Struggle is Real

I know a lot of people who think that because you’ve accepted Christ that life will be full of luxurious bubble bath days and happiness. Some know and understand the truth, some are learning, some want what they want and want it NOW! 

Just like the above scripture, there is a simplified version from the AMP explained for us, you know someone else did all of the work and all you have to do is read it to understand the bible better.

2 Corinthians 5:17 (AMP) “Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].” 

I’m not normally offended when I read scripture but that verse in my morning email struck a nerve with me. I’ll assume that AMP is an amplified bible, (total assumption) and maybe people like having someone else decipher and dissect every scriptural word of the bible for them so they don’t have to do the work for themselves. I totally understand what 2 Tim. 2:15 is saying and don’t need fifty versions of the bible to tell me. Don’t we all wish life was so simple for us, let’s have others dissect our life for us, tell us right from wrong so we don’t make any mistakes? I have cancer, here ya go, take it away from me. Make my job in doing all of the hard work in healing simple for me, please! I can read and learn the protocols in healing but no one is going to do the work for me, but ME!

We think that being a Christian that there will be no struggles, no hard days, that all our days will be filled with knowing, understanding and doing the right thing. I’m here to tell you, nothing in life is simple, not reading the Bible, not being a Christian and certainly not going a Natural path to healing when conventional treatment is out there to make an illness easier for us.

I’m also here to tell you that the struggle is real! Life is hard, being a Christian is hard work, reading the bible is a (fun for me) chore! Nothing in life ever comes easy. If you’ve had an easy life, raising kids or pets, if being an adult has been a walk in the park for you, well then praise be to God, you’re one in a zillion! Yes, I said zillion because no one has an easy road to walk in life! 

Being a Christian doesn’t make the road easy, and it’s not always paved; sometimes there’s gravel on the road and we walk along in our bare feet. Our journey as a Christian is as tough as the non-christian we just have a friend walking along with us at all times. Now some people allow Jesus to walk way up ahead so He can prepare us for what we’re about to go through. Sometimes people allow Jesus to sit on the side of the road to watch us stumble and fall. Others don’t believe there is a Jesus and only allows a god to be sunshine on their bubbly well-lit path. 

See what I’m saying? The struggle is real for each and every one of us, in reading, believing and walking. I myself, and I like to think many others, has the Spirit of the Lord WITHIN us. This way we don’t have to look outside to see where He’s at, at any given moment. If we feel weak, we know He’s our strength to hold us up. If we feel disillusioned, He restores our sight so we see. If we have trouble understanding the Word, He fills us with the knowledge to understand every intricate word.

2 Tim. 2:15 King James Bible “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

There are literally thousands of interpretations, languages, renditions of the bible but in all honesty, there is only ONE Word! With the Word, we have internal and external struggles but all struggles none-the-less. Our internal struggles wrestle with the new life we’ve been given in Christ. We wonder when He’s just going to simplify everything for us, after all, we’ve allowed him on our path, right? Wrong! He’s not there to SIMPLIFY your life! He’s there to fill your life with meaning, purpose and most of all, strength. The task is that you yourself have to do the work but you're never alone!

Ezek. 37:1 “The hand of the LORD was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the LORD, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones,”

Our external struggles come when we wrestle with the flesh, the mind on other things not of God. Free-will demands we choose from good and evil, there is no in between. We struggle with understanding the Word and is probably the reason we seek out a simplified version of the bible so we’re sure that we are understanding correctly. 

Ezek. 36:27 “And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

Can everyone and anyone understand the bible completely with so many renditions out there? With thousands of years passing the story around, do you believe it is possible that some words got lost along the way? I believe God to be the One and Only word and He places on your heart the understanding so no simplification is necessary. What is the purpose of discernment if we have the Word simplified in many variations? Shouldn’t we FEEL the Word in us and no reason for simplicity?

I could be totally wrong, (as often I am) but I believe over dissection of His Word loses the luster of the meaning SPIRIT-FILLED, for ME. The struggle becomes a battle of differences in opinions and again, lost is the Spirit that was intended in having the Word documented by so many people.

