What Healing Looks Like

John 12:35 “Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.”

God's Healing Touch

What Healing Looks Like

Often times when people are in the throes of pain and suffering they can’t grasp what the finished product of healing looks like. I remember the day of dire diagnosis when everyone around me wore grim and sad faces, reaching out in sorrow to offer their hand of comfort and prayer during a trying time. I made it perfectly clear from the beginning I was not accepting the diagnosis as the death sentence everyone sees at the announcement of a Big C diagnosis. At this point in my journey, you could walk with me holding my hand or perhaps stand face-to-face in a guiding manner, or behind me drifting with the dust of the earth, your choice.

I saw the diagnosis quite differently and I think my stance took people by surprise, understandably so; I saw it as healing. Yes, you read it right, healing. When I took my daily walks, my mantra that I repeated out loud was, I am HEALED, I am Healthy, I am WELL! When I announced my mantra on Facebook my friends were kind of stunned, “You’re healed, really?” Their voices came through in words, clear, bold and loud.

“Yes, I believe I AM,” was my response very soon after my diagnosis of that dastardly death sentence announcement.

Pss.121:1-2 “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; from where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth”

Some people were so aghast that they stepped back and away from me, either thinking I lost my mind or I was in deep denial. To me, they looked like little beacons of light drifting off, holding candles as they slowly floated away from me, off into the night sky. Whatever the case may be, dear friends became people I thought were friends and no longer offered prayer or support in any way. As a few folks stepped away from my inner circle, others entered, droves of people fanned in from out of nowhere, stood up and rained support on me. Not only on Facebook, where my Spiritual family dwells, but my physical family and friends I knew were all in PRAYER for me. They offered the loving prayers in their weekly prayer box at their churches, announcing vocally that they needed prayer for ME, or silently in their inner prayer circle whispered my name asking for healing. Little old me was being healed by prayers!

I understand that not everyone believes in God and I’m okay with that. I do have friends who stayed by me that offered peace and light, and that is a positive I fully accept as a blessing. My healing is not about religion, it is more about FAITH and my faith grew ten sizes in a day through prayer and blessings, in return, I prayed for those souls who backed away from me; they needed my prayer. 

Pss. 103:20 “Bless the LORD, ye his angels, that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.”

I’m wondering if I came off as arrogant in my stance on healing besides people seeing me as if I was in denial. My first step in my healing journey was to stop worrying about what other people thought! Yeah, that’s a tough one for us all, but if it's healing you seek, cleanse yourself of naysayers right up front.

Healing is not about reading the bible more (though it can’t hurt), it’s not about knowing more scripture than the next person, it’s certainly not about dissecting the Word, word for word, and I can say it is truly not about claiming to know God more than someone else. We all own our own faith and beliefs, what you discern from your faith is where the true touch of healing resides. Although your actions are weighed, there is no amount of acts that can inch you closer than the next person to His embrace.

1 Sam. 2:3 “Talk no more so exceeding proudly; let not arrogancy come out of your mouth: for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.”

Healing is found by touching base with God within you. Healing is not going to be found outside in the corrupt conventional world. Medical doctor’s are aids in healing, not the means. God is the greatest healing physician in our lives. For some reason, we’ve been conditioned to accept and trust that outside of God, we believers can find healing. Funny how that works isn’t it? 

Pss. 121:2 “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.”

What does healing look like? How do I explain the explosive beauty of healing? Well, for one, you need to dig deep within the core of your being. WITHIN means not outside in a physical manner, DEEP within, in a spiritual manner; God, prayer, meditation etc., whatever the spiritual means to YOU. In that core realm is where God resides and is waiting for you to acknowledge Him and put your faith and trust in Him. That is when we find, touch and SEE the actual healing take place.

Pss. 121:5 “The LORD is thy keeper: the LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.”

How do we see within all that we are? You must be humbled by your illness, your trials, and tribulation. You might as well toss pride and dignity in the heap, also. This is not the time to panic or seek outside help. This is the time the prayerful meditative mind can touch, breathe, and be one with the part of God in you that needs to be reached. This might be the hardest part of healing, listening to God, not yourself.

I’ve always seen myself as a vain woman and that was a hindrance I could not release in my healing journey until I was forced to face the intense flaming fires of pain and hell, head on...

