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dr4cking · 3 years

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BIRTHDAY SMUT

Birthday Boy.

masterlist taglist

draco malfoy x reader | smut | fluff |

a/n : we love spoiling our ferret boy and thank you for requesting! <3

y/n look up at the clock hanging on her bedroom wall. its 12am sharp, confirming the next date has arrived, which means that it's June 5 now.

she was feeling excited and nervous as she finishes wrapping up the present that she will give to one of her best friends, draco malfoy.

they had been best friends for long years, it started in 2nd year and became inseparable since then and now they both are already graduated.

as they grew up they often flirted with each other, always got jealous when the other see another person.

they both knew that they always wanted to be 'more'. the sexual tension between the two is becoming too hard to ignore, but they were too scared to ruin their friendship.

she stood in front of her mirror, taking the last look at herself. she decided to dress up, it was a special day after all.

she wore a dark green satin dress because draco's favorite color is green and paired it up with silver heels. she had decided to put black lingerie underneath her dress incase 'it' happens.

she had asked her parents to let her stay in malfoy manor today so she can celebrate draco's birthday. and because their parents know each other too, they let her stay there.

she swishes her wand and in a second she was apparated to malfoy manor hall, it was really dark but she still managed to found his bedroom, she knocks softly on his door not wanting to wake his parents.

the door opened, revealing the blonde-haired guy who stood straightly with a genuine smile on his face.

draco is wearing his usual black suit which always making him look hotter than he already is.

she feels her heart will going to jump out of its place at any second when she cant take her eyes off of him.

"you came," he said as he greeted and taking her hand in his guiding her in. they both sit at the edge of his bed.

"of course, i wouldnt miss my best friend's birthday, making sure i was the first celebrating your birthday." she laughed softly making draco chuckle.

"you look so beautiful in that dress, love. green really suits you.”

draco once again take her hand in his and brought it to his lips and kiss it, making her cheeks heated at his action and the nickname he just called her.

"here, happy birthday draco." she placed the gift in his hand.

his eyes lit up and he immediately opens it, making y/n getting more nervous waiting for his reaction.

"oh merlin! this is so cool y/n!! i love it so much!"

he took out the black ring that had a snake symbol carved in it from its place and put it on his ring finger, taking a look and admiring it.

"i’m so glad you like it, draco! i wasnt sure what to get you then i remembered you've been looking at this ring when we passed the store last week"

"thank you so much y/n!! you dont have to do this i appreciate it so much, you're the best thing that ever happened to me, love."

he pulls her by her waist and kisses her forehead, thanking her.

no one has ever treated him like the way she does and he's so grateful to have someone like her in his life.

"aww stop it draco or i will cry in front of you now" she laughs, nudging his elbow making him laughs too but he suddenly stopped and looking at his lap.

"whats wrong, dray? are you okay? did i do something wrong?" she asks worriedly tilting his chin making him looking up at her.

"i'm afraid that i have to say this, y/n..” he takes a big sigh looking into her eyes.

“what is it? tell me i wont judge, draco”

“i- i think i’m in love with you, y/n. no! i know that i am in love with you, i have always been."

he inhales deeply and broke the eye contact, looking anywhere but her eyes, knowing his sudden confession would make him lost her this instant.

"draco, look at me" y/n said as she tilts his chin again making him look at her.

"oh god.. i’m sorry y/n i shouldnt have said that! i was just- its just i- i cant hold it anymore y/n. i need to get this out of my chest and now look, i just ruined us"

"oh draco.. you're not ruining anything, quite the opposite actually, you just made the right move, i'm in love with you too, idiot, always have been."

she chuckles and cupped his face in her hands, pressing both of their foreheads, looking at each other causing a shy smile to appear back on his face.

he tilted his head and wasting no time to smashed his lips on hers, kissing her passionately, showing her how much he loves her which she gladly returned with the same passion.

he put one of his hands on her throat and the other on her waist pulling her closer to him, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tugged softly on his hair making him moan into the kisses.

as the kiss turning into a full makeout, he lays her down to his bed, resting both of his hands on the side of her head still kissing her hungrily.

his suit already thrown out on the floor and her heels too. she snapped back to reality and realizing what is gonna happen then flipping their position over and now she is on top of him straddling him.

