Explanation

I thought before I moved on to other topics I might give an explanation as to why I choose to entitle the last 13 Post as “What Can Be Said”.

When I started this series I really had no idea as to why I chose this title for the topic, other than I hoped it would cause people to be curious enough to read into what was being said.
However, somewhere within sharing my past and being where God wanted me to be I began to see how the events of the past are directly related to the understanding of present-day.

For years I wondered what God had in mind for me but not enough to do anything about it. Not enough to be active in a spiritual way, or to be where He wanted me to be and under the Authority of those who are now over me. I had an understanding of who God was and when I started to return to Church and be where God wanted me to be I gained a new understanding of God. Over the last two years or so that understanding changed again. I moved from one understanding to another understanding or as the Word of God says, moving from one type of glory to another type of glory. Praises be to God.

Still, with all possible humility I say that what ever distance I have come spiritually speaking, there are depths of understand that I can not currently fathom.

So to answer the question, “what can be said”?
We have a Sovereign God who demands our obedience and our loyalty and our devotion. And how better than to show you in the Word of God.

1 Peter 2:9-10 But you are (A)A CHOSEN RACE, A (B)royal PRIESTHOOD, A (C)HOLY NATION, (D)A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you (E)out of darkness into His marvelous light;
10(F)for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.

A) 1 Peter 2:9 : Is 43:20; Deut 10:15
B) 1 Peter 2:9 : Is 61:6; 66:21; 1 Pet 2:5; Rev 1:6
C) 1 Peter 2:9 : Ex 19:6; Deut 7:6
D) 1 Peter 2:9 : Ex 19:5; Deut 4:20; 14:2; Titus 2:14
E) 1 Peter 2:9 : Is 9:2; 42:16; Acts 26:18; 2 Cor 4:6
F) 1 Peter 2:10 : Hos 1:10; 2:23; Rom 9:25; 10:19

What Can Be Said 013

Continuing with Post # 012, I am finding the part of my past that I wanted to write about is difficult to put into words, there is too much detail and not enough words. Sometimes the pictures of our memories are not easily put into words. As stated in the phrase, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I guess the challenge is going to know what to add and what to exclude.

“Even in the negative thought progress of one’s own depravity God will get your attention.” I had originally intended to put down in words every detail of how God had decided to get my attention, and how it had affected me spiritually. However, I think if I did that it would be more like glorifying me than glorifying God. I know that the, “old man” in me enjoys the idea of what your response would be concerning those events. Moreover, we are in no way here to glorify ourselves, but it is God Almighty whom the glory belongs.

To be completely truthful it wasn’t until some years had passed that I looked back and understood that God was tapping me on the shoulder and it was God telling me that I had strayed beyond the limitations of the flock. We are after all under Authority and we do have limitations. Indeed, we are free, but there are without doubt places that will be harmful for us to stray into.

I remember just before calling to God and just after thanking Him for saving me from each event, for “pulling me through” as it were, though that feeling of thankfulness didn’t stay long. I guess I just wasn’t ready to admit that I was angry over my physical condition. Moreover, I certainly was not ready to say I was sorry for my actions or my feelings.

I’m sure no one looks forward to the feeling of impending death; and fear that I felt was real but I’m not sure on some level it wasn’t what I really wanted. Not the fear, but the death. Life in it self can be miserable but having to live with the fact that you will never again have that that was taken away is (or was) beyond what could handle. In the simplicity of my mind, I knew I was saved, and in that gave a kind of comfort to the idea. I hated what I was and what I had become and I hated God for putting me in that situation.

I never did attempt to take my own life, not in the traditional ways. I simply continued on the path I was heading, slowly tearing down whatever was left.

The bright spot in this situation is that God did eventually get my attention and He did help me to come to terms with my physical condition. Although I still didn’t understand the, “why” in all this, God taught me that I could live this way and that I could worship Him this way. The breath the depth and the length of all this would take time and I was willing to wait.

It was 1998 when I finally started coming back to Church, yeah I had come a couple times a year for a while but I still remember the Sunday that I was sitting in Church and I realized that I had come two weeks in a row. Seems silly now but it was very important to me then. Yes, I still mess up and I still have questions but not as many as before. Thank you Lord.

What Can Be Said 012 (Camouflage)

The stealthiness of our own ignorance, although reproved often in the Word, is more often the one thing we spend the most time perfecting, rather than spending time on those things that could deepen our relationship with God. We could be working on our prayer lives, (or prayer relationship) or we could be working on opening ourselves to God so He can work on changing us and bringing us further from that point in our lives where we were once alienated from the Father.

