the accidental bohemian

One thing my husband tolerates about me with not a little protective concern is that I am a very independent and unpredictable wanderer. He can never assume where I am likely to be or for how long and for what reason and I always go alone. I greatly enjoy a good amount of aimless moseying. Maybe I’ll go to the library and read about Objectum Sexuals or the kind of plants that cure kidney stones or the most ruthless female serial killers that ever lived. Maybe I’ll drive there and maybe I’ll walk. Maybe I’ll wear my sandals and maybe I’ll forget them and not notice until three blocks later (true story). Maybe I’ll stay for two hours and forget about lunch. Maybe I’ll stay ten minutes, get bored and wander over to the thrift store to hunt for unrecognized antiques buried amongst the valueless rubble. And maybe, during all of this, I will have let my phone die or left it at home so I am completely unreachable.

When I am wandering aimlessly I tend to never really get lost. I’ve noticed that about aimlessness. How can you feel lost if you have no destination?

When I am trying to get somewhere specific, however, getting lost becomes this thing I do like a predictable disorder, the symptoms of which strike only in certain settings, making you wonder if it is just psychosomatic. And yet, even though I have this pathological history of getting lost, it still so often catches me off guard: What?! How did I get lost?! Or denial: I’m not lost, I know exactly where I am… Wait… 

Like yesterday for example. I had to bring my Jeep to a dealership my husband (who works in the auto hail damage industry) does business with, to have new tires put on it for winter. I have actually been to this dealership a few times already. It is called Metropolitan Ford in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, only a scant twenty minute drive from my Minneapolis home.

I firmly believe one should still use the old memory method of getting places because GPS systems are making us dumb followers that don’t have to figure out or remember our own directions anymore. (If you are still using it to guide you to places you have been more than three times, it is succeeding). But I only vaguely remember the way, so I quickly consult my GPS map to refamiliarize myself with certain vital street names and left-or-rights and then I get on the freeway and start my trek without its guidance.

Somewhere in Minnetonka I suddenly snap to and realize the scenery is all wrong. What the heck? I flip on the A/C because the instant I discover I am lost I get very hot and my back begins to sweat. I grab for my phone and try to look like I’m not one of those people who texts and drives while I frantically pull up Metropolitan Ford on my Google Maps to see how long I have been driving since I passed it, as cars whiz past me, suddenly taking on the form of a threat in my panic.

Okay, I passed my exit only a couple miles ago. I am relieved. It is pretty common that I don’t notice I have passed my exit until I see the sign announcing my arrival in the next city. Having an overly active mind can actually come across looking more like mental retardation at times because it takes you away so easily from the concrete world.

I use my GPS just enough to help me get turned around properly and then click it off and put it away.

I confidently take the proper exit and make the following two turns until I arrive at the dealership on the service road.

But these places are huge metropolises with multiple entrances and garage doors that confuse me. I call Jesse.

Okay I’m here. Where do I go?

Find the big row of garage doors that says Service over them in the back.

I drive around and around, passing big row of garage doors after big row of garage doors. No sign that says Service anywhere to be found. Jesse is getting perturbed. I am getting exasperated. I’m starting to doubt there even is a sign when he says,

Babe… look around you… Are you surrounded by Chevy’s right now?

Yeah. starting to chuckle.

Then you are not at Metropolitan Ford.

You know how car dealerships are like box elder bugs? There’s never just one, there are hundreds all grouped together in these ominous-looking clusters. I had pulled into the one next door.

And that is why my problem for today is called:

The Mystery of Being Lost Without Knowing it

We all have done this. I was so busy believing I was at Metropolitan Ford that I didn’t even stop to consult my actual scenery… Chevy’s? whaaaaa…?

I think that as we all search life for the riches we long for: happiness, health, prosperity… we come across a cluster of car dealerships that all look the same. And we can drive around and around and around looking for the right entrance and never actually find it because we are at the wrong building entirely. And if someone tries to tell us we are at the wrong place we often shrug them off because we see it with our eyes: It’s a car dealership! Filled with vehicles! On the right road! How can I be at the wrong place? You’re the dumby!

I think that when it comes to questionable life decisions that we make and we have people we trust, mentors or parents or leaders of some sort that are trying to warn us that we are not actually in the right place, we ignore them because we so strongly believe we know right where we are. But if we are in the wrong place… then we will never actually find what it is we are looking for. Because it isn’t even there.

If you are sure you have made all the right turns and you are in the right place in life, but something is pointing to the possibility that you might actually be lost without knowing it…

Look around you and ask yourself: Am I surrounded by Chevy’s? Because if so, then you are not at the Ford Dealership, no matter how strongly you may believe you are. 

If you are doing something to try and find happiness but your dissatisfaction is only increasing… you are not at the Ford dealership.

If you are using a certain method to try and extract love or attention from others but people are avoiding you instead… you are not at the Ford dealership.

If you think you’re eating healthy but you still have fatigue that sends you face-planting into your desk every afternoon, an extra twenty pounds that won’t relent, and skin problems… you are not at the Ford Dealership.

If you think your parenting method is awesome but your kids are terrors that frighten away even the most ironclad caregivers… you are not at the Ford dealership.

If people regularly have to cut you out of their lives or unfriend you on Facebook… you are not at the Ford dealership.

And of course by Ford Dealership I mean your true goal destination: a place in life where health and overall prosperity are being properly cultivated. When this is happening you will be seeing the sprouting up of plenty of love, happiness, energy and radiance, healthy kids and relationships, and lots of friends.

Keep a close eye on your scenery and make sure it matches up with where you think you are and the things you are really looking for. If it doesn’t then you’re in the wrong place.

I am in my best-mommy-spirits right now after dropping my son off at his first day of eighth grade this morning. You know that September Glee we mothers become infected with? I feel like I slept with a hanger in my mouth because I have a real toothy perma-grin.

I had the “pleasure” of attending my niece/Goddaughter’s first birthday party last night. I confess I truly am one of those people that breaks out in a sweat and begins mumbling in an incoherent panic and jumping at loud noises like a war veteran when too many small children are in the same enclosed space as I am. I swear it’s the honest truth that there was one moment last night when one of them was having her balloon angrily confiscated by a red-faced parent, while another dumped an entire glass of soda onto his lap and yet another one swallowed wrong and began coughing and gagging in a way that made me certain we were going to see vomit before the night was out… All simultaneously.

Add two very big very friendly dogs to the mix and I was a complete nervous disaster that teetered precariously on being rude in manner and there were several trips outside for “fresh Air”. Luckily my family understands this about me and they have a lot of grace for me. (Thank you everybody. I mean that).

I waited the obligatory two and a half hours and then slipped my sister-in-law a twenty to make up for forgetting to stop for a gift and fled somewhere between cake and presents dragging my husband and son along behind me out the door like we were making a quick getaway from the scene of a crime. (Sorry I didn’t say goodbye, Grandma).

I absolutely love my sister-in-law, Amanda. She is one of the best parents I know for her saintly level of patience and gentleness married with a totally natural laid-back energy that still somehow manages to be attentive. She is awesome. So I completely declare her exempt from the problem I am about to address:

The American Child’s Birthday Party.

I’m just going to come out with it. Come on parents. What the heck is going on? It’s getting out of hand.

I was told once by my pest control tech to stop tossing my old stale food out in the bushes for the city squirrels. I flippantly asked why not? I’m not going to eat it. He proceeded to explain that squirrels will scavenge for themselves and live a perfectly content life. Once you start to feed them they will soon begin expecting it. And then after awhile they will demand it. They will angrily show up at your door to solicit what they now view as their dues. They can even break into your house by chewing right through the walls!

I stopped feeding the squirrels.

But this, my friends, is the very pattern I have seen in many American children who have been infected with the American Child’s Birthday Party. Also known as Overfed Squirrel Syndrome. And it is not pretty.

The following is a true story (though names have been changed).

Opening scene:

An outdoor park gazebo. A small child of one year old exactly is sitting on her mother’s lap. The child is our neighbor Jane Howard’s one-year-old daughter Rosie and is one of those kids that I feel guilty about thinking ugly every time I glimpse her large bulbous forehead looming over tiny mud-brown beady eyes.

Rosie’s unreasonably large fat rolls have rendered her almost completely immobile up to this point, foretelling a possible future of health-compromising overindulgence that will likely surprise poor Jane one day as if she never saw it coming. Jane appears completely oblivious to the frightening developmental delay, seeming unconcerned that her one-year-old has not yet made one move to even scoot toward an object of desire, let alone begin to crawl. I feel shamefully judgmental whenever I am in her presence and sometimes end up giving her strange and unusual compliments about Rosie’s complexion or suspected mental clarity to ease my guilt.

My husband is beside me, chatting merrily with Bruce Abernathy, one of our other neighbors, whose long and painfully detailed stories about lawn care have the ability to make me fabricate lies about places I have to be. As long as Jesse distracts him and his attention isn’t guided my way I will be fine at this close proximity, but I am peripherally aware of him at all times, like one might be of an approaching Jehovah’s Witness. Though I feel like I am slowly dying of boredom when lassoed in by Bruce, Jesse seems to greatly enjoy these mundane talks which include the finest weed killers available, the most effective ways to handle groundhogs, and the best times of day for watering, including preferred sprinkler system choices. Sometimes Jesse even appears to seek out an encounter with Bruce, which never ceases to baffle me.

I am busily pretending to be interested in a flock of Canadian geese that are waddling around about thirty feet away. This is one of my main defense strategies, to appear very interested in something far off. I’ve found that few people will bother to interrupt the deep thoughts of someone who is staring toward the distance in contemplation or wonder. Unfortunately, those that are willing to do so tend to be the most arduous to interact with, so sometimes this plan backfires.

I suddenly get the image of Harold Winkle, the sixth grade science teacher, who is currently hovering near the drink cooler on the other side of the gazebo, wandering over to give me a twenty-minute lesson on the mating patterns of Canadian Geese. I quickly avert my gaze from them. Which is too bad because a boy of about seven was slowly approaching from a distance with a long stick and I make a mental note to check back in a few moments to see how that turns out.

Rosie is strapped into her highchair now and her arms and legs are making the only small movements she is capable of in her excitement: twirling at the wrists and ankles and flailing slightly, but not much. Like a blood-swelled wood tick. She is surrounded by a hoard of balloons that could carry a normal sized one-year-old away. Every couple minutes or so a gust of wind sends the balloons flapping and one of them hits her in the face.

I glance back over at the stick-wielding boy and find a moment of pleasure in first watching the geese hiss at him like wild cats as he pokes the stick in their direction. And then in hearing his mother yell at him from a distance: Oliver! What are you doing?! Those things are dangerous! From my perspective Oliver looks like the dangerous one.

My attention returns to the neighborhood children, aged about two to eleven, that surround us, in the swirl of rising chaos groups of them seem to generate. my son, seven years old, is among them and contributing. As the mayhem escalates, Rosie begins to look a little concerned and slightly frightened. She glances up at her mother for security.

