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 platform--a work in progress

I have fought since I was a child.  I have battled abuse, both physical and mental.  I have dealt with mental illness in the form of depression.  I have made horrendous mistakes and suffered because of them.  In all these things, I have been fortunate--yes, fortunate--because I have learned a valuable lesson.  That lesson is solidifying and becoming my platform.

I find that in my life, there have been three major types of trauma.  The first is the trauma in which I was a victim, the second is trauma which I was instrumental in causing, and the third is trauma in which nobody was to blame--things went horribly wrong, and I (and many others) suffered because of them. In walking toward wholeness, I found that all three types of trauma had to be handled in the same way:  go back to the event, forgive, and move on.

Seems simple, doesn't it?  Well, I can only recently claim that I am far enough in the journey to actually claim wholeness, and I started that journey in 1993, so I am pretty sure that my explanation is deceptive.  However, that is exactly what I did.  I went back to the event (sometimes over and over again), I forgave the people involved--including myself and including God--and I moved on.  Often, I found myself coming back again, and that's where this got interesting for me.  I was told over and over again never to revisit old wounds.  If I had claimed healing, then healing had happened, and I was giving in to a spirit of infirmity by going back.  I have come to believe that words like that are a lie from the pit of Hell itself!  Sometimes you have to revisit the same scene over and over again because you are unable to fully realize the healing.  Each time, though, the process is the same.  You go back to the event, forgive, and move on again.

Rereading this, I realize that there is something that I didn't mention yet.  In some ways, it's the most important part.  See where God is in this.  I know it smacks of visualization, but that's not what I mean.  I learned this from Father Mike Flynn, among others.  You can ask God to show you the scene and ask to see where God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) was in the enacting of it.  It can totally change your understanding of the situation when you do this.  For example, there was a scene that played out over and over again in my mind.  In that scene, I was totally helpless, and nobody came to give me aid.  I felt powerless and shamed, and I couldn't understand why nobody was sent to intervene on my behalf.  Then, at a conference led by Father Mike, we were led to ask the Lord where he was.  I asked, and immediately I went back to the same scene again.  But then I realized that the love of God was all around me.  Jesus was right there at my side.  No, he didn't stop it, but I do know that he was protecting me.

Some of you might be thinking that what I say is incomprehensible.  If God was there, why didn't he lead me out of the situation, or better yet, never let the situation start?  I can't answer that.  What I can say, though, is that I am here today and part of what I am was created in that moment.  I can honestly say that I don't wish it didn't happen.  I don't know why I had to learn the lesson I learned, but one thing that I do know is that many others have dealt with the same trauma, and I am proof that they can come out the other side whole and healthy.

After you go back and see the events, you have to determine where forgiveness needs to occur.  One reason you might find yourself revisiting an event is that you have not yet forgiven the people involved.  The person most commonly left out of the forgiveness step is yourself.  And even after you've forgiven yourself, you might find yourself coming back and forgiving yourself--or your abuser--or even God--for things that you hadn't even been able to consciously realize at the point you were at before.

After you have gone back and forgiven, you move on.  But you don't move on and leave that place empty.  You pray over the memory--you ask God to seal it for you and to leave it in the past unless and until it needs to come forward again.  You ask him to cover it with his mercy and forgiveness, and then if (when) it comes up again, you ask the Lord if he can take it away.  If he does, great.  If it doesn't, ask what needs to be revealed now.  And then go through the same procedure again--go back, forgive, and move on.

Of course, some of you are not at a point where you can do this alone.  Or maybe you've tried to do it and been thrust into even more darkness and depression--perhaps even despair.  Please don't try to do it yourself.  If you have been so wounded that it is life threatening (whether this means your ability to live a happy life or whether you feel that it's worth living at all), you need help.  Take the step and find it.  When my husband died, it was the third loss in 4 years.  I knew that my children couldn't deal with that, and I sought counseling immediately.  I should have sought it for myself, too, and eventually I did.  There is no shame in seeking help.

