Rewind#5: A Little Clue

Original air date: 1Jun11

So the other day I was thinking ......

Think for a minute about God, as you believe Him to be. Think about His attributes and His personality. (No really. Close your eyes for a moment and think only of God.) Think about what you believe happens when we die. Is there an afterlife? Do you believe in heaven or hell? Do you believe some people will spend eternity in the presence of God while others spend eternity in torment? If so, who? Who will be in heaven, and who will be in hell? Murderers, child molesters and Nazis? What about people who are generally decent people, but who you know are crooked businessmen, or who cheat on their husband? What about people who are incredibly loving and kind, yet live life their own way and do not honor God? Where will they spend eternity? Where will you spend eternity? Now that you’ve thought of this “list” of those who you believe will be in heaven or hell, let me ask you this: Do you agree with that list? Are all the people you call ‘bad’ in hell and the ones you call ‘good’ in heaven? Are there any that you might say, “I know God has said ‘_____’, but if *I* were God I would do it differently”? 

So here’s a little litmus test I thought of for my own beliefs recently, and I hope this might help you: If you agree with every decision that you believe God has made (and I don’t mean ‘agree’ as in ‘you think God ultimately made the right call’ - I mean that you personally would have made the same call) ... if you would have made every decision the same way you believe God has made them, then it’s possible you have created a god in your own image. In my personal experience, it is usually in the times when I can be honest with God and say, “I know that you are a fair and just God, and every decision You make is perfect. Yet I still have to say I don’t understand this, and I might even go so far as to say I’m a little angry about this .... yet, Father, not my will but Thine be done” ... when I can say this, I know that I am choosing to submit not to my own intelligence and opinions but to the Intelligent Designer’s. I’m not saying that if we agree with God then we aren’t being truthful ... I’m just saying if we agree with everything God has said, it might be a clue or a red flag. God has said, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts higher than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8,9) ... and: “I know, O LORD, that man’s way is not in himself, nor is it in a man to direct his own steps.” (Jeremiah 10:23)

So, am I trying to direct my own steps? Are you? 

Jesus said, “He who rejects Me and does not receive My sayings, has one who judges him; the word I spoke is what will judge him at the last day.” (John 12:48)

Rewind#4: Masquerade

Original air date: 27Jan10

First of all, I really want to thank everyone so far for all of your support for this blog effort of mine! It was a total step in faith, not really sure why I was feeling compelled to do it, but listening to that tug inside me anyway. Lately - more than ever before - I have felt my mind dwelling on topics that were much larger than my day-to-day routine, and my heart has felt as though it is being pulled open - wider than ever before - to encompass territory I never thought I would call my own. Don’t worry ... there will be much more on this in the entries to come, I’m sure. But there’s also been a surprise to all of my feedback lately -- not just to this blog, but to whenever I take the step to become vulnerable and share things that have been weighing on my heart (or setting my heart free, in some cases.) People relate. It reminds me of the simple principle from grade school - no, it’s not “There’s no such thing as a stupid question. Only stupid people.” I was thinking more of: “If you have a question, don’t feel dumb asking it, because if you’re confused then most likely someone else is too.” In our spiritual circles, I think the truth is that if you are struggling with something, either someone you know is struggling with it right now or they have in the past. And this has held true for some areas that I NEVER dreamed anyone could relate to me -- especially in the church! When I first started hanging around Christians, long before I was one, I of course noticed how nice everyone was - but I also noticed very quickly that no one struggled. No one was tore up about something they were dealing with. At least, not on the outside. This was a major sticking point for me at first, and it made me feel like I was SUCH an outcast that I would likely never fit in. “Surely no one here could relate with what I have struggled with this week!!” I thought. “What’s the worst these people have? They didn’t let someone merge in front of them in traffic? They left a $4 tip when they should have left a $5??” I was absolutely convinced that no one could relate to the process I was going through of purging my mind, my heart and my body of the sins that had accumulated there after living contrary to God for 25 years. I knew at that point that I needed to give my life to Christ, but I didn’t think I was ready. There was MUCH too much wrong with my life that I needed to fix first, and then I would turn to Christ. One night in Bible class though, the Lord spoke to me straight through Larry Cain. He said, “There are some people waiting to be a Christian because they think they need to get their life in order first. They are thinking absolutely backward! What they don’t realize is that the ONLY way they’ll be able to “fix” their life is through the strength that is found only in Christ.” That very week I was baptized, because I knew that until I was washed in the blood of Christ, my life would continue to be in opposition to God and all things good, and I wouldn’t have the tools in my belt to actually fix the problems I was facing. As for everybody looking perfect around me, it wasn’t for a long time that I realized I looked pretty perfect to them too! I too had been donning my mask of perfection when we got together.  My smile got bigger and my laugh got louder. Why? Because I didn’t want anyone to see the dark struggles that were happening right under the surface. I’ve done this to my friends and family for years -- as long as I can remember. Why? Because no one wants to look weak. Because *I* don’t want to look weak. That is why I chose the picture at the top of this page -- it’s so easy for us to look through a lens at someone else and be their armchair psychologist. How often do we willingly step out in front of that lens?

It’s only been recently, though, that I’ve come to realize the danger of this masquerade. YOU -- that’s right, you - the one reading this RIGHT now -- would NEVER know how to reach out to me and help me when I really need help if I never let you “in.” And ohhhh boy does satan like that strategy! It’s like the analogy of the single coal being taken out of the fire and left to sit by itself. What happens? Even though while it was near the other coals it was helping produce an intense heat, once it’s set by itself it quickly loses that heat and goes out. Satan knows that when he isolates us and makes us feel like this burden is too much to put on my friends, or that they would look down on me if they really knew what I struggled with, or any of the thousand other useless lies that keep us struggling in isolation - he knows we lose our effectiveness in the kingdom and are soon at the risk of having our light be extinguished altogether. The other danger is in recognizing we aren’t doing each other any favors by refusing to be honest. Isn’t that what we’re doing? We say we’re fine when we’re not, and we look happy when we’re troubled inside. How can God use my struggle to help anyone else if no one else knows what that struggle is? If my trials don’t go any farther than benefitting myself, that’s a pretty shallow existence.

So this blog is one of my attempts to take off that mask. It isn’t about parading my personal life to the world -- it’s about becoming vulnerable to the people that love me the most ... but may or may not know me the best. After all, if we do not bare our souls to one another, can we truly say we “know” each other? Or do we simply know the mask that person chooses to show us? Really, we get to pick who people think we are, instead of being honest about who we are. From now on I am committed to being a person who is more known by my loved ones. By having the strength to be honest when it’s not a good day, you will know I mean it when I say it really IS a good day. What’s so scary about bad days & struggles anyway?? We all have them. Why don’t we start admitting it?

Rewind#3: While I am Waiting

Original air date: 26Jan10

(Blogger’s note: don’t worry, dear reader - not all the posts on this little blog will be this long!  But when I’m trying to explain probably the second most profound revelation to my heart and soul in my adult life, it’s not going to be a quick note. So grab a cup of coffee, get in a comfy chair, and read on!)

Recently, I have been humbled. I have been brought to my spiritual knees and things became clear in my heart that have been struggling to find the surface for YEARS. This revelation has only been rivaled by my initial conviction to turn my life to Christ - almost 7 years ago! But I certainly don’t credit myself for this big breakthrough. I know in my heart of hearts that the Lord has been working diligently on me -- He has been using the people in my life to talk to me, He has used years of frustration and a general feeling of being lost & spinning hopelessly to get my attention, and He has used pain, sorrow and heartache to bring my heart to a point where I would truly listen to Him with my whole soul. I have known that God is bigger than any situation in my life, and that He is powerful enough to use all of these things together for what is good. This requires a “big picture” point of view! It is WAY too human and easy for us to only be able to see a day behind and a day in front of us. All we can see is the hurt we feel RIGHT NOW. We don’t see the blessings that come from what I will learn and grow in and mature by going through this. We just feel our pillow, wet with tears. We feel our fingernails digging into our own skin, the sinking of despair in our hearts. It takes the faith of a saint at THAT moment to know that God will use THAT moment for what is good. The Holy Spirit tells us: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to {His} purpose.” (Rom 8:28) - and now my soul is accepting that, beyond just my intellect believing it.

