Monday blessing
On Mondays I go to a bike class at 9am. I have to get there by 815 am to sign up and get a bike because it is so popular. So I spend the rest of the 45 min. and sit in the car. I usually read or pray etc. Today, I forgot the book I am reading so I turned on a CD I love to meditate on the Lord to and I was so overwhelmed by him all of a sudden...there are times when he does that...... he makes himself extremely vivid.
A memory of my visit to the ocean popped in my head of my girls and I looking for shells to bring back for friends and collages. I kept scolding my youngest daughter because she kept putting the broken shells in the bucket....."Only the pretty ones" I said, but she said, "I like the broken ones".
Then, I got this mind's eye, panoramic view of a beautiful field and all these broken pots in various stages of being cracked, broken and utterly shattered and I saw Jesus patiently walking among the pots holding the hem of his robe to form a pouch to place them in. This overwhelmed me so intensely I could not stop the tears.....I've never had an issue with crying;I think I have gone months and months without crying. Now, when I just think about the Lord, He reduces me to rubble. I went in to bike class with my sunglasses on, I was so self -conscious of my swollen eyes. This morning's solitude has left me with the impression of pure hope....don't give up, the Geat Tender Potter is not finished.

Praises to my precious Jehovah Shamah, the God who is there, the God who wants the broken ones.

Remembering Good and Noble things …….Philippians 3:8

I found this in a word document I had written the day I found out that Mr. Rogers died (I cried). I grew up glued to Mr. Rogers. I loved him ….my sister would say he bored her and he was probably too low tech for some kids (how sad is that?), but he was so gentle to me, a television fantasy father. I loved the make believe and he and Captain Kangaroo taught me to tie my shoes. I fell in love with him more when I found out he loved classical music and his wife was a concert pianist. I thought I would post this because it reminded me how important it is to live a gentle life of affirmation and deliberate love, to leave this world a melody that would remain in peoples hearts and minds….It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…..

Mr. Roger’s Sparrow song:

“We all have only one life to live on earth and through television we have the choice of encouraging others to demean this life or to cherish it in creative imaginative ways”. Fred Rogers

Things I learned from Mister Rogers:

I am the only one of me in the world
Everyone has something special about them
It is okay to be afraid or angry
Make believe is important
Hang up your sweater
Love and get to know your neighbor
Love yourself
Be gentle
Talk slower
There is a simple make-up song for all the things we experience
Listen
Be curious
Children have dignity

The Legend of the Thorn Bird

There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen and God in his heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of pain.......or so says the legend.

Thank you Jesus for the sweetest song that will be heard for eternity.

Clowning in Rome
I would like to join the reading club....I haven't read that one yet and would love to blog some thoughts, especially on Nouwen . I read Phil's Blog last night and wanted to say I look forward to him blogging more.

An Anniversary

It has been one year today that we moved from a 2500 square foot home to our 1488 square foot home. The differences in the mortgages is about as dramatic as the footage. We have done a lot to this little fixer upper. I am hoping our pool will be finished by my daughter's birthday in June. I think I will call it home for awhile and put more of my self and personality into it.

The anniversary brought back a memory when we were remodeling the kitchen . We basically had no where to put anything, there was no flooring in the whole house and Gregg, who cannot stand conflict, had to come out of his unflappable, easy going guy mode and go toe to toe with a slack jawed kitchen installer who was incompetent and had absolutely no integrity. After the confrontation, Gregg had to put in a full days work and the girls and I were left swimming through all the anger and profanity.

I was trying to come up with some creative way to put lunch together and I think I was standing in what might of been the general area of the potential kithchen pretty numb from the drama and my youngest daughter who was five at the time had been playing with her toy guitar and started singing this song she made up. I wrote it down because it was one of those moments when you know Jesus is breaking in ...simple and profound. I was humming it to myself today. In my opinion, 5 year olds are the best theologians ( she is six now and still pretty theologically brilliant).

You have to kinda sing the song to a little bit of a Mary Had a Lttle Lamb rhythm but not the melody.

God loves me more than Microwaves and eggs microwaves and eggs, microwaves and eggs
God loves me more than computers and rabbits computers and rabbits computers and rabbits
God loves me more than milk and crackers. I don't know why he just does

Do you love God for who he is, who he is, who he is, Do you love God for who he is ?
I don't know why I just do.


Thank you Lord for a roof over our heads, loving us and five year-olds

Contemplation: to view or consider with continued attention.

