Poetry Sunday ~ I Was Weeping

Christ-mas display in Texas 

John 19:25-26 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw his mother, and the disciple standing by, whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy son!

I was weeping…

There were some who placed Him on the cross;

while others pulled His linen to toss.

Some were poking spears in his side

while women below were weeping and cried.

I was weeping.

Men were standing there mocking Him

some laughed and scoffed as His eyes grew dim.

Wails could be heard all across the way

as God put an end to the longest day.

I was wailing.

Some contend He was a guilty man

but only God knew his master plan.

Carried off to a cold empty tomb,

women followed; their faces bore gloom.

I was full of gloom.

In three days she came looking for

a Man that laid in the tomb no more.

Run and tell men to praise and sing

The Lord has risen, our Savior and King!

I was singing!

While many stood in disbelief

there were some who felt great relief.

Not all men nailed Him to that cross

Some people wept and felt the loss.

I was weeping.

Matt. 28:5-9 And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him.

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."

Competitive By Nature

2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NIV) “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” 

I called my mother the other evening, like I always do every night and twice on Saturday and Sunday, but this time it went to the answering machine as she waited to hear my voice and then pick it up. 

I asked, “Why the machine. You have caller ID?”
She retorted, “Why all the questions, you writing a book?”
I sarcastically replied, “Well yes, yes I am.”

I could tell right away she was in ‘a mood’ the kind I tolerate since my dad has passed and she clings to so much bitterness, for his death and for her being left alive, alone. I just try and be the relief pitcher and comfort her in any way I can. Since I’m the only child of six who talks to her on a daily basis, I take the brunt of her moods from a distance. 

To be honest, I cherish these phone calls to my mother because I know there will come a day when I don’t hear her voice on the other end and I’ll be alone without any communication from the family I once had. I don’t miss my family like I do my mother because we were never really a family in any sense of the word; we were competitors in the field.

You see, when I was born, I was the sixth child of a family all vying for a prize, the prize being the attention of my mother and father. My sister had held the baby position for three years and here I come into the fray as the fresh living competitor baby, the new attention getter, the new baby with a nickname, the baby that would, in her mind, replace the love my parents gave to her, and so she set out my demise from the day I was born. 

I can tell it was a bitter competition to her from the stories she’s told all of her life, I guess in a way to make me feel guilty for being alive? A way for maybe getting me to go far away from the family so she could take her position as the center of attention? I don’t know, I just surmise an intuitive guess. And yes, my writing will hold the story whether they ever see it or not, this is MY story, not theirs; my truth, not their jumbled mess of perception.

Granted I was a tattle-tale brat but I did not deserve, at three-years-old to be pushed on a swing so high that I’d fear for my life and jump off the swing to be caught by a chain link fence, the kind with the barbed-wire looking top? Yes, I have the ugly memory and nasty scar to prove it and over the years my sister vehemently denied it was her doing the pushing but my brother. Gee, that didn’t make me feel any better.

She gave me my first cigarette at eight, my first joint of marijuana at I don’t know what age, the damage is real though, it was young. My first beer, my first jump in a raging river, my first kiss from some boy she set me up with. Also the first voice I overheard whispering when I was sixteen, “She should’ve just had an abortion.”

This was a real competition, not some contrived imagination of my overly drugged mind that went right into my twenties when at the time I was closer to my brother and she wanted that position but he didn’t want a relationship with her. My entire family fought with the battle of Dad loved me more, mother liked you best, neither of them liked me and there I was the baby, the relief pitcher who would try to bring a broken vase to the table and try to glue the pieces back together. And it bled into my late thirties when I finally left home and left all the bad memories behind and never looked back.

While the world is busy bustling with sharing all the beautiful moments of their family, pictures abounding of happy times, I often wonder when people say that they too had a hard life or trying times where are THOSE images? Mine are either in a box somewhere or lost in the portals of time. I understand it though when people aren’t as ready and willing to share their trying times as I am. It’s okay, we all have our own way of healing or hiding behind masks.

People are not willing to share the ugly times, that’s ‘their little secret’ that they’ll carry with them to the grave. Sometimes they’d rather people only see the good and happy posts spread out on Instagram and Facebook so that people visually see the good life they had or have when deep down the pain and hurt comes out in snide remarks.

I myself sometimes use humor to hide my pain but really it doesn’t hide it too well, I think humor, to ME, is just a form of medicine I use to help with my healing. I love to laugh, I love to see people laugh, I love to share my pain and most of all my GROWTH, through smiles and laughter. Some may see it as me letting too many skeletons dance freely out of the closet but hey, we all need to let them free some time or another, I’d rather do it sooner rather than later when they decide to jump out of the closet as regrets. 

It all boiled to a steep head last year in October when my father passed away. I no longer wanted to be the relief pitcher. The last straw was the poem that I wrote for my father to hear on his deathbed since I couldn’t be there for one of the hardest days in my life. My sister held the poem in her hand and withheld reading it, a scar that singes burning hot to this day at just the thought. 

Don’t say I’m mean and unforgiving for not sharing any love for a lost family. Respect me for the forgiveness I HAVE shown and chose to move on from it all, in a healing place for ME! The best thing I carry with me from my past is my son! And I will continue to give him the best part of me and we’ll have our very own memories, good ones that outweigh the bad ones. He said to me this morning, "You're not a phony like everybody else, you lay things out in the open."

Wow! Thank you, son. Not only does he see the real me, YOU see the real me too! Nothing phony or fake here, people!  

Stressed Part II

James 3:10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. (NIV)

Stressed Part II

I wrote a post about me being stressed about my sons graduation, I also think I mentioned it was more than that and all I knew to do was to take it to God and await an answer. Well last Sunday after our service at church, we were listening to a sermon on the radio (Yes, we listen to a radio sermon on the way home from church) and there seemed to be a message hidden in the sermon for me.

The minister said something like, “It’s all well and good that you sit on facebook, hours on end, posting scripture and inspiration but what do you ACTIVELY do to walk in Christ throughout your day?”

That lay on my heart pretty heavy and as such, I brought it back to God and asked for some sort of clarification/guidance to all this confusion going on inside my head. Whatwith the graduation approaching quickly, face book time, Adam going off into the world, too soon for me to grasp, but soon.

This week I got a lot of clarification. First, I went into facebook and announced that there would be a ‘change in the way I post, I hope you like the change’. I informed no one of just what that change would be but I got an immediate response from a dear, well respected friend, “Whoa!” he said, “I noticed it right away!”

Then the conversation went on about how they like reading what people are REALLY thinking, not through inundating the wall with pictures, but words, they like to read words. Wow! Change one, met and approved.

Now onto change two. Words! For years my blog was about writing then the change came when God spoke to me and He told me about WORDS; people want to read words. They don’t want information shoved down their throats, they want real thought provoking words; thus the change to poetry, my words, my thoughts.

After a peaceful nights rest, I wake in the morning, I read the Word from the bible first and then I pray; thus starts EVERY promising day. So change two would be The Word, I would share my verse(s) that spoke to me that morning and THAT is what I’d post, first thing. Not a random pic with scripture, words that touched ME and would maybe touch someone, anyone reading.

People like reading words! Now onto hurdle three, emoticon madness. A few years back I actually quit a writing course and gave up most writing because the emoticon madness was rampant. Now don’t get me wrong, I love smiley, I probably would want to marry him, if he was HUMAN. That’s just it, he is NOT human, so in the rampant unending posts of emoticons, you as a human come off as INHUMAN. You know what I mean?

People want WORDS! A happy smiley here, a grumpy smiley there, a heart here, an angel there, smiley’s can have the effect of how you’re feeling. But you know what, they are inhuman feelings. You cannot express true feelings with a smiley.

A smiley with WORDS has an affect. Overuse of a smiley can have an affect too, a negative one, as in my case. When someone asks for prayer, I offer WORDS of prayer, not an emoticon, when someone needs a lift, I offer WORDS to lift them up, not an emoticon. Granted I abused the picture situation; I had no idea people would actually want to READ MY WORDS!

So the change comes, and with that oftentimes a stir of controversy. Like a post the other day where I had a dilemma. It came to my attention that someone in school, in an administrative position was sleeping with a student. I didn’t have all the facts but it was enough to cause me concern. What do I do? I had prayed and like so many, I didn’t wait for an answer or resolution, and I just wanted someone’s opinion on the matter.

Boy oh boy did I get it. Keep in mind I was sexually molested as a child so I was very bias. No one heard me, no one did anything, so what was I to do for this kid. Granted he is 19, graduated early in November (which I stated) and she is a thirty-something administrative assistant; works in the office typing and such.

I said I’d pray and wait for an answer but the comments already had her burned at the stake. That was my first response too, but like always, I pray first, act later.

“Turn her in!”

“Go to the authorities!”

“She’s a child molester! Working with kids! How many other children has she molested?”

“Probably a government paid education!”

Things of that nature.

Wow! My dilemma had become a full-blown witch-hunt! When the word government reached the post, I deleted it. I in no way have anything to do with people’s political agenda. When I say I love my brother, I mean ALL of my brothers of humanity! ALL!

Pray and pray, that’s what I did. Later that day it came to my attention more FACTS about the whole thing. 1) The authorities know (as well as the small community) 2) The boy is 19 OUT OF SCHOOL (meaning, he is his own person) 3) Their liaison took place AFTER school (not on school property) so there is NOTHING the authorities in charge can do!

Shameful: an older woman, having sex with an adult child, yes. Illegal – no. Criminal – no. Immature were the acts of the boy showing pictures of his conquest to friends. Mistake – yes. Judgment? There is only one judge and jury now and it is in HIS hands.

Lesson: Really choose your WORDS wisely before posting ANYTHING!

The change has come and continues to grow. I will move and ACT only by His hand.

Hakuna Matata

Is. 57:19 I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him that is far off, and to him that is near, saith the LORD; and I will heal him.

***

Hakuna matata is a beautiful phrase from the Swahili language. In short that means “no worries for the rest of life”!
 

Isn’t that a nice concept? No worries for the rest of your life. Can you imagine?
 

On the threshold of tomorrow, we all have worries and concerns. I like to give all my worries to God because I feel He is better equipped to handle my baggage than I am capable of doing.
 

Writers have worries also, and with each word, sentence, paragraph, we wonder (not worry) if the next page will be as smoothly as the first. Will we or won’t we even be able to finish the book, short story? Will the words surface like bubbles under water, rise to the occasion; Be lifted by a force so that when it reaches the surface we grab it, only for it to pop?
 

Oh dear, I’ve opened a can of worms. But not to worry. Life is too short to sit in the worry pool. We would never accomplish anything in this place and time if we sat with worry by our side because where there is worry, doubt being its best friend, is right there alongside you too! I can list a whole slew of synonyms that ride along with worry and believe me, if you befriend worry, that list of synonyms clings to it like a spitball to a wall. Anguish, distress, misery, and my favorite worry friend, torture!
 

Do you see what I’m getting at here? If you allow one ounce of worry into your way of thinking, the other negative influences think they have a place in there too and they make sure they squeeze into the scene, never allowing for a positive and uplifting energy to form.The negative makes sure that the positive oozes out of the way, leaving you with what, one positive and ten negatives?
 

I’m no scientist here, but I’m 99.9% sure that ten negatives outweigh that one positive that is lingering there. So what I’m leading up to is an all encompassing peace to blanket your soul and carry you away from the worry scene.
 

Thoughts like ‘I WILL write!’, “I WILL accomplish my goal!”, “I WILL __________!” Place any positive on that line and you will do all you can do, be all you can be and achieve the outcome that you desire.
 

As I head off to Omaha in the morning, am I worried of the outcome? NO! Because I’ve placed worry and all his synonym friends in a pail for the Lord to carry across the sand for me, after all, it is His footprints I see, not my own!
 

Luke 12: 34 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
 

Matt 6: 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.