"let me do all the work draco, today is all about you, wanna make this special and a night to remember, let me make you feel good, love."

she slowly grinding against him after earning eager nods from him, both of them let out a moan at the feeling.

then she gets down and started to unbuckle his belt, kissing his growing tent and palming him through his trousers causing him to squirmed under her touch.

getting excited she pulls his trousers and boxers down, throwing them somewhere as draco's hard swollen cock sprang free and standing tall in front of her, begging for attention.

she moans at the pretty sight, licking her lips, craving to feel him. she runs her fingers around him and placing soft kisses on his inner thighs before going up to the part he needed the most.

draco let out a throaty groan when y/n finally take his hard cock in her hands pumping him, his body jolted out as he feels y/n kitten lick his tip, his hand founding its way to her hair.

she looks up to him with innocent eyes who already watching her movements, she smiles and took his balls in her mouth making draco instantly moan her name, his other hand gripped on the sheets.

then she pulls out to rest her jaw and lick a straight line on his cock from the base to the tip then going all in, his cock feels so heavy and full in her mouth, draco is already a moaning mess.

"fuck y/n- feels so g-good.." her name repeatedly left his lips like a prayer as he keeps moaning her.

she bobbed her head up and down at a steady pace, hollowing her cheeks and pulling draco deeper each time she suck him.

"yes y/n, just like that, fuck.. feels so fucking good"

she swirls her tongue around his length, sucking on his tip and taking him back inside her mouth again, her hand pumping the rest of his cock that she couldnt fit in her mouth at the same pace making sure that part got pleasures too.

he bucked his hips accidentally making her gagged and choked out, saliva dripping off her mouth and eyes watering.

"shit i’m sorry y/n!" he said as he watches her struggling.

"do that again, draco."

y/n replied as she took him back inside her mouth, and hand still stroking his cock. draco groaned and buck his hips again, making her gagged and moaning at the same time, the vibration sending him near to his high.

she noticed his cock twitched in her mouth and begin to suck faster and deeper, her hand move to his balls and massaging them helping him reach his high.

he let out a low scream of her name as he shots his warm liquids down to her throat, his legs are shaking. y/n moaned and pulls him out showing draco that she swallowed all of his cum. he smirked and mutters a 'good girl' to her.

"how was it, draco?" she asks him smirking as she slowly sat up and straddling him again.

"fuck.. you have no idea y/n.. that was amazing, the best i ever had" he replied as he still catching his breath.

she smiles at him and takes off her dress slowly showing draco her black lingerie. his pupils widened at the view in front of him.

"god y/n.. you are insanely gorgeous, you look so hot in this lingerie, darling. are you preparing all of this for me? planning all of this cause you know this is going to happen, yeah?"

his hands are now roaming around her body, admiring her in every way he could. she blushes and nodded, taking her lingerie off of her showing draco her full body making him embarrassingly moaned at the view.

she starts grinding her now bare cunt on his still hard cock, earning a soft whimper from the boy under her. his hands instantly gripped her hips helping her grinding faster, her wetness now coating his cock.

"now enjoy the ride, mr. malfoy" she said as she lifts her body and pumps his cock lining his tip against her lubricating it with her juices making both of them groaning at the sensation.

she sunk down on his cock, filling her up in a perfect way. its like their bodies fit together and were made for each other.

they’re moaning each other as draco is fully inside her. she paused and take a few seconds to adjust to his size.

"mhm.. fuck- you're so big draco.. fill me up so good inside"

she starts bouncing up and down, resting her hands on draco's chest as she picks up her pace, throwing her head back and screwing her eyes shut in pleasure.

"you're so tight y/n, wrapping my cock so tight, taking me so well" draco praises between his moans, his hands gripped harder on her hips helping her bouncing faster.

"do you like how i ride you, dray?" she leaned into his ear, blowing her hot breath and biting his earlobe making him shuddered.

"y- yes mommy" draco's breath hitched as y/n suddenly going faster, her walls now hugging his cock very tight.

she let out a groan hearing draco called her 'mommy'.

placing her lips on his jawline, licking it then going down to his neck, sucking hard as she found his sweet spot causing draco to moan his raspy voice into her ear, turning her even more.

y/n starts to give him her lovebites and marking him as hers sending butterflies to his stomach.

she put her hand on his throat, choking him lightly while her other hand toying with his nipple, making draco whine. pulling her closer to him and captured her lips on his to muffle his moans.

she broke the kiss and screaming his name out loud as his cock nearly brushing her cervix and hitting her g-spot.

