life more abundant

as i laid in bed last night thinking about the proposed national health care plan and after looking myself over the actual literal wording of the bill, which reads very much like the fine print in any insurance plan almost purposely written so the layman can't understand much or will tire of reading it, i thought many of my readers have no context for my concern with the way people die. i know that i have readers of this blog from all different backgrounds, beliefs (both politically and religiously), and contexts of relationships with me. though i am really trying to become a more transparent and vulnerable person, i have not normally allowed people a window to look into the most personal places of my heart. here is an attempt to put my concerns about a national health care plan that legalizes euthanasia in context and share a little about my personal life journey.

i used to have a count of how many people i knew and how many people close to me had died. i have lost count in recent years, not because of a slow down in cases, but because i just got tired of counting. i would like to share a couple instances that may relate to euthanasia and my concern for the government being involved in end of life plans and a national health care system that decides the value of a person getting treatment in terms of dollars and cents.

the first story i want to share a bit with you happened when i was only 14 years old. i was at a new year's eve church youth group party when a family friend came and picked me up from the church to take me home telling me that my two teenage boy cousins had been in a car accident. i prayed the whole way home for them, knowing it was serious enough for him to come get me but not knowing any details. when i got home, but parents were not there but up at the hospital. my 12 year old brother and sister were there, and my 12 year old brother had decided he wanted to be the one to tell me that my 16 year old cousin was already dead. i was of course completely rocked in a way i don't want to get into detail about right now, but i was also told that my 14 year old cousin was on life support up at the hospital.

i spent the next 3 days up at the hospital almost 24/7 without sleeping, praying for my cousin to be healed and to come out of his coma. there was a roller coaster of emotions - doctors saying we should just pull the plug because he was brain dead, then tests coming back saying he was in fact not brain dead, bad reports on his vitals, increasingly good progress of improvement on his vitals, until at one point after so much improvement he decided to go be with his brother and Jesus and his life here on earth ended while still hooked up to machines. i can never quite explain how much this experience of losing my two close cousins affected me... i am still finding ways i never realized now 16 years later.

nine years later in the same month of january, i sat in my grandpa's room holding his hand and talking to him while he was in and out of a coma while he fought a terminal cancer with an inoperable tumor. i was 9 months pregnant and had spent most of my pregnancy over at his house with him both praying for healing and being with this man i admired and loved. before my first baby was born and before he passed away into the next life, i had him lay hands on my belly and bless my first born son. it still pains me that he died only 3 weeks before asher was born and was so close to being able to meet him and hold him. one of the biggest honors i have ever had, however, was to be with him the moment he died. you see, i was so impacted by his life, not just his life before finding out he had pancreatic cancer, but even by how he lived his life with this terrible disease and how he held his heart before the Lord so humbly and so full of faith up unto the moment he died. while he wasn't seeing the miracle in his own life, he would pray for and encourage others he knew struggling with different issues in their lives that we must choose to believe God at all costs. he was a man of God up unto the very point of death and led a life very worth living.

two and a half years later i sat in a hospital room, with my 2nd baby strapped to me in a sling, surrounded by my family as my other grandpa died from congestive heart failure. he battled it and the effects of it for the entire year proceeding his death, which happened to be my entire second pregnancy. he was in and out of the hospital receiving treatments that may or may not work, may or may not lengthen his life or improve his condition, but he received them and we were there with him every step of the way loving him and praying for his healing and health. once again, even though there was no way of me being in the hospital around the clock with two little boys, i was honored to be in the room the very moment my pop slipped into eternity with Jesus. it is the strangest thing to describe, but i remember the very song that was playing when he died... i had never heard it before that day but it spoke of heaven and the angels singing praises to God. it was an amazingly peaceful moment, though my heart ached that my pop would not see my kids grow up. my pop was an amazing man - a heart fully devoted to his family and he had so many times given to me in times of need, had spent many hours of prayer before the Father for me and my family, and had made countless sacrifices so that i could grow up in a family that he never had - one who knew and loved the Lord.

