WE ARE THE CLAY – ISAIAH 64:8.

“But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand,” ISA 64:8.

The Lord wants us to submit to him as the clay in the hand of the potter.   The scripture says in the book of Isaiah  64:8 says, “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

This is a process, but I’ve seen come it to pass in my own life…  There is a time in our lives when there is peace with God; then there are times when all hell has broke loose and you know that your life has been shattered into little bitty pieces… I had a recent wilderness experience that made me feel as though nobody cared that was close to me…   Every issue in my life seemed magnified only for God to be glorified in it all.  All we have to do is surrender our problems to him and trust him to handle them..
See, it’s when we are in those little bitty pieces, is when God is still testing to see if we are going to trust him or if  we are going to handle our situations on our own…

If I had my way, I would seek revenge for all the horrible things people have done to me, but my bible tells me that Vengeance is mines says the Lord… Sometimes it seems like  justice just wont’ get served to any one no matter how you try… This has been happening in my life since 1999 when a simple trip to the Dentist turned into a complete blood bath leaving my mouth paralyzed to this very hour..  My life was shattered due to a dentist who had severed my artery working on tooth #18 which controls the major nerves in your mouth…

What they did not know at the time in 1999 when I was going crazy for those few days that sharp bone fragments were pressing against my nerves sending shock waves to my brain driving me insane… My sister took me the hospital and told the people I was a schizophrenic…  As I lay there broken into little bitty pieces… I cried “Father God, help me oh Lord”  What is she saying… It was fortunate that the hospital she took me too I use to work there in training as young lad and the Dr. that saw me knew me pretty well from the actual hospital I had worked at for over 12 years…   She began to explain to my sister the characteristics of a person that really schizophrenic… I remember her telling my sister that people in that state of mind do not care about grooming themselves… (check), she’s well groomed and matching… hmm… she went on to tell her that she did not think that was the case….   Well bottom line, they transferred me to another hospital for observation as I was in serve excruciating pain not knowing what to do at this point…  I get to the next hospital and they put me in a room with 98-year-old Caucasian woman that is in her final hours dyeing… I’m in severe pain, and this woman is in her feces, and her body is cutting loose because that’s what happens to some people in their final hours of dyeing… If I was not crazy by then, I am now… Then I had a nurse coming in asking me a serious of physiological questions and refused to give me pain meds if I did not talk to her… By this time, I’m frustrated and I’m now about to loose my mind because these bone fragments are driving me literally insane… – Yes, by this ladies final breath that was in the other bed I lost it… I could not lay in the next bed to watch someone die.. I felt it was cruel and unusual treatment for a patient that was being accused of being a schizo put in this position… So I went off on the nurse, and she lied and said I said I was going to kill the dyeing lady – Can I say that again – Dyeing lady that was on her last breath – “Kill her”  She lied so they could declare me a 51/50 and put me on a 72 hour hold in their phyc ward… Now, I really had to strategize how to get out of there… Well, I was the assistant to the Medical Director and Care Manager at the time of the dental incident,  and my first bad reaction happened to me while I was at work sitting at my desk and I was literally seeing these little floaters that looked like bubbles all over the room..  I remember blacking out at my desk and waking up in California Hospital where they said I was having a bad reaction to pain meds… My sister did not know the missing link to why I was acting the way I was so she took it  upon her educated self to agree with another doctor who I think asked her was I a  schizo.. while I was on pain meds that I was sensitive too – they did not know at the time that I was allergic to Vicodin which was causing me to hallucinate..  I made a phone call to my boss, and she spoke to the Doctor that was handling my case and explained to him that they needed to get me out of there and finish the work in mouth that was the root cause of why I ended up at the hospital in the first place initially in Los Alamitos one Saturday morning… . Of note, never go over your first mind… I went to the dentist for a routine check up at Western Dental… Had that done… Then some greedy Dentist comes in the room with my x-rays saying  you really need to have your wisdom teeth removed because they are causing a great overcrowding in your mouth.. I said “No not today because I have to be at work this evening  at my 2nd job at the imaging clinic where I worked too… _ He began to sell me, and harass me how much better my smile would look if I let him remove the two teeth on both sides… He said it would only take about 10 or 15 minutes to do both… What he did not know is my teeth had hooks on them from the roots and they needed to be surgically removed by a real orthodontic surgeon… He proceeded anyways with tooth number #18 and messed around and broke it… Now if that was not enough, he pulled out his scaffold knife and began to cut the tooth out of my mouth..  He became obsessed and agressive as I was awake under local anesthia… He went so deep until he hit my artery in tooth# 18 which controls your four bottom teeth on your left side of your mouth, your left half of your lip and the gums that that the 4 bottom teeth are rooted in.   Yes, my mouth has been paralyzed since 1999 causing me great pain and anxiety..  The doctor began to yell out as he was all covered in my blood from the busted artery.. I need an ambulance… I need someone to help me cauterize tooth #18 or she is going to bleed to death…  Somehow after perfusely bleeding he was able to stop it.. Blood was shooting out like a fountain..  After this procedure, would my life change forever  up to this very time I live right now…

