How Much Longer?

Every time we go on a long trip,  my daughter asks the question "How much longer?" or "Are we almost there?" at least a hundred times. On Saturdays, we go to town to run errands and I often hear the question, "Where are we going next?" Usually, after hearing these questions multiple times, I begin to say, "You’ll know when we get there." Our humanity longs to know exactly where we are going and how long it will take. We hate not knowing the plan.

In my spiritual journey, I am the same way. I am always impatient to know exactly how and when point A will lead to point B. I always want a map or GPS that gives me a clear list of instructions of where to go and which turns to make. God just does not work that way though. He is the Father and I am the child, and I must depend on him. To believe in the divine providence of God, Liz Curtis Higgs says, is to believe that "God is there, God cares, God rules, and God provides." It doesn’t mean that God will explain His ways or let you in on the plans beforehand. It doesn’t mean that God will consult you and make sure this is what you want. We must trust in His love for us and His amazing knowledge of what is and what is to come. So many things in life do not make sense, but we must lean on His understanding and not our own.

 

This year it seems that I've been in a valley or desert that doesn't seem to end.  I find myself asking God "How much longer?" Today I think I hear Him saying "You'll know when we get there."  So God, I guess I will try to quit asking questions and just enjoy the ride. Sometimes the scenery is not so beautiful, but I know that just around the bend, you have something amazing planned. Don’t let me take control; please take me where you want me to go.

A Long Drink of Silence

Psalm 62:5 For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from Him. 

I’ve always been a thinker and always enjoyed time alone. I am the oldest child in my family and was the only child for almost 5 years. I have two brothers and although we did play together frequently as young children, the older I got, the more I separated myself to read and think. I can remember my oldest brother, who is nearly 5 years younger than me, was always a chatter box. One day I was driving us somewhere and I finally said in exasperation, "Can you please be quiet so I can think!" The silence lasted all of about two seconds when he piped up and asked, "Whatcha thinking about?" Thomas Carlyle said, "Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge." Ruminating and thinking are the creative platform for almost anything that gets accomplished in this life.

My adult life started with a bang. I started working at age 17, I moved out at 19.  At age 21, I married a widower with two sons. I was attending college full-time and I was working nearly full-time in his office. I had a daughter six years into our marriage and I continued to work in our family practice and brought her to work with me. I’ve had my times of being closer to God and times I’ve drifted away over the years.  It just seems that in the past three years with the trials we’ve experienced and the accumulation of years of things I’ve not dealt with, there were times I felt God had vanished. I could see Him working, but it seemed in my own life He was not speaking; He was silent.

I planned this retreat not really knowing what to expect. I’ve never spent this much time alone in my life. I rarely get silence and I’ve also realized that I tend to make sure there isn’t any. I have music or something to occupy my mind available at all times. There is solitude and a heavy silence surrounding the Hesychia House of Prayer. The only sounds are cows, birds, crunching of grass or gravel as you walk. The silence is somewhat deafening because my mind is far from quiescent. The thoughts have come in droves the longer I sit in silence. There is a calendar in my room that says "Deep Silence Blossoms". I’ve realized that silence increases the volume (both the number and sound) of your thoughts. I’ve tried to limit my music and I haven’t really had anyone to speak to. I have walked, sat, laid and just let my mind wander. In the silence, I feel God as sure as I feel my own skin. The thought that has prevailed is that I want to conquer my selfish, human desires and find contentment in only Him. I’m tired of wallowing in self-pity. It’s time to lay it all down and leave it there. In Isaiah 41:1 it says, "Listen to me in silence, ...let the people renew their strength; let them approach, then let them speak..." As I sit and listen to God in silence, I am renewing my strength that was so very depleted. As my strength starts returning, I feel the need to speak.

Happy, happy, happy

Our society is consumed with being happy, happy, happy. I am probably the biggest proponent of laughter that you will find, but as it says in Ecclesiastes 3:4, there is a time to laugh and a time to cry. Despite the fact that we all have bad times in life, we do our best to cover it up and make sure nobody knows that we are sad, hurting, or broken. We all have to face sickness, death, financial disasters, stress on the job, chaotic schedules, and on top of all that, many of us have children who are involved in too many activities. The stress of our lives is way over the limit of what we should be handling on a daily basis. The past few months have been difficult for me. It seems that the stressors of my life, which are probably about par for the course, have started bothering me more than normal. I heard my husband tell someone the other day that I had been the most mature twenty-one year old in the world. My daddy says that I have "always been a grown-up". I guess all that maturity has finally gotten to me. The past few months, I have had a hard time dragging myself out of this pit that I’ve fallen into and getting myself focused to do the things I need to do. I, like many other moms, have a very active schedule, and the holidays and summer vacation just escalate the madness causing us to endure new heights of stress and chaos in our lives. The past three years, I’ve had several extra stressors come into my life which intensified the normal stress.

 I guess it’s no wonder that sometime at the end of last year, I realized that I was at my limit. I decided I needed to laugh more to get rid of some stress. The more the year has progressed, I started noticing things that I hadn’t noticed before. I began to have more anxiety, wanting to cry all the time, being unable to focus on movies or books like before. I go through spells when I can’t decide what I want to eat or what I want to listen to; I have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep–it is just a general malaise. I have covered well, and when I have tried to talk to people about it, they either don’t understand or don’t think anything is wrong with me. Apparently, I don’t act depressed, but it seems that I have to make myself do everything that is required of me, and I tend to do everything much slower than before. I would just prefer to sit on the couch or lie in bed all day. I can’t actually let myself cry and release any negative emotions because then people will ask what is wrong with me and I really haven’t been too sure about that myself. I apparently am very good at bottling things up and putting on my happy face. I laugh and I smile, and I show frustration over minor things, but I’ve developed quite a skill at tapping down my emotions over the rest of life’s problems. I don’t have time to deal with emotions, if I cry, people will want to discuss it. We really do discourage tears in our society, and we shouldn't. Jesus wept, and he did it in front of his friends.

I’ve been craving time alone. I don’t ever seem to be alone, and if I’m away from my family, it’s to go to a meeting with another group of people. I think that everyone needs time to sit and think and spend time with God. A time to get away from the pressure of a schedule. Even though I’ve had vacations and church camp, they all require something of me while I am there. I am not sure I’ve ever had three days in a row without anywhere to be or anything to do or anyone to be around in my life. Jesus went away for 40 days to be alone and pray, and when we fail to have sufficient alone time with God, the stress of our lives will become too heavy for us.

On September 18, I will turn 40. Most people want to do something radical to mark this event like tattoos, body piercings, skydiving, bungee jumping, or a big trip. I started early this year thinking about what I wanted to do for my birthday. Like everything else, I had no focus and just couldn’t decide. Then last week a friend called and said she wanted to take me away for my birthday. I seriously thought about it and realized that I didn’t want spa treatments, or anything enjoyable per se, or even to be around people. I just wanted to be alone to pray, cry, scream, sleep, sit, read, walk–just be. So on September 15, I will be going to the Hesychia House of Prayer, and yes, it’s a monastery. I know that normal people don’t want to wake up in a Monastery on their birthday, but I am far from normal at this point. I’m tired of being and feeling the way I have this year. So I am going away and me and God are going to wrestle it out. I am not sure how I will react to being alone, but one thing is for certain, Tammie will never be the same again.

God Cannot Love Me Less

When my daughter does something that she knows she should not have done, she always cries and asks me if I still love her.  It is human nature for us to feel unlovable when we sin.  Because of my upbringing, I have always had to fight the mind-set of equating God’s love with my actions. In the back of my mind, I always feel that if I am "good", then God will love me more. On the other hand, when I am bad, which seems to happen with great regularity, then I feel unlovable. I grew up in a very legalistic denomination and there were so many rules that I couldn’t begin to name them. I knew what was acceptable and unacceptable, but it was an unwritten list. I will always be shaped by my earlier experiences, but there are some habits I have had to break. I do not believe that I am saved based on my actions, but for some reason I still fight the feeling that God will somehow love me less if I mess up.

This week in class we studied 1 Samuel 12. The children of Israel wanted to be like all the other nations and have a King, and despite the many warnings that Samuel gave them against this, they kept demanding a King; therefore, God delivered to them their desire. In 1 Samuel 12, Samuel is telling the children of Israel how God has always taken care of them and it is made abundantly clear to them that they have turned away from their God, they have sinned, and they began to be fearful and to feel unloved. In verse 20 Samuel says "Do not be afraid; you have done all this evil, Yet do not turn aside from following the LORD, but serve the LORD with all your heart. For the LORD will not forsake his people.. . ." To me the word forsake means to leave, and the dictionary defines it as "to quit, leave entirely, or abandon." The Hebrew word in this passage actually has a slightly different definition. It means to beat a mass until it is flat or to devalue something. For some reason this clicked with me.  I realized God does not love me less because of my sin. I do not lose value in His sight because of my screw-ups. I have always said that I disappoint God, but He still loves me. I now am beginning to wonder, "Can God be disappointed when He knew I was going to mess up anyway?" God loves me. There is nothing else I can add to that. It makes no sense in my finite human mind. I can’t understand it or fathom how massive His love is. I just know that God loves me with all of His being, and He cannot love me any less!

The Most Important Question

Yesterday, I made a comment to a client which triggered him to share his testimony with me. It resonated with me, because I felt God calling me to witness--to actually speak up and ask someone "Do you know Jesus?" This client said that he was living a very rough life and one day he and the guys he worked with went to a restaurant. He noticed there were some beautiful girls working in this restaurant and he was able to obtain the number of one of them. He was very excited and he called her the next day and the very first question she asked him was, "Are you saved?" He, having no religious experience, totally misunderstood and thought she was worried about him being a safe person to be with.  He quickly assured her that he was safe and assured her of his good intentions. She said, "No, no! You misunderstood.  Are you saved? If you aren't saved then you are lost." He again glossed over the question assuring her that he was a really good guy. She hung up on him. Although, he said from that point he was tormented over her question and what she really meant. It was the beginning of his search for spiritual meaning and his search for God.  He never heard from this girl again, and she doesn't know that she asked him the most important question he ever heard.  

I have felt God tugging at my heart these last months about witnessing. I have lost the vision and the burden for the lost that I once had. Where I once had a burden to help needy and hurting people, it has now become a burden to help needy and hurting people. My husband is a Gideon--one of those men that hands out Bibles. I am in the Auxiliary and I carry a KJV New Testament and a Spanish language New Testament in my purse at all times. I have given out a handful of Bibles in my membership, but not near enough. I pass untold numbers of people everyday who need Jesus. They sit in the very place I work and I never think to ask them "Are you saved?" Last week at church camp I felt God renew my strength and renew my burden. My heart was softened, and it seemed like I couldn't quit crying. Today I prayed, "God send someone to me to witness to today", and tonight I sat thinking "God didn't send me anyone." Then like a lightening bolt he reminded me of the boy that was in my office with his father.  This young man is headed down the wrong road right now, and all I did was take care of the administrative work that needed completing. I forgot to witness. 

I am always waiting for someone else to start the conversation, and so many times I realize that they are waiting for me to tell them why I have hope. They want me to tell them why I am so happy with the life I live. It may be that they don't even know they are lost. I am praying that God will quicken my spirit when that person I need to witness to comes into my presence.  A preacher, that I have a lot of respect for said, "We can't change the world, but Jesus can."  The world has drifted farther and farther from God, and we worry about the political and social ills of our society.  I have heard people bemoan how Christians just want to tell you about Jesus and not take care of their earthly needs of food and shelter. I believe that until we do take care of their earthly needs they won't hear the message, but be careful that we don't spend our time feeding the poor and never telling them they need Jesus more. They may need clean drinking water, but more than that they need the water Jesus gives that they will never thirst again.  The only way our society will change is if we start introducing them to Jesus and then ".......do what your hand finds to do, for God is with you. (1 Samuel 10:7 ESV)

Laughter Toxicity

I love to laugh; it is better than chocolate in my opinion. In college, I wrote a research paper on laughter and discovered that laughter has been proven to actually work like a medicine.  At the time I wrote my paper, there were laughter clubs in India.  They got together in the park, much like exercise groups would, and they laughed.  They tried to tell jokes in the beginning, but they ran out and discovered that you can make yourself laugh and it works just as well.  I am currently in the process of updating my research, and I see that there is now laughter yoga. The goal of http://www.laughteryoga.org is to bring "good health, joy, and WORLD PEACE through laughter".  Laughter knows no language barriers. 

The last three years have been stressful years, and I started this year with the goal of laughing more. I tried to incorporate things in my life that would make me laugh because I know that laughter releases the bad stress from your body. It just seems like life continued to distract me from laughing. Apparently the average four year old laughs about 300 times a day and the average 40 year old laughs only four according to Psychology Today. These statistics differ depending on what authority you are reading, but they all agree that children laugh vastly more than adults. I do believe I am above average in the laughing department, but I do allow the stress of my life to dictate how much I laugh. 

This past week I went to church camp. When you go to church camp, you always expect to get spiritually pumped up, and I did. I didn't expect to develop "laughter toxicity!" I was sitting around talking with some friends and one of my friends was telling the story of how a poor little girl was stuck in the bathroom stall with no TP. She kept hollering and begging for some TP and nobody would pay attention. I had walked in about this time and finally my friend was handing her a roll of TP over the stall and I noticed it was the wet roll. The thought then went through my mind "Oh no, that is the wet roll.  Why did I not throw that away? I have picked it up and put it back down about ten times. Did I think it was gonna dry out?" Then the little girl cries out plaintively "This TP is wet!"  For some reason this story struck me as hilarious. I was trying to tell my side of the story and I got so tickled that I laughed harder than I have laughed in ages. I lost my breath, I cried, and just could not stop. Everyone was amazed. They hadn't seen me laugh like that and teasingly wondered if I was drunk.  I did eat a Rainbow Pop right before, and it may have gotten blamed for it. In fact, the Rainbow Pop sales shot up after that. It felt so good to laugh, and I still felt the effects of it the next day. I am actively trying to make myself laugh, even if there is nothing funny. Who says you need funny stuff to make you laugh. Just smile and fake a good belly laugh, and you will probably start laughing for real.  I promise you, that if you ever laugh so hard you cry, you will feel better than drunk and the hangover will be glorious. 