I was walking along proudly boasting that I was healed, healthy and well. I stuck my fingers in the breast of my jacket, proudly strutted my protocol, spoke to all about my alternative ways. I was sharing physically and vocally my success of this route that God placed me on. Only when I FREED my pride and dignity, I felt, touched, breathed my true healing. Yes, friends, with the aids of medical science! Go figure! The very science that God used in creation, He was now using to implement my full recovery. My faith, when falling into God’s hands, is what saved me.

Prov. 16: 18 “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.”

My vanity, pride, and dignity all got swallowed by a black hole in an instant. When my femur burst out of my leg, in the depths of torments rage, I gave my all to Christ. It was at the very moment as I’m sitting on the side of the bed, pantyless and just a t-shirt that EMT’s had to come and pry me out of the room. Not just one or two, there were about four or five men and two women. They were either tending the gurney, the truck or me, bare and broken.

Pss. 121:8 “The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

I went blank, got lost in the swirling darkness that surrounded me with a couple of stars and gems in the night sky keeping my focus. I then woke to the reality of my healing on October Fifth, the anniversary of the day that Steven’s dad was released from this earth and went home; also the day that I was released from my torment and went HOME. In the midst of my affliction all of my pride, vanity and dignity were sucked up into a tornadoes vortex, to leave me, humbly picking up the pieces of mirrored glass I called me.

This is when God’s finger reached out and touched me. When I came before Him as Eve, sinful and bare, and begged for mercy. Instead of a soft touch, He embraced me, wrapped his ever loving arms around me shielding me and healed me with the warmth of His love.

Isa. 6:7 “And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.”

John 19:35 “And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe.”

Acts 15:8 “And God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us;”

Poetry Sunday: God's Healing Touch

Pss. 45:1 “My heart is inditing a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

Shimmering reflections of pain I feel 

Lost in fragments I needed to heal

A mending touch if truth be known

Is in His fingers pressing stone.

By chance, my aches towered then crashed

A mighty sword by flames were dashed

Slicing through with torments rage

Remnants bound in an open cage.

Not being confined by a limited view

My heart beheld all that was true

The night sky opened gems bedazzled

Made whole of me the frail and frazzled.

Armed with faith my body to restore

The strength therein the open door

No longer doomed by fate I’m driven

With all the tools that God has given.

I was blinded by mortal shame

And only had myself to blame 

Shaving off my arrogant pride

Unearthed the healing deep inside.

Once I freed confined vanity

Not veiled behind bent sanity

I relieved myself of the crutch

Bare I found God’s healing touch.

Job 37:23 “Touching the Almighty, we cannot find him out: he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict.”

End of the Year: Part III

Rom. 13:13-14 “Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.

But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

End of the Year: Part III

Polar opposites. That is the only term I can come up with when I think of my family and my hubby’s family. My hubby’s dad passed away when he was twenty-five and he basically didn’t have a dad for many of those years because of a divorce of his mom and dad, but let me tell you, his family is simply amazing in their endurance of togetherness.

His great-grandparents and grandparents (on his mother’s side) were the pillars that set the stage for the future generations to come. They were deeply rooted in the love of the Lord and handed down that passion for ages to come. No not all of the family watered and nurtured the seed that was planted so long ago, but when I came into the family I could FEEL a difference in our polar opposites.

My great grandparents handed down alcoholism to the generations. Now while my hubby’s dad was a drinker, alcoholism never had a chance to define the children because the mother was so rooted in her dedication to the Lord. What the children do with the seed is totally up to them, they have free will to pick and choose where the next generation will take the family.

My family on the other hand, for generations, was defined by alcohol. I’m not talking about casual drinkers now; I’m talking about generations of alcoholics. My great-grandmother, my grandparents (on both sides from what I can tell) were very heavy drinkers, and all their kids and their kids' kids, all became drinkers or alcoholics. That was and IS my family except for the scarce few who peeled themselves AWAY from the family to become what they could on their own, like myself. I’m a survivor from way back.

Drugs and alcohol defined my life when I was very young and it was only the Hand of God that guided me in a different direction. Not my mother or father or my sister or brothers showed me a different way to live but I was determined to NOT  be like them or raise my child to grow and be a drinker. I would give him a window into the past but offer him a promise of a future, away from alcoholics.

Now many people wonder where I get my strength to battle this disease without the aid and assistance of a doctor and I can honestly tell you it is once again by the Hand of God that guides me. Live or die, my God is the guide on this long journey; always has been and always will be! I was not raised in a family that loved the Lord, we kids were basically tossed into a Catholic school and made to defend ourselves and find what we could on our own. I found God waiting to cradle me daily in life. I can’t say other members of my family were as lucky. I converted from (religious) Catholicism to (spiritual) Christianity very easily and it is the seed of the Lord that defines who I am and who I am yet to become.

You might be wondering why this is my End of the Year post? Well because on Christmas Day, the family embraced me, hugged me, allowed me to feel the love that carried them all of their lives. I feel nothing but love shining from this family. They are not perfect but to me, this is as close to perfect that I will ever see. The Mid-West farmland, the Bible belt is definitely a different place than an industrialized smoggy city like the one where I came from. Pure love is the best love here! With no ulterior motive behind the love, it becomes a blanket not much unlike the snow-covered ground. It’s a barrier of protection to the seeds below.

My blood family, on the other hand, is still continuing on the path of lies and deception. I can’t elaborate because it's not my story to tell. On Christmas Eve I went to my family FB account and wished them all a Merry Christmas, I went back the day after Christmas and not one Merry Christmas back. My family is so consumed with their selfishness, their money, their blindness that they cannot see any real love right in front of their faces except for the false products of the fabricated family that they built.

Pss. 4:2 “O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah.”

Christmas morning I called my mother to wish her a Merry Christmas and to have a good day. Later that evening I called to see how her day went. All she could talk about was how she had a good meal at my brother’s beautiful house and how she went to my sister’s and there sat my meth-head brother who is now taking advantage of my sister’s kindness in keeping him out of the frigid cold and how my other brother didn’t even send her a card and blah blah blah. Yeah, she didn’t ask how my day was and probably doesn’t want to hear how great of a family I have found and been a part of for fifteen years. 

While I sometimes miss back home, all that I really miss are the memories and to be blunt, I have them, and my story safely tucked inside my head; I don’t miss the love because my family does not know what genuine love is. I pray for them, that is all I can do. I journey on into my future that awaits me, in a polar opposite world surrounded by the path of where I was led and that is the path of LOVE! THAT, my friends, is where I find my strength! 

Pss. 18:1 “I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.” 

A Disciplined Warrior

2 Chron. 12:14 “And he did evil, because he prepared not his heart to seek the LORD.”

The Disciplined Warrior God Created

Discipline is never easy. Do you remember as a small child some parents disciplined their children? Whether it was taking something away, a smack on the fingers, or a paddle to the butt. Our parents knew we needed discipline if we were ever to learn from our mistakes.

I’m not talking abusing your children here; I’m talking about discipline. 

“Mom, can I go over to Janie’s house?” 

“Did you clean up your room?”

“I’ll do it later.”

Do it now or you can’t go to, Janies.”

Through discipline, children learn respect. They learn to respect parents, teachers and people in general. As you can see, over the years as society disintegrates it is quite obvious the reason behind the fall. Discipline. Even in the most gentle form, discipline has been left on the side of the road for some government official to come by with a sweeper to clean up the mess. Our children are not the only ones wounded by the lack of discipline in society.

Spare the rod and spoil the child comes to mind when referencing God’s plan for us to discipline. He had in mind raising the child in the way that he should go so it would change the world with each new era and generation. Change it did when discipline became an avenue for abusing the child. Now parents are being led to neglect the child and let them pretty much raise themselves with technology as a babysitter. Parents are now allowing the internet and technology to now raise our children and look how well that’s turning out! 

Prov. 13:24 "He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes."

Adults need discipline also. As I look around at an overweight society, a slowly dying nation has taken shape and I see so many people who lack discipline, lack the skills it takes and forges ahead into the future on sheer blind ambition.

Job 15:35 “They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and their belly prepareth deceit.”

Just like the child who grows to resent discipline, we as an adult species stomp our feet like children when it comes to being disciplined. Some adhere to the discipline, some shrug it off as an annoying nagging pain that will go away, some see discipline as an invasion of the ‘it’s-all-about-me-world’ in which they live.

If you see God as your Father then you should know a little bit about discipline and what He expects from us human beings. He had plans to guide us in life but instead, we became too vain and thought we could march through the world alone, live life without Him holding the reins.

