Mmm?

Lately I've been watching a lot of the Food Network. I honestly have just wanted safe, rated-G television in the background lately without having to spend extra electricity by turning on my DVD player. I like watching people teach other people how to cook and/or talk about fancy food. I'm not a foodie, I have a very simple dollar-menu palate, and I'm not interested in learning how to cook anymore. In fact, I'm less interested than ever in spending time in the kitchen, and I'm currently so busy that I've become almost exclusively a drive-thru grazer. Drive-thrus have a surprising amount of variety. In addition to dollar-menu selections that can be eaten with one hand while commute-steering with the other hand, items such as healthy $8 salads, almost-healthy Whatachickens, non-burger McDonald's sandwiches, or Jack In The Box egg rolls can be purchased and dearly enjoyed. Once in a while, however, drive-thru atrocities occur.

The photo I posted above is one such atrocity. (I snapped it long after I had eaten what I wanted from it and it had been sitting in my car for about an hour.) I won't name the restaurant in this public forum, but I will say that I think it's a cheap, terrible copy of Taco Bell. This evening while I was errand-running, I was in the mood for some nachos, so I thought I'd try this particular restaurant's large nacho offering. After I ordered and sat in the drive-thru line for at least 10 minutes (which is a considerably long wait for a drive-thru, and the cashier was courteous to apologize), I drove to a nearby parking lot to eat.

At first, I thought they had given me the wrong bag, because there were two Styrofoam containers in it. No, it was the correct bag, but what the restaurant neglected to print on its drive-thru menu was that my nachos came with ASSEMBLY REQUIRED. There were chips and a tub of cheese in one container; there were beans, beef, tomatoes, and sour cream in the other container; and jalapeños were packed separately. What the heck? I was parked in a parking lot with a door on one side, a purse and professional accessories on the other side, and a steering wheel in front of me. How the heck was I supposed to assemble a large nacho platter with nothing more than a fork? After I deposited most of the beautiful-looking toppings onto the chips, I discovered that the nachos weren't beautiful-tasting. The chips and cheese alone tasted either like movie-theater nachos or Sam's Club cheese-gallon nachos, and the only spice in the entire meal came from the jalapeños, which I only eat sparingly because my taste buds aren't made of asbestos. Perhaps the do-it-yourself nacho process would have been worth it if the food had actually tasted good. Gosh! The whole point of going through the drive-thru was to collect one container of pre-prepared food that I could shovel down my throat before proceeding with my busy evening. I didn't know I'd have to hire my own caterer and waiter, too. Taco Bell wouldn't have treated me this way, and Taco Bueno at least warns me with "dips and chips" in the title of their classic dish. I think the Food Network would probably sic a few customer-oriented chefs at the assembly-required drive-thru.

Of course, while I was chowing down on my drive-thru disappointment, the wheels were grinding in my head, and I was thinking about God and how much He likes food. And I was thinking about how He does NOT have terrible customer service.

"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." (James 1:2-3, NKJV)

"...in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NKJV)

Maybe watching all those hours of the Food Network has spoiled my perception of food just a tiny bit. I was thankful to eat least get something to eat tonight. But my experience overall was a major FAIL for the assembly-required drive-thru restaurant, where I plan to return never again. That's no way to enjoy a nice, quick dinner that I paid good money for and waited a good, long time for. And there's no reason for me to pretend that I had a wonderful dinner.

When I was in college, our pastor liked to act out funny illustrations so that we would remember certain Bible passages. The verses in James that I quoted above was one such passage. Regarding counting it all joy when you fall into various trials, our college pastor literally jumped and leapt around the stage and basically shouted, "Hallelujah! It's a trial!" and cheered very happily. I'm not a Bible scholar, so I don't know what the original Greek word for "joy" is, but I know (I've been taught this, and I've experienced this myself) that "joy" isn't always synonymous with "happiness." I don't think said pastor interpreted this verse all that accurately (I think he maybe just wanted us to remember what it said), and I don't think he would have been so hasty to have frolicked jubilantly while shouting something like "Yay! I just lost my job!" or "Yay! My cat is sick!" or "Yay! One of my family members just died!" I think it's unhealthy and kind of dishonest to just plaster on a smile during a heinously excruciating trial.

