IS YOUR BODY TRYING TO TALK TO YOU?

I honestly never gave this subject much thought. My body and I didn't really communicate-I guess you could say that we pretty much weren't on speaking terms. It didn't tell me when it was full, didn't tell me that it needed to exercise, didn't tell me much of anything. Or maybe it did but I wasn't listening to it. About the only thing it regularly told me was that it was hungry or tired or cold or hurting. Not a very big selection, and all pain-related in some way. But that has recently changed.

It started after I got home from Ashram. I knew that the miracle that I believed God was giving me was going to come through my work as well as his intervention (no, I don't believe all miracles happen this way, but I felt that this one would. I needed to step into a better lifestyle as well as being healed). In order to do that, I decided to do water aerobics three times a week and water yoga on Saturdays.

I felt that was a great start, but I wanted to do something on the other days--something that would help me with the achiness that was a normal part of a new exercise routine. So I started yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Sunday was my day off :).

I didn't realize what I was in for. The first thing that you're told to do is to sit quietly and listen to your body. If you haven't done yoga or meditation you might not believe this, but my body was quite happy to start talking! Not about aches and pains--about sadness and grief. Certain parts of my body were not healed, although I had been spiritually long ago. I suffer from kidney disease and other related issues (to go into them would be TMI!), and that part of my body seemed to be crying. I can't explain it any better than that. I know now that my woundedness was not only mental; it was also physical. Just sitting and paying attention to that was important.

If you are like me-a survivor of some sort of abuse, whether it be mental, emotional, sexual, or whatever, it might do you good to really meditate on your body. Listen to what it's telling you. See if you can understand what kind of intervention may be needed. Some people might need to come into a new relationship with wounded body parts. For example, if you were raped, you might have turned off your ability to feel and respond to your feminine parts (again, not going in depth because of TMI, but if this applies to you you know what I mean). If you are a man who was constantly abused and bullied because of a body part, you might have turned away from that part because of the shame you felt with that bullying.

What can you do about disfunction within your own body? It depends. For some, I think it means that you begin an intentional relationship with that part in particular. If your shoulders and neck constantly hurt, you can consciously say, "My stress doesn't belong here. I give it to God. He has bigger shoulders than I do." That is intentional in that you are concentrating on your shoulders and possibly stretching them or circling them as you do.

For others, that may not be what's needed. It's possible that the damage done was deeper than you can handle yourself. You might want to go to someone who you can talk to and pray with to heal your body, specifically that part. This is especially true if your pain occurred in numerous different ways and through numerous people.

For still others, your body is trying to alert you to a danger that you can't see. If you are feeling a physical pain instead of or in addition to the spiritual or emotional pain, I would really advise seeing your doctor.

For many of us, it's a combination of all three. For example, my pain was both spiritual and physical. I'm planning to pray comfort to that area, but I think that it's also wise to see a gynecologist. If my prayers don't avail, I will seek out a prayer warrior to pray with me.

So however your body speaks to you, please do listen to it. If you find that you have divorced yourself due to pain or hurt, it's time to bring that relationship to life again. You won't regret it.

Choices and Consequences

Have you ever had a "why me?" moment? Have you ever raised your fist to God and decried the unfair way that you have been treated? And after that, have you been shown, in a gentle and loving way, that your trouble came about as consequences of the choices that you've made? Yeah, me too.

I have to admit, it was my self-neglect that led to my lung problems. I knew that there was something wrong with my knee, but I chose not to go to the doctor for help until over a year after it had started exhibiting signs. After the doctor diagnosed me, he wanted to do surgery immediately due to the serious nature of the tear, but I chose to make an 18-hour trip to see my children before that surgery. He told me to be sure and rest and exercise my leg every two hours to avoid blood clots, but i chose to save time by driving for hours on end instead. The list goes on and on--things I knew but chose not to think about, treatments that I was supposed to take and didn't, and all of it combined to keep me ill long after many people with this same disease.

But see, that's life. Choices and consequences. You always have a choice, and every choice leads to a consequence. There are good consequences and bad consequences. Childhood consequences can often be the result of choices made by others in life. So what can we do about this?

I think that there are three basic things we need to hold on to:

Most of our consequences result from choices we have made.

