The Importance of Discernment

 

Discernment is important as we move through the valley of the shadow of death. I see so many theories, statements, and ideas of what the future holds, and I can honestly say I have no clue how things will unfold. I have random thoughts of how things might look, what could potentially happen, and a pretty good idea of how the world will respond to the situation, but truly don’t know, and that’s why it is important to be able to discern in the moment.

 

Time is tricky, at once seeming to slow and escalate, and no one knows the day or hour, but we all feel that whatever it is, or whatever it looks like, it’s getting close. The media scrolling overwhelms us with ideas, images, and deflections, pounding into our brains, needing our attention, and sowing so much division it’s hard to watch. How can we see the signs when we’re always staring at a screen in our own hand?

 

I’ve been noticing the changes around me, and inside me, for quite a while, and for me time has escalated to a stunning pace, and I think that it is more than my dissociative nature of turning on auto drive and slipping away. I stay busy learning, doing, or creating, my eyes on the tasks before me, but the changes outside of me slip through and I ponder the meaning in both fear and awe. We’re blessed to be here at this time, and for myself I am completely humbled by the uncountable chances I’ve been given to get it right.

 

The world continues to pump out fear, a non-stop stream of ‘what ifs’ that end with each of us being victimized, hurt, or killed, from sickness to war and everything in between, and discernment has never been more important. Anger is at an all time high, and I’ve asked myself if everyone has always been so filled with it, and I’ve come to the conclusion, that no, something is definitely different. There’s a lot to wade through to find the nuggets of truth, and to stay focused on the path to the narrow gate.

 

I was blessed some years ago to move into a rural area with very spotty Internet and cell phone service, and although rather difficult and irritating at the time, it worked to my benefit. I was able to step away from the chaos. And then life handed me a few challenging and depressing situations that brought me to my knees, literally, and changed me yet again. My faith grew, my fear eased, and I learned that the only important thing is God, in the end and in the depths and in despair, He’s all we have. And if I know that, then the world knows that, and whoever is pulling the strings down here certainly know that and are working diligently to block the connection.

 

I personally think we may be in Satan’s little season where the next step is the battle of Gog and Magog against the camp of the saints and then judgment, but even if I’m wrong and the next steps are rapture or tribulation, discernment is still mightily important. The world will try to trick us, it will try to distract us, it will try to scare us, and it will try to drag us down into hell. Up to this point my rule of thumb has been that whatever the truth is it is opposite of what the world, the media, and the majority are saying, but things have changed, and now is when quiet and calm discernment will save your life.

 

Be careful who you follow, and be careful how much you trust man. Trust God, not man. Look for the big picture, the strands running from point to point, not just the snippets and quotes and moments in time. Truth will be muddled with lies; everyone out for their herds to lead and claiming to have the secret knowledge they can’t share without committing to their ideas and accepting their dogma. Look at the fruits, the real fruits, not a three-minute segment from the world. Invest yourself into understanding the Word, not just a feel good Sunday sermon. Time has already escalated, events are happening quicker and quicker, and it’s not going to slow down. The world wants you overwhelmed and without the time and wisdom to judge the situation, the whole of the situation. The need for self-control is at an all time high when fear and chaos and delusions are coming at lightning speed, and the only control we have is of our selves, our actions, our thoughts, and our connection to God, everything else is simply distraction.

 

Remember, the world is a stage designed to entertain, possess, and distract, and at this point the world seems mostly invested in politics and furthering divisions. But we can’t change the world in that way, the stage is theirs, not ours, and we are not to conform to it, or waste our valuable time raging over it. They will do what they will do, but we must stay adhered to the narrow path, we must keep seeking the gate to salvation. If we endure to the end, we will be saved. You are special, the spark inside you is not in everyone, and your job is to make sure that it stays lit and grows into a flame. Only by lighting our own way do we help others see and find their way.

 

Keep seeking; we may be in for a bumpy ride. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Time Is It? Satan's Little Season

 

A few months ago I ran across a theory that challenged my reality; it really startled me. The theory is that Jesus already came back, and we don’t know what time it is at all. Yes, as the world is leading us toward the tribulation, the anti-christ, and the Second Coming of Christ, with all that entails, Jesus actually came back around 70AD. He had the one thousand years of peace with the saints, and we missed it, and now we’re in Satan’s Little Season as mentioned in Revelation 20:3 “[…] And after that he must be loosed for a little season.”

 

To say this idea is shocking is an understatement, but it also makes so much sense of why the world is the way it is. Hearing the information, this new theory, so many things just fell into place. Finally all the worldly conspiracies, all the corruption, and all the lies suddenly made sense, and this seems to explain what the world has been hiding for so long. I’ve touched the bottom of many conspiracy rabbit holes in my journey, but there was always something missing, and that missing piece was the whys of it all. It’s not just because of money, sex, or power that the world operates like it does, something bigger is being covered up and hidden, and this is probably it.

 

It’s a shocking realization, no doubt, maybe even a little scary, not just to realize how deceived we’ve been, but to know that the next step in the Biblical timeline is judgment. But it is also an incredible blessing to know that God is so good, so true to His word, how deeply He loves each one of us, and how many chances we’ve all been given to follow His way.

 

The proofs of this theory are literally everywhere; in the way mankind operates, in the way sin is pushed at us from every direction, and the deep and unending evil that exists. It’s in the scars on the land in which we live, the lies coming from every direction, and the systematic poisoning of the people. It’s in the mockery and anger towards Christ followers, and the different denominations, Bibles, and end time theories confusing the true and faithful. It’s in the way so many spiritual leaders are just out for money, and how much sin is revealed in them over and again. It’s in the political leaders fattening their own coffers as the people struggle and suffer, and in the division of the masses fighting to just hold onto to the little bit they have. You can see it in the medical community doing more harm than good, and the use of archaic practices that hurt, maim, and injure. In the entertainment industry pushing the least creative, the played out satanic imagery, and the continual use of old ideas repackaged for a new generation.

 

You see the devil can’t create, he can only imitate, and we’re living in his world right now. I’ve always said my biggest problem is that I expect things to make sense, and suddenly they do. At the bottom of every conspiracy rabbit hole is the satanic goal to hurt and injure, and now I know why. It’s Satan’s time to rule the earth as mentioned in Revelation 20:7 “And when those thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.”

 

Over twenty years ago I began my journey of following Christ and was rather stunned to discover that our world and our religious leaders believe Jesus was wrong. He said He’d be back in the lifetimes of His apostles, but He never returned and we’re still waiting. Somehow He wasn’t deemed a false prophet, and is still considered The King, but He didn’t return as He said He would, and He’ll be back any minute. Does this make sense to anyone? It didn’t to me. Why would time and our calendars be changed for a person who was so wrong? If He hadn’t returned as He promised He would, and with all that entails, He would have been a false prophet long forgotten in our history.

 

C.S Lewis was a renowned Christian writer, and I was shocked to see what he had written in his theological book The Last Night: and Other Essays (1960) “the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.” 

 

So one of the most beloved Christian writers openly declared Jesus was wrong, mistaken, and worse yet, instilled a delusion in His followers, and everyone takes it with a grain of salt as they file into their churches every Sunday. Jesus was the only perfect person, God come to earth, yet He was wrong? No, I don’t believe that at all, and I’m far more likely these days to trust the words of Jesus over the ideas and “facts” of man. How could we believe that all of Christianity was based on a savior who was wrong and false and spun delusions?

 

There are fifty verses in the New Testament where Jesus speaks with urgency, His return is at hand, He is coming quickly, but then nothing happened? Why do we believe this? We believe because that is what we are told, and I suppose we’ve never questioned it, but it makes no sense, and Satan is the author of confusion and lies, not God. Jesus promised to return soon, so soon that many apostles would still be alive to see Him coming on the clouds. He stated that even the Roman soldier who pierced His flesh on the cross would be alive to see His return. But the world says He did not return, not yet, and He didn’t mean what He said, or He was simply wrong, or in CS Lewis’ opinion, He instilled delusions. No, I neither accept nor believe that Jesus was wrong, and the only delusion is the one being spun on this earth in this little season.

 

In my last post I shared Gunnar Heinsohn’s presentation where he concluded at least seven hundred years had been added to history. He explained how the experts divided up the great catastrophes the earth experienced as many smaller ones hitting over nearly a thousand years, instead of one massive catastrophe that changed the world and our calendars. Interestingly enough, history states that those catastrophes included comets, earthquakes, plagues, volcanoes turning the sun dark, lands turning to desert, and soil and erosion material burying cities, pretty much what John’s vision in Revelation would look like if it had happened when Jesus returned. But man states that no, there was no return, and the destruction was metered out over centuries, not a single era ending, earth-changing event.

 

Jesus said His apostles would see Him coming on the clouds, and first century Jewish historian Josephus and Roman historian Tacitus both reported seeing armies on the clouds and strange celestial events. They both reported a sword-like light in the sky and a comet heralding great destruction, much like it states in Revelation. The towns and churches that Jesus warned were going to receive judgment are now in ruins, just as He promised. The towns that were repenting and following the Word are still standing. Revelation states that one third of the grass and trees would burn, and now one third of the earth is desert. The area that was described as the fertile breadbasket, the land of milk and honey, and the joy of the whole earth in the Bible is now a desert, as though it had received the promised judgment.

 

Revelation also states that mountains would move from their place, and now we know that the Appalachian Mountains on the east coast of the United States and Caledonian Mountains of the Scottish Highlands share a unique geological link. The Bible states that the Day of the Lord would cause mountains to melt, and it doesn’t take much to see that the earth has experienced a heat event at one point. Mainstream scientific beliefs state that the earth was once one large continent, but over billions of years we had a continental drift dividing the land, but the Bible tells us the land was split into pieces in one very destructive event. What if the Bible is right, and science is wrong? What if that division of our continents happened in our more recent past? Why are we trusting man’s word over our Savior?

 

Part of the journey of waking up and following Christ is learning that most everything this world teaches is truth is not. It’s a tough and challenging road to follow to the narrow gate, but I fully believe it’s worth it in the end. And it appears we are truly approaching the end, the end of days, the end of the illusion, and the end of suffering, tears, and death. To me this is something to celebrate, not fear.

 

I recognize that this theory is controversial, and goes against what most churches teach and believe, but that in itself doesn’t make it wrong. They teach that Jesus is the truth, the only perfect being, but also that He was wrong, and that does nothing but create a deep spiritual disconnect. I’ve never understood why the churches have so many different views of how the end times will look, isn’t the message clear? Why do they confuse with so many ideas, explanations, theories, interpretations, Bibles, divisions, and create anger between the different factions? Why do some believe in an upcoming rapture, and some don’t? There is pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, preterism, partial preterism, and let’s not even attempt to count all the denominations. You can exhaust yourself just trying to figure out what those views consist of, and where you stand. But if the churches believe that Christ was wrong, should we really trust them with our souls? Why does the world try to gatekeep our way to Jesus, our literal personal salvation? For a new Christian trying to find the narrow path it is confusing and discouraging, and Jesus warned of this too.

 

“The Pharisees and scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and hidden them. They have not entered, nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so.” “As for ye, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Thomas 39 Luke 11:52 Matthew 10:16)

 

If this theory is true and Satan is indeed in charge, I’m sure there are rules during this little season, just as there were rules with Job. I’m sure one of the rules is that we must be told about our savior, and be allowed to read and learn of the Bible, but that doesn’t mean spiritual deception isn’t allowed. I believe our mission during this time is to seek knowledge, stay humble, endure, and focus on God. It’s rather fascinating to me that all religions and denominations just seem to skip over Revelation 20:3 and 20:7 in their eschatological timelines, as though those versus don’t exist, and if I were the devil I would do the same.

