Old Start…

It’s a new year… Which means a new start… Right?

I’m going through an old start… Getting back to doing what’s right for me… what’s worked before… Although adapting as required…

When my mood is low I have many of the typical signs… Junk food, don’t shower for days, isolate… Sometimes not even walking the dog… I don’t call people or message them… I don’t do any art… I shutdown… It can be a fast fall or a slow slide… But I’m learning my telltale signs…

One of my biggest epiphanies came a few months ago… I was adopted and somehow I always knew it was the result of date rape… And it was… Add in some childhood emotional abuse and I realized I had come to feel that I didn’t deserve life… Like I had snuck in through the backdoor when no one was looking… Childhood events (bullying for example) left me deeply feeling I didn’t belong ANYWHERE… That I didn’t deserve to have a life…

God spoke to me about this very fact one night…

Matt 15:21-27 The Faith of a Canaanite Woman
Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Even the dogs get crumbs… What God revealed to me was that I wasn’t a dog… I’m a princess and I’m not just invited to His banquet – but I’m expected!!!

I’m learning that it’s okay to look after myself… That it’s okay to love on myself… To be loved…

I’m walking, the dog is thrilled, I’m eating better – most of my cravings are gone… I’m looking not only after my physical body but also my spiritual side… I’m involved in a group reading through the Bible in a Year… Accountability is a great thing… I’ve been involved in a weekly Zoom prayer meeting… I’m volunteering for a couple of things for the church – feeling useful…

2020 was hard in many ways, even outside of Covid… There is a possible light at the end of the 2021 tunnel… I’m hoping for a proper Christmas next year… Maybe not Thanksgiving… And I pass a semi-important birthday at the end of the year (my big number party was cancelled due to a blizzard)…

There are LOTS of questions and decisions that I need to make this year… And I’m back to relying more and more on God… He’s got my back… He has a plan to prosper me and not harm me…

I’m starting back to finding the deeper faith I had years ago…

I’m excited about 2021… Something I have been for several years… Even though I have no clue on many major decisions…

Yup… Old start is perfect for me…

Choosing to listen for God’s small voice throughout my day…

Merry Christmas 2020

Christmas this year is VERY different than it was 2019… It would be easy to just stay down in the muck and roll around… Focus on all the negative… And I had plenty of negatives besides Covid… Work issues, very ill, almost died parent, financial concerns like so many others..

Instead, I’m exercising a choice… To focus on the positives that have happened in 2020…

I found out who my real friends are… Those who stuck with me during some heavy trials…

I made new friends from mental health classes… What we share many won’t understand – yet we get each other and are simply there…

I grew deeper relationships with people I might not have – all thanks to Covid…

Through struggles, my children and I grew closer…

My love for my husband has deepened… My rock on dark days… He’s never waivered in his love for me as I struggled with mental health hard times… He just simply loves without any expectation…

I found FAMILY!!! My birth mom’s family… I have a younger sister and brother… It’s so different finding someone who actually looks like me… Apparently I look the most like “mom”…

I connected with old neighbour friends… Memories of childhood fun… It was such a great neighourhood to grow up in…

I found strength from God to get thru some dark times… And there were plenty… Yet God was and is always right beside me…

Did everything turn out how I planned it? Nope. There are still questions I’m waiting for answers on… But I have learned that God sometimes says yes and sometimes says wait, I have something better in mind…

Better… Something we are all hoping for in 2021… I’m hopeful this madness will be over so we can celebrate Christmas together next year…

There are many things and days of 2020 that I’m happy are gone and I’m glad are past… Yet, there have been these positives…

And 2021 will have challenges but that means opportunities to grow… As a person, as a wife, a mother, grandmother, friend and as a Christian…

So 2021… Bring it on!!!

Blessing to you all…

HOPE

Hope is a wonderful thing… I think it’s similar to a mustard seed… just a little can go a long way…

But how do we get hope? Faith… How do I know?

I’ve been facing a situation that could easily left me without hope and honestly, many days it did… then I reached out… I asked people to pray about it… I was “sure” that I knew what God’s response should be… but it seemed God was saying “No”…

My fix wasn’t going to happen… As much as I tried to rationalize it before God… The door wasn’t opening… And I was finding myself aiming for despair…

Now, as many of us “old seasoned” Christians can recite… God doesn’t say no… He says instead, “Wait, I have something better in mind”… Which I “wisely” quoted to someone else before I actually applied it to my own situation…

I figure if Jesus can choose to trust God while he was in the Garden of Gethsemane then my situation, so miniscule in comparison, warranted the same…

Out of the blue, totally unexpected… When it was least expected… God offered an answer and hope sprung up anew…

Prayer works and even though as I blog tonight knowing that there still is no answer guaranteed… I have hope…

1 Corinthians 13 – the love chapter – ends with… and these 3 remain… faith, hope and love… and the greatest of these is love…

They a fit together… and utilizing faith leads to hope… and hope leaves you feeling loved…

Always remember to be faithful… hope us so much better than dispair…

Lately Several Days Have Attacked Me at Once

Perspective is an interesting thing… I, like many others, had my issues dealing with the threat of Covid and the uncertainty… family members that are high risk… then a family member became deathly ill… and suddenly Covid didn’t seem as important…

For the last 3 months a close family member has been very ill… they have come close to death a few times… and the doctor’s are still trying to settle everything down… add to that dealing with a loved one in hospital during Covid – you know, when it’s really hard to see them… it took WEEKS before anyone could get in for a visit… and those visits have been very tough emotionally… communication between our family and the hospital has been less than stellar many times which has only added to the anxiety of the unknown… this illness has led to life altering issues… it’s also raised issues from long ago – triggers that I have had to deal with… things I thought I had maybe dealt with – but actually hadn’t… at least not fully…

Added to that – I was given clearance to return to work 6 months ago (yeah!!) after being off for 6 years… while things were moving slowly – there was finally light at the end of the tunnel… and then the light turned out to be a train… lol… my employer decided I have been out of the workforce for too long and no longer want to recognize my skills and training… (after they had offered me a carrot, let me taste it – then snatched it away…) I can honestly understand their position – it is something I have thought about myself – and that I have taken steps to refresh my training and been bringing my knowledge up to date with any changes that have happened over the time I have been off… and I actually had a plan to present to them – but unilaterally they rescinded the position they had promised…

Life always has other stressed… and I won’t go into detail about those… but I think you can now see that indeed – several days attacked me at once… or so it seemed…

Spiritually, it’s easy to say I am under attack… and to be honest, it has thrown me into a spiral quite a few times… Not back where I was when I had to leave work and deal with my mental health illness… but far enough that it really, really threw me off track…

But God is always there… that is one certainty…

As a friend likes to quote – Only God can open a door that was closed and close a door that no one can open…

For 6 .5 years I have been honing skills – growing closer to God… learning who I am in Christ…

I’ve learned “tricks” that can help keep my grounded… which isn’t easy as my life has the challenges of a brain injury and ADHD… I’m much more than just “squirrel”… I’m more like – squirrel – is that a walnut he’s holding? Isn’t mom’s dining table made of walnut? Walnut square – I haven’t had that for a while… Square – can be divided into 2 triangles… angles – can be obtuse or acute – cute – weren’t those shoes I saw my daughter wear the other day cute? And this all happens in 1.2 seconds in my brain…

The tricks I have learnt are in grounding myself in Christ – reminders to pray EVERYDAY:

• I am putting on the armour of God… that I have the mind of Christ
• God is the One who makes you and us strong in Christ. God made us his chosen people.
• Proverbs 11:29 Godly people find life
• God is the One who makes you and us strong in Christ. God made us his chosen people.
• That during trials I can pray out to Him – and that He will ALWAYS answer.
• Habakkuk 3:17-19 Even though the fig trees have no blossoms (that the world around me seems to suck)… vs 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
• 2 Cor 4:6 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.

I could continue but I have these as either prayers or as popups on my phone throughout the day…

I will admit – there are times I simply swipe them away – and times I really don’t want to – and sometimes don’t – pray…

It seemed like I was floating along and doing SOOO well for awhile… and just like Israel – it’s easy to forget about spending that quality time with God… then when things crash – it’s easy to sink into a depression… into despair…

I’m not completely out of the woods… but thanks to friends who I reached out to – I’m back to taking control with God’s help…

For me, mental health is still really a daily battle… I know I won’t take as long to recover from this crash as I did 6 years ago… I didn’t sink nearly as low… but low enough it scared me… and made me humble before my God…

I built my support system through Celebrate Recovery – if you haven’t checked it out – you need to… it doesn’t matter what type of issue you bring with you – someone there has battled the same things… the recovery isn’t just addictions like drugs & alcohol – but also addiction to negative thinking, addiction to co-dependency – addiction to foods – addiction to being treated poorly and low self-worth… addiction to hearing more from Satan than God… any type of hurt, habit or hang-ups… God is always there…

