Breathe!

By J. Sharon

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8) In order to be sober and vigilant, scripture tells us we need to know our enemy. The more we know about the wiles of the devil and his minions, the easier it is to defeat them. The Bible teaches us how to live godly lives. It's the devil's job to interfere and to crush the things of God in our lives. Jesus was the firstborn of many brethren. What made Him different? Jesus was an empty vessel that the anointing of God could flow through. Jesus never performed a single miracle. He said himself in John 5:30, "I can of Mine own self do nothing; because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father which sent Me." It was the anointing of God that poured through Jesus that spoke the words of His Father, healed the sick, and raised the dead. After Jesus died, the born-again new creatures in Christ became the brethren. We, now, are the vessels that the anointing flows through. Because of this anointing, the devil hates the born-again Christian. His attacks are unrelenting, but as Jesus said in John 17:14-15, "I have given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil." I pray that this book can give the reader the knowledge needed to rise above the trappings of the world. God has so much more planned for his people in the Spirit! Step out!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781640281943

Book preview

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Breathe!

J. C. Sharon

ISBN 978-1-64028-193-6 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64028-208-7 (Hard Cover)

ISBN 978-1-64028-194-3 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by J. C. Sharon

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:

1 Peter 5:8

**Names have been changed.

In this text, all the words of God will be capitalized; the words of the devil will not get the same recognition.

In The World

Not Of The World

Everyone knows about living in the world:

We eat We lie We lose

We sleep We laugh We gain

We work We love We lose again

But what of these elusive words not of?

Will you turn the page?

Take a final deep breath?

Let go of the in?

And delve into the not of!

It’s that twilight time, not asleep, but not awake.

That’s when it comes.

You think you’re awake; you can see the room and feel your body.

You wish you were dreaming, but you know…

You know you’re not.

It comes to you. You recognize it because it’s been with you all your life.

The word is familiar.

You’re not supposed to be afraid of it, but your Spirit knows that it’s evil. It comes down on you and presses against you, taking your breath away. You try to cry out, but your lungs don’t expand. Your body is paralyzed by the weight of the creature.

Did you trespass into its forbidden world, or did it slip through a crevice from hell into yours? Who gave it permission to touch you that way?

You try to will yourself out of this realm, in-between sleep and wake.

Your consciousness isn’t in control.

You succumb to the presence, knowing it will end soon.

And then the air rushes back into your lungs!

You start awake! It takes a moment to reorient back into this plane.

Now you’re awake! You breathe in and out.

You tell yourself it was just a dream. But you’re not convinced in the telling.

You know these events are real. They occur in a different reality, but it’s a reality nonetheless.

***********************

Of the 743,000 words in the King James Bible, the word breathe is only used four times. It seems like such an important word in our lives, and yet…

And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was not any left to breathe: and he burnt Ha’zor with fire. (Joshua 11:11)

And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any to breathe. (Joshua 11:14)

Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out cruelty. (Psalm 27:12)

Then he said unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. (Ezekiel 37:9)

Just Breathe!

It’s called a succubus, a demon that appears in your dreams, or so the legend goes. It can’t touch REM sleep because that state belongs to God. For me as a five-year-old, that place is kept holy, separate unto God, so only His dreams and visions are allowed to take root.

I knew, even in a youthful state, that this thing was real. I hated when my mother made me take a nap during the day because that was when it came. I was asleep, but not deep enough. At first, I tried to pretend that it was a dream, but there was no convincing myself. The memory of suffocation was real. And that’s when I started to train myself to just breathe!

From Here To There

Everyone’s been telling me for two weeks to take out my computer and write. No one understands that I can’t write anything unless God puts it in me. So what’s in me? There are so many things. I can’t fathom what it all means. I can see it all in the distance, but it’s not close enough for me to touch. If I can’t touch it, then I can’t understand it. This book I’m writing has a final sentence, but how do I get from here to there? How many sentences need to be written before I write that final line? I guess we’ll just have to see.

So I turned on my stupid computer, which I hate, and I started to write. Maybe by the time I’m halfway through this, I’ll come to appreciate my computer. For now, it’s definitely a love-hate relationship.

***********************

Earliest memorable memory: I’m five years old, and I’m lying in the grass in the front yard. The clouds are rolling by, and I’m trying to make pictures out of them. I ask God to show me a sign that He’s with me, but I’m very adamant. Don’t show me You because I want to be one of the people who are blessed because they believe without ever seeing. Nothing happens, and the clouds keep rolling by. I continue, Lord, please be with me all my life, and if I’m ever going to hurt You in any way in the future, would You take me now? It would be okay with me. And the clouds keep rolling by.

That day became imprinted in my brain, or was it my heart?

The Garden

Every year, I plant a garden in my greenhouse. In the summer, I plant tomatoes, squash, lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, and herbs. I till the soil and add chicken and mushroom compost. Bags of potting soil and boxes of vegetable feed are the final touches. Throughout the whole process, songs of praise are going out to God to bless the garden with a healthy crop. Every summer, the garden struggles to give its meager harvest. Every summer, I vow to end the struggle. Every spring, I forget the vow, and the cycle begins again.

The eighth year, 2012, was the worst. So much care was put into the preparation, and hopes were high. This was the year that I would actually produce enough to share with others. I was wrong. I let the lettuce go to seed, and I ripped out everything else by the roots. I gave the scraps of my labor to the chickens, and I walked away. I thought about my winter garden, which always provided me with greens throughout the colder months. It was nice to pick a fresh salad in January. The herbs, spinach, kale, collards, and lettuce seemed to bounce back from the frigid nights to keep producing.

I shook my head and looked at my barren greenhouse and grabbed a shovel. What else was there to do? I carefully picked the lettuce that was full of seeds. I set them aside, and once again, the cycle began. Once the soil was prepared, I shook the lettuce plants, and thousands of seeds fell to the ground. I covered them with fresh potting soil and vegetable feed. I planted new spinach, broccoli, collards, cabbage, kale, and herbs. I attached the hose to the windmill, and the fins spun in response to the breeze. Water sputtered out, and the seeds absorbed the moisture. In a week, the greenhouse floor was covered in green sprouts. It was beautiful! Within three weeks, I was eating fresh salads. But something else was happening. Squash plants and tomato plants were popping up everywhere—strong and healthy and bigger than they were in the summer. What is wrong with this picture?

It was sad because I knew that these plants couldn’t survive the freezes like the greens could. The first frost would kill them; they would never have a chance to bear their fruit. That’s when God told me that my ministry is that of the winter. My fruit would ripen in the depths of the cold and feed the people in the darkest time. Now is the spring and summer. Don’t be discouraged that there is no fruit in your life yet. The autumn is nigh, and then the fruit of your life will come to bear. For now, eat of the winter bounty.

Dance the Day Away

My mother was the only mom in the neighborhood who had a job. She converted our basement into a beauty salon, and all the women in our small town came to get their hair done. The salon wasn’t like the beauty salons of today—no manicures or pedicures or tanning beds. The customers came and got their hair done, period. My mom worked alone when I was five. She had Thursdays and, of course, Sundays off. Saturdays were always her busiest days, and my dad was busy working at the import store that he owned along with my aunt and uncle. So what do you do with three girls ages eight, five, and three? During the school year, we were dropped off at the dance school where we stayed for the whole day. We were registered for every class they had, from ballet to tap. It was cheaper to send us to the classes than it was to hire a babysitter. I wonder if the teacher knew what was going on. I remember after every class, the parents would come and pick up their kids, but there we sat, waiting fifteen minutes for the next group to come in and begin the next class, and the next one and the next one. Once in a while, I would see my dad at the doorway checking in on us. He never said anything or gestured to us, but it was comforting to know that he was there, if only for a second. I wonder how we ate. I know I was always hungry, but someone must have fed us. It seems like that was the start of feeling lonely and abandoned.

***********************

So who am I? Spirit, mind, and body—the motto from my college, Springfield College, home of basketball. It was my first experience of being away from my family. When I went to the career counselor my senior year of high school, he told my parents I had to go away to college. What did he know about my family that I didn’t? I had to take a bunch of personality tests and IQ tests to determine the best placement for me after I graduated. I never expected Your daughter needs to get away from the family! as being the foremost result of sixteen hours of testing. But there it was. So off to college I went to learn the ways of the world, away from the comforts of the family unit.

Just Write

It was hard to start writing this because I was overthinking everything. I imagined seeing everyone reading this, and that made me feel vulnerable. But that’s how I always feel when people read what I write. You might as well split me open and look inside my soul. Here are all my dreams and nightmares, my thoughts, my failures, my failures, and more failures. Look at how I’ve failed. Now everybody knows. I’ve pushed past all that (I just wrote that so it looks more convincing when I lie to myself), and now I’m writing as though no one will ever read any of this. This was not too hard to imagine given the status of material that’s stacked in my closet unread. Anyway, there’s a freedom now to just write.

***********************

I was watching Morning Express with Robin Meade this morning, and they had a story about a deer that attacked a man over his cigarettes. The deer snagged the guy’s cigarettes out of his car, and when the man approached the deer, the deer attacked him. They cut to the weather, and Bob Van Dillen said, "Well, it is mating season!" I just started laughing, and I couldn’t stop. It’s been a long time since I laughed. I don’t remember the last time I laughed. How sad. But I laughed this morning, and now I’m writing about it, and I’m smiling again. I don’t smile anymore, but here I am, writing about smiling—picturing this deer hanging out with his harem, a look of satisfaction on his face, cigarette sticking out of his mouth. Thanks, Bob, for the visual.

The giggling doesn’t last long because it’s the start of a new day, and no matter how many times Robin Meade says Good morning, sunshine! there’s very little sun shining in life. The battle begins almost immediately when my husband, Rick, makes a comment about me hating our red heeler puppy because the dog loves him. Wow! What do you do with that? The connotations are endless, and none of them are good. What happened to the five-year-old girl who loved and prayed and thought that all you had to do was be good and then life would be good? How innocent, how childish.

Innocence is fleeting, particularly so for me. In 1963, after dance classes ended, we were put into a day care. I didn’t remember anything traumatizing happening to me, but then I started to panic whenever we had to spend our Saturdays there. Of course, back then, our parents never thought anything about the sudden change in behavior of their kids. At least, my parents didn’t.

I went to a counselor when I was thirty-two because I had horrible night terrors. He asked me to recount any memories of my childhood. I told him all about the day care center, how I cried at lunch when I didn’t want to eat macaroni and cheese because, hey, I’m Italian—I didn’t know what it was. I remember how the women were mad at me because I was the only child who refused to sleep during nap time. They talked to my mom and told her how I used to take naps with no problem, but now I cried and wouldn’t close my eyes. My mom just told them to set me down at the art table and give me an activity to keep me busy while everyone else slept. So that’s what they did. I colored and painted and helped clean the bathrooms. The most vivid memory is of me climbing to the top of the slide. If you stood on the top, you could see the street. I would stand there and scan the street for my dad’s car. The kids would scream behind me because I was holding up the line, so I would slide down and climb right back up. Then I saw the car pull into the parking lot, and no more memories. I have no memories of my family or school—my life was a black hole.

My counselor told me that five-year-olds don’t have such vivid memories unless there is a traumatic event related to that time period. So the journey begins.

***********************

In 1990, I wrote The Healing after the nightmares took on their reality. My husband has it ready to download to Amazon after all these years. I need to proof it before he sends it off. Perfect timing. I’ll start tomorrow. All those feelings come back to the surface after twenty-two years. Coincidence? So Breathe! gets put on hold for a few days. Hopefully, rereading The Healing will bring a richer truth to Breathe! After all, the book is about when I first lost my breath.

Inhale…

***********************

I’m back. I finished proofing The Healing, and it’s with my friend Tom, who’s a computer genius. He’s putting the book in all the correct fonts and margins, and then it’ll be ready for anyone to download. I’m surprised how unemotional I am about the whole thing. Years ago, there would have been an excitement and an expectation of what it could all mean. Now, whatever. I wrote the screenplay for the book right after I sent the manuscripts off to prospective buyers. It was a two-night, made-for-TV miniseries. The script came out so much better than the book (in my opinion). I pictured in my head how it would be to see something that came from my mind unfolding in front of my eyes.

My whole life was spent in my head. It would take hours for me to fall asleep at night when I was a kid because I would conjure up stories about my favorite TV shows, and I couldn’t fall asleep until the whole story came to a conclusion. It didn’t help that my mother made us go to bed at seven-thirty every night until we became teenagers. Yes, even in the summer, when it was still lights-out and all the other kids were outside playing. We were in our beds looking out the window, still wide awake. My older sister, Angel (Angela Antonia; she was born on St. Anthony’s day), anyway, told me that Mom just wanted us out of her hair, so off to bed we went. Then she would grab a cup of coffee and go outside and visit with all the neighbors. I don’t understand why we couldn’t be outside with everyone else.

God always turns the bad into good, and the good is how my mom gave me the gift of a rich imagination. I was never bored, and I began to look forward to going to bed. I enjoyed being alone as I withdrew into my fantasy life. I could go through a whole day without ever saying a word to anyone. This became a huge problem in school.

I was in seventh grade with my teacher, Mrs. Miller. It was the first parent-teacher conference just before Thanksgiving. My parents told Mrs. Miller they were Sharon’s parents. Who? Sharon. Sharon who? This scenario would repeat many times throughout my life. Anyway, my mother came home and screamed at me that my teacher didn’t know who I was. No surprise; I never said a word, and I sat in the back of the class.

The next day, my teacher made a grand gesture in front of the whole class and moved my desk right in front of hers, actually touching her desk so my face was two feet in front of her face when she sat down. My mother said I had to raise my hand and answer questions out loud every day. Being the dutiful, obedient daughter, I defiantly did it.

I now realize that my mother was embarrassed because how dare someone not know her and her daughter? How could something that came out of her be invisible? How dare I not reflect the parenting skills of my mother?

Needless to say I didn’t do well in elementary school. I was put in a special reading group in third grade because the teacher told my mother I couldn’t read. No. I refused to read out loud. I could read in kindergarten, but who would know? Back then, being introverted was hell. But it was okay with me because I was able to daydream the day away. I never listened to the teacher or to the lessons, but I managed mostly Bs on report cards.

Still, when I entered high school, I was put into special classes. All my friends from the neighborhood were in regular classes, so I didn’t know a soul in school. I became more isolated. Prospect, Connecticut, didn’t have a high school, so we had to be bussed to Waterbury. I attended Wilby, which was in the north end of the city, near the ghettos. Eighty percent of the school was black so when I say I was isolated in this new school, I’m not kidding. I went through the whole day not knowing anyone. I might as well have moved from Hoboken than just the suburbs.

Then there was my English teacher, Mrs. Carrington. She