Some Positive New Things In My Life

     I finally was able to meet with my Faculty Advisor today so that I can sign up for classes that start in the Fall. I'm going back to school to get a Bachelors in Psychology. I'm also considering a minor in writing, or I might just seek a Bachelors in Writing as well. I am excited for school to start. I also am enjoying this summer time with my girls, and part of me isn't ready for the summer to end. There is a lot going on in my life right now, but I'm excited about all that God is doing in my life.

     My pastor recently preached and said what looks like a set back is only a set up for greater things to come. I know that while some recent changes which have happened were very difficult to adjust to; it's not going to be a set back (although it may have felt like it), but its a set up to propel me further in my walk and destiny in Christ. I know God has great things in store for me, and I wait for it all with anticipation knowing my later will be greater than the former.

     I'd like to share one other thing I've heard from my pastor which really stood out to me. First, I'll have to give some scripture.

                            Romans 8:35-39

8:35 - Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

8:36 - As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

8:37 - Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors though him that loved us.

8:38 - For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor  powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

8:39 - Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Although I may stand as a sheep before the slaughter God as already declared my victory. For He has said that I am more than a conqueror. It is by His love that I move, and breath, and have life. Not just any kind of life, but a victorious life. A life where all my battles have already been called to victory before I even face them. Therefore, any obstacle or battle that I may face in life has already been won and cannot be lost. It is up to me to stand firm in my victory or to forfeit it. I don't know about any one else, but I don't plan to forfeit any of my victories. The biggest thing I took from this particular service is: even though I may stand before the hardest of battles (as the sheep before the slaughter) God has ALREADY DECLARED MY VICTORY!!!

     Life doesn't hold still for anyone, and mines on the move. I just wanted to take some time to share with all of you some of the positive things going on in my life. May each of us receive the blessings God shines down upon us every day, and not take any of them for granted.



My Fear Is…

    After my last post, "Where It Started", I sat down and made a list of my fears which have to do with letting go of the need to want to control how my mom views and deals with her life. I'm going to share that list with all of you. Along with quotes from Joel Osteen's new book Every Day A Friday. I have found these quotes to be very helpful to me, and I find they fit rather well with dealing with my fears. Every Day A Friday is a great book, and the whole book is full of great advice…not just the little bit that I'm sharing here.

• If my mom dies and goes to hell I'm afraid of being the one standing in front of God being held responsible / accountable for her ending up in hell. All my life I've been the one who's been responsible for her…for "fixing" her. If she goes to hell then it means I didn't do my "job" right…I've failed yet again, and worse yet…this time I've failed God, and it's for all eternity. I need to realize that I am not responsible for her soul…she is. 

1. Pg. 181 –Instead of being holier than thou and judging people, our attitudes should be But for the grace of God, that could be me.
   
2. Pg. 180 –All of us have strengths, and we all have weaknesses. We are strong in certain areas not because we're great and we just decided to be strong, but because of the grace of God in our lives.
   
3. Pg. 183 –This doesn't mean you are excusing the person's behavior. What they are doing may be wrong. It may be their fault. They may have brought the trouble on themselves. But I've learned I'm not the judge. God is the Judge. I'm not here to straighten everybody out. I'm here to help bring healing. (*NOTE TO SELF* This means her life is not my responsibility. It is not my responsibility to "fix" her, but to give encouragement when needed.) 

• She hasn't shown me she can make good choices on her own…therefore, I need to continue to try to "fix" her and control how she deals with life. How arrogant of me to think it's my place to judge such a thing. It's her life to run and I have no right to try to run it for her. She does not have to prove anything to me to be able to run her own life. She doesn't owe me anything! She doesn't owe it to me to become a healthy person…to become what I would like for her to be. She doesn't owe it to me to be anything other than who she is right now at this moment. It will be a great thing for her to become a healthy person, but she doesn't owe it to me. 

1. Pg. 172 – Everyone has faults and habits that can get on your nerves. The key is to recognize what you are magnifying. You are magnifying the wrong thing when you let the critical spirit take over.
   
2. Pg. 171 -You can train yourself to see people's strengths or you can train yourself to see their weaknesses. 

• If I can't "fix" her, then how am I to fulfill what God's called me to do. Hey here's a thought: God didn't call me to "fix" people, but to show people that God cares about them, and wants to help them heal. 