So this is my platform.  What do you think?

Next time--how I learned how to write again.

Forgiving yourself

Forgiveness.  Such a beautiful word, but such a difficult thing to give.  It is one thing to forgive a thoughtless action or careless word; it is quite another to forgive action that caused serious hurt, harm or death.  Above all, it is nearly impossible to forgive pain that you yourself inflicted.  How can you forgive yourself?

I was 15, and I was going through a particularly rough patch in my development.  I was easily embarrassed, easily offended, put off by anything that seemed to my arrogant little mind as selfish.  The prime culprit, in my opinion, was my mother.  She seemed to be a constant irritant.  She had to be helped out of her chair.  She couldn't walk long distances.  She told stories of falling and staying there until someone came to pick her up.  She seemed overly concerned about her weight.  I understood none of this and resented all of it.  What I didn't realize was that my mother was desperately ill.

In my defense, I need to explain that my mom, Violet Wood, had been seriously ill since I was 18 months old.  She was so often in the hospital that I thought visiting the hospital was normal.  I didn't realize the severity of her condition, and I didn't see the gradual decline.  I was too young to fully understand.  By the time I reached 15, my mother was months away from death.  However, the changes weren't visible to me.  I saw them as new things for her to complain about, and I resented them.

Reading this, I can't believe how shallow and callous I was.  But I'm trying to be as honest as I can, and that was how it was.

Two events stick out in my mind.  The first is just a memory.  I know I was 14 or 15.  It's like a photograph--an event frozen in time.  My father, mother and I were going to JC Penney.  By this time, Mama couldn't walk for long distances, so for this trip, she was in a wheelchair.  I didn't understand, and I was embarrassed.  It seemed to me that she was lazy.  She could walk (using a walker) in the house, so why wasn't she walking now?  I didn't want to be seen with her, and I lagged behind, looking into shop windows and pretending not to be part of the family.  Of course, Mama picked up on it right away.  She called me on my behavior.  Now I wasn't only embarrassed, I was ashamed.  I don't recall asking for her forgiveness.  I just recall resenting having to share space with her.

The second event is frozen in my mind.  It was the morning of September 23.  My mother was in the dining room in a chair.  Once again, she was going to the hospital.  I was in bed, asleep, as was my brother.  Her breathing woke me up.  It was as if she had a bunch of phlegm caught in her throat.  I couldn't stand the sound.  I remember being irritated.  'Why doesn't she clear her throat?' I thought.  My mother didn't have the strength to go to our rooms.  She called out to my brother that she loved him.  He responded.  Then she called out the same thing to me.  I remember groaning to her.  I couldn't be bothered to tell her that I loved her.  Those were the last words she ever spoke to me.  My dad took her to the hospital, and I went back to sleep.

The next day, my brother and I didn't go to school.  I don't remember thinking too much about that, but I do remember having lunch when we received the call--your mother is dying, and if you want to see her, you need to come now.  We all hurried to the hospital, and for the first time in my life, I was allowed into her room.  She was in a coma and unresponsive.  I remember going to her side, taking her hand, and saying over and over, "I love you, Mama!"  Nothing.  At that time, I didn't realize that people in a coma can hear you.  All I knew was that I had lost my last chance to let my mother know that I loved her.  I became fascinated by the heart monitor.  I couldn't stop watching it record my mother's heartbeat.  As a result, I saw those beats stop.  I saw her die.

For many years--over 30 years--I couldn't forgive myself for the miserable way that I had treated my mother.  I was in a strange place--the person that I had offended was dead.  There was no going to her and asking forgiveness.  I did, of course.  I spoke to her as if she was still there and asked her forgiveness.  I believe with all my heart that she heard me and forgave me, but how could I forgive myself?

The answer didn't come easily.  The unforgiveness that I felt became seated in my heart and turned me cold.  It began to distort my personality.  I thought of myself as unworthy, unloveable.  I built walls between myself and the world--the pain and hurt that I felt was a barrier that walled me in and kept love out.  It didn't happen overnight, and it wasn't healed overnight.

