As a human being living here on earth and having witnessed and experienced many things, I believe the thing that I'm about to say is truth: If you have been alive for as long as you have and have not had your world shaken up with some major truth about the world, yourself or your beliefs ...then you have been asleep. It is time to wake up.

As an artist and a writer holding the beliefs that I hold – it is hard being a creative human being that believes in God. Christianity with schizophrenia is absolutely insane and I'll explain in depth a little bit later but it makes carrying faith next to near impossible...yet somehow, I manage to be able to have enough faith – even a mustard seed's worth - to get through this life. Though my world has been shaken, I cling to what I know to be true.

I started this thing off pretty strong didn't I?

I better explain myself.

My world and the worlds of others that I know have been rocked by inescapable truths. We have witnessed and experienced these "shake ups" throughout our lifetimes and have not settled into a defeatist attitude. Instead we fight with an amount of courage that could only be explained as being supernatural...not walk on water supernatural but step out on faith and continue to do what needs to be done supernatural with a purpose that is higher than ourselves. A courage that defies every bit of the natural instincts that may kick up in you. Your fight or flight mechanism that you have naturally is disrupted by this kind of courage.

This courage leads you to believe that there is light at the end of that long dark tunnel you are treading, it leads you to believe that there is still hope in a hopeless situation, it leads you to believe that no matter how much the odds are stacked against you – that you can still perform at your very best in the face of your adversity. Be they people, situations or circumstances. The courage to live in these times is nothing short of extraordinary especially when everything in life is screaming for you to give up and take the fall.

The "shake up" usually happens unexpectedly. We are normally minding our own business, trying to educate ourselves on an aspect of life or seemingly pretty relaxed where we are and comfortable with the way life is going when it happens. It has happened to me more times than I can count on both hands. Just when I think I have a grip on the way the world works, on the way life works and on the way God works – the rug is pulled out from under me and I flip through the air head over heels and land on my back in pain and am usually left concussed and confused. It's almost never a pretty sight to behold. It comes abrupt and hard. It disrupts your living, your thinking and your being. It takes with it your sense of security, your peace, your time, your patience and your ability to rationalize. Rationalizations are pretty much the first things to go – because there is usually no explanation for what occurs and why. Shit, as they say, happens.

It's all true. The revelation of cancer in the body, the diagnosis of mental illness, the sudden loss of a loved one, the truth of the life you live and may be neglecting, the truth behind the system of beliefs you hold, the realization of systemic racism, the not so subtle discrimination of gender and the factions at play behind the scenes in government, in the spiritual and in the natural (evil people)...etc. It's all true – when these things are known whole worlds are turned upside down. We feel utterly and completely destroyed or lost. Fear creeps in and arranges our thoughts in a way that it becomes hard to carry out the simple act of breathing. And living? How? How am I supposed to do that now that I know?

But people, the ones you tell about your "shake up" mean well. They do. Calls for your to move on, not to think about it, calm down and my favorite – snap out of it spill off the lips of those who have yet to experience the shake up on the level that you have and are. They want you to be who you were before all of this – go back to being the person they knew before the illness, the disease, the insults, the truth...

Truth is never easy, not for anyone involved. The shake up is essentially a truth you are unequipped for and are unable to handle.

I'm going to dispel a myth...no a lie that has been told time and time again. It has been passed down by elders, spoken by mothers to their children, spread by therapists in group and private sessions and preached from pulpits all over the world.

The myth/lie: God doesn't give you more than you can handle.

The truth: He absolutely gives you more than you can handle...and on purpose!

That myth/lie is not in the bible. No...it's not! I checked...I promise you I did. The actual biblical reference this was taken from, says nothing about giving us more than we can handle. Here I'll share it...

(1 Corinthians 10:13) "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it."

Now when I say I searched Google and my own bible for the myth...and searched hard for it, I did. You can try to look for this as well on your own. But remember, truth bears sustainable fruit – while lies produce none (said by-me).

Yes, we've all heard it and have believed it. But haven't you ever wondered why you experience things that seem to be more than you can handle and often are more than you can handle? Haven't you even said to yourself or maybe even to God, "God, this is too much." Yes? There is a reason. You recognize the burden of the load you were given and often times, us parents have to take on the loads of our children – a double load. And...it gets to be too much. You cry out, you want to quit and give up, you want no more of it. "Make it stop, take it away!" I'm going to break something down for you.

