Divine Nomenclature by Sharon Lurie

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-->© 2015 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Spooky

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the names, attributes, or backgrounds of any real persons, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, because in real life, being happy to find out your husband murdered his first wife in cold blood would NEVER happen, right?

My maternal grandmother was a Norwegian powerhouse we grandchildren called Munna.  Since I was the youngest and lived the closest to her, I spent the most time with her.  Just as Ragnar Lothbrok was the scourge of France and England, Munna was the scourge of Passaic County, New Jersey, and grammar slackers everywhere.

Munna, for fun, would correct the grammar and spelling on any junk mail she received and return it to the sender in hopes they would amend their slacking ways.  She lived in a senior citizen building where each resident had a numbered, assigned parking spot.  Even though these were clearly marked throughout the parking lot, visitors to the building would often park in the residents’ parking spots.  Whenever someone parked in Munna’s parking spot, she would block the offender’s car in with her car and go to her apartment.  Usually in short order, the building security guard would knock on Munna’s apartment door, accompanied by the driver of the car in Munna’s parking spot.  Munna would then read the culprit the Riot Act.  Let me tell you, you have never been guilt-mongered until you’ve been Munna guilt-mongered.  She once chewed out a pastor who parked in her parking spot in such bloody fashion as to make “300” look like a paper cut.

Probably my favorite memories of Munna were when she took me to the local libraries for the free movie programs.  Everyone else in attendance was at least 60 years older than me, so I became everyone’s surrogate grandchild.  It was at these gatherings of retired sexa-, septua-, and octogenarians that I developed both an irrational - yet at the same time completely healthy - fear of polyester clothing and sensible shoes.  It was also at these gatherings that I first saw what would become my favorite movie of all time.

Rebecca, which came out in 1940, was based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.  Now, because of the Hays Code, Alfred Hitchcock had to modify the script in one key area, but mostly he was able to stay true to the source material.

The novel is about a young woman who marries an older, wealthy aristocrat after only knowing him for two weeks.  (Dear Readers, please don’t marry someone you barely know, lest you want to be the headlining act of either a Hitchcock film or an episode of “Forensic Files,” and for all the wrong reasons, too.)  After their whirlwind romance in Monte Carlo and a few more weeks of honeymooning, Max de Winter takes his new young bride to his British estate, Manderley.  This is usually where the fairy tale ends, but du Maurier’s magnum opus then weaves a terrifying tale representative of all great Gothic novels.  Mrs. de Winter Number Two soon learns about Rebecca, Maxim’s late first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances and whose presence overshadows everyone and everything at the manor.  The reader goes from page to page experiencing increasing suspicion.  Was Rebecca murdered?  Was she really still alive?  Was she a ghost or evil spirit out to haunt the living and torment the woman she believed was trying to take her place?

Maxim’s new wife spends a good part of the story feeling conspicuously insecure about her predecessor - that she can’t measure up, that Maxim wishes Rebecca were still alive - and working herself up into an emotional frenzy about Rebecca, whom she sees as her nemesis and main competitor for Maxim’s affections.

*SIDE NOTE/SPOILER ALERT*

After Rebecca’s body is discovered, Maxim confesses to his new bride that he hated Rebecca because of her cruelty and infidelity and, upon her telling him she was pregnant with her cousin’s child, Maxim shot and killed her.  Our female protagonist doesn’t bat an eyelash that the man she married just admitted to committing uxoricide.  She is just positively giddy that he really didn’t love his first wife, and that on top of marrying him when she knew bupkis about him.  Dear Female Readers, please be smarter than our female protagonist.

Daphne du Maurier, remarkable raconteuse that she was, used some ingenious literary techniques to help add the air of mystery.  For one, she named the novel after Rebecca, not the second wife.  Next, to show how much Rebecca’s memory drove the main characters, du Maurier never names the new wife.

Names are funny things.  In American society we usually choose names by what sounds nice to us.  In Bible times, names had great significance.  Names meant something.  Sometimes a person’s name reflected the hope the parent had for the child’s future.  Other times, as in the case of Benoni and Jabez, they are a monument to the parent’s wounds or disappointments.

All of us have a name we are trying to either live up to or live down.  Thankfully, for the children of God, He doesn’t leave us to the names we were or weren’t given.

Jacob had a rough start.  The second-born son in a Middle Eastern culture, he was persona non grata.  He was called “supplanter” at birth, and that name set the tone for the beginning of his life.

The start of Jacob’s story shows that he lived up to his name.  He cheated his brother.  He lied to his father.  He cheated his uncle.  His name was becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy - until He wrestled with God.

I had read the story of Jacob’s encounter with the Angel of the Lord many times, but it wasn’t until I read it in The Amplified Bible that it really hit home.

Genesis 32:24-28 says, “And Jacob was left alone, and a Man wrestled with him until daybreak.  And when [the Man] saw that He did not prevail against [Jacob], He touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with Him.  Then He said, ‘Let Me go, for day is breaking.’ But [Jacob] said, ‘I will not let You go unless You declare a blessing upon me.’  [The Man] asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And [in shock of realization, whispering] he said, ‘Jacob [supplanter, schemer, trickster, swindler]!’  And He said, ‘Your name shall be called no more Jacob [supplanter], but Israel [contender with God]; for you have contended and have power with God and with men and have prevailed.’”

To Jacob, his name wasn’t just what he went by to his family and friends.  It was his identity of which he was painfully aware every day of his life, and an encounter with God changed all that.  However, it wasn’t just Jacob’s name that got changed that day.  When God changes our names, He changes His own name.  From that point forward, God was no longer “the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac.”  He became “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  More importantly, He became “the God of Israel.”  When I gave my life to God during a blistering summer in 1987, He changed my name to “child of God,” and He changed His Name to “the God of Sharon.”

What is the name you want have or the one you want to shed?  Maybe you are like the second Mrs. de Winter, and the name you’re looking for is Beloved.  Cherished.  Valuable.  Maybe you are like Jacob and are trying to eschew some negative eponym like Stupid.  Worthless.  Troublemaker.  Unwanted.  Disappointment.

