The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat...Do you not yet understand or comprehend?

Mark 8:14-21

Lord, your path is the only one that will take me home

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat.  Jesus enjoined them, "Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod."   They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread.  When he became aware of this he said to them, "Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread?  Do you not yet understand or comprehend?  Are your hearts hardened?  Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?  And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?"  They answered him, "Twelve."  "When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?"  They answered him, "Seven."  He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat...Do you not yet understand or comprehend?

Lord,
I don't know exactly what you are saying but what I think of is your divine providence.  You always provide.  Trust, trusting you is the element that allows me to depend on your providence.  

Lord, so often I forget or I allow fear to overcome me and I try to depend on my own abilities or I am impatient and try to rush things along or I don't like or want to go the route I see you leading me toward.  And ALWAYS, EVERY single time I miss out on what is best for me or I make things worse or I prolong the pain.

Lord, I don't want to be that way.  As I look back at this past year and a half and all the pain and insanity you pulled me through, I can clearly see how often I tried to manipulate circumstances, said things and did things that were not from you, how I justified some of those things out of pain, the intense pain of rejection and betrayal. I allowed it to prolong my recovery and to hurt him.  I allowed that pain to control me and it made things worse.  You allowed me to do what I did and you waited on me.  You nudged me in the right direction and when I went the other way, you loved me any way and you waited.  Your patience, gentleness, compassion, forgiveness and love have changed my life and my heart and soul.  I think I'm just starting to understand those attributes of yours that I recall FA mentioning so often.  Lord, he taught me way more than any other 'man in his profession' ever has and he hurt me more than any other person ever has.  How can that be?

He is human an you learned that lesson the hard way.  You will never forget that fact again.  

Lord, that is true.  It's like my eyes were opened and I saw into a deeper level of reality.  I allowed my love and admiration of him to taint reality.

Don't be so hard on yourself.  He had some responsibility and your condition played a huge part in it.  It was a  battle every day for a long time, but that part is over and you have grown and become a new person because of it.  It did bring a greater good out of the pain and suffering.

Lord, that makes the agony worth it and there is nothing more valuable than the relationship I have with you.

seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him

I cannot resist a mother's love

Mark 8:11-13
The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.  He sighed from the depth of his spirit and said, "Why does this generation seek a sign?  Amen, I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation."  Then he left them, got into the boat again, and went off to the other shore.

seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him

Lord,
This has been somewhat confusing at times for me.  Lord is it asking for the sign or testing you that is wrong?

Both

I thought you were going to say a test.   But I understand that asking for a sign may come from a lack of faith.

You have given me so many signs or shown me confirmations that what I believe to be from you, is from you.

The signs that they wanted were miracles for proof.  You have done that once when your grief was overwhelming.  The grief of a mother who's child was taken.  You were not arrogantly wanting proof. You were in such a depth of sorrow, not understanding and hurting so deeply.  A mother's love, I cannot resist.

You got your answer that has given you consolations for years.  And you got the rest of he prayer answered years later. 


Yes, I do exist. Yes your baby is in heaven and yes her life had a purpose, to bring you to me.  I want you to look at that and see how your prayer, your desperate prayer was answered.  It didn't happen in the time you desired but it happened in the right time.


Patience, patience will bring you peace.  You know J will return.  I have confirmed that and that one confirmation has brought you peace on so many occasions when you were losing faith out of your impatience.  And that impatience brought you turmoil.  And you know where the turmoil is from  and it is not from me.  If he (the devil) cannot have your soul, he will settle for your misery.  Misery gives him pleasure and it fills him with pride because he takes credit for it and rightfully so.  He is the father of misery and all other forms of human suffering.  He only plants the thought that puts your own concupiscence into motion.  He still has a hold on your heart and mind, he will not let to, you have to break free.  It has to come from you and I will help but you must reach up to me and ask and then cooperate, even when it is difficult because of its' discomfort.

Yes Lord, as always, please give  me the grace.

You know I will

He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere

Lord, help me love the way you love

Mark 1:40-45
A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, "If you wish, you can make me clean."  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand,  touched him, and said to him,  "I do will it. Be made clean."  The leprosy left him immediately, and he was made clean.  Then, warning the him sternly, he dismissed him at once.

He said to him, "See that you tell no one anything, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed;  that will be proof for them."

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter.  He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly.  He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

 He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere

Lord,
You were not easy to find but they found you anyway.  Lord, it took me 40 years to find you and you were not hiding.  You were right with me the whole time.  Help me to remember when I was lost.  Help me to be more charitable to those who are not there yet.

Lord, mama is one of those people.  She does not have you, personally.  She does not understand your word so she dismisses it as not being true.  She has bought into the lie of the culture.   How can I help her?  Shs is in the last hour of her life, the last state before she leaves this earth.  The most critical time of her life, of her eternal life.  She hs been like this for over 80 years.  I do'tknow what or how I ccan help her come closer to you.  I know you can do it, but you  have to show me what you want me to do.


Spend more time with her.  Speak lovingly, gently with joy and she will want it.  She has not been looking so she has to first have a desire to know me, to come to me.  She does not know what she is missing.  You must show her with your actions, not criticisms and judgements.  Those will only shut her down and make her want to go away and not change.

Patience, compassion, love, gentleness, wisdom, peace, confidence....These are the things I will need to do this.  Lord, will you give me the grace?  It will be hard and impossible without it.

But this is the most important thing yo can do, this is what its all about.

Lord, I can see it now.  A whole life's purpose is to get to heaven and I have the opportunity to help her, to guide her.  This is a hug responsibility.

Yes but one you do.  Your love will live on forever.

My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat

If they could all love you the way I do....

Mark 8:1-10
In those days when there again was a great crowd without anything to eat, Jesus summoned the disciples and said, "My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat.  If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance."  His disciples answered him, "Where can anyone get enough bread to satisfy them here in this deserted place?"  Still he asked them, "How many loaves do you have?"  They replied, Seven."  He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground.  Then, taking the seven loaves he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to distribute, and they distributed them to the crowd.  They also had a few fish.  He said the blessing over them and ordered them distributed also.  They ate and were satisfied.  They picked up the fragments left over--seven baskets.  There were about four thousand people.

He dismissed the crowd and got into the boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat

Lord,
I don't get this.  Nothing stands out today but this, but it has nothing attached to it inside me. "My heart is moved with pity", that is what keeps coming to mind but there are no feelings or thoughts.

Those people were captured by you.  They followed you or sat with you for three days, even after their food ran out.  They gave themselves to you and did not even think of themselves and their need for food.  I think you must have captured their heart, mind and body.  Lord, I feel that way so often.  You have captured my heart, mind and body.  Sometimes I feel like I have a backstage pass.  I feel so close to you, that I have your full attention.  I have never received that from anyone in my life.  When I think about it, I feel selfish.  I look around to see if anyone has noticed my arrogance or selfishness.  I still feel like I am doing something wrong in this relationship.  I still feel a little like I am sneaking our or maybe not sneaking out but overindulging with my time with you.  I don't so much care what others think of it much any more because unless they have what I have, they will never understand.

I want them to understand, to know that you are real, that you are all the things the Bible says you are and that you are specifically in love with them.

It is still so hard to grasp that you can be completely with me and with someone else at the same time, that you handmade me specifically the way I am, that the differences between and others are intentional.

Lord, help me embrace those differences and discover their purpose because I know that you have purpose in everything.  Lord, help me release the shame I feel for being different and to accept the qualities that I deem so negative.  The difficulty I have with self control because of the mood disorder is what pains me the most.  How do I let go and forgive myself for the things I say or do that I later regret?  Many of those things are not sins, yet they haunt me just the same.

For years I believed my openness was a  gift because I was authentic and it opened others up and put down their guard so often, it made them trust me.  I thought it gave me freedom to be myself but what it often did was open me up for hurt, rejections and so often when I look back at those times, it's like I made myself naked and then I regret and feel shame.  Lord, I don't know the difference between embarrassment and shame.

Shame is deeply rooted and comes back over and over.Embarrassed is like a snapshot, a short time and then it is over and you are able to let it go and often laugh at it in retrospect.

Lord, help me get rid of this same because that is what it is.

He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak

Lord, do with me what you Will

Mark 7:31-37
Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis.   And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him.  He took him off by himself away from the crowd.   He put his finger into the man's ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!")  And immediately the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly.   He ordered them not to tell anyone.   But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.   They were exceedingly astonished and they said, "He has done all things well.   He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak

Lord,
You have done this for me.  You have been speaking to me my entire life but I did not hear you until that day, that day in 2004.  I heard you so clearly and I had no doubt it was you.  It's been seven years since that day and I have heard you in all that time, leading me, correcting me, consoling me, teaching me, counseling me, healing me and using me, even when I am not faithful to you, when I allow my feelings of anger, fear, doubt, rejection and so many others lead me away from what you desire from me and every time I regret it.  I suffer in some way because of my rebellion and my desire to control things.

You are learning even thought you do not embrace those things you do not wish to do ,with zeal, passion and a desire to please me, but with resignation that if you do not comply, you will regret it.  Well that is a step on the way to total abandonment to my will and I will take it.

Lord, I am sorry.  I do still have a will that does not want to do what I do not want to do even thought I know in my heart that it is what I must do and that it is what is best for me and for all involved.  Lord, I will work on embracing your will for me with more love and gratitude and a desire to please you because I really do know that is what will be best for me and it will save me pain and regrets.

You do that.  It would make me happy and you as well.  I love you and want the best for you and I alone know what is best and I will lead you.

Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps

Lord, all I want is for her to be back in your arms

Mark 7:24-30
Jesus went to the district of Tyre.  He entered a house and wanted no one to know about it, but he could not escape notice.  Soon a woman whose daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him.  She came and fell at his feet.  The woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by birth, and she begged him to drive the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, "Let the children be fed first.  For it is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs."  She replied and said to him, "Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps."  Then he said to her, "For saying this, you may go.  The demon has gone out of your daughter."  When the woman went home, she found the child lying in bed and the demon gone.

Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children's scraps


Lord,
You got me here.  I think I understood what this meant at the time, but what does it mean to me today?  “Even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

Lord, I will take whatever you have to give.  This woman knew she was not one of “His” children or at least believed it and yet she had courage to go to him and beg.  What humility.  He r love for her daughter drove her.  Just thinking of that brings tears to my eyes.  Lord, J will be here in less than two weeks and I am filled with grief, knowing she is living so far from you.  It stabs my heart.

She’s not so far, she just thinks she is.  She has to fall trying to do it without me, that way she’ll know she needs me.  She will be more convicted in her faith; it won’t be based on what she read or what someone told her.  You know she’s never learned that way.  She has a good heart, she loves, she does what she believes is right, as misguided as she may be.  She called on me and I was there (in car accident).  I am there always.  I am all around her, protecting her.   My mother is there.  We love her more than you.  We want her salvation more than you.

Lord, that is hard for me to grasp, that anyone could love her more than I do, yet I know it’s true.  Lord, I know she experiences what I do, the mood swings.  But she does not want to treat them.   She thinks she can control it or live with it and I guess she can live with it, but she doesn’t have to.  Lord, my genes brought this on her and I know I have no control over it, but I still grieve at little that she has to suffer through this and so do those around her.  The only thing I can do is pray and see if I can find a natural solution for her.

She’s a big girl.  It’s not up to you.  She has choices and she has to live with her choices.

Lord, I don’t even know if that (statement above) is you speaking.

It’s not.  Your discernment was accurate.  He (devil) wants her to live with the pain and the struggles you have.  But that’s not what I want or what you want either.  This is a way to show her your love.  Finding a natural cure will not be easy.  But by going that way, doing it her way, you will be showing her your love and your acceptance of what’s important to her.  You will be helping her in a way she needs help but doesn’t even realize.

Lord, if she goes through the depression that I have, I know it is dark and I have had some medication, at least for that part of it for years.  I don’t know how much worse it would have been without medication.  Lord, more than all of this, I want her to know she needs you, that ultimately you are the only ‘thing’ that will make her truly happy.

I know, she will……………………….one day.

Hear me, all of you, and understand.....Are even you likewise without understanding

Lord, help me practice patience

Mark 7:14-23
Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand.  Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile."

When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable.  He said to them, "Are even you likewise without understanding?  Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?"  (Thus he declared all foods clean.)  "But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him.  From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.  All these evils come from within and they defile."

Hear me, all of you, and understand.....Are even you likewise without understanding

Lord,
I'm reading thinking, yet again, "OK, What?"  Understanding ....Lord, that is what stands out but???

Lord, I don't understand so many things.

It will be two years since it all began, in two more months, and I have changed, grown spiritually and I've changed my thinking a lot.  You brought me through a lot of emotional pain, of which, a small amount remains.  I know you will heal me of it completely and I have been impatient about it.  I have been impatient about many things.

 Even my body has changed for the better.  I do see that my view of myself physically has not changed much especially when I see myself in pictures.  All I see is the fat and ugliness that remains. Lord, I don't' want to be like that.  I know that is perfectionism and a bit of fear of being vain.  FA told me long ago that my concern about what others think of me was vanity and I didn't see it because I was not so concerned with my outward appearance at the time.

Lord, help me understand where you are taking me.  I can barely believe it's taken this long to get this far.  That day you filled me with yourself changed my life and started all of this.  As I think about how long it's taken me to get this far, I think about FA.  I don't know for sure if he has been receiving the help he needs and if he has it's been less than a year.

As I look at myself and my progress and the fact that I sought out this help myself and I truly want to change and am willing to do what it takes, I understand that it will take him more time.  It's not all about me.  It never was.  It was about him getting help too.  And the promise was that the time would not come for a reconciliation until we were both healed.  So an encounter now would not be fruitful and I would be disappointed and probably lose ground with my progress.  Just like this diet and the chiropractic work, I need not to only reach my goal, but maintain it and be stabilized or I risk a relapse.

Lord, I see where you are leading me here.  I need to be more patient and quit thinking of a reconciliation.  He is not close to being ready even if I am, which I am not.  I need to trust your perfect timing on this.  This is my opportunity to practice patience and trust in you and myself.

Please give me the grace to do this right, Lord,

You already have it, now you must rely on your own free will to carry this out.  I promise if you do trust in me, all will be well and you will be happy with the results but you must be patient and wait on me.