Thoughts on faith reconstructed, being alcohol-free, dealing with disability,and living transparently (and somehow keeping a sense of humor)
WordPress sent me this annual report for my blog, The Beggar’s Bakery for 2012. Going into this new year, I want to thank each and every one of you from all around the globe. Happy New Year and may God bless you and yours outrageously in 2013!
Here’s an excerpt:
600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.
By: Jana Greene
I made a lemon ice-box pie today, for no good reason. Several sad things have happened over the past few weeks – the pinnacle of which was the Sandy Hook Elementary shootings, the saddest of all. And I had a jar of lemon curd in the refrigerator (very Rachel Ray of me, no?) that was on sale at the new Trader Joe’s last week and a pre-made graham cracker crust leftover from Thanksgiving, so I figured…why not make a lemon ice-box pie?
I’m fighting the funk a bit these past several days. The Sad is a powerful thing.
Lemons are yellow, the color that is supposed to lift your spirits. And the recipe also called for sweetened condensed milk, which is the antidote to whatever ails you. Throw in some cream cheese and lemon curd and I had a pie filling so yummy that for the two or three minutes of spatula-licking involved, all was right with the world.
Except that it wasn’t, of course.
So after putting my pie in the freezer to chill, I sat down and attempted to do the same. I was thinking about how much the yum reminded me of my childhood – my grandmother used to make all kinds of ice-box pies. There are things about my childhood that don’t exactly put me in a cheery mood, but there are also many things that do. My grandmother is one of them.
She was from an era before mass school shootings and Doomsday Preppers, a time before it was considered dysfunctional to ease suffering with sweets and feed your family to comfort them. I was a skinny little kid back then who resented that I had to eat at all, much less enjoy food. I was too busy discovering things.
Childhood made me think more about the babies who died in Connecticut last Friday, so I started to cry…again. All through the day today, I checked the news websites to see if they’d come up with any answers (as if there COULD be any) and cleaned the house to distract myself from what I’d just read. My friends, who have recently experienced loss and depression, I am crying for them too.
Busy work, busy work that only made me tired.
There is a pretty well-known verse in the Bible about feeling exactly this way – grieved, exhausted, overwhelmed. As I sat down and tried to fear the quiet stillness that enveloped me, I told God that The Sad was overwhelming. Sometimes there are so many feelings and thoughts milling about in my mind that I can scarcely communicate them with a tangible person, much less an invisible God. But I pray anyway, because sadness is powerful, but it will not prevail if I ask for help:
God,
I’m lugging around The Sad, and it’s heavy.
I miss my family…the ones with whom I’m estranged through a series of most unfortunate events, and the ones who have passed out of a world that has to deal with such horrors.
I’m worried.
I’m disappointed in myself on a couple of different levels. Help me to see myself the way You see me, God. Not through the scratchy lens of self-condemnation.
I don’t understand what is happening all around us.
It isn’t fair that children die. That their parents won’t ever have the opportunities afforded to so many of us. Daddy-daughter dances, little girls standing atop their father’s shoes to waltz perfectly; Mommies to clean the mud out of soccer cleats and teach their boys how to be good husbands.
I’m so tired, Lord.
Weary.
I know He is there, I feel His Presence intensely…like a strong wind. You can try to touch the wind; you can try to hug the wind but it’s far too big for that – it envelops you. It can either knock you off your feet or fill your sails, but you cannot deny it is present. I am like a tired toddler right now, I know, with my relative misery while the whole world seems to be falling apart. I need sleep and comfort (and more pie). Most of all, I need to know what my Daddy says about sorrow:
My soul is weary with sorrow; strengthen me according to your word. – Psalm 119:28 (King David’s lament to God….well, ONE of them. He was another of the Father’s needy children).
Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. – Matthew 11:28 (I love this one)
I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint. – Jeremiah 31:25 (Refresh us, Lord!)
Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. – Hebrews 12:3 (Even Jesus Himself became weary)
Knowing the children who lost their earthly lives are in a perfect place, discovering wonderousness beyond our comprehension dents the grief. They are – I believe – surrounded by yellow there – experiencing ultimate uplift-ment. All is right in their worlds now; they suffer no more, but their families? I cannot begin to imagine what they are going through. They carry the heaviest burdens anyone can be expected to carry. We cannot allow evil to prevail, but we must ask for help.
Jesus, give them rest.
Maybe we can all learn a bit about living in the now. Spend less time in busy work and more time in honest conversation with our Creator. Hold our families as close as we can for the time we are given. Go a little easier on ourselves, learn to forgive ourselves.
When we’re weary, take time to be enveloped in the Wind and listen to what God says about strengthening, refreshing and giving rest.
And, of course, make lemon ice-box pie for no good reason.
When I don’t know what else to do, I pray. Well, sometimes I wring my hands and cry and get angry…but then I pray. And I write about it to process the information and ask God for help. This is one of those times. The whole nation is mourning the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary and the true senselessness of it all. This is just the prayer of one person – my prayer. God bless each of you readers today and every day.
14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14 (NIV)
Dear God,
Yesterday, twenty children came to you in rapid succession. Others, too…taken suddenly in a Connecticut schoolhouse without any warning at all. What havoc one single individual hell-bent on destruction can wreck.
I know you did not “will” this. This has the signature of your enemy stamped all over it.
There is a growing movement taking place about intellectualism…how we humans are too smart to believe in the Supremes of Good and Evil. I personally know people who don’t believe in You at all and think believers are fools. They don’t believe that there is a devil, either, and that no “sin” at all exists – that people only just make “mistakes”.
“See THAT?” I want to scream in their faces today. “What happened in New England to those babies? That is what evil looks like!” But of course, illusion is one of your enemy’s greatest tricks. He desires that humans don’t believe in him at all. It makes his vile work seem innocuous.
Folks want to blame gun laws, mental health issues and just about everything else. These things may have played a part in this tragedy (only You really know), but nobody wants to blame the devil and his demonic influence…that would be considered positively medieval Meanwhile, we look for a root cause to such terror, while the witch leads the witch-hunt.
This world is a broken, broken place. To be honest, God, it seems too broken to support life at all. And too many times, it is the least of these who bear the brunt of the brokenness. I don’t understand why that is the case. From a human standpoint, we don’t understand. Horrible things happen to innocent people – even the most innocent.
Oh God, be with the families of those victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. Surround them, infuse the, love them in a way that leaves no doubt that you are a God of compassion! As the Kindergarteners climb clamoring onto your lap today, comfort the ones whose laps are now empty. Erase the last earthly memories from the minds of those precious children and ease the torment in the minds of their families.
Father, help us! And forgive us for our in-house bickering over who lies at fault. Let it be obvious!
Let the prayers and love of a nation be the tiniest little consolation for those whose lives are devastated beyond measure. I cannot begin to fathom the hurt, but YOU have been a grieving parent, Lord. I know this breaks your heart in two.
Let our nation know what forces are truly behind all acts of terror. This was not a “mistake” Although it only takes one individual hell-bent on destruction to devastate a nation, there is still hope.
There is also One able to save an entire world. Save us, God.
We are NOT too “smart” to ask for your help. We need you.
In Jesus name. –
Jana Greene
By: Jana Greene
My seventeen-year-old daughter made an interesting comment about the supposed Mayan Doomsday prophesy: “If the Mayans were so smart, why didn’t they see the Spaniards coming?”
When I was her age, the Social Studies teacher made our class watch a 1983 movie about post-nuclear war life called “The Day After”. I had my first anxiety attack that same afternoon, because sooner or later this is very likely to happen and how can everybody just carry on living normally after KNOWING that this was likely to happen? I wanted to stand under a street lamp with a sign warning everyone that THE END IS NEAR! I had nightmares for years, and my walk with the Lord suffered from neglect because I was too busy wringing my hands to fold them in prayer.
But the world kept spinning like a crazy merry-go-round anyway, and I had to learn to hold on.
Oh how we humans like to believe that SOMEBODY on earth has a clue about our future! Maybe not the crazy Hale-Bopp Comet chasers (remember them?) or Pat Robertson or the paranoid Doomsday Preppers, but SOMEBODY.
If the world really ended this month, I would mostly carry on as I am now.The priorities are getting to know the God that I will spend eternity with, loving people to the best of my ability and letting them know that this planet we call home is NOT ‘all there is’.
I would probably eat more chocolate if I knew the end was near – a LOT more chocolate, watch the sunset from the North End more often, finish the My Name is Earl collection I (selfishly) got my husband for Christmas last year. I would spend more time laughing in general, because so much of life is absurd.
Ironically, it has always been on the bottom-end of my bucket list to learn all of the words to REM’s “It’s the End of the World as we Know it” and not just sing out the words “that’s great, it starts with an earthquake”, “Lenny Bruce” and “Leonard Bernstein”. (Who IS ‘Lenny Bruce’, anyway?) But really, if we only have eight days to live, I could die without knowing the lyrics and be okay with it.
The truth is that life on this planet will end one day, that life as we know it is already over because it changes every day. The only future I am secured is life in Christ, but really – that’s the only life that matters. The merry-go-round will stop and let us off where we are meant to be.
The Bible says that nobody knows when that will occur. We really can’t see the “Spaniards” coming in advance, we just have to learn how to hold on.
“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[fbut only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” – Matthew 24:36-44 (NIV)
Buckle up – its a wild ride!
Hello, all. Today I am sharing the link for a post I wrote for WilmingtonFAVS Redemption Feast. It is a short little piece about being patient with alcoholics and addicts that you love until sobriety “sticks”. Be prayerful in all things, and thank you for your readership. I appreciate you!
http://wilmingtonfavs.com/blogs/jana-greene/sticky-sobriety-nothing-is-impossible-for-god
By: Jana Greene
MMMmmmm, Christmastime. The music is lovely, the parties are grand. The food? Well, it’s almost divine.
Almost.
As a recovering alcoholic, I save a lot of calories by not drinking (sick thought #1) but I make up for it by taking part in food festivities. Savory dips piled high on crackers, sugary cookies and cakes. If it arrives in a crock pot, it’s simmering on borrowed time. Anything with a cream-cheese base? Yes, please!
The problem is – if I’m honest – is that I need to admit a little secret: making food a centerpiece in my life is not just a holiday phenomenon. And I have the pounds to prove it.
I worry about my issues with food because I see a pattern emerging. A few weeks ago, I cleaned out my closet, and within moments I found the first Hershey bar. I had hidden it in an otherwise empty shoebox, a single candy under tissue paper. Working my way under some random papers stacked on a closet shelf, I found another Hershey bar and at the bottom of the stack? Another one., and another. The last one was under an old Pittsburgh Steelers blanket behind some more boxes.
I have had issues with food all my life. From hating to eat as a child, becoming a full-on “foodie” as an adult. When I went through a painful divorce several years ago, I lived on Diet Coke and cigarettes, losing 80 pounds. To be truthful, it felt pretty good to have some measure of control over something going on. The cycle has repeated over and over: starving myself for a little while because I don’t like what I see, bingeing to fill up and comfort. It was the kind of hidden behavior that I just didn’t want to “discuss” with myself (also known as “denial) But now – here in a tangible intervention, was evidence bold on brown wrappers: H.E.R.S.H.E.Y.
All told, there were 11 chocolate bars hidden in strange places in my closet.There is a big difference between using food as a treat and an anesthetic. I am very emotional about food (and dern near everything else) but usually not to the point of crying. This time, there were tears.
The candy had been stashed individually over the course of months, because chocolate is my comfort food and having three young adult daughters, someone is ALWAYS PMS’ing at my house, looking for this anesthetic for the symptoms. So I hide it. Because when I am jonesing for chocolate, I am really jonesing for chocolate, you know? I am the mother in this house and don’t I deserve chocolate for putting up with everyone? I can quit any time I want! I’ll quit for the New Year and get in shape…you’ll see! What’s the big deal?
See? Emotional. Hershey bars should not be that powerful of an emotional trigger. Also, while I’m being real here, hoarding food is a related compulsion I struggle with. But that is a blog post for another day.
Do I remember hiding the chocolate? Not really. It is something I did kind of automatically. Go to the store for milk and eggs, pick up an extra chocolate to hide. When I get especially stressed out, I go buy more chocolate at the store and sooth myself the Hershey Way and it seems harmless enough. Except like some people can’t “just eat one” potato chip, I almost never “just eat one” chocolate bar. Here’s the secret: The second bar I like to enjoy in private – and that’s really embarrassing to admit. Sometimes it is more than two. I’m ashamed, even for my husband to know. Why does all this seem SO familiar?
Ah, yes.
Right before I got sober, I was terribly sick. The first glass of wine, I would drink in front of other people, but the second….seventh…..tenth? I “enjoyed” those alone, ashamed. I had boxes of wine stashed in secret places all over the house, because there was never enough. What if I ran out? Dang it, I am an adult and it’s just WINE for Pete’s sake, and don’t I deserve a little something for putting up with everyone? I can quit any time I want! I’ll quit for the New Year and stay sober, you’ll see! What’s the big deal?
The big deal was that I’d forgotten that the void requiring filling was not shaped like a bottle or box of Chardonnay. The hole is not shaped like a Hershey bar. It is a God-shaped place that, in times of stress and need and worry and peace, can only be filled by Christ. It’s not “just a treat” if you are tormented by it.
Run first to Him, and away from things done in secret. There is no shame in Him; no room for condemnation. Love conquers sick thoughts #’s one through one-billiion. Love fills up the void, and I know that already. That’s the thing about life on this planet: I will struggle with SOMETHING until the undertaker is throwing dirt in my face. You will too. But oh, the grace that God offers us strugglers!
That – the sweetest of things – I don’t need to hoard or hide. It flows constantly and with such force that it spills over into other spaces and can’t be contained. Kind of like my belly over the waistband of my jeans right now. (Hey, it’s important to keep a sense of humor!)
Jesus as the centerpiece of my life, First. Jesus consulted before food or drink or even friends – renewable comfort, available. I just have to ask for it.
Now, that is truly divine.
Good morning, Readers!
Today, I would like to share the opportunity to check out my blog post on Wilmingtonfavs.com. As a blogger on that site, I have the honor of writing for “Redemption Feast” and yesterday’s post was all about the Christmas Season and The Five People you are likely to encounter during this particularly frenzied time. I hope you check it out and share the link!
As always, thank you for reading thebeggarsbakery.net and God bless us, EVERYONE!
http://wilmingtonfavs.com/blogs/jana-greene/the-five-people-you-meet-at-christmas
By: Jana Greene
Have you ever heard the expression: “Sometimes you are the dog and sometimes you are the fire hydrant”? Sometimes you feel as if you are in control and other times? Well, you are stuck in a bad place, feeling helpless.
Yesterday was a mixed bag for me, for instance.
BAD: Sick with sinus issues…again.
GOOD: The doctor finally gave me antibiotics –the kind that might actually work!
BAD: the cat continually tried to sit on my keyboard when I was trying to work.
GOOD: Hey, the cat was not completely ignoring me, nor plotting my imminent death!
BAD: I yelled at my kids, enthusiastically.
GOOD: I apologized to them for losing my temper and enjoyed the forgiveness hugs.
BAD: Got cut off in traffic.
GOOD: …
Actually, no good came of that particular situation.
BAD: Overdue fine of $1.60 at the library.
GOOD: Happened across Stephen Colbert’s new book while paying the fine! My seventeen-year-old daughter read some especially funny parts to me whilst I was driving home. We both laughed so hard that we cried, and that’s always good.
If attitude is really 90% of any given problem, I really need to work on my numbers. Because good and bad stuff will happen to me, and good and bad stuff will happen because of my own actions or inaction.
It helps me to remember that the same man who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament of the Bible struggled with the same issues we do today. It is never a surprise to God when we are “all over the map”.
“It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.
“I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?
The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.” – Apostle Paul, Romans 7:21-25 (The Message)
My thought life is similar and my attitude? Always in flux. But I’m working on it.
BAD: I am a sinner – and like the Apostle Paul, often do, say and think what I shouldn’t.
GOOD: God is full of mercy and grace, and sees me through the filter of His Son.
Most days are a mixed bag, are they not? It is so easy to label the days of our lives as a good or bad one, depending on the good/bad experience tally of any given timeframe. It’s nice to know that although I cannot be consistent to save my life (literally), God is the same yesterday and today – all day long.
Musings of a Gypsy Soul 