April 23, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

Tomorrow is Easter. This is the day we celebrate Christ’s resurrection. Jesus walked among us after He had died as well. He was three days in the grave and on the third day He rose again. Then Jesus walked among us for 40 more days. This is one of those Wow moments for me. As I pray I find myself in many states of awe moments. To think that God would send His only Son to live in our world filled with filth, violence and a whole host of other not pretty things is a marvel to me. About now I think of the verse “For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son, that whoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” I feel a deep love from God and to God.

I have always believed there was a God. I even believed that Jesus lived but I never knew how to enter into a relationship with Him. For most of my life, Christmas and Easter was about family. It was a time to gather and celebrate the family structure, the generations etc. Very little thought went into Jesus, His birth, His death, the reason He left God’s side to live among us.

Since I have been married to Junior, we have spent many holidays away from family, for a variety of reasons. Let me side track a moment. Divorce is so hard on families. My son comes to mind. His parents are divorced. His wife’s parents are divorced. Holidays are especially difficult for them. There are four parents to visit plus a set of grandparents at one point. The grandparents have now passed on. There are only so many hours in a holiday and, there is the family they now have and……

I must admit at first the holidays alone were difficult. As the years have gone on my mindset has changed. The holiday is really about Jesus and God’s provision to redeem us through His Son. Junior and I will go to church and more often than not at church during the service I find myself being ever grateful for the gift of new life I’ve been given. My new life is of course Jesus, God’s love and the transforming of who I was to who I am in Jesus. By the time I walk out of the service I find myself truly happy and content.

If the holiday is a holiday on our own, I find myself content now. Many times I make us a nice meal and we enjoy it. Sometimes we watch holiday appropriate videos and enjoy them to no end. Throughout the day I find myself reflecting on the gift we’ve been given and find myself happy and content.

“Into each life some rain must fall.” I reflect on this statement from time to time. No one gets through life without some sort of heart ache. For me many times the heart ache builds character and perseverance. I am often amazed when I get to the other side of a struggle. I read in Romans 3-4 about this. It says, “More than that. We rejoice, in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces charter, and charter produces hope.”

This verse is one I often reflect on when I am in a struggle. It helps me to see that the struggle will come to an end. It helps me to see that at the end of the struggle I will be stronger and more resilient. I hate hurting. I try to avoid pain whenever I can. I run from it but all of a sudden I find that until I face the struggle and deal with it, I’ll never be able to move forward.

One of the first struggles I remember as a young adult is my husband lost his job. Because of my background of lack of money due to Dad’s polio, I was panicked. I remember fretting and worrying and a whole host of other paranoid feelings. My husband found a job. We never wound up living on the street. It took me years to realize that we weren’t going to end up living on the streets. If we were late on a payment, I panicked. I felt one step away from living on the street for most of my adult life and to be honest, I’ve never even come close. It took me 10 years to realize Junior was not going to get us in debt and we’d be living on the street.

I believe my years of celebrating holidays on our own has been good for me. I’ve learned to celebrate the gift Jesus is, to accept God’s love. I’ve learned to place the true gift within my heart. Now when I am with family, I appreciate it even more. God allowed me the struggle to help to build within me a true sense of what I’ve been given. I also find moments where I try to bring God into the celebration. At Thanksgiving one year I asked everyone, “What are you grateful for.” We went around the table and gave some thought to the question. For Christmas, I often read out of the Children’s Bible the birth of Jesus. Then we have a cake with candles and sing happy birthday to Jesus. I don’t think I’ve done Easter dinner with the family. I have not come up with a way to introduce my faith at that point.

I believe God allowed the pain of not celebrating holidays with family to help build a true sense of who He is. In my thinking, it has been worth the painful moments. I now celebrate Jesus, God’s love and even am able to hear the Holy Spirit’s prompting more often. I also appreciate those moments when I am with family even more now.
As I end this I’d like to ask, what are you celebrating? What is really on your heart this Easter? Have you taken time to look at the cross, the gift of Jesus and God’s love?

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet

April 16, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

I’m having a rotten few days. Right now life sucks big time. I want to love God with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength. I’m praying a whole lot trying to hear God’s direction and frankly that is hard right now.

