Distracted?

"I'm on my way; I'll be there soon. Keep a tight grip on what you have so no one distracts you and steals your crown." -Rev. 4:11 (Msg)

 I opened the Bible on my cell phone today and did a random search. I'm a pentecostal and we're notorious for that - opening the Word of God to a random page and pointing a finger believing that God is going to give us spiritual nutrition for the day. OK, it wasn't really like that. I just didn't know what to look up so I decided to wing it. Anyway, this is what came up. Can I get a fist bump up in here? This verse was meant for me!

I'm distracted all the time. I love technology, can't get enough of it. Hubby tells me to put my phone down in restaurants. And the day I found Facebook was my last uninterrupted day of work, perhaps ever. That's not the kind of distraction, however, that poses the biggest danger to my walk with God. Lately, I've been distracted by myself. Distracted with a new writing project and where I hope it will go. Distracted with all sorts of groups and church classes designed to make me a better person. The good news is, the classes, groups, and lessons are working. The bad news is, it's just too easy to start focusing on how I'M doing, or how I'VE changed, and forget that any progress isn't about how hard I've worked or how dedicated I am, but about how the Lord has worked in me and how He has blessed me for my obedience.

The kind of distraction that God talks about isn't just Facebook and Twitter, it's all of life. Look around you. Look in. Have a messy past that you don't think you can overcome? That's a good sign that you're distracted with where you've been. Have a long, difficult road ahead of you and considering a detour? You're probably distracted by where you're headed (my own current distraction). You know that saying, "No matter where you go, there you are"? The Holiest of Holies is kinda like that. God is in your past, He's here with you today, and there isn't one thing about your future that Abba Father doesn't know.

I have the attention span of a flea with ADHD. Distracted much? Oh yeah. But Jesus is coming soon - He's on His way. I want to give the days I have here to Him - I've already thrown too many away. I'd rather be so distracted with God that when I look at a dirty and broken world, all I see at first glance is the good in other people and the places I can share His love.

Can you imagine being that 'lost' in Christ? How awesome would that be? You can't just wish it into existence. You have to be deliberate about it and be conscious of where you're focusing your attention. That's really hard for me, I don't know about you.

I know none of us is perfect, but how do you keep yourself 'in check' and your eyes on God?

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The Badger Family & the Unthinkable

If you don't know who Madonna Badger is, or what happened at her home on Christmas morning, you must be living under a dusty rock somewhere, but to recap: her Stamford house burned down, killing her parents and her three young daughters.

Why am I blogging about this? Because I haven't been able to get it out of my mind for a solid week. This has haunted me unlike any other news story I can recall. I've read a lot about devastating fires recently. First a house in the next town over burned down a few weeks before Christmas, killing a 24-year-old woman and her parents. Her teenage sister had to jump from the second floor to safety. Over in Australia, a beloved celebrity chef named Matt Golinski lost his wife and 3 daughters on Boxing Day and suffered third-degree burns to over forty percent of his body trying to save them. 

I actually found myself getting sort of angry the other day thinking about it. I don't know who or what I was angry at, I just felt... angry. I've been through some very painful things in my life, but isn't this THE absolute nightmare of everyone, everywhere? This really dwarfs all other fears and tragedies in my mind. It's senseless. The Stamford fire, in particular, was senseless - the blaze is blamed on a bag of smoldering fireplace ashes placed at the back of the house by Badger's boyfriend.

I don't know if there's something that presents a major challenge to your faith, but logic presents a major challenge to mine and always has. A loving God who allows people to lose, literally, their entire families in one swoop. Stupid freakin' logic - it's kicking me in the butt this time! I've devoted a lot of hours to mulling this one over. I've tried to envision what these people must be going through, and how they will - I hope - eventually put one foot in front of the other and simply breathe. I have thought numerous times that I would regret not dying myself. I don't even have children of my own.

I can sit here and tell you about the peace I had when my husband almost died this summer, or the way God has been healing me from a crappy childhood, and I can give you a list of things God has done for me through rough circumstances, and there is barely a comparison. Like trying to blow bubbles into a stiff wind. Right back in your face.

It leaves me feeling naked and terrified. And all I can really do when I feel that way - here's the irony - is pray. Pray because being afraid doesn't get me anywhere, and it doesn't get the Badgers or the Golinskis or the Risslers anywhere, either. I pray because it makes no sense to me and I still hang onto that little mustard seed of faith that tells me GOD understands it, and the only thing that can help these people breath and walk and carry on is HIM.

It makes me stare directly into the face of what a relationship with Jesus is supposed to be about in the first place: making Him my everything. Everything else can disappear in an instant, but God cannot be lost. Real relationship with God means you can never lose everything.

But I'm guessing none of those people are feeling it right now, and that's the emptiness that scares me. It scares me, but it brings me to my knees.

It's a messy grace that keeps us afloat, isn't it?

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Upside Down

It was four in the morning, and I was in the kitchen arranging my spice cabinet by alphabetical order and container size. Most of them were spices I never used. I didn't even like marjoram and I didn't know what coriander was but I kept them anyway, lining them up row by row. It could have been four o'clock in the afternoon, it didn't matter to me. I was wide awake and contemplated a trip to Wal-Mart to expend some energy.

"What are you doing?" I looked up and saw my husband standing in the hallway in his rumpled t-shirt, rubbing his tired eyes. This had become a predictable routine - my husband awaking in the middle of the night to find me elsewhere, usually in front of the TV, or quietly trying to pluck at my guitar, or writing depressing poetry. It scared him when he found me doing something productive in the middle of the night, like cleaning or arranging. It meant my energy was off the charts.

He took me gently by the shoulders and led me away from the kitchen. I imagine it must have looked a lot like a scene from the Alzheimer's unit of a nursing home - "Come on, Julie. Let's go back to your room." Of course, I was only in my early twenties and we were supposed to be happy newlyweds, except we weren't. I was not at all what he had signed up for.

We got married wanting a simple life - the kids, the dog, teaching Sunday school, keeping the white picket fence nicely painted so it glowed around our perfectly manicured lawn. He wanted a soft-spoken wife who could make a decent meatloaf, but instead he got me - exhausted and barely able to function by day, wide awake and wired at night. If he had known I'd be punching holes through walls or throwing plates at him, or contemplating suicide on a daily basis, he probably never would have walked down the aisle with me. Nobody signs up for Wifezilla.

Did I know I had issues before I married him? You could say there were a few signs. I believed, like a great many foolish women do, that once I got married I would "settle down" and the problems would magically disappear. Being in love would make the depression go away. Establishing a new life would make the anger subside. Being a wife would make me gentler.

