I am not one to read the Bible where it opened. I'm systematic. I know what I am reading, or I know what I want to read when I want to read something other than what I am systematically reading. But today I read my Bible where it opened. I don't like being the superstitious kind that thinks everything is a sign and when things align it's "God talking to me." But I guess this kind of thinking is prideful and closing me up to look beyond what the eye can see. After reading my friend Diane's book God in the Meantime, I am trying to seek more God's voice like she often did. And I have to say, today I heard His voice so loudly I want to share it with you.
My Bible opened to Psalm 116. As a systematic
reader that often reads something in the Old Testament and something in the New
with some Proverbs and Psalms sprinkled in there most days, I have read Psalms
many times in my lifetime. I often overlook them as profound chapters until I
study how many times Jesus and other men in the Bible quotes them. After
today's reading, I have to take a closer look at Psalms. Before I go into the
Psalm, let me tell you what's been going on with me.
I have shared how I am taking antidepressants
because I suffer from clinical depression. Clinical depression, which has a
very physical component due to chemical imbalances in my brain exacerbated by
normal everyday problems, is a mental and emotional disorder that is a
recognized illness and takes just as many lives as cancer does. This has been
the longest I've been on antidepressants taking them since October of last year.
I usually take antidepressants when my depression is getting into the
"heightened desire or thoughts of suicide" stage that you always hear
on antidepressant medication commercials. I always wait until it gets really
bad before I seek medical and pharmaceutical help. I've been fighting the
stigma on my disease by being timelier in getting the help I need so that I
don't let things go too far. But! I don't let myself be on the medication for
too long for fear of creating dependency. And so, I am weaning off my
antidepressant. I've been steadily feeling better and getting a better grip on
my mental and emotional health, so I felt the time to go off the meds was now.
The problem with this is that weaning off of these types of medication is
dangerous and hard. The doctors warn you that weaning off of them will bring
about suicidal thoughts. "This seems crazy. How can me not taking a
medication make me think of killing myself?" Well, they're not lying. It's
insane. The thoughts come out of nowhere and for absolutely no reason. This
begs the question: Should I wean myself from them? Let's answer that question
after going into the Psalms. The Psalms was titled "Thanksgiving for
Deliverance from Death."
Psalm 116
Verse 1 and 2:
I love the Lord, because
He has heard
My
voice and my supplications.
2 Because He
has inclined His ear to me,
Therefore
I will call upon Him as long as I live.
This first verse gripped my attention. It
doesn't say "He answered my supplications. He gave me what I asked."
It says, "He heard me," and this was reason enough for the psalmist
to decide to call upon Him as long as he lived. I wrote in my previous post how unanswered prayer has really
tested my faith. And here the psalmist is telling me he loves Him for the mere
fact that He listens to his supplications...
6
Verse
6 - 9:
The Lord preserves the simple;
I was brought low, and He saved me.
7 Return to
your rest, O my soul,
For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.
For You have delivered my soul from death,
My eyes from tears,
And my feet from falling.
9 I will walk before the Lord.
I often battle with my
feelings about my cancer because I wish it had never happened and I am
eternally grateful it did. It changed me. It brought me low, real low. My
friends laugh when I share with them, I am a "reformed pharisee", but
I am. I grew up in a church that created division and classes according to
"maturity" and "sanctity." It looked down on the
"lukewarm Christians" and I was taught to be and act this way. I
wondered what the Bible commentary on "simple" had to say.
“The simple; sincere
and plain-hearted persons, who dare not use those frauds and crafty and wicked
artifices in saving themselves or destroying their enemies but wait upon God
with honest hearts in his way and for his time of deliverance. Such persons he
calls simple or foolish, as this
word is commonly rendered, not because they are really so, but because the
world esteems them so.” (Poole)
“Not only
is God gracious, but he is also gracious to the little people, to the plain, to
commoners, to the everyday person on the bus or in the shop – to people like
the psalmist. That is one of the great glories of our God. When Jesus called
his disciples, he called fishermen and tax collectors. When the angels
announced the birth of Jesus, they appeared to shepherds.” (Boice)
When I consider Jesus, He
would have sat with the other group in my church and not with the "mature
group" I belonged to. Cancer stripped me of any pride about myself, about
my body, about my mental capacities, about my Christian maturity, about my
youth or physical abilities. It broke me completely where I could not depend on
anything I could do and solely cry out to the Lord in my need with absolutely
nowhere else to go. Do you know what a gift that is? As I got better and
better, I tried with all my might to hold on to that feeling and total
dependance, but my humanity came back!
The psalmist was delivered from
death. I was delivered from death. If you have been here, you know I struggle
with survivor's guilt. "Of course, he can sing to the Lord! He was spared.
But what about the others?" is usually my first thought. Let's see what
the psalm keeps saying:
Verse 12 and 13:
12 What shall
I render to the Lord
For all His benefits toward me?
13 I will take
up the cup of salvation,
And
call upon the name of the Lord.
Pastor Bob said something that has been replaying over and over in my
head these past weeks of weaning: "Jesus paid it all for us. There is
nothing that can take our Salvation away from us. We are saved. We have the
gift of eternal life. With that alone, we should live the most joyful lives
ever. We have nothing to worry about anymore ever again!" I believe this
is what it means to "take up the cup of salvation." What else can I
do for all the benefits God has bestowed upon me than to live in
gratitude!
Verse 15:
15 Precious in
the sight of the Lord
Is the
death of His saints.
I thought long and hard on this verse. How had I not studied it before?
What does it mean? I prayed God to speak to me like I haven't in a long time.
"He loves my children far more than I could ever love them," is one
of the most comforting thoughts I have when I consider the lives of my girls
don't rest solely on what I do. He is at work in their lives far beyond than I.
If they were to die, it would hurt Him more than it would hurt me. God's saints
(His children adopted through the blood of Jesus Christ) are precious to Him.
Here the psalmist recognizes he was spared from death, but knows death is a
reality to many of God's saints. Their death doesn’t go over God's head. He
knows. He is there. He holds them. This is why I have been learning to stop
"putting things in perspective." You often do this when you want to
lessen your feelings about something. "I am in chronic pain but at least I
am not a quadriplegic." "I lost my job due to Covid but at least I
haven't lost a loved one." Putting things in perspective to lessen your
pain doesn't work and only hurts. They come from lies from Satan. For me, the
lies were "How could you be spared, and Kara Tippets wasn't?" And
these lies become worse when you try to view your personal relationship with
God from what happens to others. This is often the case I see in those who
profess to be atheist. "How can you say God is loving with all the hurt,
killing, illness, poverty, and injustice you see around the world?" These
atheists usually come from a good background and have not personally
experienced what they profess to be the reasons not to believe in God. And the
people who have actually experienced them are usually the first to cry out and
cling to God. It goes back to the point of being simple. I can only view God
from His personal dealing with me, and His personally dealing with me was
deliverance. And to those that wasn't, precious is to Him. I will only know how
precious is to Him when I myself walk through the doorstep of death and feel
His love and comfort and being held in that moment by Him. This takes me back
to the time I was on my cancer treatment, and I suffered from unshakable joy
and trust and faith. I'm telling you the best thing that ever happened to me!
I am
weaning off my meds. I was having the most wonderful girls' night with the best
friends the body of Christ could have gifted me with here in Panama, Jackie and
Tita, and I couldn't stop knitting while sharing with them the Friends' Reunion
because I was scared that if I stopped knitting anxiety would take over me.
Anxiety that I am experiencing for the mere fact of weaning. I was having the
most wonderful family trip eating at a lovely seaside restaurant and thoughts
of "you should kill yourself" came to my mind for the mere fact of
weaning. It's insane. The difference between me before treatment and me now is
that before I would desire these thoughts and fully embrace them. Now, I strike
them back with the words of Pastor Bob; I take up the cup of salvation. I fully
reject those thoughts! And, slowly the thoughts come less and less, and I open
my Bible more and more!
I accept my
deliverance from death and praise God for it instead of questioning Him on why
me.
I open my eyes to
see how bountifully the Lord has dealt with me.
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| We found this wild beach close to the San Lorenzo fort in Colon. It was such a great trip with mom out for the first time since her surgery last October. |
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| Family pic at the fort! |
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| My mom was finally able to walk since breaking her pinkie toe three months ago! |
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| Friends Reunion girls' night with Tita and Jackie. We loved having Francia over too! |
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| Second trip to Colon! |
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| I love this man! |
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| Alyla, as my daughters call my mom, is so happy to come with us again. Emmalee said she had been waiting for family trips to come back and spent the night telling her grandparents in Honduras every detail of the trip. |
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| Finally went to the Canal expansion visitor center! |
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| He had been waiting long to finally visit. He was the happiest! |
