I am coming up for air after a week or so of drowning in the dark mist of the mind.  At least for today that is how I have been feeling the past few days.  Today I feel like the vice on my heart is gone.  Today I feel like I can lift my head.  Today I can feel like I can talk to God.  I have been fighting the past few weeks.  It has been a frantic battle.  Today I feel a little peace and today I feel like I can actually Praise God.  Feel like I have been through a war, and can relax cause the enemy has been pushed back far enough to relax a little.  I can breathe. 

God of course has been talking to me– mind you,  so have the dark voices but today God has made it clear what he wants.  It’s funny how God talks.  For the past weeks I keep coming across the same two bible vs.  God put them in a book I am reading,  God put them in a TV cop drama show,  God put them in last weeks sermon,  God put them in a conversation I had with a friend.   God put them in Facebook.  (who says God doesn’t use multi media – funny) It was then I finally thought OK I will sit down and study this.  I’m a little thick sometimes God has to repeat himself to me.  It was the sermon on the mount that he kept referencing and the camel going through the eye of a needle.  Both, I believe are in Matthew. Both repeated several times.

In particularly God has shown me part of the Sermon on the Mount with the verse Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. 

I have been feeling poor, I have not felt pure in heart. I have felt everything has been taken away from me. My mind, my spirit, my carefreeness, my humour, my memory, my character.  I feel a shell of my former being, an  abandoned  container, empty except for the nasty voices that scream destruction and the soft whisper of my God– when I take my hands off my earsonly then do I hear the whisper. Jesus said those who have ears let them hear.  Today I can listen.  To be poor means to be without, to not have.  My spirit has been poor and when I read this vs and thought about it,  I saw my heart, dark and small with me crouched over it,  trying,  with all my might to protect it from the dark dirty place I was.  God showed me I needed to stand up and open my eyes and ears and arms upwards.  He gently urged me and as I did the light from above came down and the light showed not a dirty dead-end ally,  but a clean, warm room.   My spirit is not something I can possess or fix or do anything with to be honest.  God is the keeper of the spirit I just need to open the door and see and hear.  Jesus said “whoever keeps my commands will be great in the kingdom of heaven. ”  Those who are pure in heart.  Who can be pure– no one.  Again God is the keeper of pure.  Jesus is the gate.  If I allow God Jesus and the Spirit access to my heart they can clean me to be pure.  Through Jesus and the Spirit I can come close to God. The more I pondered this the more I could feel my body relax.  You have heard the phrase hold on to the seat of your pants—I have been gripping my heart so hard to protect it from the darkness and the harassment it has been given in the past few weeks that I was suffocating it.  My arms felt drained. I feel like I have been running for the past week or so.  Depression is physical.  I have come to realize it more and more.  My body hurts for no reason some times.  I get headaches,  I get dizzy sometimes.  I can’t hold things sometimes.  These are the things I hate for the make me feel less than I am.  But Jesus says all things can be gained through him.  That is not an answer to a wish list.  God has, dare I say today made me understand that—-this illness is a blessing — for if my mind had not gone crazy I don’t think I could have comprehended how much I need and how much I understand about the Kingdom of God.  Through the desperate times God has shown me so much for me to understand, there is no way my faith and trust of God could be so great otherwise.   This freedom is available through Jesus and yet are not us humans like stupid sheep.  We forget where we are and what is good.  Sheep wander behind what ever is in the lead,  are we not just like that?  Following fads, trends, electronics, must haves of this world.  We remember the worst things.  We do not forgive the most important things.  We forget the most important words from God that would set us free.  We panic when we should remember to pray and give it to God for we are not in control.  The mind is a funny thing it comprehends so much but knows so little. 

A week ago I said to my best friend I feel like God is punishing me — but I also know he is not, it just feels that way sometimes.  My friend who I love so much reminded me he is not, but to think of him as my Father.  She was right. It is through being poor we learn to be rich. It is being poor we appreciate the sacrifice God has given us-to bring us closer.  It is through being poor that we receive and understand all the things that Jesus is telling us in the Sermon on the Mount.  I believe that is why that is at the first of the sermon – to be poor sets up to hear the rest of it.   At that time it was was backward thinking for the people sitting on that mountain listening – they wanted a physical victory over oppression of the time.  But Jesus talked of a victory over a spiritual battle.  The demons he fought then are as real now.  They do stock you and I have become very sensitive to them as this illness has progressed.  These are the things God has talked to me about.

As I sit in this light — I am off to the Doctor next week.  She is sending me to be for an assessment.  She has diagnosed me with depression, she suspect major depression psychosis.  The depression episodes I suffer from are not being treated effectively by antidepressants I am taking,  so its been 9 months of the same pills so she is sending me to an expert and evaluation.  (the diagnoses can make you depressed)  I will know more next week.

In the mean time I look forward to a Sunday service where I can lift my hands and praise the Lord.

till next time………………………..