 

If I were the devil I certainly wouldn’t let the masses know what time they’re in, and that lack of knowledge would keep the people unsure and feeling abandoned by God in an incredibly evil time. I would hide all evidence of Jesus’ reign on earth, and declare that time the dark ages where nothing much happened. I would introduce as much sin as possible into the people, and with the introduction of radio, television, and then the Internet I’d have a pipeline into every home and to every child. I’d tear down morals and call them old fashioned, I’d push sexual sin in every direction and call it freedom, I’d paint the dark occult ideals as something to strive toward, and celebrate the evil entities with movies and books geared toward the young. I’d break the Ten Commandments daily in living color and with moving pictures, murder, envy, lust, lies, and taking the Lord’s name in vain, etc. I’d illustrate the Christ followers as backward, naïve, dangerous, and uneducated, while making the followers of Satan seem cool, smart, enlightened, and powerful. I’d have the young women longing for romance with devils, vampires, werewolves, and ghosts, and the young men seeking only sexual satisfaction. If I were the devil I’d create the world we’re living in today during this little season, and arrogantly call it progress, and the height of all knowledge, technology, and intellect.

 

 A different view of eschatology is not a salvation issue, and this idea does not go against the scripture, as a matter of fact it brings it all into focus and clarity. For a growing number of people the veil of confusion has been lifted and they’re seeing and reading the Bible with new eyes, and turning fully to Christ and God. For myself I’ve spent almost 60 years longing for the world to make sense, and finally it does. Jesus wasn’t wrong, He didn’t spin delusions, and He returned just like He promised, but the ruler of this world, that old serpent, is the liar, the sower of confusion, and his evil reign is short and drawing to a close. It gives me great hope that the deceptions we’ve endured for our lifetimes are coming to an end, and a New Earth and New Heaven is quickly approaching. 

 

I will leave some links to explore this idea further, and above all else, keep seeking. 

 

For the readers, Jesus Kept His Word: https://medium.com/@JesusKeptHisWord/the-return-of-jesus-and-where-are-we-now-on-the-biblical-timeline-9f19d7faf893

 

A five minute video overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0jwjZBYrX4

 

For a view of scripture, Jason Jack has a great channel and this is a link to part one of his series on the little season: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AciFWtSu-2s

 

Little Season Ministry has a scriptural based video that I found to be very clear and Bible based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytxGFyPdZUI

 

JT Follows JC is a channel that is jam packed with information, and both long and short videos, as well as many podcasts: https://www.youtube.com/@jtfollowsjc

 

And for a more advanced conspiratorial view, Understanding Conspiracy has many videos on the little season: https://www.youtube.com/@uconspiracy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pay Attention! Something Is Wrong With Time.

 

In my last post I mentioned how my father complained of a calendar change that made his historical research difficult, and years ago I looked into our time and dating system after having an odd dream. The dream was just a voice in the early morning between sleep and waking, and it declared, “Pay attention! Something is wrong with time.” The voice sounded urgent and impatient, as though time was short, so that morning I began trying to understand time.

 

When I had this dream the world was obsessed with the upcoming end of the Mayan calendar that would happen in 2012 according to experts. The experts claimed to have a grasp on time, understanding the calendar changes over the years, and adjusting their counting system accordingly. There were mainstream books, movies, and debates in the years leading up to 2012, and the conspiracy boards were ripe with opinions, descriptions, and counter debates on how they believed it would unfold, but I wasn’t sure. Apparently, according to the impatient waking voice, there was something wrong with time.

 

The world media introduced fear into the people, as it always does, with the ideas that we’d all die suddenly, or suffer in some unexpected and creative ways, and then, of course, not much happened. The experts were wrong, we didn’t die, but things did change. Something escalated, and the world seemed to move a little faster. Was it the introduction of digital TV, smart phones and meters, wi-fi, etc.? Who knows, but here we are in 2025, and it’s been a wild ride to get here. Well, at least we think it’s 2025; does it really matter if we know what time it is?

 

At first I think maybe it doesn’t matter, the days will still pass, life will go on, but something in me feels a little inkling of discomfort inside. If it wasn’t important why go through so much to keep changing it? Why have so many dating systems? Why do some cultures have a different counting system? Why confuse everyone so much that they don’t even know what day it is, or what year? I can think of a couple reasons to strive to keep the masses unsure, one would be to deliberately confuse and mislead, and the other would be that something is being hidden from us, something that no one wants us to see.

 

It’s said the calendar is the center of civilization, but has to be adjusted periodically because it slides out of sync. If time is a continuum from one point to the next why is it so difficult to take note of and count? We know of the great calendar change after Jesus walked, died, and was resurrected on the earth, which moved our dating system from BC (before Christ) to AD (anno domini “The Year of our Lord”) or BCE (before common era) to CE (common era). There was also another change in the 1500s named after Pope Gregory XIII, and that one took quite a while to be accepted by the masses. The new calendar added in a couple weeks and moved the celebration of the New Year from the first of April to the first of January. Those who protested the change and refused to accept a wintry New Year were mocked and called April Fools. There were many issues with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, but as time passed those of us in the Western world now accept that the New Year is indeed in the winter instead of the spring.

 

Is it that important to know what time it is? The Bible says there is a season for everything under the sun, and time will change, and change again, but it also says to follow the Sabbath. How can we do as God asked if we don’t even know which day is which? Do we make up our own Sabbath? Do we trust the government and our 501c3 church leaders to tell us the proper day? It’s all so confusing, and perhaps deliberately made so, but what if it’s worse than what we know? What if the entire dating system is off, what if it’s not missing just days, weeks, or months, what if it’s missing years and centuries?

