Dying to self, learning humility, renewing my mind

Okay, so this morning I just burst into tears. Why, you ask?

Because it's the first or second day of school and the bus company that brings Gabe to school said Gabe has to have an harness if he's on the school bus. Some aggressiveness in the summer because another student was mocking him.

Anyway, I was so hurt and felt so put upon. I began thinking about how powerful people have bullied me and how my life has been a life of being bullied by fears, authoritarian people, cruel people, slick bosses, sociopaths who knew how to handle the system, the verse, bill collectors, rich people, white people, superior church people. And I just burst out in tears to God, "Let not mine enemies triumph over me."

So I hear the radio. Generally I don't hear the radio cause the alarm isn't on. And they start talking about ovarian cancer and how we don't know what's going on cause it has no symptoms except vague ones
and I burst into tears again.

I said to God, "Oh God, since I've lived...all my life I've lived with fear caused by an alarmist nurse mother.
I've lived being bullied by those more powerful than i am. I've lived afraid of people and phone calls from bill collectors and rules laid down on me by powerful people. This has been my life..one of continual fear and stress. And I long for heaven because there I won't fear, there I won't stress about cancer or bullies. There is where peace should be. Because although you say you give peace and abundant life, I don't have it."

And the Lord said, "First, trust that if you got cancer i would tell you." This is true. Because I got a dream about the lumps (hopefully benign) in my left breast. And although the mammo was clear, God made my nipples bleed after...which led to the discovery of the papilloma. And he is taking care of the hospital bills for me.

Then He said, "Second trust Psalm 91 that you will not get cancer."
Which is true. Psalm 91 is a salvation revealed in the last days. That is one powerful psalm.

Then He said, "And the harness might be from me."

So I come downstairs and hubby Luke is researching harnesses because we have to tell the school system to get the harness because the bus company INSISTS and I was just feeling so bullied by powerful people and wanting God to heal Gabe out of spite to show those horrible know-it-all people and to make me not be pitiful and weak in everything in their eyes.

But I felt God saying it's about renewing my mind and not seeing a situation as bullying but to see some unpleasantness from horrible people as being about God working through the the powers that be to help us.

So Luke is looking at the harnesses online for the school buses...and Gabe goes to school next week because we hve to approve and ask for the harness...or else it's driving him 45 minutes away every morning and getting him in the afternoon and Luke says, "God's ways are not our ways. God knows the way we go."

So we've decided to see this as the authority being from God, that even though it's silly to put him in the harness and seems about their bullying and "winning" against us and strutting their power, that God knows if there's gonna be a bus accident and God could be protecting Gabe. And that we should die to self and accept the humiliation because according to Paul's letter to the Romans all things are of God. The funny thing is I am not really a fighter. But I've been so stepped on all my life that fighting back is often my only way of holding on  the little humanity they've left me. This world strips you bare. And I have been so stripped all my life.

So in many ways I feel a sense that i have died spiritually in a good way. I really hate losing. I really hate it when someone triumphs over me. I really hate the idea that someone has "won" over me. But in this I have to accept this authority even if the authorities might be arrogant and accept that whether the world is bullying me or not, that I must trust God -- Let the Lord fight my battles-- and that whatever comes at me, i must accept and rejoice in.

I have gotten into so much trouble trying to win against certain people in life. Trying to win against my mother-in-law, against evil people, against bullies. And I always thought that it would be a horrible kind of death to watch them triumph over me. It is a kind of death, definitely...only I'm beginning to feel that it's not so horrible...if we see everything from the hand of God. In some ways, also, I feel as if this has made the prayer for Gabe's healing purer. Because we have not because we ask incorrectly...so that we may consume it on our lust. Gabe's healing was always mixed up in validating me against cruel people. Now it's purer, i think.