I know God to be a giver, a God of abundance. Just as he is an abundant giver of the good things that our storehouses overflow with every blessing he has for us, so too is a giver of loads and a giver of strength for those loads. He is a taskmaster and also one who takes our burdens for us – in the event that we cannot take them upon ourselves. I know him to be faithful and to have never forsaken me in my hours, days, weeks, months, years and decades (yeah) of need. Never. As a matter of fact, he wants us to come to him. He says so!

(Matthew 11:28-30) "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

My God is a God of abundance – he has given me many a task to juggle and at times I have dropped the ball. There was a time that I was juggling life and that's when God decided to toss me the proverbial running chainsaw (schizophrenia). I was juggling the death of two family members – only months apart, the failing of my marriage and depression, and the loss of a job and then the chainsaw happened. Now...as much as I love Wonder Woman, I am not her. I cried out. I pleaded, cried, begged, I fell to my knees in supplication and petitioned God with prayer to let up on me as I believe at that moment it's what he wanted me to do. Before then – I was trying to accomplish everything under my own power and was getting nowhere and fast. "Woman heal thyself" is what was going through my mind but I couldn't. (And if you are wondering – that phrase is also not in the bible – the true verse is "Physician, heal thyself".)

But I called out to him – I said "Lord, Please make it all stop!" Did it stop? I will answer this truthfully. No. It didn't and there was reason for that too. Our lessons don't come in the manner we want them to. Often times we are so busy and caught up in our lives that we miss the importance of living. We forget to take care of ourselves and to take care of those around us. Life becomes the hamster wheel that we run and run and run trying to get from point A to point B and never make it because we are stuck in the loop of doing the same old same old. I was meant to learn something from it all and I did learn something from it all. School was effectively in session. Faith 101 was about to begin and God was teaching in way that only he can.

My foundations were shaken and my life came crashing down around me – I was in a pile of rubble and at rock bottom, looking for a way out of the mess that my life had become. This was a divine act. Yes! God meant to shake me up to wake me up. He had better in store for me, he wanted better for me and was giving me better but somethings needed to be let go. I was clinging to old habits and routines. I was clinging to self-empowerment rather than to his Grace and Love. I was lost in my life and couldn't see a way out and then he provided me with light.

We are shaken up to reveal some truths about us as individuals, about the situations we are in and about the circumstances we encounter. I believe that all things happen for a reason. While my illness tore my marriage apart at the seams, my immediate family grew stronger through it all. While I was fired from a job that I had been told I wouldn't be fired from, I am now able to pursue writing full time which is what I was working towards doing. While I endure schizophrenia and have had it take a toll, I am also able to share my experiences with others and that within itself is a miracle. I wasn't always able to communicate and articulate the happenings of my life. I am thoroughly blessed to be able to do so.

The truth revealed in our times of upheaval are deep, they are straight forward (as truth always is) and they are painful. I can't remember a time when I received a major truth and it didn't hurt. I had to hear from the lips of my mother that my husband didn't love me anymore and wanted me out of the house before he got home from work, or else the police would be called. That came as a shock because I thought that we were still able to work things out. When I learned that I had schizophrenia, it wasn't the relief people thought it was for me. I was afraid and felt alone and pained by the things that I had been doing and saying. This diagnosis and my world wasn't just shaken but it had been turned upside down. When we reached out to my father about his family history – again, I was shaken. He didn't want to help and had no intention of acting as a father should towards his child. He told my mother, "I don't have a daughter." That broke me but it didn't kill me. I'd be lying if I said it didn't have its effects on me. I nearly parted ways with this life...many times and that was just one of the reasons why.

And yet today, right now, I have been shaken once more.

Over the last 4 weeks I've been in a bible study centered on a book called the God Chasers: "My Soul Follows Hard After Thee" by Tommy Tenney. The last few weeks have been earth shattering. My faith and my beliefs have been shaken in an intense way. The things that I have held to in my beliefs have been challenged and that was the design of the book and bible study – to question everything you know about your faith and about your God. To question whether or not you are doing the right things by God and for God.

While reading this book and going through the bible study headed by our new pastor, I have been rocked on my foundations. I don't even think my foundations exist anymore as they have been broken up. But the good news is that I feel the rebuilding of something new. As vulnerable as I feel, I also feel as if I am being made new.

The "shake up" in your life won't leave you broken – it will break you, yes but it will always shed some light, give you new perspective and a new way of thinking and feeling about yourself and those around you. I am experiencing this. In my life there have been several major events that have occurred around my faith. I may not have always been in my right mind but I have always believed in God, his healing and his speaking. Right now I am being challenged on whether or not I have done all that he has asked of me, whether or not I'm seeking him or the things he can do and whether or not I really know who God is.