God is still in the name-changing business, and He does it in a way that could make even the Master of Suspense envious.

Hebrews 11:16 (The Amplified Bible)-“But the truth is that they were yearning for and aspiring to a better and more desirable country, that is, a heavenly [one]. For that reason God is not ashamed to be called their God [even to be surnamed their God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob], for He has prepared a city for them.”

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

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The Rise of the Crocodile by Sharon Lurie

© 2015 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Wild

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, except the part about the babysitting.  Please don’t tell my old boss I wrote this.  He’s seven now, owns four more conglomerates, and if he gets wind of this, I’ll never work in this town again.  

A few years ago, I had to babysit my then boss.  My boss at the time was four.  (Through clever wranglings, some of which I don’t understand from a legal standpoint, his parents gave him controlling stake in the company.  I was in my late 30s, struggling to get by, and living in someone’s basement, whereas a toddler was the Chief Executive Officer of a successful business.  And to answer your next question, yes.  Life is cruel.)

For those that don’t know, and for reasons unclear to me, boys between the ages of 3-8 love to pull animal tails.  It doesn’t matter the animal or its size.  It’s almost as though little boys have some sort of biological drive or scientific need to do so, and according to them, being told not to pull animal tails is not only oppressive but downright totalitarian.  Little Boss Man kept pulling his German Shepherd’s tail, and I knew if I didn’t intervene, the German Shepherd was going to take matters into his own hands…er, paws.

I made a call to the Chairwoman of the Board, also known as Mom, as to proper punishment.  She told me to give Little Boss Man a time out in the corner with his hands raised.  Little Boss Man immediately began crying, saying the German Shepherd’s tail was asking for it, and that if I didn’t shorten his punishment, he would die and his arms would fall off.  He also told me what a horrible human being I was.  Since this wasn’t my first babysitting (or boss-with-a-Napolean-complex) rodeo, I suspected his tears were crocodilian in nature.  So, I decided to put it to the test.  In what I thought was a necessary violation of the normal employee-employer boundaries, I tickled him.  Little Boss Man laughed profusely.  When I stopped, I asked, “Now what is this?  I thought you were dying and your arms were going to fall off!”

Without skipping a beat, Little Boss Man went back to sobbing about the cruel and unusual nature of his punishment.  So, I tickled him again, which resulted in additional uproarious fits of laughter.  As the reader can imagine, when the time out was finished, Little Boss Man did not, indeed, die, and he retained full use of his extremities, ensuring that he could and would live to pull many a dog tail another day.  I, however, did not leave the experience unscathed.  Though I am not a parent, I witnessed something every parent does at some point or another:  I saw Little Boss Man learn how to lie.  More specifically, he had learned how to manipulate, and it made me profoundly sad.

I remember hearing a lecture about ten years ago by a psychologist about how children learn how to lie.  (Much of what he said is referenced in this article.)  He said it starts as young as six months.  The example he used is of a child being hungry.  The child may coo or whimper a little bit to get his mother’s attention, but if he’s ignored for whatever reason, he will escalate the situation by screaming louder and louder, as though in bodily distress, in order to get his needs met.  For most of us, if we encounter a pattern of being ignored or overlooked when asking for our basic needs, we either get in the habit of trying to meet them in inappropriate ways, or try to just go without.  Some of us vacillate between both.

Crocodiles are said to cry tears of ostensible remorse as they devour their victims.  The dictionary defines crocodile tears in part as “an insincere show of sorrow.”  The crocodile shows his deception in many ways.  For Little Boss Man, it was pretending to be near death to avoid a well-deserved punishment.  Sometimes the crocodile screams fire in order to simply get attention.  However, sometimes the crocodile puts on a brave face to give the illusion he’s in more control than he actually is.  Last summer, I realized I’ve worn the crocodile face in many regards.

It’s not an easy thing to admit one has a problem.  For me, the realization came from reading the second chapter of "Boundaries in Dating," entitled “Require and Embody Truth.”  I remember when the lines from the book hit me over the head like a velvet brick:  “Finally, if you don't want to be in a relationship with a liar, be an honest person yourself.”

I had found myself in a pattern of relationships with dishonest people.  Part of it was I had a terrible time addressing problems that I saw or being direct about things I needed.  A good part of that was learned behavior on my part.  I guess you could say I come from a culture of crocodiles that either pretend they’re stronger than they are or who only know how to get what they need through manipulation and theatrics.  Because of that, I developed a pattern of communication that was great for appearances but bad for long-term relationships.

Sometimes, we don’t remember how a bad habit started, but we had an “event” that cemented it.  For me, it was a guy. Someone I really admired, respected, and trusted.  I tried to be honest with him about some emotional support I needed.  In his defense, I think he was channeling the crocodile, too, but he lashed out at me, to my surprise, and let me know in no uncertain terms that not only was I wrong for asking for help, I was wrong for even needing it.  I couldn’t get his words out of my head, and it began a long period of me pretending I didn’t need anything, even if going without put me in danger.

Around the time I began reading “Boundaries in Dating,” many of my single friends began either dating or getting married in disastrous fashion.  I won’t go into the gory details, but they were all making romantic choices so destructive and unwise that even Larry King, Donald Trump, and the late Elizabeth Taylor went on record to say, “Folks, you’re rushing into danger here.  Maybe you should work on your issues, not jump from relationship to relationship, or at least date the person longer than a week before getting engaged, don’t you think?”

As the reader can imagine, almost all of these ill-conceived romantic ventures ended badly.  I found myself not only sad seeing my friends suffer, but terribly disillusioned.  Some of them were older than I am and had been single longer than I have.  I kept wondering how these people who were so sensible otherwise could ignore such glaring red flags and be so foolish.  I also wondered if it were possible for me to be deceived like that.

I pondered and prayed about the situation, and finally the answer came to me:  my friends all fell into that trap because they were lying about their wound.  Some came from terribly dysfunctional homes with no support to speak of, while others had been alone a long time and were ashamed of their loneliness.  I remember one friend of mine who had said to me repeatedly, “I feel like I can’t talk about it with anyone.  If you’re still single at a certain age, people tell you it’s your fault because you’re either doing something wrong or you just want a relationship too much.”