It's the same thing with the "in everything give thanks" verse I quoted above. Again, I don't know the Greek, but in English, I've noticed it doesn't say "FOR everything give thanks." I don't think the Bible is necessarily saying that we should literally prance around with fake happiness and non-sarcastically shout silly things like "Oh, boy! I have no idea how I'm going to pay my bills next month! I may end up losing my house! Whoo-hoo! My life is awesome!" Not to say that that couldn't be a genuine, heartfelt response. When I got laid off a year and a half ago -- perhaps it was my internal glutton for punishment, or perhaps I'm simply extra crazy -- after the brief shock wore off, I gladly embraced the challenge. What I'm saying is that just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean that I'm required to fake happiness in order to make Jesus look good. (Don't try it. I tried it, and it nearly killed me.) I'm saying that joy is deeper than happiness.

I think joy is complicated to explain or define; it isn't exactly like happiness. Happiness is reclining on my couch and typing away at my little computer while I've got two extremely adorable cats napping nearby. Happiness is biting into a Heath candy bar after it's been stored in a cool, dry place. Happiness is listening to any single that The Carpenters recorded in the early- or mid-seventies. Happiness can disappear rather quickly. But joy stays around much longer. Joy is knowing that I've got a Father in heaven who is quick to dispatch angels to come to my aid whenever I need it, and especially when I least suspect it. Joy is enjoying the fact that my Father in heaven trusts me enough to make simple little decisions for myself like which drive-thru to try. Joy is resting in the truth that if I get hurt, I have a Father in heaven who will let me crawl under the shadow of His strong wing and have a much-needed cry. I hope you see a motif here.

I don't think the joy or the thankfulness that the Bible talks about is necessarily "Yay, I have a trial, and I'm SO thankful that my life sucks right now!" (But if that's an honest heart- or gut-response that you have, that's truly awesome.) I think the joy and thankfulness that God helps us experience during a terrible time is more like "I have no idea why this is happening, but I'm SO thankful that God will help me see the other side of it, and I hope it will be soon, because this sucks so terribly that I don't know when I'm going to be able to stop crying or uncurl from this frightened fetal position, but I SO dig that God is with me right now and that He'll never leave me, and I'm SO glad that He wants me and that He's helping me, and this spot here between His shoulders smells SO nice and is SO comforting and is SO superabsorbent for this freakishly flowing current of tears; and perhaps someday, I'll be able to help other people who are having to walk through this atrocity also, and now that many of my tears have gotten squeezed out, I'm kinda starting to laugh about the whole thing; dang it, this spiritual desert reminds me a lot of a buttcrack, 'cause it's so tight and stinky! Girlish giggling!"

"How priceless is Your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of Your wings. They feast on the abundance of Your house; You give them drink from Your river of delights." (Psalm 36:7-8)

"But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you." (Psalm 81:16)

"I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward." (Genesis 15:1b, NKJV)

"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." (Romans 8:28)

I hope I haven't ruined your appetite, but I'll go back to the topic of food -- metaphorically, at least. What I don't have an appetite for during a trial is platitudes. My least favorite platitude is "everything happens for a reason." Yes, the reason that these words appeared on this page is because I typed them, the reason that my cat is currently purring is because she's feline, and the reason it's dark outside is because it's nearly one in the morning. Platitudes don't really tell me anything. I can't really eat platitudes anymore, and they especially don't nourish me during a trial. I've done this before, and I know that people mean well when they do it, but please, if someone you know is going through a hard trial and they're hurting, maybe you could just skip the platitude and hug them instead. Hug them for a long time, so that if they start to cry, you'll already be right there to comfort them. Or if they're not into hugging or crying, maybe just offer a "sorry, that sucks" and an ear so that they can vent a little bit. But you can't snuggle with a platitude. You can't soak your tears into a platitude. You can't talk to a platitude. Or maybe I'm completely wrong about this, and platitudes truly encourage you and bless you.