When I was first diagnosed eight months ago with this disease, I turned TO God not AWAY from Him and asked Him what I should do. While he gives some women other options he gave me the option of alternative treatment but I’d need to be disciplined in my approach. I would need the full armor that he bestowed upon me; I would need the strength of little David going into a war of huge proportions. I would meet the giant (big pharma, oncologists, and surgeons) head on and it would wage war against me and I’d need to fight tooth and nail to rise above to reclaim the undisciplined life I was leaving behind.

I had in the palm of my hand faith and hope to endure the trying times that I knew I would face. There is no Awareness Month for the people FIGHTING cancer, there is only a month of awareness set aside for women who are fighting the effects of chemotherapy!

Did you know the reason behind October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month? Back in 1985 the pharmaceutical company pretended to need money and asked you to be aware of the growing-in-astronomical-numbers-the-deaths-from-BC or something like that. BCAM for chemo patients,  and the appearance of survivors of chemo, not for people fighting an illness.

What the pharmaceutical palace didn’t mention was that women (and men) were dying from chemotherapy drugs. No, the awareness that the pharma wants us to look at is the fear and death tied to all that they did to the millions who have perished from a drug, not a disease. Us warriors out here fighting for our life are overlooked, we’re left behind road kill to be scooped up and tossed in the dumpster because we didn’t bend to their way of doing things.

We don’t have a National Compassion Month for WARRIORS, no we have the pharma begging for even more money to be used to make an even better drug to kill cancer patients. THAT is what you support when you go out in force to support BCAM!

It all boils down to discipline. The ones who shrug off discipline because they know what’s better for them than any God are the ones who suffer from the diseases ravishing the world. We do absolutely nothing to change, we just look out at the ocean of people and declare, ‘I am one of you.’

From day one, my sword was sharpened and I went into battle. I went up against a maniacal society hell-bent on doing everything on their own, in their own way never understanding the need or demand for discipline in their lives. I often feel alone but when I look behind I see an army of women and men fighting the exact same way as I am and we’re winning. Quietly we’re winning without the fanfare of a united National Pharma Month. No, we’re alone in this war but in the end, it is disciplined spirits who will win.

All praise and Glory to God!

1 Sam. 7:3 “And Samuel spake unto all the house of Israel, saying, If ye do return unto the LORD with all your hearts, then put away the strange gods and Ashtaroth from among you, and prepare your hearts unto the LORD, and serve him only: and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.”

Quotation Saturday ~ Ego, Vanity, Empathy, Truth

1 Sam. 12:24 “Only fear the LORD, and serve him in truth with all your heart: for consider how great things he hath done for you.”

EGO

“The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.” 
― Criss Jami

“The Ego is a veil between humans and God’.”
“In prayer all are equal.” 
― Rumi

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge… is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.” 
― Bill Bullard

“Accomplishments don’t erase shame, hatred, cruelty, silence, ignorance, discrimination, low self-esteem or immorality. It covers it up, with a creative version of pride and ego. Only restitution, forgiving yourself and others, compassion, repentance and living with dignity will ever erase the past.” 
― Shannon L. Alder

VANITY

“The wise do not buy into other people’s perceptions of who they are and what they are capable of. Instead, they bypass a person’s public persona and see who they are in their highest expression. When you see actions taken with integrity, instead of words only, you will then know a soul’s worth.” 
― Shannon L. Alder

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.” 
― Jane Austen

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.” 
― Dale Carnegie

“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.” 
― Blaise Pascal

EMPATHY

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” 
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” 
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

“Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.” 
― Andrew Boyd

“Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our world expands. Our own problems drift to the periphery of the mind and so seem smaller, and we increase our capacity for connection - or compassionate action.” 
― Daniel Goleman

TRUTH

“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.” 
― Jim Morrison

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” 
― Søren Kierkegaard

“Equality is not a concept. It's not something we should be striving for. It's a necessity. Equality is like gravity. We need it to stand on this earth as men and women, and the misogyny that is in every culture is not a true part of the human condition. It is life out of balance, and that imbalance is sucking something out of the soul of every man and woman who's confronted with it. We need equality. Kinda now.” 
― Joss Whedon

“The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies” 
― Jodi Picoult

Pss. 51:6 “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.”

Poetry Sunday ~ Vanity Has Risen

 Job 7: 3 So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.

Vanity has Risen

My concern is for man

Who sits idly by

Watching as the world

Erupts in tears they cry.

A man content on living

And never really being

A source of light to all

of those that are seeing.