Here's the link to my research paper on Laughter
Laughter: Is it Healthy?
http://home.hiwaay.net/~garson/laughter.htm

Church Camp Bubble

This Monday, July 1, I will be entering the church camp bubble where there will be few worries, no stress, and very little anxiety.  There is lots of good music, singing, preaching, devotionals, recreation, cold showers, and that lovely camp food (yes, I speak with some sarcasm here.) I have decided that heaven will be a lot like church camp–except we will all have mansions, a delicious feast  (which will not make us fat), and we will be able to see Jesus always.  

Every year, I get to feeling the need to go to my church camp bubble and this year I have needed it for several weeks.  I just need to get away from the cares of this world and the needs of others.  No, camp is not perfect.  The food, well, the Bogg Burrito has a reputation–if you know what I mean.  The beds have been around since the Civil War, and in order to get cell service you have to stand in the middle of the field, hold out your tongue and lift your right arm in the air while standing only on your left leg. All of this pales in comparison to the love, joy, and peace I get out of church camp.  At the end of the week we all leave full of, what our pastor’s wife has termed, “pumpedupedness”  

On Friday, the church camp bubble will officially “pop” as we all arrive home and face reality. We will still have bills to pay, laundry to wash, grass to mow, and sometimes more serious matters to fill our lives. It makes me long for heaven even more.  The older I get, the more I find myself understanding the saying, “Come Lord Jesus, come quickly we pray.”  

Themepark Therapy

The stress of being an adult gets to everyone eventually and sometimes you just have to take a break from it all and be a kid. Today I took my twelve year old daughter and her best friend to Magic Springs, a theme park in our town. My daughter is a scaredy cat and I have had to make her ride every ride she has ever ridden. I haven’t pushed the roller coasters because I thought at my age it probably wasn’t a good idea.

 

 

Somewhere in the middle of Big Bad John as I began to scream and laugh like a crazy woman, I realized that was exactly what I needed. Sometimes you just need permission to let loose and scream like a banshee. So with all the laughing and all the screaming I have done today, I feel euphoric. I have literally laughed and screamed myself sane. Themeparks are cheaper than therapy and a lot more fun.

Take a Virtual Ride of Big Bad John

The twist on this coaster was the plunge into darkness at the end.
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Take a Virtual Ride of the Arkansas Twister

The Arkansas Twister which used to be at Six Flags over Texas has a 92 foot drop and goes 50-60 miles per hour over many twists and turns.

Fairytales Will Never Be Reality

What makes fairytales so attractive? I am a cynical, practical girl, yet I love a good fairytale. I know that based on statistics almost one-half of all marriages eventually end in divorce. So why do we still buy into this undying love, meeting "the one", finding our soul mate, and falling in love business? Actually, I think that we are addicted to falling in love. I mean who doesn’t like that new feeling of being pursued and having somebody love you more than life itself. When we first fall in love we are willing to change how we dress, where we live, what we eat, our religion, etc. When we fall in love, we can move mountains, cross the ocean, and go to the moon and back; then we write a song about it.

 

 

I wonder if watching and reading all these fairytales are harming our psyches. Do they just help us escape from the nasty now and now or are they making us hope and wish for a different reality? We have allowed ourselves to become completely controlled by our feelings. The problem is that our emotions are fickle. One moment, I want ice cream and the next, I want to go to the beach, and then later I just want to go to sleep. Our wants, emotions, and feelings are causing us to lose grip with reality and screw up the lives we have.

 

 

So take a look in the mirror and embrace the zits, the gray hairs, the bulges and the stray facial hairs. Love the life you have and the one you are with. Realize that the grass still has to be mowed on the other side, and you can’t hire a Gardner. Our relationships are shaping our world, and by tossing them away so easily, we are teaching our children to not commit to anything that doesn’t feel good. The old adage, "if it feels good, do it" is just not working out for us. Sometimes you have to do it because it’s right, and the feelings will follow.

My Story

When writing the story of your life, they always say to start at the beginning.  The first crystalline memory that I have is at the age of twenty-three months.  I remember a warm, summer day under a tent in a grassy area with lots of trees.  There were chairs with people sitting in them all in a row, and my mom was crying.  Nobody wanted to hold me and I was passed from lap to lap.  I remember a lady named Andi Miller singing and then the memories end.  I cannot remember the casket that was there or the huge hole in the ground. My mom says that she had me potty trained before my brother died and that I completely digressed at that point.   

I was about five years old when I started having this memory disguised as a dream.  I kept having the same dream every night, and my mother had just had my other brother, Daren.  I now realize that I was probably worried that he was going to die as well.  When I told my mother the dream, she said, “that sounds like your brother’s funeral.” Since she had never told me about another brother, I was floored. She had a box of momentos from his birth and a picture of him in his casket.  She told me about John David Swisher, Jr., and how he had died the day he was born. She was holding him in the hospital and she commented to the nurse that he was a little blue.  The nurse whisked him out and she never saw him alive again.  Mom always blamed herself, thinking she must have done something that caused it although there was nothing she could have done to prevent it.  They said his lungs must have not been developed right.  

A few years ago, I bought a gravestone for my brother’s grave.  At the time of his death, it was all my parents could do to pay for the funeral and burial and then they got busy raising me and later my two brothers.  It always bothered my mother that they had not bought a marker.  So for Mother’s Day one year, I decided to buy a marker for his grave.  My mother still goes to visit the grave and remembers the baby she only held once. 

I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I’d had a brother just twenty-three months younger than me, but God is writing my life story, not me.  Sometimes I help mess it up, but he ultimately puts His signature on the pages.  We cannot change our past, we can only use it to help guide us in our future.  I have to say that God really is the best at writing my story, but it seems that sometimes I hear myself yelling, “Cut!”  I mean surely that was not what he intended.  I can’t believe that he wants to take this character out or put this character into my life story.  In the end, I always see where God was on the money.  So God, I give you back the reigns again–write my story, and make it sensational!

Just Mud!

So many times we humans do stupid things. Everyday I deal with people who are going through distresses, many times as a result of poor choices they have made. I often wonder as we go about our lives if God and the Angels are watching us and shaking their heads. "Don’t they know where this path is leading?" "I can’t believe they are doing that!" So many times we react to those around us in anger and meanness. We just don’t act very Christ-like. As I was reading Psalms 103, I came across verses 13 and 14

"As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him.  For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust."

I can just imagine God walking up on the angels as they are shaking their heads at our shenanigans and saying, "Now you must remember, they were just made with mud." It is so awesome to think that the God who created me has given me a little leeway, because He realizes He just used dirt to make me. He also wants to remind me that I can’t do anything in my own strength, because I am nothing but dust. Everything good that comes from my being is a direct result of Jesus living in me. There are times that the feelings of failures are more prevalent than others. Paul said he died daily, but I am afraid that I must put my flesh to death more often than that. The awesome thing about God is that His love never ceases and his mercies are new every morning. (Paraphrase of Lamentations 3:22-23.) Everyday I need a fresh dose of mercy and grace to wash away the past and help me face the future.