The fits of rages didn't tear us apart, the expectations did. My husband walked on eggshells and tried to be the perfect man, hoping that if he could keep from rocking the boat, I'd be in a manageable mood. I expected him to understand that what he did or didn't do had nothing to do with how I felt or how I acted. When I whipped a plate at his head, it wasn't personal. I was angry, in general, and he just happened to be in the way. As many times as I tried to explain to him that I wasn't angry at him, he didn't understand it and certainly didn't believe it. To him, my actions proved otherwise.

It's hard to have a happy home when one spouse follows the other one around all day asking, "Honey, are you doing OK today?"

Translation: "Are you crazy today? Are you normal yet? How many fingers am I holding up?"


Realistically, the things that angered me don't anger 'average' people. Most people don't fly off the handle because they dropped a butter knife or something fell out of the freezer when they opened it. At least, they don't fly into a rage that escalates and escalates until they have bloody knuckles.

I found myself going through pastoral marriage counseling and sitting through individual therapy once a week, and praying for deliverance from my anger every day. I read books and hashed out a troubled childhood that I had hashed out many times before in counseling. Nobody seemed to understand - least of all my poor husband - that I wasn't seething with inner anger. I was having flashes of very intense anger that came out of nowhere, and I felt powerless to control it.

I was energetic and creative and had so many ideas, but was limited by my human capabilities. More often than not, that's what really ticked me off. How could I sleep when my mind was racing and my body felt like an engine revving at the starting line? How could I be happy and at peace when my hand was reaching for a plate but my thoughts were a mile ahead of me already contemplating what I would do the next morning and I was super-sensitive to noise and light and virtually everything around me?

I knew there was something wrong - something medically wrong - but part of me worried that I wasn't really a Christian. How could the Holy Spirit live inside of something so messy and frightening? Repentance means turning away from sin and walking as far away from it as possible. I was always 'sorry' after an angry outburst, always sorry for scaring my husband with my late-night antics, but I always did them again and again. Had I really received Christ's ultimate forgiveness? Could Christians be terrorized by demons?

Was it brain chemistry, or something demonic? Both? What was the answer?

I didn't have the answers to those questions.
All I knew was that nothing was working.




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Good And Angry At God

God has a big ol' lightning bolt with your name on it, you naughty, naughty thing, you.

Parents always embarrass their kids by talking about them, and since I don’t have a kid of my own, I’ve decided to embarrass my niece. She’s the closest thing I have to a daughter, which makes her the perfect candidate.

She’s pissed off at God for a variety of reasons I won’t share. (I’m not THAT bad.) At 17, she has experienced more hardship in life than some senior citizens. We have a lot in common, though teenagers won’t ever admit to being anything like an old person. The trouble with teenagers is that you try to impart life lessons but always wonder if what you say will be overshadowed by a rap song, whose lyrics will undoubtedly be quoted on Facebook.

My niece is a lot like I was at her age – a troubled young girl trying to make sense of the pain in her life while trying to figure out where and if God fits into the big picture. Unless you are raised steeped in Christianity, it’s easy to think that God sits on a cloud somewhere in the sky chucking lightning bolts at people who cross Him – even if those people have accepted Christ as Savior.

I have to say my view of God was perhaps considerably worse when I was a teenager. God was the head administrator of the universe, seated at a desk piled high with paperwork. Every now and then, an angel would wander in and hand Him a paper. “This girl is being molested,” he’d say, or “This boy’s father ignores him. Which pile do you want it on?” And God would point to the appropriate stack without even looking up and save the crisis for another day, if at all. He should have been on that heavenly cloud, chucking lightning bolts at evil people, but He was too caught up in red tape to do that. And when he did venture out with bolts in hand, He only shot them at the believers who screwed up and sinned against Him.

I suspect this is my niece’s view of God at this very moment. She wants Him to answer the age-old question of “Why?” but her queries seem to be met with silence.

Reverse Theology
Apart from the death and resurrection of Christ itself, all of Christianity is based on the premise that our identity, value, and worth can be found within the pages of the Bible. When facing hardships in life, the Bible is full of promises designed to give us hope and keep us focused on the reality that earth sucks, but it’s not our eternal home. In Psalms, God promises that that He will bless the righteous and show him favor (5:12); that He will be a refuge to the hurting (9:9); that He will give His people strength and peace (29:11), and that’s just to name a few. Throughout the Bible, God promises us healing, full forgiveness of sins, and freedom.

It was always hard for me to understand a book full of promises when I lived in a world full of painful uncertainty. Obviously, I’m not alone in that. Everyone has questioned why there is pain and suffering in the world. It is a part of human nature. For a young war-torn believer, it’s hard to reconcile what seem to be blatant contradictions. 

The human brain weighs about three pounds. Did you know that? I actually learned that from a Chris Rice song years ago, but I promise I looked it up to make sure. I’ve purchased smaller bags of ground beef at the grocery store. Now compare that to the vast knowledge of God and suddenly it makes a little more sense how… none of this makes much sense. Only in the past couple of years have I realized that I’ve been trying stuff all of the wisdom of God into three pounds of gray goo. I’d have better luck trying to back my car into my laptop bag.  Can you imagine how frustrating that would be? I get irritated when I can’t get the cover on my grill. No wonder we get angry at God. 

Part of the problem, of course, is that we expect things out of God that He specifically told us not to expect. We have a sense of entitlement. We get too caught up in being human beings and believing that since we live here, we should have it all. My husband has a relative who lived in a house rent-free and when it was time to leave, he believed that meant he owned everything in the place. 

Not so!

I got a grip on my anger at God through reverse theology. You’re less likely to hear this preached from the pulpit because instead of focusing on God’s promises, I focus on the things He didn’t promise, but it gave me great perspective.

A lot of people “get saved” believing that life will be wonderful now because we have Jesus in our lives. We don’t realize that the peace and joy of God comes from what we learn from circumstances, and not the circumstances themselves. We see “good” people getting what they “don’t deserve” and it infuriates us. I watched one of my cousins slowly die of ALS over the course of five years. He was a good man who loved the Lord, had a beautiful wife, and four amazing daughters. He was a musician with a brilliant mind who once designed and published a game that was promoted by MENSA. 

According to my three pounds of brain mass, if anyone deserved to live a good, long life, it was him. But he became completely disabled and finally died in 2009. I don’t get it; I never fully will.

We can trace death and destruction back to the fall of man in the garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve decided to get uppity and directly disobeyed God by eating the forbidden fruit. God cursed man and said that from that point on, we would experience the things that hold us back now – shame, trouble, hardship. 

Ah, that’s the part we missed. We missed the section at the front of the book where God said life would be hard. We miss John 16:33 where Jesus says that in the world we will have trouble. We just want the good stuff. We feel like we are owed it. 

The first part of my life was inexplicably hard. I spent nearly the next half being angry about it because I felt like I didn’t deserve it. Whether you blame Adam and Eve or not, however, none of us deserve anything good, if only because we expect God to deliver our goods with no hassle, like a child demanding money from a parent. 

