Everything Is Better
Today started with a hug.
Before my father left for work, I hugged him and told him I loved him. Then I told him we were going to have to start doing this a lot more often.
Hugging, that is.
I told him we both needed to work on regulating our nervous systems, so throughout the day we should just hug each other and remind each other that we’re safe.
We’re safe.
Everything is okay.
Except somewhere in the middle of that hug, my nervous system apparently had something else to say.
I freaked out a little.
I couldn’t hold the crying in.
I’ve been through a lot. Not just recently, either, although the accident and everything that’s happened since absolutely accounts for a lot of it. The pain I’m currently experiencing. Not knowing exactly what’s happening inside my body. Getting better and then getting worse. Wondering when this is finally going to end.
Pain can create hopelessness if you let it.
And that’s something I’ve been battling.
My mind can say, This is temporary. This is going to pass. There’s something to learn here. There’s something inside this experience that I haven’t discovered yet.
Meanwhile, my body can basically respond:
To hell with what you’re thinking.
That’s the strange thing about pain.
You can have all the positive thoughts you want. You can pray. You can believe. You can work on your mindset. You can tell yourself that there’s a reverse Trojan horse sitting in front of you and that somewhere inside this ugly-looking thing are gifts you can’t see yet.
And your body can still hurt.
Bad.
I understand that now in a way I didn’t before.
If you’re going through something like that, I get it.
When the Theory Gets Tested
I went into town today for chiropractic treatment and massage, then hurried back home in enough time to get ready to help someone with some work-related stuff.
But I wasn’t doing well.
I’d already been dealing with dizziness for the past few days, and it had progressively gotten worse.
I brought ice packs with me. I was told that if things got worse or I couldn’t handle being there anymore, I could leave.
I was distraught.
Still believing.
Still praying.
Still trying—
Actually, no.
There’s something I’m learning about language, so let me correct that.
I wasn’t trying to believe.
I was believing.
There’s a difference.
But I was also scared.
And eventually I realized something.
I needed backup.
Calling for Backup
I’d been praying myself, but I wanted more prayer surrounding me.
So I started contacting people.
I reached out to my friend and brother in Christ, Mr. Mack, who also happens to be a pastor.
I contacted my dad’s nephew Jerry—Jeronimo—and his wife, Ofelia, from Agape Fellowship.
I reached out to my brother in Christ, Frank, who told me he was going to pray for me immediately and contact me later.
I also contacted Joe, a friend of mine and my father’s. My father does some work for him. Joe has always been good to both of us, and he’s a strong man of faith.
There were other people I could have contacted, I’m sure.
Those were simply the people who came to mind.
And then I realized something about them.
They aren’t all from the same congregation.
I’ve never seen all of them sitting together in the same room.
They came into my life through different places, different relationships and different periods of my life.
But every one of them was somebody I knew I could reach out to and say:
Pray for me.
And they would.
That’s church.
Not the building.
Those people are my church.
Psalm 91
Jerry and Ofelia tried calling me and left me a message directing me toward Psalm 91.
Eventually I got Jerry on the phone.
We prayed.
Ofelia got on the phone.
She prayed.
We talked about Scripture, faith, what I was going through physically, and what happens when you’re already down and something seems determined to kick you even harder.
We talked about remaining firm.
We prayed specifically over what I’ve been dealing with physically—my neck, my spine, the muscles, the occipital area, the fear surrounding everything, healing and recovery.
I told them that I had been praying. I’ve been claiming healing. I’ve been getting deeper into Scripture. I recently started a chronological Bible-in-a-year practice. I’ve even built my own online Bible study.
And yet here I was still getting beaten down.
One of the things we discussed was how attacks can come when you’re trying to grow stronger in your faith.
Ofelia also gave me a piece of advice that stuck with me.
When I read Scripture, ask God for supernatural understanding.
Our human minds don’t always comprehend what we’re reading on the first pass. Sometimes we need help absorbing it.
That’s my interpretation of what she was telling me, anyway.
We also talked about Jesus in the wilderness.
Forty days and forty nights.
Temptation.
Hunger.
And the reminder that man does not live on bread alone.
Sometimes you have to feed your spirit.
Get into the Word.
Pray.
Remember that, as a Christian, I believe the Holy Spirit is already present within me.
I’m not fighting everything alone.
I can get knocked down.
I can get kicked while I’m down.
And the Holy Spirit can pick me back up.
Toward the end of our prayer and conversation, something else happened.
The dizziness started subsiding.
I’m not going to turn that into a medical statement about what caused what. I’m simply telling you what happened.
I was still hurting.
But the dizziness had improved.
And Psalm 91?
We’ll come back to that.
Because apparently Psalm 91 has been following me around.
I Didn’t Even Know I Was Gnostic
All of this brought me back to last Sunday.
September 27.
