Michele Gyselinck

 I've been taking pills since I was five months old because of congenital hypothyroidism--basically my thyroid gland did not function, so the hormones it would normally secrete had to be replaced by synthetic ones.  Since then I started taking meds for depression, then later for schizophrenia, cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes Type 2, and some to counteract the side effects of other meds.  While I know that God could heal or cure any of our ailments, Jesus did not cure all the sick people when He was on earth.  And please note that healing and curing are not perfect synonyms.  God CAN heal us emotionally even if He doesn't choose to cure us, anymore than He didn't cure Paul of his thorn in the flesh.  And nowhere is it written that He blamed Paul for his lack of faith.  God chooses to let Christians suffer from physical ailments as a consequence of original sin so we know what the rest of the world has to live with.  WE should be thankful that meds exist to help people live out their lives and not always make it an issue of having enough faith.

Just to point out a fact, Marc Lépine had only one sister. Both of them died before their mother who is still alive. His sister whose name I don't know died of a drug overdose some years after him.

 Yikes! That's awful. Doctors can be real jerks sometimes, not to say something worse.  It goes to remind us that they are sinners too.  In fact, my mom, age 92, who worked with doctors as a social workers often says that they are business people in white coats because many of them go into medicine for the money, and compassion for patients is mostly an afterthought.

As sewing has never been my forte, that doesn't mean a great deal to me, but I like to paint. While oil painting allows more time to finish a painting, I have had to stick to acrylics because of the smell. Oil paint has a strong smell, and it lasts a long time. That's great if you have a spare room in which to paint and you can close the door after a session, but I don't. I only have a one-bedroom apartment, which means I paint in the living-room kitchen part of my condo, and the smell of oil paint gave me headaches, so I had to switch back to acrylic paint.
Acrylic is odorless, but it dries quickly, so I had to learn to paint fast. While there are products to slow down the drying process, they still don't allow as much time as painting with oils would. But fortunately, by the time I started doing representational work--that means you can tell what the painting is about--I had perfected my technique of working with spatulas. If you want to see some of the results look up my page.

GOOD!  Kinism makes no sense whatsoever.

I find it difficult to relate to what you're saying because it doesn't describe my experience of church AT ALL. And yet, Montreal is not exactly a small city. Maybe you haven't visited the right churches before making your sweeping statements? Come and check us out at Montreal CRC.

Interesting.  It took me a long time to find my way because my gifts didn't fit into the conventional ways of serving God in the CRC, where if you're not called to be a pastor, sing in the choir, or teach Sunday School it's easy to wonder if you can serve at all. Eventually, through my gift of writing, my experience with mental illness and bilingualism I found my niche, but it was a slow process.  

And before I ended up as Regional Advocate, and translator of sermon power points, I was baking desserts for Community Supper.  Now it seems that the denomination, or at least the Canadian branch of it, may find further use for my writing and translation skills.  

In the process I have sought God's guidance, though not as precisely as Rev. Muller, and He used my abilities and interests to guide me.  So for those seeking God's guidance about their vocational choices I'd say that He will use who you are and your skills and interests to direct you.  He made you the way you are, so He's not going to try to force you into some career or calling you have neither ability or interest for.  God doesn't waste his time creating people to like certain things and then forcing a square peg into a round hole.  Life might do that to you, but God won't.