If there is a problem then go to the person directly. If that doesn’t work go with a witness and then if that don’t work, let them go – I think. This is something I have read throughout the Bible. It makes a whole lot of sense to me too. Now I’m in a situation where I want to say “stop it, I’ve had enough and that doesn’t feel good.” I feel backed into a corner and when I get backed into a corner the fighter in me comes out.

I don’t feel heard. I don’t understand the other person’s perspective either. As hard as I try, I’m not getting it. I am totally missing the point. I’m spending lots and lots of times in prayer saying Lord help me and I am not hearing His voice.

Two or three friends tell me not to send a note I have written. I don’t. They say if this situation is eating at you this much why don’t you just take them off the friend list on Facebook. More than one tells me that and I think this is a sign, maybe it is time to walk away so I take that person off of Facebook. My desire was, take them off, several other people so this person won’t see my stuff all over the other peoples stuff. The person sees I’m not out there and figures out that they’ve been deleted and asks about it. I tell them, that I’m trying to not be such a bother and a whole blow up ensues.

In my mind I feel like I’ve gone person to person with how this is affecting me. I do hear that I am rough. I’m not trying to be. Still that backed in a corner feeling is front and center in the emotion department. I try to tell them and they don’t hear, I can’t seem to hear either. I know that the emotions on both our parts are real raw.

More praying, lots of praying and still I am not getting the idea of how to deal with this hurt. How do you tell people to stop? How do you tell them and be nice? How do you tell and hear? The questions continue to bombard me. The pain is about as raw as it gets. I want to love but I also don’t want to continue on the way things have been.

I eat some chips and dip, comfort food for me. I take myself for a long drive. I feel a little more settled but I don’t find an answer. I finally come up with a “nice” note in my opinion. I send it off, a rebuttal comes back. Ok, now I answer every line in the note and it is not pretty. Finally, I start a new note and it is kinder. Nope I’m still not heard, still told I’m too dramatic and the reason I’m not wanted in the family is because I shut them out. Ok, now what to do. Time to shut the door, the pain is now unbearable.

In the recent past, I have found that I needed to be direct. I felt the air clear some and felt the direct approach worked. No it did not really, at the time though I thought it worked. I felt peace afterward. The problem was not really resolved and the festering boil of emotions continued to grow. The boil of emotions finally opened up into oozing pain. So now what?

The girl friends have been helpful. They have let me say “ouch.” They have told me to write it out, I’ve been doing that. I still have no peace. I know the person has had a lot of struggles. I know they are not touchy feely and my touchy feely ways are totally uncomfortable and they want to shut the door, move on and say it is what it is. I find no solution in this approach.

I can’t sleep. I’m up half the night, up fairly early the next day and no solution as to how to pop this festering boil from my system. In my mind it is time to walk away. Enough is enough. They see me as overly dramatic, all about me and have no clue as to what I’m trying to say.

My friends love on me. They let me talk, try to find a solution. We are not gossiping although I’m sure people think that is gossip. The goal is to find that middle ground and I can’t find it in my thought life. Out loud works for me and so I try to stay focused on the struggle and how to relieve the boil within my heart.

As I was driving I thought, oh I need to ask for prayer on this whole situation. I need to ask if someone would go to prayer with me beside them and help me find God’s voice. That begins to settle in me. So I will find the friend who will pray for me and with me.

I want to love this person. I also want them to stop a few things, I can’t take it anymore. I understand that life is tough for them. I understand that being a prickly pear is how they cope. I understand a whole lot of things but right now……I need some relief.

So, I will continue to pray until I hear what I’m to hear. God will quiet my heart, my thoughts eventually. I’m guessing as I quiet down, I’ll start to hear and know how to respond with love, right now though……I will pester God until I can feel me settling down. He will settle me, open my eyes, my heart and I’ll be able to put this in the right perspective.

The biggest lesson for me is not to wait till the situation is out of control. I may need to ask God to help me sooner the next time.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet

April 9, 2011

Greetings My Friend,

An old story of my Dad is playing out in my thoughts. As you know, Dad had polio and taught himself how to walk again when no one thought he’d be able to. That was a miracle. Dad had asked for a back brace and our church provided him one. With this brace, he taught himself how to walk using the muscles in his back. Dad had a strange walk, he looked like he was a drunk, but Dad was able to walk. Stairs were a struggle for him. He bent over almost in half and that is how he got up the stairs. Amazing!

