I'm Not Very Good at This, it Seems...

Hi! *waves* Sorry 'bout that.

So...guess I'm kind of late to the dance with the whole Benedict XVI resigning, but hey! I mean, it's just the first time in 500 years a pope has resigned, right? No biggie.

Kidding! I am still a little in shock about the whole thing. And reading posts like this:

http://www.taylormarshall.com/2013/02/did-blessed-virgin-ask-pope-benedict-to.html

And this:

http://www.taylormarshall.com/2013/02/st-malachy-prophecy-why-pope-benedict.html

are not exactly helping. However, we know that whatever happens, God will always take care of His Church. We also know that it might be a good idea to start saying a daily Rosary and/or going to weekly Confession/Daily Mass, yes? :D

In all seriousness though, I'm not sure what to think of the whole "prophecy of St. Malachy". But parts of it seem to coincide with the Fatima secrets, which I do believe in. Long story short, I'm still doing my research and will post whatever results I come up with. Or I might just post another couple links to what other people (who are smarter and more knowledgeable than I) are saying about all this stuff on their blogs.

As far as the papal conclave, it's really exciting! I remember watching the news channel on TV, before Pope Benedict XVI was elected, while everyone was waiting with bated breath for that white smoke to start rising. :D This is also a primary prayer intention at my house at the moment, because, being huge traditionalists that we are, we would rather not have a Cardinal such as Shoeborn or Oullet be elected. Just sayin'. Not that we believe either of these men would consciously harm the Church, but...they're not big fans of our Sacred Tradition and prefer (as in Shoeborn's case) to hold "balloon Masses":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67Lom28KSlg&feature=youtu.be

I rest my case.

(By the by, I know I'm going to be yelled at for the above comments, but I can't help it. Those are my opinions. I'd really rather not have them, but there you are.)

So! Exciting things are happening, peoples! Both in the great big world out there and at right here at home...I officially don't have to take the SAT again (I can't remember if I mentioned that in my previous post or not...and I'm too lazy to go back and check teehee), I have some very big scholarships I'm working on AND...I may or may not have met somebody in my classes this semester...:D

Ahem. So yes. I'm still alive and monitoring the happenings outside my little sphere of existence, however I am really busy. But I will try to post something once a week from now on. *nods solemnly* Now I need to go catch up on what everyone else is blogging about. ;)

OH! Also before I go, Happy Middle of Lent to you all! I know you're all enjoying it ever so much. ;) I also want to say that I'm reallyexcitedandjumpingupanddowninmychaireventhoughI'msittingbecausethisSaturdayis
myBirthday!!!!!!! :D

So yeah. That is all. ;)

~Grace

Soooooo...Happy New Year?

I AM STILL ALIVE!!

Ahem.

Now that we have that cleared up...;)

I am terribly sorry for not posting in...what? Over a month? Yeah. Unfortunately, nothing really exciting happened in that month for me to tell you a story about. Unless you want to hear my final SAT story...well, okay. You talked me into it.

(Actually this is going to be more of a rant on how low the standards of our public school system have slipped...consider yourself warned.)

So...I walk into the highschool -- which is about as big as 5 hotels smooshed together...just sayin' -- to find my fellow SAT-takers dressed to the nines in...pajamas. Seriously, guys? I know it's Saturday morning, but if I can drag myself out of bed and at least run a brush through my hair and put a pair of jeans on, so can you. And it's not even that early. Work with me, people!! :P

Now really, it went pretty smoothly, for the most part. Except none of the kids knew how to write in cursive. Or sign their name in cursive (what are they going to do when they have to sign important legal documents to, gee, I don't know...get a student loan for college? Buy a house? Get a car?), or bring their IDs with them when they left the room during the breaks. *headdesks* Plus, they were loud. And talking most of the time. Which is weird, because I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be. One of the guys was even making goat noises. I "kid" you not. (Hah! See what I did there? Ayyyyy?? :D)

But the one thing that made it really interesting was when one of the guys in my class got caught trying to use his cellphone. In the classroom. On the last section. Right before we were about to be let out. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

Do public-school kids have any concept of the "real-world"??? Please tell me this is just a fluke, because....I mean, really?? :P I mean, I'm sure most of them did fairly well on the SAT, and I'm not saying they're all idiots. Not by a long shot. But they have no concept of responsibility, or being an adult! I mean, the whole reason they're taking the SAT is so that they can get into a good college, get a good education, and be successful adults, right? Btw, I don't actually think that college guarantees you a successful career, but it doesn't hurt. Neither does learning a little responsibility and good work ethic.