 I don't remember one specific moment that led to my ability to forgive myself.  I think that it was a gradual understanding of an overwhelming truth:  God forgave me, and my mother forgave me.  Of that I was certain.  So in my refusal to forgive myself, I was stating that their forgiveness was incorrect.  If they could forgive me, then I had the ability--the responsibility--to forgive myself.  I didn't have the power within me to do it, but I had learned obedience, and in that obedience I claimed forgiveness.  I forgave myself for the foolish behavior of my youth.  The italics show the understanding that came with that forgiveness.  As long as I was mired in my own guilt, I couldn't see that.  There was no category, there was just self-loathing.  But as I forgave myself, my soul began to speak to me the peace that had always been available to me in Christ Jesus.  I began to realize that I was judging myself far more harshly than either my mother or my Lord had ever judged me.

Dear friend, what is there in your soul that is waiting to be forgiven?  Please look into your heart and see what is behind the hurt that is there.  What is keeping you from feeling free to express that loveliness that is you?  Is it youthful indiscretion, a life of sin that is still bothering you, although you repented long ago?  Are you refusing to forgive yourself for the pain that you caused others?  Please, in obedience, grasp the forgiveness that has been given to you and then apply it to yourself.  I promise you that it will set your soul free and allow for the healing that you know you need.

Father, I pray for the person who may be reading this right now with tears in their eyes.  I pray that as you speak words of love and forgiveness to that person, they understand that your love is always free, always open, and always available.  I pray that as they accept this truth, they find the obedience that they need to both accept your forgiveness and then apply it to their own soul.  Let them see that the self-forgiveness that they do not feel worthy to claim is the very key that they seek to unlock their hearts and admit the love and peace of Your Holy Spirit.  In Jesus' name, Amen.

writer, ministry--the work has begun

I am a writer.  I am.  I don't know why it takes someone else affirming it for me to really believe it.
I saw an editor today.  He was so positive, so affirming, that I knew beyond any doubt that my dream was going to come true.  My head is still spinning.  It is amazing to me--totally amazing.  He and I are going to work together to make my dream become a reality.
He told me that I need a platform.  He told me that I should have a ministry--something that I can do that will promote my book while serving God.  I just looked back to Facebook--Sept 15--my fondest dream is being told "You should make a living at this. The way you write and the way you read, you're perfect!! Of course, little chance of that happening.  

That was what I wrote on the 15th.  And it came true today.  The time is right--my kids are all grown, I am on my own, I have no major debt, and so I can look at the possibility of change.  It's a big leap (and I'm not saying that I will give up my day job yet), but it's happening.

He said (Adam--he has a name) that I should start asking God what I should do.  I have been, and he's been reminding me of three things;  healing, forgiveness, and obedience.  All of this has come about because of all of those things.  

I have been in a process of healing since 1993.  My husband died and I was broken.  Broken--more like shattered.  Crumbled into a million pieces.  Shards of glass lying on the floor with no hope of redemption.  One by one, God has picked each piece up and gently, carefully, lovingly put it back into place.  No, I'm not who I was.  I am cracked, patched, mended.  But I'm so beautiful. Each scar, each mark is a reminder of the work that God has done.

Forgiveness--how very important that is.  In my life, thank God, forgiveness has rarely been hard for me.  Sometimes, yes, I did find it hard to forgive.  It was hard to forgive our doctor for forcing her religion on us when all we wanted was to keep our baby alive.  It was hard to forgive when I knew that the people who hurt me so terribly would never come to me and ask for forgiveness.  But I've always known how important forgiveness is.  I've seen firsthand the bitterness and hatred that comes when forgiveness is refused.  I don't want that ever to happen to me.  And so I know that forgiveness is for yourself every bit as much as for the offender.

Obedience.  This is the secret to successful living, first and foremost.  Don't try to talk him out of it.  Just do it in obedience.  If you prove that you can be obedient in the small things, then he will entrust you with bigger things.  It's by obedience that we learn to walk into abundant life in Him.

