The Ebola Scare

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Philippians 4:8 "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things."

The Ebola Scare

Does even the name make you cringe? Here in recent news this is all you ever hear about, Ebola. I think people get scared because as in anything we don’t know a thing about and what we do know is all spoon fed to us via media outlets who are often one sided.

Are you the kind of person that when something serious happens, you want to know all the information you can about the event? You sit sometimes for hours seeking out news, listening to people, digging through fact-finding websites just so you can get some kind of handle on the situation?

It’s been an interesting month in the Ebola crisis. It began with U.S. missionaries flown here for treatment over the past summer, they were treating Ebola patients and came down with the disease and were brought back to America to be treated, then it went to a man Thomas Eric Duncan who came into the country with Ebola, and now two nurses are fighting the disease because they took care of Mr. Duncan.

Here’s what we know about the Ebola scare:

According to the World Health Organization, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa has sickened 8,399 people since March, killing 4,033 of them -- making it one of the worst outbreaks of the virus in history.

We know that two nurses that had close contact with Duncan have now been diagnosed with Ebola and finally after two and a half weeks of exposure to the outside world, the 75 or more attendants of Duncan are being asked to have limited contact with the outside world.

Due to the lackadaisical attitude of the CDC and of the nurses who treated Duncan, Americans are now fearful of where the disease will show up next. I say fearful because the illness knows no bounds and I feel the Center for Disease Control is not as in control as they would like us to believe.

They are the people who didn’t restrict the nurses from boarding planes, jumping on a Cruise ship and exposing possibly hundreds of people to the disease. Why wasn’t after every single worker that came into contact with Duncan told they had to restrict contact with others for 21 days? Because of the inconvenience to this very selfish society? To me, it’s a very ignorant response to a lethal killing machine.

Then there is the lying factor. First, Duncan did not tell anyone he had come in close contact with a woman who died from Ebola. He exposed everyone on the plane but because he didn’t have symptoms, he ignorantly thought he was exempt from spreading the disease. He told the hospital the very first time he came in with a fever that he had just come back from the infected Liberia, but they sent him home.

He goes home and comes in contact with three residents living in the house, whom we’ve not heard a peep about since they were put in isolation. He is rushed back to the hospital, VERY sick, and is in contact with unprotected nurses and doctors again, who then finally diagnose him. He’s carted off to isolation and later dies.

We know the Dallas Texas hospital was not capable of handling such an infectious disease and instead of notifying a more capable hospital, only FOUR in the country, the ego won out and the hospital sat on a high horse claiming, “We got this handled!”

They DID NOT have the sources to care for the disease and because of their ignorance many are coming down with the disease. The country is blaming Obama for letting people into this country, pointing fingers at people for this and for that all the while the Ebola scare is becoming a real possible epidemic.

I blame the selfish ignorant people who sat on a high horse thinking they were exempt from such a disease even though they KNEW full well that they had been in contact with a contagious man, therefore possibly sharing their disease with hundreds of others. The spoon-fed smiling faces of the infected do not fool me into thinking I’m exempt!

Satan has got us in his hands. People are fearing, lying, ashamed, hiding facts, being selfish and thinking of only themselves and their pleasure. They are killing, raping, beating and devouring the very essence of morality in record proportions.

I have a funny feeling that people are going to be turning to their faith, any faith, flocking to the churches and finding peace while hiding from pain and fear of this retribution. These are the times I read about and the times I’ve prepared my soul for in the grand scheme of things. May the Lord God be with you all.

Isa. 52:10 The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

Grains of Sand

Job. 6:3 For now it would be heavier than the sand of the sea: therefore my words are swallowed up.

Grains of Sand

Shards of glass, window broken

Words unsaid, never spoken

Lining up the grains of sand

I reach out to grasp a hand.

No one sees me standing there

Arms outstretched in deep despair.

Calls unheard, emotions dripping

Grains of sand, my fingers slipping.

Fragments of a former storm

Threads just barely keep me warm

I extend a trembling hand

Seeking out one grain of sand.

There along the barren shore

I am offered an open door.

Carried from this desolate land

Rainbows blink on grains of sand.

Prov. 27:3 A stone is heavy, and the sand weighty; but a fool's wrath is heavier than them both.

