MUNCY STATE PRISON
December 28th, 2018
Friday
Tiger’s birthday today. I wonder if I would be able to spend it with her if I was out.
Probably not.
It’s rainy today and I am sore–even my back hurts. Just took Ibuprofen.
“The Word Among Us” says to ask Jesus if there are unacknowledged fears in our life, and then work on them.
My biggest fear is to never have the opportunity again to mother my own children, but I acknowledge that pretty readily. My other fears are pretty basic–that I’m not good enough, that I’m a failure, etc.
I dreamed last night, in a dream that seemed to last forever, that I was shooting up and getting high in secret again–that’s another big fear–relapse.
“Beside the Still Waters” says, “Let’s open every part of our lives to the true light of Jesus. God gives great peace to those who faithfully walk in His light.”
–Joshua Gingerich
McConnelsville, OH
Back to Coach’s Bible Study–Ellen mailed his letter for me today, so wi’ll see how that goes.
2. Ezekiel 37:1-14– “The Valley of Dry Bones” – Ezekiel is in exile, and the LORD set him in a valley of dry bones. He did what the LORD told him to do, and prophesied over the bones, and they became the army of Israel.
Personal → We are called to live, not exist–not wait until I get out, die, etc.
Acronym – LIVE
L – Laugh → Children 400 times per day, adults 15
→ Mt. 18:3 – Change and become like children
→ Proverbs 17:22 – “A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
I – Important –Prioritize – Now what?
→ Mt. 6:33 – “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. [food, drink, clothes]
–Luke 10:38-42– Martha and Mary “Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted by much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
V – Vision → Proverbs 29:18 – “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
→ GPS – Recalculating
E – Exercise – Physical, mental, spiritual
–James 2:14 – 19 – Faith Without Works Is Dead
“What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!”
3. Bands – “Live”
–Hebrews 10 – Christ’s Sacrifice Once for All “I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
The End
Coach wrote – “God Bless you Jess!”
What a guy.
On to “Autobiography of a Face” by Lucy Grealy
“When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.”
She hit that nail on the head. I remember feeling ugly as an adolescent because of terrible acne–it was almost as bad as grief.
After Lucy goes to college and falls in love with poetry, she writes, “Now I knew that joy was a kind of fearlessness, a letting go of expectations that the world should be anything other than what it was.”
Profound.
It’s no wonder she’s a brilliant writer, with all of the insights she developed from having to endure adolescence with a deformed face, not to mention cancer and chemotherapy. About the way she dressed in college, she writes, “In my carefully orchestrated shabbiness, I was hoping to beat the world to the finish line by showing that I already knew I was ugly. Still, all the while, I was secretly hoping that in the process some potential lover might accidentally notice I was wearing my private but beautiful heart on my stained and fraying sleeve.”
I finished the book–it was very good!
Of course, after 30-odd surgeries to reconstruct this woman’s jaw, at the end of it she looks near-normal (I didn’t notice her slight deformity until I studied her picture), but still has an identity crisis because she can’t equate the person in the mirror with her own sense of self.
Very interesting.
This reminds me, in some small way, of how much I hated my own face growing up, and even endured criticism from my own mother on what it looked like. By the time I got to college, I wore heave makeup at all times, and only stopped a couple of years ago. How ironic that my acne has returned at a time in my life thatI struggle immensely with self-hatred, as if the loathsome feelings about myself were the cause of the acne, and not the other way around!
Hm.
I guess I’ll never know.
I was, in fact, very beautiful in college, but even the boyfriends I shared my bed with never saw me without my mask on, and I would never allow them to touch my face.
Oh, the scars we bear from our feelings of isolation and not belonging.
What next?
Maybe I’ll finish “Abba’s Child,” by Brennan Manning.
Oh, how fitting! On the page where I left off, it says, “Wounds are necessary. The soul has to be wounded as well as the body. To think that the natural and proper state is to be without wounds is an illusion. This who wear bullet-proof vests protecting themselves from failure, shipwreck, and heartbreak will never know what love is. The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.”
–Thomas Moore, “The Care of the Soul.”
When the author went to a priest and told him he grieved his time squandered while binge-drinking, the priest replied, “Rejoice and be glad. You will have a heart of compassion for those who walk that lonely road. God will use your brokenness to bless many people.”
That’s what Coach says about my life.
Thomas Moore also said, “Our depressions, jealousies, narcissism, and failures are not at odds with the spiritual life. Indeed, they are essential to it.”
The author continues, “Self-acceptance becomes possible only through the radical trust in Jesus’ acceptance of me as I am.”
Mail–
My sponsor had my whole AA group sign a Christmas card for me! How nice. I’d better write her.
After dinner–
I wrote my sponsor and just basically said thank you for thinking of me, I got accepted into SIP, and Merry Christmas.
I also told her I was reading and writing a lot, and am doing better emotionally than I was before.
Back to “Abba’s Child:”
“As our hearts beat in rhythm with the Rabbi’s heart, we come to experience a graciousness, a kindness, a compassionate caring that surpasses our understanding.”
“He says, ‘I give you a new commandment; it is My commandment; it is all I command you: Love one another as I have loved you.’ Only compassion and forgiveness count. Love is the key to everything. Living and loving are one.”
“The success or failure of a given day is measured by the quality of our interest and compassion toward those around us.”
Here’s the last paragraph of the book:
“Wise men and women have long held that happiness lies in being yourself without inhibitions. Let the Great Rabbi hold you silently against his heart. In hearing who He is, you will find out who you are: Abba’s child in Christ our Lord.”
Wow.
What a great book.
Next I’m reading, “Bringing Heaven Into Hell,” which is about praising God for all things, good and bad, that happen to us. (By Merlin R. Carothers)
“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and for as many years as we have seen evil.” –Psalm 90:14-15
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in Him and I am helped: therefore my heart will greatly rejoiceth; and with my song I will praise Him.” (Ps. 28:7 KJV)
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’” –Matthew 22:37-40
“We have no particular reason to feel grateful to our sensual nature, or to live life on the level of the instincts. Indeed that way of living leads to certain spiritual death. But if on the other hand, you cut the nerve of your instinctive actions by obeying the Spirit, you are on the way to real living. (Rom. 8:12-13 Phillips)
December 29th, 2018
Almost a whole new month. “The Word Among Us” says, “On every page of the Gospels, [Jesus] has shown us that love is about making concrete decisions to put other people’s interests before our own.”
“Whoever loves his brother remains in the light.” (1 John 2:10)
This entry challenges us to imagine a person we find difficult to love with Jesus’ arm around them.”
I find it difficult to love my parents.
“Beside the Still Waters” is a story about cleaning up a piece of land and making it like the Garden of Eden.
“God is taking barren, empty lives and making them productive. The rubbish needs to be carted out, but God will receive any person who has a willing and surrendered heart, and will make a beautiful and fruitful life.” –Leon Horning–Fanling H. T., Hong Kong
Time for cell cleaning.
Alaina does this, which makes me feel mildly guilty, but there literally isn’t room for both of us to clean at the same time. Plus I don’t see the point of cleaning a cement box–it never actually gets clean.
Somebody is singing “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”
Funny.
Onto “Ice, Ice, Baby.”
Even funnier.
I heard Lauren Daigle’s “You Say” this morning, and it made me happy.
Later–
I tried to sleep, but Ellen is “singing,” or what passes for singing for her.
Be nice, Justine.
I dreamed briefly of Mr. Big, which made me all the sadder when I woke up here again.
I guess I’m in a mood.
I miss him.
Of course he’s whispering sweet nothings to me in the dream about all of his wonderful feelings about me, and then Ellen cuts in with, “How do you talk to an angelllllllll, it’s like trying to catch a falling starrrrrrrr!!”
Not funny, God.
Not funny at all. 😡
I guess I’ll read “Unmask the Predators” by Lisa Cherry and Kalyn Cherry Walker.
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7:13)
Wow, this book says that that 65% of polled Christian adults think Satan is not real.
Wow.
That surprises me.
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.” (Romans 8:1-2)
“God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)
“He, who loved you unto death, is speaking to you,” wrote Amy Carmichael, a well-known missionary to India for fifty-five years. ‘Listen, do not be deaf and blind to Him. And as you keep quiet and listen, you will know, deep down in your heart…’”
“There is a deep reluctance to begin the process of change by admitting that damage has occurred…all inappropriate sexual contact is damaging and soul-distorting. Seventy-three percent of the least severely abused victims report some damage, and 39 percent report considerable to extreme trauma as a result of past abuse…Verbal abuse is a powerful and deep wound. Sexually abusive words produce the same damage as sexually abusive contact. Yet the potential for minimization or feeling weird for being damaged makes the potential for change even more difficult for those more subtly abused than for those more severely abused.” –Dr. Dan B. Allender, author of “The Wounded Hearts.”
“Love never fails.” –1 Cor. 13:8
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26-28)
“…If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all Creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)
After dinner–
I got “pulled over” for nothing again on my way back from dinner. That’s when a CO randomly picks you out from the line for no reason and gives you a hard time, making you produce ID and shit.
Fun times.
At dinner I met a woman named Emily, and we were talking about our kids. She was an English teacher before she got arrested, and she doesn’t know if she’ll be allowed to go back to that after this. I told her I used to be a teacher at the Vet Tech Institute, and she said, “Oh, isn’t that funny, I work at a tech school too!”
Funny how that happens so often to me–that I have things in common with strangers. I guess she’s not a stranger any more! She said she loved every age with her kids, and I said I did too.
I miss my kids so much!
I’ll write them on Monday.
I wonder if my mother will do the necessary paperwork to visit.
Dubya never filled his out.
Shocker.
Ellen is all wound up. I am waiting for Common Room so I can see if I have any money on my books. I sincerely doubt it, but we’ll see.
Ellen is imitating cats yowling for some reason–it’s fairly annoying.
She says she misses CO Emmett– I do NOT.
She had like half a bag of coffee today–I predict I’m not going to get much sleep tonight.
I wish my skin didn’t look so bad–I’m getting very, very sick of it. I’ve tried four different kinds of soap so far–I’m onto Dial now. What 37 year old has this terrible acne?!
Me.
That’s who.
I’m blaming it on the pollution from the cow farm. Maybe it’s stress. Who knows?
After Common Room:
Ellen is freaking out over a book I got–screaming and shit. It’s called “Lucifer Exposed: The Devil’s Plan to Destroy Your Life.” She’s having a FIT–yelling that I’m going to somehow invite the Devil into my life. So the truth comes out–she DOES believe. It’s by Derek Prince.
I dare say the Devil has been in my life for some time already, and hers too, and that’s why we ended up in prison, so why not learn how to get him out?
This book says that pride is the worst sin, and what affected Lucifer.
“The archangel Lucifer was so beautiful he became proud. The transition from archangel Lucifer to Satan was made complete through his pride.”
“Since the children have flesh and blood, he (Jesus) too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and freed those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” (Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV)
“The more God encounters pride, the more He Himself displays humility.”
“He himself (Jesus) bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (1 Peter 2:24 NIV)
“For Christ died for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:18 NIV)
“Whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.” (See Luke 14:11)
“Anyone who is in rebellion against God is automatically under the authority of Satan. He is in the ‘domain of darkness.’”
“We have only two options: we can either be in Satan’s territory or in God’s territory. There is no third option.”
“The devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.” (Ephesians 6:13)
“We are citizens of the kingdom of God; therefore, we are at war with Satan.”
This book has a picture on the front of an apple with a bite out of it, and Ellen saw it, unfortunately, while she was eating an apple. She shrieked, “Now I don’t even want to eat this!” and told the neighbors that I am inviting the devil into my life.
They told her not to worry, because I like God.
Nice.
Then she farted and told me it would put hair on my chest. I told her she’s growing enough for both of us. The joke there is that she announced earlier that her nipple is growing a long black hair.
The things that come out of this woman’s mouth!
She wants me to read the book she is finishing up that has murder, incest, and porn in it, so I told her I would if she reads my “Lucifer Exposed” book.
That gets me out of THAT one.
Haha–victory!
Back to my book.
It says that guilt is Satan’s most powerful weapon against humankind, and prejudice is one of the most powerful strongholds of Satan. (Prejudice = having your mind made up before you know the facts.)
“Stand therefore, having girded your waist with the truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit.” (Ephesians 6:14-18)
“Just as faith protects our heart, hope protects our mind against depression and discouragement.”
Isn’t that the truth.
I was without hope for a very long time after Ethan and Kaylee died. Hope of any kind of good future, hope that my life meant anything, any kind of hope, really. Even after I got remarried and had Tiger, I still thought in my heart that I didn’t deserve good things, and let my PTSD control my whole life, and then my addiction when I couldn’t take the nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks anymore.
Pure survival mode, with no faith at all in a good, gracious, or loving God.
When I first wrote “Kidowed,” I wouldn’t even capitalize the “G” in “God” because I thought He didn’t deserve the respect it denoted!
Like Jim Carrey’s character in “Bruce Almighty,” I thought that God was a mean guy with a magnifying glass, and I was the and He was focusing on. How the devil had me in his clutches! How very grateful I am now that I know the truth.
My life before was not a life worth living.
Now I am happy to be alive.
For over a decade I was spiritually dead inside.
Thank God that He stuck by me, even in my darkest hour, and kept INSISTING over and over and over again that He loved me.
Where would I be without Him?
Of course, I know where, I have been there–Hell on Earth.
“With the heart one believes.” (Romans 10:10)
“Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” (Hebrews 11:1)
“So, on the basis of faith in the heart, we may have hope in the mind. And hope safeguards our minds.”
This book says that what drives Satan back is the Word of God spoken out of our mouths, and references Jesus saying three times, “It is written,” when Satan confronted Him in the wilderness. (Matthew 4:4-10, Luke 4:4-10)
“It is my experience that we have to make use of our four main ways to launch that seventh weapon: prayer, praise, preaching, and testimony.”
Bedtime.
Oh my.
Ellen has such bad gas that neither of us can sleep. She says that her blanket smells like a garbage can full of dirty diapers.
I agree.
She almost peed herself when the CO came by and surprised her with his flashlight and she farted. The urinary near-accident was a result of the endless mirth that followed. We’re trying to analyze what on Earth it is that makes her stink so bad–she says she’s never had this problem before. I think it’s the coffee (freeze-dried) with loads of artificial sweetener in it that she guzzles all day.
She says that last night I got up, grumbling and swearing under my breath, and shut the windows.
I do not remember doing this.
I hope I’m not sleep-walking again. I used to do it during times of extreme stress in my life, but it was always correlated with drinking.
I’m obviously not drinking, so I hope that isn’t it–the thought of me unconsciously walking around creeps me out to no end.
