Category: Health

Time For Beth Moore and Dog Allergies

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Some of TLC goes to see Beth Moore

I’ve missed writing this past week! April 1 saw some of the women of TLC head to Fresno, CA to see Beth Moore at the Save Mart Center. What a blessing for us. We stood in a stadium of 6,500 women and worshiped to the music of Travis Cottrell and then heard a powerful word from Beth Moore. At one point, during the worship, I looked around the stadium and just shut my mouth. I watched in awe as the daughters of the Most High King praised him with song. It was just beautiful. Tears filled my eyes as I stood on holy ground and watched women from all denominations, all colors, all sizes and shapes, all ages including babies come together for one common purpose. To praise and learn about our Father.

The Save Mart Center became holy territory the moment our feet entered that space together in one mind and one accord. With all debate between denominations and all the Christian voices we hear battling one another it was pure honor to be one voice among many that sang in unison, that laughed in unison and that talked non-stop during break! There were so many of us, honestly I saw about four men there, that we not only used all the women’s restrooms but the men’s as well.

Of course the women of TLC who went to the conference, spent the night in a local hotel, and I spare you the details of that, but suffice it to say that we all slept about 3 hours or so and then went back to the conference. I can tell you that our ride home in the church van was MUCH quieter than our ride up!

I wasn’t able to catch up on my sleep that night or for many nights. Lulu, the wonder dog, began to scratch like crazy. I thought she had fleas so I pulled the flea comb out and began to brush her out but there was not a single flea. A trip to the vet told us that she has an environmental allergy. What the heck does that mean? Well, she allergic to either her food, her treats, flowers or grass. So guess what? Lulu and I are on prednisone, my seasonal allergies and her whatever allergy. There’s a problem though. We decided to eliminate one thing at a time to see what she’s allergic to. So we had to eliminate all snacks and put her on a special diet. Lulu, is not used to getting told no she doesn’t get people food, so she’s not happy. Plus swallowing a pill without a treat afterward is not her idea of fair.

So life’s been rolling along and my writing has lapsed but I’ve got so much to share. So many things on my heart, so many things I am learning. I can’t wait to get back to time writing. For now, I have to give my dog her next dose of meds!

Dirty Dishes

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Recently the question was posed if we ever praised God for dirty dishes in the sink? NO! Was my resounding reply.

My answer was wrong because as it was pointed out to me, I need to be grateful that I have dirty dishes in the sink, it means my house had food to eat. I liked this attitude and I began to think of all the things I need to praise God for:

My bad hair day, because I am not going through chemo or radiation and my hair is still on my head.

My toilet and sinks that need cleaning because there are people who still live without such luxuries in their homes.

Laundry that needs to be done because it means I have clothing and linens to use. I don’t have to use the same thing daily.

A house to clean because in this economy it’s not a guarantee.

A car to wash.

A job to go to.

Well you get the picture! Today look around at the work your hands do and instead of complaining rejoice because you have it so good!

Fussing

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Luke 12:22″Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or if the clothes in your closet are in fashion. 23 There is far more to your inner life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body.

Luke 6:25 “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body.

Did you ever notice that these two passages of scripture have Jesus saying, “quit fussing”.

Fuss- noun – an excessive display of anxious attention or activity

So what’s all the fuss about? Why do we worry so much about things that are so insignificant? Today I am taking a day off of work to clean my house. I am making a nice dinner for my family, and I am going to watch some television or maybe a video. Really, what else is more important than that today? Tomorrow, I go back to work and I spend some time working at the office, we have practice for the Easter musical in the evening, and the next day will hold it’s own set of directions but why complicate it?

Jesus said there was far more to our inner life. Yet that statement becomes sort of a catch-22 when it comes to our inner life. It’s hard to discover the inner life when the widow is given anti-anxiety pills and sleeping pills to not feel those things she MUST feel to grow and heal and learn. It’s hard to talk about the inner life when the teenager is giving anti-depressant medication to not feel the angst of being caught between becoming an adult and a leaving childhood behind. It’s easy to ignore the inner life when we give a boy who can’t sit still in his seat medication to settle his soul.

