Wednesday, March 31, 2010

God’s Blessings Be Upon You

May you lift your gaze to the heavens and hunger for the Lord, your God.

May your help come from Him, the Maker of all creation.

May He not let your feet slip outside of His Holy ways.

May He keep you safe day and night, for He never rests.

May He encompass you as you go out and come in.

May the Lord be your shade by day so the sun will not harm you.

May He be your shelter when the moon shimmers by night.

May He protect you with His mighty hand and watch over you – now and forevermore.

    I borrowed the above from a Sunday School notice. It seemed to cover every aspect of our lives concerning God's interplay with our own. How often do we ask for specific prayer answers but not for the incomprehensible covering of our Almighty God's Blessings? Surely we believe in living within the will of God, but do we ask for the blessings to coincide with our efforts to be holy?
     As Easter weekend approaches, what blessing do you long for most in your life? Do you wish to fully comprehend the extent of Christ's suffering and share in his suffering for the sake of our Lord? Probably not. Who of us wants to ask for more pain and tribulation? The mysterious oxymoron in life is suffering was the birthing of our salvation and peace with God. It was also the doorway to His Blessings.
     If we, as Christians, never suffer we miss the whole point of the crucifixtion and the joy of Christ's resurrection into embodied glory. Give thanks to God for your trials. Give thanks to God for your suffering. Give thanks to God for tears shed in the dark of night. He is our Father, Abba. He wants good to come out of what the world sees as bad. That is the tranforming power of the Holy Spirit through our faith in Christ, Our Risen Savior! May your spiritual heartbeats echo the message of the gospel within your soul this week. (John 3: 16-21)

May God be with each of you this Easter Season,

Linda B. Greer

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Lasting Memories and Loving Comfort

Dear Fellow Writers, Publishing Friends, and Good Friends,

After over two years of hustling in the writing world, I have finally earned my first small paycheck for a short story about dogs as part of an anthology to be published by Lonnie Hull DuPont. Oh, my! I guess it will cover the cost for all the paper I have used or thrown away trying to become an accomplished writer. Thanks be to God for His gracious gifts.
 
I had a wonderful time this past Friday at the First Presbyterian Church of Clinton (pronounced as Clinnon) with Dr. Edna Ellison who spoke to ladies from various area churches on "Putting God First in Your Life". I also made a closer acquaintance with two friends from our common writing group in Spartanburg, Blessed Temple and Dianna. We laughed ourselves into tears on our voyage.

Edna was gracious enough to let me have a small end of her long publications table, and I actually got 4 orders for Susan T. Osborn's anthology Too Soon to Say Goodbye. The women who came to my end of the table were recounting very recent suicides in their circle of friends. I was glad to be able to offer some comfort and a well-written book for them to give to the victims of suicide in their community.

Suicide is becoming an all too often end to lives these days. How sad to suddenly lose a loved one to such a hurtful death. It is an especially deep wound when there is no note left, and you are wondering, "Why did this happen? What could I have done? Were there signs I missed on life's roadway?"
 
I know, as a contributor to this anthology from my husband's sudden suicide in the Army oveseas, it took me at least three years of recovery to function. I still had two young daughters we brought into the world to mother.

Everyone takes their own path and time to grieve a suicide. Their spiritual heartbeats are weak, irregular, and pining to find God through a valley of tears. Putting time limits on a mourning person just adds to their weight of grief.

Another word of advice to well-meaning friends: When someone has told you their young relative or spouse has died, please don't ask what happened. The surviving members of the family don't know the answer to a suicide and may never know for sure this side of eternity. Offer the mourning person Christian comraderie, your ears, and your prayers. And give them lots of hugs, too!

Blessings and Agape,
Linda B. Greer

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Sharing the Burden of Over Five Million Citizens

The Bible tells us not only to be concerned with our own problems, but to share the burdens of our brothers and sisters in Christ and do good to those of us in God's family. There is always time for sowing good seeds. (Galatians 6: 2-10). For over two years I have volunteered in Spartanburg as a support group leader for the National Fibromyalgia Association. The NFA is one of the largest world-wide groups to assist and educate the public, medical professionals, and people afflicted with Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) and/or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), the most common comorbidity to FMS.

I had suffered chronically for about 10 years before proper diagnosis and couldn't make sense of the fatigue and achiness I would feel. Even my orthopedic doctor, a graduate of UNC-CH, misdiagnosed me as having tennis elbow with my first bout of FMS. In 2001, at the Pain Clinic at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC, I heard the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia for the first time. It relieved me knowing there was a name for all the symptoms I was having.

When I returned to my home in Florida, our support group was a real life saver for me as my symptoms escalated with the murder of my elder of two daughters in 2003. I was already a widow of 15 years at the time. I was unable to provide a godly father figure for my children. As each year ticked away and they grew up without their own daddy, I acutely grieved the hole in their lives. 

After moving to South Carolina as an empty nester, I started a group because there was none. We meet monthly to share and care about each other and have a light lunch together. You can probably imagine how difficult it is to encourage people who don't feel good to dress, drive, and come to a meeting in my home, but I believe it is a necessary part of getting some social, spiritual, and medical networking done.

The Spartanburg Christian FMS/CFS Support Group is a tiny part of a community of chronic pain sufferers nationwide and deserves your support, especially since doing so is free! You can even forward this link to others.


This is the link:

The igive team has made many improvements to their search engine recently, so they want lots of people to try it out and put it to the test. If you keep on searching or shopping after testing it out, so much the better for the Spartanburg Christian FMS/CFS Support Group .



The details:



- Offer is $1 for every new member to igive, active between noon, February 24, 2010 and 11:59 a.m., Februrary 25, 2010 (Chicago time). Make sure you select Spartanburg Christian FMS/CFS Support Group as receipient. 

- New members only (never have been an iGive member previously). All the normal rules of membership, searching, and purchasing apply; our site has the details. Real people only, who sign themselves up. It's not fair to sign your pets up, the new member has to sign him or herself up.

- Once they've given away $5,000 to all causes combined, the offer ends.

- The special link is important. No link, no $1.

- Visiting a store via iGive is crucial.

That's it. Don't forget to try the search portal (http://isearch.igive.com/) as well as checking out over 700 stores online. You may need to login or register first (personally, as an iGive member).

Blessings and Agape,
Dr. Linda B. Greer

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Every Dog Has Her Day

A first for me in this life--my name in print and my first short story published in a book! My story, "A Different Kind of Family", was published recently in the anthology: Too Soon to Say Goodbye, ed. Susan T. Osborn et al., Baptist WMU publishers. It's a great ministry for suicide victims and survivors including Holy Scriptures, true stories, Christian counseling snippets, poetry, and thoughtful chapter questions.

I received my complimentary copy in the mail last week and jumped around like a three-year-old with a chocolate chip cookie fresh from the oven. It was a benchmark day for my writing. Clearly, it was also a call to better writing. I saw many ways to improve on the story since submitting it about a year ago.

Someday the spiritual heartbeat of my short story will be interlaced into the romance novel I'm writing entitled: Forsaken but not Forgotten. Dear readers, pray for me to get back into writing jockey mode soon. I haven't touched the draft since before the holidays and here it is almost Valentine's Day. Also pray for acquiring an agent to spur me on (pun fully intended).

I have the plot line worked out, but those are just the bones of a novel, the kind of material you see on the inside flap of the book cover. Flesh, personna, and voice are still needed, the meat of the matter in writing a book. I have the imagination to create, but need the discipline to write...write...write beyond chapter ten.

I've even bought books on how to write better, currenty in need of a dustcloth. I'm pathetic. I have a freind who needs to write a series of short stories (Life on the Funny Farm?). She's further behind than I am, so somehow I feel comforted in a cock-eyed way.

If you want a discounted copy of Too Soon to Say Goodbye for someone needing Christian comfort from loss of a loved one by suicide or for someone who has attempted suicide, email me at drgreer@charter.net for info. It's a great book and a much needed addition to Christian world view literature on an agonizing and acutely touchy topic.

Blessings and Agape,
Linda B. Greer

Sunday, January 10, 2010

New Year, New You?


Is this the year your spiritual heartbeats will thump with your highest joy for His utmost glory? Will you resolve to have a special time and place for reading God's Word each day? Will you sign up for your first mission trip? Will your prayer life blossom like a beautiful magnolia, large and fragrant?

I know we all make and usually break our New Year's resolutions. But some promises to ourselves are bigger than ourselves. If you were to increase your time in prayer and Bible reading by twice, would that be a great sacrifice? How can you do such a thing when the urgency of the banal calls? Dishes need washing, clothes need folding, errands need running, your workplace needs you on time regularly, homes need cleaning, and meals need to be made and eaten.

Even though we are part of the microwave generation, some things are just too important to breeze through in seconds or moments. Think about the vow that a priest makes: to be chaste, to be poor, and to obey God. As future citizens of God's kingdom, we must peel away the non-essential parts of our lives and dig down to the foundations of our soul to find the peace and joy only God can give us.

In order to be closer to God, perhaps you could peel away some of the obstacles between you and the lover of your soul, the one who makes your heart soar with undeserved love, mercy, and grace. Here are some of my own personal obstacles:
  • too much TV watching
  • too much email to manage, read, delete
  • too much junk snail mail
  • too much time wasted looking at online bargains for things I want but don't need
  • too many dogs that need attention, food, snacks
  • too much time doing my make-up and hair (vanity, vanity!)
  • Disorganization at my desk, especially for my business cards
You may have an extremely different set of obstacles or perhaps one like mine. In the big picture, what will we leave behind as a legacy of how we spent the time God gave us on earth? Will it be one that includes great God conversations or the flotsom and jetsom of life?

Blessings and Agape for the New Year,
L. B. Greer