Well, then.

So much for weekly updates...

So much to process.

In the past few weeks, so much of what I've learned this year has come into question. Our school does not have "final exams;" however, as Life would have it, as a class, and individually, we have endured a series of tests.

Before I expound further, please know that this blog is my creative expression and the place where I share my process. I spent most of my life trying to be the "good girl" trying to be perfect, in a culture where love and acceptance was something to be earned, where "you just don't talk about those things."

In that culture, many around me were hurt, molested, addicted, bored, depressed, anxious, and full of fear. So I intend to be a culture changer, and if that means letting people in on my process, while I try to figure out a better way to live than what I've just described, so be it.
 

It is your choice to read what I write. I hope you will read, and if what I write causes you to think new thoughts, wonderful! If you disagree with what I write, that's ok. Just stop reading.

Right. So. Moving on...

One of the core values our school is based on is that God is good. Regardless of were you are on the map of knowing God, please know that is what I believe, because that is how He has revealed Himself to me by all the amazing miracles I've experienced, that's simply what we know, and it's how God reveals Himself in [***gasp***] the Bible, (...to Moses...in Exodus 33:19-34:9...and then again, all over scripture...).

So I'll be real. Two weeks ago, one of my classmates died. We prayed for her, she made a turn around, was about to be released from the hospital and then she died.

One of my classmates miscarried. Another woman connected to our school lost her baby when it was almost full-term...literally a few weeks before it was due. Another woman we prayed for with stage-4 cancer died.

And another...it's a long story, but he's making some really bad choices, and those choices are affecting a large part of our student body.

All this is really tough, especially when we see people healed of cancer and everything else you can think of,  every week in the Healing Rooms here at Bethel. Especially when other babies we've prayed for were healed, at the same time others passed away.

Is it God's will to heal some and not others?

No WAY! God is good. All. The. Time.

He is not wrathful and vengeful...He is loving, merciful and kind. But He is also fierce and jealous...as any Lover or Parent would be. If you commit a crime against Love...well, that is just not a good idea.

I will never develop a theology opposite to what I read about God in the Bible. If it says by His stripes, I'm healed, then I'm healed. If the Bible says I'm to lay hands on the sick and they will recover, then I'm going to lay hands on and pray for the sick until they recover.

People laid hands on me. They prayed for me. And guess what?

 I recovered.

Did it happen the moment they prayed for me?

Once. And even then, it was a 2 or 3 day process.

I'm walking in the fullness of the answers to prayers people prayed for me when I was a child. I'm walking in answered prayers people prayed when I was teenager in a very dark place. I'm dancing and thriving in a new body that is a miracle, with a mind and heart that are daily being restored.

And you know what? The people who prayed those prayers...some of them will never know about all the amazing things God has done for me years later, as a result of their prayers.

And I'm not going to keep quiet about it. [This is a fun song about that.]

As I let the Light in, I have no choice but to shine... :-)