Jane smiles at her, a very creepy overly huge smile with a lot of teeth, widening her eyes as if she is trying to say look how much fun all of this is! But it kind of comes out as yes even I am acting strange and you may not be safe anymore. Rosie’s giant brow furrows, ape-like.

Then Walter, Rosie’s father, approaches with a cake the size of a dinner plate, adorned with its customary burning candle that won’t stay lit in the wind. For a length of time wildly out of proportion to the importance of the task, Jane and Walter coax and coddle the reluctant flame before finally accepting defeat, thank God, and presenting the cake to her unlit. Instead of removing the candle, however, they leave it standing there sadly, in the center of the pink confection, like a singed bald disappointment.

One by one, as Walter and Jane lead, everyone begins to sing the Happy Birthday song and Rosie’s face twists in horror as she tries to decide whether or not she should cry. When she hears her name in the chant, she lets loose and starts wailing. I imagine her thinking: This is it. This is the end. They’ve been fattening me up all this time just to bring me here today… kill me… and then eat me.

But when Walter sets down the cake in front of her, she stops crying. She looks back and forth between them, confused. Up to this point her food has always been presented in carefully cut-up pieces or crackers the size of her hand (even if far too many of them). And here was this monstrous pink thing that she had no idea what to do with.

Walter produces a video camera as if from nowhere and both parents now look on in gleeful excitement at the prospect that their child will lunge for the cake. Their faces fall in disappointment when Rosie regards it with suspicion.

Finally, Jane takes her child’s hands and plunges them both into the cake like a sadistic masochist. Rosie, greatly shaken by this unexpected move, looks horror stricken. This entire episode seems to be a shocking turn of events that she never saw coming during the previous safe and predictable twelve months of her life. She begins to cry a little bit again, her hands held out before her in fright, covered in pink frosting. But Jane wants to convince her this is something she desires. She begins to shove one of Rosie’s hands toward her mouth. Rosie resists but Jane overpowers her. Panic turns to confusion and then turns to realization, as Rosie tastes the sweetness. A long moment of thinking takes place before a frenzied look crosses her face and she dives back into the cake with both hands.

Jane and Walter cannot contain their glee and the video camera is reengaged with jubilant vigor. Now Rosie is shoving fistfuls of the pink and white mass of glutinous sugary wonder into her tiny mouth (and all over her face) and her beady eyes are widening by the second, half with the pure bliss of taste and half with the sugar that is hitting her bloodstream like a vial of crack.

The other children crowd around her, eyes wide as well, but theirs with envy, until their attention is directed toward a swiftly appearing platter of cupcakes. Jadon glances at me momentarily before he grabs a white one and tentatively licks the top of it a few times before taking a small bite. We keep sweets like this to somewhat of a minimum in our house, but clearly this is not the way Jane and Walter feel. Because, after Rosie has been allowed to eat the amount of sugar capable of killing a very small animal and making a medium-sized one violently ill, her body begins to shut down into a coma-like state as she slumps over in her highchair and starts to nod off like a narcoleptic nursing home resident.

Jane cleans her up with wet wipes while repeatedly shaking her alert so she will not miss the next segment of the fun. Within moments, parcel after parcel of brightly colored wrapped bags and boxes, most of which are larger than Rosie herself, are then presented. The next thirty minutes are hard to watch. It is like seeing prisoners of war being tortured for information. The girl is clearly quite miserable but Jane couldn’t be more oblivious. Rosie is still being shaken awake and ushered through Jane’s overdramatic exclamations and psychotic faces as she opens and presents to Rosie a pile of merchandise that would satisfy a Hilton. All the while the poor child looks as though she couldn’t possibly want any of it more than a nap.

I, an innocent bystander, fighting the urge to intervene on behalf of the victim, risk a side-glance toward Bruce who is chatting away about turf builder as Jesse nods agreeably. Bruce catches my eye and lifts his can of Mug Root Beer toward me in hello. And for some reason he doesn’t look quite so frightening anymore. The scariest person in my vicinity has suddenly become Jane Howard.

Children are born easy to please. It’s parents that ruin that. Celebrate your kids. But don’t give them Overfed Squirrel Syndrome.

Some encounters with people are like being on the Jerry Springer show while eating Spam in the middle of a demolition derby.

In the end you just keep asking why in a traumatized state of shock. You start planning out how to completely avoid ever putting yourself through it again. You feel sick, battered, and overall icky. It takes time to recover. You may have to shudder repeatedly to shed its residue. It may scar you forever.

I am the type of person who despises conflict. I will go out of my way to avoid unnecessary debate, bickering, and most of all, abuse. But once it is being directed my way I usually freeze. I find myself just taking it in a zombie-like state of panic while silently trying to map out a route of escape in my mind, still trying to maintain a facial expression that doesn’t cause the other person to feel rejected. I almost never fight back because I am just naturally more pacifistic. I am still trying to figure out how to stop a person from attacking once they have started. It is very difficult. The people who do this have no respect for the boundaries of others in the first place so when you try to put one up mid-rapid-fire-sentence they just plow right through it as per the demolition derby way and you have been singled out for complete annihilation because of some perceived lack of value.

I have been verbally lashed twice in the past few days. By two different people. One of them I knew well and one I did not know at all. The first of these times is hardly worth mentioning. It was minor and not even in person, though still appalling. But yesterday I was attacked to such a severe degree that I am still trying to recover. It was completely unprovoked and had barely a word of truth in it. It was all presumption with no evidentiary basis. But the one thing that was the same about both of these encounters is something that has me sitting up at four a.m. sick to my stomach and just trying to make some sense of it all here…

Both of these people, who violated my boundaries more and said more nasty vicious things than anyone else I have encountered in several months, maybe a couple years… they were both “Christians” who were trying to enlighten me with their wisdom, completely uninvited, much like a viper might try to enlighten: with fangs and venom. And this “wisdom”, to make matters worse, was little more than hateful narrow-minded babble.

