I live because I am loved

I want to tell you I only lived through the last two weekends to write the post below, and this one, because I have a friend that can, in some mysterious way, always lift my spirit. I have learned a few things that I think are important enough to share.


I wanted to quit smoking by Christmas as a gift to myself. It would have been a gift, too, for those in my family and my friends that don't smoke, at least that is what I thought.


It was not to be more socially acceptable, that doesn't even appeal to me, but to be more able to spend time with those I love with less stress on myself did. I hate having to miss something because I needed to have a smoke.


I tried the new medication that is supposed to help you stop smoking. My body was told it was getting no "feel good feeling" (first note) when it had a cigarette. The medication blocks those receptors in your brain. Unfortunately it got no "feel good feeling" from anything else I did, either.


I got depressed seriously on day four, the first day you take a second dose, upping the level of medication in your body. I didn't realize it was the medication.


I have had bad days on and off since the mate died and accepted them as grief. I have bad days that have nothing to do with the mate dying. I accept them as normal to life. We all have a bad day now and then.


This was really bad though and I called a friend for help with it. It was given. Our conversation made me feel better. (make a note of this)


I made it through the first weekend. I was busy with things going wrong during the week and thought that was why I wasn't pulling all the way out of the funk. Things were going wrong and it was almost Christmas, a funk is normal, then. That is what I told myself.


Only Saturday, the 15th, I was cleaning house and getting things in order. This is not me. I clean or I put things in order. I do them as rarely as possible because I like to have better things to do than clean or do books. I realized I was doing both and then I knew it was because I would be killing myself that night. That is not like me, either.


I have dealt with depression in my life. I have suceeded at suicide once. I will not be doing that again. Not because I believe it is a sin but because I was sent back and believe there is a reason I need to be here that goes beyond my ability to understand. Bad or good, my life and my self are needed here. I made it through losing the mate, I wasn't going to punk out for a black funk of depression I could see no reason for. But I knew right then I wouldn't see dawn.


I needed help. I called my friend again. I claimed another hard day. You don't really want to say the truth when what you feel is so bad you are ashamed of feeling it.


That blessed friend gave me no lecture, no faulting me for needing the same help again. They didn't say "Blow your head off then, I'm tired of dealing with this." They told me that when they feel their thoughts scattering and picking up bleak feelings that they focus on the good things they know, on a healing light from above.


Because those words showed me what I needed to do to get through one more day I could tell them how bad it had been for me - until their kind and caring words had lifted my spirit. (also note this.) Then I confessed why I had called.

They let me talk it out and then we ended our conversation. I made it through another night and researched it on the web the next day. I found it was not me - it was the medication - that was causing my problem.

I can't tell you where the joint is where my body and spirit are joined. I can tell you this - I know they both exist. There is a part of each of us that we can not see. It is real. It is part of "me".


My body was physically incapable of "feeling good". No matter what I did for it the brain said it was NOT feeling it and it was miserable enough to seek an end to it's existance. I know, I was there. Saying it was "not me" that wanted to die was true, it was my body that wanted to quit.


That inability to feel good physically had affected my spirit, but not as strongly. I feel the spirit of me felt badly because the body was having such a hard time. My spirit didn't want to give up. My spirit wanted to live. My spirit sent me seeking again a friend to help it win this one. On it's own it was going to lose.

My friend's words redirected my thoughts to the Holy Spirit. They lifted my spirit up and helped strengthen it. That let me reach out to where my spirit could find help. It was too weak from fighting the body's depression all week to reach out on it's own, at least it seems like that to me. I felt better when I got off the phone. (note again)

You may disbelieve this next, for me it is a truth. After we got off the phone I felt my friend's prayer for my spirit to be healed of this darkness actually touching "me". I felt their spirit lifting mine in prayer. I lived to see the next day because of a friend who did not judge me but offered me the best they knew to give.


A reverse on this is that I have seen that friend dealing with a rough go sometimes this year and been praying for them. I hope my prayer has ever done for them what the prayer they prayed did that day. I would like to think that even once I had lifted anyone's spirit like that.


Now let's add up the notes.

My body was told it was getting no "feel good feeling" (first note)
Our conversation made me feel better. (make a note of this)
their kind and caring words had lifted my spirit. (also note this.)
I felt better when I got off the phone. (note again)

My body could not feel better. If I was sunk in a hot tub with a virial male feeding me dark chocolate with a massage to follow it would not make the body feel better. My brain could not process the information to tell the body it felt better.

"I", in at least three places, state that I felt better or my spirit was lifted. "I" felt better.

The apparent conflict in those two paragraphs is really no conflict at all if you believe your body and your spirit, while they are joined, are two different things.

Two ways to perceive the world are available to us. We mostly only believe that the ones of the body are "real" perception. No one teaches us to use the abilities of our spirits.

I learned again that spirits are real. I learned another spirit can lift mine up. I learned that prayer is the way the spirits touch the Holy Spirit or God and that they can touch each other where ever they are on the planet.

I know things through my spirit when it may be only my body you see here. I knew these things once, when I was younger, but I forgot, I guess. I am going to work at not forgetting them again.

I learned that we do not walk alone here, ever, when there is even one who cares. If we do not die then I never walk alone or unloved - in spirit. That I may feel alone is only the body's way to see it. I know that there is always more than one way to see it. I need to see more with my spirit.

May God Bless all my friends the reached out to help me this week. I live because I am loved.

I live because He lives

On my way to work today I was driving through a fog. I saw some beautiful scenes, magic fir trees, the sun on the fog lighting it unusual ways, the views were stunning.

I asked God, as I often do, to sing for me. I asked that it be in reference to something important to me. I reached for the radio and ran the volumn up just as the sun went orange-red and shot that light through the fog behind the branches of a small stand of trees on a hill.

I can't tell you the radio station, I can't tell you the exact time of day - what I am going to tell you is that the Creator lives and is with you and me still, right now today.

The music that came out of the radio was an instrumental part, I had some trouble catching the first few words and then the station came clear. I heard, "For God, love and rock and roll" jamming out of the radio.

As I sang along and cried at the same time I knew someone would say that what happened is just coincidence - you will never prove it to me.

I needed to remember the joy of loving and living is ours as a gift. I needed to remember to say thank you again for all I have been given. But most of all I needed to know that there is always one who loves us, even if He is invisible from here. That gift was given to me again this morning.

And if God lives, then Jesus lives and my mate lives and I will not die either. Neither will you.

I was talking to my mother and she said, "I didn't even expect you to stay here after your mate died, much less that you would love again."

I had to tell her, "I couldn't have lived if the mate died, Mom. I live because he lives."

Jesus gave us that gift by not being dead for forty days to show us He told us the truth.

God loves us - we do not die. Why do those that say they believe in Him still think that we will?

Grief of separation is real. It hurts. It is a pain that can be gotten over if we believe we will catch up with them later. It is only for a little while and we will be with all those we love in a way we couldn't be here.

Thinking you will never see one you love ever again or that you go alone into that mystery that is death of the body is a terrible way to feel, at least, to me. I wish I could lift that fear and hurt from any one that thinks it is a truth.

I can't see anyway to change anyone's mind or heart about it except to live what I believe. To show people there is joy and love in life to be grown and nourished still as a treasure for those coming behind me.

To show the kids that to live is to love and to be glad for all the love in our lives I can't just say words. I have to stay here to show that is what I believe. I love them, until He calls me home, I'm staying here to love with them as long as I am allowed.

I live. I seek to give and recieve love. I have fun and joy in my days. Some will think I must be nuts or that I didn't love my partner the way they thought I did. They are wrong.

I just don't believe that loving stops because the one you loved with is not here in our way of seeing "here". I believe all that love me are alive and love me still. They know that I will be there with them, later.

I believe you do not die. I believe you change. I believe you will find this truth yourself when it is your time to pass through the veil of life here to life there.

I believe love is the purpose of life. Living it lovingly and joyfully and helping others do the same is working with the living God of Love. I say, "may your kingdom come," and add "soon" as I see the sad, hurt world around me.

