faith

Nourishment

/ Carmen McKnight / Leave a comment

A week of food deprivation took it’s tool on the body as I laid in bed shivering, frail and faint.

Why didn’t I eat this week? Was it laziness? Was it ignorence? What was it?

The knock on the door only irritated me further. It took all my remaining strength to get up and answer the door. I squinted my eye from the pain the light reflecting through the window gave me. A UPS guy stood in front of my door. A huge box sat next to him.

“Sighn here, please.” I signed. The unexpected blow come from my left and I fell down too weak to get up as he hit me over and over leaving behind broken bones, gashes with fresh blood dripping all over my bruised and semiconscious self. Then he leaves. I lift my fist in utter bitterness and anger.

“Where is my neighbor when I really need them? Where is everyone? Can’t they see I’m hurting here?” The UPS left, not bothering to bring the big box inside the house. Now I’m left struggling with the box and cursing all the people, so called friends, too selfish to come and help me.

This is a fictional story, based on something God tried to help me understand. When we choose not to feed ourselves regularly -everyone eats a different amount of food and their diets are different than yours- you weaken and are easy prey to the unforeseen battle ahead. Same with soul/spiritual nourishment. If we don’t regularly feed ourselves -encouragement, pozitive thoughts and faith (in God in my case), we’re left just as weak and vulnerable as the example given, and simple tasks- like lifting a heavy box- became overwhelmingly frustrating. To blame God or other’s for us freely choosing not to nourish ourselves is just as ridiculous as the example given. Stop over-spiritualizing -myself included- our actions or lack there of. We must take responsibility for our actions. More times than not, we suffer from being unprepared.

God bless:)

Tennis match

/ Carmen McKnight / 4 Comments

Today, for the first time in…let’s not even try to go there but finish the sentence with, many years, I played tennis. Our family went to a very nice tennis court only minutes away from where we live, formed teams and began to play. Mind you, we skipped the stretching part or any of the warming up, because that’s for sissies:) In our own eyes, we played like champions and within minutes felt the weight of the gold metals around our necks, enjoying the imaginary cheers coming from the imaginary audience near by too flabbergasted by such an incredible performance.

I pulled a muscle, but what’s a champion without its injuries? We came, we fought, we conquered.

At home, I pulled out of the freezer a bag of vegetables and happily attached it to my upper thigh where the muscles screamed like a toddler who skipped its nap. But I had a smile on my face. This injury made sense to me. I’ve earned this injury fair and square and was very proud of it. I hurt because I lived. Not some stupid bug biting me and nearly killing me then turning me into a walking zombie for years. Noooo, my friends, this was the kind of injury you get because you live, and you have fun living. And I plan to do it again:) My muscle sores have sores, that’s how I feel now, but I smile and keep on tapping this keyboard because I played a match of tennis with my family and we had a fantastic time doing it.

I hope you get a chance to enjoy life in your own way and keep cool this week because real summer has finally arrived in Pacific Northwest.

God bless:)

Power of prayers

/ Carmen McKnight / Leave a comment

“Does prayer really work?”

I’ve wondered that often in the past, and there was always a level of doubt lingering around my heart, especially right after a prayer seemingly was not answered.

Since 2014, I feel very differed about prayer. I was meant to die, but God had other plans. He touched my heart so many times before, but through the “valley of shadows” or “Satan’s disease” as I eloquently put it, I’ve seen his care, like never before. Sure, the battle is not over, not yet, but that does not mean I’m not at peace. Prayers do work. It’s as simple as that. I should’ve been dead by now, maybe you too, but we’re not and, personally I’m thankful for that. I’m thankful for my friend Lynn and the fact that she is fighting her battle, or my friend Gabi, or my mother-in-law, Janet, who fought hard and succeeded:) Or Miha, or tanti Nina, or Lena, or, or , or. I’m so glad I have them in my life and I see how strong they really are.

Last night, as I was praying for someone close to my heart, I was allowed to see fragments of the invisible world- the action behind the curtain- is one way of putting it. It was brief, powerful and left my hair standing up all over my body.

A baby elephant was raising his trunk up to the sky, crying (the dear one I was praying for). Circling above his head, like vultures, were a few shadow spirits. They really looked like shadows, circling over the baby elephant. I knew the person needed help. So I continued to pray. Within minutes, brief and powerful, I saw three angels, dropping from the sky with the spread of light- just like lightning- powerful, spears drawn (meaning judgement) and going straight for the shadows. A battle was about to take place. Than all went back to normal, but I felt my heart light and there was peace.

“Well Carmen, that could be a result of your religious brainwashing…” This is a doubt I would’ve (and I did) addressed myself, in order to explain away what just happened. Not today. I do not consider myself religious at all, in fact, I avoid religion when possible. But there are realities out there beyond our understanding and it does take faith to believe them or not. Oh, come on, we all have faith in something. How about when you sit in a chair? You have faith that it will hold you up, based on repeated past experiences, etc.

So, in my humble opinion, prayers work far better than we realize and can cause a very powerful ripple in our lives. I’ll keep praying, that’s for sure. I’ll also have lots of questions, I’ll have realizations of things I thought wrong about in the past, mistakes I’ve made that I need to change, but isn’t this part of living, and hopefully living well?

So keep on praying, because in the invisible realm, powerful being (angels) go to battle for us.

God Bless.