I speak now of my own mind as I do not know the mind of others. I do not intend to give excuse or lay blame to the past, how I was raised or under what conditions. God has made me to be my own person in that, I am responsible for that which is my own understanding, my own choices. I allowed these choices to become an expanse, a place where I did not want God to be.

There are within me things that I tried cleverly concealing from God, small dark little secrets that I never wanted to come out. God in His wisdom brought them to the surface of my mind but I pushed them back and concealed them with a smile. In His desire for me to grow, He found them and put them in my remembrance but I camouflaged them with prayer and worship. God, again, uncovered them and put them in the path of my feet, I tried to step over, I tried to kick them aside, I tried to cover them up but they would not move. He was telling me I would not move forward until I was willing to deal with them, until I was willing to work through them with Him. I could not move forward or side step them, but I did move. I was not willing to be obedient, in the stealthiness of my flesh I chose to step backwards.

As is with most people who are not willing to see that God has their best interest in mind that first step is usually followed by a second and third step further into the realm of disobedience.

It’s amazing, (in an daunting sort-of-way) to become aware that you have gone from being angry at God to realizing that you have no feelings at all, while adopting all manor of worldly habits and phrases. However, that was just an illusion. Even in the negative thought progress of one’s own depravity God will get your attention.

What Can Be Said 011

I don’t know when things started to change for me, it seemed as though things were going well with the out patient therapy. At first, I would get a ride to the Hospital and after a while, I began to wheel myself down there a couple times a week. Somewhere in the midst of getting to know my family again and learning that, some limitations were more like innovative challenges I began to adjust to this new life style that had been superimposed on my life.

It is true that I began to adjust to the wheelchair and those other things that accompanied the paralysis but there was still a large part of me not adjusting. Thinking back, I suppose being a teenager at that time probably didn’t help the emotions I was feeling. It feels, now, as if I was alienated from everyone I knew. I am not sure this is the best explanation for the moods and daunting feelings that started so long ago and the feelings I used to keep me from God and keeping me from healing.

At first, it was little things like tossing a bowl of sliced pears on my then little brother (now just younger) for reasons I have long forgotten or getting into yelling matches with my mom and roaming the city until late in the evening just to keep me away from everyone.

I got so tired of people telling me how well I seemed to be handling “it”, whatever “it” was. I don’t think I ever told anyone that the smile that was on my face and the kind teenager everyone liked to talk about was nothing but a facade. It was nothing other than what I thought people wanted to see. I hid the fear and anguish for months but no matter how hard I tried to keep it in, it found its way out and unfortunately my family got the blunt end of all my emotions.

In addition, to make it worst, I began to get muscle spasms in my legs and stomach and of course, the typical response for such things was to medicate. The started me on a prescription of muscle relaxants, which just happened to be mood enhancers making it very difficult for anyone to want to stay around me for too long.

We stayed in Bangor until the next spring until a small insurance settlement was finally decided. There was thirty thousand dollars total, Ten went to the Lawyers Ten to the hospitals and Ten was given to my mom in guardianship. We took that money, put a down payment on a hunting cabin, and bought a large wood stove to heat with in cold weather. I don’t remember how we ended up back in the woods but we did. All I remember is when we went to look at it; it reminded me of our farm we had left behind. I remember the smell of the fir trees and the apple blossoms and something that could only be described as comfort. The comfort from being back in the woods. A feeling that was only a memory in my mind since before all this began. Things that could never be found among the concrete and blacktop of city life.

Finally, I thought! Back where I belonged! Sure, it wasn’t our farm and there were seven acres and not one hundred but there was enough room to live again.

So here, we were hauling water by the buckets again and using kerosene lanterns to light the cabin with again but the different was I wasn’t the one doing it. There was no cutting wood or hauling water for the obvious reasons. I just couldn’t do these things anymore. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter, I tried to get out and do what I could, I tried, but something just was not there anymore.

I thought I had found a way to re-bury those emotions that had been terrorizing me for the last months before we moved out here. I thought if I could just live, they would go away.

How often do we think if we could just show our good side and never let anyone know what we are truly feeling, that with enough time those thoughts, problems, or situations will simply go away? That’s the trap! (I’m not talking about dwelling on the past what I am talking about those things that we carry around with us like old, torn, banged up luggage bags). How often in the New Testament, is it recorded that Jesus knew their real thoughts? When we hide those thoughts and don’t work out our emotional problems we lie both to ourselves and to the One who knows all our thoughts. The problem can originate years age but it is what we are feeling now that needs to be dealt with.

It seems that after enough time passes and the anger that accompanies these old feelings builds large enough within us we tend to see all the negative things about the people around us. Because that is all we see in ourselves, especially in our Christian friends.

Eighteen years would go by before I would allow God to help me sort though those things.