There are three aspects to our lives, body, mind, and spirit. If we neglect any one of these, suddenly we have a problem with our inner life, yet we seem to focus on the body and forget that if our mind isn’t transformed then the body remains the same. Just ask the woman who is trying to kick a food addiction and we can easily see the three interconnections.

So what’s all the fuss about? Well, honestly it’s easier to fuss about the outward things. It’s easier to make a meal for our family then to sit and discuss real problems. It’s easier to buy a new dress then deal with the self-esteem issues going on. The fuss is about the excessive activity that keeps us away from the true realization of who we are and what God is trying to do in our lives.

Happy New Year 2011

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Psalm 16:1 Keep me safe, O God, I’ve run for dear life to you. 2 I say to God, “Be my Lord!” Without you, nothing makes sense. 3 And these God-chosen lives all around – what splendid friends they make! 4 Don’t just go shopping for a god. Gods are not for sale. I swear I’ll never treat god-names like brand-names. 5 My choice is you, God, first and only. And now I find I’m your choice!6 You set me up with a house and yard. And then you made me your heir! 7 The wise counsel God gives when I’m awake is confirmed by my sleeping heart. 8 Day and night I’ll stick with God; I’ve got a good thing going and I’m not letting go. 9 I’m happy from the inside out, and from the outside in, I’m firmly formed. 10 You canceled my ticket to hell – that’s not my destination! 11 Now you’ve got my feet on the life path, all radiant from the shining of your face. Ever since you took my hand, I’m on the right way. -“The Message”

It’s been crazy busy around the Young house. Friends, family, church, store there are lots of obligations that came on all at once. We’ve had a wonderful season this year and I have to take a second to encourage all the stepfamilies out there. This year, we finally were able to come together and have a really great season. Statistics tell you that it takes 7 years to blend a family and we were no exception.

This year my resolution is really simple. This year, I will breathe in deeply the presence of God, I will not measure my life’s success as a human doing but rather a human being. I don’t know about you but I am my harshest critic. I will turn 46 this year and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that my plate will always be full but I don’t have to eat everything off of it everyday. I’m sure I will one day die with a do-to list left behind and I’m sure someone will come behind me and finish it. This year I want to be focused solely on being.

I hope these first seven days of the year have been great to you. I am continually thinking of all of you and I there is still much to be said!

Date Abuse In Teens

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http://www.loveisrespect.org

I was reading a statistic that said that 1 in 3 teenagers report abuse in dating. I googled to see if that seemed normal and one site said 38% and another said 1 in 4 teens are abused. Reporting can be spotty since most girls keep it a secret. On the surface it’s hard to understand why a girl would go through this when she has her life ahead of her and her choices are endless. The problem with this type of thinking is that we forget to think like a teenage girl whose completely infatuated with love and having that cute boy or bad boy at any cost.

As with adult women in abusive situations these men are often quite apologetic after their abuse. They cry, they send flowers or gifts, the promise that it will never happen again. They swear that if she hadn’t have angered him so much he wouldn’t have done it. If a grown woman falls for these lines time after time then what can we expect from our teenagers? As with adult women, teenage girls tend to make excuses and feel responsible for the abuse. Then there are the girls who abuse the boys as well.

One question needs to be asked: What does using our strength look like? If we, as the women God, have been placed to lead our girls and don’t know the answer to this questions then how do we think they respond? A question I asked a group of youth girls recently was, “What does showing your strength as a woman look like?”, it was met with blank stares and a question, “What do you mean?”. I then asked the women, “Why can’t the girls that we mentor answer this question confidently?”, and it was boldly answered by one women, “Because we don’t know either”.

We must empower our girls to know that they are the Crown of Creation. There is a way to treat a woman and that must be taught. I know you are reading this and thinking that we have to teach our sons but you, as a woman, need to understand how you should be treated and not accept anything less than that. I have to admit I saw that we aren’t doing our job with our daughters when I heard a young woman of 17 say, “A woman shows her strength by being tough, showing a man she can do it by herself, you know? They can’t hurt her.”