 

Back nearly twenty years ago when I was looking into these things there were a lot of thoughts and opinions about world changing events, some believed that every 25,000 years or so our magnetic poles shift suddenly, causing incredible turbulence on the surface of the earth, lands flood and move and shake and burn, and humans die by the millions. Others believe there is a longer span between events that bring a similar destruction, and these people suggest that a rogue planet enters our solar system and passes by leaving great damage on the earth. The commonality between these groups, and others, are that periodically the world undergoes vast, sudden, and era ending change, and the earth certainly shows the scars of great and terrible times happening, seemingly everywhere, but the dates and reasons for it vary. The one thing most of these theories leave out is God, and the people following them seem to trust man’s counting system, but have little to no trust in God.

 

Some believe our earth appeared from a big explosion in space and everything was simply created with no creator. These people believe that the earth has been spinning for millions of years, and claim to be able to date it through carbon studies, but over and again we find out of place artifacts that don’t fit into their pictures of the age and dates of the uncreated creation. Those of us of faith understand that God has had to intervene on more than one occasion to knock us back, or knock us back in shape. Some say there was no great flood although the evidence is certainly there, and all cultures speak of one. And Sodom and Gomorrah surely had an era changing event as fire and brimstone rained from the sky just as they had been warned it would, and modern archeology agrees the city was destroyed, but may disagree on the whys and hows of it.

 

Getting back to time, man’s systems can’t accurately keep up with it, or it won’t keep up with it on purpose. They say we slide out of sync, and then move days and months, and add minutes and seconds. Science says the problem is the fact that the earth is spinning with great fervor, over a thousand miles an hour, while also moving through space at another sixty thousand miles an hour or so, and that makes their jobs difficult. And there are other issues with keeping up with time and our history, like the dark ages or early antiquity and the middle ages where apparently not much happened, we didn’t progress much, we didn’t create or invent much. We know the Roman Empire finally collapsed in 436, and that the worst year for humanity on record was 536, as in 536 they had all kinds of disasters. They had volcanoes and plagues and comet strikes, and we know these things happened on those dates because the experts have stated that they did. And after that terrible year not much happened for a long time, there aren’t many written records or art or books, and what may have been left was lost to fire.

 

It seems we struggled with fire a lot from about the 1600s onward, and strangely enough between the 1800s and the early 1900s just about every state in America, and every city in the world had what were called Great Fires. The things that may have given us a clue about our past, the maps, art, books, and records have been, perhaps systematically, burned away. Now no one, or very few, know what time it is, and we are told to just trust the experts, because really, is it that important? 

 

Recently I stumbled on a video by Gunnar Heinsohn, who was an author, sociologist, and economist, and a professor emeritus at the University of Bremen before he passed away in 2023. In his lecture he comes to the fascinating conclusion that at least seven hundred years are missing from our history. I watched his presentation a couple times, and it’s filled with charts and graphs where he points out how time seemed to stop for quite a while after the fall of the Roman Empire. He spoke of the great catastrophes that hit the area with precision strikes, which man’s history claimed happened in the third, sixth, and ninth centuries, but by the thousands of archeological digs in the area the strata and evidence to prove the managed retelling of history simply isn’t there.

 

Man’s history tells us that those three catastrophes were quite destructive. The one in the third century buried cities under mud, sand, and silt, while the one in the sixth century was believed to be caused by a myriad of volcanoes erupting consecutively along with comet strikes, and the ninth century catastrophes were also blamed on volcanoes. The destruction from each of these events stretched thousands of miles with little overlap, turning areas into desert, and coincidentally the Mayan civilization also collapsed during this time at over twelve thousand miles away and across an ocean. But Professor Heinsohn’s research shows that it wasn’t three separate catastrophic events spread out over centuries, but one, era ending event that changed the face of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East, and also brought on the collapse of the Maya civilization.

 

The destruction that came with this event was profound, but the world says that it was three different attacks that pecked away at the area with surgical strikes, swiping one part, and then another part, and then another until it had altered the whole region. According to the experts the third century crisis strangled the Western Empire from Portugal to southern Italy, the sixth century disaster hit the Eastern Empire from Serbia to Egypt, and the final event hit the periphery of the area with a huge arch from Norway to Iraq. But giving the three-event scenario some thought it just doesn’t make sense, how could the devastation follow such fine and invisible lines without overlapping, and taking century after century to complete? But the experts state that’s exactly what happened, there were many, separate catastrophes in a near one thousand year span, instead of one huge event changing the whole area.

 

Typically as societies grow and fall they build on the remains of the societies before them, and through archeological digs those former inhabitants lives and existence are easily found, but not in the land where Jesus walked, died, and was resurrected. There are no artifacts, no strata, to prove that after the temple in Jerusalem fell (as Jesus said it would with no stone left unturned) the Roman Empire continued to thrive for several more centuries. Time seemed to have stopped, and the population disappeared, only to reappear hundreds of years later. During these dark ages from the first to the tenth century there was no change in architecture or language or art or coins or glass, and there are few, if any, writings from the era, time had stopped. And when time restarted, Christianity spread across the world.

 

But what if those centuries aren’t there, and never existed? What if there’s something wrong with our understanding and knowledge of time? What if there was one earth shaking, era ending, catastrophic event that changed time, and the world is determined to hide it from us? What could be so important that it must be hidden? Even Professor Heinsohn was stumped, but found a small clue of what those catastrophic events may have looked like to the people in chapters 6 and 8 of the Revelation of John.

 

 “A mighty earthquake took place, and the sun became black like animal hair sack-cloth, and the full moon became like blood, and the stars of heaven fell to earth. / And one third of the earth burned up. […] Something like a huge mountain burning with fire was hurled into the sea. And one third of the sea was turned to blood. […] A huge star fell from heaven burning like a lamp and it fell on a third of the rivers. […] And a third of the waters were turned to bitterness, and many people died from the waters.”

