Merry Christmas Friends!

Luke 11:13 “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”

My Spiritual Family: Merry Christmas

Oh come all ye faithful and lend an ear

To the sounds of the season with joyous cheer

People are laughing, the children playing

The angels are dancing, singing and praying.

Look at the sky see the blazing sun

Christmas day is for the unearthly One.

The Spirit of Him resides in us all

It’s up to us to run with the ball.

It is our choice to give or receive

The source that causes all to believe

Love is the element that breeds within

The true Light aglow of all that has been.

Awaken on Christmas understanding the reason

Of all that holds hope this holiday season.

My Spiritual family a blessing from above

Rained down on me in a show of true Love.

To my family of virtual friends, you have filled me this year with the utmost support and to YOU I wish a most blessed Christmas Day. My prayers will shower over you this Christmas season as the only gift I have to give. I love you all!

God Bless you all! 

Matt. 2:11 “And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.”

My Spiritual Family

Pss. 16:11 “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.”

My Spiritual Family

I’m always talking about my family back home and about my past but I think I’m going to write a little about this Spiritual Family that has taken me in for the past thirteen years, walked with me through my healing and has had a major impact on my life. 

It all started with Steven. He was the one who came on his white horse and carried me away from the hellish life I had known and lived in Baltimore. We had known each other online for ten months prior to meeting in person and he had read my writing, my poetry, understood my gift and thought that I deserved to be nurtured and taken care of. 

He got me started on the writing path with Christian Writers Guild and after I completed that course he enrolled me in a free 6-week writing course. My life did a 180-degree turn from when I left home. Like-minded people surrounded me and I was helping total strangers learn a craft I had only been new at myself. 

I always felt that I had a gift and back home it was never appreciated or explored. I was never ‘allowed’ to be a part of the internet because that was the work of the devil in my family and my ex-husband’s eyes. Little did I know it was streaming gift from God that would take me worlds away from the pain I had lived for nearly thirty years.

It was as if God placed a spiritual family around me that would nurture my soul on so many levels. These people would care for me, love me, help me when I was in need and just basically be the new family in my life, but I would never meet them face to face. I would only connect to them on a spiritual level meaning connecting through our writing and the virtual world senses.

Bob Hembree, (WVU) would introduce me to my writing family who consisted of Benning, Dixie, Debbie, Leona, Birdie, Shanna and a host of others, some of whom have since passed away, God rest their soul! This is the family that I would communicate with on a daily basis whether it was about our writing or our personal lives, we soon became a tight-knit loving writing family. 

Then the doors continued to open via Jason Elkins. I still don’t know what he saw in my writing that he befriended me, which then led to more of my God-sent spiritual family appearing almost out of nowhere. People of faith were drawn to me through either my writing, my blog, through facebook or Twitter. I felt a sense of God working in His wondrous ways spiritually to bring people whom He knew would care for me and encourage me. It was He who placed them in my life.

My spiritual family then became my fortitude of strength behind the woman you see today. Sure you can all read about my unsavory past and draw your own conclusions but I know that God set me on this path for a reason, maybe the reason is still being researched by me but I feel God wants me to change the world, one word at a time. 

While He placed me in my blood family, He also drew me away from the blood family that would hinder His purpose for my life. He had me give up everything I practically owned and as many of you have read in earlier postings, I only came to Texas with Steven, with my son and our basic necessities in tow.

I gave up my life to follow God’s grand plan and to this day I am still following wherever He may lead. If you are reading this and are a part of my journey please know, God handpicked each and every one of you to accompany me on this leg of the expedition. I don’t know if you consider that a blessing but rest assured, I most certainly do because you have all had a hand in the Master’s Plan. I feel extremely blessed to have met you on this journey. 

God Bless Everyone!

A Break... I'm Not Clay

Pss. 38:10 “My heart panteth, my strength faileth me: as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me.”

A Break… I’m Not Clay

It is with great distress that I need to announce a break. Whether physically or mentally I know myself too well to stick around to watch the hellfires consume the people I love. I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart who has inspired me to continue writing. This year has been an active place of healing for me, and I thank you with love.

