I Escaped the Suicide Machine

Tags

alcoholism, Bible, birds, christianity, death, Faith, God, grief, inspiration, Mental health, religion, Suicide

I feed wild finches and over the last month or so I’ve been watching them die little by little.

                                                                                                                                    

I’ve been grieving over the deaths of my beautiful birds and, though I feed them in trays on the ground, there’s dog shit around the area. Yesterday I realized that it’s probably been the dog shit that’s been killing them. They’ve had to tramp around in dog shit. I wept and screamed about it all the way home from a meeting I was at. When I got home I promptly picked up all their dishes in a tub so as not to spill any of the seed on the ground; brought them all in the house; washed them and put them outside on the other side of the yard where the dogs don’t shit. But it’s pretty much too late for the birds. Most of them are already dead. I’m so so so sad. It really really hurts.

I used to be very suicidal and this sort of thing could have very well been the catalyst to push me over the edge. It put me in that amount of grief. But today I’m no longer that way. I’m no longer on the suicidal merry-go-round. How did I get off that machine? I’m a suicidaholic and I don’t attempt suicide one day at a time… no matter what. With that attitude I’ve been forced to get better – or else suffer in great, great agony from my own torturous thoughts.

Since I didn’t try to take my life over this, here’s what happened next.

I talked to my friend Kathy about it and she said that she had a book on grieving pet loss now which she’s just starting to get into counselling about. She gave me a copy of the book to read and we’re going to get together to work on this. God has my back – as usual.

He’s coming through for me. He loves me and is taking care of my pain.

Thank you Pops.

(and God said)

I will restore to you the years the locusts have eaten.

   Joel 2:25

I’ve had it hard for many years of my life but for a while now, actually since a couple of years after I put the suicide down, life’s been good to me for the most part. I have my up’s and down’s as most do but it’s nothing like it used to be.

In the midst of this heart-ache with the birds, today,  this is the sort of thing with my friend Kathy that I pay more attention to. God coming through for me in the form of her help.

I want to talk about the ‘torture’ I mentioned above. Ever since childhood I had developed a very bad habit of thinking. I would nurture all the bad aspects of life and pass over all the good. If it was bad it warranted much attention but if it was good it didn’t warrant even a second’s thought. I had a laser focus for nasty.

This business with the birds is an example of how ‘cherishing the good and passing over the bad’ works for me. I don’t ignore the bad. Grief has to be addressed and dealt with until it is healed. But I don’t cherish it or nurse it like I used to. However, learning this new way of thinking was a long slow journey of baby steps from out of the blackness into the light. One small step of ‘cherishing each good thing like it was a rare coin’ at a time. Today, it’s a habit running so deeply in me that it’s become a part of my personality. I am no longer a suicidaholic. Not in the leastest, tiniest, littlest bit. Today, I can easily live life on this planet, not for just weeks, or months, but for decades – ‘for the long haul’.

The first step in this process of becoming suicide-free was, for me, from God giving me the heave hoe about stopping the suicide attempts. He told me “NO MORE!!!” And I knew in my heart that I was not going to be allowed to die no matter how hard I tried. Death was going to be outside my reach until He decided it was time for me to go. I no longer had any say in the matter. But I now believe that you don’t need an act of God to get to this step. Just like you don’t need an act of God to put down the drink. I think that putting down the weapons of suicide is the exact same thing as putting down the drink. It’s done one moment at a time – abstinently. You make it ‘just not an option’ anymore no matter how much you want to imbibe. And with that attitude you have to grow in spite of yourself. Eventually it will become a habit and you will become comfortable not doing it. To get comfortable you will find you are forced to make ‘attitude adjustments’ (as I’ve described above) in order to gain this comfort-ability. But making these attitude adjustments are as hard to do as changing the course of a battleship with a small rudder. It took me a tremendous amount of time and effort to overcome my family of origin message installed in me from when I first learned how to think.

Life is hard and then you die.

Such a simple message you would think. But it was a killer for me.