Contemplatives dwell on God. I think contemplation is communing, dare I say, having church with yourself. I am always drawn to read books about great Christian contemplatives. They learned how to live in the presence of God. They passed from "Christian Activity" to the higher call to be at home in the heart of God. This doesn't mean they just sat around all day contemplating their navels. It means they finally, through God's grace, were able to put the horse before the cart. They were able to genuinely serve their Lord because they fell in love with him in their prayer closets. Through celebrating him in their ordinary mundane lives, daily persevering through the distraction of self, intellect, vain thinking and religious dogma, they could receive him for who he was, not what he could do for them.

I have slowly come to realize I have often done church with people, but I have rarely done it with myself. I believe that God is requiring this discipline from me but I am avoiding it. I am not anti-communal or saying I should forsake meetings, but how can I share genuine community, when I can barely, on any consistent basis, sit alone quietly for five-ten minutes with Jesus without being distracted by my racing thoughts and vain thinking or sometimes becoming overwhelmingly fearful of confronting the vast chasm between him and me. How can I come together with my brethren offering a hymn or a teaching when I never really received it from the proper source to begin with.....I am just quoting some other person that did the time with God.....isn't that spiritual plagiarism?

Do I despise the meeting of the saints so much that I arrogantly neglect the necessary preparation done before the Holy Spirit on my face so that I may be of some true service to my brothers? I know we are to meet in simplicity with out pretense, but honestly, I have heard some of the most careless insensitive things said in community in the name of Jesus…..and regretfully they have often times come from my own lips.

When we authentically participate in the practice of the presence of Jesus, our lives mysteriously become a message to the world, to our brothers......to ourselves. We have spent so much time in that presence our "right being" instead of “right doing" becomes a well for the thirsty and a voice in the desert. Jesus Christ is so lifted up in our life that he draws men through our extraordinary, ordinary life. As it is, I am an expert in practicing the presence of me and the Christian imposter I have settled for.

My true battles are not with sin and suffering but with the self which tells me the cares of material life and Christian activity are priority... that I need to answer this special call on my life ……. I have NO special work to do; I have no special call!! The only call on my life is to Jesus Christ alone and total devotion to him. How many times have I left him hungry and thirsty right under my nose when I have been off doing the things that I thought were Christian? Why do I continue to jump on every spiritual/ideological bandwagon when Jesus is left standing alone at the altar in the tabernacle of my heart? He has something to say that is bread for me everyday ( Isaiah 30:15) but I will have no part of it. I continue to seek out those who would fill my cup. This is why I must stop. I must return to his temple and meet with him, persevere with him in the hard things he will say to me and melt in the pure love that I will find there. I must go to him before I go to my brothers or the world. I must seek him in his temple.

Lord Jesus, may I truly come to know what it means to love you with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength.

Vacations are good for the soul

I am back from my Mother’s day weekend in Carlsbad California. I absolutely love it there. I could live there and start my third career as a writer if I had 850,000 bucks for a 1300sq. ft, two bedroom on the ocean and had any actual talent for writing. Everything seems so much more alive there, me included…… I think this desert rose is fading and could use a transplant. But as it is, I don’t have the cash or talent, so I will make due by stealing little weekends with my family at the Hilton Hotel courtesy of Gregg’s frequent flyer miles, spending hours on the beach sandcastling, shell and rock collecting and watching sunsets, huddled together.

Vacations are good for the soul, mine in particular, they remove me from the things that steal my joy. Because I struggle with a mood disorder, I have made peace that I will rarely feel happy. But ironically, because of the thorn and my Jesus, I have learned much joy. It is important that believers seek to know the difference between the two….Jesus was a man of great sorrow but had abundant joy.

As of late, I could feel the little things stealing my joy and I was worried a little because the usual helps for this were not working; I just felt total despair. The worst thing about emotional and mental illness is that there is no tumor on the X-ray, no blood results or deformity, just the subjective feeling of pain and despair, it is lonely and disturbing. But the trip to the ocean seemed, and I hope for a length of time, to bring light. I had a great restoration of joy as I stood in the ocean repeating the second and third verses from the 23rd psalm….even though the waters were not that still, He restored my soul. I remembered who I was, a beloved daughter of Abba. Emotions, when they get out of balance, make you forget who you are.

