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.