This is it, Lord.  Now just show me how to use this platform for your glory.  And if it's supposed to change, please help me understand how.

on forgiveness

"I don't care what you say! They hurt me, and I will never never forgive them!"  Those words, coming from the mouth of a 17-year-old Christian girl, shocked me.  I was teaching a course on Biblical concepts, and this was just a review of the Lord's prayer.  "…and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".  The lesson taught that forgiveness isn't for the other person--forgiveness is for you.

Refusing to forgive is toxic.  We all know this, don't we?  Yet we grasp our hurt and anger to our hearts with eagle talons, refusing to even consider opening our hands and letting go of them through forgiveness.  "Why should I?" we ask. We don't want to be the weak one.  We don't want them to get away with it.  It seems to us that the horrible thing that was done to us will be compounded if we forgive the person that did it.  Added to that is the idea that we would have to actually go to our offender, not to confront but to forgive?  Unthinkable!

Forgiveness is hard.  It goes against everything we have come to accept as true.  We are a society that loves getting even, and we can't imagine giving up our hurt to the very person that hurt us.  But if you're thinking in that way, there is a major truth about forgiveness that you're not getting.

Forgiveness isn't for them.  It's for you.

The person that has hurt you has great power over you unless you choose to forgive them.  The evil that they did to you, the sin they visited upon you, is festering within.  Your eagle talons are poison tipped, and the more tightly you hold on to your hurt, the more poison you take into yourself.  Forgiveness is a means of turning the back into hands that are capable of loving acceptance.  When you forgive, you allow the hands to open and the hurt and pain and poison to go away, back to the pit from whence they came.

Some people say that you need to confront your persecutor and say that you forgive them.  In fact, the peace is done in Catholic and other liturgical churches for precisely this reason.  (I believe that all churches should pass the sign of peace).  It enables the parishioner to seek out the person that he has wronged or the person that has wronged him and ask for or give pardon.  It normally happens before communion so that you can partake with a clean conscience.

I am not sure that I agree with these people in all cases.  For one thing, the obvious fact is that some people are no longer around to forgive.  They have moved or died or you have lost touch.  For another, there are some people whose souls are so dark that they will take your forgiveness as another excuse to wound you even more.  Such people should be left alone until that time that you are strong enough in yourself and in the Lord to meet with them.

Forgiveness can be accomplished simply by speaking to these people with God as your witness.  I have forgiven countless people in this way.  If it's not enough, God will definitely let you know.  But for the majority (especially those lost to us through time or place), this will allow the bitterness to dissipate and the healing to begin.

As for those few that God tells you  must be confronted, be alert.  There's a reason.  There was one person in particular that changed my life when I forgave them.  This person did me a wrong that had been with me for many years, and when I confronted, I was told that the person had regretted it their whole life. They had done it to me because it had been done to them, and it had been the biggest mistake that the person had ever made.  "I'm so sorry that I destroyed your life," I was told.  We finished the conversation, I hung up the phone, and then it dawned on me.  Nobody can destroy my life but me!  I  can choose to let what happened make me weak or make me strong.  I choose to let it make me strong!

I learned so much through that conversation.  First, I realized that the person needed my forgiveness as much as I needed to give it.  Secondly, the person was passing on a wrong that had been done.  Thirdly, the thought of an action controlling one's life had been in both our minds, and we both needed to get past it.  I hadn't realized that, and once I did, I felt chains slipping off.  The forgiveness, which had happened long before the conversation, changed somehow.  Instead of forgiving an action that still existed, it was as if the forgiving "face to face" erased the actions themselves.  I can truly say that I no longer feel bound by them, and I pray that the other person has achieved some of the same feeling, as well.

So if you feel that there are certain things in your life that you can't forgive--a parent's unfaithfulness that led to divorce, a rebuff from friends, a time of abuse or molestation--please try--just try--forgiveness.  What do you have to lose?