"shit.. you feel so good inside me dray"

she rolled her hips faster on his cock, her tits bouncing up and down in front of him and he caught her nipple in his mouth and buried his face on her breasts, enjoying the warmness.

"ah- you feel so good too, fuck- never felt this good mommy"

his breath got stuck and he feels his cock twitched inside her indicating both of them that he was close, y/n seems close too as she bites her lips feeling the coil in her stomach tightened.

"cum for mommy, baby boy"

y/n rolls her hips and bouncing faster, tightening her grip on his throat.

and that was it for draco, he moans her name out loud not caring if someone might hear as he spilled his cum inside, filling her to the brim, ropes of his warm cum shooting inside her.

y/n cant help but cum all over his cock at the feeling of his cum shooting inside her nonstop, her walls clenching and squeezing hard on him.

both of them are a mess, legs shaking, vision blurry as they were on cloud nine, she rolled her hips lazily to ride out their orgasms before collapsing on top of draco, both panting heavily.

"fuck you have no idea how long i've been wanting to do that, love" draco said softly as he caressing her cheeks pulling her in for a sweet loving kiss.

"happy birthday, draco." y/n broke the kiss smiling at him tiredly, giving lovely kisses all over his face.

"best birthday ever, thank you my love for everything. i love you so much..” he kissed her lips one more time.

“i love you so much too, dray.”

those were the last words they spoke before both of them drifted off to sleep with a smile on their faces.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

tagging : @dracoscum @hellounicorn @onyourgoddamnleft @whoreforgeorgeandfred @turn-to-page-394-please @underappreciated-spoon-321 @youreso-golden @silverdelirium @littlemissnoname13 @dracmalf0y-dm @f4iryluvy @starstruckgranger @lieswithoutfairytales @dlmmdl @yiamalfoy @black-repunzel99 @rylynn-m @slythermuf @acciodignity @i-love-scott-mccall @maybesandohnos @yvonnearce22 @arzfia @alexthealexthealex @seriouslyinlove

#draco malfoy #draco malfoy smut #draco malfoy x reader #draco malfoy x y/n #draco malfoy x you #draco oneshot #draco fanfiction #draco imagine #draco smut #draco lucius malfoy #draco x reader #draco x y/n #draco x you #draco malfoy fluff #draco malfoy angst #harry potter

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sandracarroll · 4 years

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A L L I S O N C L O V E R S A N D R A C A R R O L L . twenty-two teamaker. chicago, il. psychedelics/coke dealer. tramp. dropped angel.

cw: maternal death, sexual coercion, frequent drug mentions.

“SANDY CARROLL” --- formerly known as allison clover --- grew up in the underbelly of chicago, raised by a fatally over-protective single mother, who tried to shield her daughter from the grit and grime that covered every square inch of their community.

as a child, allison was kept busy at all costs, distracted by a wallpapering of catholicism from the influence of her peers and the sordid history of her family. she was brought up in the church; she socialized primarily within the church’s community, she played on the church’s softball team, she participated in the church’s charity events and she helped organize the church’s fundraisers.

the clovers ran an online business selling homemade incense, candles, and teabags from herbs and spices grown right in their apartment. it was just enough to help keep the lights on when her mother’s job at the plant nursery couldn’t cut it. this is to say: a young, naive allison wouldn’t have much in realm of inheritance when she would need it.

shortly after ally’s 18th birthday, her mother was killed in an assault.

gang initiation. body mutilated. her teenage daughter had to identify the corpse.

the tragedy shattered allison’s eden. she woke up to the nihilistic nature of the world, in which good people can die with no rhyme or reason. it showed her the true nature of the modern christian and their shortcomings in practicing what they preach. in the wake of ms. clover, the church community offered allison their prayers and platitudes, but no one in their impoverished community had a dime to spare or room on their couches when allison needed a place to stay. every bystander assumed someone else would step up to take care of her.

emotionally distraught and disappointed in her paper thin support system, ally stopped sticking around after mass and isolated herself from the community, eventually opting not to attend altogether.