I have learned that I too have sought his blessings more than his presence in my life. I have done well enough with my praise and worship but it's not enough, I must also learn to trust him with everything. And everything that I thought I knew about God – turns out I haven't even scratched the surface and some of the things I do know are wrong. My shake up began at week three when I was asking a question about what to expect when God moves and I began to cry uncontrollably. I can't tell you what came over me and why I cried so hard. Only that my pastor recognized that moment as a move of God. Before the tears I was able to ask a few questions the one I stated and others about how to explain to the children what it means to be reverent. But with the last question, I broke.

My world was shaken because what I thought I knew was false. Just when you think you have a grip on something, something comes along and snatches it away from you. I don't know it all. I will never know it all and I'm okay with that because life is meant to be a learning process. That is the meaning of life. To learn as much as you can while you are here.

God has been no nonsense with me lately. He has been very much the disciplinarian that a father is and I feel it. The things I think are dealt with swiftly, meaning I get corrected. How does that happen? With me – I have this inner dialogue that happens. If I'm thinking all wrong about something then my inner dialogue changes – it asks questions. Now, this could just be me over thinking matters but I tell you now – that when I change my thinking and the way I am doing things, I see results and gain an understanding that I didn't have before.

Life is not without its rewards there's just the things that we have to go through to get to them. Everything is a process. No one knows it all and none of us is perfect. And all things take time. The shake ups in your life are designed to teach you best where you are with the situation you are in. And surprisingly it's like that for everyone. Sometimes we don't get it right away – the answer or the why. There are times we may never get it but as long as you are waking up to the fact that you are being shaken and respond accordingly you should see a difference.

My shake up as it seems is an ongoing process. I feel very vulnerable right now but I know this is for the best. My heart is on fire and hungry for what is to come. Whatever it is, it will be big because I know he only deals in abundance. Challenges are good things. Sometimes we get stuck in a rut in life. Day in day out doing the same things, with the same people with the same outcomes. Things change and people change as do the seasons.

I didn't want to come here and get all preachy, as always, I am just conveying things that I have learned and am going through. I believe that no matter what walk of life you come from, no matter your religion or creed...that you will experience these things if you haven't already but take comfort in knowing that you are being strengthened to get through them.

Now, that thing I said I was going to explain later begins now. I am a Christian woman with schizophrenia. I said, way up there that it's insanity. It's hard. With the hallucinations that come from schizophrenia it gets quite hard to quiet my mind and to know what is God speaking and what is the hallucinations throwing me off. While I am still learning the difference, I have not given up hope. My faith however small it may be is still there. I know that God doesn't always speak verbally but what he chooses to reveal to us in his own way is undeniable. Schizophrenia makes everything so much harder, particularly trusting people. But I wasn't asked to put my trust in people, I was asked to put my trust in him. And that's what I'm trying to do. Put my trust in him.

It gets very hard to tell people what I hear at times. Because I don't want them to laugh or belittle me. So when I share my dreams, my feelings and my thoughts with people I am always a little cautious about who I speak that stuff to. But I share openly here because I think these things might help someone. I do not claim to be anything other than what God made me. But messages are awesome things to receive aren't they? The message of this post is kind of hard to swallow...I know. All the salt in the world wouldn't make it go down any easier but such is that of the truth.

Truth is often hard to swallow. I'm not insulting anyone, that is not my intention – what I want to do is to get you to look at your life and take an inventory of the things that you've been through. These shake ups are meant to be your undoing – they are meant to be your remaking. Things to build you up, make you stronger and shed light onto the dark things of your life. Waking up and opening your eyes to what's around you is never a bad thing.

I'll get a little nerdy on you – we live in the Matrix. Every day we are exposed to truths about this place. How we respond to it all is what defines us as people. Will we run from what we have gained knowledge of or will we deal with it?

At a very early age I learned that the cards that I was dealt with life are the ones that I must play. And if you haven't caught on already – life on deals us big hands. It's all in how we play the game. There I go comparing life to a game again...it's not. But you get my meaning. Life is very much about reaction and response.

One more thing before I go, just because you've been shaken up doesn't mean you've done something wrong. Not at all. It is just time for you to have something better, it's time that you realize something about yourself and recognize something about where you are in life. Put your life under a microscope and look inward – what do you see there? Have you been shaken before? Are you being shaken now? It's okay...trust me, it may be uncomfortable but it's worth it in the end. I'm finding this out as well.

So I end here good people of Wattpad.

May the Lord bless you and keep you my friends. May his guiding light enter you lives and provide you strength in your times of need. And may the abundance of his blessings exceed your expectations.

Be at peace within yourselves and with one another.

And as always, I thank you for reading :)