You’ve told me over and over again how I lift your spirits, how you love my honest writing, how it is I that inspires YOU when it is some of you that inspires ME! I look for that inspiration every day in my life but don’t always find it where I look. Am I looking in the wrong places? Apparently yes. 

Facebook is becoming a desert, a desolate place where vultures linger and seek to suck every bit of life out of one living cactus. I’m a very sensitive person to the point the tiniest pinprick causes me to burst in a way I’m not accustomed to. Sorry, I don’t play your little games of ‘popularity’. Games, that’s all it is behind your mask. Well, I’m not clay, you’re not going to shape me into a hater, racist pig. I see people thinking they’re helping by spreading hate but they are a part of the demolition crew that is destroying this world.

Whether it is in YouTube comments or Yahoo comments or on Facebook, the vultures feed off of the sensitivity and I cringe when I hear/read the battle cry of joy when they’ve doused the light of the one shining brightness in a darkened world. They enjoy seeing people in pain. It is some kind of sickness that they embrace and I totally need to step away, to breathe.

A reality hit me last week when I had the pleasure of listening to this tiny little twelve-year-old, Grace VanderWaal, sing her heart out. 

One of her songs went like this:
I don’t know my name
I don’t play by the rules of the game
So you say I’m just trying
Just trying… to find my way.

Another of her songs Clay was one of my favorites. It touched me in a place that not many long time experienced writers touch me and here was this little girl, thinking she couldn’t sing, taking the world by storm and marking her spot in history. The elite vultures are going to devour her and place the obstacles of fame and popularity on her doorstep and while she has loving parents to protect her, they can only do so much.

“Your silly words
I won't live inside your world 
Cause your punches and your names
All your jokes and stupid games
They don't hurt
No they don't hurt
Watch them just go right through me
Because they mean nothing to me

I'm not clay” 
~ 12-year-old singer/songwriter Grace VanderWaal lyrics 

Like me wanting to protect people from their harsh reality of prejudice, racism, bigotry and hypocritville, people fall victim day in and day out and there is no protector. Sure they claim they have God as a protector, but too many times I see them as food for the vultures more than I see the Living God in them. They are being devoured and I have a weak stomach for mangled flesh.

Yesterday my stomach churned as if I was on the Zipper at the fair. I watched a good movie but it wasn’t enough to help relieve the motion sickness I felt in my stomach for mankind. Satan is trying to attack me from every angle whether it is my son (who will be out of his new job in two months due to the store closing down) or my love of nature; my ceramic birdbath fell yesterday cracking like a clay vase falling from the thirteenth floor with irreparable damage. Then there is the loss of respect for friends I once admired and looked up to as they slither in the snake pit, now I only see a darkness shrouding their beings. It’s all too much for me to bear and TRY to be a positive light in these dark and solemn times. I need to re-energize.

Maybe a break will help. Maybe I’ll unplug the computer completely and just vanish in an air of shrouded mystery. Maybe a day or two will be enough or maybe I need more time, only time will tell, eh? I need to breathe and only my commitments will stay while I take a step back from virtual reality. It’s not and never was a nice fit for me. TO ME, the virtual world is a huge department store on Black Friday filled to capacity with nude mannequins. I see a human off in the distance but I’ll never reach them because the mannequins will topple on top of me and smother me to death.

When I feel the anger and negativity start to boil over like water left on the stove, and I begin to lash out with hatred in my veins I know it’s time for me to get away from that which sickens me. I won’t be molded and formed into the hate-filled people that seem to run the virtual society. People are vicious and they hold no shame. Me, I’m ashamed of this place. I need to breathe because I’m NOT CLAY!

Author's note: *
*sorry Mike, I tried to see the good in a damned world. 
* I'll continue writing, bookmark my blog 

Deuteronomy 31:6 KJV 

Be strong and of a good courage, 

fear not, nor be afraid of them: 

for the LORD thy God, 

he it is that doth go with thee; 

he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.

I Love My Friends

I love my friends

I have a virtual family that lives inside my computer. I’ve known them for quite a few years and we’re often bouncing around the virtual walls and I have come to call them dear friends. They share snappy images of their treasured children, their beloved pets, their charming homes, their snow-laden paths, and their flower-filled gardens; they even get personal and share their intimate life of ups and downs.

Some of these friends are recent acquaintances while others are years long writing friends. Some are battling illness while others are rejoicing in health, others have parents or children that have passed, and others have parents/friends/family in the hospital. Many seek prayer, some seek peace and more times than not they just want to share their life with the world or a small portion of the world anyway. All in all they have become my virtual spiritual family whom I love dearly, enough to trust and give my physical address.

Some of my friends though, I suspect of being possessed by spybots. I haven’t been a part of the virtual world for too long but I learned quickly what spybots were, in essence making me set moderating comments here on my blog because they inundated the comment section with spam, not the kind you eat either.

Some of these suspected spybots over on facebook rarely have an actual thought. They smear the walls with other people’s pets, artistic homes and fatty food, while washing their mouth out with dirty laundry by posting anything and everything political that runs across their screen. These droids fill the airwaves with what they THINK we want to hear and see. Following the doo-doo wherever it may lead. It’s a conspiracy, man!

The spybot villains enlisted me also, I was thinking maybe that is how people really are supposed to portray themselves in the social media world, but it came back to bite me and I made certainly clear that I wanted no part in their shenanigans, and that’s that!

In my spirit-filled life-altering bout of change I see things differently now. I can see also that some of my compadres have seen the light too and have altered their change so that we can all illuminate the world together! BooYa!

I do have some of the wackiest, weirdest, strangest, lovable, fun-loving, God-fearing, compassionate and most awesome friends on the net and I wouldn’t trade any of them for the world… okay maybe one. No, seriously, I love them all dearly! I just had to put that out there in case they don’t already know that they change my world and make it feel right. They’re the bubblewrap that puts a pop in my day! Just sayin’.

Standing my Ground

I have always been the type of writer to stand my ground on my beliefs. Sure, I know for a lot of you it is hard, but for me it is more a moral stance. I will not jump outside my domain and watch or write something I think to be immoral.

Often I am shunned for being a ‘snob’ because I set my standards so high, these are standards that I choose to live by and don’t judge you as a person for not living by. This is MY moral compass and as a woman who isn’t getting any younger, I feel it necessary to stand my ground the closer I get to being PUT in the ground.

I watch as some claim a moral compass, some claim to be a Christian but their behavior and actions speak something totally opposite. Why is that? Sometimes I sit and watch, sometimes I try to comprehend, often times I’m scratching my head wondering why I am so different. Why do I see wrongs where there are wrongs and others see wrongs as right? Am I missing something? Are you going to tell me that God DOESN’T see you betraying Him? Or do you think He’ll just overlook the tiny things?

I started this writing blog with the right intentions but watched as it flopped. Slowly being here for no one to read and even less to comment. I didn’t write to get comments, but I did write to be read. What good is writing for yourself if no one is going to read you? I think that is why I lost interest in writing. As I wrote and posted (here or other places) no one was reading me. One person to LIKE everything I write does not encourage me to continue writing.

I went from 200+ posts a year to 60 if I’m lucky 80 by years end. This isn’t the successful journey I envisioned for myself. I persevered…persisted…plowed on and in many dark tunnels I crawled out to see the light, but when I got to the end of the dark and musty tunnel, no one was there.

Sure, I’ll hear, “God is there.” I know this! “God’s on your side.” I know this too. I have so encapsulated myself with God that it has scared people off leaving me alone (not totally because I KNOW God is there) in my writing journey. Sometimes I wished the computer and internet had never come into my life and that I would have stayed the type woman that I was molded into. I left that world for the virtual world and have to wonder if I took a wrong turn somewhere on the path. Granted, it was a path to meeting new friends but I wonder…

I know God has something planned for me and it’s not in the virtual social world of facebook or the extremely weird social format of Twits, I mean Twitter. It’s out here in the real world of beauty, nature and reality.

I WILL revive my writing blog perhaps come September. I WILL use my God-given talent of writing to further my goals. I WILL, I WILL, I WILL!  For now, I’ll await the season’s change so I can feel alive again. I’ll wait for the tapping of marbles rolling on the tin roof in the form of rain. The sound and the new season will revive in me what I’ve been waiting for to breathe the life of writing once again. 

I will stand my ground and firmly plant my feet in the Light of truth. My writing will soar as the eagles! I’ll do it with or without you, I have God, that’s all I need!

What a difference...

Rom 13:12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.

...a day makes.

Wow, all I can say is, WOW! I said I wanted change, and I just can’t stop looking at my blog page and thinking, Wow! Now this is change! Many years have passed through in my life and many have been full of change, but this one has to be the one that will stand out as one of the most exciting years of change. This is why I wanted the drastic overhaul of my blog, so you all can change with me.

I decided a few months back that things needed to change in my life. After I made that decision, oh about the end of September I’d say, that was when things began to swiftly change. I peeled off layers of pain, let go of the darkness that tried to swallow me, left it to build it’s own little playground of dark matter and I moved on, at a snails pace.

I was consumed with life! You know this thing we must live, in a physical world. Life, the reality of things in real-time happening, not virtually. I got off of the maypole, slid across the sand on gravel-burnt knees and embraced, LIFE.

Have you ever read a book, gotten so consumed with the character(s) that you lost track of time and space? That’s a writers job, to make sure you are consumed with their characters so much so that you forget your reality. That is exactly what the virtual world holds in its clutch. Sure, some folks will say, “There are some good things too, that the computer holds.”

Sure there is, and just like God himself is a struggle to find when you are in the pits of darkness, the computer wraps you in its tentacles, squeezes you real tight, until you are gasping for breath, never really knowing who you are or the insanity that has taken over your life. You dig and plow your way though the mire, stab through the muddy waters, and find pieces of the light as you surface.  What am I saying? That the computer, IN MY OPINION, holds more dark than LIGHT!

In October, a realization hit me, that it isn’t about consuming myself with the virtual world. Life is not about building walls of defense to protect yourself. You should be able to freely live and appreciate the snowballs that are tossed in your face, and with great strength, brush away the powder!

Life is about change, characters are about transformation, story line is about variations, so why would we not take the precious care of our lives as we do with the characters and worlds we form? You can not produce something of context, if you haven’t taken the time to shape the content of your life.

It’s not about consuming all you can of the virtual world, because change only comes when you’re brave enough to tackle your inner world.

Prioritize

May the sun fall upon you, may the rain drizzle your skin, whatever the weather where you are, let the joy of a new day begin! ~joni
***

It is certainly hard to sit down and write, when outside the window Spring is happening all over the place. I mean, little sprouts of green are popping up everywhere, Robins are doing some kind of waltz on the front lawn, trees are slowly being filled in with buds, evident on each and every stem. Yes, Spring is happening right outside my window!

I always sit in awe of the glory that comes alive with Spring. While winter rests in dormancy, fall has its departure of leaves and summer has its scorching heat and humidity, Spring has livelihood like no other season.

I often do my Spring cleaning to prepare not only the house but my spirit for cleanliness. It’s as if, if I have a clean house, then my soul will come alive and do a jitterbug and bring into me a buoyant springtime propulsion of zest and zeal!

But Spring is also the time I prioritize. The time I take into consideration those things that are front and center, things that are important to me and have an affect on my life. The computer is not in the forefront of my life, social forums do not hold me captive, games are there but only a shadow to the real meaning in my life.

Writing! That is standing right there in my face looking at me, begging me, pleading with me to drink from the letter pool. Sure I use the computer for writing, but it doesn’t own me. I have a notebook that I can scribble in so this technology is not going to wrap its slithering arms around me and yank me into its vortex.

While the social scene is a fun place to meet with your virtual friends, it is not the end all to all of your existence. Hey people, there is a world right outside your window, balloons written with the words 'REJOICE IN SPRING' on them are passing you by as you bind yourself to a false sense of happiness.

As priorities take the stage and the curtain rises to accolades of applause, you will see that life is not going to pass you by as you sit and enjoy your priorities dance along the stage. They are within reach as you have front row seats. They are physical needs that you need to pay attention to and allow to become more important than a virtual form of bliss and decision makers.

Don’t let life pass you by as you mechanically go through the day-to-day humdrum; same thing every day. New fun, new pages, new friends and new power. Find the power within you to embrace reality, prioritize the real world, make a new beginning of each day and maybe just maybe, Spring, will ask YOU to dance!