Anyways, end of rant. If y'all have any interesting SAT stories, please feel free to comment and share! :D

As far as New Year's resolutions...I have a million and one things I want to do this year. Whether or not I actually get them done is another story. ;) But I do have three main ones:

1. Be less of a smart-mouth. I don't know if you have noticed or not, but I tend to try to make "clever" remarks without thinking about whether or not I'm going to hurt anybody. Sooooo that's one of the faults I have that I'm hoping to at least minimize this year. :)

2. Figure out long-term plans. Let's face it; I'm a teenage girl. Stability is not really my middle-name at the moment. But I do need to try to set out and solidify some plans I have for the next few years, at least. I'll keep you updated. ;)

3. Learn how to really pray. This is one that I should have been working on for awhile now, but I'm finally going to stop procrastinating about it and do it. Starting with at least one rosary and one holy hour per week, plus reading St. Theresa's The Interior Castle. We'll see how it goes. Pray for me, haha. :)

So there you have it! Pretty much my life between Christmas and present! Except for my college classes this semester, but I'll save that for the next post...hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say next time! ;)

Happy New Year, y'all!

~Grace

My Post-Election Post

Since it seems to be the thing to do this morning. ;-)

(By the by, did any of you ever feel like this? *points to above image*)

I was talking to a friend last week who said (mockingly) that if the right candidate wins the election, next Sunday's homily will be about Heaven, joy, peace, love, etc. And if the wrong candidate wins, the homily will be about Purgatory.

I'm not sure if he was right or not, but I know it's feeling a little bit like Purgatory. And maybe that's a good thing. A lot of the bloggers I've been following this morning are writing encouraging, stick-it-out posts, and some of them are even quoting "Batman":

"I'm not the hero Gotham City wants...I'm the hero Gotham City deserves..."

Does this apply to our re-elected President? It makes sense. With rampant "tolerance" of homosexuality, divorce, atheism/agnosticism, promiscuity among teens and young adults, and the blood of millions upon millions of murdered children on our hands, who did we expect God to give us? God is a God of mercy, but He is also a God of justice. That's why we have things like Purgatory and Confession. It's so that God (in His infinite mercy and patience) can purify us. But that mercy is only granted when we get down on our knees and beg for it with everything we have.

And right now America is anywhere but on her knees. I once read something by a blogger who said her grandmother used to tell her that you will either get on your knees willingly, or God will put His hand on your head and force you to them.

Well.

We're being forced to our knees right now. And we'd better buckle up, because we haven't hit the ground yet -- not by a long shot. But this is what we need to turn ourselves around because we have shown time and again that we will not repent. And God will not suffer us to continue to affront Him to His Face. As faithful Catholics, all we can do is continue to keep going to Mass as often as possible, try to educate others about the Faith, and pray really, really hard, especially for our priests, bishops, Cardinals, and most importantly the Holy Father. We need to pray that they will recognize the state of the Church and batten down the hatches, and work harder at truly catechizing Catholics.

Get ready. Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

~Grace

Mr. Smith goes to Washington

Back in 1939, two years before WWII, Frank Capra directed a movie called "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." It starred James Stewart as the country-bumpkin-suddenly-become-junior-senator Jefferson Smith.

He was "ghost-appointed" junior senator by a man named Taylor, the infamous mastermind behind the political machine that runs half of the Senate, including Jeff's idol and fellow state Senator, Mr. Joe Pain.

Mr. Smith knows next to nothing about the political game, which is why he was appointed in the first place: to be a stooge for Taylor and his lackeys. To be an extra vote for whatever they want to be passed.

The first thing Mr. Smith does when he eventually gets to Washington is take tour. He's so much in awe of the history and the great men surrounding him that he can barely remember his own name. But he soon learns of a bill being presented to the senate which contains a graft (an illegal profit). In the face of this political corruption, one would think a man so obviously out of his league would just keep his mouth shut and go along with it, because after all, what does he know?

He doesn't. He gets up in front of the entire Senate and tries to expose the Taylor Machine for what it is. But Senator Pain, in a panic that his political career will be destroyed if his part in the bill comes out, instead paints Jeff as a criminal, and nearly forces him out of the Senate. But at the last moment, Jeff takes advantage of a rule allowing him to stay on the floor as long as he stays on his feet and keeps talking without stopping for a moment other than to take questions.

He does this for almost 24 hours straight, because he believes that the people from his state will support him and bring forth evidence against the Taylor Machine. In the end they do, but it is Jeff's amazing struggle against the powers that be in the American government that makes the movie completely amazing. His willingness to stand up even when everyone else is telling him to sit down because he can never win. They're telling him the battle is lost. But as he says several times in the movie: "The only causes worth fighting for are the ones that are lost." If you haven't seen this movie before, PLEASE go watch it right now. It is one of the best movies ever.

And it is extremely fitting for the election being held tomorrow. Mitt Romney is far from a country bumpkin, but Obama could have been cast as Taylor in a remake of the movie.