Getting Through the Crisis

A crisis at any time is challenging… add on mental health issues and it can seem like a perfect storm…

Right now it seems like the entire world is in crisis. COVID-19 isn’t racist… it effecting every race and pretty much every country…

What’s different about this crisis is you aren’t alone… we are all here working through it together… and we can support each other… maybe not through hugs or physical contact with friends, but either at the 6 foot distance or online through video chats…

One important thing to remember through this is – there is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus… We are NOT to feel guilt over past sins, after we confess them to God… Satan loves to trap us in condemnation… instead God promises to use ALL things for good, according to His purpose, for those who are in Christ Jesus!! In other words, all the bad/crappy/negative events in your life can and will be used to help others here on earth… so if you are feeling condemnation how can that event be used for good?!?!?!?! Don’t believe Satan’s lie!

I was reading through Insight for Living (Chuck Swindoll) and came across this list of okay things during a crisis:

1. It’s okay to be mad and angry.
2. It’s okay to sleep when you are exhausted.
3. It’s okay to not know the answer.
4. It’s okay to feel lost.
5. It’s okay to feel scared.
6. It’s okay to cry.
7. It’s okay to doubt your beliefs and convictions.
8. It’s okay to lose or forget things.
9. It’s okay to have huge emotional shifts.
10. It’s okay to say, “Though I don’t like this now, I will choose to believe God is sitting by me, so I might as well talk with Him about it all.”

WE don’t have all the answers… NO ONE PERSON DOES!!!!!!

So how do we survive? The simple answer is God… But what does that really mean? It means trusting God. Believing what you read in the Bible… Putting into practice all the morals and God truths learned in Sunday School… following through on all the things Jesus taught when He was on earth (Matthew 5 and the Blessed are statements are a great place to start)…

It also means turning your problems and issues over to Christ…

Many years ago I found myself in a crisis… through something I had been reading God gave me a message I REALLY REALLY didn’t want to hear… it meant huge changes in my life and I was powerless to change anything… God brought me to Philippians 4:4-7 and I found the steps to peace… it wasn’t easy and it took MANY hours on my face before God… at first I argued against what was coming… then I realized how futile that was… here was God preparing me to go through my toughest battle I had ever fought… He was giving me time to prepare… to press into Him for the strength I would need…

Philippians 4:4 states “Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS.” Always? Yes… it is possible… but how? For me I turned to praise songs… I sang every upbeat Christian song I could thing of… Rejoicing is SOOOOO important that God states it again… “and again I say rejoice!”

Verse 5 says: “Let your gentleness be evident to all” for a long time I thought that this verse was out of place but then I realized that if I am really at a point of rejoicing then I am not all worked up (BPD Emotional Mind) but instead I am working towards peace and everyone should want what I am showing…

Verse 6: “Do not be anxious, but in every situation , with prayer and petition, present your request(s) to God“… mine was simple… I needed God’s strength to get through what I was facing… there were sub-parts we also discussed…

Verse 7: “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” That peace, unexplainable, overwhelmingly wonderful peace really did come… and I still can’t put it into words… if you have worked through all the steps and then are wondering if you have “that” Peace… I can tell you – you don’t… when you truly have it, you will know… and if you haven’t found it yet start back at the top… go back to rejoicing… rejoicing until you feel God presence with you…

Six weeks after gaining God’s peace, the crisis moment came and there were many tough days… but I can tell you this… at the moment it happened, I still had that peace and I knew that while tough times were ahead, God was with me… a few days later I had a co-worker asked me why I was able to function and not a “basket case”… she saw that peace in me and wanted it… already God was using these events for good… that joyous peace and closeness to God lasted many, many months…

A friend actually told me she was jealous of me… you see, it’s hard to be that close to God in the long run… mountain peaks and valleys are a part of life… she had gone through a similar crisis and remembered how wonderful that peace, that incredible closeness with God had been…

I’ve dealt with many crisis since… some larger than others… and I can always go back to that time… and know that God is always with me… in some ways, that peace never leaves… the memory always remains…

Even during my mental health crisis, I knew deep down that God was there… my brain chemistry was horribly messed up and God has had some lessons for me to learn… now, I’m so much stronger in my faith… I had allowed myself to slide away from God… rely on my own strength and ended up spending a lot of time in the psych ward or community short stay residence over the next couple of years…

So what changed? God ALWAYS has a way off the spiral… I had to be willing to not only look for those spots but be willing to step off and accept God’s help… I’ve gone from extremely suicidal, with non-stop thoughts and many plans to not having had a suicidal thought now in a LONG time…