the scraps of wealth she had left after paying for a catholic funeral would not help her afford the rent. her underwhelming resume would not be enough to get her a job to support herself. with too much grief to handle working two minimum-wage gigs--- with her mother deeply estranged from the rest of their family--- with her long history of being isolated from her neighbors--- she had nowhere to turn when she was evicted.

her naivete and lack of options paved allison’s way to falling in with a bad crowd. her first night at a local shelter, she was recognized outside by a shaggy boy from her graduating class. immediately trusting, she opened up to him about her situation and vulnerability, and he was all too quick to offer her a place to stay until she got back on her feet. she never stopped to question his character or intentions.

she was fast to fall in with the boy and his band of delinquents, which she would later understand to be a gang deeply involved in several webs of drug trafficking in the city. her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared to notice red flags, and her gullibility made it easy for the kids to take advantage of her on the grounds of offering her bedrooms to stay in and spotting her meals in her hard time. when offerings of basic human necessities turned into talking her into smoking with them and bringing her along to parties, it wasn’t hard for them to pressure her into using her inexperienced body to show appreciation for their hospitality.

catholic guilt went head-to-head with disillusioned catholic angst, both raging inside her head with feelings of physical violation she didn’t have the wisdom to identify. in the midst of the chaos, she developed a taste for the escapism. she preferred to live in the haze of inebriation and work out her conflicts of spirituality with mushrooms rather than face her situation or her grief. but she didn’t realize she was running up a tab with her friends.

from a peer’s perspective, she picked up on their culture fast. learned the slang and the technique. gave off the impression of someone who knew what she was getting into when they started sending her to drop off and pick up at college campuses, and when she was smoking herself into debts she’d never be able to repay.

after ignoring the scarier and grittier aspects of the new friends she’d made for a year, and then upsetting them when she started avoiding sex— depriving her friends of their payment— things came to a head after a traumatic trip on DMT, a vision of her disappointed mother sent her into a serious crisis of faith and a fear that her sins were becoming unforgivable, which prompted her choice to branch out to people other than the dealers she was wasting her youth with.

when the ghouls started getting insulted by her pulling away, one of her lovers let her know that she still owed them for all that they had provided for her, and when she stood her ground and put a lock on what they wanted, he told her she owed them at least $4,000 for their troubles before they would let her scurry away.

in a cold sweat for finding that kind of money in the near future and feeling a serious threat to her safety at the mercy of a gang, she opted instead to commit one last sin in the form of stealing a suitcase and backpack of drugs from the trap house and taking a bus as far out of illinois as she could go.

she started going by the new name SANDRA CARROLL, and planned to keep moving and sell the stash of psychedelics to keep her afloat until she could start using her legal name again and get a law-abiding job. she tried to go to hipster bars and college parties, looking for less dangerous people to pick her up as a sugar baby and give her a couch to sleep on until she was far enough and emotionally stable enough to take care of herself.

the panic attacks and paranoia made it hard for her to nail a trustworthy hookup, but she found a way to survive by couch surfing at a state university in kentucky. the low threat level and high libido of clients on a college campus makes it easier for sandra to deal, especially to inexperienced freshmen who were too insecure about playing it cool to ask questions when she hiked up her selling prices. it was a perfect environment hustle free food and beds to sleep in, and she could have stayed afloat there for long enough to let her trail run cold, find a new social circle, and eventually even heal.

that is, until she spotted one of the gang members looking for her at a party.

sandy wound up packing up her things that night to flee to a remote place she’d heard about, in the countryside of north carolina, serene and inexpensive, far away from signals or surveillance, in a quaint little camp town called wrenbury.

(( TL;DR: sheltered church girl is ill-prepared and too naive to survive on her own when her mother dies unexpectedly; she falls in with a gang and loses control of her expenses and her body; steals an enormous stash of cocaine and psychedelic drugs and flees chicago, going by a false name and dealing to stay just barely afloat. spent the last year dorm-surfing on a college campus before coming to wrenbury. lives in fear of her ex and his gang who are still looking for her. haunted by the specter of her mother, imagining she is devastated to see how far her harlot daughter has fallen from grace. ))

> PERSONALITY / FAST FACTS.

pleasant. gentle. hazy. airy. strange. erratic. passive. flighty. compassionate, but unreliable.

