Overcoming Brain Pain and Clumsiness With the Power of the Internet

A three day migraine. A small fall down the stairs in the middle of the night. A request from the podiatrist office that I stay off of my feet for a couple of days until we can decide if I have indeed "done damage" to myself.

I do not have time for this! My house is a WRECK, I have company coming for dinner on Saturday, a wedding and a going away party on Sunday...and in case you haven't noticed my ticker over there on the right hand side of your screen...there is a baby coming to live in this house in about 78 days!!

So, in an attempt to get SOMETHING done... headache and injured foot be damned...today became somewhat of a "baby" day.

While my younger children tried to make sure I was fed and attended to, I sat in a semi-dark room and checked out some baby websites, worked on an invitation list, found a free pattern to make a cover for the Moses basket Bubbie got the Wee One for Christmas, and looked into recommended books and toys for babies on grandparents.com.

Then, after my first born and I managed to pound out a final invitation list and got her registered online, I drug myself out to Starbucks to visit with a few friends so that we could make some plans for the Wee One's baby shower.

ONLY for my first born grandchild would I venture out on this brilliantly bright, 11 degree, January day. Do you KNOW how much pain the sun, reflecting off a yard full of snow, can cause to an already addled brain!?!?

I made it through another day though...thanks to three great kids, a few devoted friends and the POW OW ER ER ER OF OF OF THE EE EE IN TER ER ER NE E ET ET!

Growth

Oh, that we might always catch the vision of an abundant harvest, when the great Master Plowman comes, as He often does, and furrows through our very souls, uprooting and turning under that which we thought most fair, and leaving for our tortured gaze only the bare and the unbeautiful.
~Selected

Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh the deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.
~Samuel Rutherford

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.
~Mary Antin

Growth is the only evidence of life.
~John Henry Newman

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
~Richard Bach

Learn wisdom from the ways of a seedling. A seedling which is never hardened off through stressful situations will never become a strong productive plant.
~Stephen Sigmund

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
~Anatole France

The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul.
~G. K. Chesterton

Eleven and a half years

I have begun to think that I do not understand the difference between joy, peace and happiness.

So, I decided to look up the definitions.

Might I just say right now...I would give ANYTHING for a good old Noah Websters Dictionary!

"It is reported that Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary contains the greatest number of Biblical definitions given in any reference volume. Webster considered "education useless without the Bible". "

For you see, that is what I am looking for, definitions to these things which elude me, based on the Word of God. Oh...I looked them up, but online dictionaries are just as watered down and convoluted as everything else now. No wonder no one can find true peace. No one knows what the heck it means anymore!

What happened to absolutes? Can someone please tell me? What happened to right and wrong and black and white and good and bad...and when did all of the gray move into the very definition of the words to the things which are most important in our lives? Joy, peace, happiness, morality, right, wrong, good, bad....family.

We have lived here, in our little town, in the same house,for eleven and a half years now. We moved a LOT before we came here. From the time of my birth I had never lived in one house for more than 21 months before coming here when I was 32.

During the eleven and a half years that we have lived here I have always said that this is the only place where I have ever had peace in my life.

Then, this morning, while sitting in the bottom of the shower stall, crying and pondering the state of my life at this time, I realized that I have been confusing STABILITY...and occasional HAPPINESS...with peace.

Because when I am totally honest with myself. We have not had very much "peace" in the eleven and a half years we have lived here. We were blessed to find this house, we moved in and fixed it up, we immediately joined a church....and after a little more than a year we realized that the whole time we had been there some one had been spreading rumors and telling lies about our family and after being hauled in before the elders and being questioned and yelled at for more than an hour, we eventually lost all of our close friends and our church family.

SO, I promptly said I would never go back to church, because churches are made up of people, and they are idiots.

This lasted maybe a month before I realized that I wanted my children in a place where they could hear the word and be in fellowship because there is NOTHING like a corporate anointing. You know that anointing of the Holy Spirit that falls when His people join together in praise and worship of Him and the word is broken and people are working together for the good of their Lord?!?! There is just nothing like it. It is not better than individual time spent with the Lord....it is just DIFFERENT...and needed!

So, we found another church. And it was good for a while. And I thought I had found peace...and happiness...and joy...even though it took me over a year to be able to go to church without getting sick...because PEOPLE go to church. And I had had just about enough of PEOPLE.

ANYWAY...things were good for a while. And I THINK there may have been a little peace in my life. There WAS happiness...and a fair amount of joy.

And then...everything changed. Our nice little world turned upside down. For various reasons. Leadership at churches change, family moves away, the little bit of financial security you thought you had dries up,your body turns on you, and the enemy you have worked so hard to protect your children from gains a foothold in an area you thought you had protected...and four and a half years later you realize that you do not remember the last time you truly felt peace in your life....or joy...although there is some occasional happiness.

SO...What do you do when you wake up one morning and realize that the "peace" you thought you had been feeling for 11 and a half years was really only "stability"...with a few happy times...and a little joy thrown in for good measure?