They don't bless me anymore. I put a ton of platitudes in my high-school graduation speech. (I was 18 when I wrote it. I didn't know yet what it was like for life to punch you in the face.) Something like "it is always darkest before dawn" may have sounded good while giving a pep talk to high-school kids, but it might not sound so good to somebody who's genuinely, clinically, on-the-brink-of-cutting-themselves depressed. Quoting the title of a Yanni album like "Dare to Dream" may have sounded cute while encouraging young people who are about to go off to college, but it might not sound so good so someone who has come to the end of their rope and feels like their life has become a pile of crap. I even had the nerve to quote Job 17:9 -- "Yet the righteous will hold to his way, and he who has clean hands will be stronger and stronger." (NKJV) Now I understand that Job probably knew what it was like to be misunderstood and be offered a platter full of platitudes while he was starving for comfort during a trial -- nay, a buffet of trials.

I think we in the body of Christ tend to have a bad habit of offering a band-aid to someone who has a broken arm. Sometimes we find out that someone is going through excruciating pain, and we basically respond with, "Pffffft, whatever, God will work it for good, and will I see you at church on Sunday???" And to a degree, yes, it's true that God is pretty much the only One who can reach down into the person's trial and fix it. But come on. You're the one with the hands and feet that are visible to the naked eye. You've got a fully functioning ear and a fully absorbent shoulder. Maybe the way your body parts are sewn together happened for a reason?

But I'm not saying that we should spoonfeed each other. When a person gets hit with catastrophe, it's that person's individual responsibility to walk through it. I think our job as the church is to point the trial-embracer to the only One who can shield them through it, feed them exactly what they need to eat, and make sense of the whole thing in a way that only He can. It might look something like the following.

"Lord, thank You for the food, but with all due respect, what the effing crap? This is NOT the meal I ordered!"

"Hmm. Yep, it looks like someone effed up your order."

"So, I was destined to eat this effed-up meal?"

"No, I'm not the one who made the mistake."

"Can You please help me sort through this? I've never had to eat a meal like this before."

"Of course, My delight. Here. Just balance this container here on your lap while carefully opening the other one... There you go. Come on, My delight, you can do this. You see all the components of the meal set right in front of you. Deal with it."

"Yep. Got it. Cool. I think I can-- Aw, dang it, there's no hot sauce!"

"Aquí hay jalapeños."

"OK, I think I've got this... Yay! Now let's see how this tastes. Aw, this is terrible! What the effing crap, Lord??"

"We're almost through this. It's going to be OK. I'm right here. What do you need?"

"Wisdom. I know now that Taco Bueno is my friend."

"See? There you go. Now you know to go there instead of to this, uh..."

"Atrocity drive-thru."

"I delight in you so much."

"This dinner was a disaster, but I really enjoyed getting to hang out with You, Lord."

"I love you, too, and I'm never, ever going to leave you."

"This is what it's all about, isn't it? just being with You?"

"Now you're getting the hang of it, My delight."

"I think maybe whoever told me that I had to fake happiness for You probably didn't know You very well. You really do make me happy, even while I'm eating a drive-thru atrocity."

"You make Me happy, too, My delight."

While I currently type this, each one of my cats is sitting here on either end of my little computer. They're like extremely adorable matching bookends. Maybe the reason they parked their adorable little furry selves here by my computer is because they love me. Or maybe it's because it's cold in here, and my computer is warm. Or maybe it's so that I can delight in them in a new way. Regardless, they make me happy. No assembly required!

Because I said so

An alternative title for this post would be Spiritual Abuse Part III, because I've already posted a Part I and a Part II. Yes, I'm still only about halfway through that book about spiritual abuse that I started reading two years ago, and God has still been healing me, and I've still been thinking through stuff.

Have you ever cleaned out a closet that's been dusty and cluttered for several years, and sifting through and understanding what's in there makes the cleaning process less daunting and even helps you put your entire apartment in perspective? Eww, this has been sitting here since forever. (Dusts off relic.) Gasp, so THAT'S where that was! (Joyfully rescues lost treasure from the closet's bowels.) Why the freakin' heck have I been storing this? (Flabbergastingly tosses ancient, unwanted junk into Dumpster.) Old issues can be like that. I think for me, spiritual abuse hasn't just been a one-stop-shop issue. It's been more of a three-story-shopping-mall issue. You might start out just strolling through and minding your own business, but suddenly POW! something sticks out at you, and you gotta check it out. Girlish shopping squeal! (I really don't like shopping unless it's for CDs or DVDs. I'm just mixing metaphors.)

