I Had A Bad Day...

Job 7:14 “Then thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions:”

I had a bad day

When a nightmare wakes me throughout the night, this title should really be, I had a bad night. The other day I woke early in the morning not my usual chipper self. I woke in tears and tears defined the greater part of my day. I guess I'm allowed a bad day/night on occasion. Glad they're not frequent.

We usually wake and go shopping, but this day I woke grumpy with two inches of snow on the ground and heavy stuff still falling from the sky. This winter has been a temperature roller coaster ride as well as the ups and downs of emotions. Normally I have my emotions in check but here lately everything is triggering a reaction in me.

My nightmare began with a doctor visit located in a hospital room not much different than the room I was in last year when I received my diagnosis before being forced into test after detrimental test. 

In my nightmare the nurse squeaked into the room, tearing off linens on the bed across from me. She was running off in the mouth. I asked her what she was doing and she quickly spits out, “We’re prepping you for surgery. That breast is nasty looking and the doctor needs to remove it, or you’re gonna die, gonna die, gonna die.” The sound was echoing over and over.

“Wait, I’m not going to have surgery. I have a choice!” My voice didn’t echo like hers, it sounded more like a soft whisper.  

“But if you’re gonna die, gonna die, gonna die,” my husbands says with the echo now in his voice. His face was really close to mine as the echo made his face look like the wicked House of Mirrors.

“I am NOT having surgery,” I screamed that one pretty loud but still no one could hear me. It was like my lips were moving but everything went on, movements in the room heads nodding in disagreement as if I wasn’t there. I was seriously expecting Pennywise from the King book ‘It’ to just pop out and start cackling but instead…

“But you’re gonna die, gonna die, gonna die! It looks nasty, nasty, nasty,” the nurse cackled with an eerie looking grin.

You get the gist of the nightmare. Fear, laughing, taunting all in line before I forced the blankets off of me and battled the cold reality of the morning. Tears still streaming down my face, when my husband said something to me, I snapped at him. That is so unlike me! I said, “I just had a terrible nightmare, please don’t do this to me today!”

He shrugged and mimicked me until I looked at him with wet eyes and started bawling my eyes out. He realized it really had to be a bad dream for me to wake in tears.

He went on with his routine to start his day; I could see his mind wandering. He ventured outside to start his truck and brush away the snow on there from the windblown covering that blanketed his truck; only a total whiteout hindered any chance of venturing off to the store at this time. I was adamant about not going with him and carrying this negative crud through the store. My son was at work and heading home in the whiteout at this very time, so that added to my stress of the early morning.

When my son arrived home, he could see I had been crying, “What’s the matter?” 

“A nightmare! I had a bad nightmare!” I know I was snappy in my reply.

“It was just a bad dream,” he says downplaying my pain. He was just returning from an eight-hour overnight shift, drove through whiteout conditions and here I was snapping at him. 

There it was, the truth of the matter, everyone is so used to seeing me as the pillar of strength that when I’m in a serious bit of stressful turmoil they don’t recognize it; they downplay my pain and shrug it off. She’ll get over it, they figure to themselves. I couldn’t get over this, not quickly anyway.

I carried throughout the day a heavy chip on my shoulder and an old time movie projector in my mind, the nightmare kept playing over and over like a broken record, “you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die, you’re gonna die.” There was just no shaking the feeling or the nightmare. This gives night terrors new meaning.

I tried venturing onto Facebook, bad idea. I felt like everyone was laughing at me, taunting me, mocking me, and disagreeing with everything I’ve worked so hard for. They were not doing any such thing, but the nightmare had my paranoia levels up and shaking this was not going to just go away with a few passing smiles for the day.

Super Bowl Sunday was then spent napping and anticipating my long-awaited arrival on Monday, our new mattress! My back has been a problem for years now and I knew it was the fifteen-year-old mattress but I also knew we couldn’t afford a new one, but with the expectancy of an income tax check, I made the suggestion to my husband of a new mattress. We thought of the costs of a chiropractor for me and the mattress was much cheaper by far. With enough supplements for two more months, I was anxiously looking forward to a comfortable nights rest on a new mattress!