To the non-Christians reading this I’d like to say:

I am sorry. And I assure you our God is NOTHING like the general picture of American Christianity you see. We are just messed up people like everyone else except a lethal combination ensues when a messed up person thinks they have all the answers. We don’t.

And to the really nice Christians out there who are treating people with respect and kindness and who are actually displaying God’s character and growing in life and changing I’d like to say: Thank you. Keep it up.

But to others out there (you know who you are) I must confess I am fed up, to the point of manic house cleaning and greatly increased deep breathing exercises, with people professing Christianity in one breath and then tearing each other apart in the next with a slew of hateful judgments very poorly disguised as “love” and “truth” (You’re not fooling anyone. Nasty is nasty no matter what you call it.) To these I would like to say:

Stop it.

Just stop it.

STOP SLAPPING PEOPLE WITH FISHES!

(I couldn’t help it… Veggie Tale fans, anyone?)

I have to be honest I have grown to hate the title “Christian”, to avoid using it to identify myself. It has developed a stigma to me much like the aforementioned Spam or Jerry Springer, eliciting a cringe and a shudder and a rapid shaking of the head as if to say no thank you or Please don’t associate me with that one person you knew who tore you to pieces. I don’t even feel safe anymore saying “I am a Christian” when it comes up. I say “I love God” or something like that instead. Or nothing at all.

I’ll also be honest, I’d rather go to a gay bar where I can hang out with largely genuine, nice, kind, and loving people, than to most churches. I’d rather talk to a homeless person on a street corner who has a humble collection of interesting life stories to tell me than be stuck in a conversation with some of the Christians I have known violently hashing out their latest theology or viewpoints on the end times as though I am at risk of death should I not understand and agree. And I would likely learn more from the bum. And something tells me… Jesus might have preferred the former too. Something also tells me that some should spend a little less time studying eschatology and a little more time memorizing simple verses on basic human kindness.

I would also like to say that I have many friends who very pleasantly and non-abrasively share their beliefs and theology with me and I love to hear their ideas and discuss with them. This is very different from the ones who back you into a corner and subsequently cause you to daydream longingly about a root canal at gunpoint.

Ghandi said it best:

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. You’re Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Stop slapping people with fishes. Please.

Stop trying to win in every conversation like it’s a gladiator match instead of just enjoying talking to people and letting them enjoy you, like a dance.

Stop trying to force your ideas into other people’s heads and your fixes on their lives like a sadistic surgeon operating on a screaming patient who is strapped down against their will without anesthesia.

Stop being defensive about your faith to the point where people cross the street when they see you coming. You need not ever defend yourself for liking truly good things. If you are defensive about what you like then people assume it is not really that great.

Stop acting like you are better than other people because you have the golden ticket to heaven and then trying to cram your chocolate bars down their throats in hopes that they will find their ticket too. They will just get sick. And then never want to see you again.

Stop seeing people as projects that will never attain greatness unless you personally guide them there in the next thirty minutes.

Stop believing that your mind is like the holy grail of encyclopedias and without it others simply won’t make it. I have known people with the simplest minds and even great mental disabilities that I look up to, more than any scholar I’ve ever met, for their beautiful and pure understanding of God.

So Please. Just. Stop.

And be nice to each other.

Humble yourselves in the presence of others. Let them talk and then listen to their ideas. Value their beliefs. Learn from them. Be gentle. Be happy.

And guess what? If you do this they will like you. They will want to keep you in their life. They will want to listen to you. They will want to come to your church. And maybe one day they will want to know your God. But if you are mean, who would ever want to have anything you offer?

Your desire to correct, teach, guide, and help are all valid and even fabulous urges. They just need to be fine-tuned with character, wisdom, restraint, and humility. Mix all eight of these together and you have a very attractive and effective individual. But without the last four you just have a disaster.

A billboard in my city advertising beer says something along the lines of: Be nice to people. Period. That beer billboard has a better message than many American Churches do these days. Perhaps that is why the only ones Jesus really got pissed at while he was here, the ones he yelled at and called vipers… were the self-righteous keepers of the law. The ones who paraded around pointing damning fingers at the rest of the world. Perhaps that is why Jesus was on the streets more than in the temple.

Some people may think I’m being hateful but I’m not. This isn’t a judgment, it is a plea. I simply like nice people and avoid mean ones. It’s kind of instinctual. I also genuinely love the person who put me down even though I cannot have a safe relationship with her at this time (and wholeheartedly hope she doesn’t read this because that’s how much I dislike saying things that might cause someone to feel bad). I am simply asking people to please be nice (in a somewhat dramatic and hopefully comedic way).

And I’m not saying “don’t go to church, go to bars instead”. I do go to church (and I actually don’t really go to bars- though what I said before still stands) And I am certainly not interested in picking apart churches. I know some of the kindest and least judgmental non-religious people at my church. Find a place like that. With genuinely kind people that still challenge you but in a safe way… with boundaries. And find someone you trust that has good character to mentor you into deeper things.

A little twist in all this is that I used to be mean. I was insensitive, brashly opinionated, critical, and defensive. I changed (I’m still quite opinionated as you can see, but I don’t pummel people with my opinions anymore. The only time I really speak so openly is in my writing.) The thing is, I found out how to be nice.

So please be one of those kind, safe people with boundaries and other people will like you and listen to what you have to say. You will learn from them and they will learn from you as life should be. And for the love of God, erase that imaginary line you’ve drawn on the ground between the “Christians” and “Everybody Else”. We are all on the same spinning rock and we all shit, folks. Seriously.

Be nice to people. Period.

We have these containers in our minds where we store information. They are called schemas. These containers are created by us when we see or learn something new. We either place that new piece of information into a preexisting container that is the right shape and size to hold it, or else we must create a new container that is an adequate shape and size to contain the new information. Like putting away leftovers.

For instance, a child learns the concept of “mother” very early. She is feminine, with long hair, breasts, a higher pitched voice, etc. Then the child encounters another woman. He may think “mother”. He has just placed this  other woman into the mother schema. She fits. She is feminine, has long hair, breasts, and a higher pitched voice. But then he is told, no, that is not “mother”, that is a woman. He is mesmerized, thinks this over, must grapple with it a little bit. Because he must now create a new schema: “Woman. Like mother, but not mother.” He will learn that Mother can fit into the Woman box, but no other woman can go into the Mother box.

Example 2: A child learns “Dog”. Four legs, fur, a tail. She then sees a cat: four legs, fur and a tail. She places it into the dog schema. Dog! But wait… the dog barks and chases balls, the cat meows and won’t chase balls. New schema. Cat: Like dog, but different. Four legs, fur, tail, meows, won’t play fetch.

And this is how we learn everything from birth until death. Every time we are presented with a new piece of information we must decide, does this fit into the schema of something else I already understand? Or do I need to create a new place for it? Expand my mind to fit this new, different sized or shaped information into?

Here’s where it gets interesting. If there is no place to put the new information, if it does not fit into a schema we already have, and if we fail to create a new schema to hold it, one of two things happens. Either we cram it into a place that it does not fit and so warp its structure or content in our minds, giving it a misshapen identity in our perception (in other words, we see that thing differently than it really is)… Or it simply gets discarded. We do not store that information at all because we did not figure out where to contain it.

Now, here is where it gets interesting. The science of seeing God.

Every one of us has a very different God that we see in our minds. In my belief, our view of God can come from only three sources.

1: Preexisting schemas. What we already know and understand about our parents and other authority figures.

2: New schemas. Ones we try to create to contain the idea of God in our minds. These also will be greatly influenced or misshapen by #1.

3: Revelation. Basically having your mind blown by new information that God reveals to us, blasting a sudden larger-sized, amazingly-different-shaoped box into our minds all at once to see to understand something very big.

The first, placing God into a preexisting schema, is where most people stop. We simply cram God into a container that already exists in our minds. Since our fathers are our guideposts for developing this understanding in God’s design, this is the container he is almost always placed in.

If we felt protected growing up by our Dad, it is easy to see God that way. Protector. And we can have a strong awareness of God as a protector because that is where we placed him in our minds. Fathers protect… he is a father… so he will always protect me. This is the shape and size of the box he has been placed in, so he takes this shape in our minds.

If we grew up feeling abandoned by our father, then we can easily place God into this schema and no matter the reality of what is happening at any given moment, we can feel abandoned by God as a perpetual state, simply because that is where we placed him in our minds. Fathers aren’t there… he is a father… he must be someplace else too. Or my father didn’t come… so he probably won’t come either. Or my father got remarried and had other kids that were always more important to him… so God probably likes his other kids more than me too… he’s probably more busy with them when I need him. Or… my dad left when I was little and I never saw him again… So… where is God?… out there somewhere in the universe far far away?

It is highly likely that no two people will have the exact same image of God in their understanding. In this case, sharing our beliefs with one another is fantastic, when it is welcomed, but debating, trying to force your version of God into someone else’s mind, is a completely counter-productive waste of time. Your God won’t fit into someone else’s mind any more than theirs can fit into yours.

I’d like to tell you my story now. Where I put God in my mind and why. And subsequently, the shifting and shaping of new schemas to place him into, thus giving me a more renewed, more accurate picture of who he is each year.

I grew up on a farm in a small town. My dad was a storyboard artist, and cartoon animator for the big studios in California. We moved to the farm from California when I was six so they could give us a more wholesome, safer upbringing. From that moment on, my dad worked from home and UPSed all his work to and from the studios. He was always there. Always. And if he left, we often went with him. Any moment of the day or night when I needed my dad, he was easy to find. In his art studio, in the large front living room of our house, which was completely open to the rest of the house. In fact on “inking days”– when he had to make something permanent, rather than just pencil sketching– he would hang a sign over the huge archway leading into the room that said Inking! and we had to tiptoe and whisper if we were inside until the sign came down. He was that present. His work environment was our environment and vice versa. And anytime I needed him or had a question or saw a spider or felt the sudden urge to make an announcement, he would give me his attention. His work was easy to pause, and he always paused for me.

He loved to hold me and I loved to sit on his lap. He prayed over me and tucked me into bed every night. He always comforted me when I was sad, scared, hurt, or angry. He was gentle. He told me I was beautiful, and smart, and funny, and creative. He provided for me everything I ever needed. I never went without. I never felt unsafe or mistreated. And he was neurotically protective. I had no fears in the world because my daddy was never ever far off.

And so this is the schema I had available to me from the very start, the place I could place God in my mind. Protective. Providing. Close. Always available. Aways approachable. Invited into his work environment. Seen and valued and oh so loved. This is what God has looked like to me my entire life. I never feared God. I never doubted God. I never worried about anything. (I should add, personality has a lot to do with this too. My personality type happens to be very spiritually open, and more prone to trust and optimism, and less prone to fear, doubt, and suspicion. Every type sees things differently and has different responses.)

