Category: Spiritual

But the Fruit of the Spirit is . . .

~ Sandi Staton ~ Leave a comment

Galatians 5:22,23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I admit that I have a hard time letting go and letting God have complete control of my life. I like being in charge of my life and my surroundings. I feel safer when I’m in control; when I get to pick and choose this and that. Yet, because of the way I’m geared, I cause a total train wreck for myself as well as those around me. Before I realize it, anger and depression and fear, and anxiety are in complete control. Love, joy, and peace are nowhere to be found. No matter how much I pray and moan and groan.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for me to be truly happy and joyful, I have to move out of the way. I have to become less so that the Holy Spirit can become more. So that I can know real love and joy, and peace. So that I can be more patient, kind, good, faithful, and gentle. So that I can have self-control.

It’s not easy to nail my flesh to the cross. It hurts. It’s humiliating. It’s totally not me. But, I’m working on it piece by piece, day by day.

I hope you enjoy my creations and that they will help you remember and to practice living by the fruit of the Spirit. And because we can’t do that in our own strength, God will help us.

My creations are free for your own personal use. All I ask is that you don’t sell them. Thanks!

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Stand by Your Man

~ Sandi Staton

Ephesians 5:22
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.

The first time I heard Tammy Wynette sing, “Stand by Your Man,” I wanted to smash the radio.

My marriage had just ended. He was mean and abusive. I was a strong-willed wildcat. He stayed out all night drinking with his buddies. I paced the floors while our three-month-old slept. He told me I was no good. I believed him and cried. A lot. He threatened to leave again and again. I didn’t care anymore. While he was at work, I packed his bags, set them outside the door, and changed the locks. When he came home, his key didn’t work, so he busted through the door. The wildcat in me hissed and growled for him to leave. He kissed his son and left. End of story.

So, the lyrics of Tammy’s number one country hit raised my hackles sky-high. What woman in her right mind is going to stand by her man when he treats her worse than the neighbor’s dog? What woman is going to spit-shine her man’s shoes, wash and iron his lipstick-stained shirts, singing “Oh Happy Day” after he stayed out all night just being a man? And what woman is going to forgive and forget over and over and over again till death do us part?

Not this woman!

If my man wants me to love and trust and respect him plus fulfill his every desire, then he better give me plenty of good reasons. Love and commitment is a two-way street. At least that’s what I thought I heard when we exchanged our wedding vows.

I tell people that it took a real man to love me. And that man is the man I’ve been married to for the past forty-nine years. With his stubborn love, he tore down the barbed wire fence tangled around my bleeding, unbelieving heart. With his patience, he broke through the fortress of fear and distrust. With his integrity, he pried my eyes open and helped me to see that his love for me is as real as the sky above. He adopted my son and raised him as his own. He taught him how to become a real man. And finally, because of his unconditional love for me, I surrender my heart and soul to him. Even through the ups and downs, he keeps loving me with a Christ-like love. He doesn’t always like the strong-willed wildcat in me, but he’s the only man on God’s green earth who could ever make it purr.

He’s a real man.

A real man protects his woman, fights for his woman, loves and encourages and respects his woman. A real man never ever beats his woman into submission or forces his will on her because he’s bigger and stronger. Only weak, insecure little boys in a man’s body does that to a woman.

It angers me when I hear of preachers expecting women to stay with their man no matter what. That she should be the stronger Christian because after all, her man is just a man. Baloney! Preachers that preach that lie need to go back and read the rest of the scripture where the Apostle Paul says in Galatians 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word.”

It also angers me when a woman allows a man to beat her. And The more she allows it the harder it becomes to take back the power she fearfully gave away. And the beatings go on and on and on till someone ends up dead.

Yes, I’m a fighter for people’s rights, and especially for women’s rights. We’ve been through hell and high water to be recognized as human beings with brains as well as arms and legs and other stuff to allow any man to kick us around. So yes, I take offense when my kindred sisters are being abused and if I’m anywhere near, I will unleash the wildcat in me and it won’t be pretty!

From Damnation to Redemption

~ Sandi Staton

The Cross

Sugar and spice and everything nice

That’s what Eve was made of

And placed in the Garden of beauty and charm

To bask in the warmth of God’s love

Then along came a serpent so charming and sweet

With a hellish mission in mind

To crush and destroy the apple of God’s eye

And to rob her trusting soul blind

How foolish was she that fateful day

When she ate from the forbidden tree

And lost the cloak of God’s righteousness

For all eternity

But even before He formed the clay

God had a plan for man-kind

To redeem and restore our broken souls

And give us life sublime

He sent to earth His only Son

To die on a rugged tree

To wash away sin’s ugly stain

And to set our spirits free

It’s Too Peopley Out There

~ Sandi Staton

It probably began when the doctor yanked me from my mother’s womb and slapped my scrawny bare butt. Or maybe when my dad dropped me on my head. Come to think of it, first grade was no skip in the woods, either.

It doesn’t really matter when or why it all began. What does matter is how terribly it has affected my entire life.

I mean, why did I have to sit in that stupid circle of kids every day? Wasn’t it bad enough sitting at my desk feeling lonely and afraid? And why did I have to read out loud? Why did I feel like I had two heads and a big fat wart on my nose? Why? Why? Why?

Public work wasn’t much better, either. Paranoia, like a playground bully made me feel suspicious, angry and hostile. I’d tell myself to calm down that it only feels like I’m under attack. But my addled brain wouldn’t buy it. No matter how hard I reasoned with myself, the pain was real. The anxiety was real. The panic was real. The I’m gonna quit and never come back was real.

Years, and years, and years I tried and failed at being normal. So I started pretending. I pretended that I wasn’t angry when I wanted to punch someone in the face. I pretended that I didn’t hurt when I was hemorrhaging inside. I pretended to be happy when I wanted to bawl my eyes out. Why? Because no one would like me if they really knew me. And because being vulnerable was like having a death wish.

Pretending worked until it didn’t anymore. Until that last straw that broke the camel’s back. Until all those inner demons had no place else to go but out.

Thankfully, God was there and saved me from the near fatal wreckage. Don’t ask me how He did it. He just did. We all experience God in different ways. I just know that I called on Him and He was there and changed my life forever.

It’s been a long, painful journey of learning and trusting and relying on God to fix me. Sometimes it’s a mountain top experience, sometimes it’s like crawling naked through a brier patch. But, when I let go of the reigns and hand them over to Him, He gives me strength. He gives me hope. He gives me peace. He helps me stay on track. I can’t do life without Him.

This is what God has and continues teaching me:
I’m not perfect
I can’t fix everything
I can’t always be in control
I can’t please everyone
I don’t have to like everyone
I have a God-given right to defend myself
I stopped allowing people to manipulate and use me
It’s okay to be me
God loves me just the way I am but encourages me to be more like Him

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you ~ 1 Peter 6,7

 

 

 

 

Are You Still Looking for the Golden Years?

~ Sandi Staton

We lost our jobs. We struggled from month to month on our skimpy Social Security checks. We battled depression, frustration, and feelings of hopelessness. We beat cancer and survived the seemingly worst years of our lives together.

It wasn’t until my husband started receiving disability benefits from the VA that we were finally able to come up for air and break free from the financial monster we faced every waking moment of every single day for three long, stressful years.

We planned many things before reaching retirement, those golden years we looked forward to spending debt free in splendid bliss traveling and cruising and collecting seashells on a sunny beach.

But owing a mortgage wasn’t one of them. Nor did we plan on the tiny trees we planted to get so big and messy and their shallow roots cracking the driveway.

In a dream world, our hard-earned golden years would be having a bottomless money pit and hiring professionals to renovate the house and manicure the lawn.

But those are someone else’s golden-years, certainly not ours.

So, here we are, a pair of dried up bones, our house falling apart, feeling too hopeless and frustrated to do anything about it.

Still, more than the dead trees in the yard, weeds in the flower beds, and saplings growing in the gutters, we wanted that dirty, stinking, pee-stained carpet gone!

So, with a glimmer of hope, we convinced ourselves that we’re only half as old as we look, and if we want that carpet gone, we’re gonna have to get off the pot and make it happen.

So, we watched a few how-to videos, high-fived each other, and with the adrenaline of a pair of goofy teens drunk on energy drinks, we decided to renovate the house.

Easy breezy, like sipping lemonade on a warm summer day by the pool.

NOT!

It’s been more like crawling a thousand miles across a hot desert naked.

On May 27, 2019, we began moving furniture and pulling up carpet, staples, nails, and carpet strips.

Two days later while we were out, a woman ran the red light and plowed into us causing over two thousand dollars in car damages and six weeks in the body shop for repairs. Thankfully, no one was hurt. It did, however, throw us off track for a few weeks dealing with insurance agents, numerous phone calls, and the rental car breaking down.

We have never laid flooring before and will never ever in a trillion years do it again. I’d rather kill a grizzly bear with my bear hands!

Being a perfectionist, having my house torn asunder with nothing in its place for weeks and weeks on end, the dogs acting stupid, and hubby working an hour and resting four nearly sent me over the edge.

And as if it couldn’t get any worse, we ran into water damage and huge pee stained circles . . . lots and lots of circles like stepping stones zigzagging across the sub floor. Replacing one of those boards became a crumbled mess of sawdust like a box of Nilla Wafers smashed to smithereens with a sledgehammer.

Several grueling hours later we finally cleaned up the mess and nailed down a new sheet of ply board only to discover it was too thick.

By now, we’re threatening to black each others eyes and I’m thinking of sticking a for sale sign in the yard and moving to another planet where I’m sure the golden years must be hiding.

Then, to my husband’s dismay, I do the unthinkable. I stopped everything in midstream to refinish my grandmother’s cedar chest. I got tired of moving furniture, straining my back, and crawling on my hands and knees snapping vinyl planks together. I needed a change, a creative boost. I wanted to see instant results.

Besides, it’ll only take a few days.

Ha!

That little project took three long weeks stripping paint and sanding and re-sanding and sanding again before it was ready to be stained. Then we did the blanket chest. Then I painted hubby’s computer desk. TWICE! I didn’t like the first color choice; it didn’t go with the furniture.

We knew the task wouldn’t be easy, but we didn’t know it would be like wrestling a thousand pound bull to the ground. And we had no experience or help from anyone other than Almighty God.

And here we are, at the end of August, celebrating our seventy-third birthdays together still pulling up carpet, counting the weeks when we’ll finally get finished and wondering when the golden years will suddenly appear.

Yet, through it all, God is teaching me more about Him and reminding me that life spent in His love and care and protection are the golden years. We don’t have to wait till a certain age to lounge in His comforting arms, travel the heights of joyful bliss, and sip the nectar of His eternal love, peace and comfort.

Life is never gonna be what we expected it would be and many never live to get a mere glimpse of the golden years and those who do often feel cheated and disappointed.

So, I’ve decide to forget about looking for the Golden Years and live in the joy and happiness of every moment of every day of every year till I disappear into the sunset.

 

 

 

 

My Grace is Sufficient

~ Sandi Staton

I AM A GOD WHO HEALS.

Those are the first six words I read from my daily devotional, Jesus Calling by Sarah Young.

And they got my attention.

But what awakened my spiritual slumber are the words in the last paragraph: I rarely heal all the brokenness in a person’s life. Even my servant Paul was told, “My grace is sufficient for you,” when he sought healing for the thorn in his flesh.” 2 Corinthians 12:9.

Wow! So that must mean that no matter how mighty our faith or how shiny our halo, we’re not always gonna get what we ask God for.

As a kid, I had faith; lots of faith. Or, at least I thought I did until a boy accidentally broke my glasses as we were horsing around on the church bus.

Great! What am I gonna tell mom and daddy who can barely put food on the table let alone buy another pair of glasses? What am I gonna do? I’m as blind as a bat without them.

So, with all the faith a ten-year-old could muster, I pressed my glasses together, squeezed my eyes shut, and prayed,  “Lord. You gotta fix my glasses. You can do it! I know you can!”

You can imagine my disappointment when I opened my eyes and realized my glasses were still just as broken as they were before I asked God to magically put them back together again.

As a child, it didn’t matter that it was just a pair of glasses. They were broken and I knew and believed with all my heart and soul that God had the power to fix them.

But He didn’t.

And when the family walked side by side with my sister down the church aisle to pray for her healing, we had faith that God could do it. Yet, cancer claimed her life anyway.

But God healed my brother years ago from a heart condition caused by rheumatic fever and my baby brother from a bowel obstruction immediately following the pastor’s prayers when he came to the house. He even healed my mother right before she was wheeled down to surgery. The X-ray proved the mass was gone!

I don’t know the mind of God; why He heals one person and not another. But I do know that no one has the right to tell anyone that healing doesn’t come because of a person’s lack of faith.

I saw this happen once when a group of Christians gathered around a young woman with MS slumped in a wheelchair, scolding her for not having enough faith to get up and walk! And I was so proud when our assistant pastor marched his small, indignant frame toward the holier than thou group and boldly put an end to their vicious bullying.

In my own life, like those broken pair of glasses, God doesn’t magically put my brokenness back together. It’s been a long, painful, drawn-out process of anger and frustration, of jerking away and running back. A roller coaster ride of failures and victories, tears and laughter, sadness and joy. Walking the green mile through depression, anxiety, and fear. A never-ending cycle of I’m okay, I’m not okay and maybe I’ll never be okay.

Yes, the struggle is just too much at times. But, it’s through the grueling struggles, not the instant healing that God reveals His endless love and care and mercy toward me. It’s through my quiet times with Him and the tears rolling down my face, and His light shining in the dungeon of darkness, revealing my weaknesses, my stubbornness, my fears, anger, and rage; all the prickly, painful thorns that keep me dependent on Him. Without those struggles, I may never know how much God wants me for Himself. I may never know His love and protection. And I may die not ever knowing a father’s love.

So, the way I see it, healing is not healing if it separates me from God; If it causes me to develop a doctor-patient relationship where the doctor heals and the patient doesn’t need him or her anymore.

It’s horrifying to think that everything I ask God for would sever our relationship if He gave it to me!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To Go to Church or Not Go to Church

~ Sandi Staton

It’s Sunday morning. A few years ago, I would be putting on makeup, fixing my hair, slipping into my Sunday best, grabbing my Bible and heading out the door for church.

But, like I said, that was a few years ago.

As a kid, mom never had to fight with me to go to church. I wanted to go. Like, taking a bath and washing behind my ears, it’s what I did. It’s who I was. Besides, anywhere my mother went is where I wanted to go. I even begged her to let me go with her when Oliver Green https://en.wikipedia.org held revival tent meetings in our community, promising to get up in time for school the next morning.

I got saved when I was five. Got baptized when I was seven in a freezing cold creek on a freezing cold Easter Sunday morning in Landenberg, Pennsylvania. Jokingly I tell people my sins were frozen when I got baptized.

I can’t remember a time growing up that I didn’t go to church or Bible School or Christian Camps or revival tent meetings. Regretfully, for reasons unknown, I never got to go with mom to the Billy Graham Crusade back in the ’50’s.

Yet, here I sit this cool, Sunday morning, drinking coffee on my messy, cluttered back porch having church. In my pajamas. No makeup. No spiffy outfit. No congregation. No choir. No entertainment. No preacher behind the pulpit. No Bible on my lap. Just me and God and the birds and the squirrels.

And God spoke to me. He told me stuff about myself that I didn’t want to hear. He broke my heart. He made me cry. He made me see into the depths of my soul. And there I sat, coffee cup in my hands, tears streaming down my face, seeing and hearing and surrendering my stubborn will to God.

I could give you a million reasons why I stopped attending church, but that would only open a can of ugly worms and be seen as blasphemy in the minds of many. And nothing anyone can do or say will ever change the way I feel and perceive the church today. And the last thing I want to hear is that you have to go to church to worship God or to even get one little toe into heaven. That kinda limits those who are bed-ridden in nursing homes, or hospice or an iron lung, don’t you think?

So please, don’t question those who don’t attend church. Question those sitting in church whenever the doors are open. Question their motives for being there. Watch what they do. Hear what they say. No one is what he or she wants people to believe they are; especially in church.

Things happened in the church I attended for over twenty years that after four years, I’m still working through the hurt, anger, and disappointment. Things that opened my eyes and made me question, made me think, made me wonder why I didn’t quit attending church long ago before it finally crushed my spirit.

People will argue that I need to be in church to connect with other Christians. Well, that’s funny because most of the time I felt as connected sitting in church as I did walking through a crowded mall.

So, there fly’s that theory out the window.

I’ve heard all the arguments, I’ve weighed all the pro’s and con’s, and I’m over feeling guilty for the choice I’ve made. I feel happy and free from the hypocrisy and pretenses I observed and adopted over the years. It’s like my brain went through a deprogramming process of what I once perceived as truth and discovered that much of it was a lie. Especially all the rules and regulations made by the church to keep its members on the straight and narrow and making a good appearance.

So today and the next day and the next, my church is my heart; the Holy Temple of God. As broken and screwed up as it is at times, it’s where God really wants to be. I think He enjoys cleaning and redecorating as much as I do. Anyway, He kicks off His dusty sandals, pulls up a chair and makes Himself at home there. And if He sees a crooked picture on the wall or dirt on the floor, He doesn’t shake His head and wag His finger in disgust, He helps me straighten it and clean it up. Best of all, I don’t have to dress up, primp up or put on my Sunday-best behavior. I just have to be me. Raw and naked, honest to the bone me.

So tell me, why should that offend anyone?

 

 

 

 

Diggin’ Up Bones

~ Sandi Staton

While letting the dogs out this morning I frowned at the holes Bella, our greyhound mix, has dug in the backyard. I don’t know what she’s digging for, bugs, probably, but I don’t like it, especially when I nearly break my neck stepping in one of them.

It got me to thinking, though, about my digging adventure. Not in the backyard, although that would have been much easier, less time-consuming, and a lot less painful. No, I picked up my shovel of determination and began digging up bones buried deep beneath a ton of hurt, anger, and confusion. Of course, God orchestrated the ordeal, otherwise, I never would have done it. But first, He had to do something to open my eyes real wide.

I’ll never forget the day I got zapped; sanctified, the preacher called it. Doesn’t matter to me what it’s called, I got a bath. Well, my heart and mind did. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all religious on you. I’m just going to try my darndest to show my deepest feelings and my personal experience with God.

My heart was as battered and broken as a fatal car wreck. My mind was a cesspool of depression, anger, rage, panic attacks, social anxiety disorder, noise phobia, mood swings, all adding up to Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Of course, I didn’t have a clue what all that stinking garbage was called, I just knew the hellish torment it was causing in my life and I wanted to know why. That’s when I became a digger. And that’s when everything got much worse before it got better.

Mom didn’t like the idea of my digging up the past because she didn’t want to face or feel responsible for the role she played in it. Daddy didn’t care one way or the other and my sister and brothers chose a destructive path to deal with their pain. So, that left me, the crazy one in the family to go digging for the painful truth for my sanity. And because mom was the fuse that lit the dynamite inside me, I severed all ties with her for six, long years. Did I feel guilty? Did I care what people thought? Did I cry my eyes out? Did I agonize over whether I was doing the right thing? YES! But that was my first, gut-wrenching giant step toward freedom.

With the sole support of my husband and my son, I began psychological therapy sessions once a week for two years as well as months of counseling sessions with my pastor. But, my number one Hero in teaching and leading me to the truth, is God. He is the only One who knew and completely understood my unbearable pain. He’s been there every step of the way. I’ve never known such love from anyone on this earth. And it’s His steadfast love and encouragement, His longing to set me free, that kept me digging up those ugly, dry bones buried in the darkest recesses of my mind, heart, and soul.

In the end, instead of casting blame on him and her and this and that, I took full responsibility for my lack of understanding, my anger, and rage, my unforgiveness, my stupidity, my choices. It was no longer about what happened to me but how I responded to it. It was no longer about the unfairness of being controlled and manipulated by guilt and shame and being my mother’s scapegoat and feeling emotionally raped. It was no longer about making excuses, getting revenge, seeking justice, but about healing and forgiveness. I wanted to break the chains of the past, to be free, to think for myself, to decide my fate, to be happy in spite of my brokenness. I wanted to learn more about God, about myself, about what having an abundant life means that God promises His children (John 10:10b).

There were times I wanted to give up. There were times I did give up. There were times I wished I had never been born. But I always got back up and kept going. And like a loving father rewarding his child, God turned my tears to joy. He never left me stranded. Through the darkest, scariest tunnel, He never left my side.

Am I there yet? NOPE! The journey will never end for me this side of Heaven. But I will never stop moving forward in my quest for freedom, knowledge, and understanding.

Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in Him (Psalms 34:8).