i hear the rhetoric from politicians and political commentators about death with dignity or quality of life. i would like to share that from my experience that part of life is how you die. life doesn't end the moment you are diagnosed with a terminal illness, whether you have supernatural healing in this life or not. quality of life does not end the moment you slip into a coma. dying from chosing, by your own choice or by a physician's, to not walk through the dark valleys of struggle is not dying with dignity. walking through life with your eyes fixed on Jesus no matter the circumstances around you and chosing to cling to hope regardless of what may be the present trouble - that is death with dignity. life is worth living and the way you die says a lot about the way you choose to live.

did any of the three stories i shared have someone who didn't deserve the chance to live the entirety of their life to the very end of their days? national health care, especially one with such broad openness to euthanasia says some lives are more worth living than others. that simply is not true. should a 35 year old get the treatment and not the 75 year old because we have a health care system that forces doctors to choose who they will treat? should someone in a government office be able to decide whether the plug is pulled on life support because they think it costs too much money and they deem the life not worth living? is not the last season of life as valuable as the first? it is easy to be allured by the idea of free health care, but the reality is that nothing is ever free. we will pay for it in one way or another and hopefully will not give over the choice of the viability of a life to the government in the meantime. some may think i am paranoid and extremist. that is fine. it does not bother me if you think so.

i have personal life experiences that affect how i view these questions and issues. i have friends walking through life and death struggles right now with diseases that modern medicine declares no hope for. just as i have been blessed to be with loved ones when they died, i have also been blessed to personally know and see some who were given no hope by modern medicine still alive today completely disease free because they were miraculously healed by God. i believe we do have hope. i believe in a God who both heals the sick and raises the dead, but also has redeemed even death when He laid down His life for us. death where is your sting? grave where is your victory? He came to bring us life, and life more abundant. every life is worth living from the very first moment until the last.

charis

National Health Care

i don't usually blog about political issues, but i feel this one is of importance. the health care bill that the obama administration has proposed to congress is a bill that seeks to legalize killing our older generation as well as those who are to expensive to treat with euthanasia. i believe the commandment to honor your father and mother than your days would be long... is very important and this is why i want to bring this to everyone attention and ask that you read this excerpt from an article by a christian leader and pastor, rick joyner, and click here to read the article in it's entirety and to read excerpts from the bill itself and what it means in real language for all of us if there is indeed this proposed national health care plan. the obama administration is trying to rush a vote on this because the more people who actually read the bill and know what it says make it less likely to pass. please read, call and write your senators and representative, and most of all pray. we want righteousness and justice to reign in the country we live in and we must come before the Lord and ask for His mercy and His justice to move now in our country.

here is a bit of what rick joyner wrote:

When I read the brief on what was contained in the National Health Care bill that is now being presented before Congress, I could not believe I was reading something that was actually being considered in the United States of America. This is not about money or government mismanagement—this is about something far more diabolical than that. As incomprehensible as it may seem, this is about euthanasia, the power to determine who lives or dies in America. Hitler and Stalin would have loved to have had a means such as this for dispatching the millions they killed—it would have made their job much easier, and probably given them the ability to kill many more than they did. THIS BILL IS THAT SINISTER. This is not a joke—this is actually the nature of what is being proposed in the National Health Care legislation, and it is the obvious reason why the Obama Administration wants to ram it through Congress before anyone gets a chance to read it.

I have resolved to always be as generous as I can toward people with opposing views of my own. I do this because I believe it is the mandate of I Corinthians 13 to always believe the best about people, rather than the worst. I know this opens me up to be misled by some, but I consider that a small price to pay to not become cynical. I also do it because I think it is wise to always try and understand the position of my opponents—to be open to consider their positions and not be too rigid or inflexible to change because we all “see in part,” and “know in part.” Because of this, I have been chided for being too generous by giving those I do challenge grace by believing that they had not thought through the consequences of their proposals, or had other good intentioned reasons for doing what they were doing. However, after reading the brief on this health care bill, I don’t see how anyone could not see that there is profound evil and evil intent at work here. I just do not see any way to be any more generous with those who proposed this bill than that. It is that bad.