"So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." (Romans 10:17, NKJV)

I will talk about Catholicism in the next couple of paragraphs. My disclaimer is that, in general, I respect the Catholic Church. I honestly admire the way Catholicism involves the entire family and how Catholics make a big deal out of things that are supposed to be a big deal -- choosing a Pope and televising the ceremonies, for example (I mean, when was the last time a nondenominational church did something that nice when they hired a new pastor?). I appreciate and agree with Catholics' involvement in the political process and pro-life efforts. I know people who came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ through the Catholic Church. I want to respect anything that points people to my Jesus -- who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life -- and I don't want to disrespect anything that helps people meet God for the first time and grow in their faith in Him. However, I have major issues with Catholicism in terms of spiritual abuse. My desire here isn't to debate theology but to shine a light on something that might help people have a light-bulb moment of "Gasp, is THAT why such-and-such situation felt so wrong?"

Earlier this year, a friend attempted to convert me to Catholicism. I can understand her reasons for trying to do so (she insinuated that only Catholics go to heaven), but the persuasive materials she asked me to read significantly eroded my respect for the Catholic Church. Much of this inside information on Catholicism was new to me, because I didn't grow up Catholic; I grew up extremely Southern Baptist. (To get the full effect, pronounce it "babb-dist.") That verse in Romans that I quoted a few paragraphs ago was quoted in a book that was written by a Protestant-turned-Catholic. He basically said, "You don't need to READ the Bible. Faith comes by HEARING. Come to Mass and let the priest read the Bible FOR you." (He also said that it's OK for religious services to be boring and for love and thankfulness to become ritual, but whateva.) Being told to NOT read the Bible is one thing (I grew up memorizing the Bible's table of contents, and they won't unstick from my brain easily), but being told to let someone else read the Bible FOR me is not just a red flag. It's a three-story shopping mall with clearance sales of red flags at every store and packed parking lots that will make your children scream to go home and your "carry my purse for me, honey" husbands groan and shamelessly beg to escape retail red-flag pandemonium. Do you realize how dangerous it is to base your faith, your life's direction, your daily soul sustenance -- or even any teeny-tiny shred of information -- on what comes out of somebody ELSE'S mouth?

This danger isn't just in the Catholic Church. For example, I attended a Baptist college. In one of my classes, if memory serves, the professor stated that the apostle John did NOT write the Johannine epistles as is traditionally upheld. (Actually, this point of view was taught in much of the textbooks and professors in that particular department.) In English, that means that although traditionally it's believed that John the beloved disciple wrote the Book of John and also the Book of Revelation (he basically left his signatures in John 21:20-25 and Revelation 1:1-4) and also the books of 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John (the Johannine epistles), modern evidence supposedly doesn't support that John wrote the Johannine epistles. My professor said in class, straight out of his mouth, if I remember correctly, that the same guy didn't write all of those books. And yet, if I crack open my Bible and check it out for myself, I see things that seem too obvious to be coincidental.

For example, I know these books probably weren't written out in the chapter-and-verse format that we usually read from today, but here are some side-by-side snippet quotations in English. John 1:18 says, "No one has ever seen God." 1 John 4:8 says, "No one has ever seen God." Was my professor trying to tell me that authors used to plagiarize each another back then? John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 1 John 1:1 says, "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched -- this we proclaim concerning the Word of life." Was my professor trying to tell me that the authors of these two books called each other and compared notes on how to write introductions? "Hey, Dude, I'm thinking of doing an 'In the beginning' allusion to Genesis 'cause I like how that John guy talks about Jesus being the Alpha and Omega in Revelation. You wanna copy me?" John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." 1 John 3:16 says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers." Was my professor kidding me? Do I need a Ph.D. to opine that maybe the same guy wrote all 5 of these books? Is there a reason why modern scholars are too bullheaded to just agree with traditional teaching on this particular issue? Why the freakin' heck did my professor teach that what was staring me in the face, written in black and white, wasn't for real?

This particular professor lost a huge amount of credibility with me. For example, if you check out Matthew 6:4 in the NKJV, and then you look up the same verse in the NIV, you'll see that the NIV omits the word "openly" at the end. From what I understand, this is because many of the more "modern" translations don't include the word "openly" in their texts. But what sticks out in my brain is this particular professor standing up in class and declaring about the word "openly" with a teenagery scoff, "Jesus didn't say that." And my professor knows this because he was there when Jesus spoke it live? (Perhaps my professor had never been rewarded openly, and that's why he didn't have a problem teaching that God won't reward anyone openly for doing something in secret.) As I've thought about it, I also remembered that this particular professor once criticized how people pray -- not openly critiquing prayers that were offered aloud during class but simply stating his opinion on prayer in general. He said that he didn't like how people use the word "just" when they pray. For example, "Lord, just heal this person and just be with them." Well, Professor IForgotYourLastName, I just think you may have just accidentally caused just a tiny bit of disillusionment in just a few scores of students who have taken just a few of your classes over the years. Do you realize how dangerous it is to form opinions about the Bible on just what comes out of somebody ELSE'S mouth?

I'm about to offer a major example of the potential of "because I said so" spiritual abuse not because I want to stir up a huge controversy but because it's the biggest, most brain-ready example I can think of. Regardless of what you believe about speaking in tongues, I think it's safe to say that the people who wish to disprove the current existence and validity of tongues truly need to watch their mouths. Around the time that I was first experiencing the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues -- whether it was myself or whether it was listening to other people utilizing this gift -- I was given at least a couple of "because I said so" arguments which I now find faulty.

The first argument was "tongues will cease," which is straight out of 1 Corinthians 13. The argument was that in the days of the early church (i.e., right after Jesus ascended into heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to the early disciples), the Bible wasn't canonized yet; the thing "which is perfect" that is talked about in 1 Corinthians 13 hadn't come yet. The New Testament hadn't been written yet, so the only way to access this part of the Bible was through a word of tongues. This argument says that tongues have ceased because we have a complete Bible now. However, when I cracked open my Bible and checked it out for myself, I saw that the 3 verses in 1 Corinthians 13 that supposedly disprove the current existence of tongues were quoted out of context. (Excuse me, but isn't this how cults form? They take a tiny little verse and build a shrine around it and rewrite their own Bible to make it say whatever they want?) These teeny little verses are sandwiched between entire chapters that discuss speaking in tongues and other "my convention doesn't approve this" spiritual gifts. These entire chapters go into a great deal of detail about protocol and vision and what the utilization of these spiritual gifts is supposed to look like during a church service. 1 Corinthians 13, in context, is basically saying, "You can be as spiritually awesome or as spiritually weird as you like, but it's all supposed to be done in love, or it's all no good. Grow up and stop trying to draw attention to yourselves. Lay your lives down for one another and use your giftings to serve people." I really think those teeny little verses nestled inside 1 Corinthians 13 are basically just saying, "Sure, when we all get to heaven, we're all gonna be perfect, and we're not gonna need tongues or prophecy." I really don't think it says, "Just kidding, you can ignore all of 1 Corinthians 12 and 1 Corinthians 14 and other places in scripture that talk about manifestations of the Holy Spirit, because the expiration date on these spiritual gifts will take effect during the first edition printing of your Bible, coming soon to a Christian bookstore near you." Do you realize how dangerous it is to ignore how the Bible validates or invalidates an experience that you're having just because somebody ELSE'S mouth is trying to tell you that God ISN'T the same yesterday, today, or forever?

Regarding the subject of tongues, many years ago, I listened to a 1974 audio teaching by John MacArthur. The entire series was offered to disprove the current existence of tongues and, frankly, I think to deprogram people like me. What I got out of this particular series came at the very end, when John MacArthur quoted Ephesians 4:15 and said we should "speak the truth in love" and tell charismatics that they're sorely mistaken because tongues don't exist anymore. Well, John MacArthur, in love, you quoted Ephesians 4:15 out of context big-time, brother.