Some people want me to blame God for this disease I carry while others want to blame evil, darkness, and negativity while I myself blame no one except my life choices! The lusts of my free will ran rampant and I lost the battle. No, wait, I haven’t lost the battle, the struggle is still on, day after agonizing day, night after aching night, the struggle is REAL! 

Pss.119:50 KJV “This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.”

I don’t want the Word simplified and I don’t want this journey made easy for me, it is what it is, upon me and the path I chose. Good or bad, right or wrong, simple or hard, this journey each of us is on is never easy and can never be simplified. The path can only be embraced for what it is, a completion of our journey home. Remember, He never walks in front, beside, or behind, He always remains within!  You are spirit-filled from the moment of rebirth in His name! 

All praise and Glory to God

Pss. 119:92-93 KJV “Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction. I will never forget thy precepts: for with them thou hast quickened me.”

Simplified - “I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life” (Psalm 119:93)

Gateway to Health: Don't Do Drugs!

Ex. 23: 10 “And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof:”

Gateway to Health: Don’t Do Drugs

With the height of the cold and flu season upon us, everyone is ready to grab the first drug offered if it means the symptoms will be reduced and you won’t feel so bad. Did you ever stop for a minute and think that the pacifier (drugs) is the very reason your illness lasts for two weeks or more?

I’m reminded of the time when I had had teeth pulled and expected antibiotics. EXPECTED! Expected because I didn’t want an infection and pain but the doctor told me he only gives antibiotics when there already IS infection present, there is no other reason FOR antibiotics! I sure wish he was an oncologist! His logic was that our body’s immune system fights infection better than any antibiotic and antibiotics are only for an active infection where the immune system obviously is compromised and not working! 

So if you’re taking drugs for a cold, flu or any other illness, your immune system is not functioning properly. Drugs enter your system and mimic the tiny molecular process so that your system believes that what it is seeing is from you internally. You have tricked the disease into believing that your immune system is working. My next question will be, why would you let a drug do for you what God created your immune system to do for you?

I’ve realized with this disease that is running rampant in me is all because my immune system has stopped working. The cells are in there taking advantage of me allowing the fungus to fester and grow. Like a mold growing on your walls or climbing the trees, you need to know the root cause of the problem before getting rid of the growth. A pacifying treatment is no CURE, it is an obvious mask and your internal system knows when you're trying to trick it!

I find it quite ironic how everyone looks down on drug addicts but because you are ‘prescribed’ legal drugs, everyone is okay with that. My brother is back home addicted to oxycontin because it was legally prescribed to him when he had a back injury many years ago. He’s needed more drugs and he caters to more illegal addictions BECAUSE he was prescribed LEGAL drugs. He is borderline homeless and just waiting to die I guess because he doesn’t want to be healed of his addictions.

No one wants to be taken off their meds. The meds seem to be working so you keep on purchasing them over and over, year after year. Face it, call it what it is, it’s an addiction. You don’t question the medication because, in your mind, you believe it is a medication that is helping you. Well sure it is helping you, the drug is mocking your immune system and the one God gave you has been put on the back burner and has submissively given up on you.

We ALL are fighting a compromised immune system! Some would rather take drugs and others seek out the culprit and aim to heal the immune system that years of damage have caused via herbal remedies. My disease is no different than your disease, its just as a society, my disease has the fear factor clenching its teeth around the mind, body and spirit! Take away the drugs and fear factor, you have a damaged mind, body and soul. 

Why do people turn so easily to a fabricated drug? Is it because they trust a doctor? I believe that is the problem in a nutshell. Yes, I believe doctors are necessary. Yes, I believe they can help us with a detrimental illness but I also believe it is their duty to try everything else BEFORE handing us drugs to become addicted to. They know what they’re doing and they don’t believe they’re doing anything wrong because people 'appear' to be healing from drugs.

I noticed that a lot of people are wising up to the doctors and their machinations and finding alternative treatments to their drug-induced disease. The drugs should be the last resort, not the first go to! Children across the world are being fed these drugs via vaccinations. Vaccinations are NOT mandatory yet, but you better plan to homeschool your child if she or he is not inoculated, the government doesn’t ALLOW non-vaccinated children into THEIR schools!  

Kids are the portal to future illnesses. We pop them with pills and drugs at an early age for minor things and have them relying on pills to heal any affliction. As addicted adults, we don’t take the blame for our child’s addiction because we ourselves are addicted to drugs on one level or another. It’s a vicious cycle and the merry-go-round never stops!

Herbs and oils have been used for centuries! Long before pharmaceutical corporations began running their business, the healing properties were not of synthetic form they were from the earth in a natural state! We as humans have lost sight of these facts via drugs and brainwashing. We believe drugs are good and herbs are bad. Enlighten yourself, read the links I provided.

I don’t see people spraying Round-Up on their food at the dinner table but they willingly secretly ingest the product. Because the toxin cannot be seen, we don’t worry about ingesting the chemical. At every restaurant, fast food or otherwise, you are putting chemicals into your body that your system doesn’t recognize. Your system, liver, bladder, all bodily functions react and begin to shut down and a sickness arises, one that you can’t heal because your immune system is too far gone and you NEED DRUGS.

Why is the organic industry blossoming? Not because of a bunch of health nuts, but because people like you and me are tired of being sick and fed drugs. We’re waking up and taking control of what goes into our systems. We’re not walking blindly into a doctor’s office and taking what he prescribes as truth and fact, we're asking questions! This might hurt his and the pharmaceutical business but you know what that means to you as a paying customer? They’re ramping up the PUSH for you to take MORE drugs and demanding your KIDS need them too!

You might think that all of this thinking came about when I was diagnosed with a disease that the world believes to be the ‘killing-disease’ but do you really think I would have just gone the alternative route because I thought there might be another option to slice, dice and chemo? This decision wasn’t entered into lightly. I’ve always used the doctor as a last resort. I watched what I ate daily, not taking a liking to eating a ton of meat and sugars, I read and I learned. My biggest vice was Pepsi’s, chips and pasta. When this illness surfaced I was still fitting into my size seven jeans so no, I was never an overweight person, I just inhaled the wrong things.

I’ve always believed in God, the earth, and nature. The doctor, for any ailment, depression, anxiety, and basically anything I’ve been hit with was and always will be my last resort, not my first stop and shop go-to business. I believe we hold the power within us to heal ourselves, we just don’t utilize our mind in the aspect to which it was formed and the very reason we exist!

Our secret medicinal strength is in our mind. If you ask an insomniac why they can’t sleep, they’ll tell you, I just can’t stop thinking. In other words, they have no control over relaxing their mind. I wonder if when they are sick and bedridden, do they sleep? If they do, you want to know why? Because their mind KNOWS they need REST and makes sure they get more than they normally would. When they get better, poof, their mind is back in the racing game, all gassed up and ready to go. 

When our society becomes less dependent on drugs, then and only then will you witness a nationwide healing taking place. Otherwise, if you are not willing to change, your diet, your mind, or your way of healing yourself then we will continue to see the downfall of an over-burdened drug addicted society.

Isa. 48:19 “Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”

Poetry Sunday~ Illusion

Ecc. 5:8 “If thou seest the oppression of the poor, and violent perverting of judgment and justice in a province, marvel not at the matter: for he that is higher than the highest regardeth; and there be higher than they.”

I tried so hard to simply take
A picture that’s real or is it fake?

Cheap camera in hand, I took a shot
The sunshine is real, the horse is not

Here they stand stellar in pose
Like riddles amid well-worded prose

Life sometimes is simply abstract
When digging among lie or fact

A political year wrought with lies
Manifested with a camera’s eyes.

Photoshop - Believing is Seeing

Have you ever seen a photoshop picture? They can be pretty realistic can’t they? 

I was thinking about writing and how we embellish the truth, make up stories, color it with vivid imagination and call it fiction.

How come people can take beautiful pictures and get away without telling others that the photo is photoshopped? Is photoshopped even a word?

What IS photoshop?

