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The Front Porch

My biggest fear is dying. I know I am not alone in this fear. Everyone who is honest with themselves is a little scared of it. My fear of death is crippling. It leaves me with panic attacks and night terrors. There are times when its inevitability hits me and send me running around the house terrified. My family generally things something is on fire or we are under attack. I eventually calm myself down and carry on with me life, but its hard. There were times when i literally did not want myself or any of my loved ones to leave our houses because i was filled with so much fear. 

I believe in an afterlife. It is not so much what is on the other side that scares me. It's the actual transitioning from one place to the next. The actual dying part that scares me more than anything. It's something that is impossible to understand or know until we experience it. I quite frankly have no desire to ever experience it. 

This fear does not have such a strong hold over me these days as it once did. For I recognized, in my own little way, what life really was. That recognition brought me a sense of peace and acceptance. That is why I am writing this today. To share with you. In the hopes that maybe, if you are even a tiny bit like me, it will bring you a sense peace in the midst of your storms. 

I am a Christian. I was brought up to believe of God and Jesus as being a father figure. In my prayers, I would even refer to Him as a father, but it never really sunk in to what that would look like. Until one afternoon, while i was resting on my living room couch, a vision came to me:

I was a child. A young child. If I had to guess, i would say around 12 months or so. I was out in the front yard of a beautiful big house. God, my father, was sitting on the front porch watching me. I was trying to run back and forth in the grass in front of him. I would stand, take a step, giggle, and then try to dart across the grass. I would only make it a few steps and then fall on my butt. He would laugh and tell me to get back up and try again. I would get myself up and do it all over again...laughing with every step. He eventually stand up, walk down a few steps, pick me up in his arms, give me a kiss, and tell me what a good girl I was and how proud he was of me. I beamed. Up in his arms, i looked out in the yard and saw hundreds of kids of all ages playing. There were more games going on than I could count. I wanted to play. I would kick, trying to get out of his arms so I could go run and play. God didn't want to let me go, but he loved me. He saw the determination in my eyes. He put me down, told me to be careful, don't go to far out, and reminded me that he would be on the porch watching if I needed anything. I became older suddenly. I ran out to the first group of kids, eager to join their game. They let me play and eventually they got mean. I yelled at them. They yelled back. One pushed me. I cried. I got up and ran to God. I told them that they were mean to me. He told me that he saw that. I asked him why he didn't do anything. He told me that I didn't ask him to do anything. I got mad and yelled at him. He told me that yelling at him was not going to change anything. The only way it would change is if I did something to change the outcome. I jumped off his lap angry and set out to play a new game. I became older again. I set out with a different group of people. They were a bit further away. They were doing things I know that God wouldn't approve of. I looked to see if God saw what they were doing. He did. Yet he didn't do anything. I got mad, and slowly joined them. I kept looking at God. Seeing if he would stop me. I saw the concern in his eyes. I saw him pleading with me through his eyes to stop. He even got to his feet. But he did not leave his porch. I got angrier. He didn't love me enough to come get me. He didn't love me enough to stop me. He didn't care. So I went further out. I became older. I went about and did as I pleased. Sometimes, I would forget he was even out on the porch. Whenever I did remember, and I turned to look, he was always staring at me. Aware of everything I did. On occasion he would call me over. Sometimes, I ignored him and it broke his heart. Other times I came to him. He would just look at me, give me a bite to eat, some money, clean up my injuries if I had any. Then he would let me go. I recall yelling at him. Asking him why did he let me go when he knew that the people out their might hurt me with their games. He reminded me that it was I who chose to play with those people. That there were other people who would not hurt me. It was my choice to make. I asked him if he liked seeing me hurt. He told me that even the thought broke his heart. He didn't want to interfere though. He didn't want to embarrass me in front of others. So he stayed on the porch waiting for me to say that I needed him. If you would only call to me, I would come running. I left. I grew older again. I ventured far away. I found friends to play with. We had a good time. I was so far away from the house though, I couldn't see God anymore. I could hear him calling my name though. I yelled, "I'm not coming back! I am happy here. I am having fun. The people here love me and they pick me up when I fall. They kiss me and make me feel loved. They don't need me to ask. They are just here. I'm not coming back!" I was met with only silence. I would go on playing. Eventually the friends I had made all split off to find other friends and I was left alone. I wandered back slowly to the house. There was God...sitting on the porch.. waiting for me. I walked up to him and he looked at me. "I'm hungry", I said. He gave me food. "I need money." He gave me some. "I need some medicine." He healed me. I smiled and said thanks, and walked away. Time continued to pass. Every time I went to God with a need, he did the best he could to provide. Sometimes he didn't have food, so he gave me money to buy some or sent me to someone who would feed me. Sometimes he had no money, so he gave me something of value, or a lottery ticket, or a job. Sometimes he had no medicine, but he sent me to a doctor who could take care of me. Finally, I was old. I was tired. I was hurt and in pain. I was out in the middle of the yard and I didn't have the strength to make it to the porch. I called out to him. He came running to me. He picked me up in his arms, kissed in on the head, and took me home. We walked inside the house. There were so many people inside. It felt like a Christmas party. It was warm and full of love. There was more food than I could possibly imagine. He carried me to my room. It was huge. It had a king sized fluffy bed. Beautiful clothes hanging in my closet. It had all of my favorite things inside. I turned to look at him. I was younger now. I asked him if all this was always here. He told me it was. I asked if the party had been going on this whole time. He told me it had. I asked him why he was out on the porch then rather than inside where everyone was waiting for him. He told me, "How could I go inside knowing that you were out there? I needed to be out there to watch over you. I needed to be there to hear you when you called." The tears came running down my face as I ran into his arms. He smiled. "There there my strong girl. I am so proud of you." When i calmed down, I dressed, and he walked me down to the party. 

This was God. This was life. Who am I to be having panic attacks about dying? Why would I be afraid about having God pick me up and carry me back home? Why would I want to stay out in the yard forever, when there was so much good going on inside. Whenever I have a panic attack now, I try to remember these visions. I try to remember the big picture. It helps put me at ease. I hope it might do the same for you. 

God Bless!

The Power of Emotion Filled Words

We have all done it more times than we care to admit. Our tempers flare. Our emotions get the best of us. We boil over and words come out. Often at times, they are blunt and do not accurately reflect the truth. However, we are often too charged to think about correcting ourselves, so we don't. The venom of our words reach the target they are thrown at and it begins to slowly seep in. Like ink in a carpet, it begins to saturate deep into the fiber of another. The damage is done. Grant it, if we had acted fast, we could have minimized the area of impact, but we rarely do. The day continues and we go on with our lives, never fully understanding to what extent we just damaged another. 

Lately, I have been thinking about my life. I have been reflecting on the choices I have made and the true reasons why I made those choices. I can rationalize things until the cows come home. I can give you a million and one excuses as to why I did or did not do something. The truth however is always very simple. It took 10 years of therapy to realize that. The truth behind everything can be summed up in a simple sentence. The simpler the sentence, the more honest it is. Most of my choices in my life can be summed into these simple statements: I am insignificant. I am not good enough. I am unloveable. I am scared. 

I think most of us can relate to those statements. I believe most of us are crippled by them as well. Why? Why do we believe these about ourselves? That is simple. Because someone told us so. Somewhere throughout our lives, we were told things (by people we love, by the media, by society, by authority figures, by mentors) that can be filed into one of those beliefs. As a result, we learned to feel defeated and hopeless. Those are the beliefs that are taking up the most space in our brain. 

Our brain likes to sort and store things into little neat compartments. Almost everything someone says to me is broken down to a basic statement and stored in its appropriate box. When someone says something with strong emotion, its file is bigger. it has more information attached to it. We recall the words, facial expressions, inflection, tone, volume level.....everything. I like to think of it as a RAW file (storing every speck of information captured) as opposed to the JPEG files (storing only bits of information that seem necessary or relevant) that are saved when things are spoken with or elicit no particular form of emotion whatsoever. Have you ever noticed that when someone tells you something negative, your memory of it is so detailed that you are almost experiencing it first hand? Yet, when someone compliments you, you can remember the words, but have little to no recollection of what it felt like to hear that compliment? We stored the information differently. That is why it is often so hard to get someone to believe something amazing or beautiful about themselves. It is often because, we as humans, display and elicit more emotion when we are angry or upset, than when we are happy and proud. That has to change. We all need to make a point to allow positive feeling and emotions flood our words. We need speak praise and compliments with just as much inflection and enthusiasm as we do when we yell or scream in anger or jealousy. In fact, we need to overpower the negative. We need our brains to store messages of encouragement and affirmation in RAW files and kick those others down to a GIF file. 

Our words have so much power. The power to uplift and the power to snuff out. The way we choose to speak those words have even more power. I pray that when our emotions flood us, the words we choose to speak be joyful and filled with love and beauty rather than anger and frustration. That when we are angry and rant and rave (which we all do and most likely continue to do), may those instances pale in comparison to the positive ones. May our brains be reformatted, and have encouragement and affirmation take up 95% of our files we store. 

Blessings!