On sin and salt water....

I was searching this morning for an analogy. See one of my pet peeves is the saying, "Forgive and forget." Because I find it literally IMPOSSIBLE to forget the big hurts in my life. I think I am a pretty forgiving person. In fact, on occasion, I have been accused of being too forgiving. However, STILL I have never been able to transition from forgiveness into that state where I literally do NOT remember the offense. I just don't think it's possible. Hence why that statement peeves me.

This morning I was trying to come up with one of my famous analogies to explain the fact that even though a sin is forgiven the consequences of it still remain. It's still a part of you. I was sorting through comparisons like oil and water which I didn't really like because to some extent the sin we dabble with is more completely dissolved in us, more like salt dissolves in water.......

When I hit puberty, I started losing my knobby kneed, emaciated look in a BIG way. My gymnastics coach took notice of this and began lecturing me on how fat I was becoming. My response was to request bathroom breaks from gymnastics practice to go to the bathroom and make myself throw up. My disorder grew throughout high school and college, crescendoing when I was in Denver for my first teaching job. It was there that through counseling and eventually a miraculous healing that I conquered my eating disorder. However, even still I carry with me a little bit of that 13-year old girl in a leotard bending over the toilet. Now in a season of life where I have lost control of my fitness and weight I still am haunted by her. Even still if I overeat, I am tempted to shove a toothbrush down my throat. Even in healing I am somehow a bit different than someone who never forced herself to throw up to try to be thinner.

I was searching for the analogy to illustrate this enigmatic quality of sin, when I came up with the salt in water concept. I started working it. When we taste of forbidden fruit, when we dabble in sin, it's like pouring salt into a glass of water. The salt dissolves and even if we stop sinning, even if we stop pouring more salt in the water, the salt is still there. It's a part of us. When all of a sudden from out of NOWHERE God hit me with a science lesson out of the kids Abeka text book. They had to boil salt water to learn that salt from the ocean doesn't evaporate. I heard God whisper to me, "I can boil you. You will become a water vapor leaving your salty sin behind." WOW! It ministered to me in ways I cannot explain. And it reminded me of a truth from my very favorite movie EVER (Facing the Giants), "With God all things are possible!" He can remove the salt of sin from my life. Whether I poured that salt in on my own or whether someone else poured it into me, God can REMOVE it. It won't be easy. The analogy of being boiled away does not seem like a walk in the park to me; however, "desperate times call for desperate measures."

So if you have sin in your life, and it feels like you just can't get the last of the saltiness out, ask Him to boil it away. It won't be easy. It won't be comfortable. You'll never be the same... but isn't that what you wanted in the first place?

Why oh why do you share as you do???

I share it all (almost). I lay it all out there. The good, the bad, the ugly, almost ALL of it is out there for the world to see. Recently the question arose again, "Why? Why do you do it Jami?" I realized that there are many reasons I do this: to beg for prayer, encouragement, support during a trial; to allow others to witness God's miraculous provisions right along with me; as a catharsis for my soul... there is something so liberating about "getting things off your chest." But recently one reason has risen to the top to reign supreme. It is the BIGGEST reason that I share. I share so that others will know: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! I, too, know the depths of despair.

As I have walked through the various struggles I have faced in life, the hardest part for me has always been the loneliness of feeling like no one understands and the shame of feeling surely NO ONE else in the world has been this low. As I walked through the valley of the shadow of financial destitution, as I swam through the rapids of the river of betrayal, as I hiked up the side of the mountain of perpetual singleness, as I fought in the battle of the struggle against bulimia, the thing that I hated the most was the isolation... That feeling that surely no one would understand if I told them exactly what I was going through. That feeling that surely I was the only one to have plunged to these depths. The thing that I craved the most was someone to understand... someone to tell me I have been there and I made it through or even I'm there right now and I don't know if I'll make it through.

There is some truth to that old adage: "Misery loves company." On Monday I spent literally the ENTIRE morning on the phone hashing out the specifics of our medical insurance plan with our benefits administrator, clarifying amounts on medical bills received with billing offices, and setting up medical appointments with doctors. It was so mind numbing and time consuming. I mentioned to my mom how RIDICULOUS it is that it takes SO much time to manage your family's health care. She responded with her own tale of woe about trying to manage care for my great aunt in Florida: social workers, attorneys, nurses, etc... Somehow when I picked up the phone the next day to start another round of calls to doctors, nurses, and customer service representatives, I was comforted in knowing there was someone out there, my own mother, who knew EXACTLY what I was going through.... someone who had felt my pain, someone who was standing up under those same pressures.

That is my BIGGEST reason for sharing. I share all the nitty, gritty details.... I share frequently.... and I share just about all of it.... in the hopes that someone out there will hear my underlying message, my REASON for laying it all out there: YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Even if your struggles aren't the exact same as mine, whether you have it better than I do or you have it worse than I do.... YOU ARE NOT ALONE! And I am still standing up under these pressures which proves you can too! Do not give up! Stand up with me because YOU ARE NOT ALONE! You are NEVER alone!

I risk the rejection, the possibility that others may judge me and look down on me, the chance that I may be misunderstood.... all for this reason. So I hope you're hearing it from me loud and clear. I hope it pulses in the background as you read the words I write. I hope it echos through your soul in the dark of the night when the worries or recriminations flood in. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! YOU ARE NOT ALONE! YOU ARE NOT ALONE!