The Last Words of Jesus (according to John)

my head is bursting and my heart's not far from it too...had a difficult month thus far...
i can see how easy it would be to fall back on my own coping mechanisms that were ridiculous and self-destructive...
now i know i'm in a bad place -you see, i love punctuation and am a fan of correct spelling and have a pet hate of improper usage of homophones, and i love pallindromes...you get my drift...so when i refuse to use a capital for the letter i when speaking about myself...well, something's not right...

...enter the blog...

in an attempt to keep from slipping into the darkness i am writing this -sure, it's not as productive as something else you might suggest, but it's a far cry from the what i used to resort to.

You see...only a few short years ago i would have easily hurt myself by now.

and then i heard three words that took my breath away and brought me to my senses...

"IT IS FINISHED"

Now, you might have heard these year in, year out at Easter...but I HAD NEVER HEARD THEM...Don't get me wrong -I'm a cradle Catholic and have missed Mass on a Sunday ony once in my life and that was because a machine was helping me breathe -and even at that I cried (but never really knew why I felt the NEED to go so badly...I never knew that Jesus Christ Himself gave the authority obliging Catholics to attend weekly Mass. <In Matthew 16: 19 Jesus gave to Peter, the first pope (and through papal succession, to all other popes), the power to make binding in Heaven whatsoever he the pope would make binding on Earth. Jesus Himself said that those who do not listen to the Church should be avoided (Matt 18: 17). So, from Christ's own command, the Church has to be obeyed.>...actually, come to think of it, I barely knew anything about Jesus;sure, I could re-tell you stories from the Bible that I'd heard at Children's Liturgy or from the Gospels at Mass -and I could probably recount most psalms from the age of 16...but they were just stories and didn't mean much..

..and at Easter?...I'd only ever heard the phrase "IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!"

...well -hearing those 3 simple words -Jesus's last, according to John- in a very slightly different way profoundly affected my thoughts, my actions and -ultimately- my life.

Jesus said IT IS FINISHED...
aand for me, it was -I never lifted a blade to my skin again -and I am writing this to remind myself of all of these things and that it is finished -it is in the past and I cannot change it and the scars are not reminders of weakness but rather now the opposite because...IT IS FINISHED!  

= )