Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Shingles: itching cure!
Bless my friend Giselle!!! She told me the secret to "scratching" itches that you aren't supposed to touch - such as poison ivy, chicken pox, and my current foe, shingles. Take your hair dryer, set it to hot, and blow over the affected area. Waggle the dryer back and forth so you don't burn yourself. Blessed relief! Thank you, Giselle!! The blow dryer method also lessens the pain. I wish I had known this years ago.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Shingles: treatment and resources
It started with a burning sensation on my skin, following by the most dreadful itching. I thought I had been bitten by a mosquito. The bite, in the middle of my back (aren’t they always) didn’t subside. It got itchier and itchier. Friends of ours mentioned that there is a new strain of mosquito on the Gulf Coast, an Asian import that features allergic red whelps as part of the bite. I decided that was the culprit when red whelps emerged.
A day or two later, to my astonishment and horror, the bite had spread! It followed the line of my bra strap, a burning, itching rash. I could feel the little bumps of the bites and was terrified that I had leaned up against something and become host to a zillion baby spiders. Meanwhile, the rash not only itched, it burned like the worst sunburn I’d ever had. Finally, about the 5th day of this experience, I called my dermatologist. It was after hours and I had to leave a message on the dermatology hotline. It will tell you how freaked out I was to know that I didn’t even laugh at the idea of a skin emergency.
She didn’t call back until late in the evening and because my phone had fallen out of my purse onto the floorboard of the car, I didn’t hear the call until mid afternoon the next day. She told me that if the bites were from a brown recluse spider (my worst fear), it wouldn’t be spreading – chunks of my back would be falling out! I was immediately cheerful to have that fear allayed. Then she said, “Sounds like shingles to me.”
Shingles! That’s what old people get! Oh, right, that would be me. It’s hard when your internal age clock stops at 35, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Bless the internet. David went straight to Google images for a view of shingles and voila! There was my rash, in picture after picture. Some of the pictures looked like advanced cases of purple acne or leprosy. But a lot of them looked like mine. Red rash in a cord of Rorschach blotches, little “bites” or that awful word “pustule” (always makes me think of Prince John in the 1968 version of Lion in Winter).
Once I knew what I had, I went straight to my book, Nutritional Healing by James F. Balch, M.D. and Phyllis A. Balch, C.N.C. It’s my health Bible. I know that regular herpes is aggravated by arginine (an amino acid found in food such as peanuts). Those of us who get cold sores keep lysine (another amino acid that blocks arginine) on hand to suppress the virus that causes cold sores. The cold sore virus is a herpes virus, cousin or the same as the virus that causes genital herpes, chicken pox and (drum roll) shingles!!
Here’s the shingles treatment:
• Take lysine, 1,000 meg a day, for a start. (I am taking 1500 meg.)
• Quit eating any food that has arginine. I discovered that my favorite bedtime snack of almonds and raisins is chock full of arginine – great.
• Take 2,000 meg of vitamin C four times a day.
• Add cayenne pepper, 100 meg of Vitamin B three times a day, 80 meg of zinc a day for a week.
• Fast, to get that arginine out of your system and let your innards rest. Use 1 T grade B maple syrup, the juice of one large or two small lemons, and 1/8 teasp cayenne pepper in a large glass of water and just sip on it all day. it tastes great, like spicy lemonade. At night I eat a peeled fresh pear or peeled fresh apple to give my digestive tract something to do. This is a great fast and you will not be hungry or cranky - just keep sipping.
• Then work to boost your immune system. A lowered immune system (common complaint of those of us who are mature) opens the door to shingles. Nutritional Healing has a whole section on this.
I am putting fresh aloe vera on the rash several times a day. Aloe vera cures all skin problems – I have 35 years of experience with this plant, which is a living miracle. Bottled aloe vera is almost useless, by the way.
Two days later, I am very much better. I have only one area that is still hyper-sensitive. The bites (I refuse to call them pustules) are crusting over as they should. The rash is several shades lighter.
All of which is fairly serious because three days from today I am getting on a plane to New York to attend my dear daughter’s wedding. And I AM going to wear a bra!