A Letter to My AA Friend Stewart

Tags

AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, class, friendship, God, god's gifts, marathons, presents, school, sober, sobriety

To my dear sober AA friend,
(excerpts from a letter I wrote to my friend Stewart)

While I was on vacation I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time sitting on the sand dunes where I read and did some writing. The writing started to pick up faster and faster until I was going at it at a furious pace. I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I gathered together in words some of the things I’ve come across in my sober journey. In 30 years a lot of stuff’s come across my desk but most of it just whirls around in my head – there’s been no solidity. So I decided to try to create a holding place for some of this stuff. To get it more clear in my own mind and to share via paper with others if they care to know. This way I won’t be cornering them but at the same time get a small sense that I’m contributing.

We had a Big Fight

Tags

C-PTSD, child abuse, complex ptsd, fawning, fighting, freezing, friendship, Love, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, relationship, relationships

So my friend and I had a big fight and my head is reeling from it. I don’t do ‘friends’ with people and, to tell you the truth, in 60 years this is the first real friend who I’m starting to try to be real with in my life. That’s how much abuse I’ve had to deal with. I’ve been real with my husband but then we’re like two ships passing in the night with each other. There’s very little of anything between us and, to tell the truth, it’s been that way since we got married. Almost right away, he changed after we got married, but that’s another tale to tell for another time.

So my friend and I had a big big falling out and I just wanted to write about it and maybe get some advice from anyone out there who has had some friendship experience along with dealing with child abuse issues of their own.

My friend and I met in Al-Anon. She’s also an alcoholic like me with a lot of years sober. Before I go into what our problems are, I want to say that we have a lot in common and that there is a basis for some good connection between us. We are ‘reading buddies’ in that we read and study together. She likes to learn new things as much as I do which is rare these days. We just finished reading a book on western philosophy and now are tackling one on eastern philosophy. After this were going to go to work on doing a little physics. We both have no children for the same reasons and we both come from very abusive backgrounds. There is more between us too but that’s enough to say right now.

But I’m a ‘fawner/freezer’ and she’s a ‘fighter’ type in our responses to our abuse and to life’s realities in general. I hide (freeze) and people-please (fawn) while she just plain gets mad and yells for all she’s worth. This kind of makes me scared of her. I’m already scared to confront people and her fighting me makes it even scarier. One time I mentioned that she never hardly picked up the phone when I called and I always had to leave messages (which was true). She went ballistic. Told me it wasn’t true. How could it not be true? I’m the one who should know, after all I was the one leaving all the messages. But she fought me and I backed down. Eventually she decided it was because she was on the phone with other people and that’s why she didn’t answer it. It wasn’t the truth but I let it go, I wasn’t going to fight with her.

About the actual fight. It was more my fault – I think (but actually I have no idea since I’ve so confused by the whole thing). While we were reading our book, we got into a discussion about where babies come from. I said they essentially came from dirt. That plants grow from dirt, the mother eats the plants and grows the baby from the plants she eats. My friend went ballistic. She said that babies come from God. I said “No, they come from…” and re-iterated my point thinking that it was so obvious. Suddenly she said “I think you should go. I’m not going to be abused.” So she kicked me out of her house. I think I was being more dogmatic than I realized at the time. When I got home I called her and managed to get her to pick up the phone with a little coaxing on her message machine. We went around and around but I eventually saw that I was probably ‘channeling’ my father with his dogmatic attitude on her and that that wasn’t very nice. If she wanted to believe that babies came from God then that was her prerogative to believe that way and it wasn’t for me to ‘straighten her out’ like my father did to me.

But our relationship is progressing and I’m finding out that it’s getting more and more impossible for me to be as ‘nice’ as I’ve been when some of the things she does irritates me. Now she knows that I’m not her ‘perfect’ friend that she says she ‘loves’. The truth is that she doesn’t even know me so how can she love me? And she doesn’t seem to be interested in finding out who I am either. We share our ‘history’ with each other but it’s not really ‘with each other’, it’s more that she shares and I listen (I’m a fawner and fawners are good listeners). I hate when someone says they love you but are not interested in finding out who the person is that they say they love.

So I have this friend who I very much like to hang out with (I don’t love her – that word is sacred to me). But who is a fighter and not that interested in finding out who I am but likes the ‘perfect friend’ who is me.

What do you think? I’d be very interested in some advice.

Road Rage: How to Dissolve a Traffic Jam

Tags

automobiles, cars, construction zones, freeways, highway construction zones, highways, interstates, roadways, traffic, traffic james, traffic waves

I copied this from a the website: HERE. (It comes with a neat video too). I stumbled onto this myself a while ago and it really does work. Please copy and spread it around if you will. If we all get together and do it, it could really make a difference with road rage.

Don’t try this in the fast lane. For some reason it makes drivers crazy when you try to do this in the fast lane. He was doing it in the fast lane in the video but I think that was only because it was an exit lane.

***
TRAFFIC “EXPERIMENTS”
AND A CURE FOR WAVES & JAMS
1998 William Beaty Electrical Engineer
My first ‘experiment’: accidentally erasing traffic waves!

God is Such a Good God!

Tags

Addiction, christianity, compulsive overeating, exercise, food addiction, God, inspiration, Mental health, spirituality, weight, Weight loss, Weight Watchers

I’ve been free of flour/sugar products for over two years and cigarettes for over one and a half years and I haven’t lost any weight at all. It’s been very discouraging to say the least but I think the tide is finally turning regarding the weight. I think God finally had enough of my wining and stepped in to give me a little advice.

I had a spiritual experience a couple of weeks ago about losing this weight. It went something like this.

God: You know how to lose this weight dear.
Me: How?
God: You know how.
Me: No I don’t.
God: Yes you do. You’ve done it two times before the in exact same way with complete success.

EXERCISE !
Twenty minutes a day.

God: One time just before you moved to Santa Cruz. And one time while you were in Weight Watchers. It worked like a charm back then and there’s no reason why it won’t work again this time. So… if you really do want to lose this weight… why don’t you…

Get back on the ball.

Well I’ve been doing cardio-exercise (which is what I did before) on the elliptical machine twenty minutes a day since then.

I know I will lose the weight this way. God is right. If I want to lose the weight, I have to exercise. I’ve experienced losing the weight this way two times before. I really do want to lose the weight. Enough so that I don’t have any resentment about doing the exercise anymore. I used to have a big resentment at doing even ten minutes. I’ve always talked myself into this resentment by wining things like…

How come I have to exercise
to lose weight and
everyone else doesn’t.

But when God talked to me that day, I knew instantly what a load of crap that was. He put on my heart the reality that just about everyone who has a slim figure has to exercise… the same as I would if I wanted a slim figure too. Suddenly, doing twenty minutes a day on the elliptical is a piece of cake. Not only did He give me the information I needed to loose the weight, but He took all my resentment about doing the exercise, away too!

Life is Like a River of Spinning Logs

Tags

God, logs, meditation, peace, rivers

Life is like a fast moving river filled with spinning logs. We spend our lives frantically leaping from spinning log to spinning log trying to stay afloat. Mentally, emotionally, physically, we leap.. and leap… and leap. But God lives in the calmly moving depths of the water between the spinning logs. How did I connect to Him there in the depths? How did I stop frantically leaping from spinning log to spinning log to get to Him? The answer… one time I stopped leaping. It sounds impossible but one time I sat down on a log and gazed into the water to look for Him… and I found Him there and saw Him return my gaze. It was marvelous. The spinning logs be damned, this is where I finally found peace. I stopped the constant leaping from log to log, and as I sat down on the log I found that it stopped spinning. I sat down for a time and gazed into the water, and He helped me with the constant spinning. And all I did was just sit down.

What the Heck is a ‘Paradigm Shift?!!

Tags

cancer, Children, Paradigm shift, Parent, parenting, spiritual experiences, trains, you tube

Once upon a time there was a train. On this train were many passengers coming and going about their business. Some were reading their newspapers; some where furtively ‘people watching’; some where just looking out the windows at the scenery passing by.

Then a man got on the train. A man with his three little kids.

How I Quit Smoking – Easily and Naturally

Tags

Addiction, cigarettes, quit smoking naturally, quitting smoking, smoking, stop smoking, stop smoking naturally, stopping smoking, visualization

Among many, many ‘two groups of people’, this is one type….

Smokers & Non-Smokers.

The idea is to jump, for all your worth, from the one group (Smokers) into the other group (Non-Smokers). You need to do this deeply so that both feet are firmly planted into the Non-Smoking group of people.

And never look back again.

The Love of God …Imagined…

Tags

child abuse, complex post-traumatic stress disorder, complex ptsd, God, God's Love, Holy Spirit, inspiration, Mental health, Poem, PTSD, song, spirituality, trauma

When I am quiet in the morning
I imagine the love of God
He is the Father
He wears a long heavy cloak
He draws me to Him
~ gently ~
~ slowly ~
~ tenderly ~
~ sweetly ~
He enfolds me into His heavy cloak
I lay myself against His chest
I am ~me~ I am accepted
I am ~me~ I am encouraged
I am ~me~ I am warm
I am ~me~ I am safe
This is my Father’s love for me
I can stay here for hours.
Talking with Him.
I never want to leave this place.

God written / channeled through Anonymousonetoo

Exercise -vs- Pigging Out

Tags

compulsive overeating, exercise, overeating, pigging out

I’ve been exercising on the elliptical for a month now. Twice a day for a total of an hour a day – and I can’t get enough of it.

(to read about how this started see this post:  HERE)

I was thinking about ways one tries to numb one’s emotions and how one ‘pays the bill’ for the different ways to numb.

Suddenly I Can Meditate

Tags

12-step, abstinence, Addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, God, inspiration, meditation, Mental health, PTSD, spirituality, trauma

Suddenly I find I can meditate! I’m doing it for an hour a day with almost no trouble at all. AA’s Step 11 (Sought through Prayer and Meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him) was absolutely impossible for me. It used to be, even at 34 years sober, that I couldn’t sit quietly for even a couple of minutes. The goolie and goblins would get me. Those goolies called:

You’re nothing but a piece of shit! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! No body wants you let alone loves you! Why don’t you just go away and die! (etc, etc, etc.)

A Very Interesting Thing Happened Today

Tags

child abuse, christianity, complex ptsd, Family, God, inspiration, Mental health, mental illness, PTSD, trauma, violence

Something very interesting happened tonight that I thought you would like to hear about. I’m taking training to be on the Crisis Call Center hotline. This evening we did role playing with the trainers for the first time in the training. Well I did a pretty piss-poor job of it and the feed-back I got from the others showed that too. This would have been a perfect ‘set up’ for me to rail against myself you think, wouldn’t it? This would have been the perfect situation for the ‘ugly voices’ to have come at me – enforce.

A & B – How to Deal With Fire Fights

Tags

abuse, domestic violence, Family, fighting, fire, intimacy, Mental health, PTSD, relationship, trauma

(this may seem hard to do at first but we caught on and I’m as impatient as a 30 second french fry in a fry cooker and my husband is as dense as a raw potato)

CAUTION: This is really, really, really important!! You must read through this entire article… first… maybe several times, in ordered to be fully mentally and emotionally prepared to do this exercise.

The thing is… Fights in a relationship create Fire… and fire has massive power behind it to destroy. You must realize that this is what you are dealing with when you fight. FIRE!! And like with any fire, when you’re handling it, utmost caution must be taken to keep it contained and under control so that it doesn’t incinerate you or your relationship.

* * *

I Don’t Care Much for Love

Tags

child abuse, Christian, christianity, compassion, complex ptsd, God, Love, PTSD, trauma

(an e-mail I sent to my pastor in response to the sermon he gave today. Regarding something he talked about that made me think on the word – compassion.)

*  *  *

I want to say more about the word “love”. I just don’t care much for that word. It’s been bandied about too much. Like an old wad of crumpled duct tape. It’s kind of useless anymore.

I love potato chips (?)

I mean. Come on!

But – compassion….

Intense Paranoia

Tags

child abuse, child neglect, dr spock, Paranoia, trauma

As I continue to trudge my ‘no-addictions’ journey, I came to this…

On Saturday I was roped into going to a party. My ‘friend’ roped me in by asking me if I could help her out with plates, utensils, etc. She was so insistent that I eventually caved. So I went.

I hate parties and here’s the reason why. They cement the knowledge I carry inside, that no body likes me. No body. One more time, I wound up sitting all by myself. Everyone was grouped up and I was sitting alone.

I Can’t Connect

Tags

AA, abstinence, abuse, Addiction, alcholism, anti-social, attachment disorder, Christian, christianity, connection, God, rad, surrender

I continue on in my quest as an addict into the world of no addictions.

It’s been officially a year now since I put the sugar down; six months since the cigarettes. I’m digging deep into my psyche. It started out with curiosity. I’ve been desperate to know… “Through practicing all these addictions, what the heck have I been running away from so hard?” Now it’s come to take on a life of it’s own. Here’s where I  now.