Why Medical Insurance?

I recently got to do one of the most exciting parts of my job. I called a client, who I think is very deserving and told him he had won his disability case. The first two questions they always ask of me are, "When will I get money?" and "When will I get medical insurance?" The hardest part of my job is explaining to some people that although they have won their disability case, they must wait two years from the date they qualify for disability benefits before they will get medical insurance. In the case that I dealt with today, this man will not receive medical insurance until March, 2014. To me it is one of the most inequitable and unfair situations in the whole disability process. When you are sick, what do you usually need? Doctors, medicine, hospitals, surgery, tests all of which cost money. If you do not have medical insurance, they will not even schedule your test until you pay a certain amount, if not all of the money. When you are diagnosed with a disabling disease, you will find that it is almost impossible to obtain medical insurance. If you have insurance, it will go up so high that you likely will not be able to afford it

It is disheartening to look at statistics concerning healthcare of the world. Although the United States spends more money per capita on healthcare, our healthcare is rated 37^th in the world as to overall performance and those provided for. Yet, in France there is universal coverage and they spend half as much as we do and are ranked number one in the world. There are many reasons, that these numbers are what they are and I am not sure I am the proper person to even wager a guess. I do know that the lack of healthcare insurance is causing a rise in disability cases and causes cases to linger on for decades because people have no medical evidence to prove what is wrong with them.

So we are faced with a dilemma. Many of us become sick and have no way to treat it. Insurance isn’t always provided with jobs these days and I have discovered that when it is–it is expensive. One of the great benefits of working for a large company used to be good medical benefits, but that is not the case any longer. My husband and I have recently had to drop our medical coverage because the premiums were raised to an astronomical amount. He has applied for other coverage, but was denied due to preexisting conditions. One would think that when you applied for disability, that you would automatically qualify for medical insurance, but this is not true. This is a situation where it pays to be poor.

There are two types of medical insurance that can come with disability: Medicaid and Medicare. This is determined by whether or not you receive Title II (RSDI) or Title XVI (SSI.) I explained the difference in these two in my post "A Picture of Disability". Those who qualify for RSDI (who have paid social security taxes and are insured for disability purposes) will get Medicare. Sometimes, if you have no more than $2,000.00 in assets (not counting your home), and your RSDI check is under a certain amount, you may qualify for SSI as well. If you qualify for even $1.00 of SSI you will get Medicaid. The great thing about Medicaid and the unfair thing about Medicaid is that the moment you qualify for SSI, you get Medicaid. There is no two year waiting period. If you have worked and made a good income for all of your working career, you will likely not qualify for SSI and you will have to wait until you get Medicare. I am very socially liberal and all about helping the poor, but to me this is extremely unfair to have created two different types of insurance and to make one group wait.

Why is this? There is no good reason. The Social Security Administration will tell you that they have not been given the reason. I searched for the reason on the website to no avail. The Christopher Reed Paralysis foundation along with the Commonwealth Fund did some in-depth research entitled, "Waiting for Medicare: Experiences of Uninsured People with Disabilities in the Two-year Waiting Period for Medicare." In their research, they address the question of, "Why the Wait?" They also received no good answer. It is a historical question that must be looked at by trying to determine what the bureaucrats of the day were thinking.

One group this really affects are stay-at-home moms. We’ve had many women who stayed home, took care of the home and the children because their husbands were able to make a decent living to support them. Then somewhere along the way, mom gets sick. She develops some strange illness, hurts her back, develops fibromyalgia, Crone’s disease, take your pick. Maybe they never had insurance or maybe it got so expensive they could no longer afford it, but Mom applies for disability because she needs medical insurance. The problem is that Mom has not worked and paid in social security taxes so she is not insured for disability purposes. The next problem is that Dad works and makes more than the $12,792.55 a year that is allowed to qualify for SSI. So Mom is not insured and does not qualify for Title II and she has too much money to qualify for SSI so she gets nothing. You must qualify for at least $1.00 of SSI in order to get the insurance. I have had more than one person tell me, "I don’t need the check, I just need insurance." To me this is an injustice that has been overlooked for far too long. The way to fix it–get divorced. This has actually happened and not "just so they could get benefits", but actually caused people to get divorced. Studies have shown that money problems are the number one cause for divorce and when you factor in health problems, it is no wonder that divorces are caused. One of our clients needed a certain type of treatment that was horribly expensive. She had won her disability case but didn’t qualify for SSI and was in that two year waiting period without insurance. She actually did move out and get divorced, and gave away her rights to all her property so she could get medical treatment. I just see so much injustice which all seems to be centered around our lack of medical insurance. I believe that many people would never apply for disability if they had medical insurance. There are also people who would be able to work if they had medical insurance. 

There are many disability claimants who do improve after getting medical insurance. After receiving the proper treatment and medication you do get to feeling better. Some people feel like they can work at this point. If they do work and continue to make a significant amount of money as determined by the SSA, then the they will lose their disability and thereby lose their insurance. It becomes an endless cycle that goes something like this:

 

I could work with my medicine;

If I work I lose my insurance;
If I have no insurance I can’t afford my medicine.
If I can’t afford my medicine, I can’t work. 

Having medical insurance has become a right for the rich and for the very poor, but for the middle class, the biggest majority of people, we have been hung out to dry

Noah: A Popular Guy

My blog has always been mainly for my own benefit.  I don't have a lot of traffic, but I do get a few hits every now and again.  I wrote a short blog about Noah in 2007, and that one post alone has received 10,678 hits.  Compared to my other posts, this is a staggering number.

 

In that blog, I asked the question, "Did Noah Preach?"  As I've studied more and more, I know that Noah did preach, because it states in 2 Peter 2:5 that he was a "preacher of righteousness".   It is my personal belief that God's covenant was with Noah and his family only. 

 

Nevertheless, I have been quite shocked at the amount of hits and comments on this one blog.  I can only surmise that Noah is a popular guy!

Here is a link to the original blog post.
 http://tammiediggs.blogspot.com/2007/08/did-noah-preach.html

What is Your Mission?

 

Every company has a mission statement–a statement that describes what they are about and what they are in business to accomplish. Every church should have a mission statement, and I would hope that it was based on Matthew 28:19; Go and tell! It does seem that companies and churches sometimes lose sight of what they were meant to do. Several years ago, the London Transit Authority was having complaints their buses were simply passing by bus stops where passengers were patiently waiting, and failing to stop. They released a statement saying, "It is impossible for us to maintain schedules if we always have to stop and pick up passengers." That is an excellent example of a company who lost the vision of their mission. I sometimes look at our churches and think, "Do we have a vision?" 

Statistics show that 95% of Christians have not ever shared their faith. Never?? How can you be saved and love God and not tell someone about it? You should be leaking Jesus. It has also been reported that if every evangelical in the world would share Christ with one person everyday then we could reach the entire world in 3 months. No, that doesn’t mean that the whole world would accept Jesus Christ, but it would mean that we did what Jesus asked us to do. Exactly why do we not do it? Personally, I am afraid I judge based on appearance whether or not they need to hear it or even want to hear it. Even though I have heard story after story of Americans who were adults before they ever heard about Jesus, Americans who were adults before they ever received their first Bible. While we have focused on foreign countries, our own country has developed an incredible need for missionaries right before our very eyes. In Matthew 9:38, Jesus says, "Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." While you are praying that prayer, don’t forget that God may be pointing to you! He may not be sending you to China-it may just be into your company or your world. No matter where you are, just go and tell!

A Picture of Disability

I answer the phone and a lady demands to know how her disability case is going. I can tell she is disgruntled and ready to pick a fight. Apparently her neighbor, who has "absolutely nothing" wrong with him just won his disability. We always judge situations by what we can see and so many people do not look disabled. They aren’t in a wheelchair, don’t have artificial limbs, aren’t blind, or have obvious mental retardation. There is no tape measure for disability.  You must take into account all medical problems and how their combined effect will impact a person’s ability to work. Disability cannot be determined by focusing on one issue.

In the past 15 years the number of applications for disability has almost doubled. The very word “disability” is a loaded word these days. All day long I hear things like: I need my disability, I applied for my disability. He doesn't have a disability. What exactly is a disability? 

President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act on August 14, 1935, and the Social Security Board (SSB) was born.  The SSB was renamed the Social Security Administration (SSA) on July 16, 1946.  It was established to “develop a comprehensive social insurance system covering all major personal economic hazards with a special emphasis on unemployment and old age insurance.”  Over time, this program has grown to include disability insurance: Title II which is Retirement, Survivor’s and Disability Insurance (RSDI) and Title XVI which is Supplemental Security Income (SSI). When people work, they pay Social Security taxes and after so many quarters of paying these taxes, you become "insured" for disability purposes. If you have not worked or are not insured for disability purposes, you must qualify for SSI in order to receive any disability benefits.  The rules for SSI are all financial and very stringent.  The most money you can draw under SSI at the present time is a whopping $8,529.00 a year if you are single or $12,792.55 if you are married.  Many people do not qualify for the maximum amount because they may live with a family member. If you have to live on SSI benefits, you will live in poverty.  

The Social Security Administration defines disability as an inability to work, and you must be totally disabled from all work.  There are no benefits for partial or short-term disability (less than one year).  There is a five-step evaluation process used to determine if adults qualify for disability.  You are evaluated based on the work you did before, your current work activity, your medical condition and how it affects your ability to work, whether or not you can adjust to other work because of your medical condition; and whether your disability has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death. They also evaluate your education and literacy.  

Many times clients will keep focusing on their physical problems which are not that severe, but after dealing with them for some time, I discover they have some profound psychological problems. Why is it easier to admit that our back is broken and not our mind? Our minds can break under the pressure of life just as easily as a bone. Mental disabilities are very real.  People who criticize the disability program say that if you are physically able, then your mental capacity should have no bearing on the matter. Having a strong and sound mind is just as necessary to your ability to work as your physical health.

Education is also a very important factor in determining whether or not a person is disabled.  Let’s face it, some people are just smarter than others.  We had a client who was at his hearing and Mr. Diggs asked him if there was any job he thought he could do with his set of medical problems, and he said, “I think I could do what he’s doing.” and pointed to the Judge.  Not only are there people who are smarter, there are families who are richer and able to spend more money on education.  I knew a man who was encouraging his grandson to stay in college and he said, “From the neck down, I can hire a man for about $10.00 an hour or less, but from the neck up it gets a lot more expensive.”  Our mental abilities play a very important role in our ability to work. What causes one person to be disabled, may barely slow another person down.  The more you look at the issue of disability, you realize, that defining disability is not that easy.

• Selected Data From Social Security’s Disability Program. Social Security: The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Admnistration. March 29, 2013. www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/dibStat.html
• Social Security History.  Social Security: The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Administration. April 2, 2013. http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/orghist.html
• SSI Federal Payment Amounts For 2013. Social Security: The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Administration. April 2, 2013. http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/COLA/SSI.html 
• Definition of Social Security disability. Social Security: The Official Website of the U.S. Social Security Administration. April 2, 2013. http://ssacusthelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/152/~/definition-of-social-security-disability

He Took a Nail For Me

For me, the most horrifying part of the crucifixion is the nails. The very thought of nails going through his hands and feet makes me cringe in pain. When I watch reenactments that have the sound of the hammer and nails, it always brings tears to my eyes. My daughter hates to see blood or pain being inflicted on anyone, and today as we watched an Easter program she hid her eyes. When they were hammering the nails, she said "that doesn't sound like fun." I assured her that it wasn't fun.

It is very humbling to think that Jesus took a nail for me. It wasn't fun, pleasant or the least bit enjoyable. He endured incredible pain, and He did it for me. We have had this week to remember His death and sacrifice. Tomorrow, we can celebrate the victory. Death has died and we are alive because He rose again!

Why is Disability Really on the Rise?

Social Security has been a hot button issue for at least the past two major elections.  It does not matter if you are passionately for it or passionately against it; this government benefit likely affects us all.  This American Life, a radio program of Chicago Public Radio, recently aired a program called “Trends with Benefits” which discussed Social Security disability benefits and how the number has nearly doubled over the last 15 years.  Planet Money’s Chana Joffe-Walt spent six months investigating disability and focused on this one town in Hale County, Alabama, where 1 in 4 of the population are receiving Social Security disability benefits. Despite her in-depth study, it still seems she failed to glean one very important benefit of Social Security disability: the fact that it provides medical insurance. 

My husband is a lawyer and has been representing clients in their appeals for Social Security Disability for over 30 years.  I have worked with him for 20 years and have seen hundreds of cases of disability ranging from the severe to the not so severe.  Yes, there have been a very few people who obtained their disability, and I was not completely convinced that they were completely disabled, but many, many more failed to obtain benefits when they really should have won.  I talk with these people multiple times throughout this process, help in obtaining their medical records, help fill out paperwork and file their appeals online.  Through the years, I have come to realize several problems with the entire disability process.  The next few posts will be about Social Security disability from my viewpoint of 20 years experience working with these types of cases.  

What I have discovered that Joffe-Walt did not is that healthcare reform is absolutely necessary in order to change the future of Social Security disability.  I feel it is the key to reducing applications, reducing payments, and shortening the payout of current payments.  I have seen many people who have been forced to file for disability instead of working in order to obtain medical insurance.  Claimants are forced to remain on disability and not return to work, because of medical insurance.  Without healthcare reform, the number of applications and amount of money spent on disability benefits will only get worse. 

In the next four posts, I plan to answer the following questions:  What is disability? Why is healthcare and medical insurance so important? What causes disabilities? Why do disability benefits seem to be permanent? 

Mirror, Mirror

By: Terry P. Diggs

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
   Who's the fairest of them all?

When the queen asked her mirror that question every morning, the mirror always answered that she was the fairest--until one day when a different answer was returned. That response started a long series of attempts to kill Snow White.