I wrote a poem that started on my first sunset on the beach and ended with the last:

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself.
My soul’s heaviness, absorbed by the sounds of ancient water, receded like waves which build, crash and retreat back into deep calm

Of all ilk, the seabirds sailed the cool breezes, oblivious to the sandcastlers and activities below.
One old pelican nobly coasted on a lively current as time had taught him not to waste precious energy flapping about like his younger brothers.
He had sojourned long enough to learn not to strive against the wind but to glide along with it.

As the sun surrendered to the horizon, it danced like a golden bead upon the pale gray expanse casting its shimmering radiance across the evening sky.
It surrendered to me too.
It let me gaze fully upon it without searing eye and soul as it would if it were higher and earlier in the day.
I thankfully watched it in its vulnerable state as it slowly melted into another part of the world.

At the last sliver of orange, the old pelican, arrow like from his heights, dove vertically into the white caps, disappearing temporarily and then reappearing satisfied and bobbing with the rhythm of the tide until he flapped his great old wings and returned to the clouds.

I went to the ocean and was lifted out of myself to the sweet surrender of things greater than I,
which in their time and grace, will surrender to me.

Eva Regine Schubert

That is the name of my mother. Today is her birthday. She was born in 1936 in a very small but historical city outside of Dresden in Germany. Her formative years were spent in bomb shelters and missing most of school because she had Lymph tuberculosis. She was a teutonic beauty....Hitler's ideal child. Her father Rudolph, was a butcher from a rich family and some thought he was related to Franz Schubert the composer....He had bi-polar illness and my mother was his favorite person and he hers. Her mother Lydia was a a loving person. I met her once when I was 12 (1972) and we lived with her for three months behind the Berlin wall because my grandfather was dying of lung cancer and wanted to see my mother before he died. She had escaped to East Germany during the midnight riots in the 50's and was not allowed to go back until the 70's

My mother wanted to be a star. Her first English words were, I want to be Marilyn Monroe... but, she got pregnant and married an American Airforce officer and had two children, my sister and I. Over the next five years, she lived in west Germany and North Africa and eventually ended up in Las Vegas in the early 60's where she and my Father divorced. She could barely speak english and got a job as a cocktail waitress to the high rollers at the Golden Nugget during the heydey of Las Vegas.....her beauty and charm opened many doors for her. She worked hard had a maid for us and saved a huge amount of money. Then she met my second father....the Polish math genius ( she loved smart men) who made a living playing poker and 21 because he knew how to count the cards ...eventually, certain houses wouldn't let him play, he was winning too much. Before he realized his gambling genius, He was a navigator in the merchant marines during WWII. They became involved and lived together in an apartment off of Desert Inn road until he went on a gambling and drinking binge and lost all of my mother's savings.....she made him marry her and move us to San Francisco where he would go back on the ships and pay her back every penny.

While living in California my mother's bi-polar illness began to surface. She would sleep all day , the house was always badly kept and then she would say and do inappropriate things. When she was in the manic phase she would stay up late, drink Martinis and paint huge flowers on bamboo mats, she was a gifted artist. I knew when she was in her up mood because she would wear her blue velvet cocktail dress and would play Glen miller records. She would wear blood red listick that was called Tabu and her white skin and almost white hair made her look like a goddess to me and I was facsinated by her. At these times my step dad was out at sea carrying cargo during the Vietnam War. So, mother was alone most of the time living in her own world belonging to nobody.

Eventually My step-dad could not keep a handle on his drinking and gambling and again he devastated our family financially and he moved us back to Vegas where he and my mother divorced. My sister and I, while in California, had become ballet dancers, trained on scholarship in the San Francisco Ballet school and got a job working in a production show at the original MGM. We basically divorced our parents too and our own adventures began. Mother went on to marry a sweet Italian guy with ties to the mafia and he died in 1987 leaving my mother quite alone and now in a rather delusional state.

She lived with my husband and I until she qualified for Senior housing before she was a senior because of her devastaing illness and lives there reclusively today, not really wanting much to do with my sister and I. The last mother's day I spent with her she thought we were driving her out to the desert to kill her and called the cops on me because she thought there was no food in the fridge and my children were not in school ( I homeschool). She never answers her phone ,she just sends my children cards for their birthday and holidays and the only way I know she is alive is by calling the landlord to see how she is.

So today is her birthday and I will send her a card that will get there late. She will never acknowledge getting it. She does not want to belong to anybody. I hope I have not been dishonorable to her in writing her story. I still love her and grieve that I have never and will never be close to her because that is what mental illness, left untreated and misunderstood does to people and their families....their dreams die along with their personality and identity and they must choose to belong to nobody.

