I received some rather interesting reading from Mary yesterday. She enclosed a chapter from a book called The Power of Praise. In this chapter, it talks about various people’s troubles and how praying to God for help didn’t work until they actually praised him for having the problem in the first place. At first I was like, that’s insane! And the people involved said that too, until they did this, saying that that’s what finally got them results, even though the chaplain that wrote it said you shouldn’t expect change, but should only praise him with acceptance and understanding that you’re in a bad situation, it’s for your own good, and so be it. The key is to accept that God is responsible for both the good and the bad that happens to us and that we should thank him for the bad as well as the good because it’s part of his plan for us and is for our own good.

Anyway, her letter really touched my heart. To have such a loving, accepting friend like her is a real breath of fresh air after all the lying, hypocritical, contradictory, phony, selfish control freaks I’ve had the great misfortune of knowing. She and Tom are the only people I can really be myself with and not get condemned for the way I am, and I know I have my faults just like anyone else out there. The good to come out of the bad people and the hardships I’ve known is that you appreciate good people and good times all the more and never take them for granted. My husband may not be perfect either and while he’s done some things he shouldn’t have, it was quite a change going from an abusive environment, to aloneness, then to a loving home when I moved in with him in the fall of ’93. It wasn’t just what I read that touched me but the fact that Mary cared enough to send it to me. And she did it in a non-pushy way which means a lot to me. I know I could write back saying I thought it was all hogwash and that she’d still love/accept me, but I don’t know if I’d say it’s total hogwash.

I never heard of or thought of the idea of praising God for literally everything, good and bad. Tom’s not an atheist, but he doesn’t believe in things like destiny or that things happen for a reason like we do. I don’t believe there is a God and a devil. I think God is the devil and the devil is God. Meaning, they’re both one entity. I also don’t believe there’s a reason for every little thing that happens to us. Meaning, there doesn’t need to be a reason I chose pink lip gloss over purple today, but I’m sure there’s a reason we’re going to Oregon.

Yes, you could say the investor’s a godsend like Mary said, though there are tons of them around and they’d have to be a fool to pass up such a smoking deal. Either way, I know things could’ve been worse and that we could’ve had trouble getting a buyer of some kind. I’m glad we won’t have to go through dealing with showing the house, home inspections, etc. Knowing the house is sold and that we are going to get a little money out of it helps ease the stress a little, and it’ll ease up even more once we get there.

As far as accepting God – I always have. Meaning, I know he’s there. It’s like how I see blacks. I don’t always understand them or agree with their ways, but I know they’re there, they’re not going away, and so I accept them.

I want to believe her when she says God loves me. It’s just been hard to believe that during particular circumstances I’ve gone through. In other words, it’s certainly easier to feel more loved now than I did in jail. I can also see where not understanding his ways can make it hard to believe and have faith. To put trust in one who can allow such catastrophes to occur is hard, yet I also believe that good can come from bad just as bad can come from good.

Around ’97, and I think I mentioned this recently, I began to pray for God to not let me have the child I wanted at the time, thinking it was the only way I’d feel loved and not so punished, since I knew since I was a little girl that I wasn’t meant to have a child anyway. Well, this might not have been praising him for not allowing me the right to choose, but I was “going along with him” in a sense, asking for what was meant to be anyway; my not conceiving. The point is that ironically, it was around this time that the desire began to fade. I didn’t just pray for a child, I prayed for him to take the desire away if he wasn’t going to allow me one.

Then there was what happened last night. Well, I can’t see myself, for instance, thanking him for delivering me into an abusive family or for having me get framed and sent to jail, but I did thank him for having asthma. I awoke after just 4 hours of sleep tighter than hell. It was just like old times only minus the wheezing. It was the closest I came to needing the inhaler since I stopped using them, but I knew I was so tight that it’d be useless anyway and that Tom just may end up going to Oregon alone! It was no fun. By alternating between making myself yawn and pressing my lips together and blowing as if I were blowing up a balloon, I can usually relax and open my lungs, but nothing was working. Not even my spells. It was like an iron fist had seized hold of my lungs. So I figured it was as good a time as any to try praising God for it as ridiculous as the notion seemed to me, and sure enough, my lungs opened! Tom doesn’t believe it was the praise, though. He thinks it was my spell. Me? Well, I need more than just one incident to be convinced, and I am an established psychic after all, so it could be a coincidence.

I thought of praising him for being fat, for my not being able to keep a schedule so easily and for long, for Tom and I having no desire for each other, and for my deteriorating eyesight, but I wonder if this is too much. Would God feel overwhelmed in a sense or that these requests were unreasonable, since Tom and I love each other and don’t have to get it on, and since deteriorating eyesight and extra weight go hand in hand with age, or what? I wouldn’t bug him for something as silly as a hangnail, but I was just wondering what was acceptable and what wasn’t. I asked Mary for her opinion. Perhaps I should cut them in half and just praise the weight and schedule problem? I also wonder if there are a certain number of times we should praise God for a certain situation we dislike or is once enough.

Anyway, I understood and believed some of what I read and some I didn’t. The 3 biggest things I don’t believe are 1. God helps those who help themselves. 2. We are to have all we wish for. 3. God loves everybody. I’ve seen too many people, including myself, do whatever they could to achieve certain goals/dreams, only to end up not succeeding. I once tried to conceive the child I once wanted, but when your husband won’t do his part to get help and continues to say that all will work out on its own and that he really does want a kid and that we can make one without a doctor’s help, there’s only so much you can do. For obvious reasons, I don’t believe we can have all we wish for or else we’d all have it all and it wouldn’t be such a you-win-some, you-lose-some world. No one has it all, from what I’ve seen. It’s also hard for me to believe he loves everyone when I think of how some people’s lives have been as opposed to others.

However, I do believe he’s responsible for both the good and the bad that happens to us. That’s why I feel God and the devil are one and the same.

It would be hard, I would think, for most people to praise God for their troubles without a part of them hoping it’ll result in change. It says we’re only kidding ourselves if we secretly hope for change, but it just seems like it’d be an awfully hard task not to hope for at least a little change. Either way, I doubt I’ll pray for much. I just don’t see much point in it.

I appreciate wholeheartedly the good that comes into my life and I do my best to cope with any hardships that come into it as well. Sometimes that’s by bitching in my journal, sometimes it’s by listening to music, and other times it’s by talking with Tom or taking a hot bubble bath.

Yesterday, Tom received funny feedback. It said, “Thank you for the keyboard. It smells good. It sounds cool, too.” Gee, I wonder why it smelled so good!

As soon as we get the check, we’re going to make the down payment of $500 on what we think is an ideal piece of land 20-25 miles north of the California border. It’s 2.3 acres and is the second one in from the corner. The owner says you can’t see other houses from it. Tom got a satellite picture of it and we picked out what we think will probably be the best spot to build the house which will be sort of in the middle. Of course, this picture is about a decade old so who knows how the terrain may’ve changed since? There were no houses in the area that we could see of either, but that could be a different story now. Also, the property is more rectangular so the people who end up building on two sides of it will be at a good distance, but those on the other two sides will be a little too close for comfort since I can never have quiet neighbors. They could be as close as 150’ or closer. The difference between here and there, though, is that there’ll be trees between the houses. Hopefully, it’ll block out sound as well as sight. It depends on how noisy they are. If they’re sitting outside chatting like civilized adults, it shouldn’t be as audible as screaming kids, barking dogs, and basey music. Tom insists it’s so remote compared to here that there may never be any neighbors in our lifetime, but I know better.

Since there are cougars, bears and deer there, we’re going to get large cans of mace, and I guess at some point we’ll get a gun, too.

Tom read that the unemployment rate is higher there, but those who do work make significantly more than they do here. Theft is a little higher, but not violent crime. They have an average yearly rainfall of 16” and snowfall of 34” and the area we’re going to will be 1500’ above sea level.

My butter rum incense came out well.