Missed Opportunity

Kelley says................


Last night, I spoke to a group of women at my church. I spoke on the Prison of Perception.

The Prison of Perception- 


Self imposed limitations in our minds. Limiting beliefs that keep us stuck. We build the walls of our own private cell with assumptions and ideas that have  accumulated over a lifetime. These negative thoughts make their way into our minds by repetition, until our sub-conscious is so weighed down with them that they dictate what we actually think. And as negative things happen throughout our lives, they are reinforced and their power grows. The sub-conscious mind has no ability to distinguish between what is actually happening and what you are remembering. You can never underestimate the power of your mind, and how hard it will try to hold onto what it already perceives to be real. 

Prior to me speaking, I asked several women who are close to me if they would fill out a "speaker evaluation" form for me. On the form, I asked them to give me 3 things I did well and 3 areas I needed to improve on. Well, when I started talking my voice was a little shaky and I was pretty nervous. But that didn't last long. The more I talked I was fine. Anyway, the only way I knew how to really share how I came to live in a prison of perception myself was to share my story. I went with the major events in my life all the way through being diagnosed with cancer. There was so much more I wish I would have had time to share but there was only so much time. And I guess they were wanting to keep it kind of "light" so I didn't want to go too deep into my story. 

Most of the feedback I got on my evaluations were very positive. Most of the areas where I needed to improve were areas that I already knew and felt myself were things I am going to have to work on. You know, like talking too fast and just take a breath and slow down, etc. But a dear friend who filled one of these out for me asked me "When was your point of salvation?" Well, my immediate response was that while I do feel called to help women detect early breast cancer as well as help them find God, I don't necessarily feel called to lead people to Christ. I am just not an evangelist. When I wasn't saved and people would preach at me for the way I was living my life, I would run as far as I could in the other direction. They just totally turned me off.

When I woke up this morning, I went for a walk (training for the 3 day!) As I was walking I kept pondering what my friend said. I thought about all the things that my friends said I needed to improve on. I thanked God for these friends that were open and honest with me and that I know this will only make me better.  As I was remembering the night, I realized how much of my story I didn't tell. I thought boy, I've been through some stuff!! There is a huge story that goes along with each chapter of my life. After my friends comment, I just realized that OH MY GOSH, I didn't share enough of God and what HE has done in my life and how HE is the one who has changed me. I still don't think God is calling me to go out and "witness" but I do know for sure that he is going to use me to help others find him. I totally missed a big opportunity by not sharing that part of my story. 


So, here goes. When my parents divorced, I was mad at men. When my son died, I was mad at God. When my mom died, I was mad a ME. I vowed to my mom while she lay in her casket to never again touch drugs and to live a Christian life. I got saved as a little girl but never lived my life for God. It took me a few months to start trying to look for a church. I was single and always dressed like I was goin' to the club! Every church I tried was full of old people. You can imagine how all the women in these churches looked at me when I walked in. After about 6 weeks of trying to find a church to go to, I said okay well, I tried. I thought to myself, I gave it an honest shot and if God wants me in church he will just have to bring it to me. Literally that very night, my phone rings, I say hello and a little girl says to me..."Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?" I say, "Who is this and how did you get my number?" She got really nervous and said she got it out of the phone book. Well, my number was unlisted and so I told her that that couldn't be true. She went on to say that she was really, really sorry and she didn't want to get in trouble but that God told her to dial my number!!!! I asked her where she went to church and it was not 10 minutes from my house. 


That next Sunday I went to church and loved it. Everyone was so nice and friendly to me. They accepted me right where I was at. I had always worked two jobs. I did nails during the day and I worked in bars at night. I immediately quit the night job. But after a few months, I was unable to get by financially. I watched my mom work two and three jobs my entire life and scrape by. So, when it got down to it, I went back to work in the clubs to make ends meet. A friend I worked with at the salon had been praying for me. She prayed I would find a good Christian man. Well, when I went back to work, they had hired a new assistant manager and boy was he cute!!!! I loved being single and had absolutely NO intentions of EVER getting married again. But when I saw this man, I thought to myself...."I am going to marry that man!" The thought came out of nowhere and I thought that it was really random that I would even think that. 


Needless to say, the man was Deryl and we started dating. We had been together for a couple of months and the friend at work who had been praying for me asked me if she could pray with me. Before, I didn't know she was praying for me. Now, she wanted to lay hands on me and pray for me. I said sure thinking she was totally wasting her time. She said a prayer that I don't even remember. I went to work that night and all my friends looked different. I couldn't believe this was where I worked and the kind of people I hung out with. It was full of darkness. Usually, I could drink anyone under the table and I drank one beer the entire night. I didn't know what was going on but I knew it had something to do with that girls prayer. The next night, I told Deryl that I couldn't live this life anymore and that I was going to go to church. At the time, Deryl didn't even believe in there was a God!!!!! So, I really thought that would be the end of our relationship. Well, he said he would go with me. I immediately rededicated my life to the Lord. Within 2 weeks, Deryl had given his notice to quit and was looking for another job. God quickly provided a good job. We were driving down the highway and Deryl asks me to pull the car over right then and there because he HAD to get saved. So I pulled over on the side of LBJ Freeway and led Deryl to the Lord. 


So, that is my salvation story!!


Love you all more than you can ever, ever know!!!! And thank you to my dear friends who love me enough to challenge me because you love me and care about me. YOU ROCK!!


Kelley

Last Chemo/Worry Challenge Update

Kelley says............


Well, Friday was my last chemo treatment. Unfortunately, it took two times to get my blood drawn and two times to get the IV in. I have to go back for the next two weeks to get my counts checked and then two weeks after that to see the Oncologist. Then I think it is again in three months, then six months, then every year for five years. Of course, I will start seeing the plastic surgeon more often now that chemo is done. I'm hoping that moves along nicely so I can get that surgery done THIS YEAR!! 


This last treatment really wiped me out. I have been so tired. Last night I got really, really hot and then very dizzy. I felt like I was going to pass out. Just haven't felt great. But, I am still excited because I know each day will only get better and I know I don't have to go back! That was a bummer before. Just when I started feeling really well, I would have to go in for another treatment. But I am so very grateful that I only had to have four treatments. I know there are many people who have to endure an entire year of chemo!


I am speaking this Friday at a women's event at my church. I will be speaking on the "Prison of Perception". I'm really excited about it!! I fully trust and believe that God will speak through me to the hearts of the ladies and that I will feel totally fine to complete this task!!


I can't believe that today is day 17 of my worry challenge. It has been going great! I haven't even needed to use my "worry time". I have been able to cast my cares on God much easier than I would have ever anticipated. Any time I catch myself worrying about finances, I just say to myself..."We will have it when we need it". And God has provided!! We needed $800.00 in repairs done on my car. If you are following my blog, you know that my dog has needed surgery for almost 5 months now. Within one week, God miraculously provided the money for both!! I don't know about you, but I think this is a monstrous miracle!!!!!


It turns out that my dog's ACL was actually intact. But he has arthritis really bad and they had to do something else to the meniscus. They said he will most likely have problems with his leg throughout the rest of his life. And that he could end up lame. Well, I've never had a dog that I love more than this dog. He is the perfect dog. So, this news really broke my heart. But, I will still be praying for him and believing God will heal him and give him many more pain free years. 


Kelley

If Christ is a Sweathog Part Two

Deryl says............OK. So I feel the need to explain the title of my previous post for those of you who are under forty. There was a TV show from the 70's with the title Welcome Back Kotter. Mr. Kotter was part of a gang called the Sweathogs as a high school student and came back to the school as a teacher. So he was welcomed back by the Sweathogs hence the title If Christ is a Sweathog Call me Mr. Kotter as I was welcomed back just as Mr. Kotter was. If you have never seen it I highly recommend it and it was John Travolta's first show.
But that is the thing about Christ he always welcomes us back no matter how far away we have gone. I want to share the love of God with everyone. Because God loves EVERYONE! It doesn't matter what you have done in the past or even what you are doing now. The church has hurt many people. It has offered judgment and spite when love and compassion were needed. Did you know that God loves gay people? But many in the church act like it is THE unforgivable sin. When the AIDS crisis took place the church said it was God's judgment. What? When Katrina hit New Orleans many in the church said the same thing. Fortunately there were many churches that offered love and help during that crisis which gives me hope.
Jesus said the world will know his disciples by their love for one another. He also said you can sum up the entire bible in the following statement "Love God with all you mind, soul, and strength. And love your neighbor as yourself." The word love is used 649 times in the bible. It is mentioned more than money, sin, faith, judgment, and obey are used in the bible. Rick Warren had one of the greatest quotes I have ever heard about the church he said "The church is supposed to be the body of Christ. In the last 50 years the body has had it's hands and feet amputated and the church has become one big mouth." We are a society of sound bites but God cannot be conveyed in a sound bite and many times is misrepresented. There are many good churches out there. Unfortunately they are not getting as much press.

Prayer Requests

Kelley says............


Two things.......


        1.  Please pray that my white cell counts continue to go up so I can get my LAST treatment 
             Friday.
        2.  And if you could also pray that my blood draw and the IV only takes one stick and that it    
             goes really smooth and easy I sure would appreciate it!!


Worry Challenge is going awesome! Really amazed at how good it is going. I'll be sure to post later more on this. Thanks for the prayers!!

If Christ is a Sweathog then call me Mr. Kotter!

Deryl says......I have not posted in a while. I have sat down to write something several times but nothing really came up. I am just not one to force something when I am not feeling inspired. Whenever I write I want there to be something that I find significant and profound. I know that some of what I write will be common knowledge to many who read this but when I write something it is because something has moved me inside and it means something to me. I can only hope that when it means something to me that others receive something worthwhile. That being said I am going to tell you a story about myself. One that brought great fear to Kelley at one point in our life and one that has up to this point brought me to a place that surprises me and I would venture to say Kelley will be quite surprised when she reads this.
Several years back I had become very jaded with the church. I had become weary with pettiness and judgment. The seemingly endless facade of so many people who pretended that they were ok and looked that way from the outside yet I knew were struggling with heartache, addiction, and all manner of sin within. And the gossip chain...I mean the prayer chain was a constant spreading of the dirty laundry of others. I know this sounds grim but this is where I was at the time and all I could see going on.
I had experienced first hand the judgment of others who were afraid for me because I read a book that they did not understand. One they criticized and said was evil yet never read. People even e-mailed me outright lies about the author of the book and what it said. I saw this and thought why do people from the church feel the need to manipulate me with fear if they are so sure of their faith? So I decided to try an experiment. I was going to watch some movies that I was told were evil by the church for my self and judge for myself if they would steal my soul. I had accepted completely everything I was fed by the church without any rational consideration regarding the content of their message. I watched them and saw nothing inherently evil. So I then thought to myself if they have been telling me all these years that Jesus is the only way to heaven yet have lied to me and many others about so many things how can I be sure that they are right about Jesus. If they are so confident that Jesus is the only way why do they feel the need to manipulate others with guilt and fear? So I decided that they weren't right and I was through being a christian. I had had enough personal experience with God to know that God was real. But I questioned the christian path to God because such a large percentage of them seemed to struggle and be unhappy with life.
My next step was to research my new path to God. So I read many, many books about other religions and spiritual philosophies. I read the Tao Te Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the Four Noble Truths, and many other new age and eastern religion based books. The interesting thing is that I found a lot of wisdom and spiritual truths in those books. And many of those truths impacted my life in a positive way. The interesting thing was that every time I gained a new insight I could recall a similar truth in the bible. I found it almost annoying at times that my mind would always find a parallel truth from the bible of the many spiritual truths I learned in these other books. Now there are some people that read this last paragraph and either feared for my soul or thought I am a blasphemer. For those who fall into that category I hope you will hang on and bear with me through the rest of the story without judgment.
So here I am trying to figure out am I going to be a Buddhist or a Hindu? Or was I going to follow the new age philosophy path to God. I dabbled in eastern meditation. I looked at many different paths and tried to incorporate many of them. And frankly there were moments that I felt God's presence during that time. And I could very well have stayed on one of those paths for many years. And Kelley, devout christian that she is, was beside herself. I am sure she was afraid on so many levels. What does this mean for our marriage? What is he going to try and teach our kids? Fortunately I knew better than to try and teach my kids something I wasn't sure about myself. It was my spiritual experiment and I didn't want to influence them with something that was unstable within me. But Kelley had a real fear that we might not stay married over this.
So one day Kelley convinces me to try this church out. Give Christianity one last chance. Although there had been some nice insights and practical wisdom in my research into other religions. Nothing had really grabbed a hold of me yet so I said why not? So off we go to visit this new church The Community at Lake Ridge. We are sitting and listening to the pastor preach his sermon. And he said something that caught me completely off guard and completely opened my heart and mind to what he was saying. During the delivery of his message he began to recount a marriage counseling session he and his wife had recently been through. As soon as he said that I knew I would be attending this church. A pastor that did not pretend to have it all together, one who relayed his own struggles and faults to his congregation, now this was a guy I could listen to. I began to experience a church that was really authentic in loving people where they were. A church that did not judge anyone that walked in the doors. People that didn't pretend to have it all together but were just honestly trying to live out their faith with others. It was so energizing. I began to realize that perhaps Jesus was the way after all? Or at the very least the best way of all.
Over time I slowly took steps back towards Christ. I began to see my own judgment. I understood that my judgment of those I considered hyper-religious was no different than their judgment of me or anyone else. I began to see that love was the key of the path to God through Christ. I realized that the moment I considered myself better than them I was moving away from love and away from God. I have been slowly but steadily moving back to Christ. Gaining new insight and understanding to how simple yet profound and powerful the message of Christ is and has always been. The truth is that no matter how christians behave it does not invalidate the pure message of Christ. How well a professed christian follows the path does not weaken Christ's message of love for all. I began to allow myself to accept these truths all over again. Only this time they were mine. They were not spoon fed to me by someone else. I spent hours in prayer and meditation over them and realized them for myself. But there was still something holding me back. I knew I was holding back inside. Maybe I was waiting to see if everything I was witnessing and experiencing could last? Could this be another facade that would eventually give way to the truth that this was just another church?
I began to meditate more and more. As I did I began to experience God in a way that is indescribable. An overwhelming sense of love and gratitude would envelop me during those times. That is the thing about God that we miss so easily, he loves us so much. God is unknowable, unfathomable. We can get glimpses of his nature. Hints of his personality. But these glimpses and hints are profound experiences for us and they are all we can handle at a given moment.
I find it funny how we can argue so much about someone we understand so little. Did you know the ancient Jews thought God was so unknowable that they would not even say his name? What makes us think we know everything? Just a question to ponder.
Even after all of that I was not fully given over to Christ. I still had some judgment within me towards the church. I still saw things that bugged me. For instance, I was frustrated at the constant talk of the word of God. It was not that I did not believe that the bible was inspired by God, I did. I just felt like as a church we spent so much time learning the bible and thinking about the word of God that we left out some other important things. The church was becoming knowledgeable about God but not really knowing him. I believe in the value of bible study. But if it is all in your head and not your heart what value is it? The bible is not God. It points us toward him, but it is not him. Let's put it this way. I could read books about my wife Kelley. I could study and memorize everything that was ever written about her. I could memorize all of it but if I have never met her in person do I really know her? If I met her but all I did was talk and tell her what I need from her do I know her? How do I get to know her? By spending time with her. I talk to her. I listen to her. And I live in her presence. Because I do all these things with Kelley I know her better than anyone else on the planet. She is rooted so deep in my heart that I cannot imagine my life without her. She is in my heart because we have a relationship. A book might help me have a better relationship with her but it cannot be a substitute for the relationship. It is no different with God. So I was letting this hold me back and I am not sure why. But I keep taking steps back to Christ and getting ever closer than before.
You may be reading this and thinking "Deryl I thought this blog was about cancer. What does this have to do with cancer?" And my answer is....probably nothing. But I have said in the past God has used this situation to change me and Kelley. You can see her worry challenge and what a difference it is making in her life and mine too. And since Kelley's diagnosis those baby steps back to Christ have become leaps at times. The thing I have learned about this experience that I have recorded for you is this. You cannot manipulate someone to Christ or back to Christ. The manipulation will only push them away. If someone is truly seeking the truth about God they will find it. We can advise a seeker when they ask but pushing our beliefs on someone will not draw them to Christ. We can offer our own experience with Christ because no one can argue with me about my own personal experience. Most of all we can love them no matter where they are at in their seeking. If they are really seeking and asking for the truth we only need to encourage them in their journey. I went all the way around the world religiously speaking but the truth brought me back to Christ. All the other religions I studied had some wisdom and insight. Some even pointed towards God. But only in Christ did I ever personally experience God and his overwhelming love for me. I hope that you find this encouraging. If you are a seeker I will share Christ's own words with you. "Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open. For everyone who asks receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And the door is opened to everyone who knocks." Love to you all!

Worry Challenge Day 7

Kelley says..........


I am just amazed at what this challenge is doing in my life. I have realized that my thoughts were consumed with thoughts about the future and a whole lot of things that don't matter. I have found that I don't even need my "worry time"!! WOW! This is so huge. On the first day I made a list of things that I was worried about and I have not pulled that list out of my purse once! I have been living in PEACE. 


I am finding that since my mind isn't consumed with a bunch of worrisome thoughts, I am praying more than I have ever prayed. There is plenty of space now to really hear from God. I have had so many creative ideas and thoughts about my future that are awesome and so inspiring. I'm excited about the future. I'm sleeping soundly. I've been walking and training for my upcoming Susan G. Komen 3 Day every single day and I feel great!


I believe 100% that all of this is because I have cleared my mind. I believe that I am open and ready to receive all that God has in store for me now. And I also believe that by worrying and having all my thoughts filled with doubt and unbelief that I had been blocking so much that God had in store for me. I'll blog more later on this but God is doing some amazing things in my life. I'm very excited about it!

If you are doing this challenge with me, I'd love to hear what all God is showing you too!! And if you aren't doing it, why not???!!!!!

Worry Challenge Day 4

Kelley says...............


Well, so far I think the challenge is going very well. The first day started out and I realized that I worry about entirely too much stuff. But the majority of it was all things in the future. As I was catching myself worrying I just decided to write it all down and make a list then pull out that list during my "worry time". Turns out, I got too busy and still haven't pulled out that list.


That same night, I woke up every hour worrying. The next morning it was pretty rough but I was able to pull myself out of it pretty quickly. Then yesterday morning I found myself worrying upon waking up. So I just decided to make my worry time in the morning because that is when I have my prayer time and devotion time. And today has gone very well. I worked all day which probably kept me distracted from worrying which is good. But overall, this has been a great day and I think things are going very well. I am realizing how much stuff I worry about that shouldn't even be a worry. So progress is definitely being made!! 


Kelley