Come Heal with Me

Thou Shalt Not Kill


Notes from the Book (God's Psychiatry): God made us to live with each other, and the very process of living requires certain rules. God laid down five rules for us to live with each other. The first one is: "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13).

This applies (first) to our own selves. We did not create our lives, and we do not have the authority to destroy our lives. The very fact of life carries with it an inescapable obligation to live.

Murder, too, is prohibited.

Also forbidden are the destructive emotions of men: fear, hate, jealousy, anger, envy, anxiety, excessive grief, and the others. To counteract them requires developing within our lives the healing and life-giving emotions such as faith, hope, laughter, creativeness, and love. Love, for example, is a process of giving.

Positively, it means to live and help live.

Mother's Notes in the Margins:  Mother's mind was ablaze with questions, it seems. She wrote:

have the car checked
war & self-defense
religion
mercy killing by doctor
capital punishment
kill by our words
suicide
willful
Samaritan
God values life


My Notes:  What stands out to me more than anything in this portion of the book is one word Mother circled: anxiety. My mother tended to be an anxious person. She worried about things ... try hard as she may not to. She knew God didn't want her to worry, but she did. Her worry came naturally. She worried about my father (who worked in law enforcement) when he was out working a case. She worried about her children (with good reason ... we tended to keep her knees calloused until the day she died). She worried about her grandchildren (who also kept her knees bent).

One thing I can know for sure, when Mother died, she left all her anxieties in this world for the joys of heaven. As my brother and I sat vigilant by her deathbed, two people called and told me the same story. Just recently, they said, Mother had expressed her desire to leave the worries of this life for the face-to-face presence of Jesus. She loved her Jesus. More than she loved us. And that's okay by me.

Still, for a year and a half I've struggled with Mother's death. Before I had two seconds to mourn her, another tragedy hit my family that has rocked me far more than losing Mother or Daddy. Their deaths make sense in the light of this. We live our lives and, if we are Christians, we die to gain our reward.

So, for a year and a half, I've been tossed like a ship on the Galilee during a storm. Then, about two weeks ago, I admitted something out loud that I'd only toyed with in my mind. "I don't want to die," I said to a friend. "I just don't want to live any more."

Just saying it out loud ... and the healing began. Don't ask me why. I don't know.

I do know enough to know that death by my own hand is not what God has in  mind for me. His desire is that I lean into Him and trust Him with ... my life ... and my death, which will be at His command. Not mine.

Meanwhile, I have a life to live. I have a life to give. 


Father God ... let the healing not only begin, but continue in the days, the weeks, and the months ahead.

"I am ready."

[photo by Eva Marie Everson]

Come Heal With Me

Honor Thy Father and Mother

Notes from the Book: God gave us ten rules to live by. The first four deal with our relationship to Him. The last five deal with our relationship with other people. The fifth rule has been called the centerpiece of God's law. "Honor thy father and mother" involves both our relationship with God and with our fellow men. When God made man He also set up the pattern by which men must live together. First a man and a woman come together in marriage, and out of the union come children...As the child learns to love and respect its parents, so later does it love and respect God.

1) the parents must be honorable.

2) the children should recognize, respect, and love their parents.

3) we must recognize our debt to the past and be thankful for it.

Mother's Notes Written in the Margins: Mother had a lot to write in this portion of the book. Not only did Mother have a lot of respect and honor for her parents (even with their imperfections) she had the honor and respect from her children. My brother and I knew, without a doubt, that our parents loved us. They were far from perfect, but they were the perfect parents for us.

One of the notes Mother made struck me. "Grow up to be like the parents" she penned. This was close to a paragraph that tells of a mother who took her son to the zoo. When he saw some young wildcats in a cage, he asked, "What are those?" The mother answered, "Wildcats."

Like most children, he pondered for a moment and then asked, "Why are they wildcats."

"Because," the mother said, "their parents are wildcats."

My Thoughts and Notes: I understand not everyone is blessed with loving parents who also love Jesus. I know that many who may read these words will say, "My mother never touched me...hugged me...said she loved me..." or "My father's way of showing love was a roof over our heads, a meal in our stomachs and a strap if we misbehaved."

I understand. I just was blessed otherwise. There is not a day that goes by that I don't pray my children will see me with the same love and respect as I had for my parents. If anything, their amazing parenting is one of the things that makes me miss them all the more.

My husband did not have such parents as I had. Yet, he is a marvelous father. But his greatest joy is seeing that his children are better parents than he. His prayer is that, whatever he got right, they will imitate and whatever he got wrong, they'll learn from...grow from...do better from.

If you have good parents, give them a call or go into the next room and say, "Thanks. Even for the things you didn't get right. Thanks."

If you had good parents, give a thanks to God and set your mind on imitating and doing better.

If you didn't, I ask you to look beyond what they were to you and try to see what their parents were to them. Then, with prayer (and therapy if you need it), you be the parents to your children you always wanted your parents to be to you.

Mother and Daddy: I love you. I miss you. You were the best!

(Photo taken of Eva Marie Everson and Van Purvis with Betty Purvis (top), Eva Marie and Van with Preston Purvis (bottom) c. 1962.)

Come Heal With Me

Remember the Sabbath to Keep it Holy

My notes from the book (God's Psychiatry): More words were written about this commandant than any other the others. Think about it. Four words and four words only were given to "Thou shalt not kill" but ninety-nine words were given to this commandment.

The first thing we are told is to "remember." It is scientifically impossible for man to forget anything. Every detail of every day of your life is stored somewhere in your brain. However, "forgetting" and "remembering" are two different things. We may not remember what we had to eat three months ago on a Thursday but our brains have stored that meal forever.

God is reminding us through this commandment that this is one thing we must not forget to remember.

To keep the Sabbath, the 7th Day, is to take a precious gift from God. It is our reward for six days of labor. A man named Moshe Wolf (quoted by Sholem Asch in his book East River) said, "When a man labors not for a livlihood, but to accumulate wealthy, then he is a slave."

The Sabbath teaches us that we are not work horses, meant only to work, eat, sleep...we are children of God, born into an inheritance.

The Sabbath was given to each man so that he could be recreated physically and spiritually. It has been proven time and again that we can do more in 6 days with one day of rest following them than we can do in 7 days without rest. But more than just physically rejuvenating, the 7th day spent in rest allows the spirit to catch up to the body.

An old miner once said, "I bring my mules out of the mines for a full day, every 7th day, to keep them from going blind."

"Be still and know that I am God," we read in Psalm 46:10.

Beauty doesn't shout. Loveliness is quiet. Our finest moods are not clamorous. The Divine is not obtrusive. He is reserved and courteous. We need a day to hear his voice.

Mother's Notes in the Margins: The first four commandments are between man and God. The following six are between man and man. This is the last commandment dealing with man and God.

What would our country be like if we really observed the Sabbath as we should?

Psalm 84:10: (Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.)

(Next to "we are in too big a hurry," Mother wrote:) Satan busy.

God doesn't push himself on us but waits patiently for us.

My Thoughts on Both: A few years ago, as my work and ministry seemed to explode around me, I took on the 7th Day of Work attitude. Yes, I went to church but then I came home, marched myself to the computer and started working. Occasionally I'd throw in watching an old movie on AMC or TCM...but mostly I worked. I told myself that I enjoyed it, therefore it wasn't really work.

Then, one day, my back began to hurt. And it wouldn't let up. The pain traveled to my right hip, locked itself in, and then moved on down my leg. The pain was excruciating. I went to doctors. I took pills. I had shots. Nothing gave relief and no doctor seemed to have the answer.

I was forced to stop working because I couldn't sit at my computer very long. For someone who averaged about ten hours a day of work, I was lucky to get three. Ice packs and heating pads and narcotics had become my best friends.

I sat at the dining room table one evening, opened my Bible, and laid my head on it and cried. When I was finished weeping, I looked at the words spread before me:

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."

The admonition found in Isaiah 30:15 wrapped itself around me like the sting of a father's belt. My salvation...my strength...was found not in working, but in repentance, rest, and quiet.

I knew the truth of this. I had taught it, for crying out loud. Many is the time I stood before a class or an auditorium filled with people and said, "Psalm 46:10 says, 'Be still and know that I am God.' The word still in Hebrew is raphah. It means to cease. Be still. Stop. Sink down and relax. Abide..."

Oh for the joy of just being with God! A whole day not worrying about working, but enjoying his gift of time. Of family. Of friends. Of the simple joys like watching the children play. Or taking a long walk. Or picnic-ing with loved ones. Watching that old movie.

And, of course, worship.

One thing I have noted. God said for us to "remember the 7th day" so that we "keep it holy." I believe we have confused what He commanded here. He did not tell us that nothing apart from God, worship, prayer, etc. should be enjoyed. He did not say, "If you lie on the couch and watch an old movie...or take your child to a matinee...or sit out by the lake and watch the ducks swim...you have broken my law." No...he said "remember"...