So what WAS this big breakthrough? What was powerful enough to shake the very core of all my thought processes and up-end and re-align my emotions? The shortest way I can explain it is by saying it’s putting my faith where my head is. I have always thought when I should have trusted. I worried when I should have trusted. I made my own plans, blazed my own trail, and then later asked God to bless me along the way. We all say the words and quasi-intellectually know that we can’t control the circumstances of our lives .... but then when our lives are changed by things outside of our control, we are TOTALLY lost and confused and mad!! Or, at least that described me. I have been living my life working towards the goals that I have set for myself - which, in and of themselves were not sinful goals or anything wrong - I had graduated from college with a degree in Metal, I had been working as a goldsmith, which was a job I just loved! I LOVED taking raw metal and having a vision of what it could become, and through the process of many cuts, burns, and laser welds on my skin, that hunk of metal would eventually turn into a beautiful piece of jewelry. Call me crazy, but I love the callouses on my hands and the permanent black fingernails from the polishing compound (although I quickly learned that people who make their own meth have hands that look the same, and therefore I was hit up for drugs more than once.) But at the ripe ol’ age of 25, my world was changed when Behcet’s Disease (BD) began manifesting in my body. Two years later I took some time off work to heal from a flare, (which had become my pattern by that point) -- but what I couldn’t have seen coming was that I would never go back. I would never sit at that bench again. Where I hung my torch that day is where it would remain. Whatever joints I hadn’t soldered or stones I hadn’t quite finished setting yet would never be done. Even right now as I write this, that is incredibly hard for me to say, and gets me a little teary. Right now I type this with clean hands, long nails, and a girly manicure. Not that I don’t like those things, but if I had to pick one or the other, *I* would have picked the nasty jeweler’s manicure in a heartbeat! But God had other plans for me, which are being revealed to me one painfully slow day at a time. That’s not the way I like it. (Which is weird, because I really am QUITE a spontaneous person ... in fact, too much routine will drive me nuts faster than most other things. But when it comes to my life, evidently I like to know what I’m getting into.)

So where am I going with all this? (If you know me at all, you already know that I am easily distracted by shiny objects and funny stories, so me getting off on tangents will NOT be a stranger to this blog.) :-P 

The last year of my life has been one of the most difficult years of my life. There haven’t been any big new developments (well, other than the addition of a new disease. I guess that counts as “major,") yet my mind has been in a constant struggle to accept my “new life.” I have heard that we can never go back to our old normal, but must create a “new normal.” That is especially difficult if you didn’t have anything against your old normal! My faith is strong and by far the most important thing in my life, so why was I so devastated about the changes in my life?? I have always considered myself an optimist, so it was really bothering me how negative the majority of my thoughts were. I had always wanted to be the kind of person that took everything in stride ... the kind of person who, when their left arm was cut off in some tragic farm equipment accident, could simply smile and say, “My wedding ring fit better on my other hand anyway,” and never think another thing about it. Then I’d travel the country speaking to other farm equipment victims and motivate them to be in the one-handed Olympics. But the reality was that I was having a tough time!! And I didn’t want to be having a tough time, so it made it even worse. If you had ever asked me, I would have said that what a person DOES for a living is NOT what that person IS. “A job title does not an identity make.” Yet in practice, now that I didn’t have a job title or a career, I was feeling totally lost and without an identity. So here I am, 31, without a career and without little kids runnin’ around the house ... so what did that make me? Without a career and without a family, what did I DO?? Who was I? I was struggling very much to feel intrinsic worth as a person, without making a tangible contribution to society in the work force. But I have never looked at anyone I’ve known that does not work (or is not raising a family) as if they were any less of a person because of it, but I was overwhelmed with those feelings for myself. Quite the double standard! 