We really need to stop blaming God for things that we did. If you had a breakdown on a dark road late at night that resulted in inconvenience or worse for you, you have to be honest with yourself. Was God to blame, or could it possibly have been the fact that you haven't checked the water, gas, or what have you for such a long time that a breakdown was sure to occur? You are in immense credit card debt. Is that because God chooses not to take care of you, or is it because you choose to ignore impulse control and buy what you want the minute you decide that you want it. And so on. God has big shoulders, but we need to realize that sometimes our attitude of blame toward God can keep us from the benefits of repentance and the forgiveness that comes from that.

Consequences are results of our decisions, but we can sometimes correct a decision, which will lead to a better consequence.

In my case, my choices regarding my health led to its decline. I am now on oxygen and have kidney failure. But I recently decided that my choices were stupid and needed to be changed, even late in the day. To that end, I have begun once again to do my breathing treatments and my inhalation therapy. I also am taking water aerobics three times a week. I do this in the hopes that my renewed choices will bring me to a better outcome-an improved consequence. I have lost time, but I have lots of time left as well.

Others' choices in our youth have serious consequences, but we can deal with that through prayer and forgiveness.

I was bullied as a child. I was teased, abused, hurt. Were you? It left me ashamed and embarrassed to be seen, sure that what everyone said was true, what everyone did was deserved. These were consequences of what others said and did to me. But as an adult, I choose to understand that the words those people said, the actions they performed, had nothing to do with me. I didn't deserve the treatment I got. I choose to believe that I am a well-loved child of God, and I choose to live that way. I have forgiven many of the people that wounded me, and I continue to forgive as God brings them to my memory. I find that the consequence of the original abuse made me a sensitive person who feels deeply. While I am making the choice to forgive my past, I thank God for that particular outcome. I wouldn't change who I am for the world.

So if you are reading this and know that you are suffering due to your or someone else's choice, please take it to God. Ask him to reveal that choice to you. Understand what put you there, and ask where he was in it. Be available for his answer. Then do what you need to do in order to have an outcome that would fill you with hope rather than fear or despair.

Need help? Email me at meggiev7777@gmail.com.  I'm here for you.

Bullying and its aftereffects

I have been overweight ever since the second grade. I have been teased since kindergarten. I remember the first encounter-not so much what I was teased for, but the fact that someone thought that it was all right to make fun of me. I was shocked. I said nothing, just felt a little bit smaller.

As I continued in school, the teasing grew and so did the teasers. The childish stuff in Kinder grew and developed barbs and claws, so that by the time I was 10, it tore at my very soul.

I'm sure that many of you share my story, and some of you might be wondering 'Why is she still talking about it? Why didn't she put on her big girl panties and walk away from it? We were just kids doing stupid stuff, after all.'

True. And if I was a normal kid, that would have happened. But I was anything but normal. My family was going through upheaval. There were issues at home just like at school. Without going into specific examples, I can truthfully say that I was walking wounded before I ever made through the doors of junior high. The teasing I endured in school just justified (in my mind) the self-concept I was developing at home.

More than anything else, though, I couldn't get over the teasing because it echoed in the shame that was already permeating my mind. Whenever anyone made fun of my hair, my complexion, my weight, my inability to play sports-even things that I knew I COULD do--things like singing and acting-I fully believed them. By the time I was in high school, I didn't just think I was hideous-I KNEW I was. I was embarrassed to be seen in public, and having to go to school day after day to be subjected to still more abuse just made it worse.

Thankfully, I moved to a larger town for college and became part of a group of friends that really liked me. I was able to begin to think that I might one day have worth-if I was talented enough, good enough, and Christian enough for others to overlook my many flaws.

Even today, I still carry the scars of the schoolyard abuse. Recently at a retreat, I was complemented over and over-on how nice I was, how interesting my views were, what a nice voice I had...all of it was beyond my comprehension. They were nice words, but not words that had anything to do with me. I am working on this, but it's slow going.

Why am I bringing all of you into my personal darkness? For two reasons, actually. First of all, I want you to know that the only way to really get over the shame caused by bullying is to forgive your bullies. You don't have to forgive what they did to you, but you have to realize that holding them in your soul-holding the memory of what they did hostage-is not hurting them a bit. It is, however, destroying you. You think destroying is a harsh word? Try thinking about letting go and see what your first reaction is. If you feel as I used to, that they are NEVER going to get away with it, that they deserve your hatred, that they maybe don't deserve to live, you are enslaved by your feelings to them. Let it go. Give it to God. Share with Him the full extent of your anger and hurt, then let him take it and bring it to the Cross.