Lord Jesus please belong to my Mother

Welcome Greg Hubbard

Looking forward to hearing your soul breathe.

I find myself answering to the cross ( my life and its unique trials) that Jesus has asked me to carry while following him, in the same negative pattern. I can't seem to stop the familiar reaction to the "little foxes" in my path. It is like I am an addict . I speak in anger when I know I should not, I despair over temporal things when I know I should not, I React,React, React......I want the mind of Christ, I want the fruit of the Spirit, I want to RESPOND to my temptations based on truth, but today, I have chosen to be the strung out emotional addict to anger, bitterness, and frustration...I was okay this morning, but then I just shifted.......... started to believe the lies. This may be a rapid cycling day, nevertheless... I have become utterly disgusted with myself and I am going to lie down and have my daughter read her library book to me..........

Romans 7: 24-25 Wretched man that I am.......who will rescue me from this body of death? ( not my doctor, not my husband, not my church)..... Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord.


Lord forgive me, I am a sinner.
I thank you, because you do not love me as I should be, but as I am
I know you are Lord, even when I fail....be my victory, be my truth...help me replace the wallpaper of lies in my mind with your truth.

I'm doing a little redesigning of my blog....and Gregg said he will help with making it more cool, like my friend Joe's. Hey, Kelly, want to come over so Gregg can help make your blog cool, like Joe's???? I'm going for a simpler look. I want it to look more like a journal and I prefer the font.

I took the test

I have never seen or heard of the X-men but the test results said I was Jean Grey whoever she is. But I have always wanted to read minds......

Places of Honor

Luke 14:8: When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.

I have always been fascinated with the dynamics and intricacies of group interaction. There seems to be a phenomenon that when people gather ,the collection takes on its own personality based on the individuals of that group. The stronger personalities primarily mold this group persona and are facilitated by the more passive ones that are vicariously energized by the dominate ones....yet still ,strong or passive, all personalities vie for that place of honor within the group. We all want some form of recognition, no matter our place. I think this idea runs across the sacred and profane. I am not saying this is good or bad....... it just is. Our egos demand attention whether in a prayer group or or bridge club.....selflessness is a rare bird.

But Jesus, as always, takes us out of what "just is" and makes us pay attention to our heart drives and ambitions ( a true teacher).

In Luke he is obviuosly saying humble yourself and you may be pleasantly surprised and avoid humiliation. But I always look for the between the line or the less obvious lesson.
What if he is saying hey, don't make the drive of your life a 'seat of honor' you may want to focus on the one who is more distinguished than you. This is where all the life is. Now we all know that God's idea of 'distinguished' vastly differs from our definition. There is often that one person in the group who may not be one of the beautiful people, exegetically swift, or the passive fan....they may be the one who is most wretched...in the most pain ( his favorites) and we will not recognize this one unless we are sitting in the 'lowest place' ( on a regular basis).

The Pharisees missed Messiah himself in his lowly state. So busy in the places of honor being the movers and the shakers, they couldn't see him because in his first journey, he came as a suffering wretched traveller and to the religious elite this is just another bum to put at the "kids" table.

How many times have we missed the distinguished of God in our "gatherings" no matter what their nature or purpose because we are so busy looking to be in the seat of honor or applauding the imposters in them? Was Jesus saying take the worst seat in the house so that he could have a following of severe, repressed ascetics who could live on a material and philosophical shoesting for some afterlife pie in the sky????? I don't think so. I think he wanted us to experience full life starting on this side of our true home and that taking the lowest place has the best view.... you'll never miss the distinguished of God and you may be pleasantly surprised ( not to mention have the ride of your life).

Lord forgive me for still coveting the place of honor in my heart. Teach me and take me to the 'lowest places' so that I won't miss one of your distinguished ones. Lord this is a dangerous prayer isn't it?

Little girl's and their Daddy's

My husband works too hard. He has three videos due for intel and two freelance accounts going. We are going on the third week of working the weekends and working late into the night during the week and it has finally caught up with Daddy's girls.

My youngest one is laying in her room crying for daddy. On this beautiful spring day she wants daddy to stay home and do their favorite things......jump on the trampoline, wrestle and do collage art, but he has to edit and this is one too many weekends without him. It breaks my heart. But Monday is the big event and he will finish up during the week with freelance and then we will go away to the beach and he will be ,daddy build a castle; daddy wrestle me; daddy look at the waves and sunset.......daddy hold me.....little girls love their daddy's

So I must go to my little one and hope that a mommy hug and a trip to the library and park will cheer her up. But every mom knows nothing can satisfy when we just need our daddy.