 

The presentation really intrigued me, and reminded me of that wake-up call nearly twenty years ago that something was wrong with time, and if seven hundred years are missing, then that voice was certainly correct. But what does that mean in the big picture? How does that change a thing? Our Gregorian calendar is one of commerce, and it lets us know when to pay our bills, our taxes, and counts down to our vacations and holidays. How can seven hundred missing years have a thing to do with any of us in this day and age? I guess that depends on your perspective, if the goal is to simply get through this day to face another then probably not much, it probably doesn’t affect you at all. But if the goal is to seek the truth in all things, then it may mean an awful lot.

 

Why would our society want to hide the past? What could have happened that was so profound that it must be covered up at all costs? Why lie about a world-altering event, and insist it didn’t happen, and was simply many smaller events? We know that there have been other catastrophic occurrences throughout the history of humankind, great changes to the land and to the people, but this particular one they decide to break up into smaller segments spread out over a millennium, confounding the experts, and making them guess and speculate. What was so important, so life altering that it had to be hidden? Do you know what time it is?

 

I’ll leave you with Professor Heinsohn’s presentation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0KI6TL4tf4

 

 

Keep seeking, it seems that things are getting weird out there.

Generational Trauma and Curses

 

I’ve spent the last few years exploring support groups geared toward survivors of narcissistic abuse, scapegoating, and child abuse. Social media is certainly good for allowing access into the worlds of others through various hobby, art, religion, and support groups. At first I was emotionally raw, and read and read, never commenting. I was rather stunned to find so many people shared my experiences, and they aren’t as rare as I had once believed. They are hard to explain, though, especially to people who grew up in stable, loving homes, or to counselors who didn’t spend their formative years walking on eggshells and questioning their own reality, and they are on a spectrum from bad to worse.

 

With reading so many stories, day after day, and feeling the raw emotion and confusion of these people, I began to see parallels. This type of abuse is not creative, not in any sense, and so many report growing up with the same events. Sudden, unpredictable, outbursts of anger, crazy making and impossible demands, bullying and mocking, triangulation between siblings, ruined milestones and holidays, adult issues dumped on children’s shoulders, and a lot of illogical, overly emotional and/or violent situations that leave the person drained, exhausted, and depressed. It became clear that there is a lot of fear and anger being handed down through the generations.

 

One of the more disheartening things I saw was how often unaddressed trauma is diagnosed as mental illness. I’ve seen this over and again, victims carrying the weight of family dysfunction on their shoulders, and accepting the diagnosis and drugs to numb, sedate, and ease the turmoil inside. Usually the misguided diagnoses are labeled bi-polar disorder or borderline personality disorder, and the treatment is mind numbing drugs, and shame for being mentally weak. But the struggles that come with surviving trauma and insane amounts of gaslighting is not a mental illness, it’s the natural and logical reaction to poor treatment. It’s a huge business, this mental health industry treating abuse victims and ignoring the bigger picture of why so many people are perpetually in fight or flight, and so traumatized.

 

But with all things I discover in life I tend to zoom out and try to see the bigger picture. I understood the micros, the fear and anger infecting adults that they both knowingly and unknowingly pass on to their children, but how was it so widespread? Why do we have so many traumatized adults? It dawned on me that there are strands of generational abuse, trauma, or just plain ole curses running through our nation, and it had to come from somewhere, but where? In looking around I found this trauma was woven through our nation, through our society, and is impressed on us from many directions.

 

My father (1920s-1990s) was a genealogist and historian, obsessively tracing his family tree back as far as he could, and learning about what led to the creation of our nation. He often complained about little old ladies changing official records to make their family name appear above reproach, and how that made things difficult for him. He also mentioned a change in the world dating and calendar system adding additional problems to his research. Despite my dad’s obvious trauma issues, and having only received an eighth grade education, he was a very intelligent man. He gave me my first concussions, and was one of those fine line people, a fine line between genius and insanity, a fine line between calm and raging. He was a formerly abused child, and a WWII vet with undiagnosed PTSD, and sensory and anger issues.

 

I bring up my father because I remember him having a very emotional reaction to a discussion about adoption. He ranted how unjust and harmful it was to uproot children from their lineage, and how it would leave the child forever questioning where they belong. I didn’t understand, as I was sure he hadn’t been adopted, but his reaction has stayed with me since then, and I’ve often wondered why. Why he reacted in such a fashion, and why it has stayed with me for over forty years? Over the top reactions were not out of character for my father, but this particular one has lingered in my mind while hundreds of others have not.

 

It seems the whole world carries a generational trauma, a curse, and no one speaks of it. The first orphanage in the United States was created in 1729 before America was even established, and it appears they were springing up in other countries as well. Orphanages became an industry, written about in popular literature, acted out in stage plays, and by 1900 there were over 1000 orphanages spread out across our country, each holding hundreds or thousands of kids at a time, a steady stream of kids coming in and then aging out. These were massive buildings where the children were warehoused like cattle, and treated brutally without parental care and concern. Interestingly enough a review of the Protestant Orphan Asylum in St. Louis, Missouri from 1847 to 1869, found that only 27% of the children had no parents.

 

The official record holds that the leaders of the time felt that children shouldn’t remain with their families due to poverty, low education, and other facets of life, and removed them. So three quarters of those orphans weren’t actually orphans, just uprooted and tossed into care. Coincidentally, as the leaders were yanking children from their parents, the first mental hospitals or lunatic asylums began opening in the United States in 1752, more massive buildings where brutal treatments were enacted.

 

According to the official record (which I rarely trust to give the real, true, and full picture) between the years of 1854 and 1929 the orphan train movement operated. Hundreds of thousands of kids were shipped all over the country and “adopted” at train stations, more often to work as farm hands and servants, than to be taken into a loving families. Coincidentally at the same time we were overflowing with “orphans”, Ellis Island was open and bringing in millions of immigrants and their families, while the insane asylum industry continued to grow at an unbelievable rate. So our nation destroyed countless families, tore the children away to essentially fight to raise themselves while working adult jobs, and those who complained were committed. Well, that would certainly leave an awful lot of trauma and anger in the heart of each of those children. And those children grew up to be parents and grandparents, passing on the hurt in a myriad of ways.

 

And then came the wars, and we certainly had a lot of angry young men to fight in them, war after war sending traumatized men home to start families. And then came the televised traumas, presidents being shot on screen, national leaders who brought hope being slain, and of course more wars with gruesome images of our dead young men being shown on the evening news each night. How many children got to know, love, and admire the astronauts before watching the Challenger explode in mid-air from every schoolroom across the country? There was 911, and the terror of more planes attacking the innocent, and the towers coming down over and again on repeat for days on our screens. And then the pandemic with the rolling death count on TV while nurses and doctors danced in empty hospitals, almost as though they were mocking us. Then there are the weather events, the tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, and earthquakes where we see more of our dead countrymen, and it has gone on and on for my entire lifetime, one shocking and numbing event after the next. Our country appears to be invested in keeping us traumatized and off balance.

 

Could it be that this trauma, this dysfunction, has been deliberately spread out into mankind? Why did every major country suddenly need to separate parents and children and imprison them? What is history not telling us? Depending on your beliefs we people have been on the earth for thousands or millions of years, have we always been so rough on our children? Where did our ideas of parenting begin? Could the lessons of parenting that we know have started in dark and archaic asylums where only the strongest survive? Who decided that this Lord of the Flies mentality (where bullies reign, children suffer, and personal identity and morality is lost) was the way to create a productive adult?

 

The Bible tells us that there is no new thing under the sun, and the world’s dirty secret is, and has always been, that children are a commodity. They are bought and sold and killed and used, and it’s the richest dark money scheme that exists. Despite the fact that the asylums, orphan trains, and orphanages are long in the past, hundreds of thousands of children are uprooted and disappear yearly in this nation alone, and this fact is not mentioned on the TV or media. There is still, in this day and age, a dark cloak of evil after the children of this world, and it’s far bigger than the abuse in individual families, it’s sewn into the fabric of our very nation, and our nation’s soul and identity.

 

The big picture shows that there is a massive evil stalking our children, and the micro knows how hard it can be on the individual kid where nothing makes sense, there is no stability or trust, and armoring and closing yourself off to others is the only way to survive. And perhaps that is what the nation wants for us, maybe it wants us to be closed off, broken, scarred, and no longer giving a care about our neighbors or fellow citizens, and perhaps that was always the goal from the beginning.

 

Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to seek the truth, to love and honor God and have no idols, and to protect our children, while the world’s message is far different. In this world debauchery is power, truth is negotiable, infanticide is bravery, sacrificing everything for money is heroic, idolatry is the norm, and experiencing and surviving great traumas is simply mental illness. The Bible is right yet again, what’s been done before will be done again, there is no new thing under the sun, and the soul of this nation, and the souls in this nation are in a very dark place. A dark place contrived and created by our leaders with a purpose, and looking out, and over, and under, and around I only see that the purpose is to drive us further from God, from salvation, from our rightful inheritance, and from our place in heaven. Generational abuse, trauma, and curses are real, and useful to a dark agenda, and the only way to end them is with acknowledgment, faith, personal sacrifice, honesty, and prayer. The world continues to inflict the trauma programming, and hate and shun and mock and cancel the ones who stand up and point it out.

 

Keep seeking. 

 

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Moving Forward

 

I’m always amazed when I see how many visitors this blog receives each month. I don’t know who you all are, but I wish you well, and thank you for taking time to stop by. My latest novel is complete and is yet another attempt to explain the various colors of narcissistic personalities and generational abuses, I’m just taking little slices and expanding them into stories I hope are interesting.

 

I haven’t posted here for over a year, been busy writing books and keeping focused on a couple goals, and I needed time to do some healing. There’s been a lot I’ve wanted to say, but hesitate because I know simple words rarely change any situation, so why waste the energy? But then I remember how many people my book “Momma Said Write a Book About It” helped, so perhaps I’m a little obligated to share my experiences. I think the truth is important, though, perhaps the most important thing as we maneuver through these lives and this dark world. The truth is a light in the darkness, the truth is healing, the truth is all that matters in the end, and the truth is the only way to reach the narrow gate and what lies beyond it.

 

After my mother passed I heard how she held such a love for Jesus, and I surely hope it’s true, but if it is it is a love that was found after I parted ways with her. For years and years my mother and I spoke nearly everyday, and the one thing she never mentioned or discussed or brought into any conversation was Jesus, not one time. I often wonder if people considered what my mother and I spoke about in those daily, hours long, phone conversations, because it wasn’t God, it wasn’t Jesus, and it wasn’t empathy for our fellow man, it was people, it was family, it was harsh and destructive gossip.

 

Everyday my mother dumped on me, every secret entrusted to her, and all the “concerns” and speculations of family, how each member was less than they portrayed to the world, and all they lacked in her harsh opinion. She did this in a subtle fashion with a conversational tone, usually followed by a long-suffering sigh and probing questions. (Think: “All they do is sit in front of the TV and eat, what do you think is wrong with them?” “They don’t care about those babies, it just doesn’t seem like they have a conscience. Do you think they’re a sociopath?” “I don’t know why one had such a strict curfew and the other got to run wild, or maybe I do. I think they’re playing favorites, what do you think?”) She’d pull things up from years ago, imagine scenarios that hadn’t happened, and project her own flaws on others. She wasn’t lovingly concerned about their well being, she was a harsh judge to every aspect of their behavior (as she understood it), and she wanted to talk, and talk, and talk, and talk these people into the dirt daily. She had a surgical way of picking at their character, and expounding darkly on their motivations, often going so far to question if they even possessed a conscience, or if they were possessed by a darker force. (As a child she often insisted I didn’t have a conscience, and now I know that was simply projection.)

