The Snake Line

I was at a conference recently and the speaker talked about hiking in the mountains, where there was a point that was called the snake line.  It meant that once you hit a certain altitude the snakes did not go above it.  I’m sure there is some scientific reason why, like oxygen levels or something.  But in life we need to live above the snake line where Satan lives.  So how is that done?  

It is funny because about the time I hear a new message, I usually get the chance to try it on, if you know what I mean.  I have had much adversity come against me recently and I was teetering between situational and chemical depression.  The following is how the Lord helped me to stop the descent and claim my peace.

I believe the snake line is the place you choose to go if you engage in the “world” about situations and circumstances you can’t control.  For example: Worrying about what other people think.  Or obsessing about what may happen in the future, or rehashing injustices from your past. Then you have dipped below the snake line and have opened yourself up to be bit.

Our battle isn’t against flesh and blood, so to engage with flesh and blood about things you can’t do anything about will cause you to become entangled in the snare set by “thee” snake.  I needed to focus on what Jesus says about me. That is what it is to have the mind of Christ.  I have had to tell myself numerous times daily that I am loved, I am worthy, I have value, I am fearfully and wonderfully made, I am the righteousness of God in Christ, I am redeemed, I am blessed, I have favor, I am a good wife, friend, daughter and person. I exhibit the fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I had a choice to make, to choose life. The strangest thing happened, when I spoke these things out loud I would feel my peace return. I did not have peace when I started, instead I began with names and faces with which I had issues popping up in my mind.  But I choose not to go there, by turning down the fight and remaining with God with my head in the clouds, above the snake line. Nothing—absolutely nothing—changed in my immediate circumstances except that the situation did not escalate either, it sort of smoldered out.  

Think about this for a minute. You have a choice to be in the mind of Christ; why would you ever choose to go and fight below the snake line?  I have to admit it can be cleverly disguised, but as a believer we are to have the mind of Christ, we have been given it.  I had to make a clear and definitive decision over and over as I faced the lure to draw me down.  I did not want to get sucked into that pit and enter a place that only offers death.  I did not want to cross the snake line but chose to enjoy the peace and serenity of His company with the promise that the battle below couldn’t touch me.  Maybe only people who have suffered from depression can understand this as it would seem like, why would someone make any other choice.  It is just a lot more complicated than at first glance. God said in the Old Testament,  “I set before you life and death, choose life.” Above the snake line is life, below is death.  I’m choosing life and to live above the snake line if I have to make that decision 100 times each day.

For some time now, I have loved and been fascinated with the Scripture about Peter walking on water.  I think he was able to because while he was focused on Jesus he walked on the water.  When he took his mind off Jesus and went below the snake line (onto the wind and waves, including his audience) he began to sink.  I have often found it interesting of what the other disciples in the boat were thinking. “Oh, Peter you can’t do that!  Who do you think you are?  Is he crazy? Look he’s walking on water.  How is he doing that?  I want to walk on water too.  Oh no, he’s going down.  We were right.”  Peter may have had “little faith” as Jesus said as he began to sink but the ones who never got out of the boat had even less.  I think the key is to get out of the boat, keep your mind focused on Christ and just keep walking.

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Do you see the part in the Scripture above that reads, “Against such things there is no law.”  When your mind is above the snake line the enemy can’t touch you.  He can only touch you if you stoop to his level. I don’t know if I’m just having an epiphany moment here, but why would anyone choose to go to his level?  Be in the world but not be of it.  

There is freedom above the snake line. Walk in it.

30th Anniversary Insights

Coming upon the 30^th Anniversary (August 29^th) of my crime and the death of my daughter, I want to share a few things.  If someone would have told me 30 years ago I would love God and be following after Him, I’d have said, “You’re” the crazy one.” 

While growing up I often asked God, “Why me, Lord?”  I grumbled about my pains from childhood.  As early as I can remember I wondered why God didn’t fix things. It seemed there were only two options, He wouldn’t or He couldn’t. And I didn’t like either one.

Then when I was 25 years old I became psychotic and paranoid (without the abuse of drugs).  Most people don’t know what being psychotic is like, I pray you never find out.  It made panic attacks from when I was 19 years old seem like a walk in the park.  I would never wish it on my worst enemy, it was that horrific!  I had to deal with mental illness and incarceration.  I admit I was NOT one of those lovely people who praised God through the storm. Sometimes their testimonies just make me mad.  Like maybe God didn’t give you more than you could handle, but I for one was in way over my head.   I prayed that God would just leave me alone and I wondered why He enjoyed knocking me down. It seemed He took away my happiness from the time I could remember. I wondered, “Why did you do this to me?”

After being released from Winnebago Mental Health Institute after four years, I continued to be on supervision.  I would be on supervision for life unless I could prove I was no longer a danger to myself or others.  I was monitored by the Department of Health and Human and Services and the Department of Corrections making a minimum of monthly contacts with each department.  I went back and forth with being thankful for my release and continually striving for the life I lost.  I wanted nothing more than to be a wife and mother, I could easily settle for stepmother.  I met a lot of men, fell in love with their kids, not always with them and then they would fall off their pedestal and I would be on to the next hopeful candidate.  I did the same thing with jobs.  About 18 months was my average length of employment, and then I would again be unfulfilled and in search of happiness that always eluded me. God always seemed to step in and dash my hopes. I was tired of Him, He could just stay where He was and leave me alone and stop messing with me!  

Then in December of 2002, I sat in the back row of a church without options because I could no longer fight Him.  There was one common denominator in the process of switching out men, jobs and happiness, and that was me.  I basically thought, if the altar burns and I burn up with it then that’s fine because I’m fought out.  I had that visual in mind when I stepped into the church and I fully imagined it happening.  God hated me and I didn’t know why. We were going to face off finally, wasn’t 40 years enough of this?

As the sermon was presented and the altar did not burn, I found myself weeping.  This was new! There was a story shared about a little baby Jesus in a Nativity scene that was missing from a manger.  The best way I can describe what happened was as if I was an apple hanging on a tree by its stem, and it was perfectly ripe and all it took was the breath of God to gently breathe on it and it would fall.  And I did fall, right into His waiting hands.  But not to destroy me but to explain some things over the course of time. And the first was that He loved me.  I cried sweeter tears that day than I had ever cried.  At that moment I didn’t ask, “Why me?” because I knew.

Over the next 15 years He would proceed to reeducate me on the truth of His Word vs. other world views.  That process continues to this day.  One of the main things I needed to understand was that He was not my enemy, oh I had one, but it was not Him.  The real enemy, Satan, had me believing for years that God was behind all the pain and struggle in my life.  I still have battles to fight but I know that they are there so I learn to fight the good fight, bringing my Father glory.  I had been a pawn and I did get played, but the strength that came from the battle could not have been achieved on my own. I began asking a new question, “How, Lord?  How did you see something in me I didn’t see in myself?”

I heard a man speak about his teenage son who had committed suicide.  When he was asked after witnessing many other teens coming to Christ as a result of his son’s death, would did he feel differently about it?  Sort of like would he have approved seeing all the good that came from it. The man declared without hesitation, “No, not my son!”  I have asked myself the same question, “If I could have foreseen the good that would come out of my daughter’s death, would it somehow have been justified?” And the answer is decisively, “No, never!”  The man who lost his son to suicide said something that moved me deeply.  God had an identical choice to make. And with all the power and ability to stop it the God of the universe said, “Yes, take my Son.”  I can tell you this from experience it would have been easier to give my life than my child’s.  Yet, He gave His son Jesus to die for us.  Now, that is a love that I could spend 1,000 lifetimes and never fully grasp.  I ask with “forever in your debt” gratitude, “Why me Lord?  Why would you do that for me?”

I have found the happiness I was looking for and it has more to do with the guidance and counsel of the Holy Spirit than it does with external things.  God has been good to me, growing fruit that lasts with the knowledge that I am His child.  I do have abundant life.  I now ask, “What Lord, what can I do for you?”