writing

You mistook my illness as my identity

/ jill autrey dorman / 3 Comments
silhouette of bird above clouds

Photo by Flo Maderebner

 

You may think you know me but you best beware,

 I am stronger than any thing so You best take care

You mistook my illness as my identity

but the Healer came to me and set my spirit free!

 

I won’t run from haters or keep quiet your lies

The Spirit teaches  me the Truth and why

You mistook my smallness as fragility

But my Maker gave Eagle’s wings to me!

 

I soar, I speak up, and I tell the Truth,

lies make you sick and bitterness takes root

Your Pharisee bondage is a con artist scam

I will listen and obey the great I AM!

Born Liars…The Epiphany

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments
nativity set figurine

Photo by Vinícius Vieira Fotografia

A mystery revealed. When we are born we know nothing of Truth. We believe those around us are truth tellers. We believe WE are truth tellers. We believe our parents tell us the truth and they believe it too. Our homes are warm and dry so safety must be true. Our siblings play and live the same as we do so how we live must be the true way to live. Our schools must teach true facts so educated people must be true. Our religion must be true because it rules our behavior, our traditions but the fact is we are born liars. We are born enemies of God and do not know truth. We are born liars, decievers, and accusers. The Truth is not in us until the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ utterly dwells within us. God’s Word states that not one of us is good and that humans love darkness and when the Light of the World came we did not know him. Until He chose to reveal to us, by the Spirit of God himself, who came in the flesh. Until Jesus! This is the Epiphany, the Light of the world who is the God Man Jesus. The One born in Bethlehem. The One who grew up without sin. The One who was crucified for all sin. The One who rose from the dead. The One who ascended and lives on High. The One who will return for His people and will reign forever. He is the only Truth!

So why are we surprised that we lie to each other and put on masks, and build detailed facades of being perfect families, perfect marriages, and perfect churches? Why are we surprised that some of us had Godly truth telling parents and some did not? Why are we surprised when our five year old child lies to us or sneaks candy from the pantry? Why are we surprised that we are or once were liars and not valiant for Truth?

This is an important part of understanding the ” state of human kind and our sin. Understanding our sin is the way that leads to falling on our faces before The Holy and repenting with humility. There is not plural Truth! There is only One Truth!

“All have sinned and fall short… (Romans 3:23). All of us need redemption. All of us are liars if we say this isn’t true. Truth is a person in flesh and a person in the Trinity of God’s very being. We do not know Truth in our lives until we humble ourselves to receive the Grace and the Mercy of The Holy One who is the very definition of Truth.

” and they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for Truth…Jeremiah 9:3

You said I have become a grown up girl

/ jill autrey dorman / 1 Comment
person standing in pathway

Photo by Lisa Fotios

 

I remember that sweet lavender dawn

                      you looked at me across the room

you were thinking I was still that little girl

                      who cried over all the pain and gloom

Ah yes that sweet little girl is still here

                      but she is not afraid and her heart is free

By God’s grace she has grown into a woman

                       and can face each path with eyes that clearly see…

 

 

We have traveled far, that little girl and I

                       We have danced and died, laughed and cried

We have known romance and reality

                       We remember and forget, we dream and sigh…

I love that little girl and the woman she became

                        she could always spot a faker and call a spade a spade

She is me and I am she woven and spun by God

                       We travel well together upon this earthly sod…

 

 

You said I had become a grown up girl

                        and what you say is true

This grown up girl is a woman now

                        and has no need of you…

 

 

Magen veLo Yera’e (Defender that shall not be seen.)

/ jill autrey dorman / 2 Comments
switched beige table lamp

Photo by 祝 鹤槐

Like silver liquid the moonlight poured over my head spilling down my back renewing my eyes and my mind…

I had stepped outside the hospital to get a breath of fresh air. It had been a long shift and my body, mind, and spirit had grown weary…

As often happens to nurses, I often received words, tokens and notes of thanks and appreciation throughout my career from patients and families, and each one is so very meaningful…

Loss is hopefully made a bit more endurable by compassion and kindness. It is perhaps the truest calling of a nurse, for inside of me lives “Magen veLo Yera’e” which in Hebrew means “Defender that shall not be seen.” Of course, that Defender is not me but the Spirit of Jesus abiding in me. For there is no one good but God as Jesus said, so I know it isn’t me doing it, but I digress…

As I look back over the past forty years my memory runs to the many wonderful people, I have had the privilege to care for and their families. For some there is a reluctance to embrace the future and losing meaning of the past. For some they linger in the pre-dawn haze digesting an outcome they perhaps always knew was coming.

The greatest gift these people have given me is the privilege and opportunity to see that God’s design of our longing to live is not a fragile thing. It is in fact the very strongest thing about us. Yes, our physical bodies wear out with time or disease. Ah, but the soul, the spirit of a person, it fights for life! We were designed for life not death and that is why the “Unseen One who defends us” is the Holy Spirit who lives within those who believe.

Jesus told his follower that He would send us the exact essence of himself in the person of the Holy Spirit to comfort us, to guide, and teach us about Him. It is the transforming phase of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus that He sent us the Holy Spirit, who is unseen but defends us all the way into eternal life.

