Friday, May 30, 2014

Disrespect Toward Young Marriage

Alright, so I got a few ideas for today’s post. Once again, please always feel free to ask for a certain blog post. I run out of ideas like any blogger, so thanks for the suggestions :)

I asked several of my friends and family via facebook and G+ what I should do for my next post. As I was not expecting a question about marriage, I was caught completely unprepared when a friend of mine’s mother asked me to do a post about why women who get married under the age of like 25 are not respected. People just don’t take them seriously. So, I scoured the internet looking for other peoples’ opinions on the matter. I myself think that often people who are in their teen years (16-17) are not ready to pick who their soul mate should be, but then there are times when some people are very responsible and may actually have found the one for them at the age of 16-17. So, this friend’s mom has a friend who got married at a couple months before she turned 20 and was given a lot of hate about it. People didn’t respect her or anything, so as unprepared as I was, this actually piqued my interest. Why is that?
So, I went on the internet, and found that most of the people who do get married before their twenties end up getting divorced or break up or separate, or something not long after the wedding. So to be honest, women do not get taken seriously because “The earliest marriers, those adolescents who enter marriage in their mid-teens, experience marital failure rates closer to a sobering 80%. Not until age 22 does marital stability improve significantly and do marriage dissolution rates begin to level off.” (http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2013/01/why-we-should-raise-the-marriage-age.html : Why we should raise the marriage age)

I found that most teenagers are not nearly as responsible as they think they are. So if you want my opinion, take it slow and wait until you know for absolute certain that the person you like or want to marry is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. And I don’t mean just wait for a month or so and then say “Okay, I wanna get married” if that is a long time for you, then wait for a REALLY long time. Like several months to a year. I know, it is so horribly long to wait to be with your love! But really, it’s not. How old are you? 16-18? It is really not that long. Look back on your life. You got where you are now in the blink of an eye. You can wait a while longer.

I hope I didn’t sound too harsh or anything, and I hope I wasn’t really just rambling because like I said, I really wasn’t prepared for this. Thanks so much for reading! All of you who keep up on my blog mean so much to me! Thanks!!! And again, if you have an idea about what my next blog post should be about, please let me know! I would love to hear from youuu!

God bless <3 Have a wonderful weekend.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

The Illusionist


Hey, everyone!!! Sorry that I can’t finish the James chapter. :/ I am still unable as of now to locate the third page of notes. So if you have any ideas about James and the chapter I have been talking about, please feel free to discuss it with me. James is my favorite book of the bible and I plan on reading into it a whole lot more this summer.

For now, I am going to tell you about what I did today. So, this morning, my beautiful cousin K and I got up at seven and waited until eight at which point we went to our grandmother’s home to stay with her for a while. She has gone through a couple surgeries and is still working on moving around on her own with no help.
Tonight, we got back and in about 20 minutes will be on our way to Allendale High School to go to Tom Coverly’s Illusionist Show. I am very excited. He is a family friend, so we got VIP tickets. I don’t think I have ever been to an illusionist show, so this is going to be very fun. :)
For those of you who don’t know, Tom Coverly is a “Magician” who does “Magic Tricks”. As he is a christian and has no wish to deceive people, he prefers to be called an illusionist who “Creates Illusions”. I personally have never seen him in real life before today, and I am super excited to finally meet him. My parents and my mother’s family has known him personally for a long time. He has a wife and two children whom I am also excited to meet.

So yeah. That is the summary of my day so far, and to come. I hope you all have an amazing Memorial Day weekend, and week. :) I would love to hear what all of you are doing for Memorial Day. If you don’t feel uncomfortable telling me, please let me know! I am excited to hear all of your replies :)

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

James Part 2

James 5:7-12 Part 2

Hey, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed part one of the James chapter. I am moving on to part two today.

