Getting My House in Order and Signing Off
It's time to make some changes.
“Get your house in order.”
This is a refrain I’ve been seeing and hearing repeatedly for the last few years, and it really started hammering on my heart this summer. I felt like my house was, while not in shambles, certainly disordered. I’m speaking of both my physical home and my spiritual house.
That’s part of the reason why I’ve been silent these last two months. I felt convicted to get offline and focus on getting things in order, both spiritually and in my home. Both are still a work in progress.
The other reason is that I just hit a wall and was completely burned out. I realized that I had an overwhelming amount of stuff on my plate, and a lot of it was stuff I had heaped on there myself that nobody was asking me to do. So I took off everything that was non-essential, and I still felt overwhelmed, but at least I had some margin for rest and reflection.
The last couple of months have been a bit of a roller-coaster ride. My health has gone downhill — my Hashimoto’s flare-ups have gotten worse and I’ve been dealing with a lot of joint stiffness and pain, and I also seem to have developed some neuropathy in my feet.
I’ve been battling a good deal of anxiety because of it, especially over my diet, which is not nearly as anti-inflammatory as it needs to be. I can’t really do a whole diet overhaul right now, for various and sundry complicated reasons, but we are cutting back on the inflammatory stuff, and it’s helped some. I’m hoping that after we’re moved and things are more squared away and we’re past all the temptations of the holidays, we’ll both be able to make big changes and eat a lot healthier. But in the meantime, I realized that stressing out about it only makes things worse, and I’m leaning heavily on 1 Timothy 4:4-5.
We’ve gotten over a big hurdle that was in the way of getting moved onto our property, which was major standing water and drainage issues. The fix for that turned out to be a lot more involved (and a lot more expensive) than expected, but it’s done now. There are still a few more things to get done first, but it’s looking like, Lord willing, we’ll be able to move before winter.
Now that we’re on the other side of that, I’ve been managing to get some quality rest and spend time doing the kinds of things that fill me up and restore my energy. I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods, a lot of time just playing with my dog, a lot of saying no to other people so I can just hang out with my bestie/husband, and a lot of crocheting while listening to podcasts and audiobooks.
I’ve also been spending a lot of time in my prayer closet, and wrestling with a lot of spiritual warfare that I can’t really talk about here, other than to say that it was draining and exhausting, but it’s gotten better.
One of the things I’ve been praying about and seeking the Lord’s will on is when and whether I should get back online, and what should happen with this newsletter. Because honestly, I haven’t felt a single inclination in the last two months to post here, or anywhere else, or to get on social media. At all. Today is the first time in many weeks that I felt “internet chatty,” so I thought I’d go with it.
But I think it’s time to bring this Substack to a close. For one thing, it’s been feeling mostly like trying to shoulder my way through a ministry door that the Lord never clearly opened for me. And I feel like He’s been pulling me back for a good while now, but I’ve been stubbornly trying to forge ahead. I’ve realized that, until my house is in good working order, I really have no business trying to lead or teach in some kind of ministry capacity.
I also feel like maybe my blogging days are over. I’ve been blogging one way or another since 2000, and I just don’t enjoy it like I used to. I’ve been feeling led to put all that time and energy into my fiction instead. I feel like the Lord’s been showing me that my ideas and insights about theology will go down easier couched in fiction than in straightforward articles and essays, especially when it comes to the stuff that’s considered “fringe” and borderline-heretical by so many mainstream Christians who stand on Augustinian tradition rather than actual exegesis.
So I’m going to semi-retire Spirit, Sword & Truth, retaining the right to change my mind at some point in the future, or to jump on here if I’m just burning up with something to say. My focus for the foreseeable future will be my fiction publication, Through a Glass, Darkly, especially continuing my supernatural dark urban fantasy series, Flesh and Blood, which is going to be getting into some Frank Peretti-style spiritual warfare, but more informed by the Divine Council worldview made popular by Dr. Michael Heiser. If that sounds up your alley, you can check it out here:
If you’re someone who follows me on Instagram, I’m going to continue to keep away from that app for the foreseeable future. I simply haven’t missed it one bit, and I’m sure it’s a crazy and crazy-making place right now and will continue to be so until after the election, if that doesn’t just make it worse. The only social media I’m doing for now is Substack’s Notes, and that in extreme moderation. If you’re on Notes and you don’t already do so, you can follow me here.
Speaking of the election, if you missed my last two issues of SS&T, or if you read them in haste, I encourage you to go back and read them (I’ll link them down at the bottom). At least one person somehow seemed to take away from my last post that I was endorsing Trump and unfairly criticizing the Dems, despite my including the Bush family in the lineup of evil, stating that I think Trump (along with Elon) might be Satan’s guy to usher in the LWO and, I thought, being pretty clear that I think both wings are extensions of the same corrupt bird.
But in case anyone is confused, let me state it plainly: I sincerely believe that this election is literally — and I mean that in the correct sense of actually being literal — a choice between Baal and Molech. It’s a “choose your own adventure” to decide which path to take to the Antichrist — one simply seems to be more of a straight path, and the other more roundabout. I’ll leave it to you to decide which is which.
But I will leave you with a few things to watch and think about over the next week and a half, down below.
I’m not really sure how to sign off except to say that I sincerely pray for peace and encouragement for everyone who reads this. And if you’re not a believer, let me assure you that things are only going to get weirder and darker and that Jesus Christ is the only true Light and the only truly safe harbor in this poop storm. Call upon His name and you WILL be saved.
Grace and peace to you,
Jean ♥️
