Are you bored with life?

Are you teary weary?

Or are you in strife?

Do days seem unlovely?

Because of no wife?

Then turn to your answer -

It comes from Real Life.

Where do I find it?

Best search within.

The realm of the spirit’s

the place to begin

Your spirit empty?

Lonely and void?

Like room without light

In the dark of night?

Then faith is the switch

you need to flick on -

It leads to your Maker

Through Jesus His Son.

His only the Way,

The Truth and the Life.

A decision can end

that turmoil and strife.

A click of the switch

Will turn on the light

A flash of a prayer

Can start your life bright.

DECIDE ! -

IT’S ALRIGHT.

5th May 2001-05-29

If I had not written that poem down

as it flowed, I now would have no idea

that I had even written a poem !

The writings of the heart need to be expressed.

God is in heaven in my heart.

Are you troubled by obvious anger? Or do you get depressed? Then read on.

Anger has very many faces and I find that many patients are quite unaware of this.

As a result of unawareness they have never discovered that this anger energy is very valuable and that there is a way to harness the anger energies and use them for creative love, creating healthy relationships and bringing life into any situation.

Isn’t it better to open up and learn about these things than to get into a recurring guilt cycle over being so moody, irritable, impatient, cranky, volatile, abusive – or to wall off more and more into depression, isolation and despair?

Have you ever thought that anger brought us into life? Think about it. When the baby decides to get out of the confine of the womb, a horrendous birth process for baby is initiated – (by the baby unless there is outside interference).

This is all by divine design. We go from warmth to cold, from upside down to right side up, from dark to light (so bright we can’t open our eyes), from mum’s familiar muffled voice to absence of this familiar sound to harsh, shrill sounds coming onto our eardrums via the dry air, and this causes us pain. We are so squashed through the narrow birth passage for so long our head is out of shape, skull bones overlap, we may even be bruised. Now all this makes a healthy baby rightly very angry.

So when it is suddenly manhandled and comes out into the air, it wants to express that anger. We are pleased if the baby cries LUSTILY and turns from blue to bright pink or red. No worries with that one. If the baby is so shocked that it expresses no feeling, we see the blueness ever deepening, will it be stillborn? It was recently so alive, now dead? To avert this we turn the baby upside down by the feet, suck out the airways, slap it’s chest with cold liquid. WHY? – to provoke the anger response. We want it to express feeling.

The external feelings coming in through the sense realm rightly disturb us so much.

What does the baby have to do to vocalise? It must take a breath! Thus anger is the force that brings in the breath of life. Life is started with just one breath! How close then are anger and love??

Apply that to relationships. We get married, are born into a family, and people say and do things that are distasteful. If we use our angers and hurts to locate the real problem then we can birth life into a situation, and accept the pains that come along with the growth of relationships. The baby’s cry in labour ward is a joy, hurts no one.

May we learn in emotional life situations to express an acceptable cry that brings joy, not pain, to others.

Ignoring what I see
What needs must change in me
Robs me of choice to see
The best that I can be.
Will I change? Let me be?

Heeding my harvest well
Gives me the chance to tell
My soul, “Get out of hell”,
Plant seed word to be well.
Will I change? My life tell?

That is God’s plan, my soul,
For me to be made whole
In spirit, body and soul,
Be every whit made whole
That is God’s plan, my soul.

Written 16th Aug. 2001

Written  16th Aug 2001

For years I thought feelings and emotions were the same. I now think differently. It seems to me that using our seed words so loosely brings in a lot of confusion and so we become disempowered by our words which spring from our thoughts, usually the subconscious ones, linked to the passed past.

Feelings belong to the sense realm, and die when our body dies. The 5 senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, do not work when our body has died. Imagine your eye on a stool? Can it see? (Even in the body, the eye simply conveys light, which enables the mind to see, to no longer be in the dark).

The mind, the conscious and subconscious thought life, belongs to the soul, the personality, which is either developing or disintegrating, not neutral. The emotions follow the way we think. The emotions drive our personality. From where do we emote? So often it is from the past, with all its hurts, disappointments, ignorances, deceptions, rather than from the truth of what it means to be a real human being. Yes, there is light, truth, to be found on this subject of being truly and fully human, mature and functioning, effective in being and doing.

So where does the confusion come in?

When we see and hear things, we are relating to the external world through the sense realm, and we start to have feelings. If we let the things we see and hear control us, to live by those feelings, we are living in the realm of darkness, because all these things are going to die when our body dies.

The sense realm is left behind at death of the body but the personality with the emotions goes on. If we start to think that the material world is the reality, then we are in living in a deception. We become deceived by what we see and hear and want more and more, and experience less and less of LIFE. The material world only came into being by thought, followed by word.

The real world is the invisible one. LOVE is experienced, but it is not material itself. It can certainly produce material results.

If we seek the light on all this, when the truth reaches our emotional selves, that is, starts to be experienced, then we start to understand and to be set free from the inside. Truth knowledge is an important start for the head, the control centre, the adult in us.

It is like bringing wood to the fireplace. The mind is like the fireplace. The soul is like the fire, in our belly, the place of passion, where we live, or where the fire goes out. The energy comes from this child within. The child (our emotions) needs love, acceptance, encouragement and training. Our mind needs to be renewed by truth to bring our emotions under control, loved and biddable, like a really co-operative child in the family ( contrast the rebel child in family and inside us).