But it gets a little muddy after this. See, God is not just a father, is he? We are also trying to make room in our minds for… three separate and unique parts of God. Hmmm.

When I was seventeen I fell in love. A year later he disappeared from my life. I never saw him again except in my dreams. So after a year of mourning I married another. And he left me repeatedly, constant abandonment. I sat alone. Waiting for my lover to return. He never did. Then he divorced me. And my entire world crumbled around me. There was an almost biblical level “Job” experience. Looooonnng story short (though a lot of it is in other posts) soon I was sitting in a pile of nothing but ashes.

All the while, I never once felt my father-God ever leave my side. I never cried without feeling his presence around me. I never worried how I was going to be taken care of. I knew my Daddy-God.

A year and a half later, I met my husband. But I was so broken by this point that I could not love again yet. I was drowning in self-hatred, saturated in trauma, and had no good experiences yet with a man that wasn’t my father. I could see that Jesse was right for me, but I was resisting, and so afraid. I asked God, the one I trusted, to make it clear to me if I was to marry again. If I was to marry him. And he did. (Oh boy, did he! I need to write a blog about that story!) So once I got the go-ahead from the one I trusted–my father-God–I married him. I did not love him yet, not the way one is supposed to love the one they are marrying. I was far too broken, my first husband had destroyed me. It was a choice to commit myself again, more than a feeling. And then for years I dug around in my cluttered soul, trying to muster up feelings that I wanted to have for him. I fought for healing, and sought it with tenacity.

I found it.

I clung to my Father-God and he guided me through it all.

And all along I knew that God, in my mind, was only in my Father schema. Because the Bridegroom schema, the one where Jesus was supposed to go, it was warped and misshapen. It was twisted and scarred and had been stomped on repeatedly. It was easy for me to see this great benevolent father-figure presiding over everything… but this schema where you put a Savior, the one that’s supposed to come one day, take you away and marry you… it was completely misshapen. I had no healthy schema in my mind in which to place a God that was also a man. Jesus.

I had dreams about this often. I asked Jesus who he was and he would come to me in my dreams. I had been “saved” my entire life. But Christ? The one who did the saving? He did not fit into my mind yet. And I kept myself, without trying to, turned slightly away from him, because I knew I was desirable as a daughter… but I did not feel desirable to another type of deity, a type that was not a father, but was a kind of groom. A man who was also God who intended a kind of marriage to us one day… it didn’t fit! I couldn’t comprehend it.

He came to me in dreams because I asked him to. I wanted to meet him. I wanted to know him. Just like with Jesse, the one I trusted more than anyone else–my father-God–had told me I was meant to have a deep intimate relationship with this man-God called Jesus. So I trusted him, I listened, and I searched for him. And in these dreams where he visited me, it was always the same. He looked a lot like my first love. And I was afraid to get too close because I felt so undesirable. In almost all of them, I would suddenly become aware that I was dirty and smelled bad, and I would try to find a shower and wanted to clean my teeth before I got close to him. In one of these dreams (which I blogged about here) I was terrified that he didn’t really want me. I was afraid to get close to his face. I felt dirty and unattractive. Because in my mind, men who were not my father that I desired… none of them desired me back, not properly.

Fathers were safe.

But lovers, husbands, other desirable men were not.

I talked to my Father-God about this often. I would only pray to Father. Father was always there. But a betrothed? Would he want me? Would he like me? Am I desirable? But things had also changed. My new husband was exactly what I needed and nothing at all like the other two I had loved.

It took years. And my love and desire for Jesse grew and grew and grew. My husband schema began to revise itself based on this new information. he never abandoned me. He walked patiently with me through the roughest parts of my healing. He gave me everything I needed and more. He raised my son like he was his own. I eventually bonded very deeply to this man, this safe man, and then clung to him.

And then recently I was sitting in my room and I suddenly felt this jolt of emotional anguish shoot through me and out of my mouth came, “Jesus, who are you! I know our father, but I do not know you!” Instantly I began to sob. It had come out of nowhere really. It was the beginning of hunger pangs. The very beginning of desire.

Just like my husband, I had chosen Jesus even before I desired him. I had decided with my mind before I had felt anything with my heart, because I knew that it was the right choice for me. And then it was a waiting game, waiting for feelings to kindle, desires to shift and grow and point toward this person I hardly knew at all. I wanted to actually know him, to create an appropriate schema in which to place him so that I could see him clearly. Really see him. Not a warped image. But a reality of this person… who is also a God… who is love in perfection… who wants to be with me… forever.

This part of God that has been trapped inside a misshapen box in my mind.

A box that is shaped like my drunk ex-husband who’s real love was in a bottle of Southern Comfort.

A box that is shaped like the first boy I worshipped who disappeared, who didn’t want me enough to stay.

A box that is shaped like every man I ever desired that came and went.

A box that is so warped, so not the true shape and size of Jesus. A relationship that is pure, not merely human, not sexual, not perverse, but intimate in an entirely different way.

And now I am trying to release him from that schema, and trying to create a new one. One that he fits into.

Not mother… woman. Not dog… cat.

Waiting only on revelation to show me his real shape and size and content, so that I can see him for real. And this is the way we will know God. This is the only way we will see God, in all his parts, and all his traits. We have to ask God to reveal himself to us, ask Jesus to reveal himself to us, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal himself to us. And then as they slowly help you create new schemas, as they slowly show you more and more, the boxes in your mind will expand and grow and take shape. Proper shape. The real shape and size of God, as far as we can understand in our current state.

