About Face

Some of you may have noticed that I posted and then removed two other articles....both regarding a rude telephone call I received yesterday. It was vicious and uncalled for, and I confess it completely knocked me off my pins. Even this morning, I woke with the weight of the world on my shoulders.  I did not feel like reading my normal Scripture reading this morning but I knew I needed it.  Penicillin for the soul. Here is a portion of what I read this morning:

Psalm 143

Come quickly, Lord, and answer me,
    for my depression deepens.
Don’t turn away from me,
    or I will die.
⁸ Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning,
    for I am trusting you.
Show me where to walk,
    for I give myself to you.
⁹ Rescue me from my enemies, Lord;
    I run to you to hide me.
¹⁰ Teach me to do your will,
    for you are my God.

May your gracious Spirit lead me forward
    on a firm footing.
¹¹ For the glory of your name, O Lord, preserve my life.
    Because of your faithfulness, bring me out of this distress.
¹² In your unfailing love, silence all my enemies
    and destroy all my foes,
    for I am your servant.

I had just been thinking recently as I read all of the Psalms that refer to David's enemies.  I recall thinking, "I do not think I have any enemies--other than demonic ones of course. "  But here. Yesterday, God showed me that I do have people who do not wish me well.  And it was a hard thing to handle.  But he also showed me that the God in me, will rise above the rancor in her...and he will grant me the victory and the courage to rise above the feigned friendship and thinly veiled animosity from this woman.

He also showed me that I was wrong in my initial belief that this one attack negated all my years of being obedient to God's command to me to express myself in this Blog, in articles and in my book....This woman simply does not have the authority to cancel all the benefit I have been to others...And truly I have had MANY more expressions of gratitude and blessing than I have had by this one jealous woman.

So I removed the first two posts (although if you subscribe by email you may have received them anyway).  My father put it succinctly.  "HOGWASH" when he read my second article from yesterday.  So I felt that I needed to close the circle and let you know that once more, GOD reigns in my life --not that He didn't yesterday...but it's kind of hard to see His majesty when you are face-down in the mud.

The important thing is that I know she is wrong.  God knows she is wrong. And now I know that when she calls again, she will be getting my voice mail.

Praying for Shalom

Picture:  Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his arrest, on the eve of his death....praying fervently to the Father to take the "cup" from him. Jesus, the human, was scared to the point that he sweat droplets of blood from his forehead.  With each request to his Father to please find another way, he yielded his will and submitted to the Father's plan, yet still desperately longing to bypass what lie ahead.  Jesus asked for the support and prayers of his friends/disciples on his behalf...yet found them time after time snoozing.   Finally he realizes that in this, he was truly alone. In his last session with his Father before the mob arrived to arrest him, again, there seemed to  be silence on the part of the Father.  But according to Hebrews, that was not the case.

Hebrews 5:7New Living Translation (NLT)

⁷ While Jesus was here on earth, he offered prayers and pleadings, with a loud cry and tears, to the one who could rescue him from death. And God heard his prayers because of his deep reverence for God.

How was this the case? As we all know, the Father did not make another path for the salvation of mankind....Jesus was tortured and died a horrendous death.  How was he heard?

I believe that the Jesus who sobbed out his fear, who in terror sweat drops of blood, who begged his Father for mercy....was not the same man who  moments later faced a lynch mob with calmness and strength.  He was heard.  And somehow, mysteriously,  he was strengthened and emboldened to carry out his part in the violence and pain to come.

I am reading a book called The Mystery of God by Steven D Boyer and Christopher A. Hall and it is from my reading there that I am presenting my thoughts to you here --thoughts that were born in this book.

