The Cure for "Double Yoke Syndrome" Part 1

Hope in a Prison of Despair: Wikimedia Commons

The food we feed our minds and the things we tell ourselves make a great deal of difference in whether our cross feels light or heavy. Half the problem with feeling doubly yoked is what we believe about ourselves and others mixed with what we may not believe nor trust about God. I joked around in my last post about people feeling doubly yoked but there's a great deal of truth mixed in with my rather lame attempts at humor. Many people do feel overwhelmed and weighed down but the truth is that feeling heavily burdened is often the result of a lack of hope.

Despair is the heaviest thing in the whole universe. Even a little bit is hard to carry.

What we believe or disbelieve about ourselves can leave us locked into patterns of living that make it more difficult to respond to God's freely given grace. If we don't believe that we, or others, or even a situation, can change we have the tendency to slam the door on grace. Very often there are hidden areas of hopelessness in our lives that God yearns to touch deeply with his grace but because of the things we believe about ourselves and others we keep the door closed through our own hardness of heart. A strong and stubborn belief can be a hard obstacle to remove. It can be done but we have to ask God to open up these painful wounded areas to hope. As in "Lord, please pour your hope into this area. I have difficulty believing I can/she can/he can change and I hand it over to you. Touch this part of my life with your grace. May the light of  hope cast its rays on the dark corners of my heart and may your love be the balm that heals this brokenness within me. "

Basically, when we don't trust fully in God or his word, we end up with hidden areas of despair in our hearts. We discount grace. We believe in a cheap grace that is not powerful enough to effect change in ourselves or others.

Hope is a "power" virtue and a "living" virtue. Without hope touching every aspect of our lives parts of us crumble and die inside. The easiest way to destroy someone? Strip them of their hope. Anyone who has ever lived in a state of despair can understand the debilitating effects of a lack of hope. Hope grows things... hope nourishes faith and love and brings about their full flowering.

Those of you who are gardeners have probably heard of "companion planting". This is when we group certain plants together to increase their strength and ability to survive and bear fruit. The same is true in the garden of your heart: faith, hope and charity work together to nourish the soul. These are virtues that God has infused in our hearts. Here on earth, they work in tandem. Strip one away and the others begin to fail.  When virtues fail like this we leave space in our hearts for the Seven Deadly Sins to set in. They are the "weeds" in our gardens and if not removed tend to take over the whole thing.

When I began praying for hope to light up all the areas in my life I felt hopeless about I began to see huge changes in my life. It doesn't matter the size of the issues you are despairing over, large or small He wants to open these areas to the light of hope.



"For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe, plans to give you a future full of hope."              Jer. 29:11

"And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us."               Rom 5:5

They Did Not Know I was Their Healer

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is from Hosea and it reads like this:

I drew them with human cords,
   with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
   who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
   they did not know I was their healer.
                                    Hosea 11:4

Do you know that God is your healer? As I look around the world we live in today I see so much suffering in people's eyes. Many don't seem to realize that God is their healer in a very real and personal way. I believe that this is an aspect of God's nature that people don't think about often in this day and age where being self-sufficient is praised and looked upon as a great virtue. I think we forget that we are not a world unto ourselves and that the very self-sufficiency we so praise can at times be our greatest downfall. When we forget that we need others we tend to grow very selfish and overly focused on our own lives and well-being. We lose the greater picture that is reality and sit on our little thrones in the little false worlds we create for ourselves.

Pretenders, the whole lot of us. Imagine if God were to show each and every one of us the truth about ourselves all at once?

Ouch.

Like a universal "divine adjustment". (Hey, never say never.)

Thankfully, we usually get this "divine adjustment" over a period of time.

The truth is that we need others and we need God. Those who believe they can "do it all myself" can, if it goes too far, shut themselves off from God and others. When we close ourselves off in this way we also close ourselves off from the deep interior healing each of us needs. Healing that we need so very much in order to grow spiritually.

Many people aren't even aware that they do need healing. They walk around joylessly, believing that this is a normal state of existence.

It's not.

There's a strange ideology in this age (and an odd one it is if you really think about it): that God doesn't  step into our lives in an extraordinary fashion anymore. I think this manner of thinking is more a byproduct of the age we live in rather than a "truth" we should hold onto. As a matter of fact, if you ask me:

It's ALL extraordinary.

Every darn bit of it.

Every single moment of it.

Every last particle of it.

                                                             God with us

At least...it should be.

We Are All Interconnected

I was thinking about The Mystical Body of Christ and how we are all interconnected through Him and I wanted to share a story, as strange as it is, which points to this fact. When I had Myasthenia Gravis I would often have "visual disturbances". Many times half my vision would cut out and I would not be able to see properly for a while.These disturbances are quite common in MG. Sometimes these came with headaches, sometimes not. A bit different from migraines,
I wouldn't get the "halo" effect and get headaches quite that severe but it was still hard to walk around when my vision would cut out, especially in public.

Last month, before we went on vacation, Randy, Michaela and I went out looking for a bathing suit for Michaela. We were at a local department store and I was in the fitting room helping Michaela try on swimsuits when all of a sudden...my vision cut out. I said, "C'mon, Michaela, we have to leave right now! Mommy can't see right." We dashed out of the fitting room and I told Randy what was happening and that we had to get out of there. He looked at me in shock and we left the store. When we got outside Randy this is what Randy said to me:

"While you were in the fitting room helping Michaela my Blackberry dinged so I went to check the new e-mail that had just come in. I read the e-mail, which was for you. You gotta read this."

I couldn't read it, of course, because I didn't have my vision back yet so Randy read it to me. A young woman who had been recently diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis had written me an e-mail. Here are portions from some of her e-mails to me:

"I suffered from severe almost sudden weakness when I was 22 years old, I am 26 now. I take medication everyday for Myasthenia Gravis and I had a thymectomy a couple years ago and that has helped. I am a follower of Jesus Christ and a firm believer in His healing power!! I have never accepted that i will be sick for the rest of my life even though my doctors keep explaining that "MG is a chronic disease that you will have for the rest of your life so you just have to find a way to make your life as manageable as possible." I was very active before i was diagnosed. I have a black belt in Karate and played almost every sport, so needless to say this was a huge life changer and i was so weak at the beginning before I got officially diagnosed that I had fallen down the stairs, I couldn't talk, chew or even walk for most days. I have been on a mission to change my diet and try to exercise and find some way to fight this!! I have noticed some good changes due to my Gluten free diet but i know what it feels like to be normal and even though if feels like a lifetime ago I want that back!!! IN JESUS NAME!! I googled "Jesus healed my Myasthenia Gravis" and i was happy to read your blog explaining your experience being healed from this awful disease. I would love to hear back from you."

From another e-mail she sent after I had asked her to tell me more about her symptoms:

"I did have had the worst symptoms. I was working at target and started noticing that my hands were getting weak and it was difficult to straighten my fingers, I had to wear gloves at some points for work and could hardly get them on well I thought it was bad at first but had no idea how serious it really was.I didnt have insurance so i couldnt go to a regular doctor so when i went to ER the doc spent 5 mins with me and said that bc of my hand weakness he said that i had a "pinched nerve" and gave me a prescription for viacadin!!! i didnt even take it bc i knew he was wrong. I was on the computer looking different things up all the time and within a few short months i was having difficulty raising my arms and holding my head up. One night i was at my dads helping them move into a new place and I couldnt do much but that was not the kind of person i am so i pushed myself ( i know now that is why i became so weak) but i didnt know what is was so i thought i could just fight against it i guess. Well I was by myself unpacking and my neck became so weak that i couldn't keep my head up so i just broke down and literally got on my face and prayed and asked God to help me figure out what was going on ... so i got up of the floor and went to the computer where i had explored many other options but never really found the right one (vitamin B deficiency, seizures ,MS) but some how I at that time found the symptoms for a disease called Myasthenia Gravis and it described everything i had a symptom. That was the beginning and it progressed really fast.. but i have no pain just weakness, debilitating weakness.

To make a long story short i went over a year without medication with my body being so weak I was unable to shower without my husband bc he had to do everything for me. I had problems eating, talking, walking, it effected ALL of my muscles. I went to free clinic with the diagnoses that I MADE and a young helpful doctor FINALLY believed me and wanted to help me so he set up a blood test and within a week i was on medication.

There is a huge improvement from now to when i was first diagnosed but i have never accepted that i would be sick for the rest of my life!! I have fought and prayed and cried!! it has been a long difficult past few years.. and now i feel like something amazing is about to happen. I have talked to everyone in my family about you and shared your story and it really encouraged me!!! "

When Randy read her first e-mail to me... to say I was shocked is a huge understatement. What are the odds that I would have a return of one of the symptoms of Myasthenia Gravis at the precise moment that this e-mail came in? The odds seem slim at best. It was as if the Lord was giving me a nudge to pray for this young woman. But why such a strong nudge? This still puzzles Randy and I. My heart really felt for this young women as I could certainly relate to her suffering. She was not the first person with Myasthenia Gravis to write to me but the other woman had a relatively mild case compared to A. Most people would simply chalk this up to coincidence but I no longer write stuff like this off so easily.

 Myasthenia Gravis can be life threatening. Those with severe cases can have "breathing crises" and can die from these. I warned her in an e-mail that if this should ever happen to make sure that her husband called an ambulance immediately. I am praying for A. and I am hoping that some of my fellow bloggers might join me in praying for her. We are all part of the Mystical Body of Christ and through our prayers we can all assist each other here on earth and our prayers for those who are battling terrible diseases can bring healing and help when they need it most.

Love Uproots Hidden Things

"For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light."             Lk 8:17

The Holy Spirit never stops working. Day after day, night after night, grace presses onward. Bringing everything into the light of God. The more people hide their sin, the more grace is poured out by God, for God is love and has our best interests at heart. He wants to save each and every one of us and, sometimes, to save his children he must use drastic measures. At least to us it seems drastic - humans usually prefer to look upon the sins of others rather than look into their own hearts. But this doesn't help us, we always have to understand that what we see in others is often in our own hearts too. Sin in the heart cannot be healed until it is exposed to the light of Truth himself. We do not know how deep the roots of sin run in our own hearts much less that of others.

Love uproots hidden things. Not to harm but to heal. The Mystical Body of Christ is wounded and the Holy Spirit is surfacing these wounds so that our eyes open up, we turn to God, and He heals us. If we let Him.We have free will and He respects that, but He has sounded the alarm worldwide. This is our wake up call. We look around the earth and see these wounds festering everywhere. In the eyes of our teenagers crying out for love and purpose, in our elderly who are made to feel useless and unwanted in our society when they should be cherished, in our overflowing prisons, in the "little ones" who are tossed in the trash because they don't fit in with their parents "plans".

The more we run from God the more obvious this woundedness is becoming. Will we completely destroy the earth and ourselves before we wake up and realize the answer is staring us right in the face? All creation is crying out. No one can blame God for what we ourselves have wrought. He is simply allowing us bigger and bigger glimpses of the damage we have done through our hardness of heart.

Perhaps we could call these glimpses "shock therapy". We live in a jaded, apathetic, world and many of us need to be "shocked" out of our complacency before we can get up out of our easy chairs and engage in the spiritual battle for souls that is going on all around us.  It seems to take a lot to move us into action. In the meantime people are falling apart, families are falling apart, nations are falling apart. Blessed John Paul II once said, "As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live." We can see that this has happened, not only in the U.S. but throughout the world. Families are the basic unit upon which societies are built.

The truth is...people were made for love. God would loves us back to wholeness if we would allow Him to. Jesus took upon Himself our sins and by "His stripes we were healed". Can we look Jesus in the eye and say that this wasn't enough? He poured Himself out for us. Even during his painful crucifixion He thought of us.

 He pled, not for himself during these dying moments...but for us.

"Father forgive them, they know not what they do."

Bared - pt 2

The Lord knows everything about us. Including secret motivations of the heart that WE aren't even aware of. Buried deep inside us are often hidden agendas that need to be brought to the surface for healing. Over the years the Lord has drawn my attention to many of these - which I then tried to correct with the help of his grace. Still, until the experience of feeling as if my soul was bared to the Lord I had no idea how deeply rooted they were and how much work still had to be done. I'm realizing now that my previous experience of this type of purgation left me thinking , "Well this can't go on forever. There has to be an end to it at some point." Problem being...I have no clue where that point is. For all I know, this latest healing could be the merest tip of the iceberg. Sigh.

I'm always wary during periods of deep consolation. And if I'm being honest...they make me a bit nervous. And rightly so (lol). As thankful as I am for these profound experiences of God's love, I know what's coming next. From past experience, at least in my case, it seems that the greater the consolation...the greater the purgation that follows.

Healing isn't always pretty. But then again, neither are the wounds which the Lord is seeking to heal. Here is a brief glimpse of my prayer life during this period of  spiritual healing:

Each morning, after getting my daughter off to school, I like to pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I always ask St. Faustina's intercession (Padre Pio's, too) while I pray this chaplet and I join my prayers to theirs. Much to my surprise, during this time, I rarely could make it through an entire Chaplet without bursting into tears. Huge great gulping sobs that I was powerless to stop. Sometimes these tears would go on for an hour. I was both shocked and appalled by this. Sure, I've cried during prayer before but never like these huge upheavals. And after these storms I would feel wonderful! Each day I would think that, surely it was over, but it just went on and on. The more I cried, the better I felt. It was as if the Lord was taking huge burdens off my soul and filling those places with love. Then, one day, the tears just stopped.

Last month I attended another healing service. Much to my surprise, I was called into the aisle, prayed over, and Slain in the Spirit. Within a couple days the tears during prayer started up again, much to my chagrin, and just stopped a few weeks ago. It left me feeling very peaceful.

We are oh so very fragile in our humanity. At times we despise this fragility but I've come to see that it is this very frailty that moves God's heart so much. He understands our total dependence on Him though we may not understand it ourselves. His strength is made perfect in weakness.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness."    2 Cor. 12:9

Bared - pt.1

Back in October I wrote a post titled, "What if things are worst than we think?" and I'd like to address this subject and give some of my reasons for writing it:

 Over the years one of my biggest prayers has been, "Lord, grant me the light to see the truth about myself and the truth about this world we are living in." I have always had this certainty that we are WAY off kilter these days and that our spiritual perspective is skewed. I've never known what to do with this sense of  the world being off course in a significant way, despite tackling the issue in prayer over and over and over again. "What is going on here, Lord?! Please show me the truth. I cannot live here like this knowing that things are so awry and yet being unable to pinpoint what troubles my spirit so much. Please, Lord! Help me!"

Well, I'm sure you've all heard the saying, "Be careful what you pray for because you just might get it. " I GOT IT alright and there's a teeny part of me that wishes I had never asked. I had no clue that it would cause me more suffering in some ways and that I would have a tough time coming to grips with it. I have spoken a lot about the physical healing I received but less so about the spiritual one. The spiritual healing actually began a month or two before the physical and continued for months afterward. I walked around feeling as if my soul was completely bared to the Lord. Like Eve stripped of her fig leaf. And it was painful. Excruciatingly so. Why? One of the reasons is that I had compromised with the world to a degree. After all, I had to live here. Though I have made tremendous progress over the years and this pleased the Lord, there are areas where I was still compromising the truth. In my defense, I often did this because I hate hurting people. There's so much suffering in the world today that I couldn't stand adding to anyone's pain. Even in my writing I would hold back to a degree for fear of causing anyone hurt. I  found myself "toning down" what the Lord laid on my heart to spare others pain or fear. This is one of the reasons I take time off regularly now, it gives me extra time in prayer and allows the Lord to give me an "adjustment" in my thinking. In posting about the serious times we live in, the key isn't to say "Well, okay, maybe things aren't so bad after all."  The key is to be truthful about this era and remind people that God is yearning to show them a better way. "Dying" to show us a better way is probably more appropriate when you consider that this is exactly what He did. It's about revealing his mercy without soft-soaping the reason why we are so in need of this mercy. The reason we need his mercy is SIN, plain and simple. You can't sugarcoat sin - though we certainly do try.

If the Lord had only revealed my own sinfulness I might have borne it better than I did. After all, this was something I could correct with his grace. What caused me tremendous grief was seeing the sin I was surrounded with in the world at the same time. I cannot force others to correct their own lives. Every person has the free will to choose right or wrong and, unfortunately, much of the world is on the wrong path right now. My consolation is the understanding that God is at work correcting this because He loves us very much.

The sense of being surrounded by sin (while still having to deal with your own) is extremely painful. I can't help but be glad that the Lord lifted this from me when it became too much to bear. But I know it's still there  hidden from my senses. As much grief as this has brought me, I can't disregard what a  tremendous grace this also is as it brings clarity about sin, especially ones that are hard to discern such as false compassion and the little (and big) ways in which we compromise the truth in our world today.  It doesn't take a great deal of discernment to see that this world has gone off path so I'm not absolutely sure why many people are unaware of this fact. Not only are many unaware, but many people EMBRACE the world today and consider the human race "enlightened".

Scary, our ability to deceive ourselves.

God have mercy.

Spiritual bandaids

One of the purposes of prayer is to open us up to God's Presence within us. We are temples of the Most High and prayer and meditation open us up to this reality.When we pray we are giving The Lord access to our innermost beings. He removes the bandaids that we have put on our wounds so that He can access them.  A bandaid doesn't fix a wound, it simply covers it. These bandages are the protective devices that we have put up over the years. Our defenses. Sometimes God removes them slowly. Sometimes quickly. Ouch! We are shocked at how much the wound has festered. Next time we'll go right to the Divine Physician.

 God heals us. I have often been told over the years that I really should do certain prayers a specific number of times for them to be answered. Nonsense. God can hear the softest whisper. God can read our hearts. He doesn't NEED our prayers. He is completely self-sufficient on his own. However, He knows that we NEED HIM!  It's not the formula but the heart that matters. People can get attached to certain prayers and forget that it's not the prayer but the GOD behind the prayer that matters. Does this mean we shouldn't do novenas? Of course it doesn't. But neither should we think that if we follow a specific prayer formula our prayers will be stronger and more likely to be answered. Better 1 heartfelt prayer than 20 mumbled ones.

Amen.

The Divine Physician - Jesus heals!

As many of you may know I have suffered from an undiagnosed illness since childhood. No doctor that I ever went to could say with certainty what was wrong with me. Over the years the muscle pain and weakness increased until it affected every muscle in my body from head to toe, including the eye muscles, throat muscles (difficulty swallowing) and chest muscles which caused breathing difficulties. Even as an infant I had difficulty breathing and was tested for Cystic Fibrosis which came out negative. Yesterday, I not only found out about my illness but was healed during a healing service.

Those who live in the Northeast have probably heard of Father Ralph DiOrio, the priest with the great gift of healing. God has used Father DiOrio to heal thousands.... and I am now one of them. Yesterday I attended a Mass and healing service in Sturbridge, Massachusetts where Father DiOrio often practices his ministry.  About 150 - 200 people attended the service and I sat in the back of the church with my brother and a friend. Father DiOrio prepares for the healing services the night before and God gives him "words of knowledge" about the illnesses and diseases which will be cured the next day. During prayer Father received a word that Jesus was going to cure someone with a rare disease called Myasthenia Gravis which Father had never heard of before. Trusting  the Lord, he looked up this mysterious disease to find out more about it.
Myasthenia Gravis is a chronic autoimmune neuromuscular disease that affects the muscles in the body, it also affects the thymus gland. A person could have a relatively mild case that only affects the face or a more severe one that affects the entire body including deep internal muscles. Because there were two unusual diseases that the Lord mentioned to Him Father DiOrio brought the words before the Blessed Sacrament. He also fasted before the service. The Lord assured him that the names of the two diseases were correct and
Father had no doubts.

I was seated at the end of a pew and as Father walked in He gave my hand a little squeeze. He said Mass and talked a bit about the healings that were going to occur that day including the two that He had never heard of. When He mentioned Myasthenia Gravis the fire of the Holy Spirit rushed through my body - but I still didn't really understand what it was. Father tried to explain that it was a neuromuscular disease that can also affect the eyesight and cause headaches and pain in the body. He walked around the room sprinkling everyone with Holy Water. When he came to our pew, he sprinkled us and touched my right shoulder. The pain left this shoulder. When Father heals Christ takes over his body completely. Jesus is the Divine Physician, Father is the vehicle through whom this healing gift is expressed. During the last part of the service He walked around the Church calling certain people out into the aisle that he then annointed with Holy Oil. As He came toward the back of the church he looked me right in the eye and called me into the aisle. It was like looking into the eyes of Jesus. My vision doubled (a common symptom of Myasthena Gravis) and my head hurt as well as other body parts. He reached me and annointed my head with oil and DOWN I WENT. Slain in the Holy Spirit! When I got up I knew I was healed! The Holy Spirit started working and freeing my body from pain. As the Holy Spirit touched different areas of my body I would feel heat. This went on for the rest of the day, throughout the night, and even continues now as I write this post.

My brother and Theresa witnessed my healing and we were all dying to know more about Myasthena Gravis (well, especially yours truly :) ). My car was at my parents house and we went in and had my dad look it up. The symptoms read like the story of my life. You all can probably imagine my joy and excitement! The doctors may not have known what was wrong with me, I may not have known...but Jesus did and freed my body from this disease. Praise the holy name of Jesus!

Here is a site which gives some information on Myasthena Gravis :http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/myasthenia_gravis/detail_myasthenia_gravis.htm
It makes me wonder how many others unknowingly suffer from this disease.

Jesus, I thank you and praise you for the healing you have brought to me. I place all of my brothers and sisters in Christ who are in pain in your beloved hands. May you reach out and heal them both spiritually and physically. I love you and praise you dearest Jesus - for by your stripes we were healed. Amen