I do not worship God but one day a week. That is every day. He is with me constantly, praise Him! Even when I am at my worst, He stands by and says, "Get your hissy fit over with and then let's move on." And I praise Him for that!

Remember to rest. Remember to enjoy this precious gift God has given you. One day a week. One whole day. How marvelous is that?

Photos copyright Eva Marie Everson

Come Heal With Me

Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord They God in Vain

Notes from the Book, God's Psychiatry:

What a person thinks about determines what he is.

The secret desires of our hearts eventually show up in our very appearance.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our life is what our thoughts make of it.

Marcus Aurelius

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Proverbs 23:7

Mother's Note in the Margins: Where are you Adam?

My notes: As I read the chapter titled "Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord in Vain," I grew confused. I flipped back and forth from the text to the title, back to the text. What, I wondered, did my thinking patterns have to do with taking God's name in vain?

Growing up, I'd always heard that saying "Godda**" was the ultimate sin. "God cannot damn," some teacher once told me. But the more I thought about it, the more it didn't make total sense to me. At the end of the book, it seems to me, God pronounces judgment, bringing some into glory with Him and condemning others to a life of "weeping and gnashing of teeth."

When I was a little girl, I dreamed that God could be seen high and lifted up, high above the whole world. There, standing in the front yard of my childhood home, I stood, looking up...looking at God. And, the whole world stood there with me (how we all got on that property, I'll never know.)

God was ready to pronounce judgment on the whole earth, on all mankind. He said, "I will separate the earth. Those on the right will come to heaven with me. Those on the left will go to hell with the devil."

The earth began to split, from just under the Almighty all the way down...toward me. I watched as some fell to the right, others to the left, and some fell into the great crevice. Just as the line approached me, I tried to judge it. To mark the timing. As it reached my feet, I reckoned, I would leap to the right.

But instead, I fell to the left.

I was going to hell??? This could not be right.

I looked up at God. "Can we have a do-over?" I asked.

And God granted it. Again, I positioned myself, ready for the great crack to come toward me, ready to jump to the right.

And again, I fell to the left. I looked up in horror. As I did, God said to me, "Eva Marie, this is just a dream. Mankind has been given chances time and again. But one day, the chances will run out."

Then I awoke.

I spent the rest of my childhood trying never to say a bad word (I was reared by parents who never cussed) and certainly not to commit the "unpardonable sin" as I knew it to be. But now I understand something even more: when we hold something in high esteem, we do not "take its name in vain." We honor it, both with our thoughts, our words, and by our relationship with it.

I. Love. God. Period.

I adore Him. Cherish Him. Worship Him. But do I ever take his name in vain?

Yes. Every time I get angry and say anything that would disgrace Him or my relationship with Him. Every time I don't take our relationship seriously and our time together seriously.

Mother wrote, "Where are you Adam?" God knew exactly where Adam and Eve were hiding. What He was asking was, "Where are you and I in this relationship, Adam?"

When we grieve, as I have grieved this past year--both for Mother and the other things I have lost (as this has been a year of loss)--I have both run to God and run from Him. Angry. Bitter. How could you? How could you have taken her...or her...or her...or it from me? Haven't I been a good daughter? Haven't I tried to live on the 'right' side of the crevice?

I took my eyes off the One I love and put them on my circumstances.

Don't get me wrong. It's okay to cry (even Jesus cried at the death of Lazarus). To be angry. To question WHY??? But in doing so, we should...we must...keep our eyes on Him. Become more like Him.

To live on the right side of the crevice.

Come Heal With Me; Week 14

Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee any Graven Image

Notes from the book, God's Psychiatry, by Charles L. Allen: It is much easier to whittle God down to our size instead of repenting, changing our way of living, and being godly ourselves. When Horace Bushnell was a college student he felt he was an atheist. One day a voice seemed to say to him, "If you do not believe in God, what do you believe?"

He answered back, "I believe there is a difference between right and wrong."

"Are you living up to the highest you believe?" the voice seemed to ask.

"No," he said, "but I will."

That day he dedicated his life to his highest belief. Years later, after he had been pastor of one church 47 years, he said, "Better than I know any person in my church, I know Jesus Christ." when he began conforming his life to his beliefs, instead of making his beliefs fit his life, he was led to a realization of God.

Mother's Notes Found in the Margins: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him. Nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.

My Notes: God created man in His image, yet we are told not to create any image of God for the purpose of worship. So, we seek to find something within creation to connect with our Creator. We sit on the ocean's edge and marvel at it's power. We look out over a range of mountains and can barely speak. We gape in wonder at a forest of Sequoias. Why? Perhaps because in our effort to find God--to worship Him--we attempt to create Him in our image of what we think God is like.

We try to make God into what we want Him to be; not who He is. We know God wants us to live according to His goodness. Yet, when we want to sin, we create in our mind a God who is okay with that. We create a God who gives--health, wealth, prosperity--but we do not want a God who requires of us--thithes, offerings, acts of service.

We worship God by "picturing God" according to our own ideas and fabrications. but what if those notions aren't accurate? What if they aren't even close?

Philip said to Jesus, "Lord show us the Father."

Jesus replied, "He who has seen me, has seen the Father."

Those who walked with Jesus and went on to write about it failed to tell us anything about Jesus' physical appearance (almost as though they were commanded thusly). But they told us plenty about who He was.

How wonderful it must have been to look into the eyes of Jesus and know you are looking into the eyes of God! But we don't have that opportunity. We have no image, graven or otherwise.

Or do we?

It is us, you know...We are created in His image. When we look into our own eyes or the eyes of one another, we should catch a glimpse of His. We are to imitate Him, so much so, we become His reflection.

Lately I have found it difficult to worship because life has sucked everything out of me, leaving nothing but a shell and vacant eyes. My prayers of praise are spoken through tears and anguish. My example of Christianity has been anything but. When others look into my eyes, they hardly see God. They see hurt, betrayal, anger, anguish, confusion, brokenness. I fight to hold it all together for the sake of the call and if that is not apparent, then no one is really looking.

But maybe, what God really wants me to do is to stop pretending and start coming to Him from such a raw place, I am emptied of all of me and replaced with only Him.

John gave us the most incredible promise in the 22nd chapter of Revelation. He reminds all that those who are faithful "shall see His face" (vs 4).

No longer will we have to look to the mountains, the seas, the trees, or each other. One day, when there is nothing between us and God but the praise and worship, we shall see the glory of God by His own image.

Notes from the book: One thing more. After Thorwaldsen had completed his famous statue of Christ, he brought a friend to see it. Christ's arms were outstretched, His head bowed between them. The friend said, "But I cannot see His face."

The sculptor replied, "If you would see the face of Christ, you must get on your knees."

He is the perfect image of God; let us have no other.

Come Heal With Me; Week 13

The Ten Commandments

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Notes made after reading the Book: before man can live rightly with each other, he must first get right with God. The 1st commandment is not "Thou shall believe in a god." We were created with the instinct to believe--to reach for something higher than ourselves. When we come into the world, it is with a natural desire to eat and drink. However, we must be taught to eat and drink the right things. God, as the creator of man, knows that man will reach for something, anything to worship. The moon, the sun, the stars. But God created all these, too. God's 1st rule is that none of the things He created for us to enjoy become something we bow to.

God also placed other desires within us: to gain knowledge, wealth, fame, pleasure, power. In and of themselves, they are not wrong. But when we put these things--or the acquiring of them--before our desire to know God, we have broken the very first commandment of God.

Mother's Jotted Notes in the Margins:

Not in God's Word

Starve

Traveler's Checks

What about me

Look nice

She also underlined a lot of the text, but she underlined twice: "One of our greatest temptations is to put pleasure before God."

I write: I have no idea what most of Mother's notes mean, but I do know what her first note in the margins means.

No where does the Bible attempt

to prove there is a God.

I have never doubted God's existence. Mother made certain I knew of Him from birth. But knowing Him has been up to me. My desire for Him must rise above all other desires.

Do I want to be smart? Of course. I am interested in a variety of things, some I wish to have more than a passing fancy over. Just this past weekend, while in Cedar Key watching the birds, I found myself wishing I knew more about the varieties of these fine feathered friends. Nothing wrong with that, unless I put the knowing about God's creation over the knowing the Creator.

Would I like to be rich? Perhaps not necessarily of the Bill Gates category, what with all it's responsibilities. But to be comfortable in my old age? Sure. To be able to help my children or grandchildren should they need my assistance? Of course. To be able to give to the children's charity I am affiliated with? Naturally! Furthering God's work is of paramount importance to me. Certainly nothing wrong with that. But if I put the gain of money ahead of the mission it may accomplish, then I am walking down a dangerous path.