A day or two later, to my astonishment and horror, the bite had spread! It followed the line of my bra strap, a burning, itching rash. I could feel the little bumps of the bites and was terrified that I had leaned up against something and become host to a zillion baby spiders. Meanwhile, the rash not only itched, it burned like the worst sunburn I’d ever had. Finally, about the 5th day of this experience, I called my dermatologist. It was after hours and I had to leave a message on the dermatology hotline. It will tell you how freaked out I was to know that I didn’t even laugh at the idea of a skin emergency.
She didn’t call back until late in the evening and because my phone had fallen out of my purse onto the floorboard of the car, I didn’t hear the call until mid afternoon the next day. She told me that if the bites were from a brown recluse spider (my worst fear), it wouldn’t be spreading – chunks of my back would be falling out! I was immediately cheerful to have that fear allayed. Then she said, “Sounds like shingles to me.”
Shingles! That’s what old people get! Oh, right, that would be me. It’s hard when your internal age clock stops at 35, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Bless the internet. David went straight to Google images for a view of shingles and voila! There was my rash, in picture after picture. Some of the pictures looked like advanced cases of purple acne or leprosy. But a lot of them looked like mine. Red rash in a cord of Rorschach blotches, little “bites” or that awful word “pustule” (always makes me think of Prince John in the 1968 version of Lion in Winter).
Once I knew what I had, I went straight to my book, Nutritional Healing by James F. Balch, M.D. and Phyllis A. Balch, C.N.C. It’s my health Bible. I know that regular herpes is aggravated by arginine (an amino acid found in food such as peanuts). Those of us who get cold sores keep lysine (another amino acid that blocks arginine) on hand to suppress the virus that causes cold sores. The cold sore virus is a herpes virus, cousin or the same as the virus that causes genital herpes, chicken pox and (drum roll) shingles!!
Here’s the shingles treatment:
• Take lysine, 1,000 meg a day, for a start. (I am taking 1500 meg.)
• Quit eating any food that has arginine. I discovered that my favorite bedtime snack of almonds and raisins is chock full of arginine – great.
• Take 2,000 meg of vitamin C four times a day.
• Add cayenne pepper, 100 meg of Vitamin B three times a day, 80 meg of zinc a day for a week.
• Fast, to get that arginine out of your system and let your innards rest. Use 1 T grade B maple syrup, the juice of one large or two small lemons, and 1/8 teasp cayenne pepper in a large glass of water and just sip on it all day. it tastes great, like spicy lemonade. At night I eat a peeled fresh pear or peeled fresh apple to give my digestive tract something to do. This is a great fast and you will not be hungry or cranky - just keep sipping.
• Then work to boost your immune system. A lowered immune system (common complaint of those of us who are mature) opens the door to shingles. Nutritional Healing has a whole section on this.
I am putting fresh aloe vera on the rash several times a day. Aloe vera cures all skin problems – I have 35 years of experience with this plant, which is a living miracle. Bottled aloe vera is almost useless, by the way.
Two days later, I am very much better. I have only one area that is still hyper-sensitive. The bites (I refuse to call them pustules) are crusting over as they should. The rash is several shades lighter.
All of which is fairly serious because three days from today I am getting on a plane to New York to attend my dear daughter’s wedding. And I AM going to wear a bra!
Thursday, August 18, 2011
As Long As Our Love Shall Last
We attended a lovely wedding not long ago where I heard some guests support the “no-fault, opt-out vow” that has been popular for quite awhile. The vow goes something like this: We’ll stay married “as long as our love shall last” or “as long as we mutually benefit one another” or “as long as we are growing spiritually”. My guess is that what all those phrases usually mean is “as long as it feels good”. Feelings are wonderful arbiters of the head, but in my opinion aren’t reliable enough to base life decisions on.
What about when marriage doesn’t feel good? Does that mean love is gone, spiritual growth has stopped, and we are no longer of mutual benefit? Consider what love is and what spiritual growth is and what mutual benefit is – and who the author of love and spiritual growth and mutual benefit is. I am firmly convinced it isn’t us. I suspect it is the utmost in arrogance and folly to believe we can fully understand the dynamics of love or recognize all aspects of spiritual growth or point out all mutual benefit, much less that we know when they have come, abide with us, and depart.
An analogy: in the winter, the grass appears to be dead. It is brown and dry and does not grow. However, underneath the soil where we cannot perceive it, the root system is alive and growing, using the energy that causes it to grow upward in the summer to push the root system outward in the winter. The growth only becomes apparent when the season turns. All of which is a long-winded way to say that we plant, hoe, water, and prune, but only God gives the growth. If we pull up the crop before harvest to check on it, we kill the plants we’ve worked so hard to establish.
The long-married enjoy seasons of growth and closeness, but they also endure seasons of seeming death: when love seems pallid, when passion and desire cool, when they don’t have much to say to each other and may not even like each other very much. But in those times of seeming death, who is to say that spiritual growth is not occurring? Like the grass, it may be spreading underground. Tolerance, respect, patience, endurance, empathy, compassion, and egoic death may be the fruit of a winter’s growth. Another fruit of binding commitment is trust. Often it is only when trust is long established and secure that healing and growth can take place.
“For better or for worse” accepts all seasons of life. Real love, the love that creates and heals, is the love that makes it safe to have bad days, bad weeks, bad decades. It creates a spiritual incubator in which eternal growth is nurtured. Sometimes love feels good. Sometimes it doesn’t. The way we feel doesn’t alter its essence, because love isn’t just a feeling. It’s also a decision and an attitude of trust and a very long series of actions. It’s the way we love our spouse back from their mistakes and the way they love us back from our own. It’s the way we love each other through mental and physical illness, financial disaster, and tragedy. Thankfully, it’s also the way we share joy.
It’s a wonderful feeling indeed to trust your partner’s decision to love you regardless of how they (or you) are feeling. If you let Him, God will carry you through the winters of your life together, enabling you to be faithful and true to your beloved while your love, spiritual connection, and mutual benefit continue to grow. Even when you can’t see or feel the growth.
What about when marriage doesn’t feel good? Does that mean love is gone, spiritual growth has stopped, and we are no longer of mutual benefit? Consider what love is and what spiritual growth is and what mutual benefit is – and who the author of love and spiritual growth and mutual benefit is. I am firmly convinced it isn’t us. I suspect it is the utmost in arrogance and folly to believe we can fully understand the dynamics of love or recognize all aspects of spiritual growth or point out all mutual benefit, much less that we know when they have come, abide with us, and depart.
An analogy: in the winter, the grass appears to be dead. It is brown and dry and does not grow. However, underneath the soil where we cannot perceive it, the root system is alive and growing, using the energy that causes it to grow upward in the summer to push the root system outward in the winter. The growth only becomes apparent when the season turns. All of which is a long-winded way to say that we plant, hoe, water, and prune, but only God gives the growth. If we pull up the crop before harvest to check on it, we kill the plants we’ve worked so hard to establish.
The long-married enjoy seasons of growth and closeness, but they also endure seasons of seeming death: when love seems pallid, when passion and desire cool, when they don’t have much to say to each other and may not even like each other very much. But in those times of seeming death, who is to say that spiritual growth is not occurring? Like the grass, it may be spreading underground. Tolerance, respect, patience, endurance, empathy, compassion, and egoic death may be the fruit of a winter’s growth. Another fruit of binding commitment is trust. Often it is only when trust is long established and secure that healing and growth can take place.
“For better or for worse” accepts all seasons of life. Real love, the love that creates and heals, is the love that makes it safe to have bad days, bad weeks, bad decades. It creates a spiritual incubator in which eternal growth is nurtured. Sometimes love feels good. Sometimes it doesn’t. The way we feel doesn’t alter its essence, because love isn’t just a feeling. It’s also a decision and an attitude of trust and a very long series of actions. It’s the way we love our spouse back from their mistakes and the way they love us back from our own. It’s the way we love each other through mental and physical illness, financial disaster, and tragedy. Thankfully, it’s also the way we share joy.
It’s a wonderful feeling indeed to trust your partner’s decision to love you regardless of how they (or you) are feeling. If you let Him, God will carry you through the winters of your life together, enabling you to be faithful and true to your beloved while your love, spiritual connection, and mutual benefit continue to grow. Even when you can’t see or feel the growth.
Plastic Free Life?
If you are discouraged in trying to avoid plastic waste and poison in your life, here's a good site for tips and information.
http://myplasticfreelife.com/about-me/
http://myplasticfreelife.com/about-me/
Thursday, July 14, 2011
My Very Best Dog, April 1996 - July 2011
I hadn’t realized how much Schnitzel’s breathing had become the background white noise on the boat. As the tumor in her nose grew, it pushed its way into her nasal cavity so that she alternately snored, rasped, and panted as her breath whistled and gurgled past that bloody lump. Her nasal passages filled up with the intruder and she began to sleep with her mouth open, her tongue bulging against what was left of her teeth while she sucked her breath in and out.
When the tumor bled, which was not constantly, the blood and mucus dripped from her tongue and pooled under her head as she slept. I’d sponge her jaw with a wet paper towel in the morning. Some mornings she would lean into the towel as I rubbed her jaw, as if it soothed her. The seepage didn’t seem to hurt, but it made an awful mess.
The worst part was that it clogged and distorted her once black button nose and cut off her keenest sense. She couldn’t see much and had been mostly deaf for some time. Being unable to “snuff her snuffs” must have been confusing and equivalent to a human going blind. The last few weeks she hasn’t been able to smell anything but fried grease. Her head would come right up whenever I fried chicken or made pancakes. The last few days she has been feasting on once-forbidden pancakes and syrup, bread and butter and honey, and other diabetes-instigating treats. What the hell.
But the tumor, messy and invasive as it was, didn’t kill her.
Her back legs have weakened steadily over the last four years and finally failed her. The same dying nerves caused her to lose feeling in her insides. As long as 18 months ago she didn’t realize she had to poop, and only much later, the last month or so, she has been unable to pee without help. For a short while, lifting her back end with the harness triggered the reflex and she was able to urinate, but over the last few days even that trick failed. She’d release on her bed, and while I didn’t mind gathering up the soggy dog training pads, she was constantly damp, either from urine or from her twice daily backend shampoo.
Her paralyzed back legs didn’t kill her either.
It was her liver, swelling up until it looked as though she had eaten a softball and hot to the touch that told me it was time to let go. I knew it wasn’t a fat stomach filled with what she ate, because she didn’t eat much. Mostly bits of Wal-Mart roast chicken infused with butter, another forbidden treat. Her insides were just shutting down, and instead of helping her release the toxins from her body, her kidneys and liver were storing them up. I could see that those poisons were bound to make her miserable, like having a worsening case of the flu, with all its attendant aches and pains. She slept 22 hours a day, sometimes running and barking in her dreams, something she hadn’t done it the waking world for months, if not years. When she woke up she was alert and herself enough to growl menacingly at other dogs from the safety of the little blue cart she rode in when her legs went limp. She never lost her spirit. Her little body just gave out.
Finally, after it being not right, not right yet, not now but maybe soon, it was time. So we put her on some towels on the front seat of the truck between us, where she has ridden thousands of miles over the years. We went to Burger King, where they prepared a small bag of salty hot fries hours before they usually do, just for her. She was wide awake, head cocked toward the fast food window. She knew those fries were coming. I cooled the fries in the draft of the truck’s air conditioner and fed her bit by bit and she gobbled them up as she always does. We drove to the vet and sat in the parking lot and waited, me feeding her those salty treats one by one.
The vet and the tech came to the car to give her the knockout shot. It stung and she whimpered a little, but it was over in less than 30 seconds. Then they left us and her attention was back on the warm French fries. She was scarfing them eagerly when she suddenly lost interest and went limp against my leg. Her breathing evened out and slowed. We waited as her body relaxed as it hasn’t relaxed in months, if ever, as she drifted deeper and deeper to the floor of consciousness and then sank through it.
I tried the handle of her harness. Usually no matter how deeply she is sleeping, she feels my tug and bursts awake. Now she hung limp as a rag dog. I handed her gently to her bed that was waiting on David’s outstretched arms and we walked her into the clinic. The techs had prepared the cold steel table with a brightly striped blanket. Maybe some who bring their dogs in don’t know that those operating tables are cold and hard. I was glad Schnitzel was sleeping on her own bed.
The vet was kind and solemn. She shaved part of Schnitzel’s leg and inserted the needle. She and the tech screwed in a vial of cheerful pink liquid and depressed the plunger. They followed with a vial of neutral clear liquid. Then the vet listened until Schnitzel’s heart stopped beating. Schnitzel never moved from her deep sleep. We stayed with her the whole time, our hands on her head and neck, combing her curls with our fingers. They said they’d dispose of the bed and her body.
I came home and bleached the bloody, urine-soaked towels and threw all her things in the dumpster.
I pretend that she is staying with friends for a few months. I imagine her chasing squirrels, 18 pounds of pure silver thunderbolt joy.
It is awfully quiet.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Jellyfish: they're not just for breakfast anymore...
How many times have you been late to work because you had to pull a jellyfish out of your air conditioner? I thought so.
The warm waters in the Gulf make jellyfish happy and prosperous. At this time of year they drift up the channel and into the waters of our marina. Unfortunately, as interesting as jellyfish are, they are a bit on the dim side and don’t understand air conditioning intake systems. Actually I don’t either, but I don’t swim in the marina water (yuck) and I am far too large to be sucked into the intake. Jellyfish slurp right in and, gooey as they are, jam (pun intended) the A/C flow. The happy trickle of water over the side, which means a functioning A/C and relatively cool boat inhabitants, stops dead when a jellyfish is sucked inside. The fan whirs but nothing happens and in a matter of minutes the temperature rises 3-4 degrees and we’re all sweating. This morning it goes off while I am dressing for work.
I investigate the strainer. Located under the sink in the head, it’s really hard to get to for me, since I am left-handed. I have to sit on the stool, reach in and behind with my left hand and shine the flashlight in the darkness with my right, while pretzeling to see what I am trying to get to. Then I unscrew the top of the strainer tube, pull out the little plastic basket and…eeeeeeew. Jelly. It’s clear as glass and looks just like soft-set Jello. Fortunately there are no tentacles, eyes, or condemning looks from the deceased, just a big glop of clear goo. Out comes the strainer, in goes the spare. I have to hold the new one in, twist it around until it fits, and hold it down while putting the top back on the tube and screwing it down. Not an easy job for someone with only two arms.
Not done yet. Then I get the hose off the dock and turn on the water. I attach that hose to the hose under the port side settee (which involves holding the long sofa cushion up with my head while I fish around in the storage area below), turn the valves, and turn on the water. Water from the dock whooshes through the system, chasing out the air bubbles and priming the pump, so to speak. After about a minute, I turn off the water, unhook the hoses, reverse the valves, stuff the settee hose back in the hole, toss the dock hose back out on the dock, turn on the A/C, and scramble up the ladder to see if there is a little waterfall out the port side of the boat. If so – rejoice and sit in front of the fan for a bit, since the temperature rises from 79 to 85 in the cabin while I am doing all that. If not, cuss like a sailor and do it again.
Try explaining that to your boss.
The warm waters in the Gulf make jellyfish happy and prosperous. At this time of year they drift up the channel and into the waters of our marina. Unfortunately, as interesting as jellyfish are, they are a bit on the dim side and don’t understand air conditioning intake systems. Actually I don’t either, but I don’t swim in the marina water (yuck) and I am far too large to be sucked into the intake. Jellyfish slurp right in and, gooey as they are, jam (pun intended) the A/C flow. The happy trickle of water over the side, which means a functioning A/C and relatively cool boat inhabitants, stops dead when a jellyfish is sucked inside. The fan whirs but nothing happens and in a matter of minutes the temperature rises 3-4 degrees and we’re all sweating. This morning it goes off while I am dressing for work.
I investigate the strainer. Located under the sink in the head, it’s really hard to get to for me, since I am left-handed. I have to sit on the stool, reach in and behind with my left hand and shine the flashlight in the darkness with my right, while pretzeling to see what I am trying to get to. Then I unscrew the top of the strainer tube, pull out the little plastic basket and…eeeeeeew. Jelly. It’s clear as glass and looks just like soft-set Jello. Fortunately there are no tentacles, eyes, or condemning looks from the deceased, just a big glop of clear goo. Out comes the strainer, in goes the spare. I have to hold the new one in, twist it around until it fits, and hold it down while putting the top back on the tube and screwing it down. Not an easy job for someone with only two arms.
Not done yet. Then I get the hose off the dock and turn on the water. I attach that hose to the hose under the port side settee (which involves holding the long sofa cushion up with my head while I fish around in the storage area below), turn the valves, and turn on the water. Water from the dock whooshes through the system, chasing out the air bubbles and priming the pump, so to speak. After about a minute, I turn off the water, unhook the hoses, reverse the valves, stuff the settee hose back in the hole, toss the dock hose back out on the dock, turn on the A/C, and scramble up the ladder to see if there is a little waterfall out the port side of the boat. If so – rejoice and sit in front of the fan for a bit, since the temperature rises from 79 to 85 in the cabin while I am doing all that. If not, cuss like a sailor and do it again.
Try explaining that to your boss.
Monday, June 13, 2011
My dog is dying. She is a little over 15 now. I’ve had her for almost exactly 15 years. When she came to us, she was barely a handful of black fur. Now she is 20 pounds of gray fur, mostly deaf, mostly blind, but still herself. She hasn’t played in years, so maybe not exactly herself. When she was a puppy and a young dog and even a middle-aged dog, she’d run like a rabbit after squirrels or a ball, growl ferociously over a game of tug of war, and pull ahead on the leash like a sled dog. Now it is I who pull her, coaxing but insistent. I don’t take her for a walk, I joke, I take her for a drag. It isn’t funny, but I don’t want to cry. And she still stops now and then to sniff another dog’s passing. She doesn’t do that much any more either, because of the cancerous nose tumor that’s killing her.
We thought we had lost her this past weekend. On Thursday and Friday she refused her food, which she has been noisily gulping down all through her illness. She turned her head away from the water dish. She wouldn’t accept the pill pocket stuffed with her meds. That last was the scary part – one of those meds is a pain pill, and if she didn’t eat that, she’d hurt. I have no idea how much she hurts, because like most animals she doesn’t groan, moan, or otherwise tell you she’s in pain. I have been told that’s because in the wild that sort of noise would get an injured or sick animal quickly found and eaten. I do know she sleeps most of the time, hard, and barely walks, and wants to be lifted up and down the curb.
We made an appointment for euthanasia Saturday afternoon. They were booked, but they’d fit us in. Not a good situation, to say the least, but she still hadn’t eaten, and I was afraid the meds would wear off long before Monday. Our plan was, and is, to have the vet come out to the car to give her the knockout shot. We’d sit there, or drive around awhile in the air conditioning, and only when she was under would we take her in for the final round. Needless to say, I had to hold myself very stiff, mentally and physically, to keep from weeping. We sat there in the truck for 45 minutes, with no sign of the vet. David got madder and madder and finally we agreed just to go home and take our chances.
When we got home, I decided to try one more time. She’d refused chopped fresh chicken (cooked chicken thighs), honey, chocolate milk, jam, and cheese by this point. All of them are her favorites. But I had the chicken thighs out to feed our ancient cat (age 17) and had the thought to try a chicken shake for Schnitzel. I whirred up a thigh and some chicken broth to a nasty consistency, poured it in her bowl and….she ate it. No, she devoured it! Oh, glory! At least she wouldn’t have to be hungry, even if she did hurt.
Sunday morning, I made pancakes. It was sort of a “last meal” idea – she loves pancakes. I didn’t know if she’d eat one or not, but by golly she scarfed a piece down. So I wrapped her pills in more pieces, and she ate the lot. Later I tried dog food, pill pockets, etc. but she was adamant. Nothing but pancakes and chicken shakes.
She is still going to die. But maybe not today and maybe not at the vet.
