Thursday, January 27, 2011

Jesus...the spiritual Roto-Rooter.

I recently made a new best friend. It's my toilet. Yeh, you read correctly... the toilet. He's been my best pal for the majority of this new year. I didn't go looking for this new friend...he found me. I don't know if I mentioned it or not, but for the last few days of 2010 and the first few days of 2011, I experienced the worst stomach flu known to man! I had it all...the chills, fever, horrible bodyaches (in which I told my husband I was dieing, cuz I thought I really was) headache, vomiting, and my new soon-to-be other best friend...diarrhea! After about eight days of all that horror...it subsided, and I thought I had seen the last of any of it for a while. So, there I was, a good two weeks into the new year. I had finally gotten my appetite back to, aah, some-what-normal. Thank the Lord! I was finally able to eat some real food, like a nice hearty bowl of gumbo. Hey, I'm a cajun girl...it's all about prioritizing. Well, I began feeling a little icky. A little achy. Tired. Worn down. I'm normally quite the busy bee, can't keep still, energetic, work work work, yada yada yada. But, I began feeling really sluggish, sort of like an overweight beetle stuck in a sticky pile of poop. (No pun intended...okay, yes it was. Excuse me while I giggle) I thought that maybe, possibly, I wasn't eating enough, so I began to pick my appetite up to replace what my body might have lost with the whole "New Year's Surprise" stomach flu. Yeh...bad move. Really bad move. The more that goes in... the more that must come out. Ya know...me and my intestines, AKA my colon, have shared this body for 38 years now. We've walked side by side and I thought we had a common respect for one another. You'd think that it would be a little nicer to me, but ohhh noooo! It decided to turn against me. A little bacteria decided to grow in my intestines and throw a little party inside my intestinal tract...but it failed to wait for me to RSVP! The diarrhea came back and this time it brought furniture and it's own toothbrush! It was moving in and staying for a while. Today makes 15 days...that's right ...15 long days, back to back, with you guessed it...diarrhea. I have what the doctor called Collitis. An infection of the colon. Your probably thinking, "that sounds like an old people illness and you are too young and beautiful to have that." I know right! My sentiments exactly. Good news has found me! I have been on medicine for a week or so now, and I am on the mend. I have to admit, that memorizing the number of tiles on my bathroom wall, and each crack or nic on each one, was not a talent I was looking for. But, now I have it. I am a "bathroom tile expert". Go me. After having diarrhea for three weeks of this year, I have come to the conclusion that they should use this as some torture device to make criminals talk. I'm not for human torturing at all, but a lotta' forceful diarrhea...just might make someone spill the beans. (Sorry...another pun.) The "diarrhea torture" and making them try on new bluejeans when they are "retaining fluid" just might make someone crack open the door to the vault of guilt! It's just a tiny suggestion.

Are you still with me? Because I do have a point with all of this...

You would think that with all the "cleaning out" my body had gone through, I would have stopped there, but I decided to begin a new book at the beginning of the year titled Breaking Free by Beth Moore. (I think I have mentioned it once, or twice, or maybe five or six times. It's FABULOUS! She is like all up in my head and stuff. She's good...real good.) Well...while my body has been bonding with the toilet, my spirit has definitely been getting cleaned out as well. I have learned things in every chapter and on just about every page. Her insight is totally God driven and it makes me evaluate myself from the inside out. There is such freedom and release when God breaks you from yourself...and I needed to be broken. Badly. This is the first book that I have read that is also a Bible study. You can't rush through the book, because every couple of chapters has an assignment attached to it. Either scripture memorization, quiet self reflection, prayer time or journaling. It is envigorating and I am so glad that I decided to take on this new challenge. It makes me pause, and stop when I need to. And I need to be stopped, and often. I was reading in bed the other night, when I finished one chapter, paused to pray for a moment, then I began to turn towards the next chapter. Right at the moment, where I was sitting in awe and mentally thinking of how to find Mrs. Moore, and shrink her down to place her into my pocket...when I saw the title of the next chapter:
TOURING THE ANCIENT RUINS
They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated; they will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations.
Isaiah 61:4
It was at this point where I began to quietly freak out in my bed. My heart began to beat fast and I began to breathe heavily. I thought to myself, "Nope, not ready for this." I just about closed the book, when I felt a gentle nudge to go forward, "It's alright, walk with Me", God spoke to me. All I could think of was, I did not want to go back to "the ruins". I just can't. I know what is back there. I know the pain that I felt. Then I began to wonder why I was feeling so apprehensive when I knew that God had healed me in this certain area. What's all this about? Why am I so scared of this? It was because...I was still holding onto something that God needed me to let go of. When He had taken out the huge limb of destruction in my life, a splinter or two was left behind...because I wouldn't let go of the grasp that my past had on me. It was time to take out the spiritual tweezers and pluck those splinters out. It was time to let it go...to go back to the ruins and finish my "cleaning out".
I'm glad that my husband is a pretty hard sleeper, because if he would have woken up and found me sobbing over my book, he might have freaked out a little himself. I cried to the point of having to get up and blow my nose. Yep...a major cry. I discovered through the pages of this chapter, that God sometimes will ask us to go back to the "ancient ruins", to take a look around and remember where he brought us from, and to maybe find something we might have left behind that was preventing us from moving forward.
I toured the ancient ruins of my past.
I found my something.
I was holding on to the mistakes of someone else, and it in itself had become my own mistake.
"Learning from the mistakes of others is the essence of wisdom"--Beth Moore
I wasn't finding wisdom and learning by watching the mistakes of my mother, I was causing an unseen, and quiet destruction within myself, by carrying them around. It was time for me to visit the ancient ruins of my past, observe them and put back in place the part of her (my) past that I was carrying around. I was letting HER past, determine MY future. It was time to put down the pieces of the ruins of the past, and pick up the rest of my healing and walk toward the monuments of my tomorrow.

The best part of it all, I had the ultimate tour guide with me...Jesus!

So...as you can see this year has been filled with major physical, emotional, and spiritual cleaning out! Not at all what I expected, but definitely what I needed.

As they say, "out with the old...and in with the new!"

When God cleans you out, He never leaves you feeling empty...only filled with new life! I'm looking forward to what's ahead for me and God now...and of course, I'm really looking forward to lunch.

Thank you Jesus for taking me on the tour through the ruins. Thank you Jesus for cleaning out my soul.
Walk with God through "the ruins". He will not leave you there or leave you empty!
I will leave you with a little more of Beth Moore:
"Family ruins continue to be the seedbed for all sorts of destruction. We tend to think of generational hand-me-down baggage as part of who we are rather than how we're bound. In many cases we grew up with these chains, so they feel completely natural. We're apt to consider them part of our personalities rather than a yoke squeezing the life out of us."
Psalm 23:4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death; I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
To order one of Beth Moore's books or dvds click link below:

1 comment:

  1. Wonderful to face your fears and push through- even though you don't WANNA!

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Proverbs 17:22 "A joyful heart is good medicine"


THANKS FOR STOPPING BY!

Hope your visit was a pleasant one. Be blessed and come back soon!