 

She dumped on other family members too, where I was the body being autopsied and scrutinized, and if anyone said something about me in response to her guided probing questions, she couldn’t wait to tell me. Again, in a subtle fashion she’d let me know I was the one being discussed, and share their carefully selected opinions about me with me. It was triangulation; she played both sides, and stirred up trouble and ill feelings. And if there was an argument in the family she was quick to call and share every detail; every hurtful word said to her, and always with herself as the long-suffering victim of the family’s cruelties. 

 

I find it disheartening to discover that the people my mother dragged through the mud on a regular basis are the people who hold her in the highest regard. It hurt my feelings that the people I defended over and again through the years so easily turned away from me and began ignoring, excluding, and gossiping, as well as blocking me on social media. I don’t quite know what to do with that knowledge, and it was incredibly painful, but I’ve accepted it, and am grateful to God for revealing yet another hard truth to me.

 

I also don’t quite know what to do with all the secrets that have been dumped in my lap over the years, as well as all the speculations on all the secrets. I know more about some people than I ever wanted to know, and now I carry secrets I didn’t ask for, and had no interest in knowing. It is almost as though I had an unwanted surveillance into the lives of others and saw the absolute worst of them, but made to keep it to myself, and to carry someone else’s burden. Biblically it’s called gossip and is an abomination to God. (In my opinion gossip is akin to black magic, it doesn’t stop with just a few people, the darkness spreads out in the world infecting others.)

 

The truth is my mother was an emotionally manipulative person who was a master in triangulation, plotting one against the other with speculations, half-truths, and lies. The only time she showed compassion for another was when attempting to emotionally manipulate someone, to triangulate to make someone jealous or emotionally triggered, and then she pulled the compassion out in abundance, but only to imply the lack in others for not feeling the same way. I see clearly now how she manipulated my son and I, and I see how she did it with others. Plotting one against the other, egging on and offering advice to both sides while trying to provoke jealousy and emotional outbursts (which she’d later use for gossip and condemnation), and then claiming her innocence and ignorance as things dissolved into chaos. My mother has left a lot of damage in her wake.

 

After I stepped away I then heard of her “disease” which I assume was supposed to be Alzheimer’s, although no one stated it. To me it wasn’t a disease as much as an inability to mask her true personality any longer. With me she began bringing up situations from the past, hurtful and traumatic and life-changing situations caused by her hand, but now defending her actions as just and right. (“I don’t know why everyone said I had a drinking problem. I never had a drinking problem.”) Day after day in those last months of contact she’d bring up one situation or another, and explain how she hadn’t been wrong in hurting me, physically, emotionally, and mentally, I had been wrong for pushing her to that point, and being a bad kid. There are some things in life you don’t do twice, not if you have a choice, and reliving my traumatic childhood is one of those things. I was a child, she was the parent, and I didn’t make her abuse me, bully me, insult me, call me names, or break my spirit, and I wasn’t going to agree that I was just because she was old.

 

All my life my mother stated that I was too honest, the most honest person she’d ever met (as though it was a weakness instead of a strength), but I suspect those statements changed when I stepped away. I think she was terrified that I would reveal her. She said many times I couldn’t share anything she talked about or she’d be homeless, ostracized, and hated, and I didn’t share it, even after I took a break for my own sanity. She often told me I was her best friend, the only person she could talk to, but I now know that wasn’t even close to the truth, it’s what she said to many people, the people she regularly lied to and manipulated, and those words were just another manipulation. My mother had a way of making everyone responsible for regulating her emotions, she did it to me from the time I was a young child, she did it to my son, and she did it to others. Everyone was responsible for her emotional needs and expressions, everyone except herself.

 

I’ve been able to find forgiveness, though, because I realize my mother was just continuing generational abuse, a curse the Bible would call it, and was once a young and confused girl undergoing abuse just like I did. I can easily forgive that scared little girl, God bless her. Curses can be broken with prayer and faith, with obedience to the God’s rules, but they have to faced and acknowledged. Buried and unspoken curses just continue to produce bad fruit, and in families that bad fruit is broken and hurt people.

 

I pray my mother did find Jesus before she passed, but I have no proof of that. It seems that if she did she would have reached out to apologize, to find a way to help ease some of the pain, to be honest about the circumstances, but she never did. Jesus is the truth, the life, and the way, and no one can reach heaven without Him. The path is very narrow, and according to the Bible very few will find it, and I know without any doubt it can’t be reached while living a life of lies. Facing the truth is incredibly hard because it brings change, and once you see the truth you can’t unsee it.

 

The truth will set you free, but it will also piss off an awful lot of people. Keep seeking, though, it is worth it. 

 

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Grief Is Not A Spectator Sport

 

I’ve been thinking of funerals, and of course I am, my mother has recently passed on. Death is a big thing in trauma/addiction recovery, truly any event that brings a lot of emotion forward is a big event, but death is definitely one of the biggest ones. And the death of an abusive/estranged parent is the biggest. Needless to say there are a lot of mixed emotions involved.

 

With the news of her impending death I found myself in constant prayer that she would seek repentance for the harm she put out in the world. I found myself waking early in the morning already engulfed in prayer that somewhere in my mother she realized the harm she had caused, and was honestly repenting. I have longed for her to show me remorse over the years, to acknowledge she hurt me worse than any other human being was capable, but the last week of her life I wasn’t interested in her remorse, I just wanted her to repent before she died. (Mathew 18:6) I don’t know if she did, and I suppose I won’t know until I pass on myself.

 

I am grateful I had almost two and a half years of mourning before she passed. I am grateful I had a chance to begin healing, to create a life where she wasn’t the chaotic center of it, to find some peace and belief in myself, and put myself in God’s hands and trust Him completely with my fate. I will always be grateful for the time. In the beginning I separated myself simply because I had no choice, my body had revolted. And I will be forever grateful the nightmares, flashbacks, fear and trembling, anxiety and panic attacks came before she died, because if they’d happened afterwards I don’t know if I would have survived it.

 

Therefore I’ve been thinking about funerals, and being the youngest on both sides of my family I’ve been to a lot of them in my years. Funerals tend to be highly emotionally charged events, and perhaps because death marks the end of an era, funerals tend to bring people to seek resolution of one long-held issue or another. Funerals are triggering, and I can’t think of a single funeral I’ve been to that didn’t bring an eruption of chaos during it, or quickly following it.

 

When my own father buried his mother he went to the funeral carrying his gun. The tension in that funeral home was like nothing before or since, the factions were aligned with their perceived righteousness and indignities of how my father had failed his mother, and although no shots were fired, or blows thrown, that event left an indelible memory. Then there was the funeral where a cousin went after an uncle and had to be physically restrained. And the one where one mourner worked diligently to turn everyone from another mourner with accusations of an earlier unwanted sexual encounter, or yet another funeral where there were divisions with claims of domestic abuse.

 

And of course there was my own child’s funeral where several people targeted me, trying to engage me into some kind of upset. One followed me through the funeral home mocking my words as I spoke to mourners, another tried to draw me into an argument because she felt she had been treated unfairly, and yet another sought out to resolve an issue from years earlier. All this occurred while I was attempting to say goodbye to my only child. Why did those people choose a funeral to address long-held upsets? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s not uncommon to use that ritual as a tool of harm.

 

Grief is not a spectator sport, nor should it be used to gather more fodder for the gossips. If the last two and a half years have shown me anything it has been that I can only rely and put my trust in God, not man, not family. I suppose I knew what would happen when I stepped back to mourn my own losses and begin to heal my own injuries, and the events happened in a textbook fashion, the lines were drawn and people chose their side. I didn’t ask anyone to choose, and although I may have desired understanding and compassion, I did not expect it, and I wasn’t surprised when I did not receive it. I was hurt, though, just one more hurt piled on top of the others, and I was gossiped about and condemned far and wide.

 

I have stated over and again that I abhor gossip and fully agree with the Bible in this point, it is destructive, it is sinful, and it is where small and evil minds gather. My mother told me many times in my life if I didn’t do as she requested then people would talk about me, ie., she’d get that ball rolling. Luckily for me after being warned, gossiped about, and experiencing the awkward hush that comes over a room when I stepped inside, I was prepared for what followed. What I won’t do is feed that gossip machine any further. 

 

My mother has died. There are so many losses to be mourned, so many. As her only surviving daughter I have the right to mourn as I see fit, I have the right to soothe my own pain in Jesus’ peace, and not be further fodder for the gossips.

 

All this is my way of saying I will not attend my mother’s funeral. Experience has shown me that funerals aren’t a safe place to let down my guard and open up my heart. Experience has shown me that the only benefit to be had by my attendance would be to deepen the coffers of the gossips, and to further a divide that may never be bridged. I know where my mother will be buried, I’ve spent a lot of time in that cemetery in my years, and I will go and visit the grave on my own, when I am ready.

 

Sometimes in this life you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t, and I am mightily tired of being damned by people who do not know my story, and mock, lie about, and dismiss what I have survived. She was my mother too, and above all else I pray that she repented for the incredible pain she caused in her life. 

 

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Righteous Anger

I haven’t been posting a lot of blogs recently and the main reason is that I’m angry, and I didn’t really want to push that anger out into the world. I’ve written plenty, and when I see the anger sneaking in with no way to say what I feel without revealing it, I close it out. It’s righteous anger though; it’s the anger that comes when you finally find respect for yourself, your abilities, and your own existence.

 

I find I’m most angry over all the losses, the loss of a education, the loss of the love and affection a child needs to become a well-rounded human being, the loss of a central nervous system that works correctly and isn’t constantly on high alert waiting for the next threat. I’m angry that I never had a mother I could trust, one who would protect me. I’m angry that as an adult I never had a mother who was a friend, one who would hold my secrets and stand up for me. I’m angry that through all the suffering I’ve endured in my life, my mother only viewed my pain as fodder for gossip, as a means to draw attention to herself.

 

I’m angry that I have suffered real brain damages from the concussions, the beatings, the threats, and the continuous and constant stress through my formative years. I am angry that every confidence I trusted with my mother was shared far and wide, and not just shared, but subtly changed to suit her wants and needs for attention. I’m angry that in my childhood every little thing was a dramatic, never-ending crisis. I’m angry that my mother never tried to be a good mother, never taught me anything useful or valuable, it was all about her, her feelings, her needs, her wants, her desires to be the focus of everyone in her world.  

 

I am angry that the only affection I received as a child was in front of an audience, and had no real feeling behind it, it was just a show for others. I am angry that I am the daughter of such a cold, heartless, unfeeling, and cruel (mean-girl) woman, and that I was never allowed to be my own person, I was simply a possession that was expected to mirror her feelings. I am angry that I had to struggle so hard to find little pieces of myself, that being a whole, separate person was discouraged, while being a pathetic, helpless mess was encouraged.

 

The anger ebbs and flows, some days better than others, and I know with time it will lessen, and I also know that the anger is righteous and needed. What I find I am the angriest with is that I put up with it for so damned long, that I wasted the majority of my life seeking a thing that simply doesn’t exist. I am angry that I exposed my only child to the gaslighting and confusion, and now so many odd things that he said over his lifetime are suddenly making sense and I know from where those words emerged. I am angry with myself that I continued to trust my mother, and the countless times I was hurt, deceived, and gossiped about. I am very angry with the way I was used as gossip fodder over the years, my life, my pains, my suffering at the hands of a narcissistic parent were only used for talk, as a means of damned entertainment for people who would have never survived what I have endured.

 

So yes, the reason I haven’t posted much in the last year or so is that I am mad as hell! And following my well-established training, I’ve kept that anger to myself, not wanting to be or put a burden on anyone. I can’t say much will change by my stating these truths, but posting this blog will be a start.

 

 

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