I didn’t put myself through the anxiety of a football game and my husband was kind enough to sit through a Disney movie with me instead of the year’s ending of the football show. Neither one of us watched football this year as it has become its own little world. No longer an enjoyable sport-like football game, it’s now added fluff and frufru make it a waste of MY precious time. He did catch the second half (he’s a man, whatcha expect) *wink-wink* and he enjoyed watching someone else win the Super Bowl this year. 

With the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl it just reaffirms my hope that the underdog DOES WIN on occasion! It signifies that the underdog has a chance against the powers that be, the winners of society, the boasters, and braggarts, we little folk DO win! 

James 1:12 (NIV) “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

Monday, the mattress came…

Pss.3:5 “I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the LORD sustained me.”

Pointing Fingers

Ps. 136: 25 Who giveth food to all flesh: for his mercy endureth for ever.
***

After yesterdays post, I could feel the fingers pointing, the mouths hanging open, whispering sounds, “You were on welfare?”

I’ve known many people who should BE on assistance but they don’t because of pride. Pride holds people back from many things and when you get the haughty attitude in life, you are missing a main element in your human existence; compassion, meekness.

“I’m not going to lower myself and go THERE” they say, while slopping up oats, or mac and cheese, for the 28th day of the month. When you don’t have a child, I guess you and your pride can stand on the pedestal thinking yourself really something way up there, above everyone else. Looking down on the lowly, meek and humble.

“HaH, look at me, I’m way up here and you, you have lowered yourself and will sit in that welfare office with all those stinky people who have absolutely nothing.” They have absolutely nothing? Really? I don’t see it that way. I see them as having MORE than you and as human beings who need food and are willing to go and get it, even if that means, shaking off the prideful attitude, humbling themselves and standing in line for hours at our government offices, and going home with food. Real food, delicious healthy food that will strengthen and nourish their bodies.

Meals on Wheels, food assistance to the elderly. Would you stand on your pedestal and deprive the elderly of a meal every day? You sit there and say that the welfare offices are full of people who take advantage of the system, yet you have no idea the persons life or circumstance that caused them to be in that situation. The meals-on-wheels is no different, the elderly need food and sometimes they don’t have cars or a means to get a meal each day, but would you deprive an elderly person a meal? Then why judge and deprive anyone else who is getting a much needed meal?

Oh, I get it now, it all boils down to your ego. “I work for my meals!” or “I have a job, now YOU go find one and stop allowing taxpayers to pay for you!” Really? Is that what it is to you? You being better, you having something others don’t have, you wanting to keep it for yourself and not share it?
You’ll spew back at me, I have no ego, I just call ‘em as I see ‘em. My point exactly, YOU call it the way YOU see it. When YOU have an ego, remember your pov lessons? Ego is all about YOU.

So what we have is YOU calling yourself a Christian, and YOU depriving innocent people of food and shelter, YOU taking from the poor, to give to the what? I can’t say rich, but those just getting by, too?
 
We have greed festering and surfacing, boasting, taunting, yet you say you have no ego?

Luke 18:14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Can you imagine just for a moment the weak and lowly of the earth coming to Jesus and saying, “I’m hungry.” And Jesus scoffing and saying “Get a job! I have nothing to offer you!” You’re jaw just dropped open. Close it before the flies get in, would you? Why did your jaw drop open? Because you know that Jesus would NEVER deny any man food, and I do mean ANY man or woman. So you calling yourself a Christian and denying a man his food, is no different than your Lord and Savior turning his back on the needy.
 
We as Christians have to humble ourselves and at one point in our life, become a weak, meek, lowly person to grasp the reality of what is being taught us by Christ.  Some of us never seek to rise above humility because we’re comfortable teaching what truly needs to be taught. All I ask, is look within at YOU and see just who it is YOU serve. It's not all about YOU pointing fingers, remember that.

Pro. 13: 23 Much food is in the tillage of the poor: but there is that is destroyed for want of judgment.