While we were at school and Mom at work, Dad would spend hours teaching himself how to walk. Many times he would fall and have to crawl back to the wheel chair before he could get up again. I believe in my heart that is where I get my dogged determination to see things through. Actually, I see that all three of us kids seem to have adopted this determination. As I play this thought out, I see Mom standing by Dad. She told me one time that she was planning on leaving Dad and when he had polio and Grandma and Grandpa walked out on him, Mom stayed with Dad. The three of us kids have a strong sense of loyalty as well. We tend to not give up when things are going rough, we stick it out. I believe in my heart that is why I stayed married for 24 years, I didn’t always have the sense to call it quits, even when life hurt so bad.

The story I’m thinking about happened one time when Dad went to the strip mall near our house. It was cold out. Dad tripped on a raised crack in the sidewalk and fell down. He fell and struggled so hard to get back up. While he was struggling a crowd formed to watch him. He kept hearing about him being drunk, which he was not. No one offered him a hand to get up either. Dad eventually found a way to get himself up and left the scene very humiliated.

He told that story many times as I was growing up. That hurt him deep in is being. Dad left home at 14 and never returned. He’d stay in area garages and earned his keep by helping out. Dad had a nasty temper. Dad stole. Dad was not the best of kids. I often heard him talk about being able to overcome his delinquent youth. As a father he tried to live a wholesome life. He tried to make a reputation for himself, one of being a good man. He worked hard at it. He was proud to have walked away from his past. Dad would often admonish me with “remember you are a Rogers and that is a name you don’t want to tarnish.” He knew what a tarnished reputation was about and didn’t want us to have to overcome that.

I was Dad’s confidant. Many times when I got home from school, Dad was getting up. Dad worked nights, Mom days. Dad sat at the table smoking his cigarette and often confided in me. As a kid, I loved it. Some of what Dad talked about, he should not have talked with me about. I didn’t grasp that till I was older and had kids of my own. I believe I may have even tried to talk to my children in ways I should not have. It was what I knew and I wound up repeating, not knowing.

At some point in my adult life, I could not face life. I thought that counseling would help me. I knew I grew up in dysfunction, not that I could put a name to it at the time. I’ve spent a good portion of my adult life trying to figure life out. For me life hurt. I could not figure out how to be accepted. I wanted to be normal, whatever normal is. In school I learned that frequent bathing was important. I learned to brush my teeth. We weren’t made to do these things at home. Dad’s philosophy was you only needed a bath once a week. More often was not healthy, in his opinion. I remember I would wait till Dad would go to bed and then jump in the shower. My hair was very oily and it needed to be washed every day.

Counseling did help. I would not stick with it though. It cost money and money was tight. I’d go for a while start to feel better and then quit. My ex and I started counseling yet again before the marriage ended. As we went through the divorce and for a couple of years afterwards I stuck with counseling. I finally started to feel whole. This time though I began a serious faith journey with Jesus. I believe the combination of Jesus and counseling was one of the best things I’ve ever done.

Counseling has allowed me to say, “I didn’t like that, that hurt and such.” Once I was able to voice my feelings, I began to feel whole and alive. Counseling taught me to look back and to see where different hurts arose. My one counselor taught me about deep wounds. They heal from the inside out and he taught me that was how I was going to fully heal, from the inside out. I believe he was right.

Jesus also taught me the importance of forgiving others. Through the years I’ve learned that in forgiving others you really are letting go of the hurt. I tend to see my hurts nailed to the cross. If I begin to dwell on the hurt, I look at the hurt nailed to the cross and I am able to let it go. I go to prayer a whole lot as I am hurting. Sometimes I need to talk to a counselor to begin to let go of the hurts. When I truly forgive, I find peace. I tend to beat myself up a lot when I make mistakes, especially if I’ve hurt someone. God has taught me to bring this to Him. As I let go, peace begins to reside in me. Mom and Dad had a lot to deal with and raising us was hard. I’ve learned to let go, let God and in that I can then begin to see the struggles Mom and Dad had AND have compassion.

Here is my oft asked question again, have you forgiven? It is good for your soul.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet

April 2, 2010

Greetings My Friend,

I’m thinking deeply of my spiritual journey. As I learned there was the sinner’s prayer and prayed it, I find upon hindsight that is the point where my life has really turned around. Part of that journey has been learning who the Holy Spirit is. In Sunday school, I often heard of Him, but I never grasped who He was or what He was. As I learned the ACTSS prayer format, I began praying first to God the Father, then to our Lord Jesus and then to the Holy Spirit. For me that was the only way I was going to figure who He is and meet Him.