A woman doesn’t show her strength by being tough. We weren’t designed to be physically tough. We were designed after everything on the earth was created. God didn’t create anything else after he created us. We show our strength in our nurturing, we show our strength in our ability to be relational, we show our strength in our love. Teen girls are being abused because they don’t know their strength, they don’t know their worth, they don’t know their possibilities. So they think being abused is as good as it gets and that saying sorry fixes it. We need to elevate our worth to a higher standard.

Just because a male is good-looking, charming, popular, smart or a jock doesn’t mean he has character and integrity. A person can be smart but that doesn’t mean they are decent humans. Just because he says he is sorry doesn’t mean we take him back. We are worthy of so much more than this! How will our young women know these things if we aren’t teaching it? How can we change these statistics unless we speak out and have dialogue? Stop for a moment as you read this and think about it. Have you talked to the young women in your life about abuse in dating? Are you watching for the signs?

We must learn that our strength is in our ability to think for ourselves. Our strength is holding ourselves to a high standard of morality and worth. Our strength is in not following the crowd. Our strength is in the ability to discern right from wrong. These things only happen when we are able to truly know who we were created to be.

The Hour Of Power

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Jack Canfield is a success coach. I read his facebook postings and they are inspiring to me. Last month he offered a challenge to take an hour of power. I’ve decided to do this for myself and I’d like to encourage you to do so as well. So here’s the challenge:

Spend one hour on yourself. Nurture your body, mind and spirit.
20 minutes reading
20 minutes in prayer/meditation
20 minutes exercising

I’d like to see how the stress level changes in my life. How the time spent with God changes my life, and how fit I become. What about you?

Prayers Needed for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani

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While it seems an ancient practice, these things still do happen today. I am asking us all to read the article in the Huffington Post and to respond in prayer to God. I am becoming more aware of the atrocities directed at women globally and while God has not changed my focus from the local body of women I serve, he is broadening my horizons and realizations to what is happening globally. May we learn how to be effective, even if it’s one woman at a time. Click Here to read the article.

TEHRAN, Iran — The lawyer for an Iranian woman sentenced to be stoned on an adultery conviction said Monday that he and her children are worried the delayed execution could be carried out soon with the end of a moratorium on death sentences for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

In an unusual turn in the case, the lawyer also confirmed that Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was lashed 99 times last week in a separate punishment meted out because a British newspaper ran a picture of an unveiled woman mistakenly identified as her. Under Iran’s clerical rule, women must cover their hair in public. The newspaper later apologized for the error….

Your Brain On Computers

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Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

I read this article in the New York Times, by Matt Richtel and think it bears repeating. Click here to read the article.

Here is an excerpt:

Technology use can benefit the brain in some ways, researchers say. Imaging studies show the brains of Internet users become more efficient at finding information. And players of some video games develop better visual acuity.

More broadly, cellphones and computers have transformed life. They let people escape their cubicles and work anywhere. They shrink distances and handle countless mundane tasks, freeing up time for more exciting pursuits.

For better or worse, the consumption of media, as varied as e-mail and TV, has exploded. In 2008, people consumed three times as much information each day as they did in 1960. And they are constantly shifting their attention. Computer users at work change windows or check e-mail or other programs nearly 37 times an hour, new research shows.

The nonstop interactivity is one of the most significant shifts ever in the human environment, said Adam Gazzaley, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We are exposing our brains to an environment and asking them to do things we weren’t necessarily evolved to do,” he said. “We know already there are consequences.”

Detached Emotions

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I had a long drive yesterday to pick up tile to finish the fellowship hall. Flipping through radio stations, I stopped at the Oprah Channel and listened to a show with Dr. Laura Berman. The topic interested me because she was going to interview 20 something women on issues of sexuality.

It wasn’t long into the show before I was very saddened by what I was hearing. In modern-day sexuality of friends with benefits and one night stands, where does that leave a young women? I heard these young women make comments like, “All my other sexual partners…”, “How do I tell him that I find (fill in the blank) strange?”. It wasn’t that I was thinking they’d had so many partners, it was that I saw the discomfort. On the one hand, they are having sex, the most intimate thing you can do with a man, and they can’t talk about their feelings. One woman said she was able to have multiple partners because she was able to emotionally detach.

Yet, the thing the that blew me away was that sex wasn’t about pleasure for them. In the group only one woman had achieved an orgasm. Dr. Berman said this is typical and meets the studies. Although it wasn’t spoken, it sounded to me that it was more about expectation than it was about anything else.

While there are some who read this site that will think this isn’t a topic for Christian site, I disagree. I don’t think the women in the church do much better in this area, but if we keep quiet it will never get better. Teaching why something is the way it is makes it understandable. If we keep pointing to scripture without explanation it will never get better. I believe we have to explain why.

Sex sells, no doubt about it, from perfume to hamburgers we are inundated with sexual images in the media. When sex becomes casual and not profound then you begin to detach. When you unlock doors prematurely, with images brought on too early, desires awakening before they are understood, pressures from society that tell you sex is no big deal and love that awakens before it so desires, Song 2:7, 3:5, 8:4, through consent or through pain, then you begin to shut off emotionally. This is how we are able to emotionally detach. I don’t think these women were bad, I think these women are asking questions and trying to figure out where they fit in. I don’t think they understand the why of things any better than most.

God put sex in the confines of marriage because it is emotional. Sex is intimate, pleasurable, or should be, sacred and profound. It is not just for having babies, it’s for relationship with your spouse. I know that sounds old-fashioned but the purpose is to save us heartache. God didn’t put sex in marriage to punish us but to protect us. He made woman the last thing he put on earth because she was to be the crown of creation. She was the one who brought peace to man who had discovered there was no mate suitable for him. She was brought on the scene to be the finishing touch, the answer to his longing. Had she been brought on earlier she would have been abused by a man who didn’t understand her purpose, not because men are abusive but because he would not have known better. God brought woman to a man who understood her worth. I can’t imagine not being able to look at my husband in the eye and tell him my desires because we have intimacy and a bond that makes comfort possible.

Sex is a big deal. It’s leaving a part of you with someone else. God isn’t being punitive, he protecting his children from the misunderstandings of a great gift opened too early.

Being Played

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There are some people who are just exhausting to be with. They go from one drama to the other. Life is never peaceful in their world. The more drama they have the better life gets. How do we deal with those people and what can we do to keep from being dragged into the pit with them?

First off recognize the behavior and refuse to be played. People who are emotional manipulators will never have enough of your time. They will always need more from you, no matter how much of your time you give them, whether it be 10 minutes or 10 hours, it will be less than what they need. They will drain you with their needs. Be mindful of yourself and your capabilities. Don’t allow them to guilt you into more time.

Don’t get caught up in their drama. You are being played when the person will not only carry their own drama to you, but they’ll also give you the drama of every single person they know. They aren’t interested in fixing the problem which caused the drama, they just like the wallowing factor of being there. They love being the one in the know of the drama, but they won’t contribute to a solution because it’s just too much fun to be wrapped in it. Have you ever seen a dog after they’ve had a bath? They run out to roll in the stink of dirt. They aren’t interested in being clean, the smell of yuck is the better draw. How’s that for a visual?

This person will be emotional about everything! Big highs, big lows, and no matter what you do to try to make it better, it will never be enough. They will be the first to volunteer to help you, but they will also sigh, complain, never finish the job and remind you constantly that they helped you. What they will do in the end is not follow your instructions, and refuse to be accountable for their inability to handle the project. Your best bet is to hold them accountable and not get caught up in their drama. If you let them know that they forgot something, they will give you a list of their latest dramas to try to make you feel guilty for asking anything of them.

Unfortunately, this person won’t make a good friend overall. They may seem like they really want to be your friend but their only agenda is to take away from you. Ultimately, they are very selfish people who want the world to revolve around them. They don’t see past their need to be the center of attention. So while they may look as if they are there for you in a crisis, it’s only to get their latest fix. They will move on as soon as the next victim has a trauma. You may be lured into trying to help them, but recognize that this personality needs professional help and directing them to that process is your best bet.