February 22, 2018

Greetings My Friend,

Several years ago I heard a sermon where this phrase was used, "Turn and face," as I heard it the phrase imprinted into my brain then pops up from time to time. I sense "Turn and face," is a new lesson the Holy Spirit is teaching me, my usual response to anger is to "Turn and run." Through the years God has removed most of my anger from me, I am grateful because I got pretty adept at tearing someone apart with my words when they kept pushing me into a corner. Through the years I have learned to leave a situation that I could not handle, a first step really for learning to keep my tongue in check, now though I need to work through fear and anger then respond with a calm demeanor. I have known for a very long while that Brenda has continued to be in my life for a reason, I felt that God was chasing Brenda wanting her to enter into heaven with Him and I believe He is. Over the past weekend though Brenda and another person both hit buttons that paralyzed me drawing my anger to the forefront. I did not know how to respond to either person and I was internalizing my anger because I did not want to speak it. This time the Holly Spirit was not letting me walk away, He was prompting me to respond only I could not hear how to respond. I verbalized my concern to Junior  who promptly gave me an answer that diffused my anger. The answer was very simple "Jesus loves you." In both instances the people wanted me to hear their opinion and had no desire to listen to my viewpoint, I was never going to align with their thinking although they were trying hard to make me. After I wrote Brenda "Jesus loves you", she later wrote back that she had entered one of her "deep dark moods." I think my statement about Jesus stopped her spiraling thoughts, brought her back to the moment because the next text she was telling me about her weekly schedule and was back on track to listening to what her doctor's were telling her to do. With Brenda's reply about Jesus loves her I added "What you do with your health is between you and God, she saw that I was done debating with her about her health so she moved back to her rational thinking side. I know that I need a lot more practice learning how to keep my anger in check, how to diffuse a situation, this is a very difficult lesson for me to work on and I am anxious to see the wonder God will work in me with regard to "Turn and face," a situation. May God bless you and keep you make His face shine on you. Love Janet