Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Reverend Debra Basham

  • Property Virgins

    First times are memorable just because they are first. This has certainly been true for me this summer with the selling of our home.

    Here is a handout left on our kitchen table next to the plate of cookies just-out-of-the-oven:

    This was our first home, purchased 40 years ago this past April.

    Our next home is in Glen-Aire, just around the corner.

    Here are a few of the things to love about this home:

      Location, location, location!
      The beautiful hardwood floors.
      The family room.
      Looking out on the back yard.
      The laundry chute.
      The kitchen layout, including the pantry, the pull-out shelves, and the 36 inch drawers.
      The dimmer switches.
      The built-ins (master bedroom, master bathroom, garage).
      The lighted closets.
      Instant hot water in all locations.
      The gas fire place.
      The sunrises and sunsets.
      The basement shelves.
      Did I mention the location and the lot?

    If you decide this is to be your next home, you will love it.

    This is the first home we have ever sold, and it is also the first home the buyer has ever bought. We are both well past our teenage years but we are property virgins.

    The selling and buying of this home will be memorable, as will this morning’s sunrise….

  • COIK

    I have been doing a lot of contemplation regarding the healing capability of your mind, body, and spirit. This model of medicine is overlooked by most of us in the U.S. Conversations this week have been with clients, friends, colleagues, and family. Perhaps the real challenge is the military idea of Clear Only If Known (COIK).

    Learning about the human energy field changed my life. Not only did I experience relief from chronic pain, I also stepped into my life’s work. If you are new to this blog or want to share the details of my story with someone else who is ready for relief, check out the digital copy of my Freedom from Pain

    Two techniques from Healing Touch became mainstays in my health and well-being. These are Track 3 and Track 4 on the Freedom from Pain MP3 audio. (Sample listen: Freedom from Pain.)

    You can download Freedom from Pain for $8.99.

    I’ve been reading the transcript from a talk given in May 2017 by Barbara Brodsky and Dr. Tavis Taylor. Both Barbara and Tavis are familiar with John of God’s Casa de Dom Inacio in Brazil where many people from all over the world have experienced healing outside of the current medical model. Barbara says the doctors in Ann Arbor wanted to do surgery on her back. She was in pain and was unable to walk. Her words about what she learned in Brazil are telling, “For them to be able to help me, instead of relating to the spine as damaged and something that had to be fixed, I needed to meditate and know the strong perfect spine, to visualize it; to feel places of blocked energy and invite the simultaneity of the flow of energy; to love my spine.”

    Richard Bandler says if they can’t see it, they can’t see it. I am so very grateful I was able to see the importance of knowing we are energetic beings. Painful sensations are communications from our bodies. It is possible to love our bodies and see ourselves whole and healthy….

  • Appointment

    Sacred Stories

    February 8 she received an email message requesting a session. When would she be back in town? She was not due back until early April.

    March 22 she sent a response: “Hi. Wondering if you want to set up your appointment for soon after I get home.”

    The reply popped in right away: “You won’t believe this. Oh, yes, YOU will. I was thinking just ten minutes ago about texting you to see when you will be back home! LOL.”

    These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? If you have a story to share, send email to debra@scs-matters.com.

  • UPS

    Sacred Stories

    She was intending to drive to the UPS store after her doctor’s appointment, but she needed to return directly home to ice packs. Halfway home on her country road, she said out loud, “Sure would be convenient if a UPS truck was in the neighborhood to take my package.”

    A UPS truck rounded the corner heading directly toward her!

    She waved to him to stop next to her car and handed him her package.

    It’s the littlest things that can make the biggest difference. That week her life had gotten very dark, sometimes scary, lonely, and pretty heavy.

    She says, “I felt heard. Ask and you will receive.”

    It was just what the doctor ordered.

    These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? If you have a story to share, send email to debra@scs-matters.com.

  • Candy Striper

    Sacred Stories

    Her son was two-and-a-half. Friends had come to swim. Just before dinner, she bathed her son and was bathing her daughters when her husband screamed her name. Her son had been pulled from the pool unconscious!

    Water poured from every orifice in his body. She rode in the ambulance, praying.

    At the hospital, she stood by helplessly as they were unable to revive him. She was led to a room to wait.

    The woman in a pink candy striper uniform came in and told her, “Your son is screaming bloody murder.” They prayed together, and the woman in pink stayed with her until someone came to get her. They needed her help to calm her son so they could run some tests. He was alive!

    After the situation calmed down, she wanted to thank the woman who had stayed with her. No one knew anything about a woman in a pink uniform. This hospital did not have candy striper volunteers.

    These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.

  • Casey

    Sacred Stories

    Casey was a bit of a handful. She was one of those dogs who refused to stay in her own yard. For weeks now, Casey would disappear every afternoon. Her owner had no idea where she was, but Casey would come back home by dinnertime.

    Quite the surprise, one day Casey stayed home all day.

    The following day, a man came to the house, asking if the Alaskan malamute lived there. He said he just wanted to thank Casey.

    The past few weeks Casey had been spending every afternoon with the man’s father. He said his father had Alzheimer’s and had been very agitated and fearful. Petting Casey kept him occupied and calm.

    Casey had not come to visit yesterday because somehow she knew!

    The man’s father had died peacefully in his sleep two nights previously.

    These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.

  • Mojo

    Sacred Stories

    On Sunday evening he was visiting friends to play dominoes. Addressing the wife, he said, “I need you to do some of your Mojo. We need to find a rental for next season.”

    She told him he did not need her Mojo, he just needed to use his own. He was to simply say or think, “Whatever she does, I need some of that now.”

    The following evening, at euchre someone told him about a rental. It was perfect!

    These are sacred stories. What does this all mean to you? Do you have as story to share? Send email to debra@scs-matters.com.

  • Shoo Shoo Shame

    Listening to a podcast titled “Empty Out the Negative” by Joel Olsteen this morning has my process stirred. Of course, that stirring began before today. A few days ago, as the sorting, purging, packing and staging continued here on Lincoln Avenue, I found the following penciled-in note in the back of my first NIV bible. A bible gifted to me by my friend Rick, who has since died of AIDS.

    My precious notes are barely legible but an internet search attributed a significant quotation to Dr. Ray Anderson, published in Proclaiming the Scandal of the Cross: Contemporary Images of the Atonement, page 147, by Mark D. Baker:

    Shame is the perceived loss of our place with others. Those who have the power to create our history have the power to make us feel worthy or unworthy at the core of our being. Since our being is dependent upon how others view us, we feel shame as loss of being. It is this deep sense of shame, which seems to deprive us of our very right to exist, that drives many over the edge of guilt to suicide.

    Shame is a sense I have been all too familiar with in this life. Many of you know the story of my conception and birth and teenage pregnancy (Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother Southwest Michigan 2016). The idea of our need to empty out the negative in order to enjoy the positive is what I appreciated most in Olseen’s podcast.

    If your life is filled with frustration, anger, sadness, resentment, guilt or any other unpleasant emotional states, little space is left for life to fill in all the good stuff. Olsteen offered the metaphor of a catheter draining the body of toxins to our need to release stored toxic emotions through forgiveness.

    I agreed wholeheartedly with Olsteen that forgiveness is something you do for yourself, not for the one thought to have done you wrong. However, him saying we don’t have to seek vindication because God is the judge drew my heart back to a line at the bottom of the page of penciled notes: “Remember Christ died for my sins, not because of them.”

    While releasing toxic emotions, best to let go of any stubborn toxic theology, too.