Blossoms in the Rain

A s I've been home, waiting for my new job to start tomorrow (yay!!!), I have been sharing tons of stuff on Facebook on what's going on with Israel and with Jews around the world, and I've started noticing, today and yesterday, a surprising increase in other smaller issues. As I've been sharing them, I keep waiting for more information on Israel, and it's not showing up in anything I'm looking at. It's like it's being systematically removed from the system, and replaced with these other concerns. It's like what happened with Hawaii; after a short period of outrage and upset, it got swept under the rug by other, lesser issues, and disappeared from the news, and thus, from people's attention. Please, let me remind you, that this is very much like what happened in WWII. There was, indeed, outrage at what happened to Jews initially, but the powers that be swept it out of the public eye, and as it fell out of the news, it stopped being opposed. That ...

  A few years ago, my pastor started a study on the life of Christ, called "The Harmony of the Gospels," wherein, he was expositing the four Gospel accounts chronologically. While events coincided so that he had to lay aside that particular study, I continued studying the life of Christ on my own and have been doing so for the past few years. In an effort to encourage other women in studying Scripture and perhaps give a little help to their studies, after discussing it with my husband, I have decided to share my studies here.  First, let me clarify a little bit of information before I continue, so that you and I are on the same page. This study is a chronological study through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, following the chronological reading plan designed by John MacArthur. I will be referencing different study books to help me in my study, and I intend to put a list of those resources up soon so you can obtain them for yourselves. This study I have primarily done from the E...

 My last blog post, I had posted about facing life's U-turns. I was struggling with the ideas of singleness, and wondering how to glorify God in the midst of being alone.  Welp, SURPRISE! A little over two years later and I'm happily married to a man who knows and loves the Lord, and who treasures me more than I could have ever imagined!  It's been a hard road to get here. Many sorrows, and some surprising joys, not the least of which being my dear husband.  Ok, first updates to bring you all up to speed: Since I last posted, my mother went through her second round of cancer, and in March she went home to be with the Lord. It was a difficult few years. The cancer had metastasized to her brain and towards the end, she was very childlike. It was a big struggle, but our church helped us immensely, and I'm so grateful to God that they were there! We could not have made it without their help!  In July, I married the love of my life, Mr. O (♪O is for the only one I se...

We all grow up dreaming of what we want to be. Parents and family friends ask us when we're young, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I want to be a dinosaur!" "I want to be a dancer!" "I want to be an astronaut!" Enthusiastic answers, beaming smiles; we know what we want.  And then we grow a little older, and our dreams change. We learn what it costs to do those dreams, and sometimes they're just not possible, and most of us switch to other dreams. By high school, our dreams and hopes for the future become more specialized. Some of us choose to be beauticians, some of us choose to be athletes, some want to be chefs, others want to get into science or medicine.  And then things just...happen. The internship fails. There's no money for schooling. A tragic injury or illness. And what you thought life would be like just never happens.  I thought I would be a wife and mother. I thought that by now I'd be married and have chil...

Adulting: a term used by young adults to describe the struggles they're having with adulthood, and also sometimes used derisively by older adults to make fun of young adults struggling with adulthood.  In the past 10 years, there has been a lot of shaming young adults, and even people into their 30s, for struggling with doing things previous generations seemed to do with ease. Things like getting a job, doing grocery shopping, making meals, mending clothes, house keeping, handling money, and a whole host of other things that make up the sphere of adult responsibilities have proven to be very difficult for the current generations of young adults. And I'm here to say that that shame is not justly earned. Yes, the previous generations were able to do it, but they were in a very different time and situation than we are today, and I'm going to explain several reasons why it's so difficult now. 1. The past two generations have been the most underprepared generations in millen...