The authors say that our prayers must be shaped to best bring back to earth the "Shalom" of God.  "Shalom" means peace --but it means more than that. It means wholeness, wellness, kinship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  It means to live in the manner that God initially dreamed for mankind to dwell.  The Shalom on Earth was destroyed by the sin of Adam and Eve....and it has taken all this time for God to unfold his plan to restore the Shalom.  This did not come cheaply or easily.  It came at the cost of the death of the Son.  And even then, even after the resurrection, although the coming of Shalom was guaranteed by that death and resurrection, it did not bring it immediately.  In fact, here we are 2000 years later, still battling the sin in our own hearts; still striving to display the love and mercy of God to a world that wants no part of him.  And believers, daily, give up their lives and their families to the hands of brute forces who in the insane pursuit of pleasing their god...are murdering and pillaging and killing and imprisoning thousands of Christians each year....and with every year that goes by, the numbers increase.

Surely, this cannot be God's plan! ...can it?
It is freedom, bought at a huge price.   As was the freedom purchased on the Cross.  How is it freedom you ask?  Every blood drop of a God-loving believer, is working to bring about the Shalom of God back to this war-torn planet.

How then, shall we pray?
I propose that we pray like Jesus did, "Father, Abba, if there is any other way, please bring it to pass.  If the lives of one or many can be saved on this earth, than do so.  But God if your plans are bigger than what we can see now,  then Lord, carry them out and do not let us, your flawed children, get in the way or work against your plans.  Grant those who suffer, courage.  Comfort the widows and orphans and provide for their needs.  Let love for their captors well up in the hearts of those who are hurting and dying at their hands.  Lord bring about Shalom. And may it hasten.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus!! Restore, Rule, Reign  Here. Soon."

Are your prayers full of the "Gimme's"?  Gimme this and gimme that?  I challenge you today to stop working against the plans of God on earth.  Partner with Him instead.  Pray for those who are buying Shalom at the high price of their bloody deaths.  And ask God to make you willing to pay your two cents as well...in whatever way God shows you that you are to work for Shalom, then ask for courage to do it.

One thing and Another

It has been a while since I've written.  There is not that much going on.  I am reading a good book called "The Mystery of God"...it is quite an undertaking. It has words in it that I have to look up--and that rarely happens.  I have a pretty good vocabulary so I am always delighted to find a book that challenges me and teaches me some new words.  I love the feature in Kindle where you just tap a word and up pops the definition.  I used to keep a notebook with words in it that I'd encountered but did not know...and I would look up the definitions in my huge Websters and then look over them from time to time to review. That's the only problem with the Kindle....you only get one chance to learn the word...you cannot review it. And also the very act of writing out the definition helps with recollection.  Maybe I should still keep the  notebook...only skip lugging out the Websters...just use the Kindle definitions but write them out.  I'm going to look for that notebook today.

I got new glasses.  THREE pair of new glasses!  I wanted to get progressives however I have prisms in my lenses because I have double vision...and for each level, closeup, intermediate (computer), and distance, there were a different number of diopters --so progressives were impossible.  I did get the Transition lenses in my distance glasses....so I could do away with sunglasses.  And these lenses maintain a slight tint which the doctor said would be good for my eyes and the glaucoma. The doctor, a nice young blonde lady, gave me the sense that she was very sympathetic.  I think she knows how bad my eyes are and that they are only going to get worse.  I bombed out of another field vision test.

Because I am continually switching glasses and need to have them at hand at all times, I bought these very pretty doohickeys that attach to your clothing with a powerful magnet and they have a loop on them to hold your glasses.  I got two loops (and one of the loops comes with three different designs for the outside of my shirt) so those will hold two pairs and my face will hold the other pair :)  I have been wearing my glasses all the time now, which I never used to (never since high school anyway).  Now I am so blind that it is really no longer an option not to wear them.

What are my feelings about losing my vision?
I'm scared to death.  I can deal with being in a wheelchair....I've done that before.  But being blind is a whole different story.  I think it will be terrifying...and especially so because my hearing is not good either.  I had encephala/spinal meningitis and it damaged my vision as well as my hearing....and it left me with a drooping eyelid and a crooked smile.  But I guess I should not complain....I very nearly died, so I should be grateful to be alive.  ( I should --not that I am). I don't know if there are places a newly blind person can go to learn how to manage...like a school for the Blind.  Would I learn Braille? I suppose I should...however my fingers are partly numb from peripheral neuropathy...and I don't know if they are sensitive enough to be able to distinguish the letters. I know I should install Dragon software on my computer and learn how to use it while I still have vision.  But I haven't done it.  Somehow that would be making it seem too real.  Too imminent. 

well I need to go and get ready for church.  Have a blessed Sunday.