Watching my friends get hurt made me realize I was in danger.  If I didn’t learn how to be honest about my emotional needs, I was going to be the next one to fall for a charlatan.  I realized, though, that part of getting needs met in healthy ways was learning to seek out healthy relationships.

There’s a person I’ve done a lot of writing with over the years whom I’ll call Mister Storyteller.  He was the one who first encouraged me to write scripts, and he and his lovely wife, Mrs. Script Editor, have been very kind to me over the years, like spiritual parents.  I have solid history with them, and they have stood by me when others couldn’t or wouldn’t.  I thought if I was going to do the hard work of being honest about my emotional needs, they would be a good place to start.

Mister Storyteller and I were working on a literary project together.  He asked me how I felt about the writing process.  I told him that I needed to get positive feedback.  I said I’d worked for many people who only told me what I did wrong, and never mentioned things I did well, and I really needed the encouragement.  While Mister Storyteller was always one who had offered positive comments about my writing, after we had that talk, I noticed every time he emailed me with notes on a current draft, he included positives about my work with each update.

A few weeks later, I took a chance and asked Mister Storyteller and Mrs. Script Editor if we could have a chat.  I was scared to death to admit to someone else that I’ve failed in my relationships in the past and needed help navigating those waters.  However, when I told them, they were so understanding.  They told me I was part of the family, they loved me, and would help me in any way they could.

I wanted to go further with learning to own my needs, address problems, and communicate honestly.  I joined a group of Christian women who meet once a week.  We laugh and cry together, and we allow one another to speak the truth and process our emotions without shame.  This has been a slow and difficult process for me, but a rewarding one, because as I’ve learned to be truthful both about what I need and problems I see, I’ve seen my relationships become all the more fruitful and rich.

Killing the crocodile is not any easy task, nor is it a one-time deal.  There is always the temptation to pretend we’re okay, to hide when we’ve screwed up for fear of rejection, or to seek attention and validation in unhealthy ways.  I don’t know that the crocodile ever dies completely.  I think we can get to the point where we just stop feeding him.  The sooner we get there, the better, and if you don’t believe me, just ask the toddler CEO.  *grin*

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

Isn’t She Lov-er-ly? by Sharon Lurie

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-->© 2014 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Secure

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional…or, at least I hope so.  If people really are dropping like flies around Nicholas Sparks, someone needs to call the cops.

Recently, for reasons unclear to me at the time, I felt a pressing need to watch all of the movies of Nicholas Sparks, author of perennial favorites such as “The Notebook.”  For those unfamiliar with his work, his stories strongly resemble Mark Schultz songs and episodes of “24”:  gutwrenchingly sad, and in the end, there will be a body count.  If I remember correctly, “The Lucky One” had a higher death toll than the last installment of “Die Hard.”  If you are reading this and you have never seen a Nicholas Sparks movie, you can save your time, because they are exactly like Shakespeare’s tragedies - in the end, everybody dies.

I don’t mean to sound negative, though.  I think everyone should familiarize themselves with Mister Sparks’ repertoire because his films teach an important life lesson:  if you treat others well, don’t compromise your standards, and if you wait long enough, you will eventually find the love of your life who will bring you the greatest joy and fulfillment you have ever known…only to have that person snatched from you via an incurable disease or natural disaster two weeks later.

Just kidding…sort of.  Though I am not a fan of romantic comedies or romantic dramas, I found the schmaltzfests of the Sultan of Star-Crossed Lovers consistently entertaining and endearing.  However, when I watched “Nights in Rodanthe,” I got a lot more than just a good cry.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Jill Torrelson, one of the secondary characters in the story, died during an operation to remove a hemangioma, a benign cyst, from her face (she had a fatal allergic reaction to the anesthesia).  In a critical scene, Paul Flanner, the male protagonist, went to talk to Jill’s widower Robert who had the following to say about his late wife:

“Her eyes were dark brown and soft, like she’d never hurt a soul, and she wouldn’t, neither.  I knew Jill since we was in school.  That thing on her face, she always had it.  I didn’t care about it.  I never even saw it, but she wanted it off.  I’d find her in the bathroom crying, looking at it.  She’d be saying, ‘I want to be pretty for you.’  It broke my heart when she’d say that, because she was pretty.  She was so…but, that’s what she wanted.  She wanted the operation, and in our whole life, I don’t remember her asking for anything.  So, I said yes…She had all the love and kindness in the world right inside her.”

I want to talk about a disease that is running rampant today which seems to affect women mostly.  This plague upon the land is called Toxic Self-Loathing.  It is the practice of not seeing or actively degrading worth in ourselves because of our perceived lack of external or internal beauty (for those unfamiliar with the disease, click here).  Contrary to what we think, it is not harmless, it is not “cute,” it is not representative of Godly humility, nor is it something that goes away on its own in time.  It is a disease, and, if left unchecked, has devastating consequences.

What Toxic Self-Loathing Does to Us

The aforementioned scene in “Nights in Rodanthe” opened my eyes to something important:  Toxic Self-Loathing is deadly.  I never would’ve thought before that a little insecurity could be lethal, like it was in the case of Mrs. Torrelson, but often it does kill the one infected, though not in the dramatic and abrupt fashion seen in the movie.  Think about it:  the woman who hates herself will often give herself to abusive men, and many of those women end up dead at the hands of their abusers.  Another woman who can’t see physical beauty in herself will starve herself in an attempt to attain a physical ideal which, in the digital age of airbrushing, isn’t even real.  Yet another woman, believing she can’t be or do any better, might turn herself over to self-destructive behaviors such as alcoholism or drug abuse.

Every time we knock ourselves for reasons other than the conviction of the Holy Spirit, every time we call God a liar by telling ourselves we are not fearfully and wonderfully made, we are drinking poison into our spirits, pure and simple.  And if we think we are no good, we will behave in such fashion.

Mrs. Torrelson, despite all the reassurances from her husband, could not believe that she was beautiful unless she got rid of that cyst.  Her lack of belief in her own value literally cost her her life.  However, her Toxic Self-Loathing didn’t rob just her.

What Toxic Self-Loathing Does to Others

I have a good guy friend I will call the Shadow Boxer.  One night on the phone he told me about his ex-wife.  She was very insecure and suffered from congenital Toxic Self-Loathing.  He said, “She was physically beautiful, intelligent, and had an engaging personality.  But she never liked herself.  She thought she was ugly, for some reason I’ve never been able to fathom.  At first it was flattering, because she needed me so badly, but over time it became draining.  It was like a constant drip, drip, drip energy drain. I felt like I had to carry her all the time. The weight became unbearable, and I started to rebel.  At some point, I gave up trying to convince her that she was beautiful, because it never worked.”

The story did not have a happy ending.  For all he did to love her well, after a short time she left him for another man without much of an explanation, causing my friend a world of longstanding hurt.

I couldn’t get the conversation out of my head for many days following.  Shortly thereafter, I conducted one of my famous Facebook opinion polls.  I asked, “Which is harder for you to handle:  a person who is conceited and thinks he’s perfect and doesn’t make any mistakes, or the person who is rabidly insecure and always putting themselves down?”  Overwhelmingly, my friends answered the latter, to my shock.  They said it’s easier to bring a haughty person down than to lift an insecure person up, and most said that being around a self-hating person is draining.

The conversation with Shadow Boxer and the surprising results of my social media survey were hard to hear, but I needed to hear it.  A lot of women need to hear it.  So many of us become emotional black holes, so incapable of believing we are beautiful, valuable, and deserving of love that all the validation we receive is like pouring water down the drain.

Toxic Self-Loathing is not only a danger to us but a danger to those who love us.  Shadow Boxer’s ex-wife didn’t believe she was worthy of love, so she left (and thereby hurt) a good man to be with a bad man.  It is not uncommon for someone who questions her own value to leave a healthy person for an unhealthy one, which often causes the healthy person to wonder what was so terrible about him that his woman left him for an axe murderer.  A woman who marries and stays with an abuser because she thinks she doesn’t deserve any better sets the example for her daughters that they deserve to be abused, too.  I have also talked to a number of women who said they learned to berate themselves and their physical appearance because they had a mother who denigrated her own figure on a regular basis.  After all, if Mommy is ugly, and I come from her, then I must be ugly, too, right?

So, in other words, and I don’t know how else to say this, our not feeling good enough, in one way or another, makes those who try to love us feel not good enough, too.  Therefore, unless we do something about it, Toxic Self-Loathing is not only in danger of killing us, but infecting those around us.  Just ask Mister Torrelson what it was like every time he tried to reassure his wife she was beautiful.

(For the record, it’s not just women who suffer from Toxic Self-Loathing.  However, men usually berate themselves over their perceived lack of accomplishments and the mark they’ve made on the world, whereas with women it’s usually about their appearance or loveability.

I have a good guy friend who for many years constantly beat himself up because he felt he wasn’t where he needed to be in life and would never be good or strong enough to achieve anything.  Every time I tried to encourage him, he would tell me I didn’t know what I was talking about.  This is a man who started several extremely successful and profitable businesses and has also received numerous well-known accolades in the music world!  To hear him speak of himself as an utter failure, no matter what I said to the contrary, left me devastatingly sad .)

The Solution

Now that we’ve clearly defined the problem, what is the solution?  Telling ourselves or others to stop the Toxic Self-Loathing doesn’t work.  No one gets into the habit of hating herself overnight, so she won’t break the habit overnight either.  (For those who doubt the ineffectiveness of just telling someone to stop thinking negative thoughts, watch this.)

Jesus said the second greatest commandment was to love our neighbors as ourselves.  That says to me that there is a kind of selflove that is not only healthy, appropriate, and beneficial, but also natural.  I don’t think anyone comes into the world thinking they are ugly and worthless.  I think we all start out with a good self-concept, because apparently a good self-concept will allow us to see others in a positive light.  Therefore, the question is when is it that we begin to hate ourselves?  It is usually a traumatic event or a series of messages from people whose approval we seek early on that begins to plant those seeds of doubt about our own worth inside of us.

Many of us think all kinds of crazy things about ourselves:  we’re not pretty enough, we will never be successful, we will always screw up the good things in our lives, we will sabotage whatever relationships we have so it’s best not to get close to anyone, and the list goes on and on.  What I have discovered, however, is that there is usually one or a few foundational lies from which the Redwood Forest of Self-Hatred sprouts.  As with a tree, the most effective way to destroy those lies is to burn the root.  Kill the root, and the fruit has no choice but to follow.  The hard part often is finding that root.

I had a terminal case of Toxic Self-Loathing from the time I was eight years old until March of 2013.  Lie upon lie that I believed about myself compounded, and the weight of them almost killed me.  I got desperate and asked God to show me when and why I started to believe I had no value.  He showed me what that root was.  It was a lie, a message given to me by someone I both loved and trusted.  It was also deeply rooted around my heart, and it wasn’t going to give up that ground without a fight.

I am not going to say that following that revelation I never had an insecure thought about myself.  However, two things happened.  First of all, I stopped seeing that lie as a part of me and recognized for the first time that it was a tool from the Enemy to keep me from receiving love from God and His people.  Second, with that big lie exposed, a ton of lesser but still debilitating lies I had believed about myself for years lost their control over me, too.  God showing me the source of my problem was one of the tools necessary to fix it.  I had a lot of work on my part (and still do) to see myself as the beloved child of God that God says I am.  However, the war against Toxic Self-Loathing, for me, has become winnable and and my victory permanent.

Reader, you are beautiful and you have value.  God says so, and He wants to heal you of your Toxic Self-Loathing.  After all, He loves you too much to let you become Mister Sparks’ next casualty.  *grin*

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

The Great Pill-Popping by Sharon Lurie

© 2014 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Coherent

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional…or maybe not.  Just because I was on Vicodin doesn’t mean I didn’t really see the Death Star.

Many years ago, I went for my first ride on a motorcycle.  All went well until my friend and I returned to my church parking lot.  I didn’t feel anything as I dismounted his bike, but was taken aback when I found my right leg stuck to the tailpipe.  (*WORD OF CAUTION TO READERS*  When riding a motorcycle, always wear long pants!)

I tore my leg away from the miniature incinerator, and with it a sizable chunk of skin.  I went into the church, grabbed the first aid kit, and covered my wound with burn cream and gauze.

About an hour later, I unwrapped the gauze to see how the burn was doing.  Without going into the gory details, it looked a bit like a bubbling cauldron.

A friend took me to an urgent care clinic.  The doctor gave a shot to me of something to anesthetize the burn in order to clean and dress it.  Whatever he gave me made loopier than a Slinky.

The next day, my friend took me to the burn unit of the local hospital.  I was given a prescription for some industrial strength painkillers and was ordered to return every day or so to have my burn examined and bandages changed.

I have a bunch of allergies and also get quite spaced out on painkillers, so there’s not a lot I can take.  What they gave me for the burn took me for quite the ride.

I became easily spooked.  I had trouble remembering things.  I called everyone by the name of a Star Wars character.  While at a friend’s house, I ran screaming from her vacuum cleaner because I was convinced it was the Death Star.

On a return trip to the burn unit, I was asked when I’d had my last tetanus booster.  Had I been in my right mind, I would’ve told them I was allergic to it.  In a moment of terrible lack of forethought, at least in my opinion, the burn doctor decided to give me one.  The injection site on my arm blew up to mammoth proportions and I itched like a mad woman for several days following.

Four days after I had gotten the burn, I had been scheduled to give a deposition in court.  The friend with whom I was staying didn’t want me to be spacey for my court date, so without telling me, (not that it would have helped) he gave me aspirin instead of the prescription elephant tranquilizer painkiller.  Did I mention I am allergic to aspirin?  So, I had an allergic reaction to the aspirin on top of the allergic reaction to the tetanus booster on top the small supernova that was occurring on my leg.

Upon my return to the burn unit the next day, I told the doctor my tale of woe, and he took me off all the painkillers.  Since everything I had taken either made me sick or made me discombobulated, he said I would just have to deal with the pain.

For anyone who has had to deal with an injury, there are times when we have to “grin and bear” it because the side effects of some analgesics can be more harmful than the pain itself.  This is often true of figurative painkillers, too.

In today’s world, and dare I say today’s church, pain and grief are dirty words.  Though none of us would think of telling someone who had broken a bone to not think about it and get back into the physical rigors of life right away, we often tell others (and ourselves) that emotional pain shouldn’t bother us.  In Christian circles, it is quite common, upon someone expressing feelings of loss, to be told he shouldn’t feel that way, that God has a plan, blah, blah, blah.

When I was dealing with the physical pain of a burned leg, no amount of telling myself that the wound would eventually heal would make the pain go away.  A broken heart isn’t much different.  However, because the misconception that we should be able to turn painful emotions off like a light switch, most of us learned to develop quite elaborate emotional painkillers which we hope will set us on a fast track to the mental state we had before the loss occurred.  The only hitch is these anodynes often cause more problems than they solve.

In my travels, I have seen emotional pill-popping of all kinds:  the woman who goes from one abusive relationship to another to numb the pain of being abandoned by her father, the kid who turns to drugs to assuage the pain of rejection from his peers, the divorcé who uses blame and ridicule of his ex to kill the pain the guilt he feels for not doing his part to make the marriage work, or the single who goes from relationship to relationship without any downtime in between to deal with the pain of being alone.  I have even seen and experienced blaming oneself as a painkiller, because thinking we could have done better anesthetizes the pain of the knowledge that some losses are completely out of our control.

I experienced a loss that also served as a wake up call for me, teaching me that if we don’t let pain run its own course and grief do its work, we will become someone neither we nor those we love will recognize.

I had a gentleman friend.  He was my boss at a temporary job, and we stayed friends after my assignment ended.  He was the kind of dude a girl would want to take home to meet her dad.  He was smart, strong, humble, and had a huge heart.  He had been quite kind to me, and I had learned a lot from him.

He started dating a girl who wasn’t what she appeared to be.  Long story short, she took him for a ride emotionally and financially.  When she got what she wanted from him, she dumped him, but it didn’t stop there.  She treated him terribly in public and forced their mutual friends to choose between him and her.  For reasons I won’t divulge, they chose her.

I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a good man get taken out, but I have, and watching someone’s heart die is excruciating.  He started retreating into himself.  He stopped doing things he used to love.  He stopped dreaming and fell into the rut so many men do of trying to become successful in business at the expense of his soul and his relationships.  Worst of all, he began to hang out in different crowds.  The deep conversations I used to enjoy with him came to an end, and he would become irritated even with me asking him, “How are you?”

His painkiller was to surround himself with people who would never inquire to the condition of his heart, and to keep his heart under lock and key and open to no one.  He terminated our friendship in short order, and it is a loss I still feel to this day.

One of the biggest problems with trying to kill our pain in dishonest and unhealthy ways is it almost always ends up inflicting pain on those we love.  Think about it.  Our addictions cause us to break trust with those we love.  Running from relationships for fear of getting hurt robs those around us of the blessing of our presence and personhood.  Not dealing with the anger we have towards those who have wounded us turns into rage against those around us who haven’t.  The list goes on and on.

Seeing what happened to my gentleman friend opened my eyes to the direction I was heading.  I had not really allowed myself to grieve anything.  I let others dictate to me what I should and shouldn’t feel.  As particular losses piled up, I realized if I didn’t take time out to heal, the emotional and spiritual damage would be irreversible.

I think letting ourselves feel pain scares us because it shows us how little control we have in life.  Sometimes losses hit us even with the greatest of precautions taken.  Sometimes those we love change for the worse, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  God doesn’t ask us to turn off our hearts and avoid pain at all costs.  After all, there was pain from which God didn’t even shield Himself.

I started this process of being authentic and allowing myself to literally count my losses about a year ago.  (I don’t recommend stockpiling forty years worth of grief to anyone.)  It has been hard.  Letting myself cry and feel angry and show vulnerability to trusted friends has been unchartered territory for me.  Telling God what I actually feel instead of what I think He wants to hear has proved the most challenging discipline of all.  However, as I continue to be real about it, I am beginning to see the fruit of it, and the fruit is both sweet to the taste and nourishing to the heart.

I have abandoned the Great Pill-Popping, and I encourage all of you, my readers, to do the same.  The upside of grieving honestly is that we don’t do it alone.  The Man of Sorrows, who isn’t unable of sympathizing with us in our weaknesses, not only feels our pain, but chooses to bear it with us.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

Yippee-kai-yay, Mother and Child By Sharon Lurie

© 2013 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Explosive

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want anyone to think I am promoting violence on the holidays, unless it’s necessary to get out of uncomfortable Christmas gatherings in which nosy people insist on asking you why it’s almost the end of another year and you’re still not married.

“Die Hard” is my favorite Christmas movie, which is a conundrum since I am also a big Jane Austen fan (a woman who likes both Georgian gentry romantic fiction and action thrillers walks a lonely road).  Alan Rickman, who plays the main antagonist in “Die Hard,” also plays Colonel Brandon in the 1995 film adaptation of “Sense and Sensibility.”

My girlfriends think Alan Rickman as Brandon is on parity with Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy in the 1995 “Pride and Prejudice” miniseries.  They don’t understand why I can’t bear him as Marianne Dashwood’s future husband.    However, every time I watch “Sense and Sensibility” and try to imagine Alan Rickman sweeping off my feet in the rain, as soon as we get to the wedding scene, I imagine him reverting from an English brogue to a German accent, shooting me in the head, and running off with my negotiable bearer bonds on the way to our honeymoon.

Anywho, for those who don’t know, “Die Hard” is a film from the 80s starring Bruce Willis as New York policeman John McClane.  Estranged from his wife Holly, who has moved to California with their two kids, John flies to Los Angeles in an attempt to reconcile with her.  However, while visiting her at Nakatomi Plaza during her office Christmas party on December 24, the building is taken over by terrorists, led by Hans Gruber, who’s played by Rickman.  McClane escapes the party and tries to defeat the twelve terroists, who’ve taken everyone else in the building hostage.

Of course, the police get involved, and then the FBI.  For the sake of comic relief, filling 131 minutes of screen time, and advancing Bruce Willis’s career, law enforcement are complete idiots and only exacerbate the hostage problem.  So, the job of saving the day rests solely on John McClane’s shoulders.

Some say the movie is the first in a line of the modern cop movies.  Some say it’s a cliché-ridden popcorn flick full of plot holes and over-the-top theatrics that only serve to propagate the antiquated idea of the urban cowboy as it lines the pockets of film studio executives.  For me, it’s probably the greatest allegory of the coming of Christ I have seen put to film.  (To the myriad of online bloggers who insist “Die Hard” is not a Christmas movie, take note!)

We became alienated from our true love.  In the meantime, we put ourselves on a collision course with a powerful enemy, one with an intricate plan to take from us what wasn’t his and destroy us in the process.

Our true love came to reclaim us as His own, but we resisted.  For a moment we forget what it was like to be in relationship with Him, and in that moment, the enemy struck.  However, as the full force of the love we left behind and its consequences hit, so did the full force of the jealousy He had for us.

True love sprung into action, and so began redemption’s great work.  He worked and lived among us, in our confines of terror and confusion that are often the hallmarks of human existence.  For the time being, He had to do the job of preparing our rescue in anonymous and clandestine fashion, and though it didn’t seem so at the time, His surreptitiousness was for our safety and benefit.

As we trembled in terror, the Word-Become-Flesh worked in the background, robbing the enemy of his weapons and his henchmen, quickly reminding the enemy of his shortcomings, which worked him into a stupefying rage.  However, each successive blow to the enemy came at great personal expense to the Pursuer of our souls.  He was forced to experience pain and peril previously unknown to Him.  He knew full well the blood He would have to shed.  But for Him, there would be no retreat.  Those on the outside had failed, and miserably so.  He had to succeed, because the apple of His eye was at stake.

Every great story has a pinnacle showdown between good and evil, and this one is no different.  The enemy was almost completely disarmed, but we the beloved didn’t know that.  All we knew was that we had death at our heads, and the sky was falling.

But then He appeared-bloodied, limping, and with singular purpose in His eyes.  He moved towards us as the enemy sneered.  Being the coward he is, the enemy put us between true love and himself.  He demanded He put down what appeared to be His only weapon, which He did, for love’s sake.

Then began that heart-stopping, breath-taking moment when the enemy rocked with laughter.  Strength fled from our spirits as we watched in disbelief what couldn’t possibly be the end.

But it wasn’t the end.  IT WASN’T THE END!!!!!  Love had a plan.  He always had a plan, and until that moment, no one could see it but Him.  Armed with the Life and the Promises of God, He not only bought us back for Himself, but He stole the keys to Hell and Death back from the epitome of evil himself.

As the enemy fell to his defeat, the Lion of Judah proclaimed, “Happy trails, Hans!”

No, not really.  He said, “Death has been defeated.  Hopelessness has been vanquished.  Sin has been conquered.  Addiction has been disarmed.  Abandonment has been given notice.  The thief of hearts has been subdued and can steal from the lives of the Beloved of God no longer!”

Friends, we are the ones who have been rescued in a tale so hyperrealistic it can’t be true.  Ah, but it is!  And because it pushes the confines of credibility that we can cry out, “Glory to God in the highest!”, even if we are an acrophobic cop from New York.  *wink*

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

On Woodchips and Wilderness by Sharon Lurie

--> © 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Wild

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to hear any complaints from podiatrists claiming I am so endorsing walking around with wood chips in one’s shoes regularly. Although, I must say they work much better than those expensive food deodorants, not to mention that they leave a smaller carbon footprint.  (Ha!!!)

One thing I have learned in the last 18 months is that revelation comes when I least expect it, and when I feel least deserving.  Today was no exception.

I went hiking with a friend of mine whom I shall refer to as my Semitic Soul Sister, because we are both Jewish in some form or fashion.  We went to a place here in Nashville called Radnor Lake.  This body of water seems like a bit of an anomaly because the 85-acre lake and surrounding woodlands are smack dab in the middle of a residential area.  It seems odd that something so big and so wild could be so contained.

Semitic Soul Sister and I bounded down the trail taking in the glorious sight of multi-colored falling leaves.  The trail was lined with wood chips before we began our journey, but not afterwards, because most of them ended up in my sneakers.  About half way down the trail, we had to stop at an intersection closed due to the crossing of a rafter of wild turkeys.  The happy little birds waddled slowly and leisurely to their destination, and those of us on the trail just stood in awe of them.  The delightful little eye candy was short-lived, however, when a power walker decided to barrel through the crossing, spooking the birds and sending them on their way.

Right around where the birds scattered, I saw three different deer feeding on some flowers and sprouts.  Some of us moved a little closer to the deer to get a better look at them.  I was very cautious, because in the past, deer I had encountered were easily startled.  One of the other hikers along the trail said, “Don’t worry.  You can get really close to them and they won’t run off because they’re so used to humans around here.”  Learning that made me…sad.

I couldn’t have told you at the moment why I was sad.  Who wouldn’t like a close-up, unobstructed view of nature?  A little more reflection, however, revealed the cause.

There are so few avenues for adventure left.  To see what was once frontier become so domesticated and so tame pierced something in my heart.  The lavish beauty I witnessed along those trails that day was so striking -- not in its refinement, but in its wildness.  Nowadays, beauty is a costly commodity.  It is highly processed, developed, and expensive.  Women will pay all sorts of money to replicate a certain look.  Yet the loveliness of an autumn day, with a million scattered crunchy leaves, a myriad of wildlife, and a cacophony of sounds and intricate rhythms, still trumps anything that man can reproduce simply because it cannot be quantified.  So many different colors and seemingly opposing elements, scattered across that landscape, yet somehow woven together for a feast for the eyes in a gorgeous orderly chaos.  It’s a beauty man can try to copy but can never manufacture.  The alluring wildness, whose power over us lies in that we can appreciate it, but never own it.

I have been thinking a lot about what real beauty is.  It’s not something I can conjure up.  It is something God-given, God-made, and -- dare I say -- a little bit ferocious.  I still haven’t cleaned out the wood chips from my sneakers, because when I wear them, I am reminded of the importance of taking a walk on the wild side.

“Life consists with wildness.  The most alive is the wildest.  Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.  One who pressed forward incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.”  Henry David Thoreau

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

Awake by Sharon Lurie

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© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Sleepy (Very, Very Sleepy)

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to get any complaints from concerned parents that I am advocating the watching of scary movies as a spiritual discipline.  Are you listening, Morbid Redhead?

God speaks to me in many different ways.  Sometimes he speaks through the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes he speaks through his word.  Sometimes he speaks through my Christian brothers and sisters.  Occasionally, he speaks to me through my dog.  Then, there are those rare and special times when God speaks to me through a B horror movie from the 60s.

* SPOILER ALERT *  The Hypnotic Eye is about a string of beautiful women who mutilate themselves for seemingly no reason.  It is also about a man whose failure as a police detective is rivaled only by his failure as a boyfriend.

The movie, released in 1960, begins with a gorgeous blonde who walks into her kitchen to wash her hair.  However, instead of putting her hair into the kitchen sink under the faucet, she puts her hair into an open flame on her stove.  She subsequently dies from third degree burns.  Dave, the detective who arrives at the scene, talks to the woman before she dies, but she claims she was alone and merely confused the stove for the sink.  She is the 11^th in a string of self-mutilations, and all the women have the same story:  they were alone at the time, and they confused something harmful for something harmless.

The next night, Dave takes his beautiful girlfriend Marcia and her beautiful friend Dodi to see Desmond, a charming and handsome hypnotist and magician performing at a local theater.  Desmond, with the help of his drop-dead gorgeous assistant, Justine, performs mostly hypnotic tricks with a little bit of magic in the mix.  For the last segment of the performance, Desmond, under the direction of Justine, picks a beautiful woman from the audience to perform the levitation trick.  Dodi had commented to Dave and Marcia how amazing it was how Desmond seemed to completely dominate his subjects.  Dave makes a smart aleck remark about Desmond being a fake, which prompts Dodi to raise her hand to volunteer for the levitation trick.  As is normal magician procedure, Desmond hypnotizes Dodi before levitating her.  After the show, Dodi begins to act strangely.  Next thing we see, poor Dodi is washing her face and hands with sulfuric acid, which burns her terribly.

The next day, Dave and Marcia visit Dodi at the hospital.  Like the other self-mutilation victims, Dodi doesn’t remember anything, nor did she feel anything while she was washing with the acid.  Marcia begins to suspect that perhaps Desmond was involved.  However, Dave scoffs at her.  Wanting to prove her theory, Marcia goes back to the theater that night and volunteers for the levitation trick.  She pretends to be hypnotized, and while pretending to be under Desmond’s spell, he whispers to her to come to his dressing room at midnight.  Marcia shares all this with Dave and Phil, Dave’s best friend and the police psychiatrist who is also trained in hypnosis.  She also tells them Desmond used a device, resembling an eye, which emitted a strange, flickering light, hidden in his hand as he tried to hypnotize her. So, the three of them decide that Desmond is up to no good and that Marcia should go back to Desmond’s dressing room and see what happens.

Marcia gets to Desmond’s dressing room, but he has a trap for her, and ends up hypnotizing her for real.  He then takes her out, while she’s in a trance, for a night on the town of dinner and dancing before taking her back to her apartment.  When they arrive, they start to make moosh-a-moosh until Justine, who had been hiding out in Marcia’s apartment, stops them.  Justine then puts Marcia completely out in hypnotic sleep.  Desmond looks at Justine and asks, “How many more?”