It would be one thing if God honestly promised an easy, problem-free life and then all around us, the world was crumbling, our bills weren’t getting paid, and people were taking advantage of us, but that’s not really the case.  In reality, we do stupid things on a daily basis, and it’s astounding just how cruel humans can be to one another. Maybe you never killed anyone. Good for you. Me neither. But have you ever thought something nasty about someone? Flipped someone the bird in traffic? Yelled at an authority figure? If you answered no, you’re still a sinner because you’re lying.

For me, it was much easier to stop being angry at God once I realized I wasn’t being duped.

Choices, Choices
Go to any church or Bible study and you will hear about how life is all about choosing to accept the good things God has for us, including those promises. I say you also have to choose to accept the things God never said, or the things He said that you didn’t like.

You can’t really accept Jesus as Savior until you’ve figured out that you need Him. It’s about more than not wanting to go to Hell. You have to understand that you do ungodly things on a regular basis and that Jesus died on the cross to pay for what you’ve done. In a huge, supernatural way, it’s like paying for an item somebody shoplifted to keep the guilty party out of jail. A good parent will love their child unconditionally; this is what God does for us.

It’s also about understanding that God cannot stand to be around unholiness – hence, Satan got kicked out of Heaven. When Adam and Eve screwed up, God got angry and gave mankind consequences. But like a good parent, He also wanted to see His kids restored, so He sent Jesus to die for us.

So we face a choice, and often make the wrong one. We have the option of loving God and thanking Him for His unconditional love and desire to make us whole again, or staying mad at Him because sometimes our actions have consequences, and the actions of others sometimes affect us. We have to decide what is more important to us – our earthly circumstances, or what God is capable of doing in our spirit.

We react out of hurt, and we hurt others. Think about it. A drug addict becomes a drug addict because they were neglected, abused, or unloved. That drug addict then turns around and steals from law-abiding citizens to fund his habit, and destroys the people who love him the most. The drug addict can blame God for his painful history without ever realizing how he is hurting others. There are no truly innocent people in this world, even if we don’t harm others deliberately.

We can’t go to God for a new life until we realize the life we’ve been living has at some point harmed others, the least of which is God himself.

Keepin’ It Real
For years I was unable to have a fruitful spiritual life because of my anger with God. I tried to out-think it and I believed in the Bible’s promises, but anger was like a little cobweb that got stuck in my brain and even when it wasn’t a dominant emotion, it was always in the background. I have two dear friends in my life who have served as mentors to me for years, and they constantly encouraged me to discuss my feelings with God, but I rejected the idea. It seemed like a terrible sin to feel anger, let alone talk about it. 

In retrospect, it was out of character for me not to discuss how I felt. I am not obnoxious, but I am the type of person to always voice my opinion and speak up when I think it matters. If I have an issue with my husband or a friend, I confront it and try to discuss it to clear it up. God was different, though. I didn’t want Him to chuck a lightning bolt at me.

Through a support group and godly counsel, I began to realize that being honest with God was not only important, but also encouraged and modeled in scripture. I recently started the “Search for Significance” Bible study by Robert S. McGhee. The very first chapter of the book provides verses that demonstrate how David – whom the Bible describes as “a man after God’s own heart” – was very blunt with God throughout his life.

In Psalm 42:9, David questions his own pain a

nd God’s motives.
“I say to God my Rock, 
   “Why have you forgotten me? 
Why must I go about mourning, 
   oppressed by the enemy?”

In Psalm 58:6-9, David tells God how angry he is with others.
 “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; 
   LORD, tear out the fangs of those lions! 
Let them vanish like water that flows away; 
   when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. 
May they be like a slug that melts away as it moves along, 
   like a stillborn child that never sees the sun.
 Before your pots can feel the heat of the thorns— 
   whether they be green or dry—the wicked will be swept away.”

More than once, David got frustrated with God and His timing, such as in Psalm 13:1-2.
 How long, LORD? Will you forget me forever? 
   How long will you hide your face from me? 
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts 
   and day after day have sorrow in my heart? 
   How long will my enemy triumph over me?

And in case you’re quick to believe that God only listened to David’s emotional prayers because he was an all-around good guy, take into account the fact that David committed a number of serious offenses, including an affair with Bathsheba that got her pregnant, which David later tried to cover up. God did not listen to David because he had all of life figured out. In fact, the life of David would have made a good Lifetime Original movie.
God’s love is unconditional, which means He always has an ear for us. Anyone willing to talk to God in an honest way shows an open heart that is willing to be changed by Him. That’s really all He asks of us.

I stopped covering up my anger towards God for a number of reasons. One, it is very exhausting and damaging to carry around anger for a long time without making an attempt to resolve it. What I found was that you really can’t cover up anger. You can pile all the crap you want on top of it, but it’s going to dig its way through again.
Two, my anger was greatly alleviated once I realized that God never promised me an easy life and understood that I didn’t deserve one anymore than the next person.

Three, I took a look at my personal relationships and realized that a relationship wasn’t a deep one unless there was honesty. I don’t like shallow friendships. I want to get to know the people in my life on a deeper level, and a few of those people I hold extremely close to me. Our friendship is close and intimate because I allow myself to be totally forthcoming with those people. If we want to stop seeing God as an administrator or some sort of tattle tale, we need to form the same kind of intimacy with him, which includes confronting the things that need to be confronted.

We have to choose to believe that the God who created the universe, who loved us enough to restore us, is big enough and capable enough of handling even the very worst of us. If David could tell God off and still be a “man after his own heart,” why can’t we? 

I think we submit our prayers to God a lot like we put quarters in a soda machine. In goes the money, out comes the prize. That’s how we think God should work. But prayer is a conversation, right? For years I couldn’t understand the purpose of prayer. It seemed pointless to me to ask God for things without ever really knowing if you’re going to get them. You pray for safe travels for a bus full of youth group kids, and then it goes over a cliff. I’m sure you’ve heard that God always answers prayer, but not always the way you want Him to. I don’t know if I buy into that. Sometimes God doesn’t answer prayer because it’s not His will, plain and simple. Does that mean you shouldn’t ask for things like protection or favor, or the healing of a terminally ill relative? 

The character and promises of God don’t change, but that doesn’t mind God can’t or doesn’t change His mind. In Jonah 3:1-10, Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh with a message from God to change their evil ways, or else. Nineveh heeds the warning and because of their repentance, God “relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.” (vs. 10) 

We also have to keep in mind that our actions have consequences, and our actions affect each other. A friend of ours had a nasty porn habit that broke his wife’s heart and kept the atmosphere in their home tense. After many second chances and years of counseling, his wife found out he had never addressed the issue in therapy and discovered more pornography that crossed the line into child porn. He may have prayed at that point for God to fix his marriage, but his wife had had enough, and rightly so. They separated and are now planning to divorce.

Our response to God, our willingness or unwillingness to honor Him with our lives, and the actions of others directly impact God’s answers to our prayers. God is unchanging. He will not break His promises, He will not contradict Himself, and above all He will always love His people unconditionally. We may not know how or if a prayer will be answered, but we should always remind ourselves and that God is good…all the time.

When you really stop and think about it, telling God how angry you are isn’t just confronting an issue so you can hopefully get past it. We are asking God for something – we are asking God to be the person He promised to be, even though we can’t acknowledge it at the time.  If you’re angry at God, I think it should be a comfort to you, because that means you believe in Him, and that’s the first step in the right direction. 

One of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, talks about an encounter he had with God in his book, Believing in God Knows What. What started as an angry confrontation with his Creator turned into a moment of reflection and, for us readers, humor. He told God He didn’t believe in Him anymore, only to realize that, unless you’re schizophrenic or on drugs, you don’t tell off someone who isn’t there. 

Being angry at God was a miserable feeling for me. It took many years before I finally broke down and told Him what I really thought of the things He allowed to happen in my life. But it made me realize that even though I was good and pissed, I still believed…a little bit. In Luke 17:15, the apostles ask Jesus to increase their faith. In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said that even faith as small as a mustard seed could move mountains. Even the original 12 got it. I was not alone. And Jesus reassured them that even a little goes a long way.

I’m hoping my niece can go from seeing God as a cloud-dwelling lightning bolt-chucker to a confidant who can take whatever she dishes out. He seems to think we’re worth the hassle. That’s enough to grow your faith right there.

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My Theory on Pets and Heaven

I went with my parents and my brother to put the family dog to sleep this afternoon. It was the first time I'd done such a thing, and I honestly hope I don't have to do it again. Unfortunately, the odds are probably against me, since I'm an animal lover and a "pet parent". If you've ever lost a pet, you can probably relate to the notion that life would be far easier if we all became priests or nuns and never really invested in anyone or anything emotionally.

Aw, we say it, but we're pushovers. One puppy kiss, one kitty rubbing up against our legs and we're sold on the idea of adopting pets all over again.

The question is, where do our pets go when they die?
If you're an atheist, then pets go into the ground or into an oven and that's it.
If you're like me - over-spiritualizing everything from a good cup of coffee to a bad hair day - there's more to it than that.

Christians - who tend to take things way more literally than they need to be - are sort of divided on where animals go, if anywhere. Some say animals have souls, some say animals don't. Both sides are pretty determined to have the only correct answer. So here's MY theory, for what little it's worth.

I don't know if animals have souls. I tend to think they do, only because they have distinct personalities, they supposedly feel love, they are loyal, and God created them to not only help us but keep us company. Do I think my dog is up in Heaven playing with my brother's dearly departed cat? Yes. If I'm wrong, do I think I'll have to answer to God on Judgment Day? No. I can't picture God getting mad at me for thinking Winston is in Heaven.

That being said... I don't know for sure whether or not they have souls.
Anyone ever read "Heaven" by Randy Alcorn? His interpretation is that Heaven will be a familiar place where we are surrounded by everything we love. Sounds pretty biblical to me. So why WOULDN'T our pets be there?

And since there are no tears and there is no sadness in Heaven... even if our pets WEREN'T there... the rest of Heaven would be so perfect, we wouldn't know the difference.

Either way, I think the odds are in our favor... at least as far as Heaven goes. Pin It

Suicide and Addiction

This winter seemed to be a particularly harsh one for a lot of people. February and early March (knock on wood) saw the suicides of three celebrities: first it was fashion designer Alexander McQueen, followed by "Growing Pains" star Andrew Koenig (RIP, "Boner"), followed by Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil/Bryan (if one could call him a "celebrity).

Was there something in the water? I don't mean to make a joke of suicide, but I have to ask because I just came out of a very deep depression, as did several of my friends. I know seasonal affective disorder is a very real thing, but I swear the government secretly implanted crazy electrodes in our brains to make us miserable this year or something.

In all seriousness, it was beyond hard. The thing about having depression is (especially when people are committing suicide left and right) is that you always feel the need to hide it. At least I do. There are a few people I am very honest with, but for the most part I don't let on as to how bad it really is. You just don't want to worry everyone. As a teenager, I attempted suicide (didn't get very far, fortunately) so I don't want everyone automatically assuming I'm sitting on the other end of the phone line with a gun to my head.

You hear people say a lot of different things when someone commits suicide. For as much sympathy as you hear, you also hear a lot of anger. For every "that poor man" you hear "that was so selfish." And I guess if you're not suicidal, it does look terribly selfish. You're gone and everyone else is left to suffer. You will be mourned. Questions will be asked. That's the reality. But to someone suffering from severe clinical depression, the picture doesn't look like that at all. To someone with severe depression, all is lost, nothing matters, and the world is better off without them. Severe depression, in a sense, sometimes removes a person's ability to see beyond their own pain to how the rest of the world will react. You see that person as loved and valued; however, they see themselves as colossal failures who ca do nothing right and don't deserve anything good in their lives.

I don't know the story behind Alexander McQueen's suicide, but from everything I have read, Andrew Koenig and Michael Blosil felt exactly that - worthless, hopeless, miserable. If you don't think you have a friend in the world, then in your mind there isn't anyone to leave behind in despair.

Then there's Corey Haim. When I was growing up, Corey Haim was a teen heartthrob. I was never particularly "into" him but I certainly knew who he was. He died this past week at the age of 38 - the same age as my husband. Too young. He battled drug addiction and had a number of health problems that I'm sure the drug use exacerbated. He reportedly died from heart congestion. Though the toxicology results won't be known for several weeks, however, from all accounts he was addicted to prescription drugs... Vicodin, Valium, Soma, maybe others. A few months ago, troubled actress Brittany Murphy died from pneumonia and drug intoxication. She filled a prescription for Vicodin 11 days before her death on Dec. 20, 2009 and it is believed she took 109 of the pills in those 11 days.

These are the stories that break my heart. A teenage relative my husband and I are very close to recently got out of drug rehab. She told me she tried everything but heroine, but her drugs of choice were prescriptions. Maybe celebrities can get oodles of pills from crazy, money-hungry doctors in Hollywood, but Joe Simpletons like my relative buy them on the street from other kids - God only knows where they get them. They think that because a doctor prescribes it, it must be "safe." My relative has told me stories about being "careful" not to overdue the Xanax. But nobody knows what their body's breaking point is.

I'm convinced I'm not a drug addict today because my parents made it very clear that if I did illegal drugs, I was dead meat. I would have to find other living arrangements. I was terrified of my mother - in this case, it did me some good. But even I, as a teenager, tried this and that. Ritalin was the biggie when I was in high school; I gave that a shot. We used to chug Nyquil. We sucked on the whipped cream hose at Friendly's for a high. One time, in college, when I was particularly naive and in the worst depression of my life, I unknowingly huffed CD cleaner.