So when people say they see God, this is what they mean.

It’s not with our eyes.

It’s with our understanding.

I woke up this morning with it on me, a burden I have carried around all day. This is how it began…

Sunday night my husband and I were asked to lead a special worship service at a church nearby. The guests of honor that night were a young family. The father of this family was in his fourth stage of cancer. For the third time. He was suffering greatly. He was in terrible pain. He stood and walked carefully to the front of the room when he and his wife and toddler daughter were beckoned to do so. He could not stand completely upright. He lowered himself slowly into the chair prepared for him, his wife and child sat at his side. And for the following half hour the entire congregation took turns kneeling before them and weeping and praying on behalf of them for God to have mercy. For God to let him live.

I wept and shook the entire time. It was one of the most authentic and beautiful things I have ever seen. And I grew up Pentecostal. For me, this type of thing was just another Sunday… or Tuesday. But it hit me on a much deeper level this time.

My heart breaks for anyone who is struggling with illness. Over the years I have discovered some very powerful secrets about healing. All I can guess is that maybe someone is looking for this information right now. So I am going to write it down. My hope is that someone reading this has been praying for answers and has stumbled upon this today. My hope is that the secrets I am going to share here will save your life or the life of someone you know. If you know someone who is suffering or looking for answers, looking for healing, please pass this information along.

I’ve shared most of this in previous posts, but I would like to summarize now. When I was eighteen years old I became very ill. Physically, mentally and emotionally. I had chronic infections and dysfunction in my body as well as mental illnesses that were fighting my every effort to function and be successful. I got sicker and sicker for the next eight years.

And then something happened.

I began to see patterns all around me. Patterns that repeated themselves over and over again in everything: in physical matter, in emotions, in thoughts, in science… they all told the same story. Everything moved according to these patterns; this system of functioning that operates like clockwork. And as I began to apply these patterns to my life I began to heal. Rapidly. I began to change everywhere. Within a matter of days I felt like a brand new person. Within weeks I was free from many ailments. In a matter of months even more had vanished. And now, about eight years later I have never been healthier in all my life.

I have been introducing this method and watching it take action on ill people for the past six years. I have seen Parkinson’s Disease and Multiple Sclerosis give way. I have seen bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety disappear. I have seen weight fall off like old clothes. I have seen skin conditions vanish into thin air. I have seen chronic infections, food sensitivities, and digestive disorders cease to exist. I have seen chronic pain and inflammation disappear. I have seen diabetes relent. I have seen terminal kidney failure literally reverse itself, baffling doctors. I have seen countless medications become obsolete.

I live by these patterns now. I will never operate against them again. I hope you will see what I saw. I hope you will become as excited as I did. I hope you will try it. I hope you will heal.

Pattern #1: Input Leads to Output

What goes in determines what comes out. This pattern I like to refer to as the Good In/Bad Out equation. All living organisms must take in nourishment and expel waste. Very simple. But when we look at this as a universal pattern that must be observed in order for a living organism to thrive, it takes on new meaning. It is everything.

When you put good things in, they automatically push waste out. When you put uplifting things in, you get health as a result. When you put toxic things in, your health is instead pushed out. When you put toxic things in, you get a toxic outcome. This is a scientific fact.

This pattern told me that if I was ill, if I was suffering with a dysfunctional body or soul, then I was not observing this pattern. There were things that I needed that I was failing to take in… there were toxic things I was feeding on… there were toxic wastes that I was neglecting to expel. This pattern, this scientific equation was reversed in me. I was hording toxic waste. I was malnourished.

Then I set out on a journey to discover the true nature of every single substance in my life. I intended to put everything into one of two categories:

1: Toxic or Unbeneficial: Find Out How To Purge

2: Vital or Uplifting: Find Out How To Ingest

For the next four years I studied and experimented to find out which category to put everything and anything around me into. And that was how it happened. That was when I began to very quickly and very miraculously heal.

But here is where my burden today comes in. Medical philosophy has become a practice that defies the scientific pattern of healing and of promoting life, which is baffling, really, because it is supposed to be scientifically based itself. However, it completely defies the logic of cause and effect again and again. This practice somehow is still trying to make the equation bad in/ good out work: putting toxic things in and expecting health to emerge from them. And folks. It never will.

When looking at disease, instead of seeking to move their patients away from deadly things and uplift them toward life, they feed them more deadly things, put their bodies and minds into compromising and traumatic situations, put more stress on the already weak and struggling system. Fail to promote and nourish a body to find its inner strength again… where it can begin to heal itself.

Cancer is an extreme example. Cancer is a state of a body becoming so acidic, so toxic, that it begins to spoil from the inside out, one cell at a time. Cancer cells are not foreign cells that grow within a body like a virus. They are the human body’s own cells that are so full of waste and so malnourished that they turn rancid and then take out surrounding cells with them by spreading their toxicity and acidity to their neighbors. That is why everyone has cancer cells in their body. It’s not an airborne virus… it is a human condition of struggling cells, cells deprived of the Good in/Bad out pattern of life.

But as these cells develop, the body has to take action in order to protect itself. It has to try and isolate these dangerous cells until they can be cleansed from the system. So it encapsulates them. This is how develops what we call a tumor. Again, this tumor is not a growth of foreign infiltrating enemy cells, it is a part of the victim’s own body that has gone bad, and that body’s attempt to protect the rest of the body from the bad cells.

At this point our medical community looks at the cancer as if it is a dangerous enemy that must be attacked. War is declared and very powerful weapons are launched to try and destroy the enemy. But. They are launched at the entire body.