Guest Author: "Janis"

I would like to present to you the first of hopefully, several guest writers...people who have either Schizophrenia or Schizoaffective Disorder.  Today's writer "Janis" (an alias) is from Australia where the mental health system is quite different from ours in America--although the camaraderie between patients is universal....So here is Janis' story:

I was 20 or 21 years old when it hit me like a brick. I would lie in bed with my head

screaming as it was racing so fast and I could hear a man breathing heavily in my

room. I looked for him in the cupboards and anywhere else he could hide in my

room. I couldn’t find him. I put pillows over my ears but this didn’t help much as

his heavy deep breathing tormented me. My mind felt like it was “crazy” and I

would cry at times as I couldn’t handle it.

As the years went by he would talk to me, sometimes nicely i.e. “Janis, there is

nothing wrong with you” to commands to kill myself. It seems obvious on

reflection that I was hearing voices but I never made the connection.

I went to my first doctor at aged 22 and he told me I was depressed. I knew there

was more to it than that but then I didn’t give him much to go on as I didn’t see

the voices as voices. Maybe if I told him I might have received the right diagnosis.

After battling with voices, seeing shadows, people spying on me, reading my

thoughts and being quite delusional 10 years later I sought a second opinion from

a psychologist. She asked me if I heard voices and I said no as I didn’t consider

that I did have them. I didn’t trust my psychologist as I thought she was “in” with

other people reading my mind through a thought listening device in my car which

meant I couldn’t just think normally as I had to trick them and think other

thoughts that were not personal. This was a very stressful time.

Even though I felt like a failure in my work (project management in social

research) I was offered the top job as State Manager. I accepted it 6 months

before the role was to meant to start. My paranoia was high and I accused them

of all sorts of things as I thought they were laughing behind my back. I went into

my manager’s office on two occasions crying and accusing him of all sorts of

delusional ideas. I couldn’t handle the stress of feeling victimized so I quit my job.

I reached my limits towards the end of seeing my psychologist and called her on a

weekend and left a distressed voicemail that I was going to overdose. On

Monday, I sat at the kitchen table with heaps of medications and I swallowed pill

after pill. My psychologist called while I was doing this and phoned an ambulance.

The hospital didn’t treat me well and while I was high on medication (after a long

sleep) they discharged me the next morning and I went home. I felt ‘crazed’ and

totally off this planet.

The next period of my life is blurry, but I spent time in public psychiatric hospitals.

I remember they put in high dependency as an involuntary patient with two other

people, Luke and Wayne (lovely guys). The public hospital wanted me to take

lithium but I refused to take it. One day the psychiatric nurse held out two tablets

and told me one was lithium and the other something else. I took what I thought

was something else and then realised they had tricked me into taking lithium.

That set me off. I was yelling at the psychiatric nurse but he wouldn’t engage with

me and scurried quickly to the safety of the nurse’s station. I remember that I had

to see a psychiatrist and when I went into the room there were about a dozen

doctors as they asked me question after question. It was a relief to get out of

there. That evening I saw 4 shadows of people running past my window and I

freaked out with fear and hide (hid) in a corner so they could (not) get me. The

staff came trying to coax me out. I am not sure how long that hospital visit was

but I have ended up in the public system 4-5 times until I got private health

insurance. The private system is very different with people unwell but not

obviously so unwell as you see in the public system.

So my mental health journey to hospital was now in the private system which

seemed more civilized.  My symptoms seemed to grow stronger as I aged I have

made at least a dozen trips or more to hospital.