Truth: Real peace only comes when you are in a viable relationship with our Heavenly Father. This is truth.

Truth: The circumstances you find yourself in do not bring you peace. They can bring you happiness...and a fair amount of joy...but not peace. This is truth.

Fact: I am in a viable relationship with my Heavenly Father. It grows and changes every year and at times every day. I have learned that he is my only refuge in times of turmoil.

So...where is my peace?

And...what do I do with the knowledge that I have stood so firmly in one place for so long because I THOUGHT what I was feeling was PEACE...when it was actually STABILITY I had found?

Is this the place for me..for us? In truth, the only thing holding US here are a job, a mortgage and a grandson on the way. And the only thing holding ME here are the man with the job and the mortgage, the children he has given me and a grandson on the way.

BUT...what if...these things are anchors created by my father to hold me in place so that I couldn't run away when I finally realized that a house or a church or life in a small town had not actually brought me peace?

AND...Maybe...these anchors are the things that continue to hold me fast when my heart is torn asunder by the choices made by one most precious to me...and the knowledge that if this precious one continues down the path they travel now...I may actually lose part of these earthly anchors.

The gypsy ways of my youth call to me daily. The need to run and hide from all that is going on around me is ever present. Everyone thinks I am firmly planted here with my crafts and my garden and my chickens. They only see the mom, the cookie baker, the wanna be Martha Stewart, the responsible one...the fixer. When in actuality I fight the longing to run on an almost daily basis. The only thing that has held me into place thus far is an indescribable love for one man and for the children he has given me and the desire that my children would not have to move once a year when they reached middle school.

It took me eleven and a half years for me to realize that my peace does not reside in this house or this town. I guess that was just long enough for God to anchor me, good and fast, so that when he was ready to continue his work in me I couldn't run away.

Maybe my journey is not one measured by how many miles I can run, but by the number of times I DON'T run.

And maybe...now that I understand what peace ISN'T...I might actually find it.

Flying Monkeys, Chris Farley and Playing Possum

In this world, those who seek the truth will also find trouble.
~ Gary Amirault

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
~ George Orwell

Candor is a double-edged sword; it may heal or it may separate.
~ Wilhelm Stekel

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
~ Jim Davis

************************

The search for righteousness is a rocky path. Once you set out to follow it, you encounter "road blocks".

As I begin to set forth this analogy clips of "The Wizard of Oz" flicker through my mind. If Oz is truth/righteousness and the yellow brick road is the path which leads us there....then the Wicked Witch is the Enemy and the flying monkeys, the trees pelting us with apples and the field of poison poppies are all of the things which the Enemy sets in our path to prevent us from reaching our goal.

And no...Oz is not Heaven and the Wizard is not God. Although I DO believe that a heart, a brain, courage and a home or the things found upon attaining righteousness.

Sorry people, these kinds of things are what you might encounter when reading the blog of a woman-child raised on pop culture.... and who, by the way, read EVERY Oz book ever written.

Now from the ridiculous to the sublime....

All of this began two days ago when I wrote my first blog of the new year.

I poked my head out of my hole and called attention to myself instead of hiding in the shadows. And then when the enemy attacked in the form of a killer headache, the interruption of my best laid plans, a look at our financial situation and some unwelcome news...I had to decide if I would indeed heed my own advice or play possum.

I tried to play possum.

BUT when the attack continued today...I tried some Sweet Ninja Skills. ALTHOUGH...my ninja skills look more like Chris Farley in "Beverly Hills Ninja than Michael Dudikoff in "American Ninja".

Anyway,I went to my favorite daily devotional by Charles Spurgeon, which I confess I haven't done in several weeks, and I started by reading the chapter surrounding the scripture reference, 2 Peter 3:18.

Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Backing up a couple of beats....Just the reading of that one scripture at the opening of the devotional made me what to quit right there. "Growing" always involves GROWING PAINS...and that is the last thing I want to think about today. No pain, no growing, now striving or seeking!! I wanted the nice, soothing reassuring scriptures. 2 Peter 3 is all about last days and people following their own evil desires and things are going to be destroyed by fire and how because of these things we must live holy, godly and spotless lives!!!

AARRRGGG!!!!

So, on to the devotional itself...

I'm reading, reading, reading....hard words, Victorian language....and then...like a neon sign....

"HE WHO GROWS NOT IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS, REFUSES TO BE BLESSED"

Is is too late to go back to playing possum.

This is the prayer I wrote based upon this devotional....

Allow me to grow in grace, O Lord. Grow my faith and let it increase in fullness, constancy and simplicity. Free me to grow also in love. I ask that you extend it, make it more intense, more practical and that it influence my every thought, word and deed. Show me more of my own nothingness so that I might grow likewise in humility. Allow me to grow upwards toward you in prayer and grant me a more intimate relationship with your son. May I, through the power of the Holy Spirit, grow in the knowledge of my Lord and Savior. Grow me up the knowledge of your son that I might be blessed.