the usual refrain you’ll hear is, “SHE’S NOT ‘ALL THERE.’” sandra mostly comes across as dreamy or dazed out. you might assume that extreme levels of stress and substance abuse have fried her brain, and she might agree with you, but don’t be so sure. there is a part of her that prefers to buy into that story and assure herself that she’s too disconnected with reality to process it. and she’s willing to stay as high as a hot air balloon to make it convincing.

she zones in and out during conversation, absent-mindedly wanders into places she shouldn’t be while lost in thought, and tends to lose track of time or forget important things, like curfews or notices of restricted areas. she has a mind that can muse a mile a minute, and she tries to keep it busy with innocuous thought tangents about what type of flower a person would be, rather than focusing to what the person tells her about the latest murder, for fear of ruining her vibes and falling into a panicked spiral.

she grows flowers, spices, and herbal plants all over her cabin, taking advantage of the rustic life to relive her childhood of making homemade teas and incense. she has yet to ask if marnie and regina mind all of the aromas and dirt she brings into their common area.

she views sex as something that’s casually transactional. might get confused or even suspicious if you do her a favor without accepting a lay in return.

wrenbury and its glitching borders have fanned the flame of her lack of faith in her own sanity, and made her unsure of what to believe with regards to the killers. she tries to take the word of the townspeople over her fellow campers.

the kind of person who you might see sway-dancing like a twin peaks character, stopping in her tracks to stare at a caterpillar on a tree trunk, sticking her hand out of a moving car’s window and surfing it in the breeze, or praying only when she thinks no one’s looking---and if you look close, you might catch a tear streaming down her face while she does so.

she still has a trace of purity to her that most people don’t pick up on until they outright find out about her religious upbringing. she comes off as an eccentric wallflower sitting in a circle with the stoners at a party; not unfriendly, but not the person to start the conversation; doesn’t instigate the orgy but she certainly keeps up. innocent but not inexperienced. very good at maintaining lucidity just long enough to escape any witnesses when she’s having a bad trip.

some sandy carroll pinterest boards created by myself and my friends: (i), (ii), (iii), (iv).

> WANTED CONNECTIONS.

friends, especially people with easygoing personalities. someone who can make her feel comfortable enough to have more sober conversations. people who buy from her (she’s currently carrying cocaine, ecstasy, and acid). enemies (could be on the grounds of sandy being twee, inconsiderate, or a liability). a disinterested person for her to have a crush on even though they wouldn’t notice if she was hacked up by one of the killers. a kinder person with a crush on her that she’ll never pick up on.

hookups~ sandy is pansexual and doesn’t realize that she’s been traumatized by years of sexual coercion, so she consents to a lot of bad ideas, and is still conditioned into the mindset that it’s something you use to pay gratitude to people for being nice to you.

someone she met from the college she was squatting at, especially if they’re a hippie who brought up wrenbury when they were having a stoned dorm room conversation about wanting to move off the grid.

someone, either from or hired by the gang, who was sent to track her down and collect her debt and is now trapped in wrenbury with her 👀 :GRIM_REAPER_EMOJI:

#finalgirlintro

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quillsareswords · 6 years

Text

Smoke | Prologue

SUMMARY: After vanishing for five years, you return to the place you once called home, to the people you once called family. We all carry our baggage in different ways, using different techniques to hide it. You just happen to hide it in cigarette smoke.

CHAPTER SUMMARY: Tim catches you slinking around Gotham and decides a reunion is in order.

SERIES WARNINGS: cigarette smoking; underage drinking; gang activity; violence; swearing; blood; self-hate

MASTER LISTS in BIO

You’ve always liked this building. The once pristine white bricks reach for the heavens with tall pillars and the detailed architecture only found in Victorian era stonework. You hadn’t appreciated this place until you wrote that paper on it in Freshman year of high school. The original building had burned, and in the midst of a fleeting economy boom, this glorious castle of a school was built.

Gotham Academy, reads the stiff, formal letters carved beneath the school crest.

And while you love the building, most of your memories here aren’t the fondest. Too many late nights spent clacking away on a keyboard, chugging coffee to keep yourself focused, and sprinting through halls to avoid yet another tardy and yet another detention.

There are good memories, too. Most of them involve the same person you’ve been avoiding for the past three weeks.

“(Y/N)?”