When we confuse the sense realm with the soul realm, we are in trouble. Is that you?

My big dream started at age four. A doctor hurt me so badly that I decided I wanted to become a doctor who would never hurt anyone. I have now been a doctor for more than 55 years and my dream is still expanding.

I am passionately living the life I love.

I want to share with you that life is long and you’re never too old to learn. It’s very important to realize that anger can be a catalyst for good only if it helps us locate and overcome problems. Anger should be directed at the problem and never at oneself or others.

When I reached 70, patients were saying to me, “You should be retired,” which angered me. I have a mission statement: “I’m going out of this life still growing and learning.” I kept learning, and by 75, my patients were saying, “We need you! Don’t retire!”

My family emigrated from Holland to Australia in 1939 when I was 10. We had nowhere to live until a war veteran of 62 took us in and provided for us. Sadly, this family friend secretly abused me, resulting in nightmares for two years. After this incident, we moved to Sydney, where my father joined the Air Force.

When I was 13, he had a terrible accident that permanently paralyzed him and affected his speech. He was tremendously frustrated and became mentally ill. Our family suffered as he was certified, paroled and discharged, causing the whole saga to be repeated.

During my teenage years, my favorite expression was, “Joie de Vivre.” I longed for the “Joy of Living.” I was my mother’s “right hand,” dependable, studious and energetic. Yet, something was always missing—I was too inwardly focused. It has taken me a long time to see that life doesn’t revolve around me, which is such an important lesson.

At age 13, I sewed, studied and worked jobs. Yet, I was lonely and always seeking approval and acceptance. I was a human “doing” rather than a human “being.” I still wanted to be a doctor and loved to read medical biographies.

By age 15, I visited a doctor who constantly told me, “Medicine is no career for a woman!” This was terribly discouraging! This was during WWII and I wanted to be on the front line comforting and healing the troops while preparing for science or psychology.

I didn’t believe in myself and I felt others knew better. My mother was of a tolerant nature, but my father was strict and religious. I greatly feared him and gradually grew to hate him. I was always respectful, but by the time I started college, I became an atheist. I was deeply angry inside, but I masked that even from myself.

It has taken me decades to learn to be emotionally sincere. I enrolled in the university in 1946, and planned to study science, but when I reached the counter, I blurted out “medicine” and went home jubilant. There were very few women among the 650 medical students.

For class, I was paired with a very needy Jewish escapee named Peter from Vienna. By Med 2, he and I had entered a foolish five-year engagement. I was needy and eager to please. In Med 3, I broke off the engagement on two separate occasions because Peter threatened to commit suicide.

Unfortunately, I failed Med 3. To repeat the class meant I had to earn money by working in a factory by day and waitressing by night. I really wanted to be doctor and I held on to that throughout all the drama. I managed to get a class credit in medical finals despite my father’s passing away in the middle of five weeks of exams in 1952. I was finally on my way to being a doctor.

In 1950, I fell in love and was engaged. I became pregnant but was compelled by my fiancé to have an abortion. I felt like a lamb being led to the slaughter. We were both medical students and pregnancy was forbidden. We married in 1953, but it wasn’t a good relationship.

We had a son in 1954 and I became pregnant again in 1958. I also became inwardly suicidal. Why? Because four days before our second son was born, I discovered my husband’s infidelity. I felt I had to leave him despite the low status of women, no social security and little suitable work.

I was an admired doctor but was utterly lost inside. I was in survival mode for five years trying to support two babies and work all while dealing with the pain and unanswered questions. My confidence was shattered.

I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t found Jesus Christ.

At about 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 22, 1959, at the age of 30, I was radically saved by God, converted and changed. I learned to laugh. Medicine no longer controlled me. God gave me the strength to live through those tough, lonely years as a single, working mother.

In 1972, I married my very best friend. He was a Christian and I felt truly loved. I had a country medical practice and newfound confidence. From 1978 to 1990, we built a mission vessel and made it our home. We did medical and mission work in the South Pacific. I endured awful seasickness, but I loved seeing the wider world.

It was all wonderful until I discovered that for the past eight years, my husband had been unfaithful with a female crew member who called us Mum and Dad. It was devastating because she was 40 years younger than me! After this, I returned to land and resumed work in traditional medicine, heartbroken by life and still desperately seeking that “Joie de Vivre.”

Finally, at age 70, I came out of a 40-year “identity wilderness.” All my knowledge of God and forgiveness became real and I could see God as the loving father I never had. This opened the doorway to alternate medical work.

I learned to focus on health, not disease. So, what next?

At 76, I was diagnosed with cancer in the right breast. I felt divinely led to forego an operation. There is still a tumor in my breast four years later, but it has not spread.

My new focus is life, purpose, health, nutrition, exercise, sun, forgiveness and supplements.

I have continued to work, sharing all I have learned along my journey. Cancer has been a springboard to better medicine. The God I dismissed in my youth has become my strength, help and inspiration.

To be an excellent doctor, one must focus on health, continual learning, forgiveness and leading by example.

Very few dare to tell me they are over the hill or past their prime. At 80, I am full of life, learning more every day and loving it. Never give up on yourself.

Find your dream, and with God’s help, live it!

Dr. Ruth Diamond