And in the face of this seemingly insuperable obstacle that is the Obama Machine, one wonders (especially as a first-time-voter like myself) if your vote will count for anything. You wonder if it will make any difference in the long run. Sure, you're going to vote anyway, but at the same time you're filled with a despair and a horrible knowledge that in spite of your vote, Obama will win anyway.

But that's not the way it works. Firstly, God will know which way you voted, and that will be recorded for eternity.

Secondly, your vote matters because you voted. At first this may seem kind of stupidly self-evident, but what I mean is that it's the fact that you voted that counts. It's the fact that you cared enough to vote. It's the fact that you are fighting. It's the fact that you are trying your best, and that's the best you can do.

And it's the fact that America is millions of "you's" who will get up in the morning and vote for the right person, no matter how many people in the media, or their parish, or their family are telling them to sit back down, to shut up, and to just go along with it because we are country bumpkins and we couldn't possibly understand.

But they're wrong. And we will stand up and have our say, even if we have to keep standing and talking for another four years. Because everyone has labeled our cause as lost. And there are no causes more worth fighting for than those that are lost.

~Grace

Side Effects May Harm Some Family Members

In today's culture it seems to be a truth universally accepted that young women have to go to college, and afterwards get career jobs that will enable them to rise to positions of power in society, because women are just as capable of running a successful business as men are.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying that women can't run a business just as well as men. I'm not saying that they can. And I'm not saying that women shouldn't go to college. I think the fact that women are able to go to college and get as much education as they want is a wonderful thing. All I want to talk about in this post is the repercussions a working mom's career has on her family.

Women are designed to have children, and to raise them. That is why we are more emotional, nurturing, and protective than men. We are better equipped to deal with day-to-day family life than men are. That is where our main skill set lies. Traditionally, men were the bread-winners of the family, and the women were the caretakers of the home and educators of the children. Up until the Industrial Revolution, that is (but the Industrial Revolution is a post for another day).

But in our "modern-thinking", feminist-idealogy-driven times, it is commendable for women to find work right out of college. Career jobs, at that. It is unthinkable to most of society that any woman would not want a career job, or would not consider marriage to be a career job (by the way, ask any married gal you know if they would consider marriage and/or raising a family to be a full-time job. I bet you I can tell you what their answer will be).

But in all this pressure to get high-paying, successful jobs, we tend to lose sight of something much more important. We as women have the unique gift of being able to  have children, and to raise and educate them much better than a man could. We are the ones who hold the family together.

I don't know how many times I have heard priests give homilies on the different roles of family members. I'm sure you've all heard some variation of this idea: the father is the "head" of the family, the one who makes the decisions and provides for the rest of the "body" that is the family. And the mother is the "heart" of the family, the caretaker and nurturer. The mother is the one who the kids go to when they are having trouble. She is the one who resolves sibling squabbles. She is the one the kids go to when they want something, and then the mom goes to the dad, because she is the one who can soften him up. She is the one who will sit and listen for the next forty-five minutes while the five-year-old retells his latest dream that doesn't even really make sense because he tells it in such a mixed-up, confusing way that makes you wonder if he even really understands what he's saying. She's the one who has the patience to explain that geometry problem to her highschooler over and over and over again, yea, even unto dinner time when the rest of the children are ravenously hungry so that they threaten to eat each other, and yet there is no food on the table. And she is the one who then takes all the children out to McDonalds, amid much cheering and vows of eternal love and gratitude from the backseat.

But we all know what happens if you take the heart out of the body. The body dies. The same principle applies to the family. If you take the mom out of the family life, away from the duties which should be hers, there is no one to fill the vacuum that is left and the family grows more and more distant from each other. In a sense, it dies.

This is what being a working mom means. And you may be thinking "but Grace, you're being paranoid. Now really, you're taking this too seriously."

Am I? Take a step back for a minute and look around. How many problems infect our society today? How many could be prevented if all homes had a good mother in them, taking care of them? People always talk about the ill-effects of not having a father around the house. But nobody ever mentions the harm that comes to a family without a mother.

I have been able to observe the children that come from a family where the mom is "stay-at-home", and I have been able to observe children that come from a family where the mom goes to work everyday. And the differences in the way the children interact not only with their siblings, but the way they view the world is very different, and not so much for the better.

I'm may not be a psychology expert, and I don't pretend to know each different family's situation when it comes to needing the extra income. And I'm not saying that a mom can't work from home, if that's what she wants to do. All I'm saying is my observations lead me to the conclusion that a family where the mom is present and accessible to her spouse and children at any and all times is a much happier and much more prosperous family.

If y'all have any thoughts on this subject, I'd love to hear 'em! :D

~Grace

*throws confetti around the room*

I have been accepted at FisherMore as a part-time online student!! And I enrolled in Rhetoric, and got my books, and my syllabus, and tested my sound/video for Webex (the classroom provider...Mae, you oughta remember that from Latin, eh?? ;)), and I'm just so darn excited!!!!

Classes start next Wednesday (well my class, anyways...everything else starts Monday), and this course is going to be sooo rigorous. So prayers are appreciated. ;D

College! I love college! Drinks for everyone! :D

~Grace

Silly Me...

So I've been waiting to post until I have a good hour or so to myself.

Hah.

Hahaha.

*rolls on floor giggling until tears stream down her face*

*recovers*

You'd think I'd know better by now, wouldn't you?

Anyways. SO much has happened in the past week or so (or at least it seems that way to me) that maybe I do have a good excuse after all.

First of all, I am starting an ACT/SAT essay writing class courtesy of BraveWriter and Ms. Julie Bogart. I've used some of her material in the past, so I'm really looking forward to the class. I've been feeling in need of something to help me organize my thoughts and write them out clearly and coherently (as perhaps you might have been able to tell).

Second, college is *sigh* once more in "should-I-stay-or-should-I-go?" limbo. And I'll tell you why.

I recently received a part-time-job offer from a lady who goes to our church, whose son has a chromosomal abnormality called Duplicate 15q, or "Dupe-15q." Its side effects include sensory issues, problems with vision, hearing, and speech, and sometimes seizure disorders. And this tough little guy has it all. A friend of mine works has been working with him part-time for a couple years now, and the stories she tells me about him just make me want to cry, he sounds like such a sweetie! I'm so so so so so so excited to be given the opportunity to work with him, and it looks like it's a done-deal! There's only a little bit of paperwork to fill out. *jumps around excitedly*

However...

(In the sentences following I'm probably going to sound really selfish...I apologize sincerely.)

Since I'm now taking on two part-time jobs, it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to finish school when I was planning (what is that saying? Man plans and God laughs?), simply because I won't have enough time, between work and piano and family stuff.

I was talking all of this over with my mom the other day when I first got this offer from Mrs. P., and having extremely mixed emotions. I was thrilled to think that I might be able to work with Little Guy (that'll be his nickname), but at the same time I was so frustrated because I had thought I was going to be able to finish up highschool over this summer/early fall, take the SAT, and start applying to colleges so that I could leave home fall 2013.

My mother, ever the sensible one (love you Momma!), was trying to tell me that I didn't necessarily need to leave for college next year, and was even going so far as to tell me I could call it a "gap-year", if it made me feel better.

Well it didn't.

Fortunately, (for both my poor mother and myself), I had planned to go to confession and Mass that evening anyway, so I told myself if I had a little extra time in before Mass I would sit down and pray about it and see if that helped any.

As it turned out, I was the only one in line for confession, so I had a good hour and a half before Mass started. So after confession I sat down in a corner and said my penance, which was to read a card full of quotes from St. Padre Pio and Blessed Mother Teresa. My eyes immediately fell on a quote from Mother Teresa, admonishing those who don't trust in God's Will and His plan for us, even if it's something completely different from what we intended.

I couldn't help it.

I started crying. Right there in the church.

Luckily there weren't very many people there yet, other than a few elderly ladies who were praying the rosary.

Even Mother Teresa was telling me to get over myself. After I managed to pull myself together I asked that God would give me some sign as to what His plan was, because I was ready to listen now. It wasn't long before I got my answer.

In his homily, Father talked about Mary, and how we should all take her for our role model for accepting God's Will, no matter what He throws at us, and no matter when He sends us something we need to be willing to say "Yes Lord," and do it right then and there. Mary's obedience was all about trusting that God had a bigger and better plan for her, even when she couldn't tell where it would take her and the Baby Jesus.

It couldn't really have been more plain if He had put it up on a billboard with my name on it. And when I got home I emailed Mrs. P and told her I would accept the job.

The funny thing is, the family I've been working for during the past two years is starting therapy for their youngest girl, because we suspect some learning disability, or delay. And now I get this job-offer to work with another child with special needs.

Oh! And if the homily/quote signs were not enough, God really made sure I was getting the message...

This past Sunday I got ANOTHER part-time-job offer from another family in our homeschooling group who just had a baby with Down's Syndrome, and they're looking for an aid to help take care of him.

I'm starting to see a trend here...

I'm just wondering if there's any particular reason He wants me to know how to work with special needs children. Perhaps I'm meant to be an occupational therapist? I always thought it would be neat to work with the disabled. Or maybe someday one of my own children will be special needs. I don't know.

What I do know is I'm extremely grateful for the kick in the pants from Mother Teresa, and the billboard homily courtesy of Father, and all the job offers.

And I also know that I'll think of that those two things whenever I feel my inner-control-freak starting to kick in.

~Grace