Hear the Bells.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

Okay, so I'm a little late; late as in you-already-forgot-what-your-presents-were late. But hey, better late than never.

On Christmas Day, they played the song "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow wrote this song after his wife died and his son was crippled while fighting in the Civil War. The day before she died, Longfellow's wife, Fanny, wrote in her journal: "We are all sighing for the good sea breeze instead of this stifling land, one filled with dust." The story of Fanny's death is tragic, but it led to something beautiful. After years of grief over his wife's death, Longfellow wrote the words to his poem "Christmas Bells" on Christmas Day of 1864.

As the congregation sang this song at church on Christmas morning, I just felt so burdened with life, I guess you could say. The song fit so well with my emotions:

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day.
There old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

For some reason I always get the "holiday blues." Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore Christmas, and four weeks between Thanksgiving and December 25th is "the most wonderful time of the year" for me. And then January comes, and the horrible cold winter, and life just seems so hopeless.

The third stanza of the song goes like this:
"And in despair I bowed my head:
'There is no peace on earth,' I said,
'For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men.'"

You feel so lifeless and wonder what more is there to life?
And:
"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
'God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men.'"

God is not dead. Jesus was born on Christmas to die for us so that we may live for him. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Beginning of Existence

Heartbeat. Toes, fingers; nails and all. Eyelids, sight for the first time. Ears, listening to your every word. A mind, an individual, a human. Heartbeat. The beginning of a life.

 . . . just a fetus??

Or is it a baby . . .

Fact: Half of pregnancies in the United States are unintended.
If everyone just waited until marriage to have sex this wouldn't be a problem. I'm not saying all of these pregnancies happened outside of marriage, but I'm sure a great deal of them did. I love the movie To Save A Life because it one of the stories in that movie is about a pregnant teenage girl. Amy doesn't want to disappoint her mother and so she decides to have an abortion. However, her boyfriend, Jake, decides that he doesn't want his child to die and he and Amy decide to give the baby up for adoption. I realize how hard it can be to be a pregnant teenager, but there are consequences for your actions, and a baby is one of the best things that could happen. There are so many options outside of abortion. Don't murder a child because you made a mistake.

Fact: One in ten women will have an abortion by age twenty, one in four by age thirty, and three in ten by age forty five. Twenty-two percent of pregnancies end in abortion.

Fact: Eighteen percent of women in the United States who get abortions are teenagers.
I wonder how many of those abortions are regretted later? Most of them I'm guessing. I'm trying not to make any judgments, really, but how can you kill your own child? I wonder how many of these teenagers tell their parents their pregnant before making the decision.   

Fact: About sixty one percent of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.
This is the most sad statistic I found. How could a mother kill her child when she already knows what a blessing they can be? I was reading stories about women who regretted having an abortion. One women said that she will regret it for the rest of her life. Another said that it hurts to know that she murdered her firstborn. Still another said, "I regret what I have done and I have to live with the fact that I killed an innocent child." Think before you act, you don't want to make a decision you will regret for the rest of your life

Fact: Worldwide, forty six million babies are murdered due to abortion. That's one baby every two seconds.
I watched a video a few weeks ago that compared abortion to the Holocaust. The film 180 begins with interviews with people off the street who believe that the Holocaust can be justified or deny that it ever happened. The interviewers go on to ask questions about abortion.  Ray Comfort, the narrator of this film, said that allowing Americans to have abortions is exactly like when Hitler had the sanctioned of the German people to kill the Jews. Some people might find this extreme, but the fact is that more innocent babies have been killed in American than Jews killed in the German Holocaust.

So what do you think? Is abortion justified? Or is it cold-blooded murder?

Information on abortion found here and here.

The Thin Ideal

I once read a story about a mother who walked in on her six year old attempting to purge because the kids at school called her fat. A six year old! At first I didn't believe it. Children that age are, well, children. All they think about is playing, eating sugar, and waiting for they day that they're finally "grown up."

And then I read about how children's toys are teaching toddlers sexual objectifications. Did you know about some of the toys they have out there now? I had no idea! But it makes sense.

The first toy that comes to mind is the Barbie doll. Barbie has been loved by almost every girl in America, including myself. After all, she's perfect. That's the problem . . . no human being - breathing, eating, flesh and blood human being - has a body like Barbie. The original Barbie was created in 1959 and automatically became the number one doll for little girls all across America. She began her career looking like an almost-normal person. I'm sure you have all heard that if Barbie was a human being she would be missing a rib and be severely underweight. This has only gotten worse in the last fifty years. The Barbie dolls manufactured today are created to emphasize a thin waist and, to put it in a nice way, is quite grown-up.

Barbie isn't the only children's toy that gives children distorted views of beauty. Apparently My Little Pony is now creating horses with luscious hair, long legs, and pink high heels! And did you know that ponies love accessories and make-up? Troll dolls are also toys that have been made to look less like trolls and more like scantily dressed teenage girls.

Not only are toys being sexualized, but children's television shows are teaching fewer morals and giving more fashion tips. Let me remind you, these shows target three to six year olds. In a show featuring a fairy named Rainbow Bright, the characters wear revealing clothing and some might say they speak in seductive tones.

Why are the toy manufacturing companies and the media targeting children? The thin ideal in our society has gone so far as to make six year olds feel fat. They see the stereotypes that fat equals lazy, stupid, and a person with no friends and put themselves in that position. Everywhere you look the media points towards "thin and beautiful" people to be kind, popular, smart, everything that a "fat" person isn't. Thinness does not equal goodness.

To the parents out there and especially the mothers: don't ever call yourself or someone else fat, ugly, or stupid in front of your child. You have no idea how much those words can influence them. Help your children. Teach them how to be healthy, to exercise and to eat right, and don't ever let them think that if they aren't skinny they aren't worthy of your love.

I recently saw a commercial for the show Toddlers in Tiaras. There are some messed up people on that show. One of the mothers said that if you aren't pretty and skinny you won't go anywhere in life. My heart breaks for her daughter and for all the little girls on that show. And I pity the mothers because they probably are teaching their children what they were taught growing up. Is this what our society has come to? If you aren't pretty and perfect you're nothing?

Don't let your children believe the lies the media is feeding us. Don't let this be a lost generation.

Happy Holidays?? Pshh . . . Get Real!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Oh no! What did I just say?

Say it louder? Okay!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Yeah, that should do it.

You know what makes me mad? When people refuse to say "Merry Christmas" and replace it with "Happy Holidays." Who do you think you are to take CHRIST out of CHRISTmas? I mean, get real here. God sent His Son into the world to save YOU and you can't even say "Merry Christmas." How pathetic are you? God sent His Son to DIE for YOU! YOU are cleansed because God sent Jesus CHRIST. And that's why we call it CHRISTmas.

Do you get my point?

Prayers

“You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.” -G.K. Chesterton


This is how we should pray! All the time.

If Beauty Hurts, We're Doing It Wrong!

This is my favorite saying of the Beauty Re-Defined movement. Yes, it is a movement as much as abolition and suffrage were. If beauty hurts, we're doing it wrong. I think this has a lot to do with emotional pain as well as physical. If striving to look beautiful hurts us emotionally, if you're always thinking about how you look compared to her or what he is thinking about your appearance, then our thinking is wrong.

Too bad some people disagree! A man from Utah, who testifies as a Christian, wrote this letter against "inner beauty" verses "outer beauty."

The gist of the letter is against how women are turning towards inner beauty and not trying to look beautiful anymore. He wrote, "Some girls I know tell themselves it doesn't matter how they look because they're beautiful on the inside, and then they just . . . well, let themselves go."

The letter begins by claiming that you shouldn't be convinced that beauty on the inside is all you need and you shouldn't let this "hinder your quest to achieve your physical ideal." Try the media's physical ideals, which are impossible to achieve because everyone is photoshopped and whatnot. We are striving to be healthy! not to be perfect.

But it's not about forgetting our outward appearance. It's about embracing who we are and instead of picking what we hate about ourselves, we try to focus on what we love about our bodies. The writer of this letter said that focusing on inner beauty took away from taking care of our bodies. Lies! If we are happy with our bodies won't we want to take better care of them? For example, if you have something that you love, something you treasure, you aren't going to throw it around like garbage, you're going to take care of it and keep it beautiful.

Another accusation is that "for those who are still dating," if you're not taking care of yourself, well that's the reason you're not married! He goes on to say, "The right person will love you eventually, but it's your physical aspect that often catches the eye." You know what? I believe the right person will be attracted to you right away, flaws and all. You don't have to look like Barbie to be found attractive.

At the end of his letter, this gentlemen says that we should strive for "healthy improvement." What does that mean? Seriously, he was just telling us not to let ourselves go. Like I said before, if we feel beautiful we will want to be healthy.

I thought Beauty Re-Defined had an interesting response to this letter as well. They wrote, "We don't need any more reminders [of "physical ideals"]. What we need a reminder of is that our perceptions of beauty and ideal bodies - even healthy bodies - are skewed by forces that no other generation has had to deal with." We should take care of our bodies, but taking care or ourselves and being healthy are different than being crazy about our appearance.

1 Peter 3:3-4 says, "You're beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and find clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."

The problem with people thinking being beautiful is everything is that, well, first of all, there's a lot more to life than looking pretty. It doesn't last forever. Second, their ideas of beauty are so skewed by the media. Because of the invention of photoshop and cosmetic surgery and maybe even make-up, we don't know what true beauty is anymore. It's lost underneath the powder and behind the computer screen. It's forgotten behind the eyeliner and lipstick. We live in a society where if you're not perfect than you aren't anything. But remember, "You are capable of much more than being looked at" and "there's more to be than eye candy."

Taking Off The Mask

Lie: Society tells us that we have to stick to one social group. You are what you are. Jock. Prep. Band geek. Nerd. Art freak. Whatever. Everyone has a label.

Truth: It doesn't have to be this way.

Everyone has their group of friends. The ones who you are so close to, you share everything with them. I absolutely adore my group of friends. And since we're talking about labels, I might as well add that we might be known as the "Jesus Freaks," and that's perfectly fine with me.  

In high school especially, people tend to separate themselves into these groups and never look back. If you're in the "cool" crowd you can't talk to the band geeks and if you're a nerd you can't associate with the jocks. I know you're probably thinking "oh that's so cliche" but why would it be cliche if it weren't true? In my high school, if you're a show choir person you're like wayyy up on the totem pole. (Of course, I might be biased. I'm jealous of anyone who can sing and dance without falling on their face.)

I tried really hard to find some research on this but I couldn't. So this is just going to have to be my opinion: could social groups and clicks possibly lead to suicide? In the perspective of those on the outside looking in, so desperate to fit in and what do we do? We ignore them entirely. Maybe we're pressured into acting cool-er than we are, maybe we just don't care but we're still ignoring those who are searching for strength. Those on the inside looking out. Are they perhaps too pressured to be who their friends are? If they slip up they'll be shunned and no longer a part of the "in-crowd?"

Maybe that isn't true at all. Just a thought. 

Romans 12:3-7 says, "For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully."

It's so easy to get caught up on who you are based on what people tell you. But God clearly says that we are individuals for a purpose, each with our own talents, no one is better than the other. I think it's time to take off the mask and cross the social boundaries that we have set for ourselves. They only hinder us. When we all see each other as people loved by God, created by Him, then we can work together, successfully.