And this is where I believe the mistake is made. The weapons are launched into an already suffering body in order to attempt to fight its foe. The solution that is being used is to attack the host to kill the parasite. The immune system is then destroyed. And the body has no defense to fight for its life anymore. It has no power to save itself. It is now being killed at an even faster rate. This method defies the most foundational of living truths. You cannot put out fire with fire. You cannot put out fire with kerosene. You can only heal a body by lifting it up. You cannot help it if you beat it down more.

Imagine our country was a body, each person in it, an individual cell. Now say that some of these cells turn so bad due to toxic lifestyles that they become dangerous to the rest of the cells. What does the body do? It incarcerates them. It encapsulates them into a prison system to try and protect the rest of the body, until they can be either turned into healthy cells again or else eventually cleansed out of the body when they die.

If we used the medical community’s reasoning then we should create nuclear warheads, weapons of mass destruction and we should bomb the country. We should view the death of many innocent people and the total annihilation of its terrain as a necessary evil in order to take out our dangerous ones. Chemotherapy and radiation, therefore, is like nuking an entire country to kill its criminals.

The question must be asked: What would be the resulting effect on our nation as a whole? Would we have helped our country? or would we have harmed more than helped?

As a badly injured society tries to pick up the pieces that are left over from the mass destruction and rebuild a new nation, it will obviously have little chance of ever becoming great again. But more than likely, everyone would eventually die anyway from the fallout.

Cancer treatments are, by design, much more dangerous and deadly than cancer itself. Why would you create a weapon that is less powerful than the enemy it is intended to destroy? Research shows 75% of physicians would refuse their own treatments if they found out they or one of their loved ones had cancer. Many physicians are even trying to speak out, but they are being silenced.

Survival statistics are painfully misrepresented to the public. If you can make it five years you are considered a cancer survivor, even if you die the next day. Anyone diagnosed and still living is called a survivor even if they are in the process of dying a miserable death. They even often include family members of victims to their survival statistics, claiming that these people “survived” having cancer in their lives even though it was not in their bodies. None of the numbers we hear are accurate. Almost no one actually survives these methods in the long-run. And the true statistics? They would show, horrendously, that more people die of cancer treatment than of cancer itself.

I am a part of a community of people that believes we should honor our bodies in order to heal them, not poison them to try and cure them.

One of the reasons this beautiful young family was a much heavier burden on my heart is because the following morning he was scheduled to go in and begin treatment again. The very treatment that he somehow miraculously survived the previous two times. The very treatment that damaged his immune system so much, poisoned his body so devastatingly, the cancer just keeps coming back and in new ways, spreading everywhere. Treatment that confesses in its own long list of side effects is actually cancer-causing.

All I can say is if you want to heal, if you want to find health, no matter how sick you are, then the only way is to observe the universal patterns of life. To reject any method that harms you in one way with the claim of helping in another.

This is not how God operates.

This defies all of his patterns.

The only way to truly fight death is with life.

My father-in-law had an aunt that discovered she had a cancer tumor in her abdomen. She decided to leave it be since it didn’t seem to be causing her much trouble. Se lived thirty more years and died in her nineties.  If she had consented to cancer treatments she would have been dead within a year most likely. And she would have been horribly sick during that time. Studies show that people with cancer who even do nothing live longer and enjoy a higher quality of life than those who seek treatment.

I know someone else who had a friend that found out she had cancer. She felt strongly that God was telling her not to undergo the doctor’s prescribed treatment. Though she was afraid, she took some time to pray before deciding, just to be sure. As she prayed, she kept hearing God say something strange. Water. Water. Water. That’s all she heard over and over again. She believed God was flooding her thoughts to drink tons and tons of water. So she began to do so. For the next several months she flooded her body with water. Later tests showed the cancer was gone. It appeared she had flushed it out.

Healing advice for someone looking for the next step: When you fast, when you stop eating food, this sends a message to your body that you want it to cleanse itself. It gives your immune system the chance to stop digesting and dispersing nutrients (a full-time job) and to start working on long-neglected house cleaning. It enables the body to go into hyper-cleansing mode, and it begins to eliminate anything from your system that opposes your health. This includes toxins in the blood and organs, yeast in the blood and digestive system, and abnormal cells- yes even cancer cells. Your body is self-healing. It is self-cleansing. But we have lost this knowledge somewhere along the way of trying to advance into scientific glory. We have grown to believe that we are simply at the mercy of toxic things that root themselves in us.

If you are sick, I cannot stress this enough, go on a fast. Watch what your body does. It is miraculous. It will clean itself out and restore balance to all of its systems. Start small and work your way up to more intense and longer fasting periods. There are water fasts, juice fasts, raw food fasts, and alkaline (green) fasts. Do some reading on this first to prepare and get a support system in place, but I guarantee, done in small or great ways, it will change your life.

There are natural doctors that have been healing bodies with cancer at a success rate of almost 100% for over a hundred years using these fasting and cleansing methods. They are so discriminated against, so targeted, that many of them have been shut down, run out of the country and imprisoned. Medical doctors actually kill most of their cancer patients with their treatments and are never charged with any wrongdoing. Natural doctors who are seeing people heal completely with no nuclear fallout to the body are being treated like criminals… Conspiracy? Without a doubt.

Sources:

75% of physicians refuse cancer treatment

75% Percent refuse 2

Long term side effects of cancer treatments as disclosed by the medical system

True definition of “Cancer Survivor”, from Wikipedia

More misrepresented survival statistics

Treatment vs. Healing

Fasting

Fasting 1

Fasting 2