So, next in class, we discussed how you establish your heart. Now, you can give sunday school answers. “Prayer”, “God”, “The Cross”. But we talked about how all those things are good, but the man whose sermon we took this from says that we need a lightning rod.
What does a lightning rod do?
A lightning rod takes the electricity and sends it into the ground so it is no longer harmful. So, when we say we need a lightning rod, we are saying….? What?
We are saying we need first of all, someone who won’t throw bible verses at you. Now, this sounds awful, but often times, we need a friend who will just listen instead of try and tell us what we should be doing when we are likely already doing it.
The second thing we need to get is a release valve. What does a release valve do?
A release valve is on a heater and it releases the pressure so that the boiler will not explode. Without a release valve, the boiler is just a ticking time bomb.
We need something wholesome to redirect stress. When a burden gets piled on us, our tendency is to yell, eat and do things we know are wrong.
In James 5: 7-12, it says “You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.” it is not just James telling us “Hey, you need to be patient because...yeah…” We are receiving a promise. A reward. “Be patient BECAUSE the coming of the Lord is near!”
Imagine what it would feel like with no one to help you bear the burdens you have. Just for a minute imagine this. There is no second coming of the Lord, there is no end to your pain in sight, and there is no other life.
This-were it true-would crush us. We cannot carry this burden on our own. But James (And God) gives us a promise that if we are patient, when we die, and when the Lord comes again, there will be eternal happiness and there will be no more burdens.

Alright. That one was a little shorter than yesterdays. :) I will give part three, the final part, probably sometime tomorrow. Thank you so much for reading it! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thanks again

God bless <3

Monday, May 12, 2014

James Part 1

James 5:7-12 Part 1

Hey, everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Mothers’ Day.

I certainly did. In the youth group/Sunday School for the morning at my church, we talked about burdens. This, amazingly enough turned out to be another fabulous blessing from the Lord. I took lots of notes, and so I am going to kind of reenact it for you. Sorta.

So, we focused on James 5: 7-12.
7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near. 9 Don’t grumble against one another, brothers and sisters, or you will be judged. The Judge is standing at the door!
10 Brothers and sisters, as an example of patience in the face of suffering, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. 11 As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.
12 Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned.”

(NIV)

So, first, A talked about four “F” words (don’t giggle, seriously, guys).
Fight, Fright, Flight, and lastly, Faith.
Now, before we start, when he is talking about burdens, he is talking about things that EVERYONE has. School, sports, exams, friends, family, parents, etc.

James 5:7-12 focuses on one word that shows up several times in the passage.
The word is PATIENCE.

Be PATIENT, then, brothers and sisters…
PATIENTLY waiting for the autumn and spring rains…
you, too, be PATIENT…
and so forth. So, the first point we talked on, is

1. How is your Heart?
We need to ESTABLISH our HEARTS.
What does this mean? What does it mean to Establish your heart? Well, lets talk about it. Think, what does it mean to establish something?
To establish means to...set something up. Or rather, to make it stand. To know what something is. When we say we need to establish our hearts, we mean we need to establish our beliefs. We need to establish our thoughts. What do we believe?
Next, we talked about how Patience has anything to do with our hearts. Now, for some of you, this may seem an easy question, but at the beginning of the year, the very first thing A said was that he didn’t want us to give the answers we thought were true, he wanted us to examine what the answer was, ourselves. He didn’t want the Sunday School answer, he wanted our answers.
So, what does it mean? What A had us do, is he said he wanted us all to think about a burden. So, think of a burden. I can’t tell if you are, so if you are, continue reading.
What is the number one thing you would wish every day? The one thing that you would wish if you could that concerns your burden. Think of that. Now, if I know people, and if A does, everyone is thinking right now that they would all JUST GO AWAY! We wish our burdens to be gone! We don’t want them! They are heavy and they hurt, so why carry them?
But you cannot rush God. All burdens have a purpose, and only God knows what those are. There is no escaping burdens. All we can do is settle in.
We live in the most IMPATIENT generation in history. If something is not immediate-whether it be internet or food at a restaurant- we automatically get irritated. You can complain to the chef if your food is slow, and you can talk to the internet company if it is not working, but you can’t “hurry up” God. If you live in a world where a slow computer gets you agitated, then when the big things come like a divorce or a friend dying, you will be crushed unless you have patience.