1. Pg. 183 -Our job is to pour the healing oil on the wounds. Our job is to lift the fallen, to be a friend to the lonely, to encourage the discouraged. When you take this merciful approach, instead of giving them what they deserve, you start the healing process. You say, "I understand. They're not having a good day. I understand they're under a lot of stress. I understand life is not treating them fairly."
   
2. Pg. 186 –If you will just see them through eyes of love, you could be one of those to help them come up higher and still fulfill their God-given destinies. 

• I've become critical and bitter because I hold resentment over her being able to seem "normal" with other people but not with me. I've allowed myself to develop a tainted view of her. When it comes to dealing with her I am becoming all the things that I so strongly dislike about her…what you say about others can come back at you & you become what you dislike. 

1. Pg. 172 -Here's what I've learned: A critical spirit follows you everywhere you go. You can't get away from it.
   
2. Pg. 173 –A critical spirit taints everything. What's the solution? Number one, recognize when your window is dirty. Number two, just as you've developed a habit of seeing the worst, retrain yourself to see the good.
    
3. Pg. 172 – Everyone has faults and habits that can get on your nerves. The key is to recognize what you are magnifying. You are magnifying the wrong thing when you let the critical spirit take over.
    
4. Pg. 177 –Matthew 7:1 tells us to not pick on people, jump on their failures, and criticize their faults, unless of course, we want the same treatment. A critical spirit has a way of boomeranging back to us.
    
5. Pg. 185 –Most of the time we don't know all the facts about the people we judge and criticize. Even if they are in the wrong, God did not put us here to condemn them. They need our mercy, our forgiveness, and our understanding to get back on the right track. Being hard and critical doesn't bring healing. We aren't lifting people up. We just push them further down. 

• She is selfish and toxic from her unhealed hurts from her life, but it doesn't give me the right to judge her and to try to control her life. I am not responsible for her!!! (I need to say that again!) I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HER!! She is a hurt person who doesn't know how to NOT hurt ME!! 

1. Pg. 146 –When you hold on to a hurt, you never let it heal. It's like a bruise that won't go away…If your hurt isn't allowed to heal, the smallest bump will cause you to be defensive. You can't develop healthy relationships while your emotional bruises remain unhealed.
   
2. Pg. 147 –Unfair things happen to all of us. If you want to see that bruise go away and walk into the freedom God has in store for you, you have to forgive the wrongs. You have to let go of what somebody did and move forward with your life. 

• If I let go of control she will only hurt me more. She is a hurt person who does not know how to NOT hurt me. Trying to control her won't change that. 

1. Pg. 150 –Take a merciful approach and say, "God, I know what they did was wrong. They hurt me and it was not fair, but God, I'm not looking for revenge. I ask you, God, to heal them and give them what they need."
   
2. Pg. 150 -When you can pray for your enemies and even bless those who do you wrong, as the Scripture says, God will settle your accounts (Matthew 5:44; 18:21-35). 

• I'm afraid to have feelings towards her because I'm afraid of the hurt she causes me. News, flash…I still feel the hurt; so that's not working. Controlling her won't make it stop!! Building up walls won't make it stop either.  

1. Pg. 154 –You have to forgive so that you can be free to live each day with happiness in your heart. If you will let go of the hurts and pains and get on God's payroll, God will settle your case. He will make your wrongs right. He will bring justice into your life. You will get what you deserve, God will pay you back double the joy, double the peace, double the favor and double the victory.
   
2. Pg. 147 -Put your foot down and say, "My destiny is too great, my future is too bright, and my God is too big to let an old hurt cause me to be sour and bitter and stuck where I am. No, I'll shake it off and press forward into the bright future God has in store for me."
   

Page Updated

I have updated the page "Books I've Read". This new book, Every Day A Friday by Joel Osteen, was another great read. I hope you will check it out.

Where It Started

     As I lay in bed praying asking God to help me to let go of the need to control how my mom deals with life I found myself thinking about where it started. Wanting to control how she views life, how she heals, how she reacts to life and the challenges that face her. Wanting to control how and when she forgives and lets go of her anger, and all other things that in my view are poisoning her life; is all part of trying to “fix” her…a “job” that has been mine since I was little.