Your thoughts are broken by the familiar voice. You’re a little ashamed to say that it took you a moment to place it. Your head swivels to the driver’s side window, which you'd rolled down a few blocks back and forgot to put back up. You stub your cigarette in the ashtray occupying your cup holder and grin. “Tim Drake.”

He huffs an astonished laugh, stepping back as you pop open your door and step out. He dives in for a hug, which you readily accept. When he pulls back first, his eyes slide all over your face. “It’s been awhile. You look great!”

You return an enthusiastic grin. “Thanks, Timmy. You don’t look like a troll anymore either.” True to it, his black hair isn’t as shaggy as you remember and you swear his jawline has sharpened. His skin looks clearer, too, and his eyes aren’t carrying the bruise-purple bags you used to associate directly with him.

He laughs again, still looking every bit like he’s seen a ghost. His smile droops just enough for you to notice. “What brings you back to Gotham? Not that I’m not happy to see you, just–”

“It’s been a long time, I know.” You find yourself much less keen to make eye contact.

“Yeah,” he agrees slowly, “I’d say five years is a pretty long time.”

You take a deep breath. You really hadn’t had time to sort out what you were going to tell the Waynes - or if you were going to tell them, for that matter. You aren’t ready to face the guilt and the questions yet. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like you have a choice.

“I, uh– I moved back. A few weeks ago.” Your words are more guarded than you’d hoped them to sound. You are speaking to the world’s greatest detective, after all. He’s going to know you’re lying if you don’t get your act together. “Family stuff.”

Tim nods. His expression become solemn at the mention of your family, and you’re suddenly harshly reminded of the way you left things. “I never got the chance to tell you; I’m sorry about your parents. None of us knew until after you were gone.”

You nod, pushing away the sinking feeling in your chest. “I know. We didn’t want to tell many people. Small service, ya know?” You offer an awkward little smile.

“Right, of course.” He returns the gesture and shoves his hands in his pockets. “How’s your brother, anyway?”

“Oh, Nick’s fine, last we talked. He said he was going on a trip to the west coast, so I assume he’s still there,” you relate, thinking back and trying to remember when he said he’d be back. “I figured it would be best to get reacquainted with everything while he’s gone, so he’s not breathing down my neck the whole time,” you laugh.

He chuckles. “Older brother’s will do that.” They were never all that close, Tim and Nick, but they were friends enough that Nick would tag along to the Manor every once in awhile to hang out.

“How is everyone at the Manor? Anybody dead yet?” You don’t catch the joke quick enough to stop it. The moment it leaves your mouth, you’re sending prayers to every godly being you’ve ever heard of that it’s not in poor taste.

To your relief, Tim chuckles again. “No, not yet. We’ve a few close calls, though. Damian in particular.” Your immediate tensing doesn’t go unnoticed. Tim ponders for a moment while you nod, a little awkwardly, because you aren’t sure how to react anymore.

"You should come for dinner,” he says.

You suddenly feel faint. “Oh, no,” you try to sound polite, “I’m really busy this week, and I gotta get home to my, um, my cat.”

His eyebrow quirks. “Cat? Cats don’t care when or if you come home. It’s a cat.” He tilts his head. “Come on, it’ll be like old times. I’m sure Damian won't mind. I’m surprised you haven’t been over already.”

Your eyes meet the concrete. hands slip into your jean pockets. “I, um. . . I haven’t really talked to him . . . yet.”

He rolls his eyes. “Then he’ll be even happier for the surprise. Come on. Alfred is making Parmesan Alfredo. And Dick is in town! He’ll be so happy to see you!”

You sigh, deeply. “You aren’t going to let me say no, are you?” It’s a serious question, and it makes his smile drop almost completely.

“It’s the first time anyone has heard from you in five years. Nobody is gonna believe me otherwise.” He slaps a hand on your shoulder and grins once again. “Come on. I haven’t ridden in this rust bucket since graduation.” He nods toward your ‘97 Mustang fastback.

You scoff. “Rust bucket? She can still do one-thirty on the freeway.”

He laughs again. “I guess you’re just going to have to show me.”

If Tim’s the same as you left him, you’ve already lost the battle. You exhale anxieties and disguise it as a sigh. You nod an invitation to the other side of the car before ducking back into the driver’s seat, just as it starts to sprinkle.

Rain hails down on you as you race for the parking lot, weaving and ducking a desperate path through the sea of panicked people around you, all looking for the same thing you are. Your breath is hard and shallow, panic creeping up your spine while you shove people out of your way.

