Catchy Saying #3 Come Accepting Not Demanding

"Come Accepting Not Demanding"

For the longest time when I was fighting my seizures it seemed like all I did was come to God demanding healing, demanding answers, demanding relief from all my stress. For some reason I thought I could come to Him in a demanding sort of way and get my way like some little kid. After all if I came accepting of my circumstances then that meant I was okay with everything therefore God was going to freeze me in the position I was so content with.

Boy did I have it wrong! It was this simple little “catchy saying” that showed me the error of my thinking. I had God all wrong. He doesn’t tell us to be content so He can freeze frame our life so He doesn’t have to deal with us anymore by convincing us to be content where we are. That’s ridiculous. Being accepting and content with our circumstances is a way to endure what we are going through until such a time in which it may change. It’s our strength in a weak situation, our rock to stand upon when the sand of time is giving away under us.

None of us are in the position where we can go to God demanding anything. We can ask for answers, ask for guidance, ask for our needs but to demand them is a totally different thing. It’s a matter of a good attitude verses a bad attitude. To demand anything from God is like behaving as some spoiled child who always expects to get their way.

To accept what God has for us is to be humble and thankful for at least the things we do have. The less we fight our circumstances and allow for acceptance the more likely they may change for us.

I could still be fighting my stress seizures to this day 24 years later by not accepting the fact I had them and I’d still be disabled. Same goes with the elderly man with dementia. He can both accept the fact he has dementia and try to deal with it on a regular basis or fight it and refuse to accept the fact and be miserable for the rest of his life.

God’s not in the business of freeze framing. What He wants is for us to have the right attitude towards life and the circumstances we face and piece by peace our stress becomes less of a battle. Therefore freeing us up to fight the real battles in life and win. Exchange demanding for acceptance today, you’ll love the results. You’ll be surprised at the peace.

© 2014 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing for COCWF

Fighting Stress with Scriptures~~~Flawless Ways, Perfect Choices

2 Samuel 22:33 God is my strength and power, makes my way perfect

This scripture from 2 Samuel was extremely helpful to me when I had epilepsy and was fighting my stress seizures. It reminded me that God was my strength and power. I didn’t need my own to see me through. I had God. I was like a battery operated toy that when the batteries ran low I was no longer able to function. Thanks to God I didn’t need to get to that point as I so often did.

The way God was making my way perfect was the fact that He was there for me. I was still having seizures, I was still disabled. What was so perfect about that? Nothing! Except the fact that through my epilepsy I was learning to lean on God for my day to day ability to function as I made Him my perfect choice.

Sounds wimpy, doesn’t it? That’s our problem today we have it in our heads that if we have to rely on God to be our crutch, backbone, strength, or power then we must be some kind of wimpy weak weirdo. From the beginning of time starting with Adam and Eve in the garden we think we can do it on our own. There is pride in showing the world that we can make it on our own. We don’t need God. I’m not some kind of windup battery operated toy that needs power from a different source!

Can you hear it? More important is the fact you can see it. You can see what that kind of attitude does for us in the behavior of our society today. We have moved away from our true source of strength and power and it hasn’t proven a thing. When I did it I had more stress seizures, when others do it their “stress seizures” are the anger they display, the bad choices they are making, and their destructive attitude they carry with them that hurts rather than heals.

Perfect ways? What’s that! In reality there is no perfect way. Our idea of a perfect way is one that is pain free, loaded with free money to spend, everything we ever asked for or wanted without doing anything to get it. Indeed a life free of stress, worries and other people sticking their nose in our business. Nice try but have you ever seen such a thing? No.

The perfect way God has to offer is one paved with not only His power and strength leading to eternal life with Him but His love, mercy and grace as well. Yes there will be pain and suffering along the way, stressful times and hard lessons to be learned but that’s okay when you’re traveling with Jesus. The flawless way, the perfect choice.

© 2013 Karen J. Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing

Fight Stress with Scriptures Closing the Cracks

Due 6:5  Love God with ALL your heart, soul, mind, strength

 

How in the world does loving the Lord your God with ALL your heart, soul, mind, and strength help us to fight stress? It helps because it gets our mind where it needs to be. Any time we hold back a piece for ourselves that leaves a crack for things to come along that we don’t want or need brought in by stress.

