Thorn in the Flesh

2 Cor. 12:7 “And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.”

Thorn in the Flesh

I come to you today friends with a thorn in my flesh. As much as I grumble and gripe I am humbled as I am being used by God. I often think of this journey I’m on and how hard the walk has been but I also think of Paul and how he must’ve felt. I know there are many people in the Bible, real human beings who felt the Lord had forgotten them, only to find that through the scorching flames of seeming hellfire, they were actually being used by God to deliver a message. 

I rise in the morning and settle down to read my morning devotion with a warm cup of coffee in my hand. I gaze out the window into the darkness and the light is yet to shine. I patiently wait, read and glean a message to write to you. Not every day do I write, some days I just sit in thought and relish my alone time with God.

When I look out into the world the hustle and bustle sometimes frightens me as everyone is scurrying around doing their own things. They have lives to busy themselves with and often the Lord is a passing thought, if ever a thought at all.

Deut. 32:5 “They have corrupted themselves, their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.”

I often think of how many generations have been lost to the crookedness of their path. Has any ever been in the clutch of God awakened? Are the people far and few between these days who take their role in this world serious?

We have become a world puffed up in vanity and conceit and find that serving a god, any god Higher or lower to be a chore of service that sometimes takes up too much of our time. In my affliction, my disease, I have nothing BUT time for Him because, to be honest, His world is such a pleasure to get lost in, as for this world, there is nothing but distress and disgust.

I find that here lately, there is an evil that tosses me about the shores of my walk. Every word I say is met with, ‘you’re wrong!’ or ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about!’ and with that puffiness, the waves wash away my footprints in the sand. But lo, I continue to walk.

As God is directing me in my steps, there are those that wish to push me in the water. They wish to see me disappear but I cannot go yet, my words are still required. And whether you want to read them, need to read them or enjoy reading them, please know, my path of pain is as much for you as it is for me.

I can’t give you all the answers you seek as no one is here handing me the easy answer either. But I do set for you a goal, a path that is possibly achieved if only you pull the veil from your head and let the mask of conceit be drowned. 

There is much work to be done. Change is not only desired but it is much needed during these times. There is no time to be lazy and blinded by your own ambitions.

2 Cor. 4:17 “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

I see some out there laughing and scoffing, waving their pointed finger at me but I also see some out there scratching their heads and saying ‘I think she’s onto something’ and they grab hold and hope the airbags work in case a disaster should befall them. Not many are ready for the ride of their life.

I know I am not the only one being dipped in the flaming fire. But I am the rare one without a veil who is trying to show you how to weather these torrential storms. They might seem disastrous, noisy, downright uncomfortable, but rest assure, there IS hope on the other side.

Just because I don’t have the same search as you, just because you are wrapped up in your own conceit and think only YOU are right about everything, I’m here to tell you that you are amazingly wrong. Yes, I say that as my finger is poking you in the chest and pushing you back to your sitting down position! 

As you flop in the chair, listen up, LIFE IS NOT ABOUT YOU! Know that there is a force running alongside you building pedestals for you to stand on. Know that there is another force ready to knock you off that pedestal and plant you back into reality, whenever you’re ready.

As my spiritual nature has always known about the positive/negative energy having the ability to either drain you or lift you up, science finally agrees with me. I found another site that was on my newsfeed wall on Facebook. Be forewarned it has Native American belief system there. A people I greatly admire and respect, I might add.

Looking through the link above I may be labeled as a White Witch. Ironically, the writing group I frequent, the animal persona I chose was that of a White Wolf! Hmm… interesting.

For all of you saying, oh my goodness I can’t believe she said that she is a white witch. Maybe you need a lesson on what a witch is, a person with their Wits about them. Like marijuana, there is a stigma surrounding both. Yes, I’m off my rocker, cuckoo, crazy, insane and any other label you wish to stamp me with. And just so you know, I NEVER give myself a label. If I were to label myself, I’d say Spirit-filled, all the way!

From the link, all are true of me except for number nine, partially.

9 "They are ardent believers of the idea that just because we can’t see something with our own eyes doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. This makes them believers in the power of magic."

I draw the line with number nine. I don’t believe for one moment in the power of magic! I believe in the strength of an all-powerful God, Father of Jesus, His Son! If the label of White Witch offends, so must the God of Heaven who parts a sea, or unleashes plagues, or watches His Son die for the unmoved man. 

Our world is defined by labels that people place around so they can read people to make themselves feel good about themselves. They say they are not judgmental but use words, even if they are floating in their subconscious mind, words like fat, ugly, snob, witch, bitch, rude crude, you name it, it feels better to you if you give it a label. Have you ever wondered about the labels given to Jesus? 

As we wind down our days to the Resurrection Sunday. Think! Think of all the words Jesus said while hanging on the cross. Hold close to your heart the very reason you believe or don’t believe. Try your hardest to release the stigmas you drown in, this is a new era, a new day is dawning. Think! As the thorn in my flesh is painfully evident for all to see, the Crown of Thorns worn on Jesus’ head holds more significance. He came, He walked, He lived, He died. Now, pray.

All praise and Glory to Him who holds my spirit cupped in His hands! 

Never stigmatize the world we live. Keep your mind open!

Dolphins at work. 

Rom. 15:13 “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.”

MONOPOLY!

Job 40:20 "Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play."

MONOPOLY

Deut. 33:27 “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee; and shall say, Destroy them.”

This was going to be one of my Gateway to Health continuing series on STRENGTH. I got sidetracked because of my Google browser.

Gateway to Health: Strength
Through all of this soul searching, I realized another thing that makes me different from a lot of people. It isn’t just my intense love of the Holy Spirit within me, it is my strength to get through trials. Since I found out I have this disease my strength has grown to immeasurable heights. I know when I was younger my sister always deemed me ‘the strong one’. I never felt strong but she said I handled things differently than everyone else.

When I looked at this disease and the statistics in getting it, supposedly 90% was caused by stress. I don’t know how accurate that statistic is because it seems Google is waging a war against the holistic healing facts that I found one year ago. Genetics only make up three percent, and a chronic growing fungus like my psoriasis is another percentage. Add them all together and you have the Big C! Now do people with none of these ‘symptoms’ get the C? I don’t know, they’ve had to get these statistics from somewhere.

It wasn’t until about fifteen years ago when I started taking my writing to new heights with my first computer did I decide to get my story out to the world via the intranet. I didn’t care if it was in book format and no one read my words or a blog or another format, I was working on cleaning out the impervious closet.

I literally had access to thousands of outlets to post the heartfelt pain that I had suffered over my lifetime. My poetry writings in my notebooks made the long journey with me when I left home. I transferred some of my favorite poems to the newfound Word documents and the world now became mine to conquer; the new avenue was full of traffic.

Poetry was my healing outlet as a child. I could write my pain in journals and no one would be the wiser. No one would know that the walls of my closet were black because they assumed it was yellow and sunshiny bright inside my head; that is how God protected me. He allowed me to barrel over the waterfalls of life, with the sunbeams in front of me and rainbows behind me. I didn’t feel I was hiding my pain but apparently, I hid traumatic events in my writing.

As a matter of fact, I didn’t feel I was hiding the trauma. Through my writing, I was healing myself and when looked at, it appeared I was strong because I showed no sign of weakness but here I am with an illness that was awakened by the dark closet I had closed to the outside world all those years. How this transferred into the disease of a lifetime I may never know the true facts of the matter. I’m not here dissecting my pain I’m here to show you that strength wins out in the end.

Strength momentarily halted. Read on…

Since January first the ever-popular search engine Google has shifted. For a year I’ve been searching through page after page on cancer, the healing protocols, the holistic avenues I need to take. It was my understanding that your search engine ‘follows you’ and will then send like-minded pages to the front end of your searching. Holistic healing, natural herbal remedies being my most searched have now turned a sour negative note. I don’t know why but I won’t let it stress me as it is trying to do just that. Example? This link is just one example. Last year I found numerous pages that pointed to stress as the cause of this disease, but this morning as in recent weeks, I had to dig through numerous Psych central and the like pages! Page 1 listed pages that contradicted everything I saw last year pointing TO stress being the cause. This year stress is basically laughed at on page 1.

The Truth About Cancer and similar pages used to be the first pages that showed up, but it has mysteriously gone from my page one searches on EVERYTHING. It’s not doing a good job of following me, and now everything is from science this, scientific that. Where in the world did these pages come from? Now Google has its own agenda??? And people wonder why I don’t trust this superhighway? It is becoming like the rest of the outside world, unpredictable and untrustworthy with its own politically governed agenda.

Strength and monopoly merge…

I think there lay one of my biggest strengths that I was never a part of this mega mind of technology. I had a washing machine but clothes were always line dried. I cooked in an oven, reheated on the stovetop. I had no desire to be a part of the threads of the web. I got snared and tangled in it fifteen years ago and life has never been the same. Some say technology is for the better, and granted in some aspects it is, I like being able to dry my clothes in a dryer now. Life is now about speeding down the highway, closed are the bookstores and shining high are fast food joints, coffee shops, and toxicity! That’s the new world! Even the medical world has quick fixes; drugs, slice dice and radiate. Great!  Life for me has changed forever.

So if you see fewer links to my alternative holistic healing process it is because I need to find a new search engine that isn’t politically motivated or monetarily funded by the pharmaceutical corporations or the richest search engine in the world. Like cancer, the internet is one big business. I thought I was being over paranoid but no, here it is in black and white. 

My strength continues in LISTENING and OBEYING my Lord before any other entity on the planet! What a tangled web the earthlings have woven is an understatement! This is not a democracy or a republic, this is a manipulative game of Monopoly and some of us were sent to jail without a trial.

2 John 1:8 “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.”