The Best You! By Jonathan

It’s very important to me. I think it’s important to God for me too. That I stand up for myself once in my life. I am not a victim. Satan must know this. You must know this. Name of God! You must know that God wants more from us, the Children of God, than to simply sulk and kick back as offences come. We are not called ultimately to martyrdom, Church. We are called to be witnesses! Witnesses with our lives. And our lives can glorify in glory! This same Gospel that says that money is the devil has deluded so many poor people. I think that the anti-prosperity Gospel is just as dangerous as the prosperity Gospel. That Christian theology that calls us to poverty. Certainly, there are those who have a vocation in this. God bless them! I know there will be some to say that what I am saying is prosperity Gospel. That God desires our happiness. I assure you that it is not. But who are we to argue if God wants us to be rich? With this money, likewise, with the love of God in our hearts, we can help so many people! This is ultimately where the integrity of charity has fruit. Not in paying taxes to a state that it may distribute those resources to people in need. Real charity is in personally helping the poor, the mentally ill, the suffering. The point is not only that God wants us to be happy. God wants us to live happy, holy, successful and fruitful lives. He desires for us to yearn and strive for more. Not materially, necessarily. But He wants us to be the very best versions of us that we can be! God doesn’t want us to suffer. Jesus. Who is filling your head with this nonsense? Yes, suffering certainly comes. But for us to be able to withstand the hard times, we need memories of good times, of love and of joy. If our entire lives are sorrow, what does this say about God? What does this say about the transformation He has created in us? About who He has called us to be? And I think that if our lives are purely sorrow, even with Jesus, final perseverance is going to take a super-heroic act of the will. The saints are evidence of glory in suffering. Well, we need a new sainthood. We need saints who live well now. That's tough. I glory in and cherish, myself, every saint who I have met in Tradition. They have merited their places of glory! Surely! And their heavenly glory is a crown for them as well as for us. All, I want you to see is that the examples of the lives of the saints are not the only way. It's true, along with faith, comes persecution. I know you are all frightened. God hold you, wrap you up in His glorious embrace and rock you calmly to the flowing melody of the rivers of Christ's precious blood all around you. Words! They mean nothing. But God's got you. Maybe it is a dream. Maybe it is a matter of what I can see that others cannot. This vision of the world as it can be pounds in my mind, my heart, crying to be a reality. I see a world where at the very least, Christians are treasured. God, Yahweh, have your way. Still, even in a world of terrible persecution, God still desires our good. He only makes the best of the trouble for the sake of His justice, which is coming. Lord, have mercy. Simply and purely common sense, folk. I am thankful for the vindication of God. Jesus, who convinced you God is a masochist? You have the gods reversed. Satan is the one who wants us to suffer. Even the worst of sinners. Jesus, is it really difficult still to see this? Name of God!

The Six Year Old Girl Who Lives Inside of Me: A poem by Tina Bethany

There is a young girl within me,

Six years old and far too strong.

‘I struggle with self worth’ is all she has to say,

When asked why she acts in this way.

So alone.

Six years old,

Knowing more of life than most.

She simply does as she’s told,

Even while doing what she was told is what hurt her.

How can I reconcile with the fact that

This beautiful, little six year old girl is within me?

Within the heart of a forty year old man?

Can I reconcile the fact that she has been more my protector,

Than I have, her?

‘I need you to take time during the day to speak to me,’

She says in a low and flat voice.

The days pass,

I hardly think of her.

She will be here tomorrow,

I sigh.

This six year old girl,

This six year old girl within me,

Has been present to every abuse.

She has protected me,

At a time when I was much frailer,

Only a child myself.

She fragmented, taking the abuse onto her own shoulders.

How brave could a six year old girl be?

I am far from crazy.

Maybe I am crazy.

But not with the implications you desire.

After all, we are all a little crazy.

Maybe I am crazy.

I see a reality in which the mind does everything it can

Everything it can to survive.

Casting ballots for a chance at eternity to separate reality.

It’s not a different reality at all.

Simply a different way to survive, to be free.

This is the world of Tina Bethany,

The six year old girl inside of me,

The six year old girl inside of me

Who was brave enough to endure the pain and the violence done to me.

Is it any question that she is angry?

She doesn’t know how to achieve liberty.

‘I don’t know how to express it,’ she says,

‘I’ve channeled it, channeled it into my sexuality’.

It’s all she knows of life.

She would never hurt a fly.

Yet she hurts herself by avoidance and fear.

Her abusers taught her the dreadful cost of speaking up.

They taught her in infancy the violent cost of fighting back.

‘I am scared. I don’t want to be like me.’ I hear her cry.

‘Don’t say that,’ I say in response.

‘You are beautiful.’

Waiting a moment, I whisper, ‘Thank you for protecting me.’

She lowers her soft gaze and thinks a moment.

She says, ‘There’s no future for me.’

‘Don’t say that,’ I say, ‘Jesus loves you. You are beautiful. Thank you for protecting me.’

She whispers, ‘I feel I have let you down. I am a bad girl.’

I begin to cry, ‘You could never let me down. God loves you, child. Thank you for protecting me.’

This is the world of Tina Bethany,

The six year old girl inside of me.

She tells me she is helpless,

Holding an enormous amount of shame.

She has lost her power in life.

Patience child.

God loves you.

Did you know that?

Jesus died for you.

You maintain my dignity.

And I am blessed to have you as a part of me.

Jesus takes your anger.

Jesus takes your shame.

It makes me happy to say that

I’ve a hero living inside of me.

What you have endured is so important to the God who loves you.

These maladies have made you strong,

Given you hidden and secret accords of dignity.

So that especially you,

Tina Bethany,

Will be able to say,

‘There is one who lives also inside of me,

It is the God who died to set us free.’

Tina Bethany,

Can you see?

Awaiting your eternity,

You are chosen of God,

By God.

You are chosen

Out of all men,

All women,

All boys

And all girls,

You, Tina Bethany,

Have been chosen to set the world free

From endless pain and misery.

Can you see?

The liberty starts with you

Take a breath,

Speak up,

Reach out your hands.

So covered in shame, so burdened with pain.

Open your hands and accept the love that awaits.

It’s calling you out of iniquity.

Not to blame.

Not even once.

Tina Bethany,

Accept with me God and liberty.

This is the world of Tina Bethany,

The six year old girl who lives inside of me.

Together, we are together in everything.

You also have given me the key to the God who lives inside of me.

Tina Bethany,

I am so happy that you are a part of me.

I love you, Tina Bethany.

And I am proud to say there is a hero living inside of me.

Especially you, Tina Bethany,

As though there were no other creature in the world,

Are now able to say,

There is also one who lives inside of me.

He is the God who died to set me free.

The Fragmented Parts of Me: A Poem by Narcis

 

Intimacy is a cold device,

An instrument of torture.

An element of terror fills the veins,

Contemplating the hellish existence, the omnipotent presence,

Of a narcissist’s wounds.

Far more than a narcissist.

These diabolic tendrils of evil.

Satanic.

Winding their touch through all of creation.

All of creation.

As a malignant brain cancer,

These wounds create an essence of panic.

Created by the narcissist.

Created only by much more.

An element of the Satanic is in his foundation.

Not chosen.

Only chosen for him.

The protector,

The caregiver,

The mother, the father.

What happens to the child, when all of these are fallen?

Of a fate worse than that of the Nephilim?

Once hearing, mommy is the God to the child.

How can it be anything otherwise?

My existence,

Safety,

Health, future, my humanity,

The possibility of the destiny of my soul,

Is in your wounded care.

If only we knew and heard,

Really heard,

Where it says about that a child will follow the way it is raised.

If only we knew what our actions do to our children.

It’s the reason spontaneity terrifies me.

Building up walls,

Iron walls.

Shutting the door even on goodness,

To avoid the possibility of ever suffering.

What is goodness?

To me, it is nothing more than insanity,

A disguised nicety.

How could it be?

That the instrument of torture used to stifle me,

Into this foundation of darkness,

Could be such a profound source of joy to others?

Surely they are deluded.

Surely they are masochists who are into pain.

How could it be that this instrument of torture

Could also be the source of my liberty?

Traces of my pain.

Traces of my pain,

I pretend I don’t even possess capacity for this complacency.

I pretend I don’t even possess the capacity for this need.

I feign it is not even a part of me

So that I am not wounded more when it does not come.

My identity,

Fragmented into many parts of me.

There is no identity.

Only the many parts of me.

Fragmented to preserve my sanity.

How can I cope?

Well, I can write poetry.

I have vowed I will never experience passion.

That word of evil, criminal intention.

Because of how it was used against me.

My attention shifts.

Momentarily.

I only desire to protect myself from being hurt.

A matter of cosmic irony,

That you should be upset with me,

For breaking hearts, for causing grief,

When the entire reason for this avoidance,

The entire reason for these fragmented parts of me,

Is the heartbreak within myself, the grief inside of the fragmented parts of me.

My attention shifts.

An element of bitterness rises from the ashes.

Who is to blame?

I long for others to see the wounds within.

How can I tell them how this has affected me?

Filthy rags of another’s disease ridden privacy,

Violating me in the most intimate of abuses.

Having made me,

In an element of cosmic irony,

The perpetual target,

The perpetual tragedy of every bully.

It has fragmented me.

Turned the pain inside of me into sizeable portions,

The parts of me can cope with.

My attention shifts.

Realizing, I have actually participated in my own abuses,

I have been tricked and groomed into believing I enjoy it.

Still confusing.

How terribly tragic that my body, mind should

Cooperate with those who abuse me?

You may convince parts of my body.

You may even convince the fragmented parts of my identity

That I am like you –

Like those satanic narcissists who hurt me.

It’s not too late.

It’s not too late to make even

This foundation of darkness into the greatest source of light.

Repeatedly asking the question,

Is a part of me,

Asking the question,

‘How can I love if I have never been loved?

All of a sudden,

The many, many parts of me flood over,

They flood like rushing water through a labyrinth of caves.

The caves of my soul,

Of my identity fill over.

Filling every part of me with the love and dignity of one greater than me,

Than every part of me.

I cannot discern who it could be.

But that in the process of loving every part of me,

I have learned intimacy.

He tells me that ‘I am one greater than you,

Who became like you and even less,

So that you could become greater than you.

I rise up like a conquering lion,

Fierce and proud and rejoicing in the glory that awaits me.

It’s not too late.

Even with this foundation of misery.

Realizing that passion and that intimacy that terrifies me,

I have already experienced and that what remains,

What I still need,

God will provide me.

My sexuality, like my identity and vulnerability,

I surrender to Him.

How can I express myself?

‘I like to write poetry,’ says a part of me.

And much like the greater part of my life,

The poetry of this part of me,

Begins in tragedy yet ends in victory.

Inside of me, there are many fragmented parts of me.

27 that I have found in entirety.

What a joy to know that also,

Inside of me, lives a 28^th identity.

That is God Himself, who gives me liberty,

My fragmented personality,

Unity.

And in the end, He gives me victory.

He has chosen me.

Every fragmented part of me.

Societal Amnesia: A poem by Joshua Hope

It has given me a reason to be free.

To trust in God with all my strength.

It is also the reason I have adopted humility.

How could it possibly be that the entire world

Forgets because of me?

Everything to do with me,

Every good I have ever done?

Focussing only upon the negativity.

Maybe this negativity,

In fact is the reason everyone forgets about me.

I have often wondered that.

Every good I have ever done.

What obligation do they have to remember me?

This is the question that burns through my mind.

The answer is incessantly,

None at all.

Satan is trying to kill me.

God has a greater hand upon me.

Still, it’s not a matter of pride.

It’s a matter of security.

At first, it irritates me,

A nuisance designed to pester me.

Otherwise, a thorn to humble me.

However, this nuisance collects

As a snowball on a snowy, slippery slope.

Have I done something wrong? I question.

Have I deserved this injustice?

Ultimately, the reality that you are forgetting

Is the truth that vindicates me,

Makes sense of all of the negativity that you remember about me.

It is so confusing,

Happening so often,

I begin to think I am losing my mind.

How the full entirety of humanity’s consciousness is steered like the rudder of a ship

By the house of God.

How great a responsibility, then, House of God

To guide the people of the world in the truth.

Without exception.

At first, it irritates me.

Has God abandoned me?

Slowly, God reminds people.

I watch in delightful agony,

Even as the broken methods I have been using

To stimulate people’s memory cease working.

God Himself reminds them,

Of a time of His choosing.

Satan is trying to kill me.

God has a stronger hand upon me.

It irritates me,

Then it angers me.

It infuriates me that people could be so insensitive,

Care so little about me.

I become filled with indignity and voice my displeasure.

This only fuels the negativity and collective loss of memory

Of all the good I have done.

I stumble and get angry.

I regret it after.

At first, I regret after.

After a while, I feel justified in that anger.

After all, Satan is trying to kill me.

Do you not care at all about me?

It begins to feel like God is losing His hand on me.

I become desperate.

It feels like the truth that vindicates me is in darkness.

I am bracing for society’s memory to forget about me completely,

Focus entirely on the negativity.

That negativity turns to hostility.

People become infuriated with me.

I am humbled.

But then, only to a degree.

Frantically, I try to stimulate people’s memory.

I am not ready.

God has abandoned me.

Satan is trying to kill me.

Suddenly, God Himself reminds them.

Slowly, God reminds them of the truth that vindicates me.

Hardly slowly at all.

It hits like a freight train.

The emotions are overtly evident.

Overwhelming.

Like a symphony’s chorus climax.

Still, God remembers me.

He has a stronger hand upon me.

And it reminds me of the reason people are losing their memory.

God has chosen me.

I am His servant.

I realize that my identity,

And who I have been called to be

Is for them and not for me.

It’s not me. It’s not me. It’s not me.

My life, including their struggle with memory,

Is about more than me.

I accept to be their servant.

So that their memory,

Their identity,

Can be at liberty.

I don’t have to defend myself.

God’s stronger hand is upon me.

He will defend and vindicate me,

Because I have been chosen;

A servant of humanity.