Junior and I felt led to move to Virginia. We both started talking about the move at the same time. We were unhappy with the politics in Michigan and all of a sudden we felt we needed to leave. Once settling in Virginia we discovered that there was work we needed to do. We felt led to Haysi, then to Clintwood. We have a need to live our faith in our neighborhood. I felt led to write my book On the Way to Wholeness by Way of ACTSS. As I wrote the book and as I write my blog I often feel the words flowing out of me. Mostly I feel God directing me, the words.

As we were moving out of Haysi, we met B. She tells me often that she feels God sent us to her. She had been praying for a girlfriend and I felt real comfortable to her. I find her to be funny, caring and we both share the sting of abuse and we sometimes need to work through moments together. B and our income levels are at different ends of the spectrum. That’s a marvel about being in the church to me. Some of my friends are nurses, teachers, and doctors alongside of factory workers, unemployed people and the like. B has never asked for money. She tells me that she is not interested in my money and has never asked to borrow any. We just share friendship. I love it. I have acquaintances who tell me that B has only befriended me because I have money. I don’t see that in our relationship at all.

Most days I pray. I try hard to talk to God each day. At this stage in my life, I don’t want to not be close to God. In Jesus, I find hope residing in me. I find I have a purpose and I love having a purpose in life.

I pray, I read my Bible and in that I find my life moving along in love, a desire to please God. I’ve learned that the Holy Spirit is my teacher, my helper. For me to begin to understand and to get to know Him, I’ve started praying to Him directly. For me it was a way to put a “face” on Him.

Through the years, I found that I pictured God as a Father figure. I sort of saw Him and yet not really. The same way with our Lord Jesus, I could almost picture a face, a body and in that I felt the realness. The Holy Spirit was hard for me to understand until I started talking to Him as if He were my friend. I still don’t have a picture of Him, but I feel Him now.

My journey of faith is very real to me. Recently I had someone tell me that I can make my journey to Virginia and our life out here to be what I want it to be. To be honest, it would have been easier to stay in Michigan, find a condo and move across town or even to the other side of the state. As we felt led to move, we kept praying, we weren’t sure about this huge transition we were undertaking. We knew my sister and one couple from Michigan and that’s all. The weather isn’t a whole lot different than Michigan. If I had my way, I’d like to winter in Florida or Arizona. I’m not a huge fan of snow, ice and bitter cold.

We’ve found a home here that is a dream. It is a whole lot of work to make this house what our dreams are. Junior is having a blast working on it. I love all the potential that we will eventually have. Through the process of moving for the second time in two years, I have found myself coming out of depression. As I make new friends and befriend people who are in need, I feel whole and alive. I feel wanted, accepted and loved. My church family has surrounded me in such a wonderful loving way. All this confirms to me we are where God is directing us to be.

In the midst of all this, I sense the Holy Spirit leading me. He is there, I feel Him. Sometimes I marvel at what comes out of my mouth. I reflect and think; “wow” did I just say that? Sometimes I make a friend like B or J next door and there is that “wow” feeling again. As I pray, sometimes I learn about what our Lord Jesus endured on the cross and I marvel.

One time Junior and I went to Westland Mall to pick up a crock pot. We got an ice cream and sat down on a bench to eat it. A lady sat next to us and she shared about her struggles in marriage. We talked about the hardship of divorce. We talked about a program to help marriages stay together at Ward. We felt we were led to this lady. It was not a fluke, it was God.

Unless you are in a faith journey, it is hard for others to understand. Our move may seem like we wanted it, made it up or whatever. Learning how to “hear” God and His direction is a life long journey. We miss the mark sometimes, sometimes we are spot on. The Holy Spirit is there to guide us and to me, that is a huge comfort. I also marvel that the Holy Spirit is so patient, especially when I don’t get it. He gently guides me until I do.

Do you have a desire that doesn’t make sense to you? Has someone talked to you about Jesus lately and you wonder why? It could be that the Holy Spirit is trying to guide you, open your eyes to God’s redeeming love through His Son Jesus.

May God bless you and keep you, make His face to shine upon you.

Love
Janet