The most beautiful line in the entire Bible

 "They shall not hurt nor harm in all my Holy Mountain." I don't like just about anything else in there but, this statement sounds like the God I hope to know. I don't know if I'm going to make it into such a place, but just the thought of it brings comfort. God's will is not hurting or harming. Therefore whatever is happening in this world that is hurting or harming is not from God. And if I am able to separate from the evil world around me I want to. No thing of God is going to be predating in heaven. Maybe this vile activity happens here but many vile activities happen here. We can at least avoid some vile activities, and it's not too expensive. Beans rice fruit and salad, it's not going to break the bank. 

I'm tired. I hate seeing those fish documentaries. This universe probably has nothing to do with God. Probably He hears us from very far away, and sometimes intervenes, but overall its like the Bible says..there's a separate god of this world, not a Most High god but some inferior being that has hold of our souls until some specified time. That's probably the thing that forcefully the animals to eat each other and took hold of this place after the Fall. 

Truly that God is the Father of lights, the creative power that makes and protects and saves. We must be literally lost from Him. Or captive under this false god. Probably our captivity only ends when we die.

All these external concepts of God. What can I find out about God just from looking inside? God is not lesser than His creation. If I love my children and would protect them and keep them with me, so too the real God all the more. If I feel horrified by the animals eating each other, on my limited morality, so too must the real God. If I would rather suffer myself than my children, so too the real God. The real God probably has restrained horror over this place.

This place has nothing to do with His kingdom where there is peace, perfection, love, fairness, and gentleness between creatures. This place is a separation from God through which some of God is still felt, but not much. Only a few good things are here from God and the rest are just evil manifestations of this gods world. The abhorrent behavior of the fish clearly is the curse of this world. I can only imagine what fish would be like in heaven.

I don't know what I am supposed to do in a world like this. Love the good, hate the evil. Thats a lot of hating! Perhaps just love and support the good, and wait to die. Nothing of significance can be established here. I can maybe try to do less damage.

I guess I can try to recreate on a small, failing level the beautiful utopia that should be here but isn't. That's basically it, live in some kind of sustained protest against this place and hope Jesus comes back in my lifetime. If He doesn't just accepting that this entire place was just a cesspool of insane, useless suffering, and many horrific things. Taking a calming, eager anticipation of death as perhaps a cessation of awareness about this place. Perhaps even taking confidence in death as a sure end to this world.

Perhaps one inherits the kingdom, perhaps one is eradicated, but finally one no longer is part of the cycle of continual destruction. 

That's something to look forward to.

This World Is Only Suffering

 I reflect back upon my entire life, and, while nature and the scenery contained all the beauty that God probably originally intended for it, in the microcosm of human life, or perhaps animal life - it was just constant competition and suffering. I wish there were some "off" switch whereby I could simply take my husband, myself, and the children out of the world. I am so tired; my whole life I have heard Jesus will come back. I still have no good reason why a loving God would have left us here, except in some extreme anger towards us. I see no sanctification here - only varying levels of torture.

The barbarity of the animal system is paralleled in the human world by the competitive barbarity humans show each other, and resource hoarding. If only it were "just" that, it might not be so intolerable - but of course it extends. There's the endless cycles of "competition" and "deadlines" - with associated anxieties. There's the continual shaming of those who are "behind". Much like the starfish world, there's the continual "eating" of the poor by the wealthy. 

I neither want to eat those below me, torture those beholden to me - nor do I want to be beholden to torturers. It does not help to know that our torturers are also themselves beholden - everyone trapped to everyone in one giant cycle of painful madness. Ultimately no one is responsible it seems - and yet, everyone plays a role in the destruction of the environment, the worsening of social conditions, and the creation of extensive and unlivable situations for all of us. The people running the few institutions here are seemingly abject sociopaths. The fact that they too are victims of the system perpetuating the same torture they experienced upon others is of little solace to those being tortured; it is easy to say "I forgive them" but the issue is of course not with them. The issue is with this world period. This world seems like inescapable torture. 

I haven't the heart to do to my children what was done to me, even though I know it to be for "their benefit". I know I don't really have any choice. I see that even the best of people suffer pain, and this, quite a bit. Even if one is vegan and eats appropriately and even fasts, it is unlikely that they will escape the brutal competition and pain that seems to be this world in its entirety. If they do, they are still left with the observation of those suffering below and around them. They are surely only left with the solace that "this world is brief and ending", though evil. 

This, I guess, is the solace. 

I am no longer able to sleep without PTSD and fearful nightmares of some variety. As though my current world were not difficult enough, at night, even worse fearful outpourings of the mind. 

Were I alone I would probably do as the Mr. Tuttle person do - I would pray and fast, and grow accustomed to a life of hard labor in some grocery store. I would patiently wait for my time to expire, appreciating some elements of nature, trying to help a person here or there, but ultimately just waiting to die out of this place where seemingly no beautiful conclusion can be worked out.

If Chris' job were stressful, I would simply say - quit it dear - come to the homeless shelter with me, and we'll make our way on minimum wage, where there will be no anxiety at all - or, let us sell the house and live in a little, ity bitty trailer, take turns working at the gas station, and just wait for this miserable condition to pass.

But, how trapped we are with the children! It becomes a sort of complete, inescapable insanity at that point. At all costs they must be safeguarded, kept away from this monstrous and abusive place. And yet, in the best of circumstances, we are delaying their abuse. It's only a matter of time before the world, its expectations, its deadlines, its science-math-technology obsession comes crashing down on them. I have no plan to safeguard them at that time. 

We are at the mercy of God, and yet, it is so hard - does God love us? I read this over and over in the Bible, that, at least for some people - God did love them. But we read "friendship with the world is enmity with God". In the Old Testament all the people God loved seemed to get a free pass from suffering outside self-induced sinful suffering. In the New Testament, some kind of complete inversion happened where it was decided that the only way to love God was to suffer to death as a servant here. 

Who wants a reality where the best way to please God is to suffer to death as a servant? And yet, it must be admitted, who wants rather that someone else should suffer? This is the nightmare of the place. Anyone with even trace amounts of empathy does not want others to suffer for them. But neither do they want to suffer themselves. And then the worst of all realities - everyone suffering with no net improvement, simply out of collective madness and/or the circumstances of this world.

"It is what it is" - and it is terrible! 

So what to do with all of this. Every day there is the latent hope that perhaps Jesus will come soon. I understand now why this is the lynch pin of the Christian faith. It's intolerable to otherwise think of being a suffering servant, along with one's children, with no end in sight, ever. The suicide rate would be through the roof; all the poor, education or not, would throw up their hands and say "better to be dead than under these conditions!". But instead we are told every day "a little longer and Jesus is coming with a Utopia as well; you don't want to be the loser who didn't stick around to experience what is just probably happening tomorrow!"

And then the emotional punch of it too "if you really loved Jesus, you would just suffer here uncomplainingly, and wait without question, because your trust level would be so high for Him; so, here is evidence that you neither trust nor love Him - now if you don't do some more work and suffer more, and give all your wealth away, by which you could escape such a system of oppression, and if you grumble about being poor or on the low end of the totem pole of survival - then you, my friend do not love God!"

Perhaps this is the worst and most heartless thing a person could say towards the poor of this world. 

And yet who is not poor? The rich person at the top feels just as trapped as the poor person at the bottom. They feel like they could "do nothing else" because they would be "outcompeted" by their ruthless competition. They feel that mercy is weakness, and if they exhibit any of it, someone will come and hit them hard while they're being weak, and then they will just join the long line of "the exploited".

Nevermind the gains of this world are temporary, and worth nothing. Everyone is simply living for the day. The starfish completely overtaking some poor little creature wrestling for its life has no ability to show mercy, because if it doesn't eat it dies that day. I am sure it too, has starfish babies.

And yet we read that before the flood, humans didn't eat each other. And at one point, animals didn't predate on each other at all. And God promises some kind of Utopia where this madness ends.

But as beautiful, and painfully so, as these statements are - what good is it in the present moment? What good is it in the lonely "enduring to the end"? 

I reflect on my life and I don't know what to do or where to place the children that they don't suffer. Everyone in this world laughs at me as though only an idiot would have a child into this world and expect that it doesn't suffer. And yet I marvel at them - what kind of parent but a sociopath would want their children to suffer? What kind of parent wouldn't arrange everything so that their children would suffer less?

Here I am trapped. At best I can teach my children to be engineers - but, I know how shitty of an existence that is. It is a shitty existence - fraught with anxiety. Chris is bearing the brunt of it for the whole family. And how long can he withstand doing that? He is encountering the system that has shat on me my entire life, for the first time - because it shits differently on the poor. On the intelligent captives, it forces them into systems of bondage and deadlines, and makes sure they are always anxious and competing against time itself. Never can a person have a 30 year job any longer, or simply learn a trade and stably do that. No, we must maddeningly continually compete every day to get things in faster - useful things, useless things, things that destroy the world, things that don't torture animals, things that do - it doesn't matter, as long as you're sitting there worried trying to either push someone else to do things faster, or yourself getting pushed. Everyone is in fear in the end; nobody can stand such a system. The survivors have "low morale" and PTSD, and it doesn't matter that they sympathize with those getting axed. Those getting axed have their families destroyed, a lot of their self worth, and often their minds. Cycles of abuse with everyone trapped in them.

And the poor, who to some degree manage - in some cases - to escape some facets of the anxiety that comes from this insanity - have to deal with physical pain. They bear their overwork and exploitation in the form of obesity or depression, they rarely get dental care, and they are continually promised by any whore of a politician that, "in the next four years, things will be better if we just win." 

To some degree a person might think, I could simply work extremely hard, get rich, and then isolate with my family. But this is not so. You would be continually bombarded with images of the suffering around you. Everywhere you go, and perhaps you would be even more keenly aware of it, you would notice suffering and feel out of place, and even immoral, having escaped it. Only with some kind of totally deadened to other sense of empathy would you manage to so called "live it up" in this world - and then the question is - what kind of monster have you become that you are able to manage this indifference to others?

So what can I do? I hole up in the house with the children and delay the inevitable. I have no plan. In the end I hope Jesus comes within the next 10 years. If He doesn't, I contemplate the fact that life may not be worth living for my children in this world. Perhaps there could be someone strong and powerful who would take them under their wing and protect them - but look at the sociopathic nature of many of the rich in this world. And even if some sort of spouses were obtained - I don't know, I just don't know. 

Alternatively I could do what - beat them into learning now so that their life might be easier in hyper-competitive and dehumanizing ventures later? This is what my parents did with me. It builds up in the child - this constant beating. And in children like my own, who are soft and empathetic, it cannot produce the sterile results hoped for in others. It is just pushing them with pain, to try to get them to escape pain later. 

What I earnestly think about is, that better than all of this, we can just enjoy each other's companionship and love for as long as we can; I can be, first and foremost, a mother to them, rather than some asshole teacher, pushing at them like some kind of madman, for their benefit admittedly. Maybe that makes me lazy and heartless. It probably does. It probably makes me a monster, not to prepare them for the future like this.

I have to live with that. 

My plan is actually to love them for this brief period of time that I can still have them to cuddle and love. To give them, at least for 10 years, total freedom, as much as I can anyway, and then...to accidentally and painlessly off all of us at some future juncture. Before they have to suffer through engineering college. Before they have to suffer through the disappointment of romantic relationships and all the defilements of the world. Simply to explode a CO2 bomb in the bathroom at that point, and quickly and quietly take my children with me out of this world. Though it would leave Chris with a little bit of pain, I am sure it would give him the strength to follow suit as well. I could take my greatest treasure out of this place of mindless suffering, and I don't know what happens then.

I guess it's terrible because I will be breaking one of God's commands on the way out. But I think the true and merciful God will understand. I think the God that desires a painless utopia - whose original plan that was - and whose final plan is also a utopia of animals not hurting each other, and humans being good stewards, and everyone serving and loving each other - the God of all Mercy - and who put love in my heart anyway - will that God actually stare at me implacably and condemn me forever for doing what was the most merciful thing I could do in my reasoning for the children? When my very motivation was not to hurt, or destroy, but rather to end their lives on the highest, purest note - before this world would rape them of all joy and happiness?

I feel so strongly that despite the indoctrination of this world, that God would have a heart of understanding and compassion. I don't think it would be a great mystery to Him as to "why couldn't you endure to the end better?" I just don't see a loving God asking this sort of question. My reply, in any case, would be rather easy - "because I didn't want my children to suffer needlessly in a system that seems to me to be just mindless, useless, suffering and decay." Will the God of all compassion and empathy really not understand that? Really have no empathy for that? Will the God that made me really be surprised by this action, the God who clearly designed me to be able to think of such an option, and to view it as the best one possible under some circumstances? Does not compute. 

I guess there are the 10 commandments, but I really do think God will have mercy, in that - it could very well be argued that we were sadly born into the worst of times. A world with no Christian social support. A world with some kind of tyrannical capitalism torturing people through the full spectrum of their lives (whereas just 100 years ago all you needed was to add and subtract and you could live as a farmer). A place where you can't hold a job with any stability for 30 years, or have any hope of affordable healthcare. A place where everything is burning, and all the animals are slowly going extinct. A world where suggesting a turn towards more compassionate living brings total social ostracism, where women are viewed as expendable sex objects, and who themselves in turn adopt grotesque, impure ways of being, where all of nature is seemingly against you, and where increasingly, there's less and less place for family, much less large, stable, wonderful families. Will God really have no mercy in the face of all these extenuating circumstances?

I don't know.

Part of me feels like "it cannot stay terrible like this forever." Part of me feels, perhaps there will be some people's movement, or some regeneration of the churches, some shift in how everyone does things, or even the return of Christ Himself in the interim. That keeps me going a little bit. 

But if it should come to the point where my children have to begin going through everything I went through, I will very lovingly, very kindly, assure them that all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved, and we will call on the name of the Lord, and explode our little CO2 tank, and I will die with all my children undefiled in our little house, and hopefully that will permanently end our affiliation and that of any of our spiritual progeny with this world. Because it is not a world worth prolongedly living in.

If we should lose an eternity in heaven over it, at least it is something that we will have never known. If we should lose the experiential love of God over it, then, surely that love was not so great to begin with having no empathy for our situation. But, I believe that God does have empathy for our situation. And given that our motive would not be to hurt or harm others, I believe God would understand. Perhaps we would not be some "pain heroes" in his Kingdom, or perhaps we would just get offed eternally, but still out of the available given options, I think even my children will agree, it will be best, especially if the world continues to get more wicked. And it's already pretty bad.

My life will conclude in the most intimate, best possible terms. My children and I, in a loving embrace, could be boldly going where no man has gone before. So to speak. Having loved each other all of our lives without any interfering mentality from the world - perhaps having spent a lifetime drawing pictures together - we would depart and leave this inferno to whomever enjoys it. We will have really gotten, all that could be gotten out of it - the togetherness of our own love.

Increasingly, I have less and less reservations about this being the best solution for the long term. I am no genius to join the ranks of the very intelligent who turn to suicide, but, I have something worse - "life experience". I in no way want my children to have a "curriculum vitae" here. 

We will think happy positive thoughts. We will take into remembrance all the good things. The beauty of Autumn. The beauty of shared experiences beholding happily little animals. The shared experiences of meals together. The shared trips to the beach. The moments the world could not ruin. And hand in hand we will leave this place and leave it to someone else to contemplate when God might return to it, or what cosmic plan there is for it, or why so much cosmic suffering, etc. These interesting to daily contemplate questions will all end in the silence of sleep, and if Christ is coming back for us, it will be no big deal for Him to raise us up dead, than alive.

Am I crazy? Am I wrong?

 I've been thinking about things. Perhaps I shouldn't say anything. Perhaps my thoughts are wrong on these topics, isolating, divisive. And yet, if I am right, then, it would be immoral to stay quiet on some level. If it is true what is happening to the animals, then it seems immoral to stay quiet. If it is true that we are spending too much on consumerism, it is wrong to stay quiet, and to passively continue. If God truly hates sports, then it is wrong to stay quiet. If he hates Christmas or pagan ideology mixed with worship of Him, then it is wrong and unloving to stay quiet.

But if, on the other hand, God doesn't really care about paganism that is non-violent being mixed in with worship of Him, if, knowing Father Christmas doesn't exist, or Bacchus or any of that - if God simply doesn't care about this stuff, it seems like an outrageous and pointless thing to even bring it up with anyone. Then I could send my children to the Bible school and while they apparently would be learning little about the Bible - it wouldn't be a sin to have them participate in "harmless" entertainment - except of course the squanditure of money on the book. If God doesn't really care how women are dressed at sporting events, or about the sporting events themselves - if that is not His definition of idolatry, if God doesn't care about military involvement or lack thereof, if God doesn't care about the eating or not eating of animals at this present moment - if none of this is actually critical or even important, and if He doesn't care about how much money is wasted on empty buildings, then, perhaps it all doesn't matter and we can participate quietly like all the other Christians. 

But my fear is always that He does care. And that is my fear - but I don't know from God that that is His desire. It seems like there was a problem with this sort of stuff in the Old Testament, but, perhaps it was different because of the violence and debauchery involved. Perhaps "paganism light" doesn't bother God - like the ridiculous yoga or Buddhism or something. But then again I read that God is a jealous God. Though I may be crazy I'd rather be crazy and lose out on all of life than be wrong and find out that God was furious with me the whole time. I don't want to endlessly focus on it though. If these pagan influences are all around me I should just ignore them. I would be more vocal about it I think if I definitively knew these things to be wrong. But as it stands I don't know, and I don't want to be needlessly divisive over what could be in my head. I fear I may have already said too much wrong - in case the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe truly is predominantly a Christian story. I don't know and I don't even want to risk it. But perhaps that's a summary of my whole life. Except this stupid drug I took. If only I could undo that. It seemed to me so critical that I do it to bolster my belief system at the time. I just wanted to feel like an altered state was possible so that I could adhere better but it was wrong - it too was a wrong action. I wish I could have just done a better job imagining an altered state without taking the drug itself. 

Perhaps my father is right. Perhaps I need to work at some point. I don't want to be lazy before God, any lazier than I already am. Perhaps when the children are grown I will start then to try to re-enter the workforce. I will have no problem staying apart from the world - it is only critical for me right now that the children do so. Once they are through college and adults themselves, they will be able to see with their own adult eyes everything I have been trying to say to them. Hopefully they can integrate with some church without compromising their faith in God. Hopefully they can succeed unscathed in their beliefs despite my failures as a parent. 

Then one day I can die with all my fears, and, I will have tried my best to follow Gods' commandments, even though it might have turned out as one confused disaster. Even if I die like the Pharisees, straining a gnat and losing the main focus, at least I will die like an honestly deluded Pharisee. Because unlike the Pharisees I am not really that interested in the outward appearance of things; no, my own bullshit terrifies me on a continual basis. So if it winds up to not be true, I guess I will just have to look back on judgement day and say "oh, damn, too bad I misunderstood everything, sorry about that God, at least you know I sincerely misunderstood everything, and I did not intentionally try to do anyone wrong." 

That's basically all I probably will have at judgement day - a sincere desire to follow, however poorly implemented. I know I will need God's mercy and righteousness to save me because, clearly my life isn't some exemplar of success. 

However, I no longer care that the rest of my life will be spent in this hoveled up anxiety, and state of semi-isolation. This is just my existence and I am not going to complain about it. I am thankful I am not on the street. I am thankful that I have a family that loves me despite my mental illness. I am thankful I can still cook and clean for the family, and maybe even one day financially do my part as well. I am sorry if I have pushed around the church people with my delusive hopes and dreams for an "ideal" implementation of some higher standard here on Earth. It really doesn't matter. I am a dying thing, I will die, I will pass out of this world, and like every other creature that attempts to worship God, I will have tried my best to worship Him "right". I will have applied my own blinded interpretation of what that means to His Word and surely, like everyone else, come up short some way or another. 

I don't hate C.S Lewis. I don't hate the Baptists. I don't know what is right and wrong. All I know is I will certainly be alone for the rest of my life, and, it is ok. 

Thoughts

 Even though in all honesty I would like to be the person formerly described, I realize that in my present circumstances, and given my emotional composition, this would be quite impossible for me. I'm not sure if it's because I am a woman, or if that is an excuse; or because I am emotional. Perhaps, it's the later. Also, I tend to actually be very poor at implementing things like a doctor would. A doctor has to be rather organized, highly impersonal in their emotional life, and very focused on what they are doing, mechanically, and obviously above all that they have to have a medical degree. The competitive ability to make it through medical school, which seems antithetical to the type of personality I am talking about anyway, but I am sure they would grudgingly participate in such systems as necessary evils. Whatever that is anyway, a necessary evil.

In the end I am well aware all a doctor can do is heal broken things in the body, or rather, position things such that healing can occur. And even if I were by some feat able to do all that, to get to the position of this doctor, in the end, I would face several added impediments, and I am not even referring to my children - how could I ever refer to them as an impediment? But even if I were to restart at 26 or whenever, and even if I were of some frigid emotional composition such that I could handle people dying on me constantly without flinching and remain dedicated to task, without feeling the need to blow my brains out to handle the pain of their family's sufferings - I would obviously face that other hurdle - that of continually passing out in the presence of cutting someone open, and no natural love of the thing itself - only the result of the thing - which would be healing. Of course I am sure that is overcomable.

More pertinently, I am an entirely poor fit for such a role, and I am certain I would collapse under such conditions, worse than I have collapsed in my far less demanding life. It is sort of like a janitor saying "I am having difficultly regularly cleaning up this trash on a regular basis, but here, let me try to quintuple my workload and see if that helps." We can all agree that such a doctor, with such a personality, if they were to exist, would be a truly admirable human being.

But dreams aside there is my reality.

Presently, I seem to have "derealization". At least that is what I think it is. It may be an offshoot of schizophrenia, I don't know. 

Furthermore, I'm not sure if it's some weakness in me, but, I seem to have female emotions, and all my life I have had feminine desires, which really have no place in this fantasy. What would look very stolid and impressive in a man, I don't know, might look sort of bizarre in a woman. I guess it could look just as admirable in a woman, but the woman would definitely be a more masculine, independent type of woman. I guess there are women like that too, and perhaps they are more admirable than me.

But I have to deal with the reality of who I am. 

Rising seemingly against this image of this independent, self-sacrificing martyr type of doctor, is an equally beautiful, but probably more selfish? image of a beautiful and pure type of woman. I can see her standing in a garden in white, sunlight falling on her among flowers, with all the innocence of a person inexperienced with this world. Beautiful, tender, soft, vulnerable, pure, and possible to complete the picture pregnant, she would just be a living work of art. It does not seem such a creature would have much of her own existence at all, but rather, be an accompaniment. Intrinsically, her identity would be relational to others, a comfort, a nurturer, not at all emotionally independent, but rather the exact opposite, a creature of total emotional investment, a living flowing source of loving nurturing. Soft and quiet, loving and reverent, gentle, and kind. Not really strong in and of herself, but an accompaniment to her strong husband. Not really a father type of disciplinarian figure, or a person of boundless self-strength, but, a loving giver in a family unit. Unable to be divorced from a family unit, somehow beautiful there, like a piece to a puzzle.

I don't know, this world would have many words for such a type of a thing. "Lazy", "entitled", "weak", "useless", etc. etc. But such a thing is the topic of many fine art masterpieces. 

I am a little too practical and too rough to be such a thing. But I have seen elements of it.

I don't know I think back to when I was younger - it seems I was very disinterested in other things except to be married and to have a husband and a family, and everything else was a side goal around these goals. I don't even know why I had these desires so strongly but, I just remember having them. Desperately wanting a husband, and the validation thereof. Desperately wanting a companion, and a lifelong bond. Desperately wanting children, and to be with them. How would any of these things go with some kind of ascetic life of being a hero doctor in some refugee country? And yet I find the doctor figure more admirable than me. 

I don't know what I'm doing here, and I don't really know why my life has been what it has been. It has all been greatly upside down. I scarcely know what to aspire to that I could term success anymore. Even my belief system seems to have dead ended in insanity. 

And yet here I am and what am I going to do? What can I do? 

I am not really sure what God wants from me. I read in there that it's faith. I don't know how to produce such a thing. I don't know whether God is angry at me or not, or whether I just lost my mind all on my own. I don't know if I hear messages from God, or if it's a satanic deception, or the product of a diseased mind. I don't even know what God wants more - ministering to the poor, or the sort of personal worship that is common to a human being. It seems that pure undefiled religion is external - it seems it is in doing practical things for the poor - it seems like this is the "pure" religion. But then why would any of that require faith? Are internal things important at all? What is a relationship with God anyway? Is it like obeying a great King of altruism? Is it about doing as many altruistic works as possible? Or is it something about a heart condition? Is it something selfish and personal, like a relationship with a husband or a parent? What does it mean that God is a jealous God who wants praise and worship? How does God define worship? Is it exclusively caring for widows and orphans? Why would God require this when He is very capable of caring for all of us? Is it just as an exercise in learning about Him or is He delegating a task or ...why did He say this at all? And if this is the "purest" form, does He even want any other form of worship? Is He emotionally needy in any way, such as to want worship or praise, or is He totally autonomous, in which case, why is idolatry important at all? If God is God and without any need for praise or worship or need for anything, why does it matter if some people are silly and pray to some dolls of their own making? Supposing these people were walking in the ways of giving and altruism that God described, why would it matter what they felt internally? Is it all about external doing in a selfless way? Or is it really like an intimate relationship, like one between a man and a woman? What does it mean that God is like a husband? Does it mean that He is like a provider? 

Does God have feelings and needs and wants? 

Why does God want worship? What is worship? Is this a human delusion that God wants worship? Why would God want worship from fading dust vapors? 

I don't understand any of it. 

Anyway, it says in the Bible that God wants worship. Even though perhaps that is primarily taking care of other people. But maybe the faith thing goes with the relational aspect of God. Maybe it goes with the husband analogy, as a form of trust. 

But why would God want to be trusted? Why would this be important to God? Or rather, why would God care if His creation didn't trust Him. This somehow seems correlated to this Earth experience. 

Well certainly God is worthy of trust. Maybe God feels disrespected when we don't fully invest in the words He says, maybe it is viewed as some form of rejection, and some antithesis of obedience. Maybe it is not loving to distrust God, or try to work out what we can't work out on our own, maybe it's that.

Maybe this situation has something to do with that. 

I know I don't want to disrespect God, and my goal is to be obedient, and pleasing to Him. If it is within my capacity to hurt God through lack of faith, and myself in the process as well, I would not want to do it. In the end, I am not some independent, self-sufficient sort of thing, even though I admire the image of that. In the end, I am very dependent on the Lord, and the last thing I want to do is to distrust His words. I don't know what that will mean for my life. 

I see in my insanity the phrase coming up again and again that God will strengthen me with His right hand. I don't know what I am supposed to do with that. I see that it is written there and constantly before my eyes. I don't know if it's a coincidence, from the devil, applicable to me, or not applicable to me. I guess maybe God wants me to trust that it's applicable to me as well, and not just to a group of people in the past. 

Maybe God has allowed these circumstances to happen to strengthen my faith in Him. After all, this is certainly a circumstance by no means in any way of my own, or devised by the world - that I would ever find myself out of. I have no confidence in the medical establishment's attempts to cure anything beyond broken bones or open wounds or things that can literally be cut out of the body with surgical brutality. For a spiritual problem, I know only God can heal me. If my mind is ever healed, I know it can only come from God. 

And perhaps He is saying He will at one point heal me. I guess I would thank Him for that, what else would I do? 

I guess I would feel special and loved. 

But perhaps its some sort of lifelong test of sorts, I don't know. Or some lifelong consequence of sin. I don't know. 

Maybe God wants me to somehow love Him through painful circumstances so that my love for Him is sincere and not situational.

I wish I knew what it was that God wanted, besides this thing I don't understand, this faith that I don't know how to produce.

All I know is that God made me, and He is my Lord and Savior. And if I could make Him happy by worshiping Him, or walking in his ways, I want to. Because I do worship him in my heart, even though I don't have the amazing life report of a refugee doctor, and even if my life looks more like a total disaster right now than anything to glorify God with. If I ever met Him, I would bow down and worship at His feet, and love Him very much I am sure. And I am trying, in the interim, however failingly, to do what is right. I know I need to try better, and repent of the sins I daily do, like beating poor Willy. I know I need to be less selfish.

My life will be over in a few years anyway. I know that only then will I have the answers that I seek. I am trying to do the best I can where I am at, even though I am not at present, some beautiful completed spiritual thing. 

I hope I can grow to be less disappointing.

Thoughts

 What can I conclude from this life experience? All my life I have read this Bible, and, I don't know what to think. It contains within it the only reasonable hope, but I start to wonder, is it a delusive one? From what we read, things once, a very long time ago, went sort of terribly, but occasionally well for a group of Jewish people. On this, it seems, hinges the hopes of the entire world. Well, the entire world of faith anyway. 

We read of a time when God was actively, at least for a small group of people, enforcing His laws and interacting with a small group of failed people. On this experience we base the Bible stories that inspire basically everything that we teach our children today. A series of events, with a climatic end that seems to basically have ended 2,000 years ago when Jesus left back to heaven.

From there, things seem to get sketchy. 

What can I say? Can I say that God has never acted in my life, I cannot say that. Surely every good thing is from Him, including these past 2 years. 

But though there are these punctuated mercies that inspire hope, I still look at the entire miserable situation. We are born into this world where everything is sick and dying. Even the most healthy things are only beautiful and vibrant briefly. It is this brief span that we call "life" - and it is fraught with survival anxiety. When one is a child, childhood is sadly cut short by the need to learn. This cannot always be made fun, or, at least I think it can't; perhaps it can and I'm just not able to make it so, or creative enough to do so, or perhaps I just haven't put forth enough effort in that area. Then, as childhood approaches adulthood, life inherently becomes this seemingly ruthless competition. Sometimes for money and food to survive, sometimes for a "place in society" so that one can have a family, sometimes simply for a desired spouse; everywhere there seems to be, at least, scarcity, even if this scarcity may be artificial from a lack of maturity of people to share or adequately distribute resources. This is another question - is there actual scarcity or is this too just some kind of disease on this place - a delusion that could be avoided with better group effort? It appears there is always land scarcity, but then again this could be hoarding on behalf of people. It appears there is adequate spousal scarcity, but this could be avoided with people doing a better job of raising children with different values; it could simply be a societal disease not an inherent part of this world. 

Even if all these failed human factors were removed, would that change the fact that this place is sort of a giant death pile, with animal predating animal, and after a brief span, all creatures declining into illness, death, and loss? I just cannot waive this observation off as "that's just part of life!" Since we believe in a God, there must be an explanation. 

The Bible says this horrible reality is caused by our sinning against God 6,000 years ago. But then it says "God is quick to forgive." So then has God borne a grudge for 6,000 years allowing death to continue, sickness, illness, etc.? The Bible says it is not for man to question God, but the question of course is still there, festering, and it is quite a feat to daily ignore it. It is easier to ignore this question when one personally is not sick, poor, downtrodden, or otherwise spat out by society. But actually, I would not say it is easy at all to ignore it - it takes a feat of constant distraction - but perhaps this isn't such a feat because it's necessary to focus on what one is doing to just get through the day anyway, to just secure one's small piece of survival. So I would say most people just "accept what they can't change" - and go from there, without asking, why is this the case? We have a forgiving God, so why are we still on a world of death, suffering, and all of this? Is this forgiveness something that can only come after 6,000 years? 

The alternate conclusion is that truly the Bible is as it says, and the forgiveness is in fact quick, but it is only quick and effective for those who are "righteous" and "holy". This starts a long permutation of continual self examination and self blame, where one continually wonders why God has damned them personally, and one is constantly trying to "get more holy" in the hopes of being "heard". It also starts the frantic side struggle to "find a holy person", who is "good enough", to be "heard by God". The search for prophets always seems to be running through the Christian community, as each person hopes that, at last, someone has been holy enough to have "effective prayer". Alternatively, some people just revert back to the self blame route saying "well prayer can be heard by anyone, but it is neither that we are not holy enough to be heard, nor that God is not forgiving enough to hear, but simply that we are not asking anything in His will." While this is very easy to grasp if a person is asking for a million dollars or some materialistic bauble, this becomes harder to reconcile when one is actually continually sick, or ailing. One inevitably must fall back to "there is unrepentant sin" and just continually be chasing a person's own tail trying to figure out why one is not properly capable of "true repentance" or what the "hidden sin is". Inevitably someone has sin in their lives. Indeed it seems that "perfect people" would be selling everything they have, and then what, shortly, probably, dying on the streets. We would never hear back from these perfect people whether this strategy of selling everything worked or not, because, presumably, they would have no resources left to survive, so this cleans up a possible mess for the church quite easily. Ultimately, people who are "truly following God", quickly die. This could still work out in the Christian framework, but then it really is as Mona said - a religion of death. For the celibate person who has this awareness of the world, it might actually just be a logical conclusion and not a horrific one at all. But for a person invested in the world through children, it's not so easy to say - "well, the only beauty to this world is religion, and so, I'm going to go all the way, and hey, if my children all starve on the street, it's just the price we're going to pay!"

Sadly, with this mental illness, and probably my own preoccupation with making the promises of the Bible real in my life, this is the path I have tried to go, even if I have been thwarted in full completing it. Perhaps it was for the best that it didn't fully complete, because it seems like there are some dangerous people on the street, and, I would really not like to see my children starving to death. It is sort of a selfish thing to say "well, I need the Bible to be true, otherwise this world isn't liveable for me, so children, though I had all the comforts of the world, just go along with me on this one."

In fact the whole concept of having children seems strangely perplexing, and, were I not driven to it by an absolute desire to have them, and a loving fawning over them once having had them - if, like food and other things that I enjoy about this world, I were not "addicted" to them so to speak - but if I rationally and coolly evaluated this situation, what conclusion could have but with the "ethical" atheists that it not just wouldn't be expedient to have children, but perhaps that it would also be "morally wrong" to do so. It would really be bringing in a creature for "temporary enjoyment", knowing full well the predominant theme here, for many at least, is suffering. 

The one pocket of people who seem to avoid most of the suffering - well, at least some of it, they seem to get quite a bit too - is the wealthy. But this in particular we are prohibited from being lest our souls are destroyed or we be found guilty before God. And so the one thing that might cushion all of this existence, is forbidden. And, I guess even for "ethical atheists" this would make sense. Hoarding resources from others exacerbates the suffering of others, so actually the best "cushion" for suffering would seem to be humanism indeed, a well implemented communism. This would reduce the horror of this world to just bad weather disasters, agricultural fall out, sickness, and death. That's not much of a reduction, but it's a marked improvement. In this world of half-successes, I think it's an improvement worth striving for.

But it doesn't seem to say that that's what the point of this place is in the Bible, otherwise, the churches would basically be institutions of communism, with that point blank. No, continually hard and incomprehensible things are required. Constantly there is some kind of talk about "trust" and "faith" and how it's not good enough to just try to failingly follow God's law, or be concerned about the poor and share resources, or to simply act in a communistic way - loving one's neighbor as oneself, etc.; no it seems like even if a person were to try to act this way (and it is extremely difficult to do so because of short sighted people who feel like acquiring all the wealth of the world and hoarding it is in their or their progeny's - sometimes they don't even have progeny to spend it on - best interest) - it would not be enough. There must always be this area where one is inadequate unless one has enough "faith" in God. And then the ultimate whopper statement, the least palatable thing in the whole thing - as though it were not already hard enough to aspire to be the most decent version of oneself that one could hope to be - that "without faith it's impossible to please God." 

There you have it, the single hardest thing in there. This enables the church to go to the moral atheist, even if they have spent their entire wealth establishing a hospital or given away all their money to the poor; even if they are childless, intelligent, and acquired money solely for the purpose of giving it away - even if this person, should such a person exist - never had even intercourse with anyone, and were just indefatigably altruistic. A sort of successful other-centered Tibet monk of sorts. Well anyway the church could go to these people and basically spit in their faces and say, well, you know, that's nice and all but, you're actually not pleasing to God, even with all that. Because, you see, you've never expressed any faith in Him.

What can we make of this insanity? 

Who furthermore out of these two would one even want for a friend, or to have dinner with, or to have one's child marry? I can say one thing but it would be dishonest. I can say "well certainly the people of faith are more admirable, they are following what God has said; they are quoting verbatim what God said, and are following more faithfully." And yet if push came to shove and Banana was considering a man who had worked himself to the bone for the poor his entire life, versus this other one that had just prayed his entire life, with questionably unanswered prayers, and then furthermore, despite this lower level of accomplishment, come at the other one saying that he had faith, and that the other one was more deficient in the eyes of God than him, I don't know. What could I say here? 

Maybe this is a strawman scenario. I suppose it could be that both men are working hard, doing everything they can to the utmost of their ability to help others. Suppose both of them worked hard, obtained whatever they obtained in this world, and gave it away. Suppose both were equally hard working, equally ambitious. I guess then, the one who has faith would be more attractive than the atheist, and neither one would be hypocritical.

I guess it is an attractive thing regardless, that one has faith. Assuming whatever earthly morality could be gotten here was obtainable by both the secular atheist and the man of faith. I guess perhaps because the one who has faith would usually be more upbeat.

It would seem that the secular atheist would surely be more affected by people dying around him than would even an equally motivated man of faith - why, because for the former, this is all there is. That means when a child is starving to death in Africa, or when a coworker of his would be facing deathly illness, one would expect this person to work all the harder to save them, because, "this is the only life they will ever get." So one would expect the secular humanist to be an altogether miserable creature, full of surpassing sorrow. And ultimately, would such a person not go point blank insane?

I guess this is where the image of the ideal doctor comes in. Working some crazy long hours trying to rescue children in mindless, man made wars of outrageous insensitivity. Like the sole person with a remaining brain or heart, constantly scooping out the sand that keeps falling in on the sandcastle that is is his medical practice. Having dedicated his entire life, probably even having lost the chance to have a fulfilling family himself, just tirelessly working there to try to save another child for some destitute and seemingly hopeless starving family, starving needlessly from global greed or wars that even the best historians cannot find the original cause to. There in a hopelessly collapsing shithole, unable to comprehend what he is doing there anyway, some dazed, tortured animal trying to fight all reality, and, curiously, without any religion to bolster him, just for the very honest and unfeigned sense that "this is what is right, this is the only beauty that can be had in a place like this." I don't know how can this man come out less before God than the one saying "have faith, have faith, turn away from your sins". 

And yet, we read that according to the Bible this man has utterly nothing before God. Because he has no faith in God. 

Has he given God something that God could not have done himself? No, he hasn't. Objectively, we see he cannot "perform" his way into God's acceptance. I guess this is a point that came up on the radio that I just don't understand. But then again, I don't understand this world.

It seems to me such a doctor has done the best that any human being could do with this situation, and surely the most selfless thing. And yet I know it could not be said that "on his own merits" he would enter heaven. Surely he would have some hidden sin plaguing him, even if he were a vegan. Maybe he would grow to be prideful; but, assuming he wasn't. Maybe he would have lust, but assuming he were depressed enough about his existence so as to be without lust entirely. Surely such a person would not be drunkenly brawling in the streets, so that's out. What would he covet in this world? 

I don't know, I'm thinking about this. But perhaps it's just a rule of this reality that such an individual as I am imagining simply could not exist without faith in God. In fact, I guess, the world would be surprised to find such a person in a pure state, but at the same time "entirely without God." I certainly have never met such a person, and so perhaps this person I am imagining, and all the ideals therein wrapped up, by some universal law of this place, could not even come to this fruition without God. 

Anyway, these are idle thoughts, with no practical application to my life. Vain philosophies, I guess. 

Ultimately I am entirely confused about this faith thing. Why it is in there. Is it a patch fix solution the church created for the vast amount of problems for which there seem to be unanswered prayers to, so they could shift the blame to their constituents and say "you didn't have enough faith" and thereby avoid questioning people? I just don't view the church as psychologically cunning enough to devise some kind of system as this.

I think it is truly what God requires, for reasons I cannot understand. It has something to do with this world - this having faith, indeed, is critical, even if I can't understand it at all. Much less can I implement what I do not understand.

I guess it has something to do with trust. 

Anyway, I will place it in a category of things commanded that I cannot understand, that I must somehow do, that I have no idea how to do, that are probably underpinning all my current problems, but, sadly, I cannot figure out how to do, so I guess that falls into "failed requirements at this time." Hopefully it just works itself out because I certainly cannot force upon myself some kind of magical solution to this missing item.

Thoughts

 At least nobody should care about my thoughts. And what a relief not to be constantly interrupted by cruel commentary and various accusations that are so difficult to bear. And what a relief not to feel that I am burdening anyone by writing - finally, writing without the consequence of burdening the listener, and without the fear of some vicious backlash, writing, as the ability to breathe, freely. Hopefully this page never gets any commentary, but it is just anonymous enough as to feel that someone has heard me. Sadly, I know this too is probably going to get filed away for the day of judgement. I cannot help that fact. Still, at least it should only affect me.

My thoughts and interests seem to have taken a strange divergence from those of everyone else; perhaps always in latent form this divergence existed, and it was just brought to the surface by recent events. Perhaps doing that drug was the tipping point for my already fragile mind, and all my self hating tendencies just welled to the surface obfuscating any ability to render anything as more than some strict dichotomy: "children in Haiti could be using this money" versus taking joy in anything in the moment. This just seems though, to be the inescapable consequence of my belief system. My fragmented, now torturous to me, belief system. 

I don't know what I am complaining about really. Besides the loss of reality, and the self inflicted loss of all friends - and a variety of ad hominem attacks, and then the schizophrenia, surely my own fault in my own self imposed isolation - I don't know...even with that partially receding praise God - I don't know...why do I complain I wonder, when I know others have so much less? But of course it's not just the visual distortion and derealization and everything that has transpired in the last 2 years; it's that ever present terror of having crossed some irrevocable line beyond which God simply will abandon me, and I will have no hope of heaven whatsoever. No hope of a real relationship with my Maker. 

I see everyone else fully, seemingly, define themselves and their interests on Facebook. I feel this strange distance. It is hard to even write what I feel, and it feels like it has no place, it is such a strange feeling that, I am sure others feel, but it is quite inexpressible among worldly concerns. And for me, I guess, quite selfish too. 

I think about things. Who should care or even comment that I think about things? Who really, in the end, should even care about me, or these random thoughts of mine? I long for my introspection to return to being a solace instead of a plague. I don't even know why it seems like every time I express my feelings someone in those chatrooms or even elsewhere comes along to belittle them. Or turn them into hurtful challenges and oppositions. Surely just as other people go on at length about a work of art, or a political belief, in the random universal point that is their Facebook, surely, in the privacy of this blog that could be of no import to anyone, surely I could express my silly feelings in safety. 

I seem to have been born with an overload of feelings. Perhaps all women are. 

There are things I want to say but I can scarcely even write them down, because it gives them so much reality, and once written, I have to admit perhaps to myself, how central are these thoughts to me, and it becomes impossible to put up some kind of shield from the vulnerability of them. And yet perhaps if I stay away from those internet chat rooms filled with who knows what, perhaps just people that I have falsely accused in my mind to be demons, etc. - well, perhaps I can have the comfort of speaking, largely, I would think, only to myself. This used to be quite a comfort to me, and at least it doesn't plague anyone with my thoughts.

I read rather fearfully about these people who, by some miracle managed to obtain communications with the Lord. Unlike my sorcery induced evil spirits, theirs was some kind of bonafide gift from God, and it would be a wonderful thing to read about had it not ended so badly for all of them. In fact it seems in every case, it ended quite terribly for all of them, so much so the logical conclusion would be that it would have been better for them not to be selected for anything at all, at least, in some cases. So there is nothing really to envy, it is just a painfully sad discourse on some past individuals, who I can only hope were somehow backwards covered by Christ's redemption. But perhaps they were not. I just don't know - it is possible that God truly meant "forever" in separation. 

I think this constitutes my greatest fear. Being eternally separated from God. I feel though every good thing in my life is from Him, I don't really know Him. I don't know God, and, I don't really read about many women who knew Him in any case, except, I suppose, a handful that lived in that generation. Perhaps, obviously, I am not worthy to know God. So obviously I should not have done the sorcery I did in that attempt. I think about it though - sometimes they only got a few words here and there, and yet even these they were not able to follow. I sometimes wonder, I sometimes wish, I often or perhaps continually wish of late - that I were able to obey and follow God. 

This strange, isolation obsession that has meant the end of all normalcy for my children, perhaps by my failed interpretation of how God wants us to follow Him, has crystallized into my one desired life goal. I take some solace in the fact that, though I know I have a lifetime of inequity, at least, perhaps, it's some kind of mitigating factor that, my goal with doing the drug was not some hedonistic high, but just my misguided desire to wrongly confirm the Word of God as true. I remember thinking "this would be valuable to obtain at any cost." So surely, even before I did that drug, it was still something that grew to be of critical importance to me. Even if I did and am following poorly, at least there is some solace to my soul that I was not trying, intentionally, to turn away from God, even though I was reckless, and irresponsible, and selfish. I could not have imagined the mental decline and demonization that happened next. 

As I seem to be saved from the worst of it, I am thankful to God for that, but the same desire and the same fears are still largely there. Somethings about me are constant I guess. I am this strangely obsessed person with no like minded friends, or any that I know, possibly because I am also crazy.

I feel it must be totally safe to write here. I consciously have to remind myself that nobody cares about my thoughts, or my feelings, nobody is out to get me, nobody cares about the innerworkings of my heart, nobody cares just as nobody cares about people posting random artwork online, or other nonsensical posts about trivial houses for sale, etc. I am truly alone and nobody should care about anything I write, and I am not like important people that God should take note, and besides, God may be angry at me anyway, and even if He weren't, He surely wouldn't care or would already know my feelings, and feelings don't matter that much in the end, only obedience and action anyway, so I might as well express myself to myself, which could be of some solace.

Nobody should care about my strange, and vulnerable desires. Absolutely nobody, not even Chris who is probably tired of hearing my over-emotional selfish statements. I know judgement is about works anyway, and faith and the more important things. Everyone tells me feelings don't matter at all, so, they are my feelings and surely I can examine them alone.

My feelings. Strange how much of them are tied up in one thing. I guess this is where I become this aberration to normal people who have sociable hobbies. I don't have any sociable hobbies. Surely just as God made them to have sociable hobbies - He made me to be this emotionally aberrant thing.

I know in the end words won't matter, only acted upon words, and more difficult things. But my feelings are integral if only to me.

How hard it is to even write them. I guess they are so sacred to me it's hard to even write them. I encounter almost like a wall preventing me. I guess I am constantly afraid of the intensity and vulnerability of them to the point that I can scarcely even express them. I guess they render me sort of completely out of my own control, with my locus of validation based upon another entity, I would imagine in the estimation of the world, pathetically so. I have to remind myself that God Himself has better things to do, and so should demons at any rate, than focus on the mind of some random believer of little import. There might be some freedom in my total insignificance. And in the perception that by all estimates, I have never been quite so far from the Lord.

Close or far, it's still the same.

I wish I could hear the voice of my Maker. I wish even if I never heard Him, that I could obey His every word. I wish I could just feel that, and have it be so, without the terrifying risk of failing, or being displeasing, and being cast out forever - the fear that scares me so much. I wish I were just naturally capable, as His Creation, to run to Him, hang on His every word, and follow absolutely and unquestioningly, adoringly and reverently, just so happy that He even spoke to me. My Creator. So much for me is contained within that word. Creator, I suppose, with a capital C. Because I love and adore whoever took the time to make me. Someone who invested in making me, who found some kind of value in me, who supposedly even wants my worship, for unknown reasons. I struggle with the concept that something that Creates, and creates things of beauty, like the avocado tree, or things of complexity and beauty in general, would for any reason want worship from a thing like me, and yet, I read about it in there. It seems like it comes up over and over again - at least for Israel. From some people, God wants worship, and even gets angry about not being worshiped. This is fascinating and I am still struggling to believe it as fully true - why would God ever want worship from even the best of us - much less some continually disappointing people? Maybe people just misunderstood and He wanted obedience only, but, I guess it's in there - and it apparently is ...juxatoposed with the word jealous...it is hard to imagine that God has feelings, but I guess God has feelings. I guess maybe the feeling inside of me, to want to worship Him...maybe it has a place and purpose, that I cannot see. I cannot really fathom it. I read about it but no matter how many times I read about it I struggle to believe that God actually wants worship, or praise; it feels like it's just a charitable thing given to us to make us feel important.

But I don't know He seems to have written it in there. And even if I'm not one to whom it applies, at least it applies or applied to some people. 

I will never forget my experience recovering from the Salvia trip. I meant what I said and what I felt. Feeling whatever confirmation I could obtain from that experience, I wanted and still want to make God the center of my life, my heart, my everything. I know that can't possibly mean much to Him, because there are much better people, possibly even a total Remnant, and I see the extensive good works His other people do, and without demon possession, or associated selfishness, and with a true Holy Spirit, and I know, probably worship is conscripted to those more closely walking, spirited people.

But I take some solace in the failures of the past. It seems God accepted worship at times from even people wholesale steeped in sin, even people murdering daily and slaughtering animals and all kinds of raw, crazy, unimaginable things. God seemed to accept worship from just regular seeming people. 

Would God accept my worship, even after all of this? Even so filled and overwhelmed with my own sin, even unable to get it all out of my life, out of my heart, even perhaps being fundamentally broken, if not cursed - would God accept my worship, my heart at His feet? Would He ever turn His eyes of love on me? Would He ever let me kiss His feet and worship Him and tell Him that His validation means more to me than anything I have ever wanted. That I only want to be loved by Him, that I only want to be pleasing. That I am sorry for my digressions. That I wish I were more honest, and more resolved. That I painfully take inventory of my past sins, and I regret them, mostly all, as they come to my mind, and as I fearfully wonder if I have passed a limit whereby He has permanently cut me off from Himself. Could He forgive my transgressions? Could He make me loveable by Himself? Does He think that it "never meant anything to me" the hope, however distant and seemingly inapplicable...to hear "well done" from Him, even as it does not align with my reality at all, my heart continues to hope for it. I vaguely hope, perhaps vainly, that this isn't a judgement but a test - but, I know it all followed my sin of sorcery so, I know it might just be His righteous judgement on me. Does He know I want His approval more even than I want healing? That even though I am continuously failing to be obedient, and continually blind and perhaps all out of love, this seems permanently written in my heart and soul as "the goal". I wish to hang on His every word. I wish to honor Him and even, if anyone like me ever could do such a thing, to make him happy or proud like Job did. But, I know this too is narcissism. I am nothing like any of those individuals. I am just a needy person and, I know works and faith and difficult things are required, not just feelings. 

I dream when this life is over, by some miracle, as in that dream I had, somehow making it to the shores of His world, and by some cosmic glitch being allowed to stay there. How thankful I would be. I remember my dream, kissing the ground and thanking Him with such joy, and such gratefulness; desperately wishing to express thanks and gratitude for being allowed to be near Him in His world. Though I can scarcely remember the dream outside of its ridiculous simplicity, I can remember the depth of feeling it produced in me. Not in the acquisition of some better world, which would have been a cause for joy, but in finally "making it", safely, into His unlosable love. I know, it is futile to only imagine these things - it probably takes a lifetime of some difficult and painful sanctification and tribulation and terrible, horrible things like that.

I keep wondering if I don't make it, all I will have left is this desire. All I will have left is my half expressing my need, with no rejoinder. All I will have is the desperate desire to worship, to kiss the ground He walks on, to try to lay my heart at His feet, with just this terrible hole where my God should be, a terrifying possible rejection that I can't really consider for very long, because were I to do so my anxiety would be so great I would probably not be able to go on living. I think this fear above the rest of them have made the last 2 years so intolerable, this terrifying fear. 

All merciful, and pitiful, perhaps He will take mercy on me. His Creation, however ruined. Perhaps just as the Isrealite people worshiped Him with only a few days of eating some type of bread and it was enough, perhaps God will lower the standard so that I can worship Him too. I wish I knew something of His thoughts, but all I have is the Bible, and my own internal demons.

I know to some extent, all these thoughts are very selfish of me. I know Christ was not selfish and self seeking, and, I suppose when I think of this worship I am thinking exclusively of my feelings in it.

And so my dreams aside, I know I have some time left here on this Earth. Everyone else seems to be very content, and happy with their lives, and themselves - and I marvel at this. I marvel at the depths of my own insecurity, and I feel I won't ever know until I hear it from God that I am "okay" or well or anything actually. Perhaps this is just a quirk of my own personality, and not a reflection of how God's people should be. But I am just me.

What do I really want in my time remaining here? Obviously the answer is that I want to serve the Lord. Well, that remains just about as clear as mud as it ever has. Except, Christ outlined a few things. Some of them at least I can keep. Some of them are really understandable - acts of charity.

I suppose every day I am alive, until Chris loses his temper and starts yelling at me for my fiscal irresponsibility, I can give at least 20 dollars to the Haiti children. Have I screwed my own children out of a fully educational life? Possibly. It is possible that I have imposed upon them a godless deprivation in my own mistaken impressions of the sort of charity God expects. And I guess I will go with that sin to the grave, because sometimes, that 20 dollars is all that's keeping me alive it feels - thinking, however small, and incapable of purchasing salvation, it is at least a continuing testament that however badly I've ruined this life experience and associated opportunities, at least I could hit one of God's expectations - taking care of orphans. It probably isn't enough to negate all the other evils I have done, but, at least, at least I have one of the items. That is probably the wrong thought process. I have an immature, childish perspective on things. My mind has sort of gone down the toilet the last 2 years, hopefully this regressed and simplistic perspective can be forgiven.

I know it's not much but, at least it will be a work of some sort. I know it may be wrong, but I feel like the ascetic lifestyle is the only one that makes sense for me, even though I do admire some pieces of art. The ones that highlight beautiful concepts like a loving family, with a mother and father fully in love with each other, and the doting children, full of innocence, tagging along. How could a person not love such a beautiful concept? And yet, for all the beauty in that concept, I have to also practically address the total waste these artworks are. If I am self serving in this writing, how much more so charging thousands of dollars for a work of art, and using the limited time here to just gaze upon artwork. And yet, I guess, nobody is some kind of machine that can work all day. Even a person who does humanitarian work - which I am not yet one of those. But even them, surely they secretly take some solace in looking at some image of unbesmirched beauty, not anything that would compare with God's beauty but - something in this fallen world that is clean, if only in the imagination. How dangerous such things are in that a person might continue gazing forever though - obsessed with escaping rather than serving. I know myself too well I feel to know this is a possibility. 

What do I really want? I guess I am operating on the thought that, at the end of my life there will be some judgement. I cannot save myself, this I already know, because my sins are already quite prominent in my mind. I can imagine failing as a lot of the people have failed in the Bible, despite a wholehearted desire not to. So I know if God allows me anywhere near Him, it will be exclusively out of mercy. But, I still feel in this time remaining, whether I make it or not, it would be good to at least try to spend it in a way that someone would if they were maximally concerned about doing good by God's definition of good.

I only have one definition that registered there - besides turning away from idols - and that seems to be the widows and orphans statement. I do not mind living here isolated in SC, even though I worry about the children - have I ruined their lives - have I deprived them of better learning opportunities - I really don't know. I am so far away from the top and so much closer to those on the bottom, that, my thoughts are continually "those people in Haiti are making it by on this" "those refugees are making it by on this" "those people laid off this month are making it by on this". I do greatly fear even if I don't understand God's parable on Lazarus. I fear even though I can't really imagine the wealthy who are ignorant of the sufferings of the poor being held accountable, and for their sakes I hope God will find a way to save them all, out of His mercy. 

But as for me, I want to be as close as possible to his commands, and to not fail at any of them, even though, I know, I certainly will fail. But at least I want to set about trying to keep them. I really want things to go better with my mother. I don't want God to be angry with me over this. I want to be a kind, compassionate, not judgmental, cruel, or disrespectful person. I know if my Mom is expressing hatred towards me, it is probably out of her control; she probably has the same spectrum of demonic possession I have experienced, and I have to remember she's somewhere in there. How I long to be able to keep God's commandment somehow, in full earnestness. How I wish I could keep them all. But, at least I can make some progress towards keeping them. That is, in the end, all I can do without the magical Holy Spirit, which I continually lack I suspect.

So maybe I will die like this, lacking everything, destined for hell. The things on the website seem to be always gloating that "they get me" etc. etc. And if God does not want me in His heaven, then, surely it is right, and I will stay with my broken heart in hell. It is a hard thought, far too much for me to bear or think about. I guess I will have to deal with that when I get to that juncture. Perhaps, already for a time, He has determined that He is so disgusted with my selfishness that He arranged this hell-type experience for me for the past 2 years. Maybe He remains angry with me over my sin, and so I will die in them. 

But for my part it is unthinkable to hate the Lord. If I have painful sins and even a separation in hell, I know it is my fault. I know He does not have to save me. But just as Lazarus could care about other people in his Hell, so too in mine, I will pine away for the love of the Lord, and His forgiveness. I will try to keep His commandments here, even if He has partially or fully cast me aside, I don't know - it is a possibility. Because in my heart I never did wish to fail, though I am predisposed to it. I never did hope to disappoint, or anger, or cause the Lord to turn from me. I believe in this regard, I must be as blind and foolish as that Saul character. I can only imagine his horror going up to Samuel and discovering that he had just massively failed. He probably didn't even consider that he had failed - he probably thought he had even found a better way to honor God by bringing the sacrifices. He probably wanted to be even more zealous in honoring God and thus failed to follow every word. It seems like a distinct possibility. Sadly, I feel like I have so much in common with this person. I hope God forgave him after he committed suicide. I marvel that he didn't do so earlier. I know school children envy the great prestige of these leaders, but were I man, I would imagine this would have been the worst news ever - you get to be the leader of Isreal, here's your sign. No wonder Moses said send someone else, he probably was terrified to fail the Lord. I marvel that anyone wanted to be a priest given that seemingly all predecessors failed. The story of the bible seems to be one of prolonged grief. 

And yet Christ managed to overcome the world. Who wouldn't want to be conformed to His image? And yet, who could be perhaps is the more pertinent question. Who could ever conform to perfection? What does it mean? I suspect my life will not be in that category, but from without I admire those who managed. 

From without, I am glad for the ones who are in heaven, though, admittedly, not without some failed sense of impersonal envy, not in that I would like to take anything away from them, only thinking, perhaps as a sick person looks at the well, how did you get so lucky as to be well, and indeed, I am sick and hopeless? I don't know, I suppose that is where election comes in. Some people were born elected, and some people were not.

I wonder if Lazarus also loved the Lord in hell. I wonder if there is a hell also for people who love the Lord but for some reason didn't make the cut. Perhaps Saul will be there. I wonder what it would be like to meet this individual. I am certain that nobody is talking in hell, they are all probably screaming out in their own personal agony. But, perhaps there are some conversational areas, with their bitter conversations. Perhaps I will find Saul crying there somewhere, inconsolable along with the Eli person. Maybe the Eli person made it. Hopefully I don't find anyone there. Hopefully nobody is there but, maybe they are. I don't know, still I wonder...are there people going to hell who love the Lord? I think so...it says that they seek out repentance carefully and with tears but the door is shut. 

It's awful. There's nothing in the rest of my life that is so valuable, no artwork, or house upgrade, or anything that would be worth that, but I know preventing hell isn't exactly a step by step process with definitive actions. God says He wants obedience to His commands. I hope I can eventually manage this.

I hope I can somehow not cripple the children in my own misguided interpretation of what that means. 

I am okay with the fact that my life is this strange form of worried agony. The fear of being eternally separated from God never really leaves me. I find it hard to discuss anything with anyone. Of what import is anything with this possibility at hand? All of life seems like a beautiful, but dangerous distraction. I don't actually even know why some things are so beautiful, and distractingly so - like the desert in bloom. How much time is one supposed to spend on the miserably suffering and how much time admiring the desert? If one does too much of the latter, is one therefore missing out on the former? Is one somehow suddenly less pleasing to God than a person who is spending all their time on the poor?

I feel increasingly, once the children go to college, Lord willing, I am going to go to Haiti at that orphanage. I am tired of worrying all the time about not doing enough. I am tired of having excess material things that I am constantly afraid will be held against me as testimony that I didn't care enough for others. I have come to sort of fear and dread what I would have found normal - artwork, consumer products - hell even the paper towel is causing me an existential crisis. I know I cannot earn salvation, I just feel like, if there's anything I can do to get whatever this life experience is "right" - which, perhaps I cannot - perhaps that was the point of the Cross - but, I don't know, James said faith without works is dead - I don't know...if I live long enough that is what I feel I need to do. I don't know if this is screwing over my own children in the process. That always weighs heavily on me.

I hope they can forgive me for having a crazy Mom. I hope they can forgive me if I am ill, and with strange priorities nobody else seems to have. Perhaps it's simply that I just hate myself, seeing I am at a constant departure from the ascetic life of the disciples, and a state of constant service to others - which I would imagine is what the early Christians did. 

I know with all this I might still go to hell. The demons are constantly chanting that they are going to get me. I cannot do anything if that happens. I will miss the Lord in hell, as I do already now. I will dream of His ever removed approval, and read the sad stories about all the other failures. I will wish I were different, as I am sure all the others did. I will watch the people in heaven with desirous eyes I am sure, as Lazarus probably watched them too. 

But I will do my best not to begrudge them their joy. Because perhaps people I know will be in there. Am I a person to wish others ill? I hope, at least, this is not true of me. I hope I have retained that one small redeeming characteristic. I hope it too does not flee from me, as all my other virtues seem so fickle and impermanent. I hope I can be happy vicariously from them, and in my own writings, gain a sense of peace in my isolation.

I hope what I have written is not offensive to God. I am sure to some degree, most of my thoughts and actions are. I do feel sorry for this. I am sort of a blind person, and a suffering person, and, my writings help me to some degree. I am different and weird, and, perhaps inconsolable in this world, and that is OK. I feel sort of content with my recent plans. I hope they do not adversely affect the children too much. Hopefully they can be halfway normal despite me. For this I do pray and beg God, given that, they are not yet full of all the sins I have acquired. I will, I hope, Lord willing, do my best to bring them up less sinful than us. 

Thoughts

Is God angry with me or not? This question seems to underpin my entire existence. I just can't tell. I can't tell whether my past mistakes have now precluded me from any possibility of being right with Him, and I am now locked in a downward spiral of wrath, or, if part of this is from Him, and that I should then respond wholeheartedly.

I think about things. I think about things in that book about the schizophrenic person. A lot of it seems legitimate, and then I think, who would make such a thing up? But then there are some curious aspects to it, some real red flags. How could a genuinely Christian person filled with the Holy Spirit be perfectly fine with a movie kind of glorifying adultery like the preacher's wife? Or be yet concerned about financial investments well into old age - about vitamin supplements for health, while at the same time claiming a full reliance on God for all things, including, and especially healing? I guess there is a possibility here, that these things could go together. I just can't imagine any of the original apostles investing in vitamin pills. Why would anyone with the capacity of healing through prayer, albeit for a major illness like schizophrenia, suddenly be pouring out their investments into vitamin supplements? Not that these things are so bad, but...it's just curious. Maybe these are small things that have nothing to do with his story. Then the weird aspect about talking about his own life's disaster as something that could be a "hot" journalism story; it just seems so out of place. His children's lives and both of his wives suffered greatly; it would seem like the more natural response to all of this would be some sort of somber grief, not thinking "wow, my life makes such a great story!" The response seems oddly infantile, but, then again, this is just another human being. And his story may be true. Why would the devil put out such a story? What would the author stand to gain...well, except some money through the sale of his book, by lying? But I guess furthermore what would the devil have to gain by putting out such a book?

There were other things though too. It didn't seem as though there was any significant repentance, or contrition or anything. Maybe there doesn't have to be for healing. But it's curious. When Jesus healed people he said "your sins are forgiven". The guy continues to act as though schizophrenia was just some kind of disease that sort of just happened, outside of any kind of sin accumulation. And I think about this. The fact that there is an "onset" period...and that almost no child is born with this, so it seems...could that not be indicative that it is some kind of choices associated with it that cause this form of demonic expression?

I don't know for him, but, I guess for me, I don't have to look too far back. I was deluded about it, but, I can see how all of it corresponds to around when I turned 32, not that number in particular, but the activities I started focusing on, that I didn't even think could be dishonoring to God at the time...that I thought were simply seeking Him, but, not really in and through the Bible primarily. I guess I was seeking understanding from others who I assumed knew Him better, and somehow, it went terribly wrong. I guess I started going through different fallen ideologies trying to make some sense out of my life, and the horrible suffering I would read about, and, I should have obviously read the bible and prayed retrospectively, but, I don't know, I don't know why I didn't, I wasn't sure at the time that it too wasn't some kind of lie perpetuated by the Jewish people for their own personal profit. Somehow, part of me thought this could be legitimate, and also from a poor and incomprehensive reading, and this led to worse and worse things, culminating in the drug usage. So for me it's not such a great question of, whyever did this happen? Or, "perhaps I was born with this innate predisposition for demonic possession" etc. etc. I suppose if I ever wrote a book it would go something like "I had a chance for a great relationship with the Lord, and then, at 32, here are the catastrophically stupid mistakes by which I brought the worst of demonic activity into my life." I'm not sure what use such a book would have for anyone, but I would not be too proud to write such a thing were it helpful for others. It's just this aspect seems curiously entirely missing from this other schizophrenic's book. He vaguely mentions "spirit of religion", but, this is very vague.

It's hard for me to discern..."spirit of rejection", "spirit of religion", "spirit of suicide", from actually legitimate responses to some of the things God said in the Bible. Would anyone accuse the Ninevites of feeling "a spirit of rejection" when God announced that he was going to destroy their city unless they repented? Would this not be just a normal response to "oh, we have completely screwed up and need to change" - and would they not legitimately feel some kind of "rejection"? Would it be impossible for Cain to have felt somewhat "rejected" upon the news that he was going to get punished for life for his sins? Was the garden of Eden something completely separate from a "rejection" of sorts? Is rejection a concept entirely foreign to the same Bible that says "depart from me I never knew you"? Can anyone say they are entirely immune to the fear of being rejected by God? I understand how a spirit of rejection could undermine someone from perhaps necessarily stating things to other people, or, from standing up for what is right, or hurting someone in some human romantic relationships, or human relationships...certainly a person could suffer from a spirit of rejection there. But, where is the line between legitimate fear of God and fear of God's rejection, and a cavalier and perhaps reckless "certainty" that, "it's all good, I don't suffer from the spirit of rejection." This is a confusing blur to me. However Jesus did say "I will never leave you or forsake you." It's hopefully a broad application to all Christians, though, he was very clearly referring to the small group He was there talking too; I guess it is every Christian's hope that such statements also apply to them. It is also confusing to me...this "spirit of religion", when Jesus Himself said "depart from me you workers of lawlessness". How exactly could someone follow Jesus without being, to some very real and discernable degree "law-obsessed" and religious? I mean it's God that gave the law, and the things He states are perfect and good for instruction; so then, I don't understand what this spirit of religion is. I guess it could be feeling justified by following the law and alienating other people imagining oneself to be something in the eyes of God for following it above other people; but this would seem to me to be more of a spirit of pride, rather than religion. I guess I could also see where a person would confuse the "less weighty" laws while violating the "more weighty" laws, in some kind of legalistic manner...but this again is confusing, all the laws seemingly could be important, and there would ideally be a way to keep them all, especially as God says believers will "return to me and keep all of my commandments". I don't know how a person with a low view on religion could just overlook that. It is true that it is said His commandments are but a shadow of things to come, and that we are not "under the law" but...again, this is all very confusing. I never understood this part, and, maybe this simply means that God knows we might be trespassing against certain points in the law, and to remember that we need mercy and that we therefore need to forgive others. But the man spent very little going over how "spirit of religion" affected him personally. And that also of course brings up the "spirit of suicide"; I don't know how to discern here between this and a legitimate feeling that one has irrevocably screwed up with God. I guess perhaps its because in many cases very few people irrevocably screwed up. Would anyone say of Judas...oh, he just had a spirit of suicide? I don't think many people would come to that conclusion from the story. What other logical conclusion would there be to a feeling of having completely failed with God than a spirit of suicide? I guess it probably has to do with God being forgiving. And I guess in this my entire hope rests. I do think on the fact that Paul, in his deluded state, murdered people, and Christians. So then this seems very grievous, perhaps even more than listening to some fools on the internet or evil people, and even doing a drug subsequently while holding the Bible; I guess it's not much solace to say "at least I didn't kill anyone", because, I have paid for the murder of many animals, so, in a way, I have that as well. But, it is some solace in all of this that even murderers were forgiven, though perhaps they still had some lifelong consequences. David still had physical obsession with women all the way to his grave, and a horrible decline for the last 12 years following his transgression. But we are told that God did forgive him and that he will be in heaven and saved. So even though he managed to completely destroy the rest of his life, and his children's, which is horrific, at least God was merciful enough to save his soul.

So this is where the hope is. Even if I irredeemably ruined my present life in terms of my mental health, and vision, and productivity, and everything, at least God might still save my soul; I could still hopefully make it into the resurrection of the Just, even without being fully in Christ as in, having the Holy Spirit, and being completely free of condemnation. Maybe I somehow screwed up that possibility, but we know still there is a resurrection of the just and unjust, and maybe with an attempt at following God as best I can in repentance, maybe I could still make it into the just resurrection, and after some sort of judgment and punishment, be right with Him for eternity. This is the hope.

But of course that "seems" like it's a long way off, and while I am concerned about this, this "right living" with God, obviously becomes very difficult with mental illness, and especially without the guiding of the Holy spirit. I do wonder how this guy jumped to the conclusion, amidst all the voices talking to him, that God Himself was somehow talking to him. He seems to say this with absolute certainty, even after openly stating that other voices were telling him a variety of things. I guess maybe he just "knew", but sadly for me, nothing is so clear at this moment. I am going basically by what is written in the Bible as my sole guide, although I see a lot of coincidences. I cannot be certain of their source at the moment. I see the coincidences and I try to hope that they are from God, but, ultimately, my life at present does not seem to be that of an outstanding Christian person, but rather one of a person who has really crapped up and is trying to get on stable footing. I cannot carte-blanche assume God is talking to me, or assume the best case scenario here.

However, I have the Bible, and though I read continually extremely scary passages about God being furiously angry at people, and though I always wonder in the back of my mind..."is our lifestyle offensive to God, are the total net sum of our choices offensive to Him, is He presently angry with us?" - though this is a constant thought, I do read the more benevolent passages about Him being an ever present help, caring, being compassionate, tender hearted, and about Jesus forgiving a wide variety of people, and not forsaking people who come to Him. So there are these passages too.

I guess I think about a lot of things. Self preservation has come up a lot. If a person is really right with God, and this seems to be a big "if", then, one shouldn't be thinking about self preservation at all. This seems to just logically follow. If one says "I believe God is 'on my side' and has my back in all things", then, it would seem to logically follow that one would not invest basically anything into "protecting oneself" because God would be their protector. I don't know where this gets into testing God or not. I read about this Coronavirus, and the mad dash for tissue paper, and the social isolation strategies, etc. I think about disease in general. Obviously it would be testing God to go and participate in some kind of sexual activities whereby one would contract a disease and then say "okay, I'm dying now God, save me." I see how that is testing God. But, living in fear in one's home and not going out and helping people, and worse, hoarding tissue paper as the weapon of choice against the virus...it's...insanity. I don't know, my desire to self preserve has gone down a lot. And I guess Chris sees this reflected in our budget and also in the risks I take. To a large degree I often think "if God wants me to perish, then, perhaps I should." It is hard for me to want to invest in protective things over time, as I used to, because part of me...is it that part of me doesn't care anymore? I don't know. It's partially that I feel ...I don't know.

I think a lot of things. I think, for example, if God were really talking with me, if the promises Jesus extended in the Bible were really applicable to me. Then, would I care for any quality of life in retirement? Would I actively save up for anything? Would there be something I would "hold back" in that instance? Would I care to horde any money at all? I guess the answer is no, and even more of a resounding no in the face of seeing people starving all over the world. But this is easier said then done and I understand Chris' position. He talks about starving babies, and famine, and all of this, and, indeed I cannot qualify why God would protect me whereas not them, and indeed there is no such qualification that can be made as I profoundly do not believe I am "more special" than anyone. But I also think...401Ks, so clearly unreliable anyway. I see that there are perfectly good public facilities for aged old people. I do not mind dying in a smoke filled one bedroom apartment in a ghetto. I have no great plans for retirement, no great attachment to this over and above the thought that maybe by my investments, despite the compendium of sin thus far, maybe it could make God happy, at least this limited aspect, this aspect that seems "cannot be wrong", even if done by an overall evil or otherwise unworthy person. The act of giving itself is worthy, and, the act of alleviating the suffering itself is inherently pure, even if done by us. I would rather die having given over the course of our whole lifetime than to have a very comfortable retirement, or a retirement at all.

But I know we differ on this, and it is a marked difference from how we first established our marriage. It is not that I cannot budget, it is that I choose not to. But, Chris is asking me to do it, so there is the other confusing part.

I have been lying to him by not mentioning the humanitarian giving I've done, and we keep differing on this 20% versus 10%. At least he wants to do 10%.

I do think of our responsibilities to the children. I would like to put them through college. Perhaps it's insane to say "I don't care if I die from the coronavirus, but, I want to save for my children's college". I realize there's some strange hypocrisy there. I am not a fan of anything that happens on a college campus to a large extent, but, at the same time I don't want the children to suffer impoverishment from lack of educational investment. Nor do I want to test God by saying "I'm not going to invest anything into educating them, make them Noble laureates". There may be something to what one sows one reaps.

Nevertheless investing in their education to a disproportionate degree...seems like it in itself could be an offense to God. Knowing that private school costs 10K per child, and that poor people's children are lining up at soup kitchens not even having a bag of rice and beans...this...it seems unconscionable to even invest in this education, even as, I see it supports a principle, teachers, a community, and is a sustaining investment that pays rewards later. I am very confused how this adds up though. If I say "I don't care that the public schools are crap, I've got my child in a private school" ...this is inherently a me-first attitude, and not a serving one. But if I say, "I'm going to send my own child to that crappy public school, where people will spit on them, bully them, and possibly educate them in the filth of the world"...then, what have I done? Have I done something commendable?

This is where we arrive at homeschooling, which seems to be the most ideal situation. But it seems to be delaying the inevitable. At some point we would have to make the choice between sending the children to public and private school. Private school does frequently require savings, or what we have effectively done is make our own children debt slaves in an attempt to honor God. I guess the question is if God would ever allow such an attempt to be that poorly rewarded. I don't know. Because I don't know how we stand with God anyway, or kneel, or anything. If God is angry with us we could give every last penny and it wouldn't matter. And yet, would God be perpetually angry with us for our foolish adherence to some stupidities? When neither one of us profess faith in any other God, though admittedly we do have these distracting electronics, and I have this drug usage behind me too.

I don't know. I think about it. What's testing God, and what's a right investment.

I still think we could donate 20%, save 20%, and live on the remaining 40% after taxes. Why would we struggle to live on 40K? What exactly even is that...that's 3,333 a month. I guess because of healthcare that is 1,275 a month. How much do we even really need a month.

Well, I guess between car insurance, taxes, mortgage, water, trash, electricity, food, clothing, and internet, that is 30,600 about a year. Plus 18K for healthcare, that's 48,500.

So this would actually just leave the 18,000 as our 10% contribution to give away. I guess because of healthcare, we would have no ability to save for our children's college anyway.

I guess that resolves that.