One night I disappeared in the middle of the night leaving my partner and son so I

could overdose Once I left home and went to a nearby park wearing a blanket, my

handbag and a pile of medication. I took heaps and thing went blurry and I walked

the streets until I collapsed. Strangers found me and called an ambulance. I can’t

remember if the private hospital was full and I went back into the public system

or not.

Even though public psychiatric facilities get a bad rap there is a sense of

community among all of the patients. In some ways it is a relief to be around like-

minded people that understand you.

One year later after my last overdose attempt I sat at home on a day I was

working from home and just started taking pill after pill. It was a Monday. Things

are a little blurry but I ended up in bed going to sleep. I started taking the pills at

2:30pm and woke at 9:30pm. My partner got up with me and said what’s going

on. I said I overdosed so an ambulance was called. The saddest moment of my life

was to come when my partner of 18 years left after this last suicide attempt. I was

taken to a public psychiatric hospital as an involuntary patient but I asked them to

just make me voluntary so I could go to my usual private hospital. It took a few

days for the transfer.

I had a second round of ECT with 9 sessions and again my hospital psychiatrist

said I was better but I felt nothing. So I am not going through ECT again.

I use to have an excellent memory. I would remember every little detail and was

always on top of thing. But know I cannot remember if I have taken my morning

medication an hour after I have got up. Ask me what I did yesterday and I couldn’t

tell you. I don’t know if this caused by the ECT or a disintegration (due to) of my

illness. My psychiatrist is going to send me to a neuro-psychologist for some

memory teI am not sure of the duration for most of my visits but they vary from 2

weeks to 3 months.

At the private facility a couple of years ago I had Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT).

I had 10 sessions. My hospital psychiatric said I improved from it but I think it was

just time.

I still work, part-time, and it is a struggle. My hospital psychiatrist wants me to go

on a disability pension but I can’t afford to live on the minimal amount offered by

the government.

Currently my workplace wants me to work full-time. But I can only offer part-time

hours as I can’t handle the pressure that comes with more hours. I am on the

process of looking for a less stressful job. There isn’t much out there so it is going

to take a little while.

My diagnosis at the age of 34 is schizoaffective disorder (schizophrenia and

depression). At 38 years I still haven’t quite accepted it even though I have all the

symptoms.

I still hear voices, knocking on the window and someone walking around my

bedroom. I see ghostly figures and people are reading my thoughts. My

psychiatrist doesn’t want to up my medication as I am on a high dose. So I just

have to live with it until a less stressful job in social research.

“Janis”

Up and Coming....

I have some great news. 
I have noticed that my numbers of visitors here have been flagging.  And it occurred to me that people who read have maybe gotten sick of my thoughts day after day ....It also occurred to me that I have not talked very much lately about Sz (schizophrenia) and maybe there are those of you are lookng for that and are not finding it.  So I had the inspiration of asking some of my friends online who have SZ to write a blogpost on the topic of their experiences with living with SZ.  I have three people who have agreed to do it thus far and there are two people whom I asked who have not responded to my invitation yet.  I really hope they agree to do this because they are people who have struggled greatly but who have overcome and  done well in life despite dealing with this awful disease.

So stay tuned for that...Check back ....most of the people I've asked have requested a week to write their post.

"Dear Peggy,"

Dear Peggy.

You may not have any recollection of me…but I remember you: your petiteness , your hair and even  your voice.   One day we were out with your mother somewhere (this is, I believe, when we were in grade school) and we were talking about God.  I told you that you could be sure that you were going to Heaven if you would ask Jesus to save you …and if you confessed your sin.  You said you wanted to do that…..and so we prayed together in your mom’s car.

Here’s where the story goes wrong.

The next day we talked and I was desperately trying to make you understand that Christians live and act a certain way.  We do not take the Lord’s name in vain….etc. etc.  In my legalistic understanding of salvation back then…

.I built for you a box just like mine that we could each live in.  Not surprisingly, this did not appeal to you and you bailed.  On God.  Because. Of. Me.

I think of you often, when my failures come back to haunt me.  And I pray that God brought you someone else to erase the angry God I introduced to you….and showed you the face of grace and love that the Father has toward you.  I pray that, where I blew it, God came through and met you where you are….hopefully not stuck in a life of atheism.    I pray that God will miraculously show you this letter --somehow and that you would be able to see that my error as a child was NOT the way God would have had it.  I myself did not get out of that box until I was in my 30’s not entirely anyway.  God passionately loves you and he wants your acts of faith to be exactly that OF FAITH…not jobs you are doing to keep an angry God happy.  And when you fall and fail (as you will because you are human) GRACE is there waiting to pick you up and dust you off.  God’s ears are loving and open to hear your confession and he will take your failure, wash it in the blood of Jesus and cast it into the deepest sea where neither you nor he will ever see it again.

This is not a life of “attempt, fail: repeat.”  God’s love for you on the cross breaks that chain of failure and defeat and the self hatred and pain that comes along with it.  It is the enemy of your soul that tells you those lies…that  you will never, ever “get it”….that you will only be a disappointment to God for ever and always. 

Here are some verses: words from the very Word of God and they were written by God with you in mind, Peggy.

John 8:32

and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

Romans 3:23

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

Isaiah 53:6

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

John 10

¹⁴ “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, ¹⁵ just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.

Luke 15:4

“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds  it. NLT

Ephesians 2:8-9

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.  NLT

So  Peggy…..and all the Peggys out there: To everyone who was sold a bill of goods called “legalism” which implies that we have some role in earning or meriting our salvation: please read these verses and consider them to be a handwritten invitation by the Lord of the Universe himself, written to you.  He loves you infinitely….and he wants you  to have a second  chance (or more). He wants you to know there is never a limit on his grace.  It is like a steady stream of water.  One stream flowing with ever new water.

Considerings

This morning I am going out with my new caseworker for breakfast and to get some support while I pay my bills...which has always been difficult for me.  (have I mentioned lately how much I miss my old case worker, who has gone on to a different job?) This is not the place for complaints so I will not go into that.  And after that we are going to my Pdoc (psychiatrist PA who prescribes my meds). This pdoc is relatively new to me, but I like her a lot.  She's tough but I think she is also compassionate.

Also today is "weigh-day"...Wednesdays and Sundays I weigh myself.  I used to weigh myself daily but then my mood was up and down based on what the scale said.  I do wonder about this method  though because often, depending on how bloated I was with fluid or "other" substances, my weight can vary from day to day by 3 or more pounds.  So what if on a Wed. or Sun.. I encounter a heavy day?  Well if my emotions are severed from the scale, that really wouldn't matter...but they still have the power to make or break my day...(week?).  I had been really lax with pursuing my Eat to Live program and the scales were starting to creep higher and higher..until I had gained 4 pounds back.  Beginning this past Monday, I have been following it pretty faithfully.  It will be interesting to see if the scale reflects that yet.  It may take another three or four days before that happens.

I stopped taking one of my meds because I have reason to believe that it is behind my tendency to eat more than I should be.  It's not a critical med....just to help me sleep and it can also boost the effect of my other meds.   Well I don't need help falling asleep and I am dubious about any other  benefit it is supposedly granting me.  No one seems to be concerned that I am on way too many meds. Some of them are essential....but to some of them I want to say , "Why are you here?"  My husband is scared to agree that I stop any meds because mentally I am balancing on a log in the water...and for the moment am doing okay.  But I do not think that the meds I  take are so critical to my well being.  I think my well being comes from a different place than the cup full of meds I swallow twice a day.

I have been bothered by a couple of things.  One of them is my lack of emotion.  I am not up or down.  I'm just floating in the nebulous "nowhere" emotionally.   I have real trouble motivating myself to do some things.  I was just talking about this to my dad yesterday.  Even things that should be fun....like starting my next knitting project...really pose problems to my motivation.  Putting away laundry is a nemesis to me...it's common for an entire week to go by with the laundry basket full of laundry sitting on the living room floor..   Why?? It's not intimidating.  It requires no special skill....why does the thought of it  fill me with dread?  Maybe it is because doing that really causes my back to hurt...as does, doing the dishes.  I have not done anything creative in a long time.  I have no creative "edge"  ---- I have no angst to spill and no joy to report.  I just am floating in this grayness...sucking it in to my lungs and incorporating it into my cells.  "Gray matter?"  Why do they call it that?  Is the brain literally gray?  Maybe gray matters.  Maybe it's the normal place of the normal person.   However I am not a normal person. I used to be creative...I used to bleed poetry.  I used to create beauty.  Now?  I sit in my recliner in my sort of messy room and just wander around online killing time....wasting what is left of my life.  Soon I may be blind. What should I be doing while I still can?  Putting away laundry?

It's so frustrating because pain interjects it's ugly voice into everything I do or want to do.  I would like to travel  around a bit...even just locally. and paint. but both the traveling and the painting cause problems.  I would like to memorize some more poetry and  some Scripture....so that if the lights go out I can still have that stuff to recall and bring me some pleasure.  Even doing that finds its own wall of resist`ance.  What is on my "bucket list"?  And is it too late to pursue any of that? Given my limitations, what is that bucket full of ?  (OK don't say what I know  you are thinking).

Am I depressed? Or just frustrated.  Is this nothingness natural?  My daughter sits and day after day draws lovely, interesting things in her sketchpad...and I am jealous because I am bereft of ideas.  Does mental illness quash ideas?  Or is it the meds that are at fault?  I would think that all these random visions in my head would provide some matter for con-sketch-eration.  But no, they are gone to the nether world from whence they have arrived, far too quickly to be grasped and recalled. At one point recently when they were appearing every few seconds, I tried to write down what they were....and then I lost that paper.  It could be in one of  thirty notebooks....and it didn't make any sense anyway...those few disabled words did not adequately describe what I saw....at least not well enough to re-create the scene in words or images.

Well  now that I've completely depressed you.....NO! Walk away JOYFUL. Cherish your life, your lack of pain, cherish your mind that works add your body that does your bidding.  Have a bucket list filled full of possibility and pursue it, being grateful for your ability too work and to play and to create.....because all of that might be gone tomorrow.  Thank your Creator....and get to know him while you can.  Thank Him for every blessing he has given you.  Go now. Do something that matters.

Remember This!!

Recently I have energized my former discipline of Bible Memorization.  In past years I have memorized thousands of verses.  I recently read a book (only $.99  at Amazon)  called, An Approach to Extended Memorization of Scripture by Andrew M. Davis: his website is: http://www.fbcdurahm.org/
He proposed a method which was interesting and a bit daunting.  I'd never attempted to learn an entire chapter except my first "boyfriend" and I memorized 1 Corinthians 13.   It seems to make sense that an entire chapter or book would be learned because then  you can see the themes and understand the background of the verse.

Then recently I came across another book, My Scripture Journal : Fearing the Lord by Heather Bixler.  Instead of focusing on one book, she focused on a theme. In this case, learning 12 key verses having to do with the Fear of the Lord.  She had a method that if you practiced it as she posed, then you would learn a verse in one week.  I added a few more verses to her original 12...I'm not sure how many I've learned yet, but I am finding this to be both enlightening and difficult. Because the verses all have "the Fear of the Lord" in them it is easy to get the rest of the sentence (usually a promise made by God to those who fear Him) confused with the other verses.  It has been enlightening because when I first picked up Heather's book, I actually thought, :"The Fear of God?? how boring!" Yikes!! Did God ever sit me down on my duff quickly.  The fear of God---what IS it?  How does one get it or accomplish it?  What is it used for?  What promises are made to those who have it?  And I think this would likely be true for any category of verses you were to choose.  One that I would like to do is all the verses where the Hebrew word "Chesed" was used.  "Chesed (or hesed)" means 'Lovingkindness" with a touch of mercy thrown in.

And finally last week I encountered a series of five articles on Bible Memory.http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-memorization-feeds-your-imagination ..This is a five part series and as of today the first four articles have been released online.  If you go to the link here it will take you  to the first article and there will be a link for the remaining ones in the series.  #5 will be out very soon so make sure you check back.  This man, Joe Carter, has a wild and crazy method of Bible memory but I can see that it works...just in reading though these articles.  Instead of the tough days of repeating a verse over and over...he has a system where he invents a silly story and by so doing you can quickly memorize any list ...say the Ten Commandments, or you can memorize lengthy passages of Scripture...and have fun doing it.

When i was a young girl in my church in Teaneck NJ, a man visited and he tried to teach us this same approach to Scripture.  In fact he had the whole New Testament written as cartoons with these silly mnemonic phrases and images illustrated.  I found the books very difficult to catch onto...but I remember his approach --all these years later.  And here it is being taught again. I would highly recommend looking up some of the resources and beginning the discipline of Bible Memory.

My earliest memories were of my dad (who was then in Seminary to become a minister) teaching me the verses he himself had to learn.  I gobbled them up and I still remember now which ones he taught me....Little did I know that I was the one helping HIM. lol.

There is also "an APP for that!"  it is called Scripture Typer.  It is available on Kindle as well as on your iPhone.  You can add  your own topics or use one of theirs ...if there is a verse you want to learn it will download it from the internet and add it to a list or just by itself.  I love this method..you just type the first letter of each word and you do it a number of times until you have "Mastered it" and then it gets checked off.  It also provides flashcards with the reference on the back and the verse on the front. (or visa versa). It is possible here as well to learn an entire chapter and they give you the option of whether you want to learn it as a chunk or verse by verse.

Then at that church in Teaneck there was an annual contest.  The child was handed every week a packet of papers with single spaced verses completely covering the front and back of a number of pages ...We had to memorize all those verses and quote them word perfect to our listener each week. I think it went on for ten weeks or so. And at the end, if you were successful the church paid for a week at the church camp in New Hampshire....where I eventually prayed to receive Jesus.  Those verses too, because I learned them so young, are still i n my memory today...in the good old King James Version (which I spoke as fluently as I did America English.)

Then when my daughter was young I put together a memory system and learned hundreds more verses and I was asked by my Pastor to present  these packets to people with the challenge to them to memorize them...They were topically arranged.  I think only one or two of the people in that Sunday School class took me up on my challenge.

"Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee."  I can testify that when your mind is filled with the Word, sin cannot find a place to lodge.    These days I am struggling mightily to recall verses  because of  the damage done to my brain from the ECT (shock therapy) I underwent about 7 years ago.  But I thank the Lord that all the verses implanted in my brain prior to those treatments remained.  Which is a true miracle.  I am asking God to restore my mind, both from the ECT and from age...renew my mind.

Romans 12;2

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Another Letter about my Book

I have a friend in Australia and she just finished reading my book.  She sent me the following email which greatly encouraged me:

"I just finished reading your book. You have such a determined mind and spirit to get through so much, an inspiration. It is an honour to read your story. Your strength of character, mind and spirit are amazing to have “come out the other side” so to speak. Thank you for sharing your story."

Just a word to all of you who have read my book: Reviews on Amazon are critical to a books success--or failure.  If you have read my book please go to Amazon-- here is the link:
Amazon page for Treasures From Darkness 
--and write a review....Just scroll down on this page and click on "Write a review"...It is very simple.  I would greatly appreciate your taking the time to do that.

Ii am reading another book about mental illness and the church's response.  I have to say that it is nicely organized....my book hops around a little more.  I have to remind myself that this other author is not writing with a schizophrenic brain and it is probably a lot easier for her to be organized than it is for me.  I am hoping someday to work on a second edition and hopefully will catch all those issues - including typos etc - and re-release it as a "new and improved" version. I have also gotten some more material from speaking to my father about some events that I have no memory of whatsoever.  I would like to include things like this that are emerging now.

But don't wait around for the second edition.....it may be a long time in coming.
Thank you too all of you who have purchased my book.  I hope it blesses you and instructs you.