She is still going to die. But maybe not today and maybe not at the vet.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Coming home. Just the phrase evokes a sense of well-being and comfort. In my mind’s eye, I am walking over frosted fields toward a small, isolated house sitting in a copse of bare-branched trees. An icy wind is whistling around my ears; it is early evening and the first stars are appearing on the horizon. I keep on, toward the house, toward the lighted windows, toward the winding path of the gravel driveway. The scent of woodsmoke reaches me from the chimney, and someone steps out onto the wide porch and waves to me. Come on! I’m waiting for you. I walk faster, toward light, warmth, companionship, and a hot bowl of soup.
That is the way I am feeling on my spiritual journey. I have been away a very long time. I used to live in that spiritual house and then a traumatic divorce made me suspect it. I couldn’t understand how I could live in that house and yet feel as though my life had been ripped open and emptied and cast aside. I ran as far away as I could and looked for other places to live. I found some beautiful houses, but I was always the guest there. I read the texts and adopted some of the practices and considered the world from those points of view. Some of the beliefs I encountered centered on the power of the individual, some on purification, some on self-actualization, some on the importance of keeping God’s laws.
As beautiful as those ideas and goals may have been, none of the spiritual houses I visited seemed to understand the idea of the love God has for His creation, including me. None of them seemed to see God’s hand stretched out toward us. None of them offered me the chance to talk to the Creator of the Universe, and much less did they allow that He would be interested in the fact that my car died or that I really needed a new job or that a friendship needed to be mended. None of them offered relief from the spiritual burdens I carried. None of them helped me look at the dark places of my soul and helped me to heal from the filth I found there, gently, firmly, and completely without condemnation.
At some point, I received the grace to see that all these beautiful homes were empty for me. So I turned my feet toward the home I knew best, the one I knew I could trust even though I didn’t always understand why it was trustworthy, the one that was full of light and power and grace and truth and healing. As I turned toward it, the One Who Loves Me opened the door and came out on the porch. He waved to me, a huge grin splitting his face. Then He ran down the steps and out into that frosty field and threw His arms around me and welcomed me home.
If you are lost, as I was, if you are hurting, ask God to come into your life, ask Him to show you your shortcomings and your rebellion, and give your life to Him. There is forgiveness, mercy, love, and plenty of room in this house. I am joyful to know in my bones that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light – and that His house is mine again.
That is the way I am feeling on my spiritual journey. I have been away a very long time. I used to live in that spiritual house and then a traumatic divorce made me suspect it. I couldn’t understand how I could live in that house and yet feel as though my life had been ripped open and emptied and cast aside. I ran as far away as I could and looked for other places to live. I found some beautiful houses, but I was always the guest there. I read the texts and adopted some of the practices and considered the world from those points of view. Some of the beliefs I encountered centered on the power of the individual, some on purification, some on self-actualization, some on the importance of keeping God’s laws.
As beautiful as those ideas and goals may have been, none of the spiritual houses I visited seemed to understand the idea of the love God has for His creation, including me. None of them seemed to see God’s hand stretched out toward us. None of them offered me the chance to talk to the Creator of the Universe, and much less did they allow that He would be interested in the fact that my car died or that I really needed a new job or that a friendship needed to be mended. None of them offered relief from the spiritual burdens I carried. None of them helped me look at the dark places of my soul and helped me to heal from the filth I found there, gently, firmly, and completely without condemnation.
At some point, I received the grace to see that all these beautiful homes were empty for me. So I turned my feet toward the home I knew best, the one I knew I could trust even though I didn’t always understand why it was trustworthy, the one that was full of light and power and grace and truth and healing. As I turned toward it, the One Who Loves Me opened the door and came out on the porch. He waved to me, a huge grin splitting his face. Then He ran down the steps and out into that frosty field and threw His arms around me and welcomed me home.
If you are lost, as I was, if you are hurting, ask God to come into your life, ask Him to show you your shortcomings and your rebellion, and give your life to Him. There is forgiveness, mercy, love, and plenty of room in this house. I am joyful to know in my bones that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light – and that His house is mine again.
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