2 Timothy 3:1-4 There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God . . .
Biden is at the top of my list. Call me crazy, but I once believed that the government was for the good of the people; honest, God-fearing, fair-minded, compassionate, just. Silly me. I’ve never been more ashamed of a president than I am of Joe Biden, who, in just a few short years, has turned our country upside down. How can any of us, who believe in doing what’s right, support an administration that is doing so wrong? None of us are perfect; we all make mistakes. But when we keep making the same mistakes over and over again, they’re no longer mistakes; they’re habits of pure evil. I’m not speaking against a particular political party; I am speaking against the injustice I see operating within a government that has gone wrong. A government that has become lovers of themselves, rather than lovers of God and the people they have promised to serve.
If you could unzip my skin, you would see my wounds. But, unless you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, you will never know how much it hurts.
Sandi Staton
I have episodes when I feel that everyone I love has died. The feeling is so overwhelmingly dark and painful, that I just want to curl up and die. Sharing those feelings with my medical doctor a few years ago is when he diagnosed me with BPD (borderline personality disorder). I had never heard of it before, so I went online to see what it was, and discovered that he was right. And, for the first time in my life, I had a better understanding of my anxieties, fears and phobias, and noise intolerance. Why rejection feels like my heart is in a wood chipper. Why depression never goes to sleep. No matter how hard I try not to go there, I get sucked into the maddening cycle of ups and downs, of feeling okay for a few days, sometimes weeks, then falling back down to the pit of hell, and clawing my way back out again. It’s murderous! A never-ending torment of feeling good and then bad, and then like a demon from hell. I’ve been like this all my life. Social gatherings are sometimes so painful that I avoid them. It’s true, my home life was as dysfunctional as the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s. But through my own blood, sweat, and tears, I am crawling towards recovery. I dove into the murky river of lies and deceit in search of the truth, and a more functional way of life. It took guts. It tore my world apart. It opened my eyes to the brutal, emotional abuse that I endured. And there, in the deepest parts of my battered soul, I saw God. No judgement. No finger pointing. No demented glaring eyes. But, rather, I saw arms open wide, eyes filled with tears, and a smile bigger than the universe. And sobbing in His embracing arms of steel, I felt the depths of His warm and tender love.
I still struggle. I’m still learning and growing. I still take three steps forward and two steps backward. But I will never give up! I know God didn’t create me this way. God doesn’t maim, He heals. God doesn’t hate, He loves. God doesn’t laugh when I fall, He cries and picks me up. He brushes off the dirt of the world, takes hold of my feeble hand, and walks beside me every wavering step of the way.
Isaiah 48:17NIV This is what the Lord says . . . your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.”
Sugar runs through my veins. Not blood. SUGAR! I’m a sugar junkie. Malted Milk Balls? I never eat just one. I eat the whole box in one setting. Milk Duds? Caramel Chews? M&M’s? Gummy Bears? Please, stop! Give me a truckload. No, a dump truck load, and I’ll scream for more. If I were a hoarder, my house would be bursting at the seams with candy! Am I diabetic? Nope! I’m just an insane, full-blown addict!
And, since Christmas, I’ve added hot chocolate to the list. Covered with marshmallows. So yummy. Then I ran into a problem. A big problem. I got hooked on the marshmallows! My brain wouldn’t shut up about it. Every time I started doing something, I’d hear, “Sandi. Come and eat us,” till I ended up eating two whole bags full.
I only wish my body liked candy as much as my taste buds do. But, it doesn’t. It suddenly got too big for its britches. Between the bloat and neuropathy, my feet and legs swelled like road kill on the verge of bursting open. I complained. I moaned and groaned. My poor body was suffering, and my brain didn’t care.
I had to make a decision: keep up the insanity, or straighten up. I chose to straighten up. Since this is not my first rodeo, I knew what I had to do. DETOX!
I dislike water as much as I love candy. And intermittent fasting is almost as bad. But, because I’m an all or nothing freak, I do better at eating nothing than going on a stupid, calorie-restricted diet that never works for me. Fasting is a beautiful word compared to the evil, diet word.
Oh, and one other thing. I started walking. Since I quit jogging after seventeen years (another stupid thing I did), I’ve gained weight and lost a ton of muscle strength till it’s difficult walking up just a few steps. And I fall. A lot. And I’m old. Real old (77). But, that’s okay. I can’t fix that, but I can fix what I do with it from here on out. I must admit, though, that since my legs refuse to support me at times, I feared falling in the middle of the road and getting run over if I started a walking program. My son, an insane hiker, marathon runner, and body builder, told me about trekking poles that athletes are using today. I bought a set, tried them out, and fell in love with them. It took me a few walks before I got the hang of it, but I won’t walk without them. Ever!
The moral of my story is this: If you value your body, no matter what your age, take care of it. It’s the only one you have, and it ain’t gettin’ younger! Trust me!
She barks at everything, chases anything, trips all over our feet, and nearly rips the skin off our legs while attempting to jump over them on the bed. She’s clumsy as a newborn calf, and stubborn as a mule, but, if I could make her understand one thing, it would be to STOP LICKING! The floors, the blankets, the furniture, the beds, me, my husband, Pepper, and herself! For once and for all, I wish I could make her understand that her licking is bad for my health!