"Jesus answered, 'It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.' " (Matthew 4:4)

I was much wordier in this post than I had originally intended to be, but here's my main point: Depending solely on somebody ELSE'S words can dangerously open the door widely for spiritual abuse. (And for me, it has.) I'm not saying that we should be cynical or suspicious about everything. I'm saying that it's OK and healthy to question the food that other people -- especially those in spiritual authority -- try to feed us, no matter how small the morsel. Yes, we need other people to help us follow God and get to know Him better -- to help us with our RELATIONSHIP with God. But it's the person's job to point us to God, not to become our god.

Have you ever been in a relationship with another person, such as a friend, where all they did was talk and you blindly accepted everything they said? Unfortunately, I have, and those kinds of relationships are extremely boring, and after a while, they can make you feel non-human. I think the deepest, closest, most fun relationships that we enjoy are the ones in which we spend time getting to know the other person and experiencing who they are. To get to know them, we dig deep, investigate, and ask questions.

While it's true that we can accept everything that God says, period -- because He IS truth -- having a relationship with Him is the most exciting relationship that we can and should ever have. Is it because I said so? His words, His food, are our life. If I blindly depend on someone else to feed me without my inspecting the morsels, I could end up getting spiritual food poisoning. I could end up being controlled or manipulated in a way that could harm or damage me. (And I have.) To get healing from that, I need to go directly to God, anyway, so why not just start with Him in the first place?

I don't care how big a crowd is drawn to a clearance sale -- I don't want to go shopping for any red flags.

Eww, that's nasty!

No disclaimer this time. Unabashed graphicness up front. I hope that's OK.

These are my cat Macho's two teeth that got pulled at a recent vet visit. The vet assistant offered to let me take them home inside the plastic bottle that you see pictured along with the two bloody remnants. On cats, routine dental procedures such as cleanings are treated like major surgical procedures because the cats are put under anesthesia. (That makes sense. My cats barely even let me touch their mouths with my fingers, much less let a vet scoop out tooth decay with metallic instruments while they're awake.) If a cat gets a cavity, the tooth is usually pulled instead of drilled. So, these tiny little teeth were pulled while Macho was knocked out, and taking care of him afterwards was a majorly huge deal for Macho, me, and my entire household. This was actually the third time he's had the procedure done, but this was the nastiest and most dramatic time. I've never had surgery, but you know me -- this entire physical process of a surgery-like procedure reminded me of a spiritual process that I've gone through and am going through. I might get a tad redundant from some of my previous posts, but I thought it would be neat to take a fresh look at a pungent topic.

I had to leave Macho at the vet's office overnight, which I think was a somewhat traumatic process for him. After wrestling him into his carrier and sitting in traffic while he howled, I lugged him into the examining room where he was weighed (and he had a pretty strong tabby-grip on the scale) and given over to the technicians so they could do bloodwork, etc. I hoped he didn't think I was giving him away and not coming back, but the next day I returned to the vet's office at the time when they said he'd be ready. They warned me about the aftereffects of the anesthesia. He was very loopy, and instead of his usual "meow" or "wow," he communicated with me during the car ride home with a muffled "mrrr." They also warned me that he would be drooling, but oh, my goodness, Macho's mouth emitted a manly amount of drool for the next couple of hours after I got him home.

The anesthesia would take a couple of days to wear off, and the next 72 hours were very critical. Macho had an extremely awkward time readjusting to home life at first. In addition to the chronic drooling, he limped around the apartment and appeared extremely uncomfortable. A couple of times, I saw him reclining on the carpet and panting very quickly while closing his eyes. He had been stuck inside a boarding area at the vet's office, so he more than likely went for about 32 hours without grooming himself. His fur was shedding and covered in stress dandruff. As if his condition weren't humiliating enough, the vet people had had to shave around part of his forearm to insert an IV. (Now he's got a bald ring around his arm that will probably take quite a while to grow back completely.) I monitored him pretty closely while I fed him a soft diet (in a room separate from Choochie, who ate crunchy food as usual) and intermittently administered (forced) medicine into his freshly cleaned, recuperating mouth. So, Macho's recovery process, even after I stopped following him around the apartment and cleaning up his drool puddles, was a complicated mess.