I hadn’t been to church in a while.
I went back to Grace Point in good spirits, and when I walked toward the front, I found my friend Hunter, one of the pastors there.
I was happy to see him.
And I had something I wanted to tell him.
“I’m healed, Hunter.”
That’s how I felt that day.
I had been through so much physically, and I finally felt good.
I didn’t think I could get there.
But there I was.
He wanted me to sit with him, so I did.
Then praise and worship started and Hunter disappeared on me.
Turns out he had a sermon to preach.
The new series was through First Thessalonians:
Living With the End in Mind.
The message centered around something I had never really thought about the way Hunter presented it.
I had always thought of the Christian destination basically like this:
We live.
We die.
We go be with God.
That’s where we’re trying to get anyway, right?
So why stick around?
Except Hunter started explaining the difference between that idea and the fuller Christian picture.
The Christian hope isn’t simply escaping the physical world and existing spiritually somewhere else forever.
He talked about resurrection.
Restoration.
Christ returning.
A new heaven and a new earth.
He talked about the physical creation being something God called good—not some cosmic mistake we need to escape.
He talked about death being exactly that:
Death.
Not something we have to pretend is beautiful.
Not something we have to glorify.
Death wasn’t the original plan.
But for the Christian, death also doesn’t get the final word.
Hunter read from Romans:
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
That one lands a little differently for me now.
He also talked about what he called the Gnostic approach—the idea of escaping the physical world for the spiritual.
After the sermon, Hunter came back over to me.
I told him it was a great sermon.
Then I told him something else.
“You know what? I didn’t even know I was Gnostic.”
Hunter said he didn’t either.
I laughed about it, but there was something real underneath it.
Because I had thought that way.
If being with God is ultimately where I want to be, why stay here?
But there’s more to being here than waiting to leave.
We’re here to do something.
We’re here to love.
We’re here to help people.
We’re here to be there for people.
We’re here to spread the Word.
We’re here to be God’s hands and feet in whatever ways we’re capable of being.
Paul himself wrestled with something similar.
In Philippians, he talks about desiring to depart and be with Christ, which he says is far better, while also recognizing that remaining means continuing fruitful work for others.
That makes sense to me.
If God still has me here, then I’m still here.
And when it’s His time, it’s His time.
Until then, apparently there’s work to do.
The Reverse Trojan Horse Shows Up Again
That same Sunday, I went to visit Mr. Mack.
I pulled up to his house and called him.
“Are you up for company?”
Apparently he already knew I was outside because he told me to come in.
My brother in Christ Jaime was there too.
So we sat around watching football and talking.
That’s one of the things I appreciate about Mr. Mack.
He’s a pastor, but he’s also just somebody I can sit down with, watch football, talk about life and tell what’s actually happening with me.
Mr. Mack is a good man.
We talked about what I’d been going through physically, trying to remain positive, staying in prayer and staying in the Word even when pain makes all of those things harder.
Then he told me a story.
He knew a sister in Christ in San Antonio who had gone through an extremely difficult period. At one point, she didn’t even have food.
And yet she thanked God.
Not only did she thank God in the middle of what she was going through, but she thanked Him for the food she believed He was going to provide.
Faith before evidence.
Gratitude before evidence.
And then Mr. Mack used a word that caught my attention.
Manifestation.
He explained that you have to believe.
Have faith.
Remain grateful for what is coming even when you can’t see it yet.
Here’s the interesting part:
I hadn’t told Mr. Mack about all of the manifestation ideas I’ve been exploring.
I hadn’t explained the reverse Trojan horse concept I’d recently learned.
Yet the story he told me sounded remarkably similar.
The reverse Trojan horse is the idea that something can arrive looking completely negative while carrying something valuable inside it.
So instead of only asking:
Why is this happening to me?
Maybe there’s another question:
What’s inside this?
What can I learn?
How can I grow?
What is this creating?
What is it redirecting me toward?
What might exist on the other side that I can’t see from where I’m standing?
Whether somebody approaches that through Christianity and prayer, manifestation, “the source,” the quantum field, or some combination of ideas, I’ve been noticing parallels.
I’m not telling anybody what they have to believe.
I’m telling you what I’m experiencing.
And what Mr. Mack emphasized was faith.
Believe.
Even while the boat is getting tossed around.
Sometimes It Just Isn’t Aligned
There’s another update from my last entry.
Remember that security officer position that seemed to drop out of nowhere?
The job was offered to me.
I accepted it.
Then my health changed.
By Monday, I had to contact HR and tell them that because of what was happening physically, I needed to step away from the opportunity for the time being.
Old me might have looked at that as another loss.
I’m not doing that.
It wasn’t a loss.
It wasn’t aligned anymore.
Maybe it wasn’t the right time.
That’s okay.
Things change.
You flow with them.