We tried it for a quick high, a little fun. Isn't that why most kids light up a joint or smoke a bowl? But my relative got so hooked on alcohol and prescription drugs that she couldn't even wake up for school until she was higher than a kite and she took the stuff all day long to keep going.

These kids think it makes them hardcore. They think it makes them cool.
Meanwhile, the rest of us sit back and see sad, broken little children who can't handle reality. Oh, and you can be a broken little child at any age.

My husband and I watch "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew" pretty faithfully. OK, I'll admit it - at first we started watching it because we were amused at the idea of washed-up, B-rated celebs trying to get off crack. But with every episode, we got more and more sucked in, and for legit reasons. I started to identify with some of the patients and my husband saw his brother (a recovering drug addict) in a lot of them. We started to cheer them on. It made us realize that underneath it all, people are just people. It really doesn't matter how much money you have, how many albums you've put out, or how many movies you've made. We're just people with our own history of pain and every one of us faces a decision - "Am I going to deal with this or not?" Are we going to to face reality like the intelligent, grown-ups capable of healing that God made us, or are we going to hide like the sad little broken children, pushing away reality with a needle to the arm, a puff of smoke through a bong, or a line of powder snorted up our noses?

Since my relative has been out of rehab, I've heard a lot about "higher powers." In 12-step recovery, anything can be your higher power - God, Jesus, a toilet seat, your recovery book, your roommate, your cat... you get the idea. You pick something and say "this is stronger than I am" and then you rely on it to keep you from getting hooked back on whatever you were hooked on in the first place.

From where I sit, I look at all the broken little children - and I was one, but I never got sucked into drugs - and I want to hold them all and give them the love they missed out on and tell them... the only reliable higher power is Jesus Christ. Period. You want to kill yourself? You were bought with a price by the blood of Jesus. Your life is no longer your own. Go ahead - jump off that bridge. Your body will be in a thousand tiny bits, but what about your soul? You think you're damaged goods and the best you can do is drugs? You are created in God's image. He made you beautiful. HE CAN HEAL YOU. Not some book, not a statue of Buddha, not your Golden Retriever. Jesus can heal you. If you let Him.

It's a choice. You chose drugs. Will you choose the Savior of the world?

My favorite band is Casting Crowns and they say it better than I ever could:
"I'll take a shack on a rock over a castle in the sand."

Sad, broken little children like me... make your choice. And if you screw up, make it again.

But never, ever give up. Pin It

My Testimony - "Religious Nuts"

By the sixth grade, I was a deeply depressed, God-hungry Amy Grant fan. The sexual abuse of my childhood had just ended and I was flunking school. I wasn't sure if I believed in God, but an old fifth-grade teacher prompted me to take a leap of faith.

She was a pretty young teacher, about the age that I am now, with a gentle disposition and the patience of a saint. As a fifth-grader, I clung to her like glue. I had maybe two friends, who were also school nerds that got picked on every day, and I either huddled in a corner with them at recess, pretending to be homeless (what a fun game!) or I sat alone, making snot balls out of rubber cement slathered on my hand. I was the only girl in a bra at the time, and I was a little butterball. That teacher, however, always saw the good in me and I loved her.

In the sixth grade, I went back to elementary school to visit her all the time, and during one such visit she announced that she was pregnant with her first child. For the first time, I decided to ask for a little divine intervention for someone other than me and my own demise and I started asking God to take care of her and her baby, and make sure that they were both healthy, happy and OK. When her son was born later that year, it was like a faith shot in the arm. I was still young enough to have some childlike faith, and I gave God the credit for everything working out nicely.

The summer after sixth grade, new neighbors moved in next-door. They were a couple in their mid-thirties with three kids. The oldest was a bit older than me, but the two youngest were still small. Hoping to land myself a babysitting gig, I quickly introduced myself and it wasn't long before I was swimming in their pool and - as planned - watching the two youngest. I loved them dearly; I was always welcome in their home. They never turned me away. Over time, I opened up to them about my struggles and their house became my home-away-from-home. When my family was in turmoil, I ran across the yard to join theirs, and I knew the door was always open.

Eh.. Just one little problem.
They were... religious.
Every time I saw them, they invited me to church with them, and sometimes they talked about God as if He lived there in their house, eating their Fritos and sharing the toilet and such. I wasn't sure what to make of that. I wanted to be with them constantly, and yet I felt the need to run home to pull the blinds and lock the doors and huddle on the staircase until they went away, or at least until they stopped talking about God. Mama done warned me about them religious nuts, did she not?!?

That God fella was hot on my trail, apparently, because that same summer, my parents agreed to send me out to San Jose, California to visit my aunt and cousins for two weeks. As it turns out, I was related to some religious nuts, too. My cousin, Jay and his wife, TJ had two young daughters at the time and they were so much fun to be with. Jay had a crazy sense of humor and his wife was cool and gorgeous and I loved playing with their kids. I tagged along with TJ and the girls one day to Vacation Bible School and found that I wanted to cry the entire time... in a good way. The more I listened to stories about Jesus, the more fascinated I became. I asked them to take me with them again, and I accompanied them several times during my stay, and made friends with the children's pastor, who was a very kind man who made me feel comfortable and welcome.

While in California, I went out and purchased Amy's "Heart In Motion" album on cassette. If you're a teenager and you don't know what I mean, look up "cassette tapes." They were horrible creatures that forced you to "fast-forward" and "reverse" - you couldn't just select a track and play it. And if you left them in your car in the sun, they'd melt. Those were the bad old days. In any case, I bought the album on tape and nearly wore it out listening to it. Poor Jay and TJ - I asked them to play it in their car every time we went somewhere, and they kindly did.

Jay was very forward about his faith, but not in a way that would have offended a non-believer. I recall a conversation in which we were sitting on the floor in his living room playing Super Mario Bros. on his Nintendo system (again, kids, look it up) and I asked him a series of questions about his life. I wanted to know if he and TJ were going to have more kids, if he was going to go back into music (he was in a popular Bay Area rock band in the 80s), all of which he answered with, "If it's God's plan for my life." Both of them talked to me about Jesus in detail, but that's the conversation that really sticks out in my mind, nearly 20 years later.

God help my parents - I came home from that trip talking up a storm about God. My parents didn't have a problem with me believing in God, because THEY believed in God in their own way. They just found it odd that a kid who never went to church was suddenly rambling on about God and asking for her own Bible. They said my cousins' beliefs were "weird" and that religion was a deeply private thing you didn't talk about with others.

As a burgeoning Amy Grant fanatic, I started listening to her older music after I became such a huge fan of "Heart In Motion", which led me to listen to other Christian music. I found the local CCM station - WJTL - and began falling in love with the music of Michael W. Smith, Petra, Newsboys and others. The more I listened, the softer my heart seemed to become. I still didn't know if or what I believed, but I wanted the stuff they were singing about. The idea of unconditional love, there for you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, along with unending forgiveness was incredibly appealing to me. Who WOULDN'T want that? The question is, are you willing to believe in those things in the form of an omnipotent God you can't see?

Listening to Christian radio also introduced me to Dawson McAllister Live, a call-in show for people (at the time) 18 years of age and younger. Kids were calling in with all kinds of problems, many of them like mine - kids with family problems, sexual abuse survivors, teenagers with depression, etc. I started tuning in every Sunday night. On the show, they always mentioned their toll-free hotline for kids who needed someone to talk to, known as the "Hopeline," and I jotted down the number for future reference, though I never really intended to call it.

The people on the radio kept talking about becoming a Christian and "accepting Jesus" into your life. I had no idea what they meant, but I wanted to do that... whatever it was. I asked my parents what they thought that meant - my mother called her girlfriend, who told her I was on the cusp of joining a cult. Hmm, no help there!

Now, I feel like a goof going on about Amy Grant because I'm a grown woman and I know I sound like I'm sitting here with electrical tape holding my glasses together with Amy Grant posters all over the walls of my efficiency apartment. In other words: I sound like a dork. But this is how God worked in my life, so I have to tell the story exactly the way it unfolded.

There is a song on Amy's 1988 album, "Lead Me On" called "Saved By Love." I'm not going to post the lyrics here because I know Amy's manager and I don't want to break some kooky copyright law by doing so. (Eh hem.) The title is pretty self-explanatory. I don't know what it was about that song exactly, but one day, when I was 12 years old, it absolutely broke my heart for the Lord and I found myself on my knees in front of my bed, weeping and asking God to save me. I didn't know if I was asking the right thing or if I was asking it the right way... I just told God I wanted what my neighbors and my cousins and Amy Grant had.

When I stood up, I felt different... but I was still a little paranoid that I hadn't done something right when I prayed.

So I pulled out Dawson McAllister's Hopeline number, dialed it, and got a sweet-sounding lady named Ginny on the other line. She asked me if I was a Christian, and I said yes. She asked me how I knew I was a Christian, and I said I knew it because I had never killed anybody and I was born in America. ::::sigh:::: Long-story-made-short... she finally explained to me what being a Christian and "accepting Jesus" meant. And it had nothing to do with an American or being murder-free. She asked me if I wanted to ask Jesus into my heart (in the official capacity, I suppose?) and without hesitation, I said yes. In fact, I yelled it. She asked me if I was sure, and I yelled it even louder.

I asked Jesus into my heart.
It was May 4, 1992... the day before my 13th birthday.

In the next segment, we'll discuss my journey AWAY from God... Pin It

My Testimony - My Religious Background

I always wanted to start my story off the way Ellen DeGeneres started her book, "My Point...And I Do Have One." Here goes nothing.

I was born, bred and lightly sauteed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I burst into this world on May 5, 1979. I am the youngest of three children and the only girl. My parents were older when they had me (Mom was 37, Dad was 43... which, back then, was pretty old to be having a baby) and my brothers are ten and twelve years older than me. My maternal grandmother came to live with us when I was 2. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and, at the time, it was a relatively new disease and many nursing facilities didn't take Alzheimer's patients. Yet they were able to find a nursing home for him nearby, so Grandma moved in to be closer to him and to help take care of us kids.

According to my mom, we had a religious family. If by "religious" you mean we went to funerals, then maybe that's an accurate description. My mother and her side of the family belong to the Mormon faith. My dad is an Episcopalian, and his side of the family is a combination of Episcopalian and Catholic. I recall going to church once in my life, when I was very young. It was my mother's Mormon ward, and I loved Sunday School and didn't want to leave and screamed and kicked when my mother and grandmother came to get me. During the service, we received communion (known in the Mormon church as receiving "Sacrament") and I really liked the bread. Nobody explained to me what the bread meant, so I assumed it was just a nice snack for the congregation. I took a piece and my brother took the basket from me and I yelled, "WAIT... DON'T TAKE IT, I WANT MORE!!!!" My father shushed me and I remember being good and PO'd that I wasn't able to snatch a handful before the basket was passed on.

That pretty much covers my childhood church experience.

Of course, my mother had visitors from her church periodically. She had friends from the Relief Society stop by at times, and the bishop would visit. When I was a child, I loved all of them and I loved their visits because they always brought me something. I used to sit in the living room while they did a Bible study (or maybe it was a Book of Mormon study, I really don't remember) and we'd pray. My mother participated because SHE was born, bred and lightly sauteed in the LDS (Latter-Day Saints) Church and it was the thing to do. I participated because it fascinated me.

I don't know how much you know about Mormons... but they don't drink alcohol or coffee or smoke, all of which my family did. Quite a bit, actually. So when the Mormons showed up, the coffee pot got shoved under the sink where the liquor was hidden, the smokes got stashed away, and my folks went through a bottle of air freshener at a time to get rid of the awful stench of sin.

Other times, church people were not welcome at all. Religion in my family was very much a mood-based sort of thing. I had a job to do, and I did it well: if I was outside and I saw the Mormon missionaries coming (it's hard to miss a couple of hot-looking teenage guys in black pants, white shirts and black ties carrying Bibles) I ran inside to warn my family. If they were not in the mood to be bothered spiritually, we all ran around closing the drapes, locking the doors, and we huddled together on the staircase in silence until the knocking on the front door ceased.

Ah, good times.

Now, my mother always told me the reason we didn't go to church was because she was forced to go to church growing up. They lived in Provo, Utah, where everyone was white and everyone was Mormon, and if you didn't go to church every time the doors were opened, something was considered wrong with you. Apparently, it didn't matter if my mother and her siblings were attacked by a pack of pit bulls and mauled within an inch of their lives - they went to church, and by golly, NOBODY COMPLAINED.
In an effort not to force church on her children, she just didn't take us at all.

It wasn't that my family didn't believe in God, it was just that everyone was afraid of overdoing it... so I supposed they underdid it.

However, that doesn't mean I got no religion growing up. My parents also enrolled me in a Christian preschool which I actually remember very well. I used to walk around singing "Jesus Loves Me" all the time and I played with wooden figurines in the likeness of Bible heroes. I'm pretty sure I accepted Jesus as Savior during that time of my life, though I don't remember it. I was totally down with Jesus, though, and it stuck.

A lot of the religion I got as a young child came from - believe this or not - my older brother's girlfriends. A few of them were Catholic, so when my oldest brother brought them home from college for Christmas (I remember 2 of them), they always wanted to go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Fortunately for me, those girls thought I was cute so they let me tag along. I loved all of it - the liturgy, the Latin, the somberness of it all. I always had a longing for God, even before I knew the first thing about Him. I just felt like He was real and I wanted to know for sure.