I do what I can to be more loving and caring, as He leads me. He will take care of the rest of it His way. I don't know the plan but I know I will be around to see the end of the story. I believe you can all see it with me.

Heart aches from caring

He sees the truth of you. The truth is that you care and you love. You care enough to do things for others no one else sees any reason to attempt. To you they are important enough to give your time here to them.

Helping those that feel they are not worth your time is the truth of you. By showing others they are worth your time and care you are showing them they are loved. Caring enough to try to ease their hurts may seem to drive you.

It is what drives Jesus. He cares for each of us as if we were His only and best friend.

You are His in a way that no one can be unless they have yearned to help someone only to have their help rejected.

You learn that you can have the cure, the fix, the money and know it. You have just what they need at hand. But you can only offer. You can offer over and over again - but they have to accept it.

Until you are rejected that way you can not know how He aches to bring each of us peace and healing. How it hurts Him to see us go on our way in pain when He can heal it - if we let Him. If we would only accept it from Him.

Only those that have had their help rejected can understand even a little of how He aches for each one He loves here.

You are precious to Him as your caring, loving self. That is what He wants one like you for. He knows you are that self - still, now, already, have always been - loving, caring, joyful and alive.

The anger and shame and hurt you bear here is only what you see and experience without Him to be the transforming crystal of your view. He can change it, your whole life can be right in His love.

Let Him show you the self you are through the eyes of His love. He can show you. Can you accept His view of you?

Ask Him to help you see your true self.

Will you remember yourself as a loving, caring, smiling, joyful child with no idea of wrong or evil? Will you remember what you were created to be? I believe, in His eyes, that is how He has and will always see you; Perfectly made in His image.

He cared enough to ask God to change His plans for us. Change illness to a life of health; Change death to more time to live here and then to remove death completely, to give us life forever.

Then He came back to show us we would always live.

I think He never wanted to be parted from those that he loved, either.

You are one of them.

New ideas

I was thinking about people not believing someone when they hear something that is a little out of the ordinary. They seem to just disbelieve by habit, for no good reason or with no real thought given to their position.

A woman I met told me that she and her sister hit the ice and headed for a sign at a fork in the road. She had no control over the car, she said. They both started to freak out. Next thing they knew they were right where they were supposed to be going down the road. There were two of them that experienced this. She said "I looked to see that she was okay and we both said, "I can't believe it!" They had believed they were going to crash and die.

They really had to believe because they had not crashed, they never even got hurt. Try as she could, the woman said, there was no sequence of memory from the sign being right there and then the clear road being in front of them. Her next thought was "Nobody is going to believe this." That was probably true. But why?

It's not always the contrary or negative in people when they don't believe what they hear. I see it as the way most people think. If there is nothing in their past experience to refer to they flip right to disbelief.

They have no personal knowledge of what you have shared. They never heard it before from anyone else. "I never heard of that" then seems to equal "that can't be true".

They skip research or askng for more details. It doesn't matter who is saying it to them. Trust doesn't come into it. They may trust you but if they decide you have wrong information - and it must be if they never heard of it - they plain just can't believe it.

It was totally new to them. Depending on their age and mind set, they may have trouble dealing with a new idea or thought. They want it all to fit in where their life has showed them it goes.

If they have to trust another person or their past experience what are they going to trust? That's right, they trust their own judgement.

It's all they can do in a world that keeps telling them to trust others will hurt them. They judge they can't believe it rather than explore it more.

It's not wrong to do that, it just makes it hard to share a new experience or idea with someone when they react like that.

Luke 5
37 And no man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish.

38 But new wine must be put into new bottles; and both are preserved.

39 No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.

The new idea of Christ - that the love and grace of God was ours again if we only believed in His son - was hard for those who had lived so long under the law given to Moses. Some of them just couldn't believe it. Some of them didn't want to.

They were used to the law and it's ways and they didn't want to change; Especially those who made a living from it.

Those who felt the power of God's grace in their lives tried to share it with all they met. Some could accept the new idea and some couldn't. They kept trying to share it. It was real to them.

Matthew 13:33 - Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

Leaven is yeast or sour dough starter. You take a little bit and add it to what seems like a lot of flour and other things for bread. That little bit will make the whole thing rise up and out of the bowl if you don't use a large enough one.

The few people Jesus started with, in one little town, with the stories of his family and the belief of his cousin John, has grown to be what we know as Christianity all over the world. I think they were the "little leaven" and the "new wine". It grew, like a little yeast and now it has aged, like a fine wine, which gives it more credibility, not less, at least to my mind.

He said if you don't believe what I say then believe what you have seen me do. We have not seen the healing, the walking on water and the mysterious escapes written about. Or have we?

Almost every person I talk to has a story that they don't even know if they should believe. It's too far outside "real life" and most are shy of sharing it with others. Like me, they don't want to be seen as crazy or get laughed at. But we believe it and keep it to ourselves. To share a new experience or idea with others seems like a risk.

To share a new way of seeing God - what kind of risk was that? To say the law was repealed and we could be forgiven by just believing in Jesus was a hard new belief to share. It cost Jesus his life here as a person in a body, pain and shame and death. What does that show us of how much he loves us?

Sickness was lifted from just people, not kings, not rich men alone, but from those who came to him and asked, he cured, asking only for their love and trust in Him. He showed the power behind His belief to them so they could see it was real and then they could believe.

He healed things we still can't heal today. Limbs were made whole, the dead were brought back to life, whole and well again. Why? Was God wrong to let them die? Does God make mistakes? Why would He change His mind or His actions?

Was it only because it hurt Jesus' so much to see the pain in each heart? Is that why He could heal? His heart hurt for us in love and God didn't like the pain it caused in one He loved?

Those that were healed or raised from the dead by Jesus still went on to die later, in the way of humans. Did the fact that they were healed by Jesus really change anything down here?

Yes. They saw it could be done. They saw the love of God change their bodies and their lives. They told others about it. It was reported by more than one person. It was seen by hundreds. It was written down for us. The story of the one who loves all of us and lives to care today still touches hearts in mysterious ways. I think it was the yeast of the truth that God loves us.

Is that why we care for each other in love? Because we are made in His image? Our pain at another's pain shows it to God as our love for them. I think He helps them so that His power of love shows. They see we believe, they see what happened their way. Maybe then they come to believe in Him, too.

It also eases the pain in our hearts to see them have what they feel they need. He shows us that He cares how we feel. In His love He can lift that hurt from us. We were not built to hurt but to feel joy and love with Him.

We can not heal each other's hearts of the real pain in them. Only He can do that. You can tell them how it felt to you, you can show them the things you think were real to you but they have to reach to Him themselves.

He has to show them His reality in a way they will believe. Because we all see it differently that just amazes me. He shows He lives to all that come to Him and ask, "Help me believe."

Again, this is all in my own opinion and just one way to see it. Thanks really have to go to a friend for the good think I got from a story shared with me. This isn't what was shared but it is what I got out of it. I love my twisty mind!

Be Honest with me

I wrote about lies recently. I was talking to someone when she said, "I finally told them how it really made me feel." I got to thinking about that and about how I seem to lie sometimes by what I don't do or say.

If we go to everyone but the one that we think is hurting us and say we are hurt by them, telling others what a hurtful thing the other person did, what are we showing the third person about ourselves? What have we told them about a friend?

It wasn't a very pretty thought but I seem to do it easily. It's much easier to go to an uninvolved person and say you are upset than it is to say some things to those we love if we think it might hurt them - or hurt us to say it.

But have we hurt that friendship by not giving it all the truth as we see it? By not saying. "you have upset me", have I created a weak place between us; like thin ice under thick snow? You are not going to see it until it gives way under you. Did trying to not hurt you by not saying how I really felt create a flaw between us?

What good is done by holding a hurt inside ourselves that we feel was given to us by another? "I didn't want to hurt them", seems like a good reason to keep it to ourselves. But that hurt grows inside us and we add more as they come along. When the whole thing blows up on us we wonder what went wrong.