What about fame? Is it wrong to want my books to do well? To be known for the hard labor of my hands? Certainly, I don't believe there is anything wrong with that at all. But what it I put my work, every day, before seeking God? What if I ignore the rest of the 7th day in order to get a little more done, go a little further, work a little harder? This would be wrong.

And pleasure? Sometimes I think, "I need to pray..." or "read God's Word..." and then I think, "Oh...this show is coming on..." or "I'm tired and I want to take a nap now..." A few weeks ago, our daughter, her husband and their children came to Orlando to visit the House of the Mouse. This is fun. This is pleasure. But they also came by and spent time with her father...her Daddy. And so I think of the times I spend sitting out on the dock over the lake behind our house. I look out on this magnificent vista...and this is pleasure...but while I am there, I am deep in conversation with the Creator. Sometimes I take my journal and write letters to Him. I love hiking in the cool of the forest or along the crags of mountains. Sitting beneath waterfalls, listening as it pulsates into a pool below. These are times when God's creation and my pleasure go hand in hand. I think of what Eric Liddell said: I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure...

But what about power... oh to have it at times! To be able to speak one word and my will be done! To have the ability to right the wrongs! My thoughts wander down two paths: the power of evil and the evil of power vs. the power of prayer. Why do I spend so much time barking at the moon? Why not cry out to the One who has all power and waits for me to speak but one word? Abba...

I cannot think of a single thing that came before Mother's relationship with God. I cannot, in all honesty, say this about myself.

In this year since Mother died, I have been consumed with and by many things. Some are of my own making; others have been pressed upon me. To make heads or tails of this, I must list them--I think--so that I can identify them. And after this, I can--hopefully, prayerfully--see why they have gained a place--any place--above God.

(By clicking on "and when I run, I feel his pleasure, you will have the pleasure of seeing these powerful few moments from Chariots of Fire, 1981)

Come Heal With Me; Week 12

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever...

This is week 12. In the book, it is headed "12."

Mother circled the number (it is one of the biblical numbers of completion) and wrote beside the word forever, "eternity."

From the Book: The author, Charles Allen, who hails from Atlanta, speaks of 5:00 traffic in the Georgia capitol city. He describes it as thrilling. The streets are filled with people, cars, buses... people are standing, running... and people are going home.

Be it ever so humble, he quotes John Howard Payne, there's no place like home.

But what about those who have nowhere to go? What about the homeless who inhabit the streets after dark, when the streets are devoid of all those who have left their work for the sanctity of home?

Mother Wrote: love, warmth, people

From the Book: David did not suggest that he might dwell in the house of the Lord forever but that he would. "I will," he penned.

David had never heard Jesus of Nazareth say, "I am the resurrection and the life" but David knew God.

My Notes: Da'at Elohim ... The knowledge of God.

Mother Wrote: I wonder, how intimately do we know God?

My Notes: As May nears, and with it Mother's Day and the anniversary of Mother's "going home" I am more aware than ever this concept of this not being our home. I imagine David writing or being inspired by "his 23rd psalm" in the lush fields where a shepherd boy may have led his sheep. For fodder. For water. For rest. Having been to Israel, I can picture the rolling hillsides, the deep blue of the skies, the bridal veil clouds. I know what it looks like to see the Golan Heights blush in the late afternoon sunlight. The land where David grew up, the land in which he ruled as king, was and is a magnificent sight.

But not so great as to keep him from desiring "home."

This earth is our place of rest. But 5:00 comes. For some of us, sooner than for the rest. But it comes. It's like that country hit, "It's 5:00 Somewhere."

Of course, I know that's about having a drink ... but it's also about coming to the end of the stresses, the labor, the dealings with people and problems all day long. It's about finding respite at the end of it all.

Mother has made it to 5:00.

When I was a girl growing up in her home, Mother liked to have a cup of coffee late in the afternoon. I suppose this was a lot like having a "spot of tea" were she in England. At times, friends came by and shared it with her. I used to watch them sipping from their cups, listen to them chatting. And I would think, "When I get to be a big girl, I can do this, too..."

When I was older, sure enough, it was my pleasure to share a cup of afternoon coffee with Mother.

Mother is having her 5:00 coffee with Jesus now. And my father...and her mother...and so many others who made it to 5:00 before her.

I'll be there one day. Right now, I'm still at work.