“Photoshop is the leading digital image editing application for the Internet, print, and other new media disciplines. It is embraced by millions of graphic artists, print designers, visual communicators, and regular people like you. It's likely that nearly every picture you've seen (such as posters, book covers, magazine pictures, and brochures) has either been created or edited by Photoshop. The powerful tools used to enhance and edit these pictures are also capable for use in the digital world including the infinite possibilities of the Internet.”

With today’s technology, there are numerous things you can do with photoshop. I’ve seen pics of elephants walking on water, I’ve seen clouds turned into a monster storm-looking thunderous cloudburst, I’ve even seen Jesus in toast, clouds, trees, you name it, all thanks to the artists who can work photoshop.

If a writer took someone’s work and twisted it, and worked it into a totally different story, I do believe a lawsuit would ensue. But with pictures, it seems the norm to take someone’s picture and embellish it to their liking, put a caption on it, and maybe the original photographer doesn’t even recognize the pic as his/her own!

Now I’m not talking about someone re-inventing the Cinderella story, I think every writer has dappled with that tale as well as Snow White and many other fairytale's passed down through time. But when I see Lord of the Rings taken and re-invented into a “similar” story, boy it grates on my nerves!

We’re writer’s and we have our very own creative genius in our brains. We can create stories that might be general matches to other stories like say vampire stories. They should and WILL all be different from what is on the shelves now.

I’m so glad that photshop hasn’t found a way to doctor MY work, although, sometimes it does look like it needs a doctor. I’m just saying, as a photographer, a person works their tail off to capture beauty, the same goes for writer’s , we work very hard at our words so that we capture the beauty to tell a riveting story. A doctored pic to me says the photographer is too lazy to capture the REAL beauty and has to embellish it to make it shine.

If you’re a writer, you will not settle for anything less! You will make your work stand out and preferably stand alone. Sure magazines abuse airbrush, novel covers need a tricky photo to grab you, but writer’s? They walk along with only the English language (or whatever you speak) to carry their words.

Don’t photoshop your writing. Remember, you’re an artist of a different caliber. No technology is going to assist you in making it better. Use your talent accompanied with your mind to airbrush and dazzle, with WORDS!

The Tales of your Soul

Non-fiction writing

We writer’s can conjure up fairies and spellbinding magical lands. We can take you deep into the abyss while leaving you, the reader, breathless from the journey. That’s what writers do. We captivate you.

But ask us about intimate triumphant stories of our personal lives, then suddenly a lot of writer’s will put up a barricade not letting you enter into that domain. I see a growing market in this shattered economy for true stories. Sure the fiction will always carry us to the fantasy worlds of our dreams but reality is much more intriguing.

People tend to want to hear about struggles, pain and suffering. Just like our fictional characters have there ups and downs, when it switches to the character being a real live person with hardships and heart break, we the public want to read about the quest.

I, personally, have no hard time telling of the tragedies that have befallen my dysfunctional family and life. You know why? Because I would not be the woman I am today if ever I changed one incident.

Think about that for a moment. When someone says, “Do you have any regrets?” or “Is there anything you would change if you could go back and do it over again?” I always give a resounding, “No!” If I changed who my parents were, I would be a different woman. If I changed the poverty of my family, I would be a spoiled rich kid. If I changed my career and slung pizza’s all of my life (yes, I did sling pizza’s for a living.) I would not be the appreciative God fearing woman that I am today.

I always hear people complain about trivialities. “I broke another fake nail.” or “My car broke down and my kid needs to get to school, and I’m broke after we ordered out last night.” Why did you order out? Didn’t you think you would ever have a circumstance where the money was needed more than the “take-out” dinner?

Wake up people. Life is happening all around you and misfortune is knocking on everyone’s door. No one is exempt here and I don’t care what country or state that you live in, you are feeling the pain too!

Write about your life’s story. Give the world a tell all odyssey that they can sink their teeth into and most of all, relate to on many different levels. People in the world need to know that they’re not alone in their plight. Just think, you can touch someone in Somalia, making them feel not so alone.

So what are you waiting for? Are you going to let fear of the unknown stop you from sharing? Are you going to let the fantasy writing tie you up and bind you and keep you in denial any longer? Liberate yourself. Free the person within; participating in human compassion.