Despair

So, I know, it's been forever again. I think I may have a topic or two God might want me to write about, but I'm not sure exactly.
  You know how you have days where things just aren't right? You feel like you've got a reason to be mad, or depressed, or whatever, and you just let those feelings take over? Yeah, well, the last three months have been like that for me.
  I know it's my fault; I've made the mistake of trying to tell myself that I'm really a good person and everything.
  But the truth is, I'm not.
  I'm a terrible, self-centered, mean, dirty, hateful, uncaring shell of a person.
  And I don't know what to do about it.
  My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I got this awesome present. It was this photo album with notes from people important to me. I t was the best present I've ever gotten. And I cried good tears, knowing that I'm loved and appreciated by those dear to me. I thought that this hole in my heart would heal.
  But it hasn't.
  I've tried making myself look good (as much as I can) and that only works for a little while.
  I don't know what to do.
  I feel terrible because I can't just do the things that I should be able to. I can barely get all my homework done, not to mention all of the other things I've taken on. This website is a perfect example.
  I hate myself and I don't know what to do.
  I think this is where God comes in. He's supposed to take away all this pain, help me through where no human can. But I don't pray. I go to church. I'm quite the fake. I play hymns, and everybody always says "Oh, Emily, you're such a good example," but they don't know what I do when they aren't around, or when my parents aren't around.
  I hate feeling this way. Could God be the answer?
  I'll try to find Him.
  And then I'll get back to you and tell you what I've found.
  Just pray for me.

In Christ,

Emily xoxoxo

Sanctity of Life

We were talking about abortion and birth control the other night (a topic which stemmed from my mom listening to the interview of Rick Santorum with James Dobson) and my brother said a very profound thing:

"The best form of birth control is self control."

Which I thought was incredibly true, and therefore had to put it on here.

In Christ,

Em xoxoxo

Plans

Tell me,what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver



Saving

Judgement

   If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

    During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

   Socrates taught us: Know thyself!

   Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

   If Malyuta Skuratov had summoned us, we, too, probably would have done our work well!

   From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.

   And correspondingly, from evil to good.

   From the moment when our society was convulsed by the reminder of those illegalities and tortures, they began on all sides to explain, to write, to protest: Good people were there too!

~Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago