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During my time with the United Pentecostal Church, I felt like my heart had been broken so many times that I was always picking up pieces to try and put myself back together. So many hopes and dreams shattered along with my marriage.

This August 3rd will mark 15 years since my divorce, another shattering moment and there I was trying to pick up pieces of my heart. I was still attending an UPC church and I had one friend who tried to help.

My other friends were worldly ladies who I worked with and who the church frowned upon. But that was the beginning of the end of church as I knew it. My friends at work took me to lunch to celebrate my divorce with a cake and funny gifts just to lift me up.

My divorce was ignored at church except for the wives telling me to stay away from their husbands and not to even talk to them. There was never any love or support shown to me except for my one friend.

So when I left, she left also and is now very active in the church we attend today. God revealed to me that although we are abandoned by those who you love and no matter how many times your heart is broken, He is there to help pick up the pieces with admonishment to the pastors who have been cruel and hurtful to those with broken hearts.

The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them.

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: “ As I live,” says the Lord GOD, “surely because My flock became a prey, and My flock became food for every beast of the field, because there was no shepherd, nor did My shepherds search for My flock, but the shepherds fed themselves and did not feed My flock. ‭‭Ezekiel‬ ‭34:4, 7-8‬ ‭NKJV

I eventually saw that God will take care of you and those abusers will get their due. When I started letting God help me again and with the help of my “worldly” friends I began to heal from the inside out.

So now 15 years has passed since my divorce and I’m happy to say I’m healed from that heartache and even have a new love interest that God brought into my life. We’ve been together 5 years.

I’ve been delivered from the UPCI, bruised and battered spiritually, but I’m healing and the broken pieces of my heart are being healed and restored.

Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; For it is pleasant, and praise is beautiful. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; He gathers together the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted And binds up their wounds. ‭‭Psalms‬ ‭147:1-3

I may have been an outcast, a divorced woman is a stigma that is hard to shake in the UPC, but I no longer have a stigma now that I’m free and the pieces have all been picked up.

There is an interesting side note to the article about trouble in the Rocky Mountain District of the United Pentecostal Church.

As I was looking into the situation, I discovered a cached version of the opinion article to Sweetwater Now from Jeff Ramaj on Wayback, which showed that there was one, probably two, people attempting to have it removed. A man had visited their office the same day that it posted, asking that it be removed. After this, an attorney contacted them, also asking that it be removed. Since someone had already been to the office (and, to me, while there he must have changed his mind about having it removed as it still exists today), they requested that the attorney have their client appear in person. They did not comply. Because of this, the paper posted a video of the man who visited the office, asking for the public to clarify who it was. Below is what the paper wrote.

UPDATE — According to Attorney Danielle M. Mathey, the letter we received was sent by someone who accessed her client’s tablet computer, she asked that the letter be removed. We asked that she have her client come to our office and identify himself via photo ID, as just prior to her call, a man identifying himself as the person who sent the letter to the editor to SweetwaterNOW visited our office asking that it be taken down.

Since she refused the request for an in-person identification, we have no choice but to publish the video of the man who came to our office in hopes that the community will be able to identify him to confirm the sender’s identity.

The video indeed showed that it was the actual author, Jeff Ramaj, who had visited the office. In a discussion on the newspaper’s Facebook Page, Ramaj explained, “It is unfortunate that letters such as this have to be written it is however sometimes neccessary in order to get peoples attention after seding this in to sweetwaternow i realized the wrong letter had posted this one was meant only for the district the other letter was meant to demonstrate our resolve in continuing the fight against an unjust situation.” In response to a woman who mentioned the subject of separation of church and state and that she didn’t see this as a Rock Spring problem, he replied, “We watched lives diminish here a once prosperous church now gone”.  One woman with UPC ties tagged pastor Keith Riley and his wife, Tanua, acknowledged it. At the time of this discussion, Ramaj shared that they were “hoping to bring this to a close soon.”

It appears the original letter that Ramaj wanted posted was never submitted. The situation also seems to indicate that another party unsuccessfully attempted to have the article removed via the attorney. It makes no sense to me that Ramaj would have gone to an attorney, either before or after he visited the paper, since he was the one who sent it, the article has remained available all these months, and these events happened the same day it was posted. It also seems very suspect to me that an attorney would refuse to have her client appear in person at the newspaper’s office. Note that according to the paper’s statement, Mathey didn’t seem to indicate that her client was the author of the letter, but rather that she stated it was her client’s tablet computer that was used to send it. Also, if Ramaj had hired the attorney, and since he had visited the paper, it would be ridiculous to refuse another appearance. Because of all this, it does appear that someone else, who obviously did not wish to be identified, hired the attorney in an effort to have it removed.

UPCI Rocky Mountain District Trouble

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We live in a troubled world filled with violence, evil, poverty and disease. You never know what a day or night will bring. Anything can happen to rock our world; a phone call, kicked out of the church you’d been attending, a job lost, a medical diagnosis, a car accident, a death. When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in December 2013, I thought my life was over, that I had no future…no hope…no choice…

I love Christmas but not in 2013, I didn’t want to decorate or participate in anything. I’m one of those OCD people that likes everything decorated and pretty and perfect. Even down to the wrapping paper and ribbons on my packages.

I love making cookies and fudge and baking bread to give to friends and neighbors and to our local police and fire stations. It’s a lot of work but I give them my very best, even if it is home made. But not this year…..I was too angry, depressed and yes, afraid.

Then this magical and miraculous time of the year comes around every December and because I was ignoring the holidays, I almost missed the magic and miraculous of the season.

As we miss out seeing the magic of Christmas and the gift where love comes down to find you no matter where you are. A hospital room, sitting on a stump in a forest, walking along the beach, the unemployment line, the doctors office, a jail cell, a concert, a soup kitchen, or baking in your own kitchen…wherever you are. And it doesn’t matter whether or not you have a perfect record or a bad record.

Love comes down year after year and God is waiting for us to make our choice to accept Him and make him a daily part of our lives. Choice is a powerful instrument with far-reaching implications. What you decide today, will impact tomorrow and other lives. He wants our hearts more than gifts and pageants and trees, decorations, cookies and stories. I’ve often wondered because we call it The Christmas Story that we have trouble believing that God’s gift to mankind is real? Or just another story?

But thanks be to God this story is real! And it’s been told many times through the ages. He’s waiting for you and he’s waiting for me to respond to his love and his gift of grace that he gave out of his love that he has for us. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that we can be saved.

Christmas is a gift from God our Heavenly Father; it’s his very best gift to mankind and he wants us to accept it. His is the gift that keeps on giving and we are reminded of it every year and then God waits….He waits for us to choose ….He waits for us to make the right choice.

My Pastor was preaching a few months ago and made a comment that has stuck with me. “Grace is God stooping in love. Grace always stoops.” He stoops down to our level with Grace and Love.

“And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” II Corinthians‬ ‭12:9‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

May we take the time to slow down this Christmas season and on a clear night look into the heavens and listen to the angels sing….“Glory to God in the Highest,” or look to the North Star and rejoice with exceeding great joy as the wise men did all those years ago. Fill the night with your voice singing Silent Night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…. or join me and sing
“O holy night the stars are brightly shining
It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new glorious morn
Fall on your knees
O hear the angels’ voices
O night divine
O night when Christ was born
O night divine o night
O night divine”

Enjoy God’s gift this year! May you have a very Merry Christmas! And a wonderfully blessed New Year!

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I have a coworker who is an atheist. I’ve known that or at least had a strong suspicion of it for awhile now. She’s looking for a new house and was asking today about different areas I was familiar with.

It’s sad how many of the things she deals with are similar to those I deal with:

• she doesn’t want to live in certain areas because others won’t accept her or her family
• her son just needed the signature of a religious leader for a certain recognition which of course she couldn’t get in a traditional sense
• she is limited in where she can search for a home because certain areas will not welcome her family unless they are born there or are very close to the community…

And a couple are opposite of what I’m used to but so very similar as well:

• she’s looked down on by her ‘highly educated’, atheistic extended family for associating with people with different views on religion and politics than she has, while I was told too many times not to associate with people who weren’t Christian (or weren’t a certain type of Christian) unless I was trying to convert them,
• she is very cautious about admitting she’s an atheist… She said she and her husband were nondenominational and when I raised my eyebrows she ducked down and whispered, “sort of… more atheist — well, agnostic, no actually atheist but we don’t say that…” I’m cautious about discussing Christianity because I am concerned that most people I know in person would be resistant to my thoughts on some things.

It was interesting to hear her observations. It was also interesting that she was actually interested in knowing there are groups out there who consider themselves Christians but do not view the Bible as completely literal and see many of the Old Testament stories as stories, some taken from other cultures, many that should be studied today with the intent of seeing the Israelites’ development of their concept of God. Mostly it was just weird to see how much the person who’s never really been to church has in common with the one who spent hours upon hours there. I’m a believer, she is not. I don’t have a problem with faith, she resists it. It isn’t my belief in God that separates me from other Christians, but my lack of trust in those who call themselves Christians and my willingness to listen to and even accept a variety of ideas. We have those things in common.

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