A Struggling Barren Wife

I must admit that since Wednesday morning I’ve been experiencing periods of sadness.  I’ve been crying on and off.  I know the surgery was the right thing to do.  I am not angry with anyone, especially not God. Because I do know that He is looking out for me.  Not that I didn’t know what the operation would do but the past few days it hit me like a ton of bricks that I no longer have my reproductive organs. The procedure is done and believe me I am thankful to God and all his angels because I am feeling so much better but it is so hard…. crying crying as I write this…. I am so sad.  I have been praying and asking God’s help through this tough time but…. I have just suffered a big loss and I just don’t know….

I called my doc yesterday because I thought something was wrong around one of my stitches.  He thought I could have gotten an infection so besides calling me in an antibiotic he wanted to see me to make sure the stitches were okay. This morning as I was waiting to see my doctor tears started rolling down my cheeks.  Just all of a sudden.  I was thinking geesh I sure have been a watering sprinkler lately with tears popping up when I least expect it.  He came in after I had stopped crying and gotten myself together but I ended up telling him that I had been crying anyway.  We talked about it.  He was so understanding. He said that I have a right to be sad and basically that if I wasn’t he would be wondering what’s wrong with me.  He said that he’s sad for me and that he would pray for me during the next week in between visits.  He said for me to continue to look to God for guidance during this time. He made me feel much better.  He is such a caring doctor.  Thankfully I don’t have an infection but the oddest thing happened. I have an allergic reaction to the band-aid and it blistered.  But what’s weird about it and we couldn’t figure out is why I don’t have allergic reactions around my other areas where stitches are. Different band-aid? Who knows?

After I came home I offered a prayer to God asking for his help to guide me through my struggles.  I also asked Him to lead me to the right spot in the Bible.  And yes so amazingly he did.  I opened to Psalm 113: 7-9 .

Psalm 113: 7-9 says:   He raises up the lowly from the dust;

from the dunghill he lifts up the poor

To seat them with princes,

with the princes of his own people.

He establishes in her home the barren wife

as the joyful mother of children.

My first response after seeing this was God is wonderful. God is watching out for me. I know that and have known that for a long time but I have been so emotional these past few days and crying, crying, crying (and I’m not even a crier) that I hadn’t really turned to Him and asked Him for assistance til today.  God has brought peace to me. Now I feel so much better sharing my struggles with the Lord and all my blogging buddies. God Bless.

 Crossposted @ Catholibertarian 

Supermarket Gospel Choir Flash Mob Sings Christian Version of Lovely Day

AWESOME Gospel Choir Flash Mob! Lovely Day Christian Version from untilweflyaway on GodTube.

Bethlehemian Rhapsody - This is Great!

Muslim Convert To Christianity Speaks Out: Are Allah & Muhammed Gangsters?

Fr. John Corapi Speaks on Reading and Heeding the Signs of the Times

The Grace Card Trailer

This movie looks very inspirational and has a positive message. I'm adding this to my list of movies I want to see.



This movie looks very inspirational and has a positive message.  I'm adding this to my list of movies to see.

This movie looks very inspirational and has a positive message.  I'm adding this to my list of movies to see.

This movie looks very inspirational and has a positive message.  I'm adding this to my list of movies to see.This movie looks very inspirational and has a positive message.  I'm adding this to my list of movies to see

Vatican Treasure

Origins of Halloween: Not a Pagan Festival

In the article below, Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P. explains the origins of Halloween and reasons why it isn't a pagan holiday but rather in fact quite Christian.

We’ve all heard the allegations: Halloween is a pagan rite dating back to some pre-Christian festival among the Celtic Druids that escaped church suppression. Even today modern pagans and witches continue to celebrate this ancient festival. If you let your kids go trick-or-treating, they will be worshiping the devil and pagan gods.


Nothing could be further from the truth. The origins of Halloween are, in fact, very Christian and rather American. Halloween falls on October 31 because of a pope, and its observances are the result of medieval Catholic piety.

It’s true that the ancient Celts of Ireland and Britain celebrated a minor festival on October 31--as they did on the last day of most other months of the year. However, Halloween falls on the last day of October because the Feast of All Saints, or "All Hallows," falls on November 1. The feast in honor of all the saints in heaven used to be celebrated on May 13, but Pope Gregory III (d. 741) moved it to November 1, the dedication day of All Saints Chapel in St. Peter’s at Rome. Later, in the 840s, Pope Gregory IV commanded that All Saints be observed everywhere. And so the holy day spread to Ireland.

The day before was the feast’s evening vigil, "All Hallows Even," or "Hallowe’en." In those days Halloween didn’t have any special significance for Christians or for long-dead Celtic pagans.

In 998, St. Odilo, the abbot of the powerful monastery of Cluny in southern France, added a celebration on November 2. This was a day of prayer for the souls of all the faithful departed. This feast, called All Souls Day, spread from France to the rest of Europe.

So now the Church had feasts for all those in heaven and all those in purgatory. What about those in the other place? It seems Irish Catholic peasants wondered about the unfortunate souls in hell. After all, if the souls in hell are left out when we celebrate those in heaven and purgatory, they might be unhappy enough to cause trouble. So it became customary to bang pots and pans on All Hallows Even to let the damned know they were not forgotten. Thus, in Ireland at least, all the dead came to be remembered--even if the clergy were not terribly sympathetic to Halloween and never allowed All Damned Day into the church calendar.
CONTINUED

How Can I Keep From Singing?

On Fr. Barron's new television program Word on Fire with Fr. Robert Barron he focused on Jesus being the center of our lives.  This is very important for us, as Christians.  He also mentioned a hymn called - How Can I Keep From Singing? -  which I am posting here Today.

"This Little Light of Mine/ Faith, Faith, Faith" by The Clark Brothers

The Clark Brothers "This Little Light Of Mine"
Uploaded by gimmethegood. - Explore more music videos.

Hope You Enjoy Some Good Music by Jeremy Camp & MercyMe

Since I am a little down in the dumps due to events that happened to me today I am posting a couple of music videos. Enjoy!

Is Obama a Muslim?

Here is the transcript of Obama's interview with Cathleen Falsani discussing his faith:


FALSANI:

Have you always been a Christian?


OBAMA:

I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.


FALSANI:

Any particular flavor?


OBAMA:

No.


My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church.

So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a church lady.

As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn't particularly, he wasn't a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you'd hear the prayer call.

So I don't think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.

And, so that, I think, was what I carried with me through college. I probably didn't get started getting active in church activities until I moved to Chicago.

The way I came to Chicago in 1985 was that I was interested in community organizing and I was inspired by the Civil Rights movement. And the idea that ordinary people could do extraordinary things. And there was a group of churches out on the South Side of Chicago that had come together to form an organization to try to deal with the devastation of steel plants that had closed. And didn't have much money, but felt that if they formed an organization and hired somebody to organize them to work on issues that affected their community, that it would strengthen the church and also strengthen the community.

So they hired me, for $13,000 a year. The princely sum. And I drove out here and I didn't know anybody and started working with both the ministers and the lay people in these churches on issues like creating job training programs, or afterschool programs for youth, or making sure that city services were fairly allocated to underserved communites.

This would be in Roseland, West Pullman, Altgeld Gardens, far South Side working class and lower income communities.

And it was in those places where I think what had been more of an intellectual view of religion deepened because I'd be spending an enormous amount of time with church ladies, sort of surrogate mothers and fathers and everybody I was working with was 50 or 55 or 60, and here I was a 23-year-old kid running around.

I became much more familiar with the ongoing tradition of the historic black church and it's importance in the community.

And the power of that culture to give people strength in very difficult circumstances, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.

So that, one of the churches I met, or one of the churches that I became involved in was Trinity United Church of Christ. And the pastor there, Jeremiah Wright, became a good friend. So I joined that church and committed myself to Christ in that church CONTINUED

Counseling Student Pressured to Change Christian Beliefs in the Name of Diversity

Here is another instance of how diversity and tolerance are used to discriminate against individuals who believe in traditional Christian beliefs.

Here are 2 definitions of diversity:
1) diverseness: noticeable heterogeneity; "a diversity of possibilities"; "the range and variety of his work is amazing"
2) In the political arena, the term diversity (or diverse) is used to describe political entities (neighborhoods, student bodies, etc) with members who have identifiable differences in their backgrounds or lifestyles.

It seems as though that the way the term diversity is used in our society today is quite antithetical to the word's actual meaning. It seems as though progressivism has hijacked yet another word in our society to mean something it doesn't (like social justice). Do those people who claim to believe in diversity actually believe in diversity or just in acceptance of different groups with the same liberal ideology? Those people who claim to champion the cause of diversity are actually against diversity of thought. The champions of tolerance are not very tolerant. That's another misnomer. The faculty at Augusta State University are demanding that the student be tolerant of others' beliefs while they are refusing to be tolerant of her beliefs. Liberals version of tolerance equals outright intolerance of the worst kind.

Augusta State University gave a graduate student in counseling named Jen Keeton an ultimatum -- either give up your Christian beliefs or be expelled from the graduate counseling program. What happened to our right to Freedom of Religion? The student expressed her Christian beliefs on homosexuality and then ASU faculty targeted her because she refused to compromise her Christian beliefs.

"Faculty members had demanded she 'attend at least three workshops … which emphasize … diversity training sensitive toward working with GLBTQ populations.' They also wanted her to "develop" her knowledge of homosexuality by reading 10 articles and increasing her exposure to homosexuals and lesbians by attending 'the Gay Pride Parade.'"

They said that she must change her whole Christian belief system to conform to the American Counseling Association's code of ethics. But, this doesn't make sense since the code of ethics covers behavior regarding treatment of clients and not belief systems. Plus, she hadn't even seen one client, so how did she violate a client when she hadn't even seen any clients yet? It is quite apparent that Jen Keeton was being discriminiated against for her christian beliefs and not because she did anything unethical or violated any code of ethics.

Bob Unruh, BRAVE NEW SCHOOLS 'Lose Christianity or face expulsion' Georgia student told to read 'gay' lit, attend 'pride parade,' change beliefs, WorldNetDaily July 22, 2010 http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=182441

Keeton VNR from ADF Media Relations on Vimeo.