Every square inch of you is screaming, half of you desperate for the shelter of your car while the other half grew increasingly despondent, knowing you should have kept a better hold of his hand.

He’s still in there somewhere, you know it. But you also know that you can’t go back for him. You’re sprinting across concrete, listening to the rain pound against the ground and the fire roar behind you. You feel sick at the thought of leaving him here. Leaving him in a burning building, no less.

Your heart is hammering in your chest by the time you reach your car, yank the door open, and somehow manage to get the key in the slot on the first try. There are already tears in your eyes, knowing what comes next.

You slot the stickshift in drive, floor the gas pedal, and jump the curb between your isle and the one in front of you. You slam on the horn to keep civilians out of your way, because you know you don’t have time to swerve and break for them.

One last glance to the iron doors of the cargo entrance of the warehouse sends a jolt through your core. Damian stands on the curb, eyes wild, watching you tear out of the parking lot - completely unaware that it was the last time he’s see for a very long time.

#damian wayne imagine #damian wayne x reader #damian wayne

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gnat-nager · 6 years

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A little update!

What have I been up to these days... I haven’t updated y’all for a while and I hope you enjoy reading this update from me!

Life Group:

This summer I have the chance of leading a life group with three other leaders: Adrian, Guy, and John. It has been an interesting life group and we are called 111.5 Breadcast. The story behind this is based on Ecclesiastes 11:1-5, where we cast our bread onto the boat, hoping that our investment will bring glory to God. This life group, I was able to develop deeper relationships with certain younger brothers and I would have to say, it has been fruitful. The only contact I have with these younger brothers are within this life group and from the get-go, I was able to share deeply with them. Praise God for openness. I also really appreciate the other leaders that I am leading with, because we have different styles and also just different perspectives on how to approach certain things. Learning from them made me realized how incomplete I am and I need help from others. We are actually closing out summer life group soon, so pray that we can live out the vision of our name and boldly cast our bread even after life group ends.

Discipleship:

Speaking about discipling, during this summer, my focus is to teach the importance of being sustained by the word of God to the younger brothers. Many times when I meet up with brothers, I would just read a book in the Bible with them. There are various ways to disciple a person, but ultimately it must be from God. The word of God really provide a clear structure on how to live a lifestyle of worship and I must say, God has been working in many younger brothers in growing their heart for the word. I am thankful for this. Please pray for the younger generation that they will have a greater appetite for the word of God!

Aside from me discipling others, I am also being discipled by older brothers. I am super thankful for them... I don’t deserve their investment, but these older brothers are pouring out their heart to me. I’m a difficult person to put up with cause 1.) I get misunderstood easily 2.) I am stubborn at times and I revet back to my sins. However, these older brothers keep on pursing and chasing after me like Christ. Discipleship to the MAX!

Also, I am super thankful for a family that I’ve been getting closer here in Ann Arbor. Shout out to the Kim Family. I am thankful for Paul and Jennifer cause they are so welcoming... I still remember one day I helped out with building some furnitures for their kids. So backstory, Jennifer is expecting another baby soon and they bought two new beds for their children. I went out to help build the beds for them. During my time with them, they would listen to my struggles and the things that I’m currently going through. I really appreciate their honesty and something their brutal comment and giving me the reality check. I really felt like I was part of their family when I spent that day with them building the furnitures. Aside from the, one day, I really hope that I can do what they did for me, inviting younger people into my future family to build up man and woman of God.

Friendship:

This portion of my life has been an interesting area. I say this because many of my friends that stayed after graduation is leaving or have already left. I am thankful for the friends that I was able to make throughout my college career and it saddens me to see friends leave, but I am actually really excited for my friends moving onto the next stage of their lives and advancing the kingdom of God in their on calling as they move/ have already moved out of Ann Arbor. The lesson behind friendship is that, I don’t need to be with my friends physically, because they are always near to my heart. As cheesy as it sounds, distance cannot separate the friendships.

Church:

These past couple of weeks I realized how our church will never be perfect but it is being completed by Jesus. As I stay longer and longer in HMCC, I recognized there are things that need to be improved and it takes time for change to happen. Sometime, I find myself circling around over and over again on how our church need to change certain things (You can ask me about it if you want to know). While I find myself circling, I also find myself building up bitterness and ending up criticizing my church without actually making a change. As a result, I become the problem instead of building up my church. Recently, I was talking to an older brother and he mentioned to me about how, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” Ephesian 5:25b. I was challenged by him to actually love the church by acknowledging that Jesus is working within the church through the pastors and he loves the church more than anyone and more than me. Even though there are things to be improved, Jesus knows that and He is working through the messiness of His church. The lesson here for myself is to love the church as Christ loved the church by sacrificing himself on the cross. And I guess a prayer request here is that I can support the leaders that are running the church and the pastors with the best of my capability.

Excel:

For the month of July, I volunteered for a program run by HMCC, Excel, to teach international kids English. Most of the kids are from Japan, Korea or China, because their parents moved to the States to either do research or work here for a couple of years. This year I was able to help out with a tad bit of the administrative side of the program and taught a bunch of first graders. What stood out the most throughout the program was the concept of the Simple Gospel. It is crazy that even kids understand that they have sinned and done bad things in their lives and the only way to receive forgiveness is to acknowledge Jesus is the only one that can wipe us clean and give us a redeemed life. I think as we grow older and life gets harder and messier, we can complicate the idea of grace and love from God. However, it’s actually really simple that even kids understand this concept. The lesson here is that, the gospel is simple and I must be like a kid and accept his grace with a childlike faith.

Building Blocks:

This past month, I recently joined another ministry team within my church and that is Building Blocks. Pretty much, I’m a Sunday School teacher for kids! WOOO! I really love this team cause, I LOVE KIDS! Ugh. I’m super thankful that I get to invest into the younger generation by teaching them who God is. Please pray that I can be faithful with this team and I can develop deeper relationships with the kids!

School/Work:

So in the previous post, I have mentioned about being accepted into a Counseling program at Moody. Sadly, I won’t be starting or beginning this program due to financial reason, therefore I am currently job searching and trying to be responsible with my finance first! One thing I notice is that God has called me to Ann Arbor and to continue to invest in the church, but I also need to be responsible with other things like my finance in order for me to honor and glorify God’s calling for me here. So a prayer request here is that I will be diligent with my job search and also pray for providence from God!

Retreat:

This upcoming Sunday, I will be helping out a youth camp retreat at another church. I am actually quite excited for this cause I never really helped out at a youth camp before and working with teenagers. I have been trying to see how I can serve God outside of Harvest and when the opportunity came up, I hopped on it to see how God can use me in a different environment. I really want to work with kids and youth teenagers in the future. So, I really hope this chance can give me exposure with the calling that God has given me. I am also going to be helping out with worship by playing drums during my time at this retreat. But... Man, I haven’t touched the drums for like... 5 years and since practicing with the team, I am thankful for their patient with me. I think serving at another church made me realized how God is working not just in Ann Arbor, but he is working everywhere. Please pray that I can counsel the teenagers and the small group that I will be in charged of and also I can ministry to the staff. Also pray that I can lead others into worshipping the ALMIGHTY GOD.

Personal:

This summer has been a trying summer and a summer where I will always remember. He called me to surrender my own desires and chase after him and believe in His timing. Honestly speaking, it has been tough surrendering, but I believe God is the God is that for me and never against me. I think God is a funny God, as I looked back in my previous journal entries, I prayed many prayers about this one thing. I prayed, “God allow me to surrender and let you be in control of this area of my life.” Years later, I’m still surrendering and I’m still relinquishing my own plans to him. I realized surrendering is not a one time thing, but it’s a everyday thing. There are some days where I can say, “God, yes! I surrender because you are so much better than anything I desire.” and there are some days where I am dreading to surrender.

Although it is hard, please pray that I am wait patiently for God’s ultimate plan and pray that I can seek after God first and believe He is the God that is better.

Here are some pictures!

(Fourth of July Hot Pot Party with my Life Group and another sister Life Group! Funny story, I burnt myself while lighting up firework for people... I was hot.)

(Tiffany is on the left and Hannah is on the right. Hannah left and started working at Austin. Tiffany, well she’s stuck with me in Ann Arbor...)

(My Accountability Partner, Richard, He is a man of God.)

(This man is my first discipler at Harvest, and guess what. HE’S ENGAGED WITH THE LOVE OF THