Fresh Oil

By the time you reach my age things have started to deteriorate. Right when you need your body to fight back – it gives up. It’s like the slide to death has been preprogrammed to start at a certain age. I don’t mind growing older, I just want to do it gracefully. I want to live in faith not in fear. Upward movement toward the final destination. Not a down hill slide.

It reminds me of the Old Testement story of Joshua having half of the people stand in front of Mt Gerizin and half of them in front of mount Ebal.  One side reads all the blessings God promised in  the Book of the Law (Deuteronomy). The other half reads the curses that will happen if they don’t follow God’s plan.

Joshua stood in the middle and after each verse kept yelling “Choose Life”.

Kinda like standing at the intersection with McDonalds on the left and Whole Foods (before Amazon bought them out) on the right. The Holy Spirit is yelling “Choose Life”, but we turn left – not right!

So on my vision board this year:  I want to share with others my age: The Gift or The Keys I received to escape the fear of old age.

The key to choosing life.

The first key for me is The Word. The written Word of God. The Bible. The power that changes things.  I constantly preach “What you say today – you will walk in tomorrow.” So, make sure to “Say the Word”.

But I had a problem. The downside to saying the Word is you have to remember it and remember to say it out loud.

I couldn’t remember. I had notes of Bible verses taped up on every wall of my house. Post-em-notes, index cards, back of business cards but I never said them out loud. I had a large brown shopping bag taped over my bed: Outline and vision for a book. Couldn’t remember when or why I had it. I would find dreams I had written down on scraps of paper stuck in books. At the same time I was telling people God didn’t talk to me in dreams. I sure didn’t remember Him talking or the dreams. I knew how “It” was suppose to be. I had the pattern I had followed in previous years and  had a vague knowing about what to do and how to do it but I couldn’t run in formation, stay in step, or on time, or sync up with my commanding officer.

All the “bad choices”: divorce, widowhood, years of not choosing life and talking death, caught up with me. There were decisions and times of not following Holy Spirit… and following the world’s culture and solutions. There was the long term effects of  toxins from the medicine with hip replacement and loss of teeth due to possible infection threatening the  hip replacement, lost of mother, lost of ministry, loss of inheritance, loss of income.

For me, about 7 years ago, the bottom fell out!

But for the grace of God.

It was PTSD. My memory  failed.

I would get lost in middle of sentences. To me it was like waiting for the record player needle to get back in the right groove on the the record and then waiting for it to keep turning intill we found the name, location or whatever word that had evaporated. Most the time people got tired of waiting and just finished sentences for me.

I was seeing double the majority of time.  Literally! Couldn’t even see to find the sign to turn into the eye docotors’s office.

Was refused insurance because liver emzymes were high.

Had made major wrong decision concerning job choices. Decided to risk it all and go for career change to Church ministry. So when the bottom fell out of economy and church budget, my “church administrator” was the position cut.

No money, no retirement, no ministry and no future!

There was a spiritual war going on, but I didn’t have physical or mental resources to fight.

My spirit was housed in a failing body with a brain whose forest broccoli had large damaged areas that had lost connections to the mainframe.

I was brain dead. I saw it in my eyes when I looked in the mirror. I saw it in the people’s faces when they tried to talk to me. I lost jobs, ministry, relationships, credibility and faith in myself.

BUT GOD:

In the last six months, I have been introduced to the second key. One that has allowed me to find the way back to the first key door:

Young Living Essential Oils

Second Life Motto: If you want to live young – you need YL oils.