As Justine puts her hand on Marcia’s face, she answers, “As long as there are faces like this.”

Desmond then leaves Justine and Marcia alone, and Marcia is at Justine’s mercy.  She leads Marcia, still in a trance, to the bathroom and turns the shower on to boiling hot.  She tells Marcia to step into the “cool, cool shower,” which she almost does, until Dave shows up banging on the door, saving Marcia from a fate similar to Dodi and the other women who mutilated themselves.

Fast forward to the end of the movie.  Marcia has once again fallen into the clutches of evil Desmond and evil(er) Justine (chicks in horror flicks aren’t the brightest and are known for always getting into trouble, but in this instance, the fault clearly lies with Dave.)  There is a standoff between Dave and Phil and Desmond and Justine.  Justine leads Marcia, still in a trance, to the scaffolding above the theater stage and threatens to push Marcia to her death.  As Phil tries to talk Justine, she pulls the beautiful mask off her face to reveal that she is horribly disfigured.  It is the then audience learns that the reason she had been having Desmond hypnotize all those beautiful women and then giving them post-hypnotic suggestions to mutilate themselves was because Justine was jealous of their beauty, beauty she had lost and could never recover, and so she wouldn’t rest until she could destroy all the beauty that crossed her path.

Now, before I get to the main point of this blog, I would like to teach a little lesson to all of my male readers entitled, “How to Stay Celibate for the Rest of Your Life.”  (If any of my male readers sense this to be misandrist, I promise equal time by composing a similar lesson to my female readers in a future blog.)

1.     When going out on the town with your girlfriend and her friend, make sure you tell them their ideas are dumb.

2.     If your girlfriend has a theory about someone being a dangerous person, and you don’t believe her, by all means let her test her theory on her own without any protection.

3.     If the aforementioned possibly dangerous person is a hypnotist, and your girlfriend, while unprotected and in his clutches starts to act weird, your first assumption should be she is just a flake and cheating on you, especially if your best friend, who is trained in hypnosis, has just told you that hypnosis is real and dangerous if in the wrong hands.

4.     By all means, let your girlfriend go alone with possibly dangerous hypnotist to her apartment.

5.     After you save her from being badly scalded at the hands of the villain who, for the record, knows where your girlfriend lives and most likely has hypnotic power over her, leave her alone at her apartment for the villains to come back and finish what they started.

However, if you then decide your girlfriend is really cute, and you don’t want to be celibate for the rest of your life, after you’ve unwittingly done everything in the preceding list, save your girlfriend from the villain and certain death in dramatic fashion and at great risk to your own life, because a well-executed daring rescue covers a multitude of male-pattern cluelessness.  (I’m just joking.  No man in real life would ever be this careless.)

So finally, the spiritual lesson (first presented to me in Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge):  we find ourselves in the pain and distress we are in because we have a powerful yet very crafty enemy.  Our enemy used to be God’s right hand and he was beautiful and dazzling by all accounts.  However, he got puffed up with pride, and was, therefore, stripped of his beauty, position, and power and cast out of Heaven.  Then, when God made man and woman in his own image and gave them authority over creation, Satan went into a frenzy.  He hated that he had lost so much, and so, like Justine, he decided if he couldn’t have those things back, no one else would get to enjoy them, either.  So he targeted the woman, the beautiful woman, the final act of creation and the image-bearer of the lovely, relational part of God, and he got into her head and planted the idea that God was holding out on her.  And he got into her head through a serpent, the most cunning, crafty, and slick of all God’s creatures, sort of like how Justine got to the women in the film through enchanting Desmond.  So what does she do?  She partakes of the only tree in the Garden of Eden forbidden by God, thinking it is an innocent piece of fruit, when in reality, she is digesting death, and mutilating her beauty, namely her innocence, eternal life, and relationship with God, her husband, and every other human she will meet.

Watching the movie, which I stumbled upon by accident, really helped drive some of this spiritual truth home and recognize how Satan still tries to rob us, and me as a woman of God in particular, of our beauty.  I needed to see a good analogy of how spiritual warfare plays out in every day life, because the only thing more confusing to me over the years than my relationship with God has been my relationship with Satan.  What I mean is that I’ve not always had a good grasp of who Satan is, how he operates, and what he wants from me.  The church I grew up in taught that Satan was the one who tempted us and made people in the Pentecostal church speak in tongues, but other than that, he was pretty much in permanent retirement.  Then the church I went to as a teenager believed that Satan was responsible for everything, and he has a demon for every occasion, like the spirit of fear, the spirit of infirmity, the spirit of talking too much, the spirit of always locking one’s keys in one’s car, etc.

1 Peter 5:8-9 says, “ Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.  Withstand him; be firm in faith [against his onset—rooted, established, strong, immovable, and determined], knowing that the same (identical) sufferings are appointed to your brotherhood (the whole body of Christians) throughout the world.”

Matthew 26:41 says, “All of you must keep awake (give strict attention, be cautious and active) and watch and pray, that you may not come into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Satan messes with our minds, and like the women in the movie who destroyed themselves at the command of the villains, we let him into our heads when we let our guard down, when we miss Satan because he’s wearing a handsome or clever disguise that lulls us into his confidence.  He can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do, and we are also tempted by the world and our own sinful desires.  Make no mistake, though, that his mission is clear and his tactics are underhanded, and he preys on the weak, the hurting, and the spiritually sleepy.  He looks at us and sees the Beauty of God, the reflection of his image, which he can never get back, and he wants to destroy it by any means necessary.

I suffer from chronic sleep problems, so I know very well how susceptible I am to temptation when I am not well rested physically or mentally.  Keeping vigilance over my spiritual well-being is paramount, more so when I am feeling fatigued or hurt or whatever.  I have let Satan into my head and into my heart for too long, so much so that I have lost sight of who I am and in whose image I was made.  No more.  I won’t let Satan steal from me through deception what he pridefully and willingly discarded.  From this point forward, I shall remain alert, attentive, and awake.

 

The End

MILK!!!!!!!