Don’t get me wrong, mental health is still a daily battle… only now I have safety’s in place… reminders of God’s truths, mental health mood checks several times day (phone reminders), frequently listening to Christian music… friends who care and will notice if they see something happening and warn me and also willing to call on my crap – keeping me accountable… of course, I have my family who love and support me…

COVID-19 did knock me on my butt for awhile… my anxiety was higher than normal… I fought sliding into a depression along with negative thoughts and have come out the winner… I refer back to Philippians 4:4-7 often when I catch myself anxious… God provided me with timely therapy to not only challenge my twisted thinking but also the skills and tools to make the changes… it’s been hard work… and I’ve used those tools… God’s Holy Spirit inside of me often speaks to me and warns me if I’m getting off track… that still small voice… it still rings of peace…

Mindfulness Time With God

Let’s face it – right now, life can be pretty stressful…

Concerns about health – physically and mentally… heightened anxiety… it’s easy to become depressed… to spiral down…

I’ve been struggling with my eating habits… just eating too much crap… and I’ve been excusing it as a “way to cope”… but it is unhealthy… I’ve got a couple of other stressors happening as well…

It’s so easy to turn to food… or binge TV or any other “idol” for comfort instead of to God… it’s part of our built in sinful nature – BUT we can change that… we need to get into the habit of turning to God instead…

Mindfulness is a popular term these days – being aware of the moment… fully participating… Un-mindfulness is where we do things without thinking – eg. cooking a dinner and scarf it down in 2 minutes… not really taking the time to enjoy our meal… or arriving at home but can’t really remember how we got there… I’m sure you have experienced something similar…

To be mindful with God is to stay focused on what you are doing with God… if you are praying – the try to stay just praying… not planning your grocery list or thinking about what you need to do next… this is the “quiet time”

Matthew 6:6 states: But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

It’s just a time between you and God… now, if you are like me then you might be like Doug from the movie up – squirrel! It is SOOO easy to be distracted… know that God isn’t keeping score and God doesn’t condemn anymore than you would scorn a child who is trying to bake cookies for the first time… He has incredible patience and He is simply thrilled that you are spending one on one time with Him!! Just like baking – the more you do it – the easier it becomes to stay focused…

So if you find your mind is wandering, simply bring it back to a focus on prayer… no judgement or condemnation allowed!!! That judgement isn’t from God but rather from Satan who is trying his hardest TO distract us… be gentle on yourself…

As a friend reminded me, of John 16:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have PEACE. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have OVERCOME the world.”

Peace is really what we are after here… peace despite the storm… and God is a peace giver… there are so many scriptures that talk about peace… here is a few of my favorites:
Romans 15:13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 16:20 The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
1 Corinthians 14:33 For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.
Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³ gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

And my all time favorite: Philippians 4:4-7 from the Amplified Bible: ⁴ Rejoice in the Lord always [delight, take pleasure in Him]; again I will say, rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentle spirit [your graciousness, unselfishness, mercy, tolerance, and patience] be known to all people. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious or worried about anything, but in everything [every circumstance and situation] by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, continue to make your [specific] requests known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God [that peace which reassures the heart, that peace] which transcends all understanding, [that peace which] stands guard over your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus [is yours].

Verse 8 provides alternative things to think about: ⁸ Finally, believers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable and worthy of respect, whatever is right and confirmed by God’s word, whatever is pure and wholesome, whatever is lovely and brings peace, whatever is admirable and of good repute; if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think continually on these things [center your mind on them, and implant them in your heart].

The truth is what will give us peace – getting out of negative mind mode…
thoughts of:
We have the mind of Christ
We have overwhelming victory despite what is going on around us
We can protect ourselves with the full armor of God
We cannot be separated from God – not Covid or lack of prayer or not spending time with God
We are ALL welcome to join Christ in heaven (when the time is right)

In another blog posting I will take you through Philippians 4:4-8 and how God showed me one night when I was faced with a massive dilemma – and instead I did end up with that indescribable peace…

Let me know in the comments if you have questions, any verses to add or better yet – if you have success!! 🙂

Radical Acceptance God’s Way

One of the skills I learned at DBT is called Radical Acceptance…

Basically, it’s when you find yourself in a situation you REALLY don’t
like… and the reality is – there is nothing you can do about it…

With Covid-19 we are finding ourselves in just this type of situation… and we have a choice… we can react with emotional mind in full swing – hissy fits, angry, snapping at everyone and everything, depression, anxiety…