Well back to the story>>>  What my sister did not know or the hospital she had taken me too was the work up that had already been done… They had determined that Saturday when I rushed into the hospital for severe blood loss, that the only way I was not going to be paralyzed in the moth was if the fragments were removed and a nerve from my foot was removed and then transplanted into my mouth.. That was the only chance I had to get some feeling back into that area of my mouth… Well, it became an issue of who was going to pay for that procedure… Of note, the authorization had come through and the insurance company had called my desk at the job to let me know that the emergency authorization was approved  and I needed to get to Santa Monica at St. John’s hospital right away to have surgery performed.    I was then released from the psych ward immediately after the director explained to them that I was not crazy but I was suffering from the trauma that had taken place in my mouth and the pain meds were causing me to act unseemly… It was all fixed with the words of my boss from Care Management.  My mom came to pick me up from there, and I did not know nothing about crossing the red line until paper work was signed..  “The red line, yawl…” smh… that’s another story.. I just wanted out of that place and asked God why did he not come and see about me sooner?   I was hurt and my life was shattered into little bitty pieces… They were in the process of getting me to an mMaxillofacial specialist after I left the hospital in Los Alamitos.  The 2nd hospital was smart enough to contact the first hospital I was in to find out why I was on the drugs in the first place and California Hospital downtown Los Angeles were able to put two and two together..

Well after the first surgery of removing the bone fragments from my mouth that were touching the nerves of my brain..  The Maxillofacial specialist came back into the room and said everything I did today will be apart of criminal investigation and civil law suit because this was totally negligent on the initial dentist at Western Dental… Dr. Hakkaki.. I hope he is not practicing  dentistry on  anyone after what he did to me in 1999 that would change my game forever up until this day…

Well, the major surgery of the transferring of nerves from my foot to my mouth did not happen because the insurance company would not agree to pay the $30.000 the surgery would cost which needed to be done within 90 days of the initial incident to restore my nerves back to somewhat normal.  This particular surgery had only been attempted on one other study in another state, and they had contacted him to perform the surgery on me, but it never happened for financial reasons…

The bottom line to this story is my mouth is still paralyzed to this day… A kiss has never been a kiss again… A hot cup of coacoa or cofee has never tasted the same because it’s hard to gauge hot and cold with a paralyzed mouth..  To look at me, my mouth looks normal but it does not feel normal…  I’ve been to the top specialist in California at every school for dentistry and not one has been able to solve my problems…  The only comfort I get is when the master touches me with his finger of  LOVE and takes over my body is the only peace I receive in the midst of  my storm…  I took very strong legal drugs for many of years from 1999 to 2002 which altered my personality forever…  I was a functional ,working  person on a cocktail con-cautions  of  Darvocet,  and Nuerontin which is a neurological drug that relax numb nerves in your body so your brain don’t interpret numbness as pain.  I was already taking that particular drug for my premature multiple sclerosis…Now, I was on a double dose..  My life became messier than messy…