Was it that someone we spoke to told our friend we were upset? Were they hurt that we were afraid to tell them there was a problem? They can't bring it to us or they betray the one that told them.

My, that got complicated. But that is the way it seems it goes. One little bit of dishonesty just grows and becomes a wedge in between us. Then we end up short a good friend.

Maybe it doesn't get said to anyone. We just hold that small hurt to ourselves. It seems we always wonder then why the other person can't see we have a problem. They are supposed to notice we are upset - but NOT telling them - about it. Then we hurt more because they don't notice we hurt and that hurt grows inside us. Don't they care?

We start seeing the other as uncaring and unloving when they just can't read minds! They may not be able to see the subtle clues that say we have a problem. They may see them but because we have said nothing they think it's just work or stress from something else. They might even try to be nicer to us not knowing we are upset with them.

It's not easy to say to a friend, "that hurts me". They may not understand why it does but if you don't tell them they can't help you see all the way around the hurt to understand it.

If you are willing to see it from their side you might find out that not only did they not mean to hurt you but there isn't any problem because you see why they did or said what they did. It doesn't hurt when you understand it, at least, I don't think it hurts as much.

I learn you were disappointed in me because I left without saying good bye - because you told me - I can say I looked for you but couldn't find you, I'm sorry. Then you can remember you were in the bathroom and go -"Oh, darn, it was just timing!"

You know I didn't do it to hurt you. I couldn't tell you I cared enough to look for you if you didn't tell me it bothered you. It really was just the timing of your need to go and mine...so to speak. No harm meant on either side.

Maybe I had the thought you were avoiding me. If I didn't tell you I felt like that I might go on thinking you were upset with me for days. I was thinking you were mad about something and you were just in the bathroom at the time.

It can go either way in any situation. To keep the love between us always working for us we have to trust each other enough to be honest. We have to know that, in our love for each other, we will both try to understand how the other sees it.

You might hurt me saying something to me but I can deal with pain. At my age I have gotten kind of used to screwing up things in life.

What I can't bear is the thought I did something that would make you not be my friend. Please bring it to me so we can look at it together and see if it can be fixed. Maybe you can see it differently or maybe I can do it different next time.

But if we never tell each other of it then it just hurts the "us" of our friendship invisibly. It's one more reason I see to believe that because something is invisible does not mean it is not "real".

Of course this is only the way I see it. You may see it another way.

See me later

I love my friend. I cheered her up on a bad day. She called a friend to tell them she is feeling better and listens to their day. She makes them feel better about it by listening lovingly.

She would not have called if she was feeling badly herself. My love for her and my help in lifting her spirits let her lovingly listen and care about another. Her friend was encouraged and cheered up. She was better able to love her family because she was lifted up.

Cheered up, lifted their spirit. Loved. Connections. Who is to say how far the love you shared with one person will reach? I think Love connects us to others who love others into infinity.

I believe death, dying and dead are the wrong words for the events described. I think words of change like transmogrification, transmogrifing and transmogrified seem more correct to me. It is a process of change. You are not deleted, you are just different than what we know here.

Change can cause a fear reaction. Fear is normal when you face the unknown or strange. To think you will be "not" or that you will only be "gone" and your body food for worms makes some people afraid. As you come to know that when you shed this flesh you will be your perfect self; your perfect spirit, still aware, living and loving, you are not afraid.

We identify parts of the planet as ours, home, school, work, vacation spots are all places we went once as strangers but over time became familiar and safe. A new place always feels different than what we are used to but we are not afraid of trying to enjoy our days there. It's just new and different experiences.

That is what I believe happens when you no longer are linked to your body. You go to a new environment but still yourself. You will have new and different things to learn and do, new people to meet and love as well as the ones you already love who went before you.

From Johin 14: And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, you may be also. I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. At that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me, and I in you.

From Johin 16:22, I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man can take from you.

From the Strong's concordence all the words for you, me, I and my are just what they mean. The self that was Jesus will meet us. Each spirit and soul is part of God and each of us is on our own path back to God.

This year, each day, I will try to think of myself as a loving and perfect spirit first alive in the gift He gave me of a body second.

Lies

It seemed like I had not been able to lie for almost a year now. I couldn't even exagerate a story to make it more exciting in the telling. Now I have done it, in what may be seen as small ways, more than one time in the last week. One was to make me look industrious instead of just wasting time and yesterday I defended a past action with a lie about how it happened. I gave me an excuse to screw up and really I just screwed up, no excuse.

One was to make me look good to another and two were to keep me from a percieved embarrassment or punishment. Those are pretty common reasons to lie. I'm feeling pretty low.

I don't like lying to others or myself anymore. I didn't want to confess. That has it's own punishment in it. Someone that believed you learns they were not observant enough to see the lie you told. Sometimes I think that hurts worse than that you lose a little of your trust toward one that lied to you. You don't like thinking you were lied to by one you trust.

But the act of confessing and apologizing tells them you care enough for a right and honest relationship with them that you would not have a lie between you. That care you show by confessing starts mending the breach the lie created between you. I think so, anyway. I still didn't want to tell the ones I lied to what I did.

I struggled to see those, small lies as important enough to correct. He brought it to me in several different ways. Mostly that it is nagging at my mind and I can't let go of it. It has been eating at me. Maybe feeding off me is more like it. The bad feeling seems to grow the more I think about them. I can't seem to ignore them any more. To stop it I had to correct it the best I could.

The other thing I see is if those two instances were so hard to make right for me how hard is it for others to correct these things? We don't teach it in school. We barely teach it in church. By confessing to these others I was showing them it could be done and how I did it.

Maybe they would do better one day than I did confessing or not lying again, seeing how hard the repair of one is. That would be even better. I hope something good comes out of it. I have let the one fester for a week. There have been a variety of valid reasons but it is still bothering me. It feels like the only thing coming out of it right now is a poison of shame that I did it.

I think the main thought I found in prayer is that if I am His I want to reflect his love in all I do. I have to tell the truth no matter how it seems like it will affect me. Love is Truth, to me.

I have to give him my fears. I have to trust his love to lead me safely. I try to do things His way.

His love is truth in a way the words can't express. If I send out untruth in the world I am not reflecting His love but my fear. That is not what I want to put into my life or any other.

By telling a lie I am putting out, what I call "not love" into the world around me. I can try to mend it by confessing and apologizing but the harm is only patched not whole again unless He mends it for me when I give it to Him. I don't want to be ashamed of my behavior in front of Him again. I can see the learnings in this but I don't have to like them. I like it that He cares enough to teach me but I hope I am getting quicker so I don't have to do so many repeats.

I want to be truthful in all things here. He shows me I am still learning. I can only say what the truth is as I see it and try to remember I can't see very far at all. It's a misty and limited view.

The nephew and I went over this not long ago. I hit a deer with my truck. The fenders and hood have been replaced but not painted. It was parked back end toward us.

That nephew and I would have said it was white, but the one coming in from hunting would have seen just the front coming in and wondered who was there until he got up beside it.

He saw two colors on it then and said so when asked twice. It had always been "Aunt's white truck" so the first time he said "I see a white truck is here." I said, what color? He answered, "White and brown." That was the truth he saw when he came around the corner.

Someone under five feet tall standing directly in front of my truck is going to see it as brown. They will swear to it. It is the truth for them. Another person, five and a half feet tall, standing a few feet behind my truck is going to swear it is white. It is the truth for them.

If I happen to be there for this I can clear it up because I know all of my truck, from the dings to the hitch in the hood latch. I can tell them they are both partly right and partly wrong.

If they just stand there and debate it nothing is going to stop the conflict. They are both telling the truth as they see it. Neither one will back down on what they know is their truth.

For the debate to end one of them only has to move a few feet left or right to see all of the truck and "discover" the truth. One might say, "come over here and look", but that only works if the other is willing to move. There has to be a change in perspective for at least one of them for them both to see the truth.

Nothing changes until something moves. Either one of them has to move, I have to come join them and tell them what I know or the truck has to move.

The truth is there was nothing to debate. They were both right and they were both wrong. It is a two color truck. Where they stood they couldn't see all of it. The way they were built didn't let them see all of it.

They were not stupid, stubborn or insane, as they might have called each other. They just believed that what they saw of the truck was the same all the way around it. It's a pretty common mistake. We call it making an assumption and use it to jump to conclusions.

That is what I see as a problem in saying what is truth for me and holding to it so hard that I won't listen to another person's perspective. If I try to understand how they see it then I am trying to change my perspective. I may learn more of the whole truth if I am just willing to move what I believe to one side and try and see it from where they are standing.

If I just say "this is the truth I see so it must be true for everyone" I am forgetting I am too small to see all of what I am looking at. I forget I am not standing where they are. I forget I am not built like they are. They may see more than me.

By not being willing to consider others may be right, too, we lock ourselves up from finding there is more to the truth we saw than we could see alone. I only have one way to see things unless I look at it with others who are different from me.

Our two parts of a truth might just be small parts of a larger truth and by sharing them with open minds we find there is more than one way to see it.

But I know if I have told a lie when I know the truth I will have the truth trying to get out of me and I don't like trying to hold it inside. I may protect myself from punishment or someone thinking poorly of me but I will hurt myself by it.

I would rather be thumped and get it over with than have it nibble at all of my days. How can I say any truth with a lie standing there in my way?

One more to go and then I can feel right inside again. I should be able to fix it tonight. I got the cell phone fixed and that was the only way to get ahold of my friend. I didn't want them think I was just sitting here wasting time. It was such a pointless lie. I was shamed when I said it. Now I have to try and fix it.

I just realized I used to feel like this as a child when I told a lie. It may be Him letting me "off the leash" to see how I walk alone. Thanks to Him for the thought that my spirit is tender again, not the hard and dark thing it was not long ago that lied without even thinking first to those I judged unimportant to my life. I was honest, but only with those I loved.

I don't know that I can walk without being dishonest all the time here. It's a challenge to even think about it. I'm thinking. I'm praying.

What is your view? Click on "comments" below and you can tell me. Don't use real names on the net please. Leave a nick name in your post for me. I will figure it out.

I love my truck

Friday I was just a few blocks from work and was congratulating myself on being a good driver in the snow. All the big hills and bridges were behind me. I hadn't missed a stop or a corner. I had the easy part of the drive left.

I was on a straight, flat stretch, when I started feeling sassy. I don't really know what I hit, a bump in the road or a slick spot; away I went! I knew I had too light a back end, I hadn't loaded up for winter yet crossed my mind. I went a over t, and backwards, then slide side ways across the road.

I put in the clutch and let her slide until I hit grass then touched the wheel and the brake to send her off the road before we got to the telephone pole. I landed wrong way around in the corn field but I was feeling back under control, still right side up, and the truck and I were both ok.

I tried to rock her a little thinking I could drive back up the slope. Nope. I quit. I sat there and laughed out loud at myself and was glad I had landed so well.

Then I saw another truck hit the same spot and start sliding right at me. I stopped finding it amusing. At least I knew it was the road and not my driving. I held my breath until he got his big truck straightened out and didn't come down to join me. He made it.

I had the cell. I was ok, just stuck. No one was at the shop that could tow me out so I set up a ride. I tried rocking her again and got going a little but the corn was too slick for much traction and the ground was just wet, not really frozen.

Then it seemed I was getting up a little speed so I aimed up the bank. It was just too slick with no weight. There I sat.

A nice boy who had been out hunting turned around and broke out the tow strap. As we were getting ready to try it my friend from the shop showed up and stopped traffic for us. The hunter in his big truck eased me right up the hill. I thanked him and wished him hunting luck. We shook hands good bye and I went on to work. He went back the way he came.

Life is like that sometimes. Cruising along, feeling good and then the surprise - whack! You just get that thing under control and another one comes right at you. Someone sees your plight and cares enough to turn around and come back to give a hand. We get by taking care of each other.

I thought of all the friends I could have called if I was in a spot near them and I felt blessed again that I have them. The family is on that list, too. That a stranger took the time to help is just the way it worked out. That made me glad that there are still caring people in the world.