 

 

Reminiscent

Luke 23: 42 And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.

I remember telling Adam I sometimes wish I had never left Baltimore. His response kind of shocked me. “But mom, look at all the people whose lives you touched. That wouldn’t have happened back there and you know it.”

I had an ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ moment. Really? I touch people? I didn’t know whether he meant ‘touched’ people and their lives or had an affect on them. Let me see: I would’ve not signed up to WVU, I would have never met this awesome family in Nebraska and had a chance to see what normal looked like. I would have not crossed the path of so many who needed a prayer or a lifting of spirits; I would’ve never met mu church family; I would not have been me.

Joining the WVU community brought me to hundreds of minds like mine. Back home I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to make use of friendships on the internet. They were all mass killers in the minds of my sick people surrounding me, who by the way had tried to make ME believe that, but I’m a rebel at heart.

I have said many of times how GOD brought me to Nebraska so I won’t repeat the story again. But had I not rebelled against ‘my people’ I would have not been able to reach out and touch many lives. Through all of these people I feel love pouring through my screen and not the demented love of my blood family, real caring and compassionate love.

So after Monday’s post, which I started writing Sunday by the way, God placed something on my heart and yesterday on facebook two of my Christian friends posted this same scripture!

Proverbs 3:5-8 NASB Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil. It will be healing to your body and refreshment to your bones.

Let me tell you, I have a strong community of Christian online friends who might not be physical to me but we all have such a strong spiritual connection it exceeds anything physical!

Now you read my post of Monday and think, “Wow she’s losing it.” But no, really I’m reflecting on everything. Doggone me, I sure do a lot of reflecting and soul searching. That’s the way God made me.

I’m putting things into perspective here. I cannot worry what he does or what he doesn’t do, I have to worry what * I * do and as long as I stay focused on God, I will be carried by Him. I wrote a poem a while back titled ‘Your Sin is Not My Sin’. And I need to practice what I preach. Not worry about HIS sin and what he does, just worry about me and MY relationship to God.

While I go around lifting people up in prayer, presenting a happy-go-lucky lifestyle, inside I cringe. I’m tired of being made to feel stupid, I’m tired of people correcting me like everything I do is tagged as wrong, whether it is spelling, comma usage, or dangling participles. I guess as a writer I need to be made aware of my mistakes, but on a social site? I let go of everything; I typo, I often make mistakes but guess what I KNOW I make mistakes and sitting there editing everything on my facebook wall is nothing but paranoia of being pegged as stupid.

Since being diagnosed with arthritis in my back, not only does it cause me imbalance, it affects EVERYTHING I do in life from dressing myself to cooking and cleaning. In my physical world, I’m looked at as a poor crippled who can’t do anything. In the virtual world, no one sees my disability and doesn’t understand the daily pain I go through just to get out of bed and make them smile.

It affects my mind too. I’ll try and think of something, and often I can’t grasp what I’m even thinking. An example; months ago I was looking for a magic marker and I said, “Do you have a harpie I could borrow?”

I was looked at, laughed at and then responded to, “Do you mean a SHARPIE?” Isn’t that what I said? It is what I meant but it isn’t what came out of my mouth. It happens too often and instead of compassion, I get mocked.

I think God is showing me the way people are treated on a daily basis with even the most minor of disabilities. Imagine being an amputee and having your prosthetic leg stolen. Yeah, it happened in Pennsylvania at an Eagles game. People assume the disabled are smaller people than their higher-than-mighty selves.

Being reminiscent of all I’m enduring has made me think of bigger things that I have no control over and that I need not focus on. I am me and God made me this way. I need to focus on God and me but mostly God and giving it all up to Him!

Alone

Num. 11:14 I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.

I think I’m being selfish here.

I have no desire to live and every time I have these thoughts God places something on my heart to keep me here.

Is it Nebraska I’m tired of? Is it the life I made for myself that I’m tired of? Is it just me throwing a pity party for myself?

I think I’m tired of being alone. Alone in my thoughts, alone watching football, alone in my world where the only people I have to communicate is my son, and my internet friends who sometimes are the only thing that keep me alive. Yes, I know, with God I am never alone but I need a physical, emotional kind of love in my life that I’m not getting. Is that being selfish? Wanting to be loved?

The enemy has placed himself here in this house and I have no way of ridding him when I myself am hanging in the balances. I feel like a failure as a mother, a writer, a wife (when I was one) and definitely a failure in the relationship department. Anti-social is not me but out here in the middle of nowhere, one can begin to feel a little isolated from the world.

So where did the road start to twist and turn.  Well right after Adam graduated I felt it shift, then a month passed and we quit going to church. That was a depressing time, but I pulled myself out of the hole with the help of Bob offering me a place back in the writing world and I took that as a promising sign but the world around me was still crashing.

I continue to slowly spiral down with a few puffs upward mind you, but still, plummeting down. I completed a six-week fiction writing course and it was good, but I realized I’m really not cut out for fiction writing. I was seriously considering self-publishing until someone said, “Make sure you get it edited, your grammar is lousy!” This as my book of poetry was to be handed in THAT day. I backed out.

Then I fell. I tripped over my computer wire and didn’t have the ability to catch myself and I went down hard injuring my already throbbing back, the fall turned it into a bass pounding thumping that had me clinging to my cane for a day. Yes a cane, go ahead and tease me how only old ladies use canes, it’s not like I haven’t heard it before. I only use it for emergencies and this was an emergency.

Then there was the three days off. He had three days in a row off and I knew what to expect, a thirty-hour plus marathon of You Tube. Yeah, that’s real communication isn’t it. Uh oh, a dangling participle, sue me someone!

Then there was the news of our Christmas. Yeah, no exchanging of gifts, just a day of food and family. While it is HIS family and not mine, I’m sorry (selfish moment here) the exchanging of gifts, all sitting around, taking turns in opening them was a highlight of five years of Christmas’ here, all to be silenced by food. Joy! I’ll enjoy a few nibbles and savor every moment I have in a FAMILY atmosphere. Something I NEVER had or have in my life.

Can you tell I’m at the end of my rope here? I’m dangling and there isn’t one soul who is reaching out to comfort me, here in the pit of isolation. Then to top it off, a friend lost his mother, another friend lost his daughter, and yet another friend lost their father. Then there is this whole scare with Ebola and I’m clinging to the only light I had in my life these past few years, Pastor Mike. I listened to his sermon and I felt the fishing rod pulling me back to shore.

On an okay note, Medicaid sent me an application to RENEW? I had it the first year I came to Nebraska, but then the next year I became ineligible. Apparently living with someone means I make too much money (even though I don’t see or have a dime.) It came out of the blue and since there’s no guarantee I have nothing to lose, right? Right! I either get it or I don’t. That’s like saying I either live or I die, no biggy, I’ll take either one.

Will anyone read this? Will anyone care? Probably not. If I don’t post in on facebook, no one will even know this posts exists.

I’m sounding like an ungrateful whiny brat, I know. But I’m done. I’m not anyone’s doormat and I have to be done.

I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Even in my darkest days, He assures me I have a REASON to be alive.

Poetry Sunday ~ Isolation

Rom. 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Solitaire

I play the game of solitaire

Isolation of my life.

Gentle peaceful flipping

For the settling of strife.

I long to be free

From impeding worldly addiction

Hours leading into days

The soul shaped in affliction.

A world made up of images

Flashing on a screen

Never breathing in the life

Of the muffled outdoor scene.

This day I will fight to live

Outside the walls I’m in.

My life will never be attuned

To the state of man and sin.

Season of My Mind

Job 28:3 He setteth an end to darkness, and searcheth out all perfection: the stones of darkness, and the shadow of death.

Season of My Mind

The trees dispose of leaves I suppose

As they prepare for gentle slumber

Colors alive, no chance to survive

The field a brilliant umber.

Season of change, the views rearrange

Silent earth awaits new birth

In the corners of my mind I find

A victim searching self worth

With colors so great I anticipate

The dancing and singing of trees

Wind always blowing, leaves overflowing

A time to relish the breeze.

I look inside it’s there I confide

To the season of indecision.

Do I stay or go my way

I plead for undimmed vision.

