Take it to the proper place, Facebook!

      Everyone tells us that we aren't to air our dirty laundry publicly on Facebook, but I think GOD disagrees.  Usually what man thinks, GOD is thinking the exact opposite, but with a twist of Omniscient Wisdom mixed in to it.  Only weirdos hang their dirty laundry out there on Facebook for all to see, including skivies with track marks. Right?  Yes, that's true, we weirdos, the screw-up mifits, the ones God chose long before the creation of the world to be screw-ups that other screw-ups could look up to without feeling like complete losers.  

      Now, let's take the book of Psalms.  What is it but  mostly the Psalmist airing their dirty laundry on FaceScroll.   We don't get the exact details or players, but what we do get is the Psalmist processing the pain and the confusion. By the end of the Psalm, he has learned a valuable bit of wisdom for the next grievance session, and he was able to throw in a praise of thanks to the intimate GOD of his father Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who took the time to count the hairs on his head and collect their tears in a scroll. 

      The book of Ecclesiastes is the work of the wealthiest and wisest king of Israel, in which he is griping about how meaningless life is.  All the way through it, Solomon is trying to process the intense Wisdom from Above, because he was given more than a flawed human would be able to bear and carry.  Let me tell you, it's true, the more you know, the more you wish you didn't know. By the time he gets to the twelfth chapter, he is able to put all his complaining and moaning together and come out with timeless wisdom that for 3,000 years we have benefited.  David and Solomon are gone, happily in Paradise, but they are still bearing fruit down here.  

     That's kinda my goal in life.  I want to bear fruit when I'm up in heaven, not while I'm down here.  You say, that's crazy, right?  Yeah, well, I get called that a lot.  I know myself pretty well, and GOD knows me better.  I would not do very well with success, shoot, with failure I'm a PhD.  I'm good at it, it's safe, especially in obscurity. I actually like it better.  It's in the failure that we learn the most about us, other people, life, and our Savior and GOD.  People give me a hard time about all the stuff I put up on my Facebook page, but what they don't realize, those are the little lessons of wisdom I get all day and night long.  It's my processing the pain of the past twelve years and bringing all that pain to the One Who wrote it in my story, long before the creation of the world.   

      With all these tears and emotions running amuck up there in my ADHD brain, I have to go to GOD all day and night, because there is no one else to talk to and gripe as much as I can without driving someone mad, or coming off as a real pain in the donkey!  I already have this horrible complex and voice in my head that says, "That's why people don't like you, Kristina." I surely don't need to present the evidence as why they don't or shouldn't.  So, I gripe to GOD.  I was just doing that during my daily two hour crying spell that I have to do in some hiding space so my children do not hear me. I shed a lot of tears, like I could fill up my 18' round pool with the amount I've shed over the past twelve years or so, with each year getting progressively wetter.  Pun most definitely intended. 

     I always ask GOD the big questions during those, what I call, toddler temper tantrums, because because to Him, I am that.  I have written extensively in my other blogs about that topic, using metaphor to describe our relationship to our Father and Creator. So, while I was having my little fit, scrapping the paint of my very old rotting wood deck out back, taking most of the wood with the pain, I asked Him one of those deep questions.  "WHY ME?"  Not very original, but usually the question is "WHEN will this end?" to which there never is an answer.  So, I decided to go with a different approach today.   There are so many players involved in the causes of my broken heart and tears, and none of them are crying over it.  I happen to have a very deep and sensitive heart that holds on to things like GOD does, and I can never let it go, like memories, people I've loved, the things that hurt Him the most hurt me just as much.  GOD is the Author of our story so if someone has crushed us by doing us bad, it was GOD who took that bad thing to use it for good.  You could say He brought those waves into our storm, playing "devil's advocate,"  if you'll pardon the expression.  

     We all know the story of Job, and how GOD wagered a bet with the devil, knowing full well that He would win that bet, but the devil challenged GOD anyway, because he is evil and wants to do nothing but harm to YHWH's beloveds.  The Most High gave him free reign up to a certain point to wreak havoc in Job's life.  If you notice, he used weather, armies, and people partying to do all this damage to Job.  Then, when given another shot at it, GOD let him use sickness, and the devil messed him up good.  He was unrecognizable by his friends when they finally did come to his "aid."  The book says that they sat quietly with Job, not saying anything, which some people say was merciful.  I have a different perspective.  I'm going to guess they were processing all the bad that happened to Job and plotted in their minds just how they were going to explain this to him, putting all the blame on him, because, by golly, for it to be random, meant it could happen to them, so they had to place the blame somewhere.  They placed on a person, while Job the entire time placed blame on God, where it should have been placed.  

  

     This is not the lesson you would hear in a Sunday sermon, I can guarantee that.  So, when I asked GOD, the why me question, why am I the only one crying when there are multiple actors in this tragic literary story of my life, and like always, the answer came before I could finish the long e vowel sound in me.  He said, "Because, Kristina, you know how and where to process all this pain. They don't.  You bring it here to Me, and that's where it belongs, not taken out on other people or in bad behavior or running as far from Me as you can get. You bring it Me because you know I AM right here all along, watching you. If I was any closer I'd be behind you, and Yeshua HaMashiac is up here weeping with you. We process it together, you learn something valuable about getting through the storms on your seas, then you go and teach others how to do it, because basically, the church screwed it up."  

     I know, you're saying GOD doesn't say that, no He doesn't, but that's the vernacular of a Italian Yankee firecracker, but the lesson is the same.  Job, is a type or a shadow of the the religious right.  When a bruised reed comes into their four walls, they all are like Job's friends, looking for a way to blame the bruised reed for getting bruised. Well, it must have been swaying in the wind recklessly, or planted itself in the wrong field, or tickled some wild dogs or hyena's and it got what it deserved.  Really?  The truth of the matter was that GOD planted that reed in that particular field, and GOD brought the storm, with the wind which whipped that reed around so much that it became so bruised that it was either completely broken or on the edge.  

     That poor bruised reed did not get the help it needed. It was not pointed in the right direction for help, upward, instead it was trampled all over and buried in shame by the time the church was through with it.  So, then I asked GOD, "Okay, I'm taking my griping and complaining to the right source, You want me to come to You, I get that, but I have to teach it to other bruised reeds, so You are going to have to show me and example in the Bible." And of course, before I finished the L sound in Bible, immediately John-the-Baptist pops into my head.  

     The poor dude was thrown in prison for doing what?  He was preparing the way for the Messiah, he was teaching about repentance, and he had the nerve to approach Herodias and Herod with what they were doing wrong. Well, that was gutsy, but it got him thrown in a dungeon for a set amount of time of which we are not informed.  After a while, hunger and fatigue started to get to him, and before you know it, he is starting to doubt the Lamb of GOD who takes away the sins of the world, when he was the one who gave him that title.  He saw the Holy Spirit come down on him, that was his cousin, the one that he experienced while still in his mother's womb who caused him to leap for joy. Now, he's starting to doubt?  Tell me, did he start griping to his disciple or guards or other prisoners with his doubt?  No, he went straight to the source and asked the Son of GOD himself, by way of messenger.  Did Jesus reprimand him for doubting?  Of course not, he gave him the answer that he needed to hear to comfort him while literally "dying" in prison.  

     John said it himself, He must increase, I must decrease.  He probably had this quiet little retirement cave all picked out and was going to quietly slip away without anyone noticing and go back to his peaceful life of eating honey and wild locust until his heart was content, while his cousin carried on the work, getting the much more difficult tasks in the assignment.  I'm sure starving to death before getting his head chopped off on the dingy dirt-bottom floor with rats, mice, other vermin, including lice and fleas in his camel-hair coat was not on the brochure of the assisted living cave he had picked out. 

     So, I got my tears and frustration out on the Playwright to the story of my life. I sat there and griped and complained about how the waves were leaving me water-logged with no shore in sight, and here comes Yeshua, walking on water with the lesson I needed to calm the seas, and stop the tears.  It was wisdom from above that most people would not hear from a shame-inducing, holier-than-thou pew warmers who would never have gotten themselves in that kind of mess, hence it was the reed's fault.  

     No, it was GOD's fault.  It was GOD's plan, it was GOD executing it, it was the devil and his demons given almost free reign with the other bruised reeds around him to whack him around a bit.  We can't get angry with the other bruised reeds, most of them are more banged up than we are, no, we have to go with Father Nature, who brought the storm.  

     So,  as I process all these puzzle pieces that GOD gives me in tiny bits all over my Facebook wall, usually by week's end, or month's end, I have another blog post to put out there to my fellow bruised reeds, my co-screw-ups, so that when I'm gone, they can have a chief screw-up to look up to.  Again, pun most assuredly intended.