How do we answer that question about ourselves? Most of us put on a veneer of humility, but deep down inside, we think we are better or more deserving of praise than others. "Pride," the Scripture says, "goeth before a fall." I don’t know about you, but the battle against pride and its effects is continuous for me.

Pride interferes with our Christian witness. If we think we, and others, are good, how can we tell others that they are sinners in need of Jesus? If we are better than others, how can we stoop to minister to lower beings? How can we do it effectively?

Pride is really the great sin: it is the sin of thinking we are like God. It is the original sin of Satan. Pride provoked the Jewish leaders to put a contract on the head of Jesus. "The fairest of them all" is never us: it is always Jesus, and we must constantly keep that in mind.

Center of His Will

Many analogies have been made of the potter and clay to Jesus and His creations.  It may seem old and worn out to you, but it came alive to me recently. Hannah bought a little child’s pottery wheel with some of her birthday money, and we were trying to learn how to operate it. We discovered that everything has to be just right in order for the clay to actually become a vessel.  One very important step is for the clay to be in the center of the wheel. If it is off to the side, it won’t work right; it must be in the very center. I thought about us and how we must be in the very center of God’s Will in order for our lives to turn out right. It seems like I surrender and tell God, I want to be like that Godly vessel and I crawl right in the center of His will and then once it gets to spinning, I start crawling back off. 

Another thing we learned was that the clay had to be the right consistency and have the correct amount of moisture,  If it was too wet, it  would slide off.  If it was too dry, it wouldn’t stick to the wheel. If we are properly soaked in God’s Word and have an open communication line with Him, we will be stuck to the center of His Will and when the world gets to spinning crazily, it won’t move us. The devil is good at stealing our time and distracting us, so that we can’t stay focused and fail to study our Bible and pray.  Sometimes the noise of our lives keep us from hearing God's directions. 

What Hinders Your Yes?

"He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me." Matthew 10: 36-37

What a weighty scripture!  When I read this, I thought, "how many times have I failed to do what God wanted because of family?" I remember one time answering a question in a Bible Study discussion saying I couldn’t be a missionary in a foreign country because I had a small child, and that I was teaching her about God, which was the most important. My teaching her is of utmost importance, but later I recognized the lunacy of the statement. God brought to mind many missionaries that I have met who have children and are working on the field.  It seems that many of the excuses I use for not doing the work of God are usually connected to my family.  I am very impressed when I see women, men, and children serve God without their wives or husbands or parents. It takes a lot of commitment to stay faithful to God when your spouse or your parents are unbelievers.

 

I think about myself.  I always want to make sure my family is taken care of before I move on to the needs of others.  Yet, I think that God sometimes wants us to sacrifice our comfort for the good of someone else.  I am reminded of the story from my favorite book by Louisa May Alcott, Little Women where Marmee takes their Christmas dinner to the poor family who has nothing.  Many of us would not think of making our own families do without.  We will give so long as we have enough for us first. 

 

Take a moment and think of something God may have been impressing you to do, but you keep saying no. What is holding you back? What is your excuse? He will provide the ability, the courage, and the resources to do it. He will be there with you to protect you and your family as you work for Him, and should you lose your life on this earth, you will have gained an eternal reward that cannot be touched by human hands. The eternal life that Christ has given us will be so much sweeter than this life full of sin, pain, and suffering. Matthew 10:39 says, "He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." Don’t let family hinder you in your service to God.

Your Clothes Can't Save You

Children, for the most part, grow up not knowing that their family unit is not like the other families of the world. From my very earliest memories, I cannot remember ever feeling like I was strange or unlike everyone around me, though I was. I grew up in a fairly rigid religion. I was raised in the Oneness Pentecostal faith, and there was a strict dress code and a lot of other things we did not do. The girls wore dresses to the knees or below, we did not cut our hair or wear make up or jewelry. We did not own a television, go to the movies, or go to sporting events. The list of things I could not do was innumerable, and I could very quickly tell you if it was permitted, but nowhere could you find an actual list. In fact, each church had a different unwritten list and it depended on the desires of the pastor.

My first memory of feeling humiliated because of my religion was in 7th grade. I had attended a Christian school during 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. In 7th grade, I went back to public school, and the very first day I had P.E. The teacher told us we would “dress out” every day in shorts or sweats. I got sick to my stomach because I knew I couldn’t wear those clothes. I went to the teacher and told her that because of my religion, I couldn’t dress out. She wasn’t very happy about it and asked if I could wear shorts under my skirt or culottes. So my mom made me a very unflattering pair of culottes, and I began the torture of P.E. Every day some kid would laugh at my clothes, and they always asked why I didn’t wear shorts or sweats and why I always wore a dress. In high school, kids notice everything about everyone, and there is lots of peer pressure. The fact that I did nothing like everyone else drew constant questions. I really didn’t want to answer them. My faith was all about being different because of how I dressed, and nothing about being different because of my love for Jesus.

The school bus was another place that was horrific for me. Kids made fun of me for being naive and bullied me as much as possible. The most humiliating stuff was saved for the school bus. They would tell people so that I could hear, “don’t hang out with her, they play with snakes,” or “I heard someone went to her church and they got locked in a closet with snakes.” For the record, there were never any snakes at our church, and if we ever saw snakes at home it was after they were dead.

In 11th grade, I was feeling much braver, and most of the kids were used to my religion at this point. I loved to sing, and I was in the choir, but there was a special ensemble, and you had to try out in order to join. I desperately wanted to be a member, so I asked the teacher if I could try out. I immediately sensed that she did not like me. She said, “I guess.” I started singing, and she said with surprise and grudging approval, “you have a nice voice.” So she said I could be a member. For as far back as I could remember, the ensemble had always dressed with the girls in long, black dresses and the boys in tuxedos. On the first day of class, the teacher brought out a catalog and said, “Girls, I think that this year we need to wear pant suits,” and she showed the one she had picked out. The girls all went ga ga over it. I was flabbergasted and again sick to my stomach. After class, I went up to her and told her I could not wear pants because of my religion. I knew that she already knew this, but she said, “okay,” and nothing else.

The next day I was called to the principal’s office. I was terrified, because I never got called into the office. The principal said that Ms. Pat had told him that all the girls wanted these particular pant suits and that I couldn’t wear them. She felt that it wouldn’t look right for me to be wearing something different and wanted me to drop out. I was devastated, but I was so meek and humiliated by the fact that I was different that I just quietly dropped out and never spoke of it to anyone. I am not sure if my parents even knew. Nobody went to school to demand my rights; I just went away. To this day, I get a bad taste in my mouth when I remember this episode.

For so many years, I failed to really share who Jesus was to me because I was so embarrassed by how I looked. I believe that it hampered my witness more than it helped. The dress code was one of the most important parts of my faith. It was a sign of whether I was saved or lost. If you saw a Pentecostal lady in pants or with a haircut, then you would say that they were backslidden and pray that Jesus didn’t come back before they repented. There was no freedom in Jesus–just lots of legalistic rules.

When I was about twenty-three years old, I quit adhering to the dress code of my church. I had married a Baptist man, and started attending church with him. I still felt guilty, though, and was afraid that God might be displeased. Sometime in 1998, I was sitting in my bedroom folding clothes when the song Mercy Said No by Greg Long came on the radio. It was a “light bulb” moment for me. The words struck me, and it absolutely changed my whole theology in a single instant.