At the same time all of this was happening, I was being sexually abused by a neighbor on a daily basis. My grandfather died when I was 4 and my grandmother began drinking a lot and slipped into senility. I often found her passed out on the floor, at the bottom of the stairs, or mumbling incoherently in her recliner. My uncle - my mother's brother - started stealing money from our family (about a half a million dollars) and my mother sank into depression. I started eating to soothe my broken heart and by the fifth grade I was officially "Fatso." I was bullied mercilessly by kids in the neighborhood and at school.

By that point, I wasn't so "down" with Jesus anymore. I wasn't sure I believed in God at all. I spent a lot of time alone in my room, just sitting on my bed and thinking about eternity, the size of the universe, how we got here, and whether or not we went anywhere when we died. Everyone thinks about that sort of thing, but I'm pretty sure it's not normal for a 10-year-old to think about it daily, or to the point of becoming suicidal...

It was around that age I knew something was wrong with me. I know that the problems in my life were enough to make anyone depressed, but it was just... different. I didn't know if I really believed in God or not anymore, but I did start praying - that God would kill me. I started asking God to take my life because life was too sad to live anymore. And I begged him, if He was real, to have mercy on me for not knowing what to believe.

I started to get a better idea of who God was when I entered the sixth grade... Pin It

Acting Like The Tail

"The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom."
Deuteronomy 28:13

I don't know everything about life. I'm a Christian woman with opinions and some life experience to go with it, that's all. But I'm also a writer, so there is one thing I have learned, and that is criticism can be good for you.

Recently a friend of mine attended a Christmas program at her church, which considers itself especially gifted in their music ministry. My friend returned home and proceeded to give the program a less-than-favorable review. She never said it was terrible; in fact, she listed a number of positive aspects about the performance. Actually, she never really complained about the performance, but rather the sound quality.

In case you hadn't noticed lately... lots of Christians live in a bubble where everything is (fake) flowery and wonderful and there is no room for improvement because, after all, they've arrived!

Her criticism, ironically enough, was immediately met with... more criticism. One churchgoer told her she was being unnecessarily harsh and how dare she put down something the Lord clearly wrote and anointed?!? Surely, if GOD wrote and anointed it, it was perfect. Her pastor even got angry and insisted on speaking with her husband about my friend's conduct. A woman with a viewpoint - nope, can't have that either in the house of God!

As an author, I've gotten some great reviews, and some bad reviews. No doubt, the bad reviews sting. Just being the type of person I am, I got pretty ticked off about it at first. And as a staff writer at Infuze Magazine some years ago, I wrote reviews as part of my job there. Say the wrong thing, and people are ready to string you up - even the REALLY happy Christian people.

All of that taught me a few things about how to live life.
I learned, first and foremost, that being closed off to criticism is a little thing we call PRIDE. I know I don't read my Bible as often as I should, but I do know God hates pride. Pride says "I'm above it all" when, according to Jesus, we're beneath it all, and without His grace and His blood to clean us off and wipe us down, we're nuthin'. Jesus made us spotless in God's eyes, as far as sin is concerned. That doesn't mean we have it all figured out; if we DID, God wouldn't have left the Bible behind to guide us.

Which brings me to my second point - we are called to be the "head" and not the "tail." Meaning, we are supposed to lead. You see it too often in Christian music, artists imitating the culture instead of revolutionizing it. We're way behind, ironically, in leading. YES, God can write and anoint a Christmas program. YES, God can write and anoint a book. That doesn't always mean we write/perform/interpret it perfectly. God's perfect will is flowing through imperfect human hands. We will not always get it right.

If we cannot step back, take a long, hard look at ourselves and suck it up and admit that maybe we could have done something better, then WE ARE ALWAYS GOING TO BE THE TAIL.

The world expects more from us. There's something wrong if we blow them off and opt to believe that we are beyond reproach. If we want to be the head, we have to act like the head, and accept that sometimes we miss the mark and act like the tail.

The only person who ever "arrived" was Jesus. And if you think you or your church is perfect... then you have some more work to do. Pin It

You Just Never Know

If you ever read my old blog, you know that I loudly and proudly underwent breast reduction surgery this past July. It was my 30th birthday present to myself, and one I had been waiting for since I was in high school! I blogged about it in a series I dubbed "The Tata Diaries" and held very little back.

The whole thing went off without a hitch and I told would-be reduction recipients (you'd be amazed at how they come out of the woodwork after you have your own surgery) about how easy the recovery was. Very little pain, no major complications, and the ability to pick out bras OFF THE RACK, instead of on the bottom drawer of a case in the back of the lingerie department - the secret, scary place where the girlies with the extra-big boom-booms go.

Fast-forward to November. I'll admit it - sometimes I admire myself in the mirror and cop a little feel of myself in admiration of my new set. Hmm, except this time something felt weird. There was a lump... not just a pea-size lump, but a LUMP you could grab with your fingers, about the size of a dice. (Die? However you say it...)

I didn't think much of it, honestly. My old set was "lumpy" (or so sayeth my OBGYN - I never really knew the difference) so I figured it was either scar tissue or maybe I was suddenly able to feel a part of my breast that I couldn't feel when they were so large. Regardless, I blew it off for about a month, but it started to feel strange... almost like a deep, prickly itch. Hmm, I can't describe it. If you've never felt it, you're probably going to be lost. That's the best way I can put it.

So I relented and yesterday morning I went to see my surgeon.
She gave me a poke and said, "Oh yeah, there's definitely a lump there." Good news, in the sense that I hadn't made a jerk of myself by freaking out over an overly-exuberant nipple of something. Anyway, I told her about the prickly itch, and she laid me back on the table, felt me up, and asked me if it hurt when she pressed on the lump. I said no.

That's what concerned her.
It doesn't hurt to the touch. It's solid. It doesn't move when you push on it. She ordered an ultrasound for Thursday to rule out fat necrosis (when your fat tissue dies off after surgery.) But she doesn't think that's what it is.

I've done a lot of reading in the past 24 hours, so I know that if I have a tumor, an ultrasound is not likely to catch it. If I have a cyst, it likely will. I have no idea how or why it works that way, but that's what I've read, over and over.

I have age on my side, and genetics. My aunt had breast cancer years ago - they put her on Tamoxifen and she recovered and never had a problem again. She's the only person in my family who has had cancer - of any kind, not just breast cancer.

But I must say, I have plenty of other risk factors, simply because I'm an idiot.
I'm a little overweight. No one is renting construction equipment to extract me from my house just yet, but I could stand to drop some pounds. I am eternally struggling to quit smoking, and have been since I was 13. I am not in the habit of exercising regularly, despite a rec center membership. I love to eat, and we all know the crappier the food, the better the taste. I got my period before I was 12 - another risk factor. I was on birth control pills for over 5 years at a stretch.

Am I expecting to hear that I have breast cancer? No, not really.
But I'll tell you one thing - if I was asleep before this, I'm wide awake now. The bad habits gotta go. It has finally sunk in - I'm slowly killing myself. I finally admit it - I can't just stop smoking any old time I want. I have no excuse for not eating more fruits and vegetables. I'M AWAKE, I'M AWAKE!

So I have no idea what the outcome of this will be. I'm not scared, but I'm concerned. Not worried, just aware. I refuse to worry about something that could turn out to be nothing, and that's exactly what the enemy wants me to do - freak out. Besides, my mother and my husband are freaking out plenty for me! I say it's not worth freaking out over. Can't fix what you don't know, right? My life is God's.

I just want to get this over with... Pin It

Peace, Joy, And Other Things I Don't Deserve

A week of bad news is winding down. It has been like a sledgehammer - WHAM, WHAM, WHAM, WHAM!!!! I was feeling overwhelmed last night but did manage to drift off to sleep, only to be awakened by some really messed-up nightmares.

God answered a direct prayer this morning.
A friend of ours from our old church group offered to loan us his car for as long as we need it. His was the first email I read this morning, and my head just about exploded with joy and amazement. I later commented to a friend, "It's amazing what happens when you stop complaining and start praying."

Which is not to say that God is my vending machine. You don't stick a prayer in the slot and out pops your prize. You think this world is crazy? Imagine what it would be like if that's how easy prayer was and if that was how simple God's workings were. You'd have all sorts of crazy "prizes" popping out and the world would be a million times more chaotic than it is already.

After being smacked in the head by a sledgehammer all week, the number one prayer that has been answered can't be seen or measured in a human way: PEACE.

Turns out God was right all along - if we just do what He tells us to do, we'll find success. Now, lately, the word "success" has translated into job/financial issues for me, but as the story unfolds, I'm realizing it means much more. I'm finding that success means being able to live in a world of chaos without your life becoming uncontrollably chaotic. I'm finding that success means being able to keep your grip on the floaty raft when the tsunami comes in. You can't always fix a problem. Sometimes your best bet is to ride it out, survive it, and come out with a great testimony when you reach dry land.

I'm hanging onto the floaty raft of God's grace and mercies being the same even when everything else is unpredictable and totally sucks. How's that for being blunt?

The thing that really blows my mind is how little I deserve anything good.
Seriously, think about it. A lot of us would have very pitiful lives if we treated our fleshly friends the way we treat God. Friends aren't friends if you only talk to them when you need something. That's called having a sugar daddy, not having a friend. If you ditch your friends and isolate yourself every time something goes wrong, you're going to eventually hurt someone's feelings, but how often do we do that to God?

God is an all-weather kind of friend. We're not. Well, some are better at it than others, but none of us measure up to the kind of friend God is. We really don't deserve God-friendship.

So if you think life is terrible and you don't deserve the bad break you've been dealt, try looking at it from this perspective: you don't deserve the good stuff, either. And yet, you have it.

Life is not fair, and that's a real good thing. Pin It

Thoughts on Christmas, God, and Other Stuff

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?
Well, I've got my decorations out but no tree yet. My friend and I are like two little kids awaiting the first snowfall. Maybe Sunday??? I've lived here all my life, apart from that brief stint in Tennessee, and snow is elusive. There were a few years when it seemed like the snow would never end, but that's rare. Some people say a black cloud follows them everywhere they go, but I used to think the sun followed me, preventing snow from ever falling.

And here you thought the sun following you around all the time would be awesome.
Tomato, TO-MAH-TO.
Depends who you ask.

Last night was a bad night. I was about to write Christmas '09 off entirely. Our best pals possibly (probably) moving away, family crap I can't really write about, low funds and no job prospects... It's amazing what a hot shower can do for your spirit. I do my best thinking in the shower. Anyway, I came out thinking, OK, it's Christmas. I'm going to think about the wonderful things in my life, instead of the depressing stuff.
I'm going to be a godmother in the spring.
I'm going to be an aunt again in the spring.
I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful marriage.
I have a lovely home.
I have new boobs. (Sorry - had to throw that in there. Breast reduction really did make my year.)
I have a SAVIOR who loves me and wants to give me an abundant life filled with hope and PURPOSE.

When I frame it that way, the Christmas lights seem extra sparkly, you know?

What are you praying for these days? Me, I'm praying for breakthroughs. A breakthrough in finances, a breakthrough in work, a breakthrough for different people I love who are hurting. I am the quintessential stubborn Christian. When I should be praying, I am trying to force things to happen. When I should be silent, I'm flapping my gums. So I guess I should also be praying for a breakthrough in my prayer life and my self-control.

My cousin's death in September has made an interesting impact on me. On the one hand, I'm sad that he's gone and heartbroken that his family is without him. But the way he lived out his last days also struck me. You know, most of us aren't half as productive during our "living years" (I call it that because the majority of us have no idea how long we have here on earth) as Jay was during his dying days. When I feel like giving up, when I feel like my life doesn't matter, when I feel like being lazy and not even trying, I think about Jay, and it gives me fresh energy.

Can you imagine how easy death would be if we truly considered it moving away vs. leaving forever? On a grander scale, mind you, but the same basic concept. I think about our friend Mark & Jen moving away and it breaks my heart. I desperately want them to stay, but I know if they go, it's not like I'll never see them again. I will see them eventually. And that's what keeps me from completely falling apart. God, could you open our hearts to see death in the same way? To not just know it on an intellectual level, but to believe it with all our hearts and souls?

As I'm writing this, I'm watching my cat, who is sleeping face-first in the couch. Oh, to have the worry-less life of a house pet. And yet, if I really lived out the Word - not worrying, completely trusting in God, believing fully that God is for me and not against me - that's the kind of life I'd have.

Bring on the breakthrough! Pin It

Back to Jesus

A long time ago... in 2003... God spoke to me. Not really in an audible sort of way (maybe because He figured I have Bipolar Disorder and hearing voices would freak me out?) but in my heart. I decided in June '03 that I wanted to be a writer. I had spent the last several years working with adults with mental retardation and it started out very rewarding but quickly went downhill the first time one of my clients came after me with a railroad spike. I was in desperate need of a change.

When you first decide to become a writer, you have no idea where to go or what to do. God never dropped a magazine on my lap and said, "Write to them" but He did tell me:

If you write about me, you will be successful."

WHY DO I KEEP RUNNING FROM THAT?!?

I mean, seriously... how moronic am I that I would doubt what GOD told me? And not just about writing. About, just... everything. Ministry. Life. My focus has shifted in the wrong direction.

God, I'm going to shift it back. I'm going to fight the bipolar and fight what I feel, and live in obedience and do the things you've told me I need to do. I want to live the way my cousin lived in his last days on earth, accomplishing things that touch people for eternity.

I'm going to fight my natural reflex to run and avoid.

I'm going to obey.
I'm going to be successful. Pin It