Healing a Broken System

I am posting today in response to this post . (I recommend reading it if you have the time as this is where I'm jumping off from, though I ended up going a slightly different direction than I first thought I was headed...) We have been praying for Aimee's healing and for strength for the whole family. Nolan's mom is my friend Janis.

You may or may not know my own "radical" views on health etc. I keep pretty quiet because I don't feel it's my job to get anyone to see my point of view. I figure my friends and family have the right to make their own choices regarding how they live. I'll offer my opinion if it's asked for. But, today reading Nolan's post I felt like saying a few things.

Aimee's situation was desperate. With a large mass in her chest that had collapsed one lung and was putting pressure on her heart, having lost way too much weight and hardly able to breath. Her family was desperate for solutions. Nolan mentions at first he was happy to agree to the drugs. Anything to help his wife.

To a much lesser degree I have felt the same way in the past. For the first six years of his life Brannon had asthma. This disease affects a number of our family members. I noticed him wheezing as soon as he started to crawl. I'd had suspicions before because of a couple things I'd noticed with him. But I knew for sure one day when we were playing on the bed, he was crawling around laughing and wheezing. I knew the sound well from hearing my mom and brother all my life. It was devastating to admit it out loud though. Saying "My baby has asthma" was so difficult. Then came illness after illness, every cold he got turned to nights awake making sure he was still breathing.

The worst part though was that I couldn't get a doctor to listen to me and believe me. Somehow at every doctor's visit he was breathing just fine. When we went to the ER they said "Don't label him with that disease. It's just a virus causing temporary wheezing'' No matter what I said to any doctor they didn't listen. One doctor even said "Well, he wheezes when he runs on grass. He's allergic to grass, let's get him some allergy medication" I had just explained various situations, NOT just the one. I said "What about his wheezing when he laughs?" The response was, "I don't know why he would do that, but for the grass let's try this..." Aaarrrgggghhhh!!!! Was what I was thinking about then. Needless to say I did not fill a prescription for allergy medication.

It never occurred to me to go to a naturopath at that point, mostly because it was not covered by insurance and we could not afford it.

Finally when Brannon was 3 1/2 I found a doctor (a respiratory specialist) who listened to me and believed me. At the time Brannon was to the point where his passages were so inflamed he was wheezing almost all the time. I gladly accepted the drugs offered.

As time went on and I realized the side effects of the drugs were to weaken his respiratory system further I was horrified. But, I didn't know what else to do. I kept giving my son the drugs even though I was tortured by what I was doing to him. Eventually through a set of circumstance that I won't go into today we began to see a naturopath. He prescribed a series of homeopathics for Brannon, which I gave him while still keeping up his other drugs, but I didn't see any changes. I wonder now if it was because of the weakness caused by the drugs that I didn't see any effects from the homeopathics. But, I was not brave enough (some would say stupid enough) to wean him off the drugs while trying the other. Then, God healed Brannon and it wasn't an issue any more. His pediatrician looked over all his info and said to take him off the medication but to expect to need it again when he enters puberty (Ha! I don't think so! I'm not accepting that word of doom after all the miracles I've seen:)

We also at that time discovered a number of food allergies and changed our diet accordingly, seeing a big change in our overall health, though it took quite a while, but we were pretty far down the illness road as far as the allergies were concerned, it took our bodies a while to recover. Which makes me wonder, if we had had holistic care available to us years earlier than we were able to afford it on our own, would we have had to walk through some of the devastating things? I agree with Nolan. There's no money in holistic care. There's no money in training our medical doctors in nutrition. There's no certainty of an immediately visible result when you set out to heal the whole body instead of to mask a symptom. The general public is also trained to expect immediate relief from symptoms.

Now, understand that I am not saying we don't need doctors etc. I'm just saying the system is not there for the people who are seeking care. It's not designed around making people well. I could go on about agriculture and education and so on, but really what do we expect. The world is a broken place, it's going to operate in a broken manner, when left to itself. The thing is, we, the Body of Christ are not supposed to be leaving it to itself. We are not designed to sit in a pew and wait for the "rapture bus".

"For all creation is waiting eagerly for the manifestation of the sons of God" Or "For all creation is waiting eagerly for that day when God will reveal who His children really are." Romans 8:19 And from one of my favorite passages "I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of His power for us who believe Him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. Now He is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else in this world or in the world to come. And God has put all things under the authority of Christ, and He gave Him this authority for the benefit of the church. And the church is His body; it is filled with Christ, who fills everything everywhere with His presence." Ephesians 1:19-23

Understand when I say church, I don't mean a gathering in a building on Sunday morning. I mean every believer filled with the Spirit of God, the literal body of Christ living a life filled with LOVE and Power walking the streets every day, changing the world as we know it. If "everything everywhere" is filled with His presence the world would look a lot different than it does now. WE are the carriers of His presence. I've heard it said that Christians should be the most creative people on the planet. It's true, we have the Creator of all living in us. We have the literal mind of Christ (according to my bible). That means creativity and life-giving power in EVERY arena of life. Medicine, government, media, everything.

So today----

I pray that you will begin to understand the incredible greatness of His power for us who believe Him!!

Images From All-Night Prayer

We have some of the sweetest times when we gather to keep an all-night vigil. Our last time, Oct 23, was no exception. I only took pictures at the beginning of the evening, so I didn't get everybody who came and went. I was so excited Nate was able to come for a few hours:)

Rowdy and Nate playing for us. Elizabeth, drawing...

Chad's painting station--he set it up in case any kids wanted to paint then ended up using it himself. That's one picture I should have gotten, his amazing finger painting. I had my stuff out too and painted, I'll have to download a picture some time...

Danita drawing

Janis, Lorna and Elijah (Alisa and Chad too)

Bear

Chad and Janis. We had a great "drum" circle sometime in the night. There was only one drum, Bear was on it at the time I think. The rest of us slapped legs and clapped hands. It was so fun how everyone just started beating out rhythms at the same time :)

Rowdy and Nate again

Those of us remaining early in the morning were laying around the floor, huddled under blankets. Janis, of course, started the morning by throwing a pillow at Bear. Before long the seven of us were lobbing pillows at each other laughing like crazy. While still laying on the floor. :D That was at 6:30, and somehow we still managed to be late for pre-service prayer at 8:30. Oops. :P

The next couple of days after an all-nighter are always challenging because of lack of sleep. That one night seems to affect the whole following week for me. At the same time there are often spiritual or physical breakthroughs that follow the fasting of time and sleep. While those are not why we do it, it's always fun to see.

Deep Fried Friday

Welcome to 'Deep Fried Friday' a monthly worship service

hosted by -------

Jenn Maynard

(as told to Sarah Stiewig)

We started Deep Fried Friday (DFF) to create a service young people were involved in. Our goal is to create an atmosphere where identity is cultivated, where we encourage people to step into what God's calling them to do and be. We want to partner with what God is doing in the people who come.

Each month we have a different speaker and we encourage people to come up and give testimonies. It's a free and comfortable atmosphere where people can worship and just be themselves. There are people painting and we have drawing supplies so you can do prophetic art. We leave plenty of room up front so people can dance. I love the service because it's a fun and safe place to be where we know who we are and who each other is in God. We trust each other and we trust ourselves. We are able to recognize each other's gifts and give each other the opportunity to move in them.

We are always listening for the Holy Spirit's leading for the whole service; we want to know what He's doing and where He's leading us. Wherever He's moving is where we want to go, if He's talking about something that's what we want to talk about. It could so easily become just another church service where we do the same thing every single time we get together and it just becomes a repetitive thing. Instead we want it to be full of life. I find that the whole month leading up to DFF I'll be going through all this stuff and not know why until the night of the service. Then I'll realize I needed to get that breakthrough in my own life because there is someone there that needs it.

Treasure Hunting

Another post about treasure hunts :) This is for a newsletter I am working on that will be mostly testimonies of good things God is doing. It's meant as an encouragment for the whole body of Christ in our valley. I will be featuring our monthly Friday night worship service and the treasure hunts. Eventually I hope to also interview the folks who are running the healing rooms in town and include that as well. This article will be part of the first letter and is an introduction to treasure hunts. I couldn't get it to copy and paste for some reason so I just spent a lot of time re-typing it and I spell-checked but did not proof read. I must get back to the kids and the kitchen and...so forgive any typos etc :)

Treasure Hunting

Bear Perrin (as told to Sarah Stiewig)

A "treasure hunt" is a fun, easy form of street evangelism that was inspired by the book "The Ultimate Treasure Hunt" by Kevin Dedmon. Kevin is the director of Bethel Church's Firestorm ministry in Redding , CA. After reading his book and participating in a couple of treasure hunts at conferences in Redding we saw that it was an easy way to hear God's heart for individual people.

God is eager to touch people's hearts and lives through us, all it takes is listening to Him. All it takes is seeing what He wants to do and acting accordingly. Prayer is finding out God's heart about a person, subject or situation. Then after we find His heart, He asks us to go do or declare something about what He's shown us. Treasure hunts will show you just how easy it is to hear God's heart for someone and watch their lives transform before your eyes. It is amazing to see people come alive, both on the receiving and the giving side of a treasure hunt.

At the start of a treasure hunt we meet and worship. We ask God to show us who is on His heart by giving us clues about that particular person. We write the clues down as our "treasure map" as they come to mind. Clues can be a person's appearance, name, location. what they need prayer for or other miscellaneous. I think the biggest obstacle to this process is trying to think of good clues. In 1 Corinthians 2 it says "No one can know the what anyone else is really thinking except that person alone, and no one can know God's thoughts except God's own Spirit. And God has actually given us his Spirit (not the world's spirit) so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us...But we can understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ." (vs 11-12 and 16b). So, knowing we have the mind of Christ, we get to trust that when we ask God for clues the things that come to mind are from Him. I have never been on a treasure hunt where something doesn't happen with the clues that God gives us. Ever. As silly as they may be.

Here is just one example of how God comes through: It was First Friday art walk where people come and walk the streets to check out the stores and hang around, it's a big social thing. It's a really great time for treasure hunts. We've seen a lot of people who say they were raised Christian but without proof of who God is in their lives they've "fallen away" from their faith. We get to prove that God's thinking about them, so ti's been phenomenal. My son, Zachary, on his map had 'pink pants' in the appearance category and in miscellaneous he had 'green'. I had 'star symbol' in miscellaneous and 'left knee' and left eye' under prayer needs, someone else on our team had the location. A guy walked in front of us limping pretty badly, so I walked up to him and introduced myself. I told him about the treasure hunt and said, "I believe you're God's treasure", and he looked at me funny. I asked if he was limping because of his left knee. He said yes. I showed him that i had left knee on my map, and told him I believe God gave us these clues about people he wants to touch, and that I would love to pray for him. He said "No!" and turned and walked away. As he was walking off I was praying for him anyway, just silently.

Zach came up to me and said, "Dad, there's the guy on my treasure map." I asked him how he knew and he said he had pink pants on his map. There was a guy wearing pink board shorts and a green shirt (remember Zach had 'green' on his list too). We walked up to the guy and introduced ourselves and explained the treasure hunt. While we were talking I had a word of knowledge that had a leg length discrepancy. He was telling us he was raised a Christian but didn't really follow those beliefs any more. He said he believes God is like a big wheel, the hub of the wheel is people and no matter what belief system you follow all the spokes lead to the same god. I said "You know, that's an interesting theory, but if you believe Jesus is one of the spokes then that theory doesn't' work very well because Jesus said he is the way, the truth and the life. I have proof because Jesus walks in signs and wonders all the time. I believe you have a leg length discrepancy." He asked what I meant. I told him his left leg was half an inch shorter than the other. He asked how i knew that and i said I believe God is telling me so He can touch it. We also handed him the treasure map and asked if any of the things on it were something he was dealing with. He looked at it and said, "Are you guys following me around or somethings!?" He told us he had very little vision in his left eye because he had worked with a friend who was a glass blower and stared at the torch for two days which ruined his vision.

I had him sit down on the ground with his back against a wall to see what his legs looked like. His friends were looking on as we put our hands on his legs and said "In the name of Jesus, leg grow." And right there and then the left leg came out even with the other. He kind of freaked out and and went, "Um, um, um! The only way I'm really going to be able to test this it ti, um, stand up and move around." So he stood up and moved around and said, "Oh man, what did you do? What did you do?" Then he looks up and goes, "No way!" and I said, "You can see now can't you?" Then he started reading street signs all over the place.

This is just one of many, many stories of God's goodness.

Off To Redding :)

I get to go to a conference at Bethel church this weekend with a bunch of really fun friends (starting with my dear Mommy!) I'm super duper excited!! It's almost a tradition (Yikes! That word can be a bad word or a good word depending on the situation and your perspective) for me to go down there every February. For some reason it just seems easier for me to make it to this one than to the June or October conference, I think that must be in my head though, :)

We are headed out tomorrow and we have a busy morning so I have to make sure I get everything ready today. The laundry is all accounted for, the dishes are close (until I cook today anyway) and I need to make sure my fam has some meals in the fridge for the next three days. And all my clothes need to be chosen and packed, everything but the toothbrush in fact. I have ducks, chickens and rabbits to feed (and little boys:) And Joshua talked me into putting eggs in the incubator. And Brannon is sick with a bad cold, so I have lots of sitting and holding him and getting juice, and bugging him to drink it, and ferrying blankets and pillows from the bed to the couch and the couch to the bed... I am VERY glad the laundry is already done.

In the morning we'll get everything loaded up and head to town. I'm meeting my sister for an appointment she has and we'll hang out with her until it's time for my therapy(or as Nate would say 'torture') session with Bear. It's been two weeks since the last one, he wanted to see how my muscles would respond to a week without him. I was supposed to do some exercises on my own this week. SUPPOSED to. Ahem. I DID them ok! Sheesh. Once. Which is all I was supposed to do. IF...

There is that if.

If I was able to push myself as hard as he pushes me. If not, I was to do them all again at the end of the week. Well, I was not feeling so hot the day I did my exercises. So, needless to say I found myself saying "Ok, I'm DONE with that one." Some tiny corner of my brain was probably saying "Uh, how many of those did you do? Are you sure you don't have a couple more in you?" But this was way too tentative an approach for the irritated part of my brain that was in control at the moment. Did I behave and do them again a few days later? No. I did not. Honestly Friday I completely forgot. And Saturday I Almost completely forgot. Almost. We had to move Joshua's party from Sunday to Saturday at the last minute because Nate found out he had to work Sunday. So I was swamped with cake and casseroles and frosting and...

Excuses. One and all.

So I don't know how I'll do tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty wimpy anyway. Due to recurring sinus inflammation, and general wimpiness, I haven't been walking much, or riding my bike at all. Which means I'm not making progress near as fast as I was in the fall. Disheartening to say the least. I'm hoping the sunshine will give me a boost of spirits and I'll get off my behind...oh. Wait. Hasn't it been sunny for a week already???? But, the sinuses... Aaaarrrggghhh!!

Ok, how did I get on that subject? I was talking about Redding. Exciting stuff! And FRIENDS! Mom, Joanne, Jack, Janis, Rowdy, Bear, and Lorna. And me. Yaay! I can't wait to be sitting in line, laughing with everybody, waiting to crowd into the sanctuary and laugh some more, and dance, and listen to great teaching, and laugh some more, and maybe misbehave a tiny bit (you know, pass notes with Janis, that kind of thing)...

:D

Speaking of things to do... Shouldn't I be DOING them about now???

See you next week.

Our Weekend

If you are bored by the trivial details of someone else's life, you may want to skip this one :)

I had a lovely treat Friday when Natey stayed home from work. It was a planned ahead of time that he would take the day off in order to attend a marriage seminar together this weekend. It has made the weekend so lovely and long that when I started typing this Saturday evening I had forgotten (again!) that we had a whole day left :)



The marriage seminar was on video and was called "Laugh your way to a better marriage". It was great fun. Some issues were frankly and explicitly addressed that have been avoided in church culture in general and so many of us looked at each other afterward and said "Finally!" It was a good time all around and we had some great conversations come out of it.



After the Saturday morning session we hung around talking to friends for a while, then headed home to grab some lunch. Our plan for the afternoon was to get ready for Joshua's birthday present which we were picking up that afternoon. He's been asking for the same thing for months. Something unexpected for him, my boy who is not such a big animal person asked for a pet bunny. A brown bunny with straight ears (the specification on ears came because Mama loves lops and the boy feels a proper bunny has ears that stand up). Then he changed his mind and decided he wanted a bunny that looked like his stuffed bunny. Which happened to be a dutch. But I couldn't for the life of me find a dutch rabbit within easy driving distance. I suppose we would have come across one eventually, but little boys aren't the most patient creatures in my experience. So I also searched for an alternative. I found a girl who'd been doing 4H for quite a while ready to downsize her herd. She had lovely, pedigreed mini-rexes for only 10 dollars each. I presented this alternative to Joshua and he agreed this is what he would like to do. He very specifically asked for a "mama" rabbit. The day before we were to go pick up his bunny I overheard a conversation that enlightened me as to his gender preference. He wanted an actual MAMA bunny, with babies in her tummy so he could soon enjoy funny little baby bunnies. Ahem.



Well, his Mama had to explain to him this would not be the case. But...



:D



Since Mama has a big soft spot for bunnies...she agreed to purchase a "papa" bunny to make the plan for baby bunnies possible. This plan was agreeable to the munchkin. So today we came home with a lovely black doe (there weren't any brown ones, but he fell in love with the black one the instant he laid eyes on her, so it's all good) and a very cute chocolate tortoise buck (it's a nice orange color with a bit of chocolate shading). They are super, super cute and super soft and nice sweet bunnies who are fun to hold. Hopefully I will have some pictures of bunny and little boy cuteness to show off soon.



I survived the half hour drive and back tolerably well. The drive back was much better, on the way there a certain little boy was so excited as to be unbearably loud and rowdy, at least for the close quarters of a car. Once we got the bunnies settled in I started to work on some writing while the boys played outside in the mud. Then the phone rang...



It was my mom and she said, "Are you on your way?"



Huh? Oh Shoot!!!! HOW ON EARTH DID I FORGET MY BROTHER'S BIRTHDAY PARTY TONIGHT?????? Good thing my folks only live a mile away. It was definitely a red-face moment though. I remembered up until some unknown moment Saturday when everything but the present moment was apparently completely erased from my brain. But, we had a great time, enjoyed dinner with our family and wished my brother and his wife happy birthday.



Home again. Baths and bed for the boys. Nate had a friend over and I worked on a bit of transcription, then moved on to blogging and finally to reading and vegging. Went to bed at a decently early hour.

I enjoyed church immensely yesterday morning. Afterward we took a trip to Medford for Nate to run an errand. We all enjoyed some lunch together and a couple of stores. We came home with a few new craft supplies and had a nice quiet evening at home.

And there you have it, our eventful (for us :) weekend...

Lovin' This!

http://www.ibethel.tv/watch/62:3:4

This is a sermon by Larry Randolph given at Bethel Church in Redding, CA last month. Lovin it! He talks about how much God loves us, how he dreamed each one of us billions of years ago, how all of heaven is watching and waiting(cheering us on!) to see if we will reach for the amazing potential we have in Christ... Anyway, good stuff. If you need encouragement today, just turn this on while you're doing whatever and have a listen:)

Bits From the Church Conference

Ok, Matt:) I'll respond to your prompts. My favorite speaker was Larry Randolph. I'm very excited to go to a conference if either he or Kris Vallotton is speaking. ;-) What can I say, I like the funny ones...

I love Larry's personality and how he can make you laugh until you cry, but then you're chewing on what he said for days afterward (at least!).

Kris was my second favorite, (cause Larry was there, lol).

Did I get what I was hoping for out of the conference? Yep. I had tons of fun and I love God even more than I did a week ago. Plus I got to hear lots of way awesome teaching which is even now encouraging me in my faith. And have a blast during the worship times. And I got to drink lots of coffee, hang out with Mom and Vicki, feel a tiny bit silly crocheting while waiting in lines (only cause mom was knitting and Vicki was crocheting too so there we were all in a row, teehee) and bring home a Sons of Korah cd... all in all an enjoyable experience.

I think the thing that's impacting me the most right now is coming from Larry talking about obedience to God's voice, even in the smallest things(it wasn't the point of his message, just a stop along the way, but it really stuck to me, probably because there's a couple things God's told me to do that I've been pretty slack about listening too, cause they're not "spiritual" , sheesh, you'd think I'd have a clue by now--It's all spiritual!). It's kind of a "duh!" But sometimes we get so caught up in listening for the 'big' stuff we forget to listen when He tells us small things. I'm still cracking up over Larry telling us God shows up in his room one time when he's sick and saying "You haven't been drinking much water, have you?" You'll have to listen to that one Matty, its a good one...

And Leif (pronounced layf) Hetson...Wow, the guy's been through so much, and he's up there with a huge smile on his face the whole time. One thing he said is really sticking to me. A couple months ago he had a large tumor removed from his abdomen. So, he's up there saying, 'I have no tumor, so, I can pray for you and your tumors will be healed'. That so astonished me. It reminds me of Eric Johnson saying you can have victory long before your breakthrough. If we have the faith to believe God no matter what our circumstances are telling us we have the victory in the spirit long before we see the physical manifestation of that victory. So Leif believes he has the grace to pray for tumors and see them healed, even though he was not healed through a supernatural act, but by a doctor's skill, and he carries the spiritual victory for that healing. Don't know if the way I said that makes any sense, but, there you have it.

Everyone (who knew me well enough)was asking if I was coming back in May for the writer's conference. The author of The Shack, William P. Young, is going to be the main speaker. I'm ''not feelin' it'', the whole writing thing that is(long story, don't really want to talk about it). I just said, no I'm trying to go to Africa instead. Nobody then asked why I wasn't planning on the writer's conference. Sweet.

So, Matt, there you have some highlights:) We'll have to actually talk pretty soon, lol!