Chorus
Mercy said no
I'm not gonna let you go
I'm not gonna let you slip away
You don't have to be afraid
Mercy said no
Sin will never take control
Life and death stood face to face
Darkness tried to steal my heart away
Thank you Jesus
Mercy said no
Bridge
And now when heaven looks at me
It's through the blood of Jesus
Reminding me of one day long ago

The bridge part of the song really clinched it for me. I realized He cannot see my sins, because they are covered by His blood. It just became abundantly clear–Jesus loves me with such a great and massive love. He loves me no matter what. I don’t have to dress a certain way to win His approval. I don’t have to do just the right number of “good” things in order to get to Heaven. If I do something and royally mess up, He isn’t going to give up on me; he isn’t going to let me go. Fifteen years have passed since that day, and I now cannot understand the theology of “losing your salvation.” It is just as foreign to me as eternal security or “once saved, always saved” used to be. I am now truly free from condemnation and shame, because I know I have the forever love of Jesus.

Jesus Loves You!

I was reading a magazine several years ago and there was testimonial from a woman who was saved later in life. She started out by saying “My husband and I were in our 40’s when we went to a marriage seminar and learned that Jesus loved us and we were saved.” My heart was pierced, because this lady had lived in the United States of America for over 40 years before she heard Jesus loved her. I thought about how I have known about and felt the love of God all of my life. I can’t remember when I learned Jesus loved me; I have just known from the womb. I grew up singing about it, hearing about, and reading about, and my daughter has been bestowed with that very same blessing.

When we think about evangelism, we sometimes think we have to get into deep theological discussions with people. We sometimes shy away from witnessing because we might not “have all the answers.” I challenge you to not forget to simply tell them “Jesus loves you”. It seems so simple that it couldn’t possibly work, but what if they have never been told? What if the concept of anyone loving them is so foreign that it would rock their world. Everyone, at their very core, needs the love of Jesus. We need Jesus’ love more than we need money, food, air, or water. He is our Savior!

Winning Is More Fun

Hannah Diggs is the blonde in the middle

My daughter started a new school last year and was able to join the Quizbowl team.  Last year the team didn't do very well and they didn't win any trophies.   This year they have two new members and have also become more acustomed to the pressure of the game.  So far this year they have played in two tournaments and placed 4th out of 16 teams both times.  Hannah has been so ecstatic that they won a trophy--it didn't matter that it was 4th place--they got a trophy.  When the team is winning, it makes me want to stand up and cheer and scream.  Which is not acceptable at a Quizbowl tournament, and really stinks.  The other day Hannah and I realized something--Quizbowl is more fun when you win.  There is something innately competitive within us.  We like to win, and nobody plays to lose.  The cool thing about being a Jesus follower is that you can always be a winner.  It may not mean you will get a cool trophy or blue ribbons, but you will always be a winner with Jesus.  So if you want to have more fun in life--follow Jesus.

Who Owns You?

I saw this poem on Facebook and was immediately struck in the heart, because I do not believe that I can claim my life as my own.  I believe that I gave my life to God many years ago and He owns me and He has all rights to do as He wishes with my life.  I have seen this saying before, always posted by Christians and it really bothers me.  I have decided to rewrite the poem to be more accurate. 

"The best day of my life is the one where I decided that my life was not my own.  No apologies or excuses, only God to lean on, rely on, and praise.  The gift of life He gave me, and it is an amazing journey.  He alone is responsible for the quanity and quality of it.  The day I gave Him my life is the day my life really began!"

Can You Hear God?

For thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength: Isaiah 30:15

I have been thinking a lot lately about silence. I have discovered that I am addicted to noise and having my brain engaged and focused on something at all times. God has been trying to speak to me about listening. We can’t hear if we aren’t silent. It really isn’t a conversation when we do all the talking or we are focused on something else. I think we spend much of our relationship with Christ just talking to Him and never listening to Him. We tell him what we want Him to do; we tell Him what He needs to do; sometimes we ask him what He wants us to do, and then we get up and turn on the television or look at our phone. Maybe He wants us to just sit in silence and listen.

How do you listen to God? Are you like Samuel, who didn’t know who was calling out to him? Are you like Jonah, who ran away when he heard God’s plan? Are you like Peter–in denial? Are you like Sarah, who laughed at God's plan and came up with her own alternative plan? Or are you like Abraham when he offered Isaac–immediately obedient? I know for me, I always second guess the voice of God.  Was it His voice or was it the crazy loon in my head?  Surely God doesn't want me to do that.  How do we know if it is really God and not some harebrained scheme of our own creation? 

In the past two weeks, I keep reading and hearing things about the hungry people of the world. Everywhere I turn, it seems that I am being bombarded with doing something about the hungry.  I am feeling so convicted and guilty about the amount of food I have and I just can no longer ignore that there are literally hundreds of millions of people going hungry everyday.   One way we can know it is God's voice is its repetitiveness.  In the Bible, when God is trying to make a point, he repeats things.  When you seem to hear, see, and run into something at every turn and it also agrees with the word of God, then maybe you should pay attention.

Another way we can judge if it's God's voice is that it will always agree with His Word.  God will never ask you to do something contrary to His Word.  He is the same yesterday, today and forever it says in Hebrews 13:8.  A good sign is if it is something that Jesus was passionate about. Jesus was passionate about feeding people. There are two different miracles in the Bible that speak of feeding multitudes with a small amount. In the Lord's prayer He says "Give us this day our daily bread". He knows that we must have food to live, and he cares about the needs of his people. Why am I so blessed, and others are not? I believe it is so that I can bless those who have not.

Jesus was passionate about loving people especially the needy people.  This world has taught us to take care of ourselves and not bother others, but that is not what God had in mind.  He wanted us to all take care of each other.  Sometimes a person will pop into my head and I will stop and pray for them, and then I may even call them, send them a card, or contact them in some form.  Stop right now and ask God to speak to you, to lead and guide you into what He wants you to do.  Afterwards, make a point to listen and then trust that you heard from God.  Let's be obedient to the words He speaks to our hearts. 

25 Random Things About Me

I posted this as a Note on Facebook back in 2009, but as I reread it, I realized that this really does still describe who I am--probably more so now. 