This bill is obviously designed to put the authority to determine who lives and dies in America into the hands of government bureaucrats. As outrageous as that seems, it is true—you can read it yourself. It even gives the government access to all of your accounts, and the authority to make withdrawals. I know this is hard to believe, but you can read it yourself.

Do you want a government bureaucrat to determine if your mother or father can receive treatment, even in life and death cases? Would you want a government bureaucrat to determine if your child, or you, could receive treatment, even when it means life or death? Think of the best experience that you ever had working with a government bureaucrat, and then think about them having the power to make a potentially life or death choice for your child, your parents, or for you. This is actually what is being proposed.

i would love to hear your thoughts. most of all, i would love to have you join with me on our knees repenting for the lack of our stand for righteousness and against wickedness as the church in america, and see the Lord raise up a banner for righteousness!

click here to search for your local representative

click here to search for your local senator

charis

a call to anguish

here is a short video that a friend of mine sent today to look at by david wilkerson. very worth the seven and a half minutes. i would love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.



Charis

thinking of a change

so, i am just thinking about the possibility of switching my blog from blogger to wordpress. i haven't decided what to do yet, but i wanted to give all of you who follow a heads up that if i do choose to switch, you will lose your rss feed and will have to resubscribe. you will be able to keep going to http://www.charisscofield.com and see it there, but you will have to reconnect your rss feed.

as i said, i haven't decided, and if i do switch i will also post it here so everyone is aware. so, regardless if i change the format a bit, please keep coming back and checking for new posts. i have enjoyed blogging... it was something i kinda fell into, and i think it is great that i did. blogging has kept be disciplined in writing, and that is the one directional word that God gave me for this season: i am supposed to write. i plan on continuing for quite a while. thanks for being faithful readers! someday... a book.

charis

rend my heart

there are times when i, like everyone else. feel the pain of life. i know it is something that all of us feel and go through in different circumstances and moments. my desire is to take these times to the Lord. i have two temptations that i face that seem at times more appealing than bringing my pain to the Lord.

the first temptation is to try to just be positive. i am not saying that it is bad to try to be optimistic and look for whatever good may be in a circumstance - believe me that this is something i both believe is beneficial and seem to always be trying to do. however, i think it is second best to really dealing with why my heart is hurting and looking to Him to be the Healer of my heart. finding something positive makes me feel momentarily better and gets me focused to keep on going, but it doesn't really ever make the heart problem go away but just masks the pain. what can really take the pain and bring healing to my heart for a permanent fix and true joy other than the One who created me and my emotions and knows me better than any person could ever know me?

the second temptation is to talk to a person about the hurt i am feeling. i am not talking about gossip or slander right now, though i do believe a lot of that is done in the name of venting or sharing with other, but i am talking about just the simple verbal processing. this one is a huge struggle for me because talking it through with another person takes enough of the weight of it off of my shoulders that i often will stop right there at fixing the problem. i am not saying that we shouldn't get counsel from others, but i do think that if we talk to God about what is going on before turning to our best friend, mom, husband, or whomever to talk it through, we find so much more deep healing and breakthrough. after really pouring the pain and tears and questions before the Lord, much like king david would in the psalms, then talking with another person second may even bear more fruit of healing on that level.

this is something i desire: to turn to the Lord first every time. i want to rend my heart before Him. i want to take my alabaster bottle and break it over Him. i don't want to hold anything back, but bring all of me... to bring the broken places and the places i long to be whole in. it blows my mind to think that Jesus, being fully the uncreated God became fully man as well which means that he experienced the array of emotions, heartache and joy, that i do. He is so compassionate towards me and doesn't despise my tears but psalms 56 says that He keeps every one in a bottle and considers them precious. wow! why do i struggle with going to Him first when this is the very thing He wants? He longs to be tender toward me and really bring healing and joy unspeakable to my heart.

so i chose now, and hope to again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, until it becomes natural and not a struggle because i am well acquainted with His great love for me.

charis