Leah, if you say this or do this for your mom you could cheer her up and help snap her out of her depression. When I would tell other family members about my mom’s depression and about her being suicidal, instead of telling me to not worry that they would deal with it; I was told what to do to try to snap her out of it and make her happy again. This by the way NEVER worked. I was left with the impression that I could “fix” her, and not only could I “fix” her but that it was my job to do so. A “job” for which no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get it right. Here I am all these years later, in my early 30’s, and I still can’t get it right.

Leah, if I wasn’t worried about what would happen to you I would run away, or sometimes it was…I would kill myself. I also was her confidant…personal councilor. Marriage problems, problems with her family, problems at work…I got to hear it all. There were many times when she was crying hysterically and would want to drive off. How was I supposed to react, knowing she was suicidal and talked about wishing she could drive off a bridge; how she wanted to run away so bad. I would hide her car keys, and even at times stood in front of her car to keep her from driving off.

After I told my mom what Jon had done, my Grandparents would call me to talk my mom down. They would say that I was the only person she would listen to. I could hear her in the background crying and saying she couldn’t talk to me…that she couldn’t face me. They would have to coax her onto the phone with me. This was codependency working its charm. My mom’s family is very codependent, and this is where it all started. Being taught that I was responsible for another’s wellbeing and happiness gave me the sense that I could control it somehow. So, here I am…still trying to control the uncontrollable. I will say I have come a long way from where I was. I’m starting to understand I need to make a choice to not let it bother me whether I understand why I let what she does bother me so much or not.

Every time I allow her to upset me I am giving her power over me, and only I can change it. I have to make a choice…to get upset or not…to give her power over my emotions or not. She knows how to push my buttons, and sometimes I think she pushes them on purpose. She has so much rage and anger not only at Jon, but at herself for not protecting me. I feel at times she pushes my buttons as a way to punish herself…a way to keep playing the victim role. She feels so strongly about her views on how she thinks I view her or feel about her that at times it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. She accuses me of thinking of her as less than human, and views all my actions through her skewed perspective. Even though I have been and continue to get angry with her, I always go out of my way to be as kind to her as I can at any given moment. My anger at times gets the best of me; so, I am by no means perfect at it, but I try my best. I do not think of her as less than human. I do, however, see her as a very toxic person in my life. She likes to talk to me about how she is doing in therapy in an effort to try to show me she is healing, but when she does something and I draw boundary lines; she goes on the attack towards me accusing me of not giving her any breaks…she puts on the victim role. By refusing to move on and to let go...to heal, she has become her own victim. She victimizes herself with her won toxic thoughts and behaviors.

In Joel Osteen’s book, Every Day A Friday, he says we should never pray and ask God to change others without first praying and asking God to change us first. So, I will ask God to help me; to change me; to show me my fears, and to help me conquer them. I know in my past blogs I have said, whenever we can’t let go of something or face something there is a fear there holding us back. That’s what I have to ask myself, and what I have to face. So, I ask myself, what is my fear? My fear is…

Untreated Cancer

    I think...No, I'm positive that I've had a break through thought which will dramatically change the way in which I am able to handle dealing with my mom. Now, all I've got to do is get that information from my head down to and into my heart. Before I get into that I want to hold myself accountable by admitting that I am still struggling with dealing with her.

     Ok, now onto our topic.

     As I have stated many times in my posts that anger, hatred, rage, unforgiveness, bitterness...etc. are all poisons in our lives. As they poison our lives they affect the way we relate to and deal with people. They affect our relationships with others. I would even go so far as to say the poison of all those things for which my mom is holding onto is poisoning our relationship, and making it increasingly more difficult for me to deal with her as I see it poisoning her life more and more. It's like a cancer that has gone untreated. Just as cancer in the natural realm can bring forth death, cancer in the spiritual realm brings forth the death of joy, happiness, peace, mercy, forgiveness, self-esteem, the ability to love others properly, and more in your life. I see these things not only dying but dead in her life. I see her trying to mask it over, but it doesn't work with me...I see past it. I'm torn up on the inside knowing that she is going through this. I'm angry over the fact that I've told her time and time again how to purge this from her life, but she refuses to take the steps required. She refuses to take up forgiveness; the only cure. She knows she is rotting in her own unforgiveness, and doesn't care. She thinks she deserves it; which pains me deeply.

     I can see now, that I have let my anger towards her develop into this type of spiritual cancer which is affecting our relationship from both ends. I get so angry at her because I feel like she should know better than to be the way she is. I get frustrated because I try so hard to change that in her, and can't. I get impatient waiting for her to change. I struggle with accepting her for who she is, and the way in which she deals with things. At the core of it all, this boils down to not trusting God to deal with her. I guess I think I can do it better and faster than an all mighty, all powerful, all knowing, God of all wisdom God. That's pretty foolish!! I have to learn to let go, and let God deal with her in his own way and on his own terms. This is where that life changing, life altering (for me in my life) revelation comes into play. Here it is...she has a spiritual cancer and is CHOOSING not to treat it. Now if I can come to terms with that and be at peace with it; her actions and behaviors won't affect me in the way that they do. She won't be able to push my buttons, and trigger me into anger towards her. This is my cure...to let go...to let go of the desire to control her and how she copes with her life. I have already forgiven her for those things which are in the past, but it's the day to day type of things that come up where I struggle with my anger towards her.

     I do not wish for this post to be insensitive towards anyone who has or is facing cancer. My dad is a cancer survivor, and my mother-in-law is currently facing cancer. It is from seeing how my mother-in-law is choosing to deal with her cancer that I have come to the realization about my mom. Before we found out that there is nothing the doctors can do for my mother-in-law, she was saying she did not want to do surgery or chemo. She has had many surgeries in her life. I believe she didn't want to do any more surgeries because she is tired of them, and because I think she was afraid of not making it out of surgery. When she finally decided to give chemo a try, we found out it was not an option that she could do. Her fear and hesitation with chemo was...she was afraid she didn't have the strength to make it through chemo. Keep in mind we only found out about her cancer about 3 months ago after she had surgery to have her gall bladder removed. Which at the time she also was sick with pneumonia. We have since found out that surgery will only give her a 23% chance of living an extra 2 months.


     It has gotten to the point where I cannot talk to my mom about my mother-in-law's cancer without getting into an argument about it. These conversations I'm about to write about took place before we found out just how bad her cancer is. My mom believes that because she was unwilling to do surgery or chemo that my mother-in-law had a death wish that she just couldn't understand. Every time she would say that I would try to explain to her my mother-in-law does not have a death wish, but it would only end up in us arguing about it. All I could hear was anger and rage in her voice. I don't know what went on when my dad was facing cancer, but I think she is viewing my mother-in-law's cancer through her view of what went on during my dad's cancer. It was after one such argument, where my mom said something for which I consider to be extreamly insensitive and wrong for her to say, that I came to the realization that my mom's anger, unforgiveness, and other negative emotions that she keeps bottled up inside her were like a spiritual cancer in her, and she was choosing not to treat it. So, now we have come full circle on how this post came about. I know it may take time for this knowledge to travel from my head to my heart, but I truly believe this will help me to deal with my mom better.

     I also, have to consider that just because she is choosing not to treat her spiritual cancer it does not mean that she wants to be the way that she is...wow!, that is hard for me to see and understand when it comes to my mom. She has been this way for so long that I feel if she wanted to change it she would have already. The way I see it, she is only willing to work on becoming healthy until it gets really uncomfortable and then she fakes like she's trying to face it all and get better; but doesn't truly face the hard things that she needs to face. Again, this is a big point of frustration for me, and why it's hard for me to see that she doesn't want to be this way. Another reason why it's hard for me to see this is because in my own healing journey I didn't care about how uncomfortable dealing with something was. I knew I had to face things to heal, and was willing to do that no matter how uncomfortable it was. If you're going to be serious about healing you have to be willing to truly face and deal with the uncomfortable and extremely uncomfortable. I just don't see her doing that.

     However, if I'm going to be able to heal and move forward I have to push myself to accept my mom the way she is, and to not allow her to push my buttons. She is who she is, and I shouldn't allow her actions that upset me to suprise me, and upset me. It's not worth stressing over. Like I said earlier, I just have to get this knowledge from my head to my heart, and it will be life altering in the way I am able to interact with her.