1.  I really love Jesus and I really love people. I love to meet new people and make new friends.
2.  I always feel inferior so I push myself to be better and take on more than I should.
3.  I found out in June, 2008, that I am allergic to milk and eggs. This limits what I can put in a mouth, but I eat plenty of the food I can.
4.  I love chocolate! It can be eaten in a form that does not include milk or eggs.
5.  I used to walk in downtown Hot Springs and on the Promenade after 11:00 p.m. with some other girlfriends, and I now think that was really stupid.
6.  I’m nosy. I think everything needs my assistance. I was checking other babies diapers when I was in the nursery myself.
7.  I’m a really bad piano player, but a pretty good typist. The trouble is--there isn’t a need for bad piano players.
8.  I didn’t own a television until I was 21, and I don’t watch much TV now because I think it is a big contributor to the moral decline of our nation.
9.  I hate being told you have to vote a certain way in order to be a Christian. I think both parties have christian/unchristian issues. I’m a liberal in government and a conservative in morals.
10.  I hate racism of any kind. It is ungodly, it is wrong, and if you are racist you need to get to know Jesus better. He was not racist.
11.  I've become a “green freak”. I want to help save the world. If you don't like people who are "green", then get to know Jesus better. He created the world, and wants us to take care of it.
12.  I’ve learned that God is the God of people and not denominations.
13.  I thought being a “step”-parent was hard, and then found out it was just the parent part that was hard.
14.  I have a step-father, step-mother, 2 step-brothers, 2 step-sons, I’m a step-mom, and I’m my own Grandpa. . . . .
15.  I wrote a research paper on laughter in college and it was published on the web. http://home.hiwaay.net/~garson/laughter.htm
16.  My fondest memory of my youth is laughing with my mom. We would laugh so hard that we would forget what we were laughing about and then laugh because we didn’t know what we were laughing about.
17.  I’ve never been out of the USA.
18.  I’ve never flown before.
19.  I still want to go to Law School.
20.  My husband is 17 years older than me, but I am more mature.
21.  I love to sing in church, despite the fact that I get so nervous I can barely breathe while doing it.
22.  I am ashamed of how much myself, and others in this blessed country waste everyday.
23.  I work with my husband everyday (for 20 years, but only for 18 as husband and wife) and we are still married.
24.  I’m incredibly disturbed by the amount of Christian couples who are divorcing these days, and wish they could discover that the answer is not in finding another man or woman. The problems will not go away with divorce–they just generally increase.
25.  I'm a social media addict.

Are You Riddled With Fear?

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. Joshua 1:9

We have all heard and maybe memorized the Ten Commandments and probably feel like the Bible is full of rules of things for us to do and not to do. You might be surprised to know that the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear Not” and “Be Not Afraid”. Together they appear approximately 88 times in the Bible. God tells Abraham, Hagar, Jacob, Joshua, Daniel, Joseph and Mary and many others to “Fear Not!” He speaks through Joseph and Moses, and many prophets of Israel, saying the same words. He also speaks to you, saying “fear not” and “be not afraid.”

We are a society riddled with fear and controlled by anxiety and worry. Think about your life and how fear rules you. We are afraid we will have any number of calamities to befall us. Some of those fears will come true, but most never will. We are afraid we will fail if we try, and we are afraid we will succeed. We are afraid of growing old, yet we are afraid of dying. We are afraid of loving and committing and then being hurt, and at the same time we are afraid we are not loved and never will be. When we have children, we open a whole new area to fear and worry about. The fears never stop no matter how old you are. Some people are so controlled by fear they fail to experience life and fail to live a productive life. God knows that when we are crippled by fear, we are unable to be useful to ourselves or anyone else. We fear and dread the death of our mortal bodies more than anything else. We try to care for them and keep them alive as long as possible. Matthew 10:28 says, “fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. . . .” Jesus has already conquered death; therefore, we are victorious. When we cease to exist on this earth, we will continue to exist with Jesus. We have already died, and now we live in Christ. “Fear not, for I am with thee . . .”, saith the Lord (Isaiah 43:5).

Headed to Forty

“Oh, Lordy, Look Who’s 40!” is a stale idiom that is only funny to people who aren’t having a birthday. I have encouraged friends who were turning 40 and looked toward my own impending day and thought–“this is no big deal.” Frankly, I am grateful to have reached this age. I have seen many examples in my life of people who were not even allowed 40 years. Yet as the day keeps swiftly approaching, I feel a sense of impending doom. I always said this wouldn’t happen to me, that I would just have a big party and enjoy the day. I really do like my life, most of the time. As always there are things I would change if I could, but some things are as they are.

Why does this happen to seemingly everyone at this monumental birthday? Probably because at 40 you tend to be stuck right in the middle of your life. You feel bored, tired and ready to move on, but you know that the day after you turn 40 will be just like the day before. We tend to feel stuck in a job that is not profitable for us to leave. We may have children that we are toting around to ball games or other school activities. Maybe time alone is so infrequent that when you get it, you don’t know what to do with it. When we feel stuck, we sometimes start thinking of what we can do to move ourselves out of the rut. Sometimes people end up making stupid mistakes and ruining the life they had and end up no happier than they were before. So, as I travel down the road to 40, with my eyes wide open, I am looking to my God. He made me and He knows why I want to cry and run away and hide. He knows how many years I have left, and how they will unfold. He knows the situations that make me feel suffocated and stuck and I am waiting for Him to move me.

Some ways that I feel God moving me at the moment are to get healthy. It’s not news to me that I needed this, but I have begun to feel the urgency of it. I keep hearing of people in their 40's having strokes and heart attacks, and I’ve just realized that I am there. Another way God is moving me is to listen more to Him. I can’t know what He is wanting me to do if I don’t listen. I tend to fill up every moment with noise. It may not sound noisy, but I engage my brain constantly. I am reading or interacting on social media and sometimes the silence can be just as noisy as sound. We must pull ourselves away in order to hear God’s voice. I can’t complain that I don’t know what God wants if I didn’t wait for His answer. It’s been over an hour since I checked in on Twitter, yet the world still revolves.

Psalm 34:8 says “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” I dedicated my life to God many years ago, but in the hullabaloo of my life I have taken control of parts of it again. I really like my social media–in large quantities. I sometimes feel so bored with the same old, same old that I can’t motivate myself to even do those things that are required. So as I sit in the quiet and listen to God, I also ask that He strengthen my resolve to break bad habits and do better. I pray that he will refresh my zest for the life I have and help me to give it all I have once again. I hope to spend the next 40 years seeking God and taking refuge in Him.

Be Bold, Take a Stand

In Daniel Chapter 1 we see a group of Israelites, God’s chosen people, are taken into captivity by the King of Babylon, and then Ashpenaz, the chief Enuch, is ordered to take the best of the best–the nobles of the Israelites–and begin to groom them for service to the Babylonian King. We can only assume–that for the most part–if you had spoken to any one of these Israelites, they would have admitted to believing in the one true God, Yahweh. They may have also, and probably did, believe in other gods. The Israelites had been flirting with the world and the false gods around them for so long that they were beginning to look less and less like Israelites.

The Israelites in their covenant with God were strictly forbidden from eating certain types of meat–meats which the King of Babylon served freely and abundantly at his table. Daniel did not want to defile himself by doing something that he knew His God had forbidden him from doing. But of this whole group of Israelites in captivity, we only see one boy step up and take a stand for his God, and then of that entire group, only three others follow suit and take a stand with him.

Is it possible that you are in a group of Jesus believers who are starting to look a lot like the world around you? Can you tell the difference between yourself and the Babylon you live in? Sometimes we get so comfortable and used to the way we live, and the believers around us are living in the same lackadaisical, way that we don’t feel we are wrong. If you will listen closely, God is calling you out of your comfort zone into a life that is far more exciting and asking you to take a stand for your generation and those thereafter. Stand up and be different from the Babylon around you–Be like Jesus.