It wants to /tries to be the focus so we can not focus on God and His promise for us of eternal life in Christ.
I can't even work I don't know what God expects from me. But...I'm leaving it in His hands.
Also, making me sad is that I watched Ip Man last night. I realized if I become dead broke/become homeless (a very possible reality now) I will likely starve to death due to not being able to tolerate simple foods like rice, potatoes, beans or corn...At least Master Ip could fight /martial arts for RICE for feeding him and his family! He fought and applied all he had learned over the years and had even taught others to fight in attempting at overcoming the Japanese invasion/regime.
Since the beginning of time, poor people everywhere have survived on the very foods/things I cannot eat and God still has not made me be able to tolerate the most basic & natural of foods! If I'm in jail or persecuted as a Christian, God forbid not even bread and water for sustaining me - as I can't even tolerate bread. This is SO sad to me. But today I'm not letting it steal my joy; fine! I will eat lettuce til I die 😊 while praying for tolerance.
Anyway, this illness is demonic, cuz it can steal our faith & joy. It worked on me for the last 2 days, but I'm back "in the race" and "on track" once more! At least these days it doesn't take me months and years to get "back on track."
Which leads me to a situation I had and what I realized when I was playing Inside Out's movie app. It's a movie about the mental states of humans. Each emotion works with one another, and sometimes they don't. I downloaded it in December 2015.
My health began to decline upon moving here. Week after week month after month, I was (in bed) climbing the ladders of the levels. Some boards were really stumping me and hard and others were a little easier reprieve, and still others I some days NEVER thought I would get through! I would sometimes be on the same board for like 2 weeks or a month! Just not being able to pass it. I'd be making mistakes, not being able to figure things out or have no clue how to beat the board!
Sometimes I would even get close to winning a board, but I would still lose. For every couple of boards you get access to a new emotion - the ones that are in the movie. I would say probably every 25 to 30 boards you get a new
emotion and each emotion has its own special power for levels.
So I had gotten up to level 155 out of 600 something boards. I was forced to update my iPhone, but then I got locked out of it cuz I had forgotten my passcode. Apples' idea is if you don't know your passcode then everything you have on your phone gets erased in order to "reset" the phone.
I also learned a valuable lesson not to ever care about anything that I ever put or keep on my phone as it can be lost anytime, but back to gaming.
So when I was able to get back into my phone, I had to reinstall everything! And when I reinstalled Inside Out - it did not remember all my board data so I started back at level 1.
On top of what I lost: pictures, memos, conversations, music, etc. - I also lost all 155 levels that I had "worked on" for the last 6 months! All my progress, all my hours, days, weeks, months spent figuring things out for each board - gone! At first, I was extremely sad.
I play Inside Out to help me to get my mind off my symptoms, off my body, sometimes. It helps me when I need to laugh or feel like I need to exercise/escape my mind in some way - not by watching a movie, not by reading the Bible or learning, not being "productive" but just doing something while disabled feeling unproductive.
So long as I have my hands (and I don't always have them), I can at least play Inside Out for a little bit when I'm stressed and get away from my thoughts. It also reminds me of my childhood, after school going to the candy store and playing video games and eating tons of candy til very late so that I didn't have to go home. That's probably how I got addicted to sugar too..?!
Anyway, I began all over again.
I started playing the game again from level 1. But what God showed me pretty quickly was how long it took me. How long it took to get up to 155, how long to lose everything, how long to start back at 1 and how far to go. It took me A WEEK or more to pass levels 1 through 10 the first time!
God said to me in that moment right there that my going up the ladder and through the levels is much much faster and easier when I already "know the route".
I already went through the suffering, through the frustration, through the agony of puzzling events, not being able to figure out those boards!!
I already went through failing the board and then trying again and again.
That reinstall was 2 days ago and I'm at level 53...I got from levels 1 to 10 in less than 30 minutes the second time. Why?
Because as God showed me, I already went through it all - I knew the way, I have /had and played with the memory of what I did on boards previously, I had my "new" knowledge of the "future boards" that I had seen working my way all the way up to level 155 the first time, I was working with higher and learned new skills on these "lower levels" which were once so extremely difficult and frustrating.
What once took me months to master, now takes me minutes/ hours to execute. I'm at level 55 and I now move through the levels so quickly as well as know what's ahead.
I'm not sure if there's a lesson there for you or me, but there probably is if we choose to see it.
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