How is Christ my deliverer and the solution to my problems?

To say that to see "Christ as the deliverer" is the solution leaves a lot of things out. It makes things seem simple as 1-2-3 now you're ok, it's not.

If you had a lot of bones broken and had gone to the hospital for the "solution"/healing and then had some limbs put in traction and other ones had casts, that doesn't make you ok. It wouldn't be right for people to assume that you were now all better. Let's go a little farther on your path to healing. You're now able to be moved and now the legs that were in traction are in casts. Are you healed yet? Let's keep moving in time. Now all the casts are off and you look fine on the outside. Are you? No. You may or not be able to walk, you certainly aren't anywhere near back to your full strength. The problem now is that you look ok. You can easily be hurt at this time. So now you look healed but you're still going to physical therapy. Do you have to post your schedule to make sure everyone knows you are still working on healing? Of course you have options: wear a sign warning people not to be too rough on you because you are still healing; be prickly to keep people at bay so no one gets close enough to hurt you; just be standoffish enough to keep people away; of course my favorite is to act like it doesn't hurt, all the while you feel like you're dying.

Yes, Christ is the solution, but it's not that simple. Not really. How is he the solution? Those are just words. What does that truly mean in my life? Sometimes it's all I can do to mentally acknowledge that God is sovereign in all. I can't think past that to what those ramifications are. With God being sovereign over all that also makes him, on some level, the problem too. He's God. He doesn't have to use the baseball bat approach to alter events and peoples lives. For whatever reason, he chooses to.

Some days I can see past all this, other times I can barely ignore it, and sometimes I feel like I just get slammed up against all of life and there's no point to it but pain. I really hate being asked "How was your day/week?" I always answer truthfully, but rarely fully. I leave the core of it out if I'm having a hard time. On some level I'm always fine and always busy with something or other; but the part of me that just wants to say how I really am, can't. I can't because I look ok and have to pretend to be ok. I have to keep up appearances.

So am I really truthful? People get tired of hearing the truth. Who wants to hear that you are struggling again and still? They've already told you how to get to the hospital, so check out already! Be healed! or "be ye warmed and filled". If you tell someone that your leg is really bothering you today and then he kicks it to somehow show you that it doesn't really hurt; eventually you keep your pain to yourself. It doesn't hurt so bad that way, but it's also slower to heal.

"I do think that it is true that similar suffering of people can help with similar comfort for one another. But this should not mean that one person has to have the exact same suffering (or the exact same burden and/ or weight of burden) in order to help another carry that burden."
I agree with the above statement, but I've never seen it, let alone experienced it. What I've seen is that those who don't have a similar suffering get tired of other people who continue to suffer instead of healing on some timeline that the one comforting has in mind. That comfort turns to a kick on a healing broken leg. If you get kicked often enough by enough people, you hide the fact that you aren't what you appear to be; you hide your need for healing. Who really wants to try again to see if maybe this time, this person won't kick me, like so many others have?

On the other hand I've seen those with similar sufferings be so patient and gentle with one another taking turns holding one another up.

I believe in transparency with one another. I can't go very far with it these days, but I am tired of having 2 answers dashing around my mind to the question "How was your day?"
I'd like to be able to say what it really was like. "I barely got out of bed, I got nothing done because I couldn't focus my attention, I just curled up and cried and told the kids I was sick, my day was really lousy because I found out x about my non-case, or it's just been crappy" I'm tired of always having a good/fine day, but busy!

This is a good-sized dose of truth about me. I don't communicate well with spoken words. I go mute and my brain generally freezes up. I just want to not have to always be ok with everyone I see face to face on a regular basis. So maybe now my answer to how my day was, can be closer to what it really is and not just a sanitized part of it. I've felt like I've been making small talk with a friend of a friend, because I've hidden my broken leg. As long as it's acknowledged I don't have to dance around things that remind me of it and make sure I avoid it when I'm just talking.

"The only one who can really and completely carry another person’s burden is Christ Himself. But that is also where the members of Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12) come in—we assist in the carrying because we too have and live the solution—forgiven and comforted in our union with Christ!"

I know that Christ is the only one who can completely carry the burdens. But is it conditional? If I don't come and take his yoke and learn will I never have rest? I have a hard time distinguishing between his yoke and what I'm already bearing.

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

God promises that he will never give us more than we can bear; then again believing that this verse is really saying that is a IFB holdover. I doubt everything I was ever taught, maybe this is wrong too. Maybe I was lied to again and temptation here doesn't mean trial, maybe it just means temptation. Maybe this refers to sin, not suffering. So maybe then God never really promised that he wouldn't give us more than we can bear. That would explain a lot of things.

II Corinthians 1:9
Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

If I fell off a mountain and lived I wouldn't think I had been delivered. I would think I survived. Just because I landed and the fall finally ended doesn't mean active deliverance. It means I lived through it.

I have been delivered from a literal end in hell, but that is the deliverance that I received of God. Other than that, I view it as the fall off the mountain finally ended and I survived. That's not deliverance. I have huge problems with attributing God's deliverance to the natural fact that eventually everything ends, even falling off a mountain. I fell off a mountain. I was falling for the entire school year. The year ended and I hit the ground. I wasn't delivered from anything. It was a natural end, like gravity.

Now that I've written all this I can talk off of it. If I hadn't written about all this I wouldn't be able to say a thing. It's like it has been unlocked and now I can take it out and look at it and figure out what it is.

Bear ye one anothers burdens. Who, me?

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but couldn't put it in the right words until recently.

So here's what I've been pondering. Can people really "bear one another's burden" if they don't already have a similar one of their own? Is it fair of me to expect it or long for it? What does "bearing one anothers burden" actually mean?

How it actually works out in Christian life is this(as one who has been in eleven churches as either a member or regular attender in three states and timezones, I feel somewhat in a position to claim that this is how it works): You only have to bear the one's whose burdens are similar to your own, if the burden is too big; then you're off the hook and the person with the burden that is too great for you to help bear it, is on their own.

There are some exceptions that I've known, but then again the ones that help bear the greatest burdens, themselves have ones of similar weight. I know people who "bear" all they can bear of others burdens, but proportionally it's still not much. Still it falls on those of us who have the burden to be careful not to harm those who can/will "bear" in some degree by really allowing them to bear a painful amount. Most of the time the ones helping to bear your burden think they are really shouldering a huge amount with you. In reality it's like letting a 2 year old "help" you move a piano. They are working really hard but proportionally it's like they are bearing absolutely nothing. The one with the burden feels worse because he can't really say "thanks, but no thanks, you just aren't up to it".


I Corinthians 1:3-5
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,
4who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
5For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.


Is it right to really think any affliction or should the focus be on the one who is able to offer the same comfort they received of God to those who suffer in a similar way or intensity?

So, are all called to offer comfort and bear burdens to any who need it? Are the ones who are like the 2 year old helping to move the piano, a weaker brother who needs to grow in this area? Or is this a differing of gifts, some can help to bear great crushing burdens, while others can help to bear the normal and acceptable tragedies of life, and others can help in the general burdens of normal life?

These questions are not just theoretical and something to pass the time with. They are very relevant to my life. I'm actively seeking answers to these questions.

Almost wish I wished I was dependent on God

I'm back again with counselling. I think I will last this one out. I'm journaling and giving copies of the pages to him. We talked some about being dependent on God. And some on being able to "meltdown" in a safe place. I don't like that. Is there ever a place that safe?


"redemptive meltdown" How is it redemptive? How does losing control help? How do you know God is inviting you to deepen your dependency on Him? and how do you do that?
I'd like to ask why you would want to be more dependent on God, in general I know we all should be, but I personally just don't want to be. I almost want to want to be dependent on God, but I'm afraid to get the rug pulled out from under me again in order for me to run to God.

So if I just stand my distance from God relationally, then maybe nothing will happen. When I do move towards God then things usually fall apart and then I get even closer to God. The common thread is always this: I move towards God and all hell breaks loose; I cling to him until things have calmed down and then I slowly back away from the Rock that the ocean has beat me against and decide that I'm only going to go wading--no more swimming out towards the Rock.

There is something seriously wrong with how I relate to God, but I am afraid to try to fix it.

Past collides with present

We had a family of nine live with us for three months. It kept my mind off of myself. I did continue with the counseling until my 12 year old stepped on (really jumped on) a pickax. At that point I was focused on getting his foot healed and didn't go anywhere for a while and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then winter kicked in with a vengence and I couldn't drive the hour to my counseling sessions.

Spring has arrived and we are busy with all the details of building a house. My husband is also looking for a job, so that figures in. I whine around in my mind and on this blog about not having the time or money for counseling. I am homeschooling my children and tutoring 2 others. So that does take up time, but the real thing is that I'm just scared to face up to how I'm allowing what happened in the past to still mess me up in the now. I function as though I was hatched as an adult and am disconnected from my own self. Maybe I'm just thinking weird here. I try really hard to live now without the past intruding.

My 11 year old just figured out this year that the grandma she thought was my mother wasn't really my mother. She added up the grandma's and had too many. I only tell them the good stuff from my childhood. Sometimes I slip and say something along the lines of, "You have no idea what it means to have to be perfect all the time! I don't expect perfection!!!" My 14 year old was complaining that I expected her to be perfect all the time and if she wasn't she got in trouble. The "trouble" she got into is that I give her a short lecture about why she should have done x the way or when I told her to. She says I yell at her. I told her that I have never yelled at her in a glass throwing volume. That was a slip. I've never told my kids about the screaming and dish throwing my mom did. I've never even told my dad.

I was really mad when my daughter said the same things to me that I thought about my mother when I was growing up. I am not the pyscho my mother was! Proof point: I calmly discussed her complaints, but inside I was furious. She couldn't tell how mad I was. My husband couldn't either. I did good.