A “Spark of the Divine”

Tags

child abuse, divine, Ephesians 4, God, made in God's image, parenting, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, spirituality, trauma, violence

Let Us make man-kind in Our Image.

Genesis 1:26

There’s a drug that my psychiatrist prescribed for me a few weeks ago called Prazosin. It’s for PTSD. He said it was a pretty old drug – from the 70’s – and was used to treat high blood pressure. However, one of the other things it does is calm the adrenal glands so that they don’t pump out adrenalin so furiously the way they do in PTSD victims who are in constant ‘fight or flight’ mode. Anyway, since I’ve been on this drug I’ve begun to get clear-headed in a way that I’ve never been aware of before.

Here’s what I’m awakening to.

“Love”

Tags

Family, God, heaven, inspiration, judgement, Love, non-judgmentalism, spirituality

Love is an archetype here on earth of what is happening in the heaven-lies.

Many people try to define the term Love, yet no matter how they try to define it, it somehow seems to be indefinable. I believe this is because Love is not a thing to be grasped. This is not a ‘something’ but in reality only occurs in the absence of something else.

On Being a Social Outcast

Tags

misfit, outcast, social misfit, social outcast

This is the first post of this series, which here began in earnest when I hit my first crisis.

The No-Addictions, No- Obsessions – Experiment
Takes Off Like a Rocket

*  *  *

PTSD

Tags

alcoholism, child abuse, christianity, complex ptsd, Mental health, mental illness, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, sobriety, trauma, violence

My friend said good bye to me. We had been meeting every week; Tuesdays from three to five. Every week for three years. We studied Christian books together. “The Names of God”; “Lord Heal My Hurts”; “The Way of Agape”

Last week she told me she didn’t want to meet with me anymore. It was yesterday that we met for the last time. Now she’s gone.

My head knows why she did it. She had to. Her daughter had foisted three of her grand children on her to babysit everyday. She was homeschooling the twelve year old. The six year old had downs syndrome and ADHA, and the  baby of eight months was a screamaholic. She’s sixty two and has battled cancer in her past. Last week the daughter moved to Southern California and out of her life. My relief and worry for her was finally over. So my head understands that she desperately needed a break. She said that first she was going to sleep for a month, then see the Grand Canyon, and then work on her book. It was completely understandable why she did it.

But not all of me is cooperating with the head.

I’m an addict, using every sort of earthly means I could lay my hands on to dissociate from pain. “Any port in a storm”, so they say. Alcohol was my drug of choice; then junk food, cigarettes, caffeine, crochet, TV, spending, wandering aimlessly around the house in an overwhelming fog.

But, one-by-one I’ve been barreling through each addiction with the single-mindedness of a cougar going after it’s prey. Since last August I have become determined to be addiction free. I want to run to the arms of the only One I can truly depend upon. The One who comes with no ill after-effects…  God.

But now I am braving the first storm. And it’s a doozy. A hurricane, and I have no where to hide. No addiction to protect me from the raging fury passing directly overhead.

I lay on my bed, on my side, alone in the darkened room. Frozen still while this furious storm rages all around me. Monstrous claps of thunder pulse through my body.

In a thunder clap I am flung into a room. A voice screams at me…

Get in your room!!!

A lightening bolt of PTSD flash-back strikes and I am electrified. Then another, and another. They pierce me with direct hits. Then, in the light of a strike suddenly I become aware that I have been transported…  to 1960.

In the instant flash of light I see something… no… someone. A small girl… huddled in the corner of her room. Her knees pressed tightly against her chest. Her arms wrapped around her knees.  She’s in shock but… strangely… I can hear her thoughts.

What did I do?! Why is he so angry? I must be horrible for him to look at me with so much rage! I’m pure evil. I must be hideous for him to look at me with so much fire in his eyes.

She stares at nothing, almost not believing she came out alive through another savage assault.

Confused… baffled… bewildered… frozen. I see her in the lightening flashes. Petrified by what just happened, she does not move. And I can not move either. I am braving this storm. With each flash I get a glimpse. My eyes are fixated on her form and on her frozen face. I dare not budge. I do not want to miss a single second of this meeting. This memory.

A single tear runs over the bridge of my nose, then down my cheek to the pillow below. As I take her in my arms, this one tear is a miracle.

Together now, we survived the storm. We have both made it through alive.

 

 

 

How to Pray… No, I Mean… Really Pray

Tags

child, child abuse, Children, Christ, christianity, God, Holy Spirit, inspiration, Jesus, Mental health, messy, Prayer, relationship, spirituality

I loved this article. Here is a synopsis of it.

Become Like a Little Child

Jesus wants us to be without pretense when we come to him in prayer. Instead, we often try to be something we aren’t. We begin by concentrating on God, but almost immediately our minds wander off in a dozen different directions. The problems of the day push out our well-intentioned resolve to be spiritual. We give ourselves a spiritual kick in the pants and try again, but life crowds out prayer. We know that prayer isn’t supposed to be like this, so we give up in despair. We might as well get something done.

The Holiness of Words

Tags

christianity, God, inspiration, Paradigm shift, power of words, spiritual concepts, spirituality, words

Words are portals between visible and invisible worlds. The words of the Bible act as portals connecting the spirit mind of the Lord God… through this visible world… to my own spirit mind. That’s why every jot and tittle of each word is so important.

The Funny Spot

Tags

abstinence, Addiction, alcohol, alcoholism, gambling, money, relationships, sex, shopping, soma, vicodin

I was talking to an AA new-comer the other day and, as I was talking to her,  this came to the forefront of my mind.

I have a ‘funny spot’ in my brain.

In my brain there is a ‘funny spot’ that only certain chemicals and stuff will hit, and alcohol is just one of these. When I drank it, it did something to a spot in my brain that made all my troubles magically go away. When I drank it, somehow I felt lifted up out of the muck of my life.

You know what’s so funny though?

The 4th Step

Tags

4th step inventory, Alcoholics Anonymous, Anxiety, child abuse, christianity, God, Holy Spirit, inspiration, Mental disorder, Mental health, PTSD, self-inventory, sobriety, spirituality

I had an illumination at church service today that I thought I’d share.

The pastor was talking about Psalms 139 prayer and relating it to the 4th Step of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I Quit!

Tags

abstinence, Addictions, christianity, compulsive overeating, God, Holy Spirit, junk food, Mental health, smoking, spirituality, weight

I haven’t written in a while. I’ve been hiding from the world. But T.E.Hanna had a good talking to me and I’m back on track again… I hope.

That’s right, I’ve quit!

What do I mean by that? Well, I’ve quit the junk food habit for six months now. Recently I also quit smoking (over two months). I’ve quit compulsively crocheting and I’ve quit compulsive computing as well. And that’s just to name a few of the things I’ve quit.

A Wonderful “Ah-hah” Moment

This post might seem very odd to some people, in fact to a lot of people I suspect. I’m pretty sure that most of you have no trouble in this regard. In fact it probably will seem obvious to many of you. But for me it was a revelation.

First of all, I have to tell you that I am in the middle of working toward having no addictions… no addictions what-so-ever. So, in the process of working toward this end, I had a wonderful ah-hah moment as I walked my puppies today. 

One of the Definitions of a ‘Miracle’

Tags

Anger, christianity, Family, God, Mental health, Paradigm shift, paradigms, relationship, spirituality

I know there are many definitions of a miracle,
but I think this is truly one of them.

One of the definitions of a miracle is….a paradigm shift.

A Paradigm Shift is one of God’s miracles.

Because sometimes it takes God to produce that in us.

To find out what a Paradigm Shift is, Click HERE

.

.

From My Journal – 5 – Self Hatred

Tags

abstinence, alcoholism, anti-social, Anxiety, child abuse, complex ptsd, God, journal, Mental health, mental illness, Overeaters Anonymous, PTSD, relationship, self-hatred, Suicide

I’m still abstaining from flour/sugar products. On the 15^th it will be three months.

I was on the phone with my Overeater’s Anonymous (OA) sponsor last night and what came out was the word depression. She asked why the depression and I could only say; “I don’t know why.”  So she suggested I write about it… which is why I’m writing about it.