Words are bent and broken

Twisted in the sphere.

Truth mangled in the web

The dripping of a tear.

Why is man so willing

Happy to just exist.

Never seeking inner peace

In the land that God has kissed.

His vanity contains him

In works that he must do.

No blood of man is worth change

So he opts to muddle through.

No rest will lay upon his head

No peace will let him sleep.

His journey in the darkness

Is for him alone to keep.

Rise up you sleeping nation

There’s a duty at your feet.

Don’t wait until the judgment

When your Maker you will meet!

Rev. 3:15-16 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

Quotation Saturday

Many of you might wonder why I choose the quotes I pick to post on my Quotation Saturday. In the experimental stages, I’m going to express why I chose the quotes I chose.

Here goes:

I chose PRIDE because all to often this week I have seen chest pounding antics of people who seem to be too high on a pride-filled horse and personally need to be knocked off and smacked with reality.

PRIDE

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~ Jane Austen

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
~ C.S. Lewis

“The proud person always wants to do the right thing, the great thing. But because he wants to do it in his own strength, he is fighting not with man, but with God.”
~ Søren Kierkegaard

“Greed, envy, sloth, pride and gluttony: these are not vices anymore. No, these are marketing tools. Lust is our way of life. Envy is just a nudge towards another sale. Even in our relationships we consume each other, each of us looking for what we can get out of the other. Our appetites are often satisfied at the expense of those around us. In a dog-eat-dog world we lose part of our humanity.”
~ Jon Foreman

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”
~ Dale Carnegie

I chose judgment because it seems that prideful people are placing judgment on others these days. I do believe if they are without sin, then go ahead cast stones.

JUDGMENT

“If you didn't grow up like I did then you don't know, and if you don't know it's probably better you don't judge.”
~ Junot Díaz

“Man is not, by nature, deserving of all that he wants. When we think that we are automatically entitled to something, that is when we start walking all over others to get it.”
~ Criss Jami

“Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”
~ Eckhart Tolle

“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life.”
~ Oscar Wilde

I chose vanity because I feel pride and vanity are very much alike. They’re not but people seem to embrace them both.

VANITY

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”
~ Jane Austen

“Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.”
~ Tennessee Williams

“When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures bristling with prejudice and motivated by pride and vanity.”
~ Dale Carnegie

I chose dignity because people seem to lack this very much.

DIGNITY

“Dignity does not consist in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.”
~ Aristotle

“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows
with the ability to say no to oneself.”
~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

“Every life deserves a certain amount of dignity, no matter how poor or damaged the shell that carries it.”
~ Rick Bragg

“People have the right to call themselves whatever they like. That doesn't bother me. It's other people doing the calling that bothers me.”
~ Octavia E. Butler

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it.”
~ Laura Hillenbrand

I feel if more people had dignity they would be less prideful and stop judging others before they judge themselves. ~ Joni

Just because you have an opinion on something doesn’t mean everyone else shares that opinion. Expecting them to is making them as arrogant as you. ~ Joni

 I chose boasting because I’m so sick and tired of everyone’s bloated ego’s that they feel the need to spread THEIR ways to the world.

BOASTING

“The truest human is the one whose conduct proceeds from goodwill and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe.”
~ Markesa Yeager

“What do you have that was not given to you? And if it was given, how can you boast as if it were your own?”
~ 1 Corinthians 5: 7

“The maker of the stars would rather die for you than live without you. And that is a fact. So if you need to brag, brag about that.”
~ Max Lucado

Quotation Saturday

VANITY ~

Job 15: 31 Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompence.
 
Ps. 4:2 O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah.
 
Pr. 30:8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:
 
Is. 58: 9 Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity;
 
Vanity is so secure in the heart of man that everyone wants to be admired: even I who write this, and you who read this.
~Blaise Pascal

Without this ridiculous vanity that takes the form of self-display, and is part of everything and everyone, we would see nothing, and nothing would exist.
~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943
 
Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.
~Miguel De Unamuno

CONFIDENCE

A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.
~David Brinkley
 
If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
~Vincent Van Gogh
 
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
 
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is light from within.
~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
 
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
~Anaïs Nin, Diary, 1969
 
Vanity is pride walking with newly dyed hair, fake fingernails, along with a boastful attitude. Confidence is knowing vanity is buried, and people see the REAL beauty in you shining through! 
~Joni Zipp