Alright, so that one is pretty long and also, that is only a third of the notes I took, so I will give you guys more tomorrow or Wednesday. :)
Thanks so much for reading. It means a ton.
If you want more, please subscribe or like this post. :)

God bless.

Friday, May 9, 2014

I Have Odd Brothers

You know there is a problem when you walk into the living room and two of your brothers have a battery in their belly buttons…

Yeah, you read correctly. Batteries. In their belly buttons. So, yesterday, my grandparents came all the way from Idaho to come see my twin brothers’ graduation. We had a HUGE dinner of Lebanese Chicken and Pilaf-which you can find the recipe for on one of my earlier posts-and green beans, after which we basically sat around for a couple hours talking. I went into the living room with my brothers while the adults talked at the table. I hear laughter, and a strict command to stop.
I turned around, and my two out of my three brothers-P and N- have something in their belly buttons. A closer examination revealed batteries. Now, at first, I was scared because I thought they were double A’s or something, but they turned out to be the little flat round ones. Also a concern, as my N could not seem to find a way to get it out, and proposed he go take a shower. -_- Oh, the simplicity of his mind. My older brother J was the one who was telling them to stop. And rightly so.
My brother P, on the other hand was entertaining himself with a marble. All I can do in situations like this is shake my head and walk away, or else encourage them by uncontrolled laughter. I-unwisely-chose the latter. This all rubbed off on my sister, M, who proceeded to put a Jelly Bean in her belly button-What is my family’s problem…?-which made every single one of us laugh. Later on, N thought it seemed appropriate to draw a face with the battery as the mouth and drew eyes, thus proceeding to take 101 that’s right, one-hundred and one pictures of it with my mom’s phone.

There is no limit to my family’s oddness.

Well, there you are. Today’s post. I hope you all had a good laugh, because I certainly did.

Thanks so much for reading. <3 :)

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Sally and Lucy: Darling or Devil?

We have reached the milestone in school, folks! Congrats to all of you who are graduating.


So I was thinking just now about a certain person in my life who is cool, and she is pretty, but she makes me feel unwanted. So I was wondering, should I really hang out with her if all she does is make me feel like less than I should? I am God’s child. That should be enough for me. The thing is, though, that if I am no longer friends with the one, I may lose the friendship of someone whose relationship with me I DO value. So, I am asking, I guess, what should I do? I am going to write down my own thoughts, but today I am really just asking what you think. So, here goes. And for now, I am going to call the girl who should not be my friend Sally and the one who I still want as a friend Lucy. Please do not take offense at the name choice. It has not meaning.


So, Sally is really pretty, and she has a pretty hard background. Her father and mother divorced, and her mother-who supposedly hates her-remarried. This girl is really a great person, but she does things that I would really rather not expose myself to at this time. I know that eventually I will have to face things like that, but right now, it just isn’t the best for me. Sally is...dealing with some things right now, and I want to be there for her, but it seems like she doesn’t want me. I don’t know if I should back up, or confront her. I really hope some of you have ideas because I am really lost on this one…


Lucy is gorgeous-this, by the way, is not the only reason I want to still spend time with her, it is just a fact of life-and she loves to hang out with me. She tells me everything, and her life is just as bad as Sally’s, except that there is no divorce in the picture. Lucy always tells me when something is wrong with her, and she can always tell when there is something wrong with me. Her sister is...not as good to her as she should be. She has a relatively good homelife, but not the best. Her parents love her, but really just don’t know how to raise her. I love her very much, and I know we will always be friends. She is super close with Sally, and I know that defriending Sally would really hurt Lucy.


So, that was me venting. I hope it didn’t bore you too much. :) Thanks for any future comments. They are all greatly appreciated. :)