About Theophostic Prayer Ministry

Tags

C-PTSD, christianity, complex ptsd, emotions, God, Mental health, Paradigm shift, pastoral counseling, post traumatic stress disorder, Prayer, PTSD, Theophostic, therapy, trauma

I’ve been reading a book on Theophostic Prayer Ministry. Very interesting. Has anyone else heard about this type of therapy? As I was reading it, I noticed that it resonated with my own story. I have experienced more than several spontaneous (prayer induced) healings in my life that resulted in permanent heart-changing views about… who I was… what life was about… what I could overcome… and many other things.

What the Heck is a Paradigm Shift?

Tags

child abuse, christianity, Family, God, Holy Spirit, Mental health, mental illness, Paradigm, Paradigm shift, relationship, spirituality

Once upon a time there was a train. On this train were many passengers coming and going about their business. Some were reading their newspapers; some where furtively ‘people watching’; some were just looking out their windows at the scenery passing by.

Then a man got on the train. A man with his three little kids.

The Art of Forgiving Anyone… of Anything.

Tags

Bible, child abuse, christianity, Family, Forgiveness, God, Jesus, Love, Mental health, Prayer, PTSD, relationships, spirituality, trauma, violence

A long time ago I read an article in a magazine. This was the way God spoke to me about my problem with my father. At the time, I was not ready for it, but it stuck with me… until I was ready.

[the magazine read thusly]

Why Must I Honor My Horrible Parents?!

Tags

child abuse, Children, christianity, Family, God, Holy Spirit, Honor your father and your mother, Mental health, Parent, PTSD, relationships, spirituality, trauma, violence

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God is giving you.

Deuteronomy 5:16

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother,” which is the first commandment with promise: “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.

Ephesians 6:1-3

*  *  *

Just For Your Information…

Tags

5-Hydroxytryptophan, abstinence, child abuse, compulsive overeating, food, Health, Mental health, PTSD, Serotonin, trauma, weight

This information is from a non-medical person so please take it as such, having this in mind.

I have told many personal friends who have difficulty with abstinence about this but no one yet has taken me seriously. This is why I am putting out this information. I want to tell other abstainers about this substance that has been doing miraculous things with my junk food cravings.

The Voice of Our Shepherd

Tags

Bible, demons, God, guns, Holy Spirit, inspiration, Jesus, listening, relationship, Satan, Sheep, Shepherd, spirituality, thankfulness, violence, voice

A post, by the author of “Follow His Light“ inspired me to write my own experience with this.

*  *  *

I am a sheep.

I used to be a ram, but now I am a sheep and I am glad to be one. I grew up in ramsville and was taught the ways of ram-hood by father and mother. Dad and mom were gods, and they told us… all their children… we were to be rams.

Doctor Tom – The “Feeling” Specialist

Tags

abstinence, alcoholism, child abuse, christianity, compulsive overeating, Family, God, Health, inspiration, Mental health, mental illness, Overeaters Anonymous, sobriety, spirituality

I’m in an outpatient intensive program for food addiction. I’ve been going there three times a week for the last five weeks on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. But I went last Monday because my husband had a small surgery scheduled during my regular Tuesday time. This is where I met Dr Tom.  I’d met him the week before because I wound up going on a Monday during that week as well. The man fascinated me. He’s into feelings…what they mean… what to learn from them… what to do with them. I think I can learn a lot from this man.

Doing the Hard Thing

Tags

abstinence, Anger, anti-social, child abuse, Christian, christianity, church, compulsive overeating, God, Holy Spirit, Intimate relationship, Jesus, Mental health, sobriety

Do you want to really know your Father in Heaven?

Do you want to have an intimate relationship with Him?

Do you want to feel His Love, Wisdom and Power in your life?

Well, there’s one way I know of  that will give you this.

It’s called “Doing The Hard Thing.”

What I Am Thankful For…

Tags

christianity, gratitude, thankfulness

Like Looking for Golden Easter Eggs  —  It’s My Job to Find Them. To load my basket full of these Golden Gems of Happiness. For me, it’s an Essential Secret Ingredient to Having a Happy Sobriety and a Happy LIFE!!

Practicing keeping all these beautiful, wonderful things in my mind as much as I can has made all the difference in my life. Doing this has made life as good tasting as it could possibly be. And I believe I’ve just scratched  the surface of  all  the good things out there that God has provided. This is my ‘secret ingredient’  to a good, contented life.

There’s 241 golden eggs in my basket.

How can I not be butt happy?       .