Choochie had her own truly surgical procedure many years ago when she got spayed. After I brought her home from the vet, I kept a very close eye on her (I had the time to do so because I was unemployed at the time), and I was instructed to keep her away from other animals, so she lived inside the carrier for a few days. The first day, I let her out of the carrier to go to the litterbox, and she stumbled out of it, and then she gladly returned to the confinement of the carrier so she could sleep. She had a fairly large incision that was surrounded by an area of shaved-off fur (that took about 6 months to grow back completely). Being the curious feline that she is, she became obsessed with her stitches and scrape-licked them until they and the shaved-off area became infected. The infection emitted a rank stench that scared Macho away after I could allow Choochie to interact with other animals again. So, I took her back to the vet so that they could treat her infection by removing the stitches. Since her surgery was pretty major, her recovery process took a long time (especially with the infection). I remember the first time she jumped on a nearby piece of furniture after the surgery, she had a look on her face that seemed to say, "Owwwww."

"The Lord builds up Jerusalem; He gathers the exiles of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." (Psalm 147:2-3)

"He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul." (Psalm 23:2-3a)

"The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made. The Lord upholds all those who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down." (Psalm 145:13b-14)

So, while I was hovering over and staring at Macho one evening during his 72-hour critical recovery time frame, I was reminded of the truths that God was teaching me during Choochie's long recovery process many years ago. God reminded me once again how gentle He is with me and how much He intricately cares about my spiritual/emotional/soul healing, recuperation, and recovery -- my soul restoration. Sometimes when we talk about emotional healing, we compare it to having surgery. John 15 says that God the Father prunes us if we bear fruit. Sometimes when God spiritually prunes and/or does surgery on me, it can be a major procedure that could possibly involve some anesthesia and a temporary knockout. Or  -- and this is usually the case with me -- He skips the anesthesia altogether and performs the procedure while I'm awake and can feel every slice, every pierce, every drilling, and every stitch.

Then the recovery process is an extremely crucial, delicate, and messy one. If God removes something from my soul -- perhaps the procedure was a decay-ectomy -- I might be a little sore later from the incision, and I might seriously miss whatever it was that was surgically removed. I may drool, groan, and wander around aimlessly in my Father's house while He patiently dotes on me and cleans up my drool after me. I may become obsessed with my new stitches and start picking at them until a disgusting, stinky infection develops that might scare other people away for a while. (Acquiring an infection could lengthen my treatment time.) The recovery process may require some healthy isolation while I am put on a diet of special food and am given some special medicine. (Some battles are meant to be fought privately. Even Jesus was led out into the wilderness in Matthew 4 to be tempted by the devil.) Or other times, I'm surrounded by technicians, nurses, and other patients. (Galatians 6:2 says to bear one another's burdens.) Regardless, after carefully following the Doctor's orders, I can enter back into regular life eating regular food, no longer requiring medicine, and waiting for that metaphorically shaved-off part of my metaphorical forearm to grow back. It may be a bit awkward and embarrassing for a little while, but I'll get to bond with my Shepherd more closely than ever during the entire process, and I'll get to metaphorically whip out my little metaphorical plastic bottle from time to time and display my metaphorically bloody remnants: "Hey, everybody, see what God removed during my decay-ectomy? No anesthesia! It made me want to get a tattoo afterwards!" Eww, that's nasty! But hopefully if I encounter anyone else who may need God to perform a decay-ectomy on them, hearing about my surgery and recovery may help them.

So, Macho is scheduled for a follow-up appointment next week. He had a somewhat unstable past before he officially became my cat, so I'm usually concerned that he'll think that I'm stuffing him into the carrier and driving off with him so that I can give him away (instead of simply taking him to the vet). Nope. He's mine forever, and I hope he knows it. I wouldn't go through all this trouble if I didn't intend to keep him for good.