Or we can choose to accept it knowing we are powerless to make any change…

With Borderline Personality Disorder, it’s really easy to find ourselves at one of 2 ends of the spectrum – either we are in Emotional Mind or we can be stuck in Reasonable Mind…

Radical Acceptance is the concept that reality, just as it is, must be
accepted, rather than fought fighting against it. Fighting it really just causes suffering that can be worse than whatever we are facing… it doesn’t negate the situation… but it’s a choice to move forward instead of staying and being miserable…

Marsha Linehan has a great website which she explains the concept: Radical Acceptance

So how does God fit into this? First, realize that God DOES NOT cause our problems or situation… those are a direct result of free will – you know, when we have a choice to do good or evil… often the wrong choices of others is what directly leads to whatever situation we find ourselves in – this includes illness.

When Adam and Eve were created they had perfect bodies… multiple generations, bad food choices and other decisions, have lead to our relatively fragile body… God didn’t create Covid… God is LOVE and love cannot create evil or bad events…

I found myself in a really hard situation a short while ago. A close
relative became deathly ill (non-Covid) – so ill that even with the hospital lockdown and Covid, I was called to their bedside and in all likelihood, they were not expected to survive the night…

Was it fair? No – did I like it? No! Did God cause it? Of course not – but He does grieve over such events. I had a choices – I could have found myself in Emotional Mind and had out of control emotions or I could have headed to Rational Mind and totally shutdown what I was feeling and head into another reality or fantasy world (dissociation) or, and the best choice, I could turn to God knowing I was powerless but that He is the Great Physician and my Comforter!

I choose the later – as I was leaving the hospital, wondering if I would see my loved one alive again (the doctor’s said her getting through the night was tentative) I turned to God for comfort – the Author and Perfecter of my faith… and He delivered… I started listening to Christian music and I heard a new to me song – Still by Hillsong – and it touched my soul… my soul was groaning… but this was soothing… when I arrived home I continued to press into God – praying, worshipping and praising Him through songs that just kept coming…

I chose to accept the situation and God guided me through this acceptance… I had peace – even as I was rushing to the hospital I had peace… leaving the hospital I continued having peace…

FYI – the family member miraculously survived and is on the mend… some doctor’s we know says it was only the prayers that we being uttered that made the difference… looking at how serious the test results were, it really is a miracle…

But I think that should they have passed away (graduated to heaven), I would have still had peace… that doesn’t mean I wasn’t upset or in tears… I have found that you can have indescribable peace in any situation… life, death, family crisis, personal crisis… God is always there for me…

His Radical Acceptance is turning the control of the situation over to Him… relying on His love and strength to get me through… and He has NEVER failed me yet… if a situation comes up where I don’t have peace it is because I haven’t looked to Him for the support I need…

God says – Come unto me for my yoke is light… and He does lift my burdens…

Dealing with Life By a Half-smile

Recently, old feelings were aroused in me…
With my “quiet” BPD, emotions are often really hard on me… Overwhelming at times…

My usual MO is to ignore them… Stuff them down…

BPD therapy looks at Wise Mind…

The balance between emotional mind and reasonable mind… Quiet types are stuck in reasonable mind… And that can be me… Not dealing with the emotions…

At times when someone asks me how I feel I can be like a deer in headlights… Give that wide-eyed, have no clue look…  It’s difficult for me to name emotions…

As a child, shutting off my emotions was a coping skill… Eventually though, that coping skill stopped working and in 2014, it left me in a complete breakdown…

Now, six years later, I’m actually trying to face my emotions… This alone is a huge step as part of my healing process…

As a Christian it’s easy the hope that healing will be instantaneous… Like a light switch that comes on… But that isn’t always the case and it’s not always what’s best… It’s going to take time for me to learn how to properly handle emotions…

Some of the ways I am dealing with it are prayer of course… Bible nuggets of truth and wisdom… More prayer…

Using some of the skills I have learnt in dialectical behavioral therapy – DBT…

One simple skill is called the half-smile… You literally and physically give a little smile, it doesn’t even have to be visible to anybody else just something that’s like a little twitch at the corners of your mouth… Now I realize it sounds hokey oh, but it really does work… You can actually feel it working as it triggers something in the brain… The Godly part that I’ve added in is I can do a half smile realizing the God is in the process of healing me and things are going to be better…

There is also with that a second skill called willing hands… And again, it’s a physical change with your body…
Marsha Linehan describes it in this video…

The Godly part I’ve added is that the “spiritual” part is that willingness to give it over to God and the knowledge that He is in the centre of my healing…

You can Google and YouTube search the science behind all of this if you so choose… I just know that it does work from personal experience…

Does this mean that I’m perfect and using these techniques every single time? Oh heck no… I forget about them from time to time (oh the fun of my brain injury)… When I do use them it  does work…

Overall, one thing I have been working on is being more gentle with myself..  less judgemental… Realizing life and healing is a process… A marathon and not a sprint…

Ultimately, I choose to acknowledge that healing can be painful but ultimately worth it in the long run… Especially knowing that God is beside me every step of my journey…

God’s Influence and Unexpected Favour

Reading in Exodus about the plagues…
We recall Moses & Aaron… And stubborn black hearted Pharoah…
And we recognize that God is the author of the plaques…

But what stood out to me as I re-read this passage was the influence of God over the Egyptians neighbors…

Exodus 11:3 (NLT): Now the Lord had caused the Egyptians to look favourably on the people of Israel…

But could there not have just as easily been rage? Not one of the Israeli people died with the passing of the death angle… Wouldn’t many have been angry? Ready to kill?

When the final plague happened it’s easy to explain and reason why the Egyptians showered the gifts on the Israelites…  There was likely fear… They just wanted them to leave… Those are likely true… But…

These are the same people who had used them as slaves… Why didn’t they kill them in revenge? Bring out the whips?

It was because of the influence of God…

In our socialistic society who think of culture as a closed, and “well understood”… we can rationalize everything…

Or can we? How often do we discount God? Try to explain him away?

God is a God of order… Just look at His creation and how everything interacts… But He’s also an unpredictable God… He acts in ways that science can’t explain… That sociologists can’t always rationalize or reason away…

Try to look back in your life… Are there times where you can now think of ways God influenced the outcome in a circumstance?

Times of unexpected (and likely undeserved) blessings?

Maybe an unexpected pay raise? That time you had to have a hard conversation with someone… And it turned out easy… Or finding yourself short of cash at the till and someone takes favour on you?

One recent one was suddenly being listed for a mental health group… And how those classes have blessed me! I can so see God’s blessings… I was enrolled on my first phone call and didn’t have to wait 6 months… A part of my healing and God’s timing as I prepare to return to work… The “enroller” isn’t a believer…

Take a couple of minutes now… Share your times of unexpected Godly influence! Feel free to post them in the comments… And don’t forget to thank God for what He did…

And the Miracle Continues

Back on August 17, 2019 I experienced a miracle… I was healed of benign positional vertigo after 22 + years… in May of 1997 I was in an accident and received a basal skull fracture and a brain injury… Along with that came the vertigo…

I was at a church bonfire out in the country where there were really no street lights… Now, to balance we have three things we use… Our ears, eyes and C1/C2… my ears were damaged and I have neck issues so that left my eyes… When darkness hit, I could not find the horizon and I began to wobble… I literally could not stand still… I feared falling into the fire and I had resolved myself to crawl on my hands and knees to get to the car when two ladies from our church came up and asked to pray for me… As a direct result of that prayer, I was healed!!!! My vertigo was instantly gone!!!

While the ladies were praying for me the one lady prophesied over me that the healing would continue and I’m happy to report that it has! 😁

My thoughts have been healed… God opened my mind to be able to challenge my mindset and replace it with His truths… One of the biggest was realizing I have the mind of Christ!

1 Corinthians 2:16 (NLT): But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.

If we have the mind of Christ how can Satan possibly control our thoughts?!?!?!?! When the negative thoughts try to come I simply remind Satan that I have the mind of Christ and I’m not going to give credence to his thoughts and instead focus on what Christ would tell me instead…

I put on the full armour of God EVERY SINGLE DAY!

I’ve grown in my faith… I’ve grown in my identity with Christ…

I’ve continued healing so much that after 6 years off I am in the midst of planning to return to work! A year ago they seemed like a distant dream!

I’ve worked hard to get to where I am compared to 6 years ago… And Good has been there every step of the way…

I’m not perfect… I still take meds… My mental health is still a daily battle… I have set reminders on my phone to check my mind set several times a day… I have positive God truths that pop up on my phone so I can claim them… I am active in my church… I am a leader at our local Celebrate Recovery… And I am SOOOOO much better off than I used to be! It truly is a continuing miracle!

I’ve started listening to Joyce Meyer’s book Look Great Feel Great… And that’s providing me with more tools, ideas, to keep the miracle working…

I wish you well as you deal with your recovery…