Well what took care of most of my pain is when I got pregnant and was now on 14 different medications to stay alive for all the other problems the pain meds had caused…  I had to make a choice.. What the heck was I going to do now… I did not believe in abortion, so I had to make a call within myself to say I have to keep this baby regardless.   They sent me to a genetic specialist that investigated all 14 different drugs I was on and they determined that not one of drugs would have any affect on the  new baby’s life…  So I proceeded.. However, after the amniocentesis which is a procedure where they inject a very long needle into your belly to take amniotic genetic fluids from the baby, then they discovered that my baby had xyy syndrome which was genetic and could only be passed to him by his father and they needed him right away ti give his blood to be tested..  Well by this time, I’m six or seven weeks pregnant and really not getting along with Dad, and by this time, Dad had went back to  Oregon where his children and ex-wife and I guess girlfriend Lisa who sent him a bus ticket.. He was out, and my daughter in I helped  him go…  Then shortly thereafter he ends up in  some trouble and lands him self in jail for quite some time… All bad!  Now I’m getting the Jail house letters and collect calls.. You guys know the story if you ever been involved with someone who is locked up.. Then they all of sudden finds God and their thole world has been turned around until they are released and see the light of day…. There was never a month that went by that I did not hear from him up until  8 years when he finally returns back for his mom’s funeral this past December..  Of note, my son had one request for Christmas 2011, and that was he wanted to spend Christmas with his Father… It happened… They spent the best 8 days together of his entire life.  You would have thought they have been together all their lives… Yes, I’m lead to tell the truth… 8 years to get back to meet his baby for the very first time…  Letters after letters… Phone calls after phone calls…. I’m coming baby.. I want to be a family… I love my son… Etc., Etc..    – Then we discover later on before 18 months old that my son has Autism as well as the XYY syndrome, which is one chromosomes to many resulting in severe behavior problems… I mean severe, then combine it with the autism…

So I conceived this child after being  celibate for a period of time after so many horrible relationships… This time in my life, I was doing big things in ministry.. No way in the world could  Ms. CEO and President present she was pregnant to the church…  (shaking my head)… My career was over in ministry!!!!  I felt dirty and low down shame before God..  You talk about a piece of broken clay… Broken…

During this whole process since 1999 I had been saying out of my mouth that “I want a baby before I turn 40”  I really did not know what I was saying being that my personality was no longer the same… I remember even going to my Bishop six weeks before I got pregnant and asking him to pray  for me to get pregnant>>> (BAD) and all wrong.. He did..  Six weeks later, I go back to Bishop and say, well I’m pregnant and you can now have this beautiful building that we were having church at for the past 7 years.

My son who was the young Pastor of our ministry at the time had went off to college and was not as active he normally was when he was there full time.. So we tried new things that did not work.. So I decided that it was time for me to sit myself down and just be  37-year-old, confused and pregnant…  You talk about a broken piece of clay.. Broken from the gutter-most to the uttermost.. Broken..  If  what all I had been through, I now had to find a way to fix my pain in my mouth.. I tried everything from healing tapes, Anagelisic oral meds on my face.. Just anything I could use that would not cause any harm to my unborn fetus…  During this time period, I began to cope with my pain like never before… Now, not only did I have the physical pain in my mouth… I now carried the mental shame of  letting God down once more… How could I do this when things were going for us in ministry..  Things never returned back to the same.. I had the beautiful baby, and returned back to the church..    Baby got Christened like a King and it was a beautiful sight to see my beautiful baby at the alter.. He was drop dead gorgeous.. Everyone from the doctor who looked after my care asked me – are you sure your baby is not Asian being he had little bitty slits for eyes…  All I could see were those were my eyes with no eye lids like most Asian baby’s do have…  No, I was certain that he was a fully black because I was a 150% sure who his Dad is..  Today, they look like twins with the same manor-isms and all..   Just amazing…  So the happy part to this story is my pregnancy fixed my broken heart – Did not have to take the strong heart medicine any longer – so on, and so on..  I had now learned how to deal with my mouth and facial pain a little bit better… Although, the baby fixes a lot of things in my life, I developed type 2 diabetes during the pregnancy which they call gestational diabetes which is common in women over 35 and pregnant…  Well, I tried my best to get rid of  the diabetes, but it just will not go away.. I report that I have graduated from having to inject 2 different kinds of insulin into my body after losing 40 pounds, I graduated to the pill call Metaphor-min which is a deadly stinky pill that makes my body produce the extra insulin it needs…  To this day, I believe God is going to heal me from diabetes as well.

I tell a lot of history in this piece because I felt compelled to do so being my life is an open book and this insert will go into my biography I’ve been writing forever so long entitled: “Let my baby live”  This title extends back to something that happened when I was 16 and pregnant…  My God, my God… My testimony is so great, and it should be a help and a blessing to some young girl to let her know that abortion is not your only option… You too can still live again after going through a humiliating ordeal.. I did, and you can too.. That’s another whole chapter of my life.. .I will get there soon to share with my readers…

In close, “I still am the clay, and he is the potter”  Work on me Dear Jesus and shape me into the Woman of God you will have me to be!!!!   I receive you with open arms….

Written from the heart by:  Minister Thomas

Of note:  This story is uncut and unedited and unscripted because it’s really too painful to read it all over again… You all pray for me as I grow stronger in the Lord!!!