Jesus always be our ABBA

What I am going to do on my Summer vacation.

I homeschool my two daughters and today is our last day of school!!!!!!!!!!! Not that learning ever stops in the Stokes household but today I turn the last page of my teacher's manual and put down the textbooks. Before I rose to let the cat out, I lay in bed thinking of all the things I am going,or rather, want to do on my Summer vacation:

Take a creative writing class; get a certification to teach the New York City Ballet Workout; Study Greek and Hebrew theology; Go on vacation to the beach, mountains or camping...... whatever appeals; attend a homeschool convention ; workout like crazy ; read and read and read ( especially to the girls --this suffers in the school year) learn to cook some new recipes; spend more time with friends and family ;sew slip covers........wow i'm exhausted already ...If I do only three of these it will be a great summer.

I have butterflies in my stomach, I am elated to be off the treadmill......

Did I mention the Stokes are going to the ocean next weekend! It is our gift to each other. We are going to make sand castles, eat junk food sleep in a really expensive hotel ( we got a comp) and go antiquing.......yahooooooooooo! ( you can tell I don't get out much)

One of my favorite poets is W. B. Yeats . He was a true Irishman and bohemian and wrote some of the most imaginative poetry ever (The lake Isle of Innisfree, When you are Old, the Sorrow of Love). He wrote a lot about the wisdom and the fact of growing old and as of late I have been pondering the exchange of youth and all its angst, neuroses, identity confusion, and anger with the wisdom and peace of aging. It seems that all things of value relate to sacrifice . You must let go of the one to receive the necessary other. This is my favorite of Yeats on getting wisdom with time. I find it comforting.

The Coming of Wisdom with Time

Though the leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

The poem says to me that there is one simple source ....one simple truth ...even though there is much superfluity that bombards us in the green years.
In line two the word "lying" can be seen as untruthful or recumbant but I think it means untruthful because of the word "truth" in the fourth line.
So it seems that youth or fruitfulnesss blinds us or distracts us from the 'ROOT" but inevitably we must let go and wither into it.

Lord let me wither gracefully into your truth

b>Transformation

This past weekend was one of those great 'hours' when I became pleasantly aware of the vivid work of the Holy Spirit. It is so easy to fall into believing that our spiritual journey is like a tedious trip through the desert by car on the way to a mountainlake vacation.....

nothing ...nothing ..more cactus and joshua trees ....road kill ....bugs on the wind shield.... nothing nothing..... someone flips you off for driving in the passing lane.... nothing nothing......ah! pine trees we must be getting close.....flowers.... more trees blocking the sun and then the great gray stones rising out of the earth suddenly narrowing our path and the big expanse of blue still water.......We're here now we can have fun!

We act as if the destination is the important thing ( will we ever get there)....this is not so. It is when we are seeing nothing that I believe that the great teacher, comforter, counselor, giver of truth and above all the transformer is bringing about the miraculous

I spent the weekend with someone from my past. And in the past, this meeting would have been very painful, angry and uneasy for me internally. The external would be polite, accomodating, superficial conversation with all the chaos and confusion of a hurricane interiorly. And then the meeting would be over for the next odd number of years.

But the faithful one in his wonderful sense of Kairos had been silently, patiently, cultivating a metamorphosis over a period of time changing turbulence and masked ammenities to utter peace and compassion towards this person. I did not seek, work for, or desire this metamorphosis..... it just came about, a bloom in a dry valley. As I was thinking on this, I was aware that over the past months before this meeting, there were some signs that my cocoon moment was near. I just had not put it together.
Transformation is the Spirit's great labor in the lives of believers and the heart of the gospel. Our transformation is to be regarded as Holy, mysterious and out of our realm.

However, many Christians like to reduce this transcendent act to a work of man through program and exercise or intentional calculated behaviors. I am not talking about the spiritual disciplines, the Lord himself modeled them for the purpose to be at one with his precious Father, the only true motivation for them. We say, " if I do this, I'll change that thing that is a poor example for Christ." WE decide, or worse, other people said to be our brother or sister in Christ, decide the path that needs to be repented of or taken....we try to force the bud open (read a great poem on this in Ragamuffin Gospel).
How dare we give our beloved sisters and brothers in Christ a pamphlet or a program with a list of questions and activities that will keep them in some pseudo-transformation so that they will appear changed, but in the eyes of God they are a tangled and fruitless vine...... because they seek change, mission and blessings as the end ,not Jesus himself ; they know him not. We continually release these 'workers' into the field only to see them damage the harvest and become bitter and disillusioned about themselves and God.

Three or four years ago the Lord gave a vision to me from Matthew 11:28. He so kindly in his piercing way told me.....you don't know me. This can be a shock to someone who had supposedly been walking with the Lord for many years . But there the words and truth were. I learned from Him deeply and personally through no group, no method, minute by minute what it was to know him ; to recieve and remain in the yoke meant only for me. To leave behind the phantom of belief in a belief and Christian ambitions( beware of these). I retuned to my first love. I learned how to Behold the Lord, to see that precious face and feel the sweetness that only his presence can bring......I learned to Abide. From this low-tech experience came great fecundity that may be more inward than outward. My only desire is Jesus and that I will drink him to the dregs. And perhaps he will ocaisionally use my carcass in HIS battle and purposes.

In closing, I believe that the blossom that bloomed for me this weekend was like the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:26. It brings out the truth that it is God's responsibilty to transform us in to the new creation. Our resposibility is to drink his blood and eat his flesh and stop seeking our fecundity as the end----this is dishonoring to him, only pleases ourselves and man and will never bring authentic change. We will only continue to keep driving through the desert, numb to its signs and wonders, focused only on why aren't we there yet?

Jesus I thank you for your unfailing love and faithfulnesss. I thank you for the unexpected, effortless harvest you brought me this weekend. May I never assume anything and remain abandoned to you.

Amen

I just read Kelly Parker's blog so honestly and eloquently written about the battle of the Palmer family with cancer.
She titled her Blog "Blog Knots" due to her anxiety about remaining in unread -blog- limbo and boring people. If you read it, you will find her cares were for not!

And I say Amen to her thoughts and honesty.

Tears for a stranger

I read the blog of Mark Palmer. I have been praying for his wife and I mentioned her battle with stomach cancer in my last entry. When I got home from a meeting last night I checked in with his blog to see how the surgery to remove the cancer went. The prognosis is bad. They were unable to remove anything and have given her three months to live. I am heartbroken for them...But ,I know that Our Redeemer Liveth and has the last word on all things.

May the community of believers be praying for this young mother, her husband and friends and family.

Dark Night

I had a bad night last night, some call them dark nights of the soul I call them evil. I couldn't fall asleep so I began to pray for a woman undergoing surgery for ovarian cancer that has seeded to her stomach and another woman battling brain cancer. Their stories have touched my life and I was thinking of those who love them and asking the Lord to help them in these trials.

I finally fell asleep, I think, at about 2 am only to wake up at 3am in what I call one of my "episodes." They are really difficult physical and spiritual battles. It feels like there is an electrical current running through my body and I feel like my mind will snap and my thinking is very negative towards my self.

I tried to say the 23rd psalm but I could barely remember it and so, when it is that bad, I just pray, Have mercy on me Jesus. I eventually fell back asleep but had really bad dreams. And then I woke up at 7am.
Strangely enough, when I have bad nights and I finally am able to find refuge in sleep I am awakened by the early sunrise..it is very important for me to know the morning came after the dark night. I think it is similar to God's rainbow.

I have not had a bad night in such a long time and when it came I felt a little abandoned by the Lord. I was at a place where I thought that those nights would be behind me....... thy will be done......But here I am ; it is morning and I know that my Redeemer Liveth--

Those words kept pouring over my mind as I was praying for those women last night. One of them had said that during a time of worship the Lord had given her a vision into the deeper meaning her disease of cancer had for her family and community----I believe that this is the greatest miracle in our trials ...that the Lord himself is our vision and he is present----what a friend he is.

Though I walk ( and we all will walk) through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are WITH me; your rod and staff comfort me.

Jesus is called by God in Matthew; Immanuel...God with us. Though I don't like to be theological because I am so understudied, one teacher struck me when she said that Immanuel is a spiritual concept better described as the "with us of God." Jesus in his coming became and remains the very unique "with us-ness" of the Holy One, we can never be alone again....this concept hits the pavement when you are suffering. The greatest gift the Lord gives is his presence. It is also the greatest gift that people give to each other.

So, to the Great Shepherd I pray for those in the dark night that they will vividly sense in their hearts and minds the" WITH US "of God. Be our vision in all times sweet Jesus. Thank you for the things you choose to bring to us that cause us to see you and you alone.