Delightful Light

When little children are mistreated, they have no understanding to help them process the sin perpetrated against them. The result is thinking like a child and growing up having to put away childish things. When I was about seven or eight years of age I still believed in Santa Clause. I was so adamant that the tubby red suited dude existed that I got into an argument with my older sister and younger brother about it. My sister dragged me by the arm to my parent's bedroom where she opened the closet door to reveal all the wrapped gifts that year. I stood there so stunned. Tears began to roll down my cheek. My parents had actually lied to me. The same Mom, who not three years earlier yelled and yelled at me for lying had herself been lying to me all these years. My world was literally shattered that day as I told myself, "I cannot trust my parents." The pain of it so deep I drowned the pain with repression. I spent the rest of their lives refusing to believe

Recently I was asked, "So, what if a large group of Christian leaders told you, Diane, your beliefs were wrong. Would you submit and change what you believe?" My answer was, "It depends upon whether or not the large group of Christian leaders were in Christ." The God ordained position of "leader" as defined by American civil laws of corporations dictates the same authority described in this verse: Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples,  saying: "The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses;   therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. Matthew 23:1-3 (NASB) The problem this verse places on the shoulders of religious leaders is the loop hole Jesus gave us that reads "BUT DO NOT DO." When it comes to personal beliefs, religious leaders are not given any authority to dictate what to believe. In

Before January 30, 2004: When I was in grade school, all my reading and writing skills were below par. The highest score I ever achieved was a B in English and only because I did a lot of extra credit work that used grammatical formulas. I never liked reading because I was made fun of by other students. Teachers, on occasion, publicly laughed at my reading failures. My reading was always slow and so was my comprehension.  My writing skills were no better. It was so bad that I had to take remedial writing classes before I was allowed to enter community college, but every class requiring writing produced the same struggle until I just simply gave up on college altogether. It was during my college struggles that I was diagnosed with a form of dyslexia that inserted incorrect words into my brain that caused the material to become confusing when I read or when I wrote. For example: I would read "hat" and the actual printed word was "cat" or I would w

It was the first night of the camp. The teens and leaders had spent a good deal of time worshiping and the presence of God could actually be physically felt... at least by me. Nature was calling, so, I went outside where I saw a man look at me and fall down with convulsions flopping uncontrollably. My first thought was of the story in Matthew 17  of a lad having the same issue. So, I did what I had seen Jesus do for the lad in Matthew 17 . I commanded the demon to come out. Wow! Was that ever the wrong thing to do (large amount of sarcasm here). A friend of the man having convulsions immediately came up to me and began yelling in my face HOW DARE YOU ASSUME this man has a demon when all he has is epilepsy. The man's friend was so loud and angry I thought for sure he was about to cause that fist he waved behind his head to come pounding down on my head any moment. Needless to say, that night I got a good healthy dose of what was described in Acts 19:13-