...I am not praying for my physical healing. And am not at all curious about what ails me.

Why?

You see, I just don’t see the point. As many of you know, the Lord has been so gracious to me all my life and has allowed me to suffer physically (13 years of violent physical, emotional and mental abuse) along with a host of other ailments. I’ve never really been a very healthy person. As a matter of fact, I’ve always been quite sickly and have had numerous serious illnesses and have been hospitalized, being near to death with other diseases since I was 20 years old. It seems I’ve never had a very strong immune system; so viruses and such that most people either don’t know they have or will recover on their own, well…they usually put me in the hospital. So none of this is very new to me.

Because of all this, honestly, I’m tired. I really am. I’m tired in every way, physically, emotionally, mentally and even spiritually and I just really want to go Home. I know this place (earth) is not my Home and I’ve never looked at it as a place where I want to lengthen my stay.

I know this might seem odd, as I am a wife and mother and I know most people don’t want to leave their spouses or children, but I am willing. I know most people want to stay around and see their children grow up, get married and see their grandchildren and enjoy them. Although all these things are nice, they are not necessary to me and is not a great desire. Should the Lord choose to bless me with such, I am eternally grateful. But if the Lord chooses to take me Home before I experience any of these things, I am also eternally grateful and completely satisfied.

I didn’t grow up like most of you and probably not like most people you know. I grew up alone, scared and always only have God as my source of….well, everything. I’ve never loved anyone or anything more than I love God and I’ve never had any attachments that are greater than the one I have with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So, unlike many people, I don’t actually pray for my healing on this side of Heaven, as I don’t weep or hunger to stay here in this body any longer than is necessary.

I understand that much of what I just shared may not sound “normal”, but I’m sure I’ve never been accused of being normal. :-) I am also sure, some of this might sound morbid, but I assure you, it is not. I am not depressed and am not sitting here, hoping that I die. What I am saying is the same thing Asaph expressed in Psalm 73:25-26,

I will continue to actively seek the wisdom and counsel from God my Father and all the physicians He’s placed in my life for my care and health. I will continue to rejoice in anything God my Father chooses for me, whether it be healing and restoration on this side of Heaven or not. Therefore, I have chosen to see going to the Mayo Clinic as a mission trip, as that is more meaningful to me, rather than for personal healing. Like I said, physical suffering is neither new to me, nor a big deal. Eternal things have always been a bigger deal to me and is what consumes me….God’s ministry of reconciliation.

This is the major reason why I have not wanted to go to the Mayo Clinic and have made so light of it. I don’t think that my physical healing is a big enough of a reason for all the trouble of going to the Mayo Clinic. But for the sake of the Gospel? For the sake of exhorting, bringing the comfort and peace of Christ to the lost and to fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who also may be suffering? Yes, for the sake of both, I will joyfully go. These reasons are enough: for the Gospel, for the encouragement of the saints, and for my precious and beautiful family whom the Lord has blessed me with beyond measure. Even if it were just for the comfort of my husband and children, and my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, yes it is enough for me. For God has given them to me as precious gifts, which I am and will be eternally grateful for.

The Lord Jesus went to Jerusalem (Luke 18:31-33), not because it was going to make Him feel good. But He went for our sakes, for our salvation and for our deliverance. Jesus never took His focus off His Father’s plans. He never allowed anything or anyone here on earth to deter Him or even cause Him to delay in fulfilling His Father’s will. I believe that’s what it means to have our lives completely hid in Christ. To have our personal desires be dead and only alive in the desires and complete will of God our Father.

Thank you again for all your prayers for me and for my family. I would like to ask you all to please pray in agreement with me that God will open many doors while I am in MN to preach the Gospel and even encourage tired saints who are suffering. Perhaps I may be used to exhort fellow brothers and sisters to stay the course until the Lord calls them Home. And please pray especially for my darling husband. I can’t imagine how difficult all this has been for him. Just thinking of his suffering in all this, breaks my heart and encourages me all the more to go joyfully to the Mayo Clinic – for my darling husband’s peace and comfort.

I've been meaning to write for a long while now. I've had so many things swirling around my head. Thoughts about sharing, and confessing recent sins and how God, as always, faithfully and lovingly disciplines me and teaches me. I wanted to share with all of you how good and amazingly awesome our Father God is and how He has incredible compassion on us because He remembers that we are only dust. There are so many things that I've wanted to tell all of you. So many things in my heart; my personal desires, my struggles, the truth and power of God's presence in the midst of these things...so many things to share and seemingly so little time to do it.

Which thought was better? Which lesson have I learned that would be so encouraging to others? What should I write and when should I do it? Who am I writing to? What will they need to hear today that will impart to them much grace, to encourage them to stay the course (Ephesians 4:29)?


Therefore, here I am today, sharing with you what the LORD has done for me and why I praise His holy name. I want you to know why my hope and my every desire is found only in Christ Jesus alone. When all else and everyone else fails me, the Lord uses these times to remind me that HE alone is my Help and my Deliverer and He will not delay in delivering me from all my troubles (Psalm 40:16-17).

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
~ Psalm 103:13-14

The key phrase here is: "to those who fear Him." And that is who I'm writing to today. Are you one of those? If so, walk with me, as I share.

There are many people all over the world who are going through difficult times, scary times; facing life and death situations and experiencing heart break after heart break - with each beat coming so close together, one can hardly catch one's breath before the next wave of trials seem to pound upon their already frail and weakened state.


What do we fear? Do we fear rejection? Do we fear loss of favor? Do we fear we'll be forgotten? Do we fear that those God has put around us, to help and protect us - will not? Do we fear man's attempts to thwart God's ultimate plan for each of our lives? Do we fear death? Or do we fear that we must go on living; living without hope and without understanding or significant purpose?

Presently, I am weakened in every way. My body continues to fight against me. My mind seems to be fading faster than a runaway train. Emotionally, I feel that I can barely hold myself up, let alone anyone else.

We just found out that I have to go to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. My first appointment is on Monday, August 10^th. I have been told I will be there at least a week, and will know better after my first consultation with the team of doctors up there how long I will have to stay. I haven't wanted to go. And to make things worse, spiritually, I've been bombarded with the enemy using those closest to me, even my brothers and sisters in Christ - to hurt me. There seems to be no end to the barrage of battering.

I'm tired and I want to give up. I want to say, "Okay, you win! Everybody and everything that has been beating against me, tearing me down, fighting me with every opportunity - you win, all of you, you win. I quit, I give up! Now leave me alone...


Sometimes all this fighting seems senseless. Why? Why should I go on and fight? What for? What's the purpose? It's too hard! And it seems to be too much trouble for something that's so unimportant and of little significance - that is, my life. I'm only one person. One very small, not so smart, not so talented, not so anything that I'm sure all my fighting makes - not so much sense, because I make, not so much of a difference.

As my flesh works with my adversary, Satan; their loud, boisterous lies are overtaken and completely demolished by the strong whisper of my Heavenly Father who says to me:

And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the Way, walk in it," when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left. Then you will defile your carved idols overlaid with silver and your gold-plated metal images. You will scatter them as unclean things. You will say to them, "Be gone!"
~ Isaiah 30:20-22

Then I remembered, who or what do I fear more than God? Absolutely no one and absolutely nothing. For the LORD who is God, alone is worthy to be feared, worthy to be praised and alone is worthy of all my love and trust; for He alone can never fail me. When I look to others to always be there for me, to protect me, to consider my best; then I have sinned by creating for myself, with my own hands, idols - idols overlaid with silver and gold-plated metal. I can't and never should expect another fallible human-being like myself to faithfully protect me and love me. No man or woman was ever made to do that. Only God Himself is faithful and can never fail. Only God alone can always protect, comfort and seek our best. That's why He alone deserves supremacy in our lives. And that's why we all should love Him with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength. Because God alone is capable of being God. I am not, and neither is anyone else in my life.

Only God alone is untainted by Satan's lies and God alone cannot and will never be used as Satan's tool to damage our lives. But we can and have been. We are all susceptible to Satan's deceptions - if we're not paying attention and staying in constant prayer (Matthew 26:41). All of us, including me, can be and have in the past allowed ourselves to be used by our enemy to hurt those we love; our family members and those in the body of Christ. Why? Because we didn't stay in prayer. Why didn't we stay in prayer? Because we sometimes become so casual with our relationship with God that we forget that He is the LORD God Almighty, He is righteous, He is just, He is the Judge and He can and will call an accounting for every careless word, and every thoughtless deed (Matthew 12:36, 2 Corinthians 5:10).

We forget that God is holy, He is righteous, therefore He must punish sin. We want God to be fluffy and ooshy and gooshy, then we call that love. But if we're honest with ourselves, we know that while it may be warmth of affection; "love" that is safe, calculating and always considers the benefit of self before acting, has not the very nature of love in it.

God is love and He suffered Himself; His One and Only Son for our sakes. There's nothing fluffy, warm, fuzzy or ooshy gooshy about that. We bring no benefit to God and we can't make Him greater than He already Is. We do however bring Him pain, grief and sorrow. We make Him angry when we rebel and disobey (Psalm 7:11) - every single day. He could and should smite all of us, but in His compassion and endless mercy, He saves us instead and calls many to be His own. And this is why we ought to always fear Him, as we should always keep in the forefront of our minds that God is a God of righteousness, holiness and pours out His wrath against all evildoing and evildoers. Then it will be easier for us to remember to run with utter gratitude, relief and eternal thanksgiving to the One who showers us with good, even when we have hurt Him so and are more deserving of His wrath rather than His mercy, compassion and love.

Therefore the LORD waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the LORD is a God of justice; blessed are those who wait for Him.
~ Isaiah 30:18

Most holy and gracious Father God in Heaven, I truly pray that Your name will be hallowed today - especially amongst Your children. Teach us to live such holy lives that the light of Christ within us will truly shine for all the world to see. Let us not bicker, bite and devour one another as the world does. Let us not fight for our names to be hallowed, but for Your name alone to be exalted. Please Father God, You are the God of peace; protect Your children from the enemy. Keep us from allowing one another to be used as Satan's bat in which to beat one another, especially those who are already so weak by many other trials.

O Lord God, I'm so very tired. I'm tired in every way, as You know. Give me strength to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. And help all of us, whom You've called by Your name to be mindful of the precious Name that we bear; and that everything we say and do demonstrates the position He takes in our lives.

Help us Father, to not put one another on pedestals on which none of can stand. Remind us Lord that you alone are high and lifted up. When I put too much trust in other people, even my brothers and sisters in Christ, I am always injured - but I know that to a certain extent, I have caused some of this pain upon myself by giving another human being the place of total trust and supremacy in my life. Help us all gracious Lord to remember that You alone can and will never fail us. And teach us Father to love one another in spite of our failings, just as You have loved us perfectly in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

I had planned on writing something else today. But I feel that what I will share today instead, was by God, and far more eternally important than an update on me.

Many of you are faithfully praying for me and my family and have written to me asking for updates on how I'm doing. I cannot fully express how much your prayers mean to me and how much I see God answering your prayers on my behalf. You've given me such a great gift. I thank God for all of you with my whole heart. ♥

Because I can't write to all of you personally, I had planned on writing today about my latest struggles and how God continues to deliver me from them all; at least spiritually (being the most important), emotionally and mentally.

I also wanted to thank both my sisters Heidi and Hope who awarded me with The True Heart blog award.

But as the LORD woke me up very early this morning to have a six hour praise and quiet time with Him, He also brought me news that broke my heart. Today, I found out at our sister Pat's blog site, our sister Rachel Barkey was called Home, last Thursday, June 2, 2009 at age 37 after five very challenging years of battling cancer.

For those of you who missed my last post introducing you to our dear sister, Rachel Barkey, you can read the post HERE. And if you also missed her last public exhortation on why we are here, then please be sure not to miss this Christ-exalting video again. It is 55 minutes long, but I assure you, if you watch it, you'll know that these 55 minutes will be the best minutes you'll probably spend today. So come with me now and worship our Lord Jesus Christ, as we hear our Lord speak through our sister Rachel who is now Home with our Father God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, the Son.

In this video, Rachel shares what defines her: only her relationship with Jesus. She also shares the four principles (in detail) that have helped shape her, they are:

Rachel once wrote in one of her letters, that Dying Is Hard, especially because no one has died and come back to leave us instructions on how to do it. While this is true, I believe God has used our sister Rachel to teach us this very thing; as she invited the world to travel with her as she wrote letters and spoke in the video you just watched; all done, while she was dying or rather more accurately for children of God, falling asleep [1 Thessalonians 4:13-14].

I thank God for Rachel, a woman I've never met. A sister I've never hugged. But just the same, have prayed for and loved and am looking forward to seeing when the Lord calls me Home.

I believe the Lord fulfilled in her, the same spirit He fulfilled in the Apostle Paul who wrote:

Yes, there are no instructions on how to die per se, but I believe the Lord gave us those instructions both in the above Scripture passage, as well as in our sister Rachel Barkey, who not only lived well in Christ Jesus our Lord, but also died well in the same Savior with Whom she is now in the presence of, and completely delivered from all her trials and tribulations here on earth.

Please pray for her family, especially her husband Neil, and her young children Quinn (7) and Kate (5).

For more encouragement on how to live and die with your eyes fixed solely on Christ Jesus, visit her site and read her letters.

Rachel Barkey: Death Is Not Dying - A Faith That Saves

God bless you all. I love you dearly.