 

The important thing to know is that “stress” happens. We can’t do a thing in life where we will never be struck by stress again. The issue is what we do it. How long we linger in it and allow it to run our lives. Do we add to it or take away from its desire to sting us.

 

When I stopped having stress seizures it wasn’t because I was at last living in a stress-free environment and it never came around again. Yeah right! And if you believe that I have oceanfront property in Arizona I want to sell you. Just teasing but that is how crazy of a thought that is to think we can live in a stress-free environment. Some get pretty close and others couldn’t be surrounded more by it. The issue is dealing with it and not allowing it to affect our lives.

 

A good start to that is remembering the fact that we need to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. Don’t leave room for stress to have its affects on us. Yeah, I know you “have the right to get mad at someone for doing something to you” but is it really worth it holding back that chunk of your heart, soul, mind and strength to be mad at someone.

 

When I found out about my stress seizures the first thing that had to go was my anger towards the girl who initially caused my head injury that would lead up to my seizures. I chose to hold back that part of me and it showed in the amount of stress seizures I was having. If I truly loved God with all that was in me then it was time to show it by not worrying or getting upset over things, or being pre-occupied with things that were eventually going to lead to a stress seizure.

 

As I told a couple the other day, during the time of battling with my stress seizures I couldn’t even worry about what I was going to fix for dinner. If I did, I wound up having a stress seizure. It’s one thing to “think about” what you are going to fix for dinner and another to “worry” about it to the excess of having a stress seizure.

 

Looking to the “all” in loving God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength was a good focus point to measure the distance between what I was doing and where I needed to be and the stress seizure I just had in between the two points. Sometimes it was clear I loved God with my all and had a seizure anyway but there were times that evidence proved otherwise. It was then up to me to figure out what I wanted to do with the data I just collected from the last seizure. It was because I chose to learn from each seizure that future stress seizure eventually would be eliminated and victory was just around the corner.

 

Stress seizures or not it is a command from God for us to follow. An act not set up for God himself to profit from. However, it’s for the benefit of us for the by-product that comes from it.  It’s how God loves us and it does us well to do the same back to Him as we close the cracks to the things that don’t need to be.

Blast from the Past

Going thru my scrapbook recently I came across a poem I wrote to the Women at the Round Lake Women's retreat as it was called back then. It was a poem that made it to my scrapbook because of what the act behind it meant to me. From 1978 to 1990 I was disabled with epilespy. I had uncontrolled seizures daily that prevented me from doing things while at the same time made other things difficult to do. The women of the church would take me to the Women's Retreat and watch over me in case I had a seizure. Which in my case was frequently throughout the day.

In 1986 at this particular retreat I evidently had several seizures in a row. Each time I did I would wet my pants. After a certain amount of seizures I ran out of spare clothes to wear. After the last seizures I had when I noticed the clothes I was wearing I asked the ladies what happened. This was something I always had to do in order to find out what I did during my seizures. They told me I had wet my pants again so they had to hand wash my other clothes and blow them dry with one of the ladies hair blow dryers as quick as they could.

This act of kindness has never left me till this day as I type these words thru flowing tears. Back when I had epilepsy I wrote poems to keep my mind focused on things other than seizures. They may not have been great poems or drawings I did with them but they were terrific for the purpose they served. This is the poem I wrote in gratitude to the ladies for what they did in 1986.

Truly an act of kindness the women of the church continue to do today and I'm proud to be a part of them. Being cured from my epilepsy now for over 20 years I can now give to others what was given to me. It may be slowed down a little bit by my recent onset of Breast and Bone cancer but I still have the ability to give. We all have that ability to give, it doesn't take someone healthy, rich, or wise. All it takes is a caring giving heart.


MY POEM (I will not correct any grammar, I'm leaving it as I wrote it) Christian love has a value, a value all its own. Something worth the treasuring a thing that is worthy to loan. And I was honored to get this loan from my sisters at Women's Retreat The day I had a seizure and was as embarassed as all could be. For thru my seizure I wet my pants and felt so like a fool. I couldn't stop the tears from flowing, try as I did to be cool. My sisters showed their love for me when they took my dirty wet pants And blowed them with a hair blow dryer which made my heart just dance. So thank you sisters for this loan, I pray I'll pay it all back, Giving all I can to you till nothing between us lacks. Thank you friends, I love you. Karen