Secondly, if you were really hurt by your persecutors, you need to ask God for healing. One way of doing this is to ask him to come into your soul, take each and every wound made by the bullying away and bring it to the cross, and then accept that you are a child of God and should always have been treated as such. After that, every time you hear the negative voice of the enemy saying that you are ugly, stupid, lazy, or whatever the trigger words are for you, simply speak God's truth--I am a not. I am a child of God. Saying it really does help you believe it.

I want to tell you that I am still on the healing journey with this as well. I walk every day, hoping that I remember. Most days I do, some I don't. But every day, I know that God loves me. You should have that understanding, too.

God bless you.

My journey with Physical Illness

I haven't written a blog for a long time. Anywhere. Not here, not in my other blog sites, not in English, not in Spanish. Why? Good question!

Two years ago, I was busy getting ready for healing ministry. I had a website in the works, a platform, a book in the final stages of preparation, and I felt that God had a new calling for me-one that would change my life. He did, just not in the way I'd imagined.

Then I started having trouble breathing. It had probably been going on a lot longer than I'd realized, but by October 2015, I knew that there was something wrong. I went to my doctor, and she said not to worry. I went to Urgent Care, and they said that I had asthma that was acting up. They gave me an inhaler, showed me how to use it, and sent me home. It did nothing. I went back to my doctor, and she acknowledged that there must be a problem and referred me to a pulmonologist, one who couldn't see me till January at the earliest. In the meantime, it was getting harder and harder to breathe. 

In December, I had surgery on a torn ligament. I told them about the "asthma" and they had me use the inhaler before the surgery. I was given a clean bill of health and flew to LA to see my son. After i came back, the breathing seemed to get worse day by day. I began to wonder if I was dying. I went to a different pulmonologist, and he took an x-ray and saw spots on my lungs. I was told to get a C-scan. I didn't have time. That weekend my breathing was so bad that I ended up in the emergency room. The needed C-scan was done there, and it was discovered that I had multiple blood clots in my lungs. 

The short version of what happened next is that I was placed on oxygen 24/7, I could not go back to work, I felt that I needed to be closer to family and so moved in with my daughter, and I gave up on everything-my plans for ministry, my writing, any hope of a future job--simply everything. I played on my phone and followed Facebook, and I began to learn how to be an invalid. And my faith journey stalled out--stalled out in a way I feared would be permanent.

A year has passed, and this summer I have changed. I believe that God has healed my lungs, although I'm still on oxygen right now. I live at a high altitude and know that it will take time to breathe independently here, but I have faith. I already have experienced needing little to no oxygen at sea level. What caused the change? I think part of it is simply the lungs healing themselves with no help from me. But this summer I went to Virginia to see my son, and I began to think like a healthy person who happens to have to use oxygen. I used the Metro and visited all kinds of museums and monuments in Washington DC. Four days after I got back, I went to Redwood Christian Ashram, a beautiful camp in the Santa Cruz mountains where I always find God in a special way. This year, however, I was not excited to go. That in itself was unusual. Once there, though, I found myself becoming unstuck. I took a hard look at why I wasn't excited, and I realized that I didn't want healing-spiritual or otherwise. I dealt with that and by the end of the week was ready for a miracle.

And it happened in a way that reminds me that God truly does have a great sense of humor. We have a healing service on Thursday nights, and after the service I walked to my cabin and tried to plug in my oxygen machine. The plug had broken. I called my son, and he was able to attach it, but during the night it came apart again. I slept the whole night without oxygen. That has happened before-the cannula (the part that goes in your nose) has come out during the night, and the next day the oxygen content in my blood (the pulse ox) has been very low. That day, however, it was normal. It stayed normal as I readied the cabin to leave, went to communion, went to breakfast, and went to the closing service. By that time I was ready to declare that God had worked a miracle. Of course, that is a scary thing in itself. What if he hadn't?

On the ride home, I began to hear God's still small voice. I was healed, yes, but my healing was something I would have to walk in to. He said that I would need oxygen on the trip up, but not to worry about it-it was because of the altitude. Later, he reminded me that I had stopped two essential parts of the healing process: inhalation therapy and breathing treatments. 

So here I am today, sitting at home,  breathing treatment going as I write. I am still on oxygen, but I am a different woman than I was. I am determined that I will continue to walk into God's healing. I am faithful to do my treatments each day and to exercise at least 3 times a week, more when I can. I have also taken up writing again. I know that God is not finished with me yet, so I've decided not to be finished either.

Last week I rediscovered a verse that I'd like to share with you. "He who began a good work in you will complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6) It gives me hope and makes me realize that I will be healed. It's already been done-I just have to walk into it.