You Tube Junkie (mild language)

Rom. 1:24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

You Tube Junkie

I’m a You Tube junkie I’m a man

Clicking all the booty that I can

There are dogs and kitties

And big fat titties

I’m a You Tube junkie; I’m a man.

I’m a You Tube junkie with a plan

Clicking all the thumbnails that I can

With boobies and butts

And possibly some sluts

I’m a You Tube junkie; I’m a man!

I’m a You Tube junkie yes I scan

Every single video I can

With the safety off

Don’t you dare scoff

I’m a You Tube junkie; I’m a man.

I’m a You Tube junkie ladies man

Wasting fifteen hours in a span

I wake up in the morning

I give nobody warning

I’m a You Tube junkie, yes I am!

Now before I get hate mail and offended people giving me feedback, this is in no way targeted to the casual life living people who actually use You Tube for some of the beauty it holds in Christian feeds.

I myself have found some terrific posts on Bible history and Christian music and I’ve even ventured off and found some funny dogs or cat videos. Good Mythical Morning with Rhett and Link are pretty funny and often clean. (They actually have wives and kids so they understand the need for pure innocent fun.)

This is targeted at the (mainly) men who feel that taking the SAFETY OFF is an innocent way to search. Sorry, but nothing good comes from SAFETY OFF. Can you imagine driving without a seatbelt just because it is ‘hindering’ your driving? Answer me this, how is the SAFETY ON hindering your You Tube viewing? I know how… you don’t get the enjoyment of hugging Satan and all he has for you? You miss out on promiscuity and sin? You do know the thumbnails are just lures right? Yeah, have fun with that.

Mark 4: 19 And the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh unfruitful.

A Brush with Death

Job 15:30  He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.

A Brush with Death

I kissed the lips of death

The taste of blood sublime

A doorway opened up to me

I feared my end of time.

Clutching with my fingers

The beating of my heart

Pounding out the echoes

The pain in me to part.

Embrace the taste of death

Like lovers on the grass

Pray for God’s own mercy

As the pain will surely pass.

I look to a second chance

One that I won’t blow

I’ll take the time allotted me

And soon you’ll see me grow.

No more darkened journey

Behold my Light-filled path.

Taking tiny steps by day

No longer filled with wrath.

I heard the angels calling

I kissed the lips of death.

I’ll heed the Word of my Lord

As I take just one last breath.

Job 12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

I Remember...911

Psalms 27: 1-2 The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

I Remember

I remember like it was yesterday

The sky was solemn firm in gray

Soot it landed on the ground

No planes were heard; nary a sound.

Cars all paused in their ride

Time had stopped the nation died.

Silence covered all the land

Tears were counted like grains of sand.

Imagine hate quieting states

Forks were dropped onto their plates

Terrified by images seen

All seemed lost, nothing to glean.

Out of the ashes there arose

Sounds of life among the woes

Panic tried to break us down

Sorrow lifted from the ground.

Stories of heroes losing their life;

A husband, a child, a working wife.

Set in stone, we grieve, we mourn

But beyond the hate, a child was born.

Amazing how hate breeds hate

While love it opens a heavenly gate.

Out of the fear a nation rose

To show that LOVE has eased the blows.

The end is near; the time is nigh

To put hate aside and learn to fly.

Embrace the world God placed in your heart

There lies the secret of a promising start.

© Joni Zipp

Written this day: Sept 11, 2014

Pss. 27:13-14 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

September Eleven

Isa. 2:11 The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.

***

September 11

I cradled my morning coffee,

my eyes they struggled to see

a horrific terrible tragedy,

unfolding in front of me.

Today’s background clutter,

seemed to take a second stance,

scrambling cameras everywhere,

gave rise to a deeper glance.

A plane had hit a building,

I couldn't believe my eyes.

the horror of a gaping wound,

of such an enormous size.

By now I'm jolted wide awake,

something was just not right.

I witnessed the impact yet again,

on the twin without a fight.

Billowing smoke and fragments,

scattered all around.

People frozen in a spot,

as objects fall to the ground.

Reports of other targets,

were coming into view.

My tear-filled eyes were wondering.

what this world was coming to.

In merely a matter of moments,

my blurry eyes did see;

heroes rushing into the scene,

as workers fought to flee.

The crumbling of a building,

number two not far behind.

The crashing of plane three and four,

had mentally boggled my mind.

I couldn't feel my fingers;

a wounded numbness arose.

I sat in total disbelief

as my body stood there froze.

Longing to be shaken,

from this nightmare that is real

my body shrouded in emptiness,

as I buckled to a kneel.

I prayed for love torn strangers,

whose faces dripped with fear.

I longed for welcome solace,

through the shedding of a tear.

The aroma of terror lingers,

as I'm trembling to the core.

I long for the taste of freedom,

which I sense will be no more.

A sleeping nation awakened,

by the trumpets sounding in heaven.

Altering our lives forever,

on the day of September eleven.

Copyright © Joni Zipp

written: Sept. 11, 2001

Isa. 12: 4 And in that day shall ye say, Praise the LORD, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted.

 

 pics from google images

To Him Be the Glory

To Him be the Glory

        ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~          

I walk the path of loneliness

all rocks are gathered round.

I try to move them one by one

my duty earthly bound.

The burden mighty heavy

with each rock I toss aside.

I look around at no one

who is standing by my side.

“Why do you feel so alone,

when I placed within your reach,

ones to help you down the path;

hardy lessons for me to teach.”

“Lord the load is heavy.

I sometimes cannot see,

all the pillars gathered around

to walk the path with me.”

“I feel as if I struggle alone,

can do it all myself.

Hardened is the journey I tread;

people sit by on the shelf.”

“My child, all around you waits

companions to ease the road.

You need to see the well lit path;

you need to share the load!”

“But will I have failed in my job,

for not embracing the task?

I want to give my all to you

and do all that you ask.”

“You’ve given me the best of you

and that is all I need.

Your witness and your testimony;

a mighty strengthened seed.”

“Go now child and let them see

the blessings that I’ve sent.

Your journey far from over,

your light has not been spent.”

“I see them Lord, gathered here;

all from You to me.

We’ll walk the path, never alone

to You be all the Glory!”

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." --Jeremiah 29:11

I Needed a Break

Romans 12:9-15 NASB~ Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor; not lagging behind in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, persevering in tribulation, devoted to prayer, contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

I took a break.

I took a break from writing, from facebook, from the world. I was going to do a series on depression but it made me depressed so I put a halt to that.

A few weeks ago, a dear friend and owner from my old stomping grounds Writers Village University asked me if I’d be interested in working the boards again. I was in a funk and thought, maybe this was God’s way of waking me out of it.

My mind reeled. I haven’t been really active on the site in many years, I’ve been a behind the scene support member but that was it. All my writing has been non-fiction here on my blog and that’s about all I wrote. I wasn’t letting the tainted world in and I ‘thought’ I was good. I wasn’t.

I was really getting depressed when I went to facebook; pictures upon pictures of things, just meaningless things over and over again. Whether it be a lost animal, lost kids, dogs, cats, challenges, quizzes, food (more food than I care to look at in one day), selfies, endless emoticons and the list goes on and on. Basically, facebook was becoming meaningless, to ME. There has to be something more to life out there.

A few months ago a dear friend had made a remark on all the pics I was posting. He was wondering if I had any thoughts of my own. I stopped posting pics, except of Boo, one of the cutest and most popular dogs ON facebook. My facebook life changed. I saw what he saw and realized, while I love the friendships, all of whom I know and no one is a 'random' pick of the day friend, the feed is tiring to me and quite depressing.

Other folks LIKE, LIKE, LIKE pics pics pics, but I now was seeing with different eyes. I was seeing how annoying it had become, then it depressed me. I focused on my garden, mowing, finding new dishes to make for my family and just enjoying the unseasonably cool summer we were/are having.

***Please note: I LOVE all the family pics, and the flower pics that people take and share, and especially all the beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and mountains and all the PERSONAL pics that people share! And I am not without fault, I can be a pic posting maniac, but again there has to be something more to life. People HAVE to have real thoughts of their own, right?

Tiring of the unhealthy eating habits of the many, bored with coffee, depressed at being there for everyone else and no one being there for me, Bob approached me and said three words, “Are you interested?” I snapped out of the fog that held me captive and responded quite surprisingly quick, “YES, Yes I’m interested.”

I began a sort-of training for the task by my dear friend Priscilla whose very big shoes I was being asked to fill.  Both Bob and Priscilla thought I was up to the task and they had faith I could do a good job. It’s amazing what two people’s confidence in me did FOR me.

I told Bob that I KNEW I wasn’t up to handling ‘the calendar’ portion of the tasks and he assured me, “We’ll think of something.” After quite a few of rare-for-me sleepless nights, Pris emailed me and said she’d stick with the calendar! Talk about praising God. I was so thankful.

F2K (fiction 2000) was fast approaching. That’s a writing course I love too; an extension course of WVU. I signed up, boldly too I might add and began writing again.

I could now feel the fuzzy days becoming clearer. I was being pulled back to my gift of writing and that is what God had intended for me all along and He has this funny way of seeing to it we’re keeping up our end of the bargain.

While depression can be debilitating for some, to me it is a time of a forced-fast; a time to reflect and see what’s right and what’s wrong. A time to take a look and in the midst of looking realizing there is more to life than mundane functions. God didn’t put us here to go on day-by-day treating life with a menial attitude. He put us here to flourish and prosper. And I’m pretty glad that two people had the faith in me, which allowed me to once again have faith in myself. Thank you Bob and Priscilla!

Poetry Sunday ~ Fiery Pit

Isa. 13: 8 And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.

Fiery Pit

Alone in the fiery pit

No one near to see

Flames licking at my side

The walls that smother me.

Heavy eyes raised to glance

The yellow, orange and blue

Holding me within its grasp

Feet cling to the floor of glue.

I cannot move; no hands reach out

I’m caught in the raging flare

The sound is all but deafening

In its race to singe my hair.

Is this a dream I can’t wake from

The abyss alarmingly real

My limbs are numb as the blaze erupts

There’s nothing for me to feel.

Why do people pass right by

Not hearing the harrowing screams;

Is a smile enough to make them think

All’s normal or so it seems?

Alone am I in the fiery pit

While people are blind to the pain

They’ll live the fantasy that all is well

As I dance in the fan-flamed rain.

Move on you sleeping nation

Your hypocrisy is wearing thin.

Pretending to care and moving on

As I peel my melting skin.

 

 

Quotation Saturday

"The heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy" ~ Proverbs 14:10

I have chosen these quotes in light of the death of a beloved man who always made everyone else smile but was really crying on the onside. I know too many suffering with depression and maybe now is the time to bring this illness to the light of day. No more hiding!

SUICIDE

“…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
~ David Foster Wallace

“A lot of you cared, just not enough.”
~ Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain.”
~ Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star

DEPRESSION

“As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
~ Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

“Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.”
~ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
~ Sylvia Plath

LONELINESS

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
~ Maya Angelou

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
~ Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
~ Mother Teresa

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

JUDGMENT

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”
~ Galileo Galilei, Frammenti e lettere

“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
~ Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.”
~ Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

The Demons Within

Isa. 38: 18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

From RST: “Robin (Williams) was blessed with a gift to bring joy and laughter to millions of people. NO ONE THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN FULLY UNDERSTANDS THE ABOUNDING GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST! Scripture tells us not to say this one will go to heaven or this one will not. We don't have the authority. I hope he IS a brother in Christ. How about instead of passing judgment or spewing malice and hardened opinions, we who are Christ's followers lift up his family and loved ones in prayer. After all Christ IS abounding, unfathomable, never ending love. Hope, faith, and love and the greatest of these things is love. Hope to see Robin Williams in the kingdom one day! He will be missed until then.”

I read a beautiful article on suicide here.

While I’ve suffered depression and rose from the ashes, on many occasions the flames still seem to smolder never really smothered. I do have Jesus as an anchor in my life and always have but I wonder, if on the edge of suicide, will Jesus reach in and pour water on the flames surrounding you, so you don’t die? Well, we know He could, but He doesn’t impose His free will on our free will. If we consciously made the decision to kill ourselves, that is OUR CHOICE to do so, and the Lord doesn’t stop the act.

The above article really hit the nail on the head for me. Depression often feels like you’re inside a burning building and the only way out is a window that you jump through to what inevitably turns out to be your death.