This is one of the many gifts that nursing has been to me for I have seen, I have witnessed the presence of the Magen veLo Yera’e. He is faithful. He is comfort. He is Peace. He is Jesus the Christ, the presence of the Holy God himself. Jesus is the gift of eternal life and the forever Defender of our Faith and there is a day coming for each of us when we will see Him face to face and we will know Him in Spirit and in Truth. So, when the night is long and dark and grief comes and hope seems so silent I remember the “thank you” from my patients, other human beings just like me with whom I am allowed to care for, hold a hand, say a prayer, shed a tear, and talk of our loved ones we will miss and already miss. Oh yes, there is much physical  technical data in taking of lab work, blood pressures, procedures, surgeries, and various myriads of daily physical care. But the expressions of “thank you” and the bittersweet outcomes are more than a gift.  I have been gifted with the precious sight of a Child of God being carried home in the arms of the Magen veLo Yera’e, the unseen shield, the Holy Defender of God’s precious people.

Seven months ago, my own Mother who was not acutely ill but was called home from this body while all alone was in fact not alone at all,  the unseen defender was present to the very end.
In this season of giving gifts I am like the little drummer boy…I have no gift to bring before my King but the thanksgiving of letting me know some of His children in this intimate way and being an eye witness to the presence of Magen veLo Yera’e, The unseen miraculous presence of The Holy.
So, you see there is much more to our Christmas celebration of the Jesus Child for with Him he brought all we need for life and godliness.

Ecclesiates

/ jill autrey dorman / 5 Comments
brown book page

Photo by Wendy van Zyl 

 

There are no new words that I can write

No way to change the world tonight

I can feel a sadness coming round again

Trying to take me someplace I’ve already been

 

I am just calling it what it is

The way God made me, I am a child of His

When loneliness visits and friends don’t call

It is best not to compromise the Truth at all

 

Contentment is not happy and sad is not depressed

I’m still so far from wisdom, always was I guess

This melancholy often drives me to my knees

It is just the way God made me, I am a child of His

grave love — A Writer’s Soul

/ jill autrey dorman

 

 

 

silhouette of graves

Photo by Micael Widell

The puddles in the street were the color of lead

These tastes and shapes of words spoken among the living and the dead

Night jasmine dances under an indigo sky

I stand here crying over the grave where we died

We could have had it all, been something envied and grand

But our chaos took over letting us fade away into our self made wasteland,
I mourn you , us, and everything we never could never be,

And all that is left are the graveyards of a failed love, leaving nothing of you,

and little left of me.

 

This poem was written in collaboration by my self and the talented Kristen. Check out her site at A Writer’s Soul

 

 

The emptiness of my conceit and arrogance…

/ jill autrey dorman
photo of river during daytime

Photo by Ionut Cerchia

 

As I sat in the still and In the mess

In the emptiness of my own conceit and arrogance

The old man with white hair said,

“these are your thorns to bear…”

 

When the only free person in the room

Is the one who is in chains

Then it is time to look at what man calls “justice”

Pontius Pilate could not deny his claims

 

It is in vulnerability that God’s Grace comes

It is in the mourning that the Grief is fulfilled

It is in the freedom of Truth that I want to run

It is in humility that true courage is spilled

 

 

The Legend of Annie Bell

/ jill autrey dorman

 

grayscale photo of woman having breakfast

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood 

She never scoured with tears

Not her face, not her life, not her floor

She was as strong as the Mississippi’s speed

And tougher than the man who made her bleed

 

Relentless in love, quiet and strong was her way

Not hardened but not taking back her living

Until one day she took that shotgun round

The shot that rang out put him in the ground

 

She did not scour herself with tears

She washed herself clean in the blood

She held her head high for her children

That man would never make anyone else bleed again

 

I can’t cover up your sin

/ jill autrey dorman
adult autumn beauty blue

Photo by Pixabay

She said I can’t go through this again

I can’t cover up your sin

Anymore…

 

She just kept walking down the road

Trying to drop that heavy load

Somewhere…

 

Oh the days go better than the nights

The prayers crack through a little light

Sometimes…

 

The storm blows in like a runaway train

Jesus is standing there calling her name

Again…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eroding survival default (letting the Spirit of God be my coping skill)

/ jill autrey dorman

 

red human face monument on green grass field

Photo by Mike

Oh yes I learned at an early age that my face and eyes and smile could paint a picture of self confidence and a surety I could articulate all the answers expected of me. I am after all, my Father’s daughter and “no one” would get next to me…

For years I danced this dance of being strong and able. Of not letting by hurts show. Of being articulate to hide the pain. Of keeping it all together for the sake of…

By God’s grace over the years this survival mode of being all together began to erode away as I grew into the realization I wasn’t made to just survive and I wasn’t made to please others or be strong or lead. I was made in the Image of God to live my life in such a way that He would be known and glorified by it (my life).

Now when I see my self coping with life in that old default survival mode more often than not I can spot it and go to the Holy Spirit for guidance and He is always ready and present. God does not help those who help themselves. Nope. That is recorded nowhere in Scripture. God knows that we cannot save ourselves  which is why, of course, He saves us through His Son Jesus, by Grace, by Mercy, by His atoning blood shed for us. God saves people who think their coping skills are working until they aren’t. God saves us because of who He is not because of who we are or anything we have done. This is a great relief to me and probably any fellow believer in Christ. This truth gives me great comfort every day.

When Jesus told the disciples that He had to return to the Father’s house to prepare a place for us and said he would send us The One who would dwell in us, with us, guide us, and yes give us heavenly coping skills until that glorious day we go to our Father’s House forever.

How are your coping skills working for you? Eroding survival skills are a slippery slope that gives way to dying. God’s way is so much better. I choose not to go back to my comfort zone in order to avoid exposure, pain, or suffering. The cost is much too high so I choose to stand in The One who really did pay the highest price for me.