Woah! I'm Awake!

 Woah! I'm awake! Just had a gnarly nightmare where a friend of mine was lying on a bed possessed by a demon and there were several of us (including a priest) laying our hands on her to drive the demon out. True to Hollywood style, it came out like a vine of fiery light, seared a hole in the house wall, rumbled around, and then was gone leaving the room bright and cheery as if nothing had gone down and my friend happy but tired. We all left the room feeling puffed up and pretty proud of ourselves. I left the house only to be confronted by her dog, Vanessa, who obviously was on the receiving end of the demon just cast out. Now the cool part is when the dog grabbed me and lifted me off my feet as it stood up like a large human, I just said, "Help!" one time and God had me outta that dream, wide awake, heart pounding.

Even in a nightmare, God comes to our rescue! 2 Thessalonians 3:3 NIV says, "But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one." Yet, as I tried to concentrate on prayer to calm me physically and mentally, I realized I kept thinking about the dream. I kept telling myself, "Stop thinking about it!" I said it over so many times that it started to feel like a mantra I would teach the preschool class! That cool show and tell plane is safely in your cubbie until recess, "Stop thinking about it!"

It makes me wonder, how many times do we surrender an addiction, a bad relationship, an unhealthy choice only to pick that baggage up again because we simply keep thinking about it! So, "Stop thinking about it!" I know, easier said than done! Maybe this is one lesson a demon could actually teach us. When it was cast out, it had to go somewhere else. Matthew 8:31,32 teaches us, "The demons began to entreat Him, saying, 'If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.' And He said to them, 'Go!' And they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters."

If we, "Stop thinking about it!" then where is that thought going to go? What will fill the air space? So how about we start thinking about God? God called Samuel in the night, a quiet time that Samuel could actually hear God instead of God fighting over the din of a busy day. When do we start beating ourselves up over what we think are bad mistakes, failures, or regrets? Of course, in the quiet times. Otherwise, we are too busy to hear those thoughts! "Stop thinking about it!"

Genesis 50:20 NIV says, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." Now there is something to think about! In the quiet, start thinking about why God lead you through a certain season and what does He want you to do with the knowledge gained? Stop thinking about it as bad or negative and start listening for God's positive directions instead! I know right now I am grateful for God's peace, my heart is calmed and I'm sleepy again so I stopped thinking about it and followed God's direction to write this moment down. Colossians 3:15 GNT says, "The peace that Christ gives is to guide you in the decisions you make; for it is to this peace that God has called you together in the one body. And be thankful." I AM SO VERY THANKFUL!

Deconstructing a Bully

 Deconstructing a Bully by Mary E Ryan

My heart aches for a mother’s loss. A mother that had a near miss of losing her son at the Las Vegas massacre, lost her son in a California massacre. But it was her plea that I found the most heartbreaking, “I hope to God no one sends me anymore prayers. I want gun control. No more guns!”- mother of shooting victim Telemachus Orfanos. Her quote itself shows the disillusion that is compounding problems in today’s society. My own dear cousin asked, “How do we stop the killing?” Anne Graham Lotz has said, “For years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?" Therein lies the solution, not gun control, but a renewed faith and devotion in God and with the faith will come a respect for persons, unborn, young, old, victim, and perpetrator. To breakdown the first quote, she said, “I hope to God no one sends more prayers. What an incredible discombobulation of emotion. I hope to God by definition is, “the confident expectation of what God has promised and its strength is in His faithfulness.” Yet, she is denying the only way to communicate with God which is through our ceaseless prayers. Again, referring to Anne Graham Lotz’s statement, we want the protection and providence of God without committing ourselves to a relationship with God.

Is it possible, we don’t want to commit to God, because then we feel the full weight and responsibility not of the victims, but of the actions of the perpetrator? Because we failed to protect “him” from the viciousness of the world that created a person so misunderstood and desperate that he found the only option was to give in to evil and lash out in senseless violence. My cousin also asked, “Why didn’t God at least protect the innocent?” Perhaps, He did. If you are a believer in Christ, then being called home to Heaven is a glorious day for you. It’s interesting that if a person has battled cancer and lost that earthly battle, we rejoice that they are no longer suffering here on Earth. We reassure our grieving selves that, “they are in a better place” and so true that is!! Yet, in actuality, if the victims were also believers they too are in a glorious place with no tears or suffering and far better off than their best day here on earth. For a Believer, dying is certainly not the worst thing to happen to you no matter how untimely it may seem to those, the grieving, that are left here. We are the ones that intensely feel the loss. In a way, we are the victims, because it rattled our grasp on earth. It is hard to let go of people because we think they are missing out on life. We cling to the earth as if it were our true home instead of focusing on the real glory that waits for us. In truth, the best and ultimate protection of that innocent believer is to be called home to that glory. Yet, here we are still stuck on Earth and faced with all the ugliness and we cry out, "Why?" and "Gun control!" All the while another perpetrator is in the making, because we are ignoring the needs of our fellow man while demanding vengeance for the departed which in truth are far better off than we.

So, where does a killer come from? No doubt filled with evil unchecked, but when did it start? When did we drop the ball? When did we let that person down? When did we turn a blind eye to their hell on earth? Rightfully so, we focus on victims, but do we do it at the neglect of those crying out for help? Is our focus too late? A bully, so often the recipient of abuse and neglect is begging to be noticed in a most convoluted way. Isn’t a shooter no more than a bully with a weapon? If we are loving our neighbors as ourselves, how is neglect and abuse possible? If we can’t provide adequate mental health to our adults then we have to start earlier, at the source, childhood. We devalue children from their very conception and spend more time worrying about accepting the children from other countries while the babes under our very own care are slipping through the cracks ignored and unloved. We are more interested in coexisting with whatever anyone wants to identify as or with because we want to paint the exterior of our personal protective force field with the facade of love and caring. But God was pretty clear...Love your neighbor and I’m pretty sure that love was used as a verb! The definition of neighbor according to Webster’s is, “1) one living or located near another 2) fellow man.” Webster’s actually refers to Matthew 19:19, (NIV) “honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.” Is it possible we put more emphasis on detained children separated from their illegal parents because we know we won’t be asked to babysit them? If I love my neighbor, will I have to actually speak to them?! Caring will take so much work!

After coming home from a 12 hour day at school of planning, teaching, nurturing, caring, and loving, I sat down to read the news. An article talking about the government’s plan to shore up the troubled education system boldly showed a comment stating, “Preschool is a joke!” Boy, I certainly don’t feel that way! Eighty-five percent of brain development in a child is before the age of five. How many times has a child been exposed to such negativity before they even make it to preschool? And we wonder where our killers are coming from? Children model our behavior. They hear what we say, they do as we do. What message are we sending? Is it of real love? The verb love? If we are filled with the same Holy Spirit that had the power to resurrect the Lord Jesus then we have the power to deconstruct a bully before a killer is born. Are we willing to take on that responsibility or wait for a government agency to do it? I say there is less of need of gun control and more of a need for self-control and all the rest of the fruit of the Spirit that God has given as a guideline for us to live by. Do you live by Galatians 5:22-23 (NIV) “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”