One Sunday afternoon, a few years ago, the family was sitting around the dinner table laughing, and just goofing off. Suddenly, our oldest grandchild, Brandon, marches through the front door with our flag across his shoulder, working up a sweat to keep it off the floor.
At first, I thought, what on earth is this silly boy doing now? Then it all made sense when he explained, “Gideon (his then six-year-old) accidentally pulled on the flag, and it fell across the bush. It didn’t touch the ground, papaw, I promise!”
Now, more than fifty years later, he still cries for those he put into body bags, some of which only consisted of a wedding band, or a pair of glasses.
PTSD they call it. I call it a living hell. Blinded by grief, my husband can’t see that I’m on the receiving end of his rage, and grief, anger and frustration. That, like a vacuum, he sucks me on the ship with him, where we battle each other because we’re the only ones there. The only ones burning. The only ones trapped. Between the ghosts of yesterday, and stresses of today, our marriage of fifty-one years began to sink before we finally put it in God’s hands.
So, you can only imagine how explosive my husband becomes when he sees murderous mobs spitting, and stomping, and burning the American flag. It reminds him of how people spit and cursed in the faces of the men and women who went to hell and back to keep them safe and free. Instead of receiving a standing ovation of honor and respect, they were crucified, and crowned as women and, baby-killers.
Politics was my worst subject in school. Too complicated for my realistic, black and white thinking. I just trusted our leaders because I always felt they had America’s best interest at heart. But, today, I see a government consumed by recklessness, selfishness, and greed. And we, the people they promise to serve, are freezing to death in their cold-hearted lies.
Who can we trust when the government fails, when it sleeps with the enemy, when its main interest is in its own political gain? We can trust God. He alone has the world in His hands. He alone has our best interest at heart. He alone has the power to hold, to keep, and to save. He alone knows exactly how the story ends. So, I put my trust in Him.
John 16:33 In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
In the cold of winter, I step outside where waterfalls sparkle like diamonds beneath a clear, blue sky. The grass tickles my bare feet as I glide across it. Nothing of the outside world distracts me here. It’s not allowed. It confuses me, judges me, condemns me. Here, I’m at peace. Perfect peace with just the sound of my heartbeat and waterfalls and birds and the gentle, whispering wind. Now, I can write, I can read, I can dream and meditate without the roar of the world blasting my ears. This is my space, my creation, my happy place for as long or as short as I want. And today may turn into night before I leave.
I had just let Pepper out when I noticed a weird-looking animal near my husband’s workshop about a hundred feet away. It was acting crazy, sticking its nose high in the air and prancing back and forth as if to impress its mate. Pepper was having a hissy fit, barking and pulling on her chain like a junkyard dog when suddenly, the animal charged toward her! I yelled and clapped my hands, scaring it away. A few seconds later, it charged after Pepper again! I’m scared for both of us now, because now this, seemingly harmless fox we’d been seeing in our yard obviously has rabies.
I picked up the broom I keep on the deck, and screamed for my husband to get out here quick! Quick is slow motion for old people, and I didn’t have that much time to wait. So, armed with my broom and terrifying screams, the fox decided it wasn’t worth fighting a little yapping dog and crazy old lady all in one day, so it turned and high-tailed it from the yard.
We called the sheriff’s department, and within minutes we had a Calvary of neighbors and police armed and ready to put the poor animal out of its misery, but it was long-gone.
Then, one evening, as my husband was locking up his shop, he nearly collided with a skunk that had wandered by. Motionless, they stood eye-balling each other, wondering who was going to move first, and it wasn’t going to be my husband. After a few long seconds, the showdown was over, and the skunk waddled off into the woods.
And speaking of skunks. When we were kids, my brothers found three baby skunks and snuck them in the house to play with them. When mom and dad found out about it, they said we could keep them in a box outside. It was so cool having skunks as pets. But the next morning, my fickle brain decided that Florence, my animal-lover friend down the road, would rather have it instead. I was wrong! As Florence stood wide-eyed stammering like a child learning to read, her mother stormed into her sparkling clean kitchen and yelled, “Get that thing out of my house!”
Feeling stripped naked on Time Square, I hurried out the door and headed back home. Suddenly, the skunk bit me! Determined to reunite him with his siblings, I started to jog. Then, he bit me again! And then again! That’s when I dropped him, and when he sprayed me, and when I choked, and gagged, and coughed my head off. It’s a smell from hell! A smell that can penetrate your car and stay there for miles down the road. But when you encounter it close up, and your entire being is melting and dripping in a cloud of skunk spray, there are no words to describe it. You’ll just have to find out for yourself.
A normal kid would have left him there, but normal isn’t in my DNA. Dazed and confused, I reached down, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, and like a drunk on a three-day binge, staggered the rest of the way home and straight into the kitchen, where my dad sat quietly eating a bowl of cereal. He probably thought he’d seen it all in WWII. But that was before his idiot daughter staggered through the kitchen door with a skunk dangling from her hand, smelling worse than a cesspool and crying, “He sprayed me, daddy!”
He probably wished that he had kept the skunk and put me on a slow boat to China!
Straight From the Heart 