Through a lot of conversations with people, through soul-searching and prayer and asking for prayers, and just by keeping my antennae up for direction from the Lord - it all revealed amazing things! I think it all came to a head and gelled together while listening to a sermon by Dane Bengard in Chester a couple weeks ago. The basic point of the sermon was yielding yourself and allowing the Spirit to work in your life, and not only asking for God to guide your life but also making yourself available to be guided daily. This was revolutionary! --even though I had known that intellectually for quite a while. The book of James talks about when we make plans for our lives, we should always say, “If the Lord wills we will do this or that.” But does our heart say that too? The litmus test is how we react when our plans don’t come through. I was failing that test miserably! I was devastated, pouting, hurt, angry, and unsure of where to go or who I was. As if God had been waiting for my agenda to move forward, and if He didn’t have MY plan to go by He’d just be at a loss for what to do next. I suddenly realized that I had never lifted my plans up to the Lord and asked if it was His will that I do the things I was planning!! It all came home when I realized (not for the first time in my brain, but the first time in my heart,) that I serve a God who does NOT simply close doors and leave us scratching our heads. If God is closing a door in my life, it is because He has another door opening for me. 

I have no idea what that door is. I don’t know what’s on the other side. I have no idea what I’m going to find when I walk through it. But I know one thing is for certain - GOD is on the other side of that door, and Christ is there waiting to walk with me every step of the way. Why do I need to worry about where the path leads, when I have Christ at my side? So I am waiting. I know that my old plan is not the way God is leading me, but I don’t know yet the form of the new plan. But while I am waiting I will be hopeful, and I will be peaceful, and I will continue to worship the God of my every tomorrow.

Hey man, what's with the "rewinds"????

I went back and forth on this one. Since I had started a blog on a separate site (that will become defunct - thanks, Apple,) and am switching to this site -- the big question became, do I delete and lose all of those posts? Do I try to type them over? Do I re-explain all that stuff? The easiest thing for me to do - and the easiest way for you to avoid the repeats - was for me to literally "copy & paste" them into this new format. Since they are marked "rewind," you'll know to not go back and read them again if you've read them in the past. So, all that to say, if you're not interested in all the past junk, just skip on over it and wait until I think of something new to say. :o) As for now, I'm tired. Time for bed.

Rewind#2: Name, Rank & Serial Number

(Original air date: 25Jan10) The basics. Some would call that the “who, what, when, where and how” of a situation. Other times it’s called the jist. Some people simply say it’s an introduction.

But you’re reading my blog. Surely you’re not a stranger to me, right? I guess this IS posted on the “world wide web” ... but some random web surfer in Russia is NOT my target audience. This is geared towards my family and my friends ... so why would I be introducing myself? There’s several reasons .... for one, I just feel it’s a good starting place for this blog ... but more so, I guess it’s because we often take for granted how much we really know about our friends. A little while ago a line of quizzes went around Facebook that people made about themselves, and were called, “How well do you know ____ [insert your name here]?” Each person would make 5 or maybe 10 trivia questions about themselves that they considered to be basic info ... so why were so many of the average scores by even close friends less than 50%? Because what we think of as “basic info” about ourselves really hardly ever comes up in casual conversation. How many of you know where I went to college? What about what my major was? My favorite pet? Some people might know this, but most of you probably don’t. So here goes .... what I consider the basic cliff notes of “ME” .... what someone in the military might understand as just my “name, rank and serial number” - (which is what a soldier is trained to say when captured.)

I was born September 24, 1978 in Reno, NV. I lived in that same house til I moved away to college ... my parents still live there. I graduated from Galena High School in Reno in '96, and from there I went on to graduate from Boise State University with a bachelor's in Metal and Ceramics. I worked for several years as a goldsmith, and loved every minute of it! Up til that point in my life, I had always been an atheist and lived truly for the moment. A year after graduating, I then lived in Atlanta, Georgia, and was in the middle of my second divorce. My life was crumbling, and everything in my life was up for re-evaluation. For the first time ever, I decided to look into all the “hype” about God and the Bible - which I had always denounced fiercely, yet never actually read. Once I opened the pages of the Word, my life immediately came into clear view and I realized what I needed to do. On March 16, 2003, I was baptized into Christ and began an entirely new life, raised as a new creature. Praise God! I was then (& still now) living in Yuba City, CA, where I worked as a goldsmith an had a nice little life with my own apartment and being very active with the church. Well, God had better plans for me, and soon introduced me to the man who is now my husband - Danny - a Master Sergeant in the Air Force - and we were married on Jan 8, 2005. Well, another big surprise was brewing, and soon I was diagnosed with Behcet's Disease. Within a couple short years I was forced to quit working due to my health struggles. (We never can plan our lives, can we??) Danny retired from the AF in early 2008, and started his own photography business - McNeal Photography.

Now we spend all of our time together, working our best for the Lord and simply enjoying life. My most recent "adventure" is having been diagnosed with Endometriosis, and so now we are pursuing the treatments for it. These are big decisions that are literally going to affect the rest of my life. Right now much of my focus is on trying to decide which way to go -- which are some big factors that aren’t easy to weigh ... but there will be much more on that in other posts, I’m sure. 

So, I guess that's me in a nutshell! Now you at least know the cliff notes. :)

Rewind#1: Getting Set Up

(Original air date: 23Jan10) Well here I am, certainly no jet-setter ... I am joining the world of online blogging at a point when many people literally have years of entries in their archive! Choosing to start a blog at this point is, as I believe most things in life are, at just the right time. This is an outlet I need and a connection I desire, which will hopefully carve out a niche much deeper than Facebook, different than email, but certainly no replacement for all those deep conversations that happen over a great cup of coffee at wee hours of the night. Blogging is an adventure and a style of communication all its own .... and here we go! I have some hopes and some thoughts and even a few plans of what I’d like to include in this blog ... but mostly I look forward to the identity that is created along the way. I want this blog to have the freedom to morph from one identity to the next ... which I guess will meet the needs from one situation to the next. I will pay close attention to my grammar and spelling and punctuation (trying always to remember if the question mark goes inside or outside the quotes, and when to use “effect” and when to use “affect”,) but the bottom line is, this is not intended to be a discourse about English composition! I hope that you can bear with me as all the days I skipped English class to go hang out in the Metals or Ceramics studios become quite clear ...... so to my readers who excel FAR more than me at those topics (you know who you are!) - I apologize in advance and ask for your patience. :)

Since this blog will follow and document certain parts of life, it’s natural to assume that we will cover all kinds of topics! This blog will likely reflect the areas that are most important in my life, which all center around relationships: first and foremost is my relationship with Christ. How the day He entered my life forever changed everything about me, and why I will NEVER be the same; my relationship with my husband -- why a man who knows he is “second-best” in his wife’s eyes knows that is the best place he can be ... why he desires to have a wife who will always put God above her husband; and also my relationships with my two families -- my family by my parents’ blood, and my family by the blood of Christ. I am SO grateful for the love and support that both of these families has given me over the years. And I have to admit that it is only in recent years that I have REALLY grabbed ahold of those relationships. My family has always been there for me ... giving me much more help & support than I had ever returned with gratitude ... yet it has been a recent chapter in my life where I have wholeheartedly embraced that. Why? Well, the selfishness of youth is the best reason I can give. I don’t think my experiences and feelings were any special phenomenon among teens & early 20-ers, but I am not using that as an excuse. I simply took these people for granted for too many years. For way too long I saw relationships as tools in a tool belt - they sat there patiently waiting for you to realize they were useful at a particular time, and then I’d pull them out of the bag, apply them to the problem at hand, and when the crisis was resolved I would clean them off and put them back in storage until the next crisis would surface. I now realize how selfish an outlet like that is, and I pray that I am now seeing myself as a tool in THEIR bag, trying to be useful in their live (for a change) ... basically embracing the mutual nature of any relationship that is built to last.

So here we go, you and me - off into the wild blue of the world of blogging! Get a fresh mug of coffee, pull up a comfy chair, and let’s go solve the world’s problems together!! :) God bless!  

Here We Go 'Round

What exactly is a mulberry bush, and who goes around it?? Well, regardless of that piece of trivia .... I'm back! Due to a bunch of technical stuff you probably don't care about, I'm moving my blog from being hosted by Apple to being hosted here. So pardon my construction mess for a while - it might take me a little bit to get settled in to my new digs. Glad you're here!


And may the randomness begin. :o)