I’m not forcing something simply because yesterday I thought that’s where I was supposed to go.
Maybe yesterday it was.
Today it wasn’t.
Keep moving.
Waiting
I’ve also been in communication with my attorneys.
Things are moving.
I had another emotional freak-out there too.
I’ve had a lot of those lately.
A lot of tears.
I apologized afterward.
The attorney reassured me, essentially, that I’m far from the first person dealing with something like this who has broken down in his office.
That helped.
I’ve also communicated with the pain-management clinic.
The doctor has a plan of action, but the things he’s requesting have to go through the approval process with the attorney’s office.
So right now there’s something else I’m practicing.
Waiting.
That’s difficult when you’re the person still living inside the body that’s waiting for treatment.
But things are moving.
An Update on the Frequency Generator
There’s another loose end from my last entry.
The little frequency generator.
I’ve actually used it now.
And I think it was a good find.
The first time I really used it, my muscles relaxed and some of the pain seemed to let go.
Was that definitely because of the frequency generator?
I don’t know.
I’m not claiming that.
I’m just telling you what I experienced.
That was the main new thing I had used at that particular moment, and afterward my muscles felt more relaxed.
I’ve used it briefly since then, mostly checking it out or showing other people how it works.
So far?
I’m glad I bought it.
I plan to keep experimenting with it.
Feed Your Spirit
I’ve also made a pretty major change to MyDailyBread.online.
Originally, My Daily Bread was much more centered around physio, fitness, mobility, nutrition and the things I was putting together to help myself physically.
There were pieces of Scripture throughout it.
Now?
It’s become something bigger.
Mind. Body. Spirit.
When you enter the site, you can feed your spirit or feed your body.
I’ve added Bible reading, different Bible versions, my Bible-in-a-year practice, Bible-study lessons and other resources designed to help me understand Scripture and stay consistent with it.
The Bible-study material I’ve been developing was partly inspired by Billy Graham’s work—not his course or his lessons copied over, but something I’ve put together in my own way, Bible-inspired and definitely God-inspired from my perspective.
There’s a daily Scripture.
Random Scripture.
And something I call Emergency Numbers.
Not phone numbers.
Scripture.
In sorrow?
John 14.
When people fail you?
Psalm 27.
Fear?
Psalm 34.
Danger?
Psalm 91.
There it is again.
Psalm 91 was already sitting inside My Daily Bread as one of my emergency Scriptures.
Then today, without me bringing that up, Ofelia directed me to Psalm 91 and told me that she and Jerry read it every night.
Message received.
The rest of My Daily Bread has grown too.
There’s physio and fitness, health and nutrition, yoga, the Daily Bread section for spiritual material, and even a Gizmos section where I can share devices and things I discover—things I like, don’t like, want to try or just find interesting.
There’s also a section where I can explore the quantum field, manifestation and the ideas I’ve been studying.
Once again, I primarily built this for myself.
If somebody else gets something out of it?
Even better.
I Kept Creating
Here’s something else I’ve been doing while all of this has been happening.
Creating.
While hurting.
While icing.
While waiting.
While praying.
While trying—
There I go again.
While believing.
MyHumanXperience.com is now live.
It’s becoming the central place for all of this.
My blog.
My videos.
My manifestation course.
My bulletin.
My books.
My screenplays.
My artwork.
My music.
The things I’ve created.
The things I’m still creating.
And all these different versions of me that existed along the way.
That includes my older music.
Apex Fall came from a different place in my life.
Carlitos and the Bulgarian pop-folk experiments came from another.
Los Official and my Latin-pop work came from another.
Those things don’t necessarily reflect where I am today.
But I’ve realized something:
I can honor what I created without living in the state that created it.
I don’t have to erase the old music.
I can finish it.
Close the loops.
Let those artistic projects become realized.
But I don’t have to move backward emotionally to do it.
Because now there’s My Human Xperiment.
That’s my new music project.
Different direction.
Different identity.
Different energy.
Different frequency.
Freedom to experiment with sound without feeling obligated to keep creating from grief, sadness or an emotional state I’ve already moved beyond.
When everything is together, you’ll be able to trace it.
Books.
Art.
Music.
Screenplays.
Projects.
Different versions of me.
Where I started.
Where I’ve been.
And wherever I’m going next.
That’s the human experience.
Or, in this case:
The Human Xperience.
All in Due Time
There’s one other thing I said I might start doing after my previous entry.
Future journaling.
I haven’t started yet.
I will.
All in due time.
That’s actually part of what I’m learning.
I don’t need to push.
I don’t need to force.
I don’t need to frantically make every idea happen the moment I have it.
Everything will happen when it happens.
I have, however, created something else.
My own words-of-affirmation recording.
I made it primarily for myself.
Something I can listen to when I wake up, throughout my day and before going to sleep.
It’s filled with the things I’m choosing to believe and reinforce—the positive direction I’m moving, the way I’m choosing to see my life, and the thoughts I want to continue feeding.
You can listen to it below.
Like most things I create, I made it because I needed it.
If it helps somebody else too?
That’s an awesome byproduct.
Use it.
Watch Your Words
Ofelia pointed something out to me today.
I kept referring to what I was experiencing as “my dizziness.”
She stopped me.
Don’t claim it as yours.
Don’t call it your dizziness.
It’s the dizziness.
Within the way she understands spiritual warfare, she encouraged me to reject it rather than identify with it—to pray against it, rebuke it and refuse to claim ownership of it.
That made me start noticing some of my other language too.
Like what I almost wrote earlier:
I’m trying to have faith.
No.
I am having faith.
I’m trying to believe.
No.
I believe.
Words matter.
And maybe that’s another experiment I’m running on myself.
Pay attention to what comes after “I am.”
Back to the Hug
And that brings me right back to where this entry started.
I’m sitting here with an ice pack on my back.
Still experiencing pain.
Still waiting on some answers.
Still moving through this part of my life.
Still believing.
But now I need to leave.
It’s time to go pick up my father from work.
And when I see him, I’m going to hug him again.
A big one.
I’m going to tell him I love him.
I’m going to remind him that he’s safe.
That we’re safe.
And maybe I would have said this morning:
Everything is going to get better.
But I’ve been paying attention to my words.
So I’m changing that too.
Everything is better.
And everything will continue to get better.
God is working for me, not against me.
He’s got my back.
And Then Frank Called
Apparently, this entry wasn’t finished yet.
Earlier today, I reached out to Frank and asked him to pray for me.
He told me he would pray immediately and that he’d call me later.
He did.
And first, I got some good news.
Frank has been dealing with injuries of his own recently, and I’d been concerned about him.
I asked him how he was doing.
A lot better.
Apparently a lot better than I realized, because he was talking about being up on a roof today fixing something.
That surprised me considering the injuries he’d recently been dealing with.
Our injuries happened around roughly the same time, although under very different circumstances. Mine came from a vehicle accident. His came from a completely different kind of accident.
And here he was doing considerably better.
I’m not there yet.
I told him they’re only now getting around to the medication part of my treatment, and even that hasn’t been approved yet.
It’s taking time.
And I’m in a lot of pain.
We talked about some of the things he’d taken, and Frank offered me some “over-the-counter” medication he had.
I told him I’d be happy to pick it up that night, but I wouldn’t be able to get there until around midnight.
He’d be asleep by then.
So he told me I could come by the shop tomorrow and pick it up.
I told him that was better than anything.
Then something he said reminded me of something.
I already had some medication put away somewhere.
I’d completely forgotten about it.
I went to pick up my father and take him home, and I remembered that I wanted to check for it.
Sure enough.
It was there.
Something I already had that I had completely forgotten about.
And that brought me right back to what I’d been saying throughout the day.
Things are looking up.
I’m hurting right now.
That hasn’t magically disappeared.
But God’s got my back.
I’m staying positive.
I’m staying focused.
I’m believing.
I’m going to beat this.
I’m not going to stay like this.
Good things are happening.
So maybe that’s where I’ll leave this one.
Not:
Everything is going to get better.
Everything is better.
And everything will continue to get better.
I’ll keep praying.
I’ll keep reading.
I’ll keep creating.
I’ll keep learning.
I’ll keep loving.
I’ll keep believing.
And I’ll keep hugging my dad.
Because apparently that’s part of the experiment too.
I’m still in Genesis.
And while I’ve been working through all of this, I found myself thinking about Noah.
God gave Noah incredibly detailed instructions to build the ark, and Noah followed them. He built before the rain came. He prepared before he could see the outcome. Whatever Noah may have felt internally, his actions demonstrated faith before there was visible evidence.
Then came the storm.
The water.
The ark being carried along by something Noah couldn’t control.
And eventually, after the worst of it had passed, Noah sent out a dove.
The first time, it came back.
Seven days later, he sent it again.
This time it returned with a freshly plucked olive leaf.
Noah knew the waters had receded.
I keep thinking about that olive leaf.
It wasn’t the entire restored world delivered into Noah’s hands.
It was something small that told him the world outside was changing.
Things were getting better.
Maybe that’s another way for me to look at what’s happening right now.
I don’t necessarily need the entire sky to clear at once.
Sometimes I just need to notice the olive branches.
The phone call.
The prayer.
The dizziness subsiding.
The treatment moving forward.
Remembering something I’d forgotten I already had.
Another person recovering.
Another opportunity.
Another day.
Small signs that the water is receding.
Everything is better.
And everything continues to get better.
A moment of faith. An invitation to know Christ.
Are You Saved? ♥
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