Sooo....there you have it. Cheryl Pyle, attempting to use her Sweet Ninja Skills, Chris Farley style.

Right before I started writing this, I read an email from our good friend Mark M. He is sending out a daily email as we go through our 21 day fast/90 read through the bible. In today's email Mark provided some some scripture and encouraging words I thought useful and on topic....and I decided to pass it along.

"Luke 10:19 says “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”

Spiritually speaking, life is a battlefield. Most of the battles that we fight are not “of the flesh”, meaning they don’t have to do with things in the natural, but instead, they are spiritual battles. (Ephesians 6:12)

As soldiers, God gives us armor and weapons (Ephesians 6:13-18) and he gives us the power to use the artillery he has given us. In this passage in Luke, serpents are symbolic of Satan, (Rev 12:9; Gen 3:1-14) and scorpions are symbolic of evil spirits/evil men. (Rev 9:1-5; 9:10)

No matter what we face, we can be encouraged that through Christ, we have authority and dominion over negative influence we encounter. Amen?"

AMEN BROTHER!!

Hit the Ground Running in 2011 with Barbed Wire and Ninja Skills

Well, it's January 2 and thanks to a LOT of help from my two hardworking men, all of the Christmas decorations are put away and the house is "sort of" back to normal. To be totally honest, if it weren't for Jeff and our two younger children, the Christmas decorations would have never made it out of storage...nor would there have been any Christmas cookies.

2010 was a very hard year. I told Jeff this morning that I thought at this time of our lives things were supposed to be getting easier. Instead we seem to be in the EXACT same place we were when we were young marrieds. Jeff has a great job but we have no money, we drive used junker cars and there is a baby on the way. The only differences are, we are paying on a mortgage instead of renting, my parents live four states away, we have three grown children, the baby on the way is our grandchild and although it may not seem like it to some of you, my head knowledge of the Lord has grown into an actual relationship with Him.

Oh...and I am 22 years older, so the body aches a lot more and I have reached a place in my life were I don't really give a hoot what anyone thinks of me, my family or my relationship with the Lord. AND, I have very little patience with young people who think they know more than I do about children, relationships, God, or just about anything related to having been a wife and a mother for nearly twenty-five years.

I do not mean to appear negative. Please forgive me if I do. I have recently come to understand a couple of really important things though....

1) There is ALWAYS going to be someone in your life who does not "approve" of how you live your life.... ALWAYS. There are just people out there who didn't get enough love from their parents, or whose blood sugar is too high...or two low, or maybe they are just spoiled or they have no confidence in themselves..or in the Lord...and it makes them feel better about themselves when they can point out every thing they THINK you are doing wrong and how you SHOULD be living your life. It's just the way things are. If they are part of your family...someone you have to do life with...just smile and nod and pray that the Lord use them to refine you... or grow a backbone and try to talk to them about it. If they aren't...smile and wave bye-bye...cause life's full of enough crap without letting someone run their cattle on your land and fill it up with any MORE!! Put up some barbed-wire for crying out loud.... set some boundaries!!

2) Anytime you strive to make a better life for yourself, to grow, to stretch, to move ahead, the enemy is gonna try to knock you on your keister.(He might even use those mentioned above to do so.) There will be hurdles,and sucker punches and you WILL be blindsided. So get yourself some sweet ninja skills and when you get hit... tuck, roll and come up fighting! BTW...Sweet Ninja skills probably should involve some time spent in prayer and the word and having a pretty good network of friends willing to pray for you and find comfortable furniture for your pregnant daughter.

(Do you think I've mixed enough metaphores yet?)

Anyway...enough of that! I don't have TIME to wallow in the misery of 2010! I must RISE to the need and expectations of 2011!! We have a grandson on the way and TONS to do before he gets here. There will be the trading of bedrooms and moving of furniture and painting and sewing and baby showers and LOTS of birthdays and our 25th anniversary between now and March 30th when the Wee One is due!!

If 2010 was the year of angst and tears then 2011 will be a year of new beginnings. Here we are...not yet three days into a new year and we already have a good start on a list of highs....

1)Jeff's father married his long time girl Bea in a quiet ceremony in East Texas this weekend!!

2)Jeff and I have started the new year by beginning a 21 day fast (me from FB and coke, Jeff from Coffee)...

3)... as we attempt to read through the Bible in 90 days!

4)The Christmas decorations are put away!

5)Keaton made his first pot of stew today...and it was WONDERFUL!

6)Tomorrow is the 77th birthday of my Uncle Willard....whom I love dearly!

Tomorrow, January 3,2011...we hit the ground running. Jeff goes back to work, Keaton goes back to school, Kaitlyn and I try to beat back the clutter which has overtaken our home and Kirsten keeps on doing what she does best...serving up coffee and her dazzling smiles, all the while taking care of herself and the Wee One!

Let's do this thing people!!!