You see, depression stems from a loneliness. A place where you’re surrounded by people but always feeling alone. Sometimes even a rich person, who has tons of friends, is always seemingly happy is fighting on the inside the loneliness that has enveloped him in a fiery fan of flames.

How do I explain the inner demons that we humans struggle with on a daily basis? I don’t think *I* can and I certainly don’t feel a psychiatrist can. People and doctors can try; they can provide pills to dummy you up so you don’t feel anything or give you words of encouragement, or even hand you a bible and say, “Read this, you’ll get better.”

The loneliness pit is a place where you finally take a look at YOU and you’re not happy with what you see.  I had an uncle who was a sufferer of PTSD from the remnants of the Vietnam War. He sought help and while the government gave him help it was never enough to lift him out of the pit. He had friends and even turned to them on the day he committed suicide. He went around telling them, “I’m going to jump from a bridge today, I’m done with it all.”

They all laughed and scoffed saying, “Here have a beer”, or whatever the drug of choice that was offered him, gave him no comfort, no release from the pit. They had heard it before many times, many attempts, with no success.

He went and jumped off the Francis Scott Key Bridge to his death. The problems with his prior attempts was, the bridge wasn’t high enough, so this time, he made sure it was. He had cried out and no one heard, no one took serious the seriousness of a death threat.

I imagine before Robin Williams death (pure conjecture here) when on the night before his death as his wife was leaving the house, he assured her over and over, “I’m fine, really.” Always the people pleaser, he didn’t let on to his own wife the depths of the pit he had fallen in and brushed it off in a joke and sent her on her way. He would then turn, go up the stairs and have a conversation with his loneliness, the pit of demons that let him know, “We’re here for you!”

No thought of family dwells in the pit. No external love resides there. Jesus is certainly not hanging out in the pit of your worst thoughts, you’re dangling by threads of insanity, all of which are being held by demons edging you on to a place of comfort, coddling you, caressing you, welcoming you. A place you don’t need to please anyone, a place that surrounds your mind in a blanket suffocating any thoughts except that of YOU and what YOU’VE become.

You’re not dangling in thoughts of love and family, thoughts of joy and happiness, no, you’ve taken up with the demons of comfort that are whispering all the things you want to hear; things about YOU, there’s room for no one else in the smothering pit.

When someone says they’re depressed. Whether clinically or just depressed (sad, lonely, hurt, aching) Please don’t laugh them off and hand them an answer that works for YOU, this is their battle, one you CAN’T fight for them and one you can’t lift them out of.

Don’t tell them they ‘should’ do this, or they ‘should’ do that, that is the worse thing you can say. What they need to hear is that you’re there for them. They need to know you care, and often people ‘claim’ to care and be concerned, but then they disappear thinking the person is fine. The person is in a fiery pit with their inner demons and you think they’re fine? Nice assumption!

Don’t ASSUME, be willing to listen! LISTEN, not spew should’s and should not’s, LISTEN. More than anything, while in the pit of depression, people are too eager to please OTHER people, make them laugh and smile; when all they needed was for one person to LISTEN. And no one ever has the time, to just listen.

If the many friends and family surrounding Robin Williams had LISTENED, would we be talking about his suicide? I can’t answer that, I’m only talking from my pit.

I praise the Lord every day that He stands with me in my pit, dousing the flames bit by bit, but other people don’t have the company, they are in the pit alone; alone and smothering.

If you’re ever in the pit with no one who will listen and death looks much better than facing life, please call the Suicide Hotline – 1-800-273-8255. Keep the number in a handy spot on the fridge, sometimes we never know that the person right beside us is about to make the wrong choice.

You might give up on Him, but He will NEVER give up on YOU!

God Bless You!

Poetry Sunday ~ In the Catacombs of Lonely

John 11:35 Jesus wept.

 In the Catacombs of Lonely

The darkest despair, fills the air

In the catacombs of lonely.

I claw my way to find the day

A freshness for me only.

A solitary face adorns the walls

Desolation my sole friend

I carry chains of emptiness

That will never come to an end.

Deserted am I, to sit and cry

My tears that no one hears.

Abandoned is all call to love

Fills me with unwarranted fears.

The deepest despair has filled the air

In the catacombs of lonely

The mottled cape o’er me draped

As if it’s for me only.