Satan is a User

In exciting news this Thorsday (that's what my son calls it), my husband has a featured blog post!  This whole blogging thing is really new to him, and he really put himself out there (yay, vulnerability!) by writing this post.  Check it out -my buttons are popping.  CLICK HERE. And keep in mind that he didn't choose the picture.  Just wanted to throw that out there...

Satan uses souls.
Satan is a taker.

Satan even uses Jesus.  He uses Jesus against you.

Would Jesus have acted that way?
Would Jesus have spoken that way?

What comes after those awful hissings?  Guilt, shame, loathing...  everything Satan bathes in.

There is mercy for me.
I am infantile in my knowledge.  I'm doing what I can with what I know.  Jesus did what He could with what He knew, which was a LOT more than Alicia knows. 

The Lord knows that.  I know that.  Satan knows that, but he doesn't care.  He doesn't care because he's a user. and a taker.  and a tosser.

Can I just commission that bumper sticker right now? 

Hated

For the past few weeks, I have had a battle raging inside of me.

Life incidents have set in a motion of smug snowball of self-loathing, but I didn't notice it until the snowball was so big it was knocking constantly against my heart and soul.

I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me -intolerant hatred was pouring out of my mind constantly.  I felt heavy and sad.  Voices stirred from the back of my mind, "This IS YOU.  This is how YOU REALLY ARE."

I knew it wasn't true, but it felt so so true.
I've been criticized in small ways lately, and the criticisms have come from varying sources -each one small, each one adding a thick layer onto my muddy snowball.
After a conversation with my sponsor, I was able to vocalize what was really going on.

"I hate myself right now, and as a result, I hate everything."
This hate doesn't spring from anything inside of me.  I am not a hateful person.

But Satan hates me.  Satan hates women in general and reserves a special sort of hatred from women individually -knowing us as well as we know ourselves, yea, even better -he coils around our most sacred attributes, our most poignant feelings and twists them, turns them, manipulates them into filth.
Hatred is filth.

Battling Satan's hatred for me has been HARD.  It isn't something that goes away when the baby is crying or takes a sabbatical when I'm trying to make dinner for four in a messy house with no husband.
It is constant -as unchanging as the Savior's love.
The darkness is almost tangible.

I wonder what I have to offer -why I even bother getting up when all I ever do is leave my children to work and come home to a dirty house that my aching body can't grapple with.
I'm too tired to even cry, so I pick up a crochet hook and weave beautiful colors together in an effort to create something lovely.
Creating is my specialty -the specialty of all women.
We create beauty in every form imaginable.  We arrange flowers and produce laughter, we stitch fabric and buy throw pillows, we gather ingredients and our kitchens smell like home, we pay more attention to our dress, our hair, even pining over which color of eye shadow ought to be used for date nights.  We can delight every sense with our natural gifts: perfumes, silk, vibrant colors, uplifting music...
In short, we create and nurture life in every form... working hand in hand with our Father in Heaven, whether or not we are marked to create life in this mortal realm on not, women are unconquerable creators.

Satan hates us.  We stand for everything he despises.  We are the anti-demons.
Just as I weave brightly colored yarn through my fingers to create sturdy blankets and hats, so does Satan weave his blackened hatred through the tapestry of my soul.

This morning, I woke up to a blog post that sent healing tears down my cheeks -the tears that would not come these past few weeks have finally fallen.
Thank you, Jane.
I saw God today.

Remember you are LOVED.  Remember you are also HATED.  And don't ever confuse the two.

An House of Merchandise

I've been thinking about John 2.

In this chapter, Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover.  He found people using the temple for personal financial gain.  They were buying and selling.

I love verse 15.  "And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple..."

I believe if this case were taken before a modern-day court, they would classify it as "premeditated."

Christ's "driving out" actions were not an automatic reaction from the scene He found before Him.  They were meditated.  He witnessed a scene and methodically began forming a solution.  He didn't just immediately kick and scream and yell.  Can you imagine the thoughts running through His mind as he made a scourge of small cords?  His eyes were busy, His hands were busy, His mind was working.  He knew what He had to do.

As a farm girl, I love the phrase, "He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen."  Ask me if I know anything about using cords to drive cattle.  Go ahead.  ASK.

To stand in the midst of a herd of any kind of living anything takes guts.  It does.  To stand in the midst of a herd and take charge?  It takes a whole new level of guts: grit, courage, spit, fire, fearlessness.
Picture dirty jeans and dust on your boots, sweat on your sunburned neck, a breeze on your long-sleeved Wrangler shirt, a WHIP in your hands.
You are commanding.  You are confident.  You are on a mission to move.

The Savior made his scourge, and He moved the herd.

As I thought about the Savior moving people, I thought about the place.  It wasn't in the corrals west of town where I usually move herds... it was IN the Temple.  I thought of my home temple.  And then I thought of my body.
My temple... the one created by my Father.  The one I can't seem to reign in when it comes to chocolate.  The one who created and birthed three glorious children.  The one who has given up four wisdom teeth, two tonsils, and -as of Saturday -one toenail.  It's scarred.  It's stretched.  It has healing power and limitless capacity to learn. 
It is HOLY.

But there are merchants selling temples.  There is a billion (probably trillion) dollar porn industry.  There is prostitution.  There are sex shops and strip clubs and Victoria Secret.  There are lingerie shops.  There are graphic, awful, illegal practices going on with bodies.

This horrifies me.  HORRIFIES me.
It's bad enough that it's happening, that it's spinning out of control, but worse still is that it has permeated the walls of MY home, MY body, MY marriage.  My intimate and personal places where I should be in control have been desecrated, defiled, demoralized.

I move beyond being horrified and start to feel something far worse: numb.
I start to feel numb and hopeless and dark.

And in those moments, I will picture My Brother making a scourge with small cords.  I will picture Him taking it and standing in the midst of the darkened, secretive, huddled herd... and with His word and cord will He drive them OUT of the Temples.
With His cord will He stand at the foot of holiness and command the greed and the glitter and the grotesque...
"Take these things hence."

The Savior is the Savior.
He will drive herds with grit.
And I will be his part of his scourge -I will be one of those small cords.  Shaking off the shackles of shame and fear as I become an instrument in his hands to cleanse!

Porn is Godless.
It's table turning time.

We are All Minions

Sometimes I see spiritual correlation in bizarre things.

Example:
I came out of Despicable Me 2 last weekend and told my husband all about the sermon the movie contains.  You don't even have to play it backward to hear the encoded message.  It's blatant.

I watched Gru with his minions... he knew all of their names, what their jobs were, and he kept them working in a way that best worked for his jam factory.
They knew how to laugh and have fun.  They got upset over stupid things and slapped each other around.  They didn't know much about what was really going on around them. 

And then the villian stepped in and claimed them.  He changed them.
He started calling them HIS.
They became animals, devoid of natural emotions.

Eventually, they all got shot up with jam and all was well again.  Yay, recovery! *whistle, whistle*

It's just... SO obvious how much Satan tries to take credit for things that aren't his.  He didn't create the earth or Me, but he likes to think he has ALL OF THE POWER somehow.
It sorta pisses me off.
And by "sorta" I mean REALLY.  Because he is REALLY good at his job.

He reminds me of all of the lazy animals in the story of the Little Red Hen (yes, there's a SERMON there).  Once the work of creation is done, he steps in to eagerly try and claim the fruits of the labor, the harvest.
But no... the "fruits" known as my life are reserved for Him who created me, labored over me and with me.

And speaking of minions and small sermons: