This is a request post. The Lord has made a particular teaching clear to me; please share it. And I will.

But as this is my blog, I will share it in the perspective of the ongoing drama of my life and the lives of my loved ones. Without sharing any details. The drama of sin and shame and struggle, and trying to overcome and falling back to ground again and again and again.

I want to fly. I want to fly. I lie on my back, maybe on the crackling leaves of autumn most places in the USA, where I live.

Back in Colorado, where I am from, it is getting delightfully colder. Everyone there tired of the summer heat. Everyone wants hoodie weather, cold snaps, and leaves leaves leaves. Pumpkins turning to jack-o-lanterns later in October.

The Melancholy Of Fall

I always looked back, and forward too, during fall. It was beautiful and deadly and so very very hard year after year. Felt like I was in a beautiful gorgeous endless prison I would never escape. Would die there obviously.

Then I did escape, and that’s another story.

I see the sky. I want to go up there. I can’t. I jump up and I cannot make it. Sky stays up and I stay down. I dream of flight and cannot take flight.

Fortunately, Jesus Is In The Business Of Dealing With Messes

The problem is we all try to deal with them ourselves.

Ah life, it is a one way trip. It unrolls on a track, and the stuff we did behind us follows us to where we are now, and has effects that outlive us, and consequences we can’t see, and stuff we never ever thought of when we did what we thought was a great idea at the time.

Some things are actually undoable. You create such a mess you can’t ever clean it up. The government has to occasionally deal with messes like this in the environment. They’re called SuperFund sites. Without going into a lot of research about that, I can personally report once upon a time I worked at a nuclear weapons plant in the cleanup phase. It had basically become a SuperFund site itself. The ultimate disposition of the facility is they destroyed all buildings, roads, and created a VERY LARGE PILE OF DIRT about the size of a four story building roughly.

They continue water and soil testing and you do not visit unless you are authorized to go. It was always that way, but that is not a safe site many many decades and years later.

When I worked there, I used to drive across the site on my way home and see deer bounding across the facility. I wondered how they did in that environment. How are the deer doing?

The point is that site got destroyed; you cannot visit it; the land cannot be used; the land near it cannot be used; and it is in this state DECADES later. What was done to the land is UNDOABLE.

I want to fly. I want to fly. I can’t reach the sky.

I dream of flying. I dream of flying. I wake up in this body of pain; this life of darkness and sickness and fear, in this situation I cannot change and I guess I will die this way some day.

This actually is what drives social media consumption; videos; TV, movies, entertainment and above all video games!!!!

Video Game Addiction

This is real and I was married to a video game addict. It is a large part of what destroyed our life. In the end it affected his work so badly he wasn’t working full work weeks. He skipped a day of work every week because he was staying up so late playing every night.

I was steeped in gamer culture because of this. It is a full on fantasy life. Many do the minimum to interact with reality and keep the bills paid. For many, it is we need to keep roofs over our heads, pay for internet, electricity, or find someone who will do that. Above all we must pay for our games and gaming systems, and this requires we earn moolah or sponge off someone who will pay those bills.

Video game addicts live for coming back home and spending many many hours in front of those games, where they live the fantasy lives they wish they were living in the real world. Is the bottom line of it all.

There are many other addictions. Fantasy is involved in many of them. Escapism. Numb the pain of whatever it is I can’t face.

I Found The Biblical Term For This. It’s Called Sin.

“And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” ~ Romans 7:16-20 NIV.

An amazing study collected stories of the addicted and reported their accounts. One from this study stands out for me:

We forget…we forget even a month ago how bad alcohol had affected us, how we get sick, how we become homeless, how we lose all the money…we forget all that stuff because there are promises that if we stay sober…we gain all of these things back but the obsession is so powerful from day to day that we live with it that all the hard times go out of our mind and we think we can drink like a normal person when in fact we can’t…We take one drink and that’s all we want is more. It’s a terrible disease, it really is.

Wow many similarities huh?

WHAT DO WE DO?????

Paul, Mr. Billy Graham of the Apostles, had this to say about it:

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” ~ Romans 7:24 NIV.

Fortunately he follows it immediately with the answer:

“THANKS BE TO GOD, WHO DELIVERS ME THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD!” ~ Romans 7:25 NIV.

Yay!!! I Think. I Have A Few Things To Say To You About That, Phoenix!!!

You see, DEAR Phoenix, I have been faithfully going to church and reading my Bible and studies and praying until I drop and JESUS JESUS JESUS, and guess what??? Crap is still wrong!!!! I am still me!!!! I still have problems at work and I think this overcoming life is  A FRAUD PHOENIX, and maybe YOU ARE A FRAUD AND JESUS IS A LIAR!!! Promises promises and I am not seeing this in my own life Phoenix!!!!!!

I am trying and praying and it isn’t happening and maybe I should go back to my old life. Whatever that was that wasn’t working either. Maybe you’re not so great! Or your Jesus!!!

Phoenix laughs at you and with you, dear readers. I write these words as I am sure I myself have said them and thought them MANY MANY TIMES!!!!!!

Taken Jesus to task HAD WORDS what were You thinking??? I have personally screamed at HIM, LIAR!!!!!!!!!!

This did not make Him a liar or unfaithful, but it WAS how I felt at the time I screamed it at Him!! More than once!!!!! The things I have said to the Lord and He never thunderbolted me for any of them!!!!!

Jesus Had Words With His Own Father, Actually

He wasn’t all Gandhi and Zen suffering on the cross with people mocking and jeering at Him in unimaginable pain. Suffocating to death slowly in UNBELIEVABLE pain, when His Father withdrew, the Bible records He SCREAMED INTO THE DARKNESS (Mark 15:34):

MY GOD! MY GOD! WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME????????????

That was NOT Namaste!!!!! No no no!!! Or Zen!!!!!

Actually previously, He was kinda CRANKY knowing He was facing death. He cursed a fig tree (Mark 11:12-14), created a ruckus at the Temple, drove out the vendors and overturned their tables (Mark 11:15-17), massively THREW SHADE at His enemies (Mark 12:1-12). When He came close to death, He actually asked to NOT go through with the whole thing! (Mark 35:35-36). He suffered so much His sweat became like drops of blood! (Luke 22:44).

But we do. God IS one of us. Jesus is this person the video speaks of.

“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin.” ~ Hebrews 4:15 NIV.

I am not going to be able to finish this in one shot, so Part II coming very soon.