Psalm 56 and Parkinson's

I woke up from terrible dreams tonight. i don't remember them, just know they were very real and very terrifying. Melissa tried waking me but i wouldn't wake up. When i did, i was so afraid. she stayed with me until the fear faded and i calmed down and i remembered Psalm 56:2 What time i am afraid, i will trust in thee, a verse i learned as a child. i began my morning, by finding and reading this Psalm...

Now i know that it was written as David fled his enemy, the Philistine in Gath, but as i read the psalm, i realized that i am fighting a very real enemy, named Parkinson's Disease, and what it is doing to my body is every bit as real as what David's enemies were attempting to do to him. When verse 5 says "Every day they wrest my words..." and verse 6 says "they mark my steps", my heart cries out my struggle to walk and talk and my stumbling steps.

Verse 8 begins, "Thou tellest my wanderings...." Oh, my! and am i wandering, some days i feel like i'm on a rolling ship as i stumble from side to side, other days, it's not so bad and i have lots hands to hang on to...

and then verse 8 goes on to say, "put thou my tears into thy bottle..." isn't that amazing imagery? God reaching down and catching my tears and keeping them in His bottle as precious things? That is how much He cares for me!

"are they not in thy book?" God not only keeps my tears, notes my wanderings, but is writing them for eternity in His book. These little posts of mine are temporary, but God's book is forever!!!
Then verse 9, "When i cry unto thee...this i know, for God is for me." oh, how amazing, in my weakness, i have God for me!

"10 In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.
11 In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12 Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee."

And just when i was all ready to end the psalm, i mean what more is there to say, God is watching over me, i trust Him and praise Him ever, there is one last verse...

13 "For thou hast delivered my soul from death:..." God delivered my soul on the cross, and brought me to Himself as a child, For this, i praise You and thank You, Father God!

But then those last two phrases....

"... wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?" Do you know how often i don't fall? i should, and i have fallen only 4 to 5 times in the 14 years i have fought PD, but really, with my stumbling, off balance, freezing, disturbed gait, i should fall regularly, everyone, especially me, is surprised that i don't, but now i know, God is literally holding me up! How awesome is that???

and there is a reason, "that i may walk before God in the light of the living?" Did you know that the Hebrew ends that phrase with 2 words, light and  living/alive/age? Would it be too far off translation to say, "...that i may walk before God, a light to the living or to this age??" I don't think so, because that was exactly how God laid it on my heart this morning.

Thank you for letting me share my thoughts this morning....and thank You, Father for surrounding me as i walk, spiritually and physically and please let me show Your light in this dark world..."

p.s. i am restricting my use of capital letters as it is hard enough for me to type without having to hold down the shift button. my typing is so much smoother without them. 

Is it worth it? Because I am tired...

I am tired…

I am just tired. I feel over-whelmed.  Every day the incongruity of what I hear and read is just impossible to comprehend.

For example, I read, “If you have to have ID to do any of these activities…”  I just want to shout, “STOP RIGHT THERE! According to the 4^th Amendment, you aren’t required to have ID to do ANY of those things, so why aren’t you screaming about these invasions of your privacy, instead of demanding that the government require us to show it in yet another place???” The first part of the premise is totally messed up, but, we are basing the second part of the statement on the first part, and wonder why we shouldn’t also give up our 4^th Amendment right to vote?  Doesn’t anyone else get it?

As soon as my youngest daughter has her driver’s license, I will refuse to carry my driver’s’ license.  It is not an ID card and I simply refuse to be forced to “Show my papers!” I don’t live in Communist Russia or Nazi Germany!  We have gotten so used to having people tell us that we “need” identification that we don’t understand how invasive and de-humanizing it is. Just think about this, when you go into a Federal building and they demand to see your ID, it isn’t to determine who you are, you could have any forged ID, it isn’t matched to any database (although that is coming), it is simply to get you used to being required to show it.  It helps you to remember your place in society.

I read, “Build a wall to keep our borders safe, and keep people out!”  Don’t we remember the Berlin Wall, or if a wall can keep people out, it can also keep people in?  I remember when we used to be proud that we had two of the longest unguarded borders in the world. But good people don’t remember that and are screaming for a wall to be built.

And what about the current draft system? It is no longer in place to provide soldiers to fill our military, as it was explained to me very earnestly by a government official.  So, if it isn’t there to have quick access to a database of possible soldiers, why do we still have it?  The only reason I can think of is that it is there to get our young men to understand that their government is watching them and that they need to report their movements to the proper authorities and there is a push to register all the young women, too. Why do we have this? The fault lies squarely on my generation. We didn’t stand up and refuse to let the government re-institute the draft after the Vietnam War.  Less than a decade later and we had already forgotten.

We allowed the Supreme Court to legalize abortion and have stood by and watched (and paid for) the murder of millions of our children and have done nothing to stop it.  We haven’t held any elected official responsible for this national disgrace, and then we wonder why our children don’t value life. 

We didn’t hold our Representatives accountable when they created the “gun-free” zones, we allowed the government to begin “commonsense” legislation on gun control and to create a National Database on firearm and background checks.  We didn’t insist on our children being taught how dangerous a government with absolute power is.  We have allowed courts to create “Constitution free” zones. We haven’t insisted that a study of the Constitution and why we have it, being part of every American’s education, and then we wonder why our young people don’t know enough of their rights, or how our government works to understand that insisting that the government dismantle the Bill of Rights is a bad thing. Ask most Americans today and they think the Bill of Rights was written to give us rights, they don’t even know it was written to limit the government’s power to violate the rights we already had. They are already in the boiling pot, swimming around, being boiled to death and they don’t even realize it.

And the fault is MY generation’s. We let Congress make laws that trampled the Constitution.  We let the courts legislate from the bench. We let the Executive branch make rules that were not legal.  We didn’t insist that law enforcement and social service workers and teachers be required to learn and understand the Bill of Rights and act accordingly. We haven’t stood up and said, ENOUGH! We didn’t hold the line. In the name of protecting us, we allowed the Patriot Act which violates so many of our rights, it is mind-blowing to think about.  Yet where is the outrage about that?

We already have more people imprisoned than any other society in the history of mankind, mostly on drug related charges, and now our government is pushing to make a whole other class of drugs illegal, and refuses to allow natural options and the government agency in charge seems to be bought and paid for by the pharmaceutical companies.  

We have allowed corruption in high places and the rich and powerful to bribe and steal to get what they want. We allow Monsanto to control our government to the point that they can mandate private individual’s ability to save the seeds from their crops to replant the next year.  And our government working in collusion with them, exported this immoral policy to other countries, ruining the self-sufficiency of indigenous peoples that had lasted thousands of years and we did nothing more than shrug.  

We don’t think for ourselves, we define ourselves as either Conservative or Liberal or Independent and blindly follow the agenda given to us instead of doing the best for our country regardless of what others think.  We protest what others tell us to protest, and don’t measure it against the truth or logic or even what is just basic commonsense.

Oh, I’ve tried. In the 1990’s, when Congress passed the “Defense of Marriage Act” I warned everyone that would listen that this would destroy marriage.  Why? because it was NOT their job to define marriage, they were sticking their noses in where they had no business being.  Why?  Because if the government could define marriage, it could change the definition of marriage.  And last year they did just that.  I have personlly spoken to every person I have voted for to let them know that I expect them to uphold the constitution.  I have called congress, the president, and those in power when I saw problems.  I have spoken out.  But it has been a losing battle.

I have seen the government use every threat to our safety to enact further restrictions on our freedoms and seen my fellow countryman follow blindly along and even demand more restrictions and I am tired of fighting it.  I won’t quit, because it is too important, but I don’t know how much more I can do.

I have been fighting this fight since I was 15 years old, when I stood up to my high school and insisted that I be allowed to carry my Bible openly in school, defying those who insisted that violating my 1^st Amendment right to worship God as I choose, interfered with their misinterpretation of the separation of church and state.

The trouble is, it may be too late.  We may have already lost so many of our freedoms that I wonder if we can ever go back.  And I predict that within a very short time, a message like this will have me declared an enemy of the state, and people will applaud when those who dissent are hauled away. Until, of course, it comes to their house and they will not be able to resist because any means of resistance will have been made illegal when people feared for their safety and insisted that their government step in to protect them from themselves.

Like I said, I am tired, but yes it is worth it.  I will live peaceably and lawfully, as I always have even when I disagree, but I a writing this to remind us of the liberty we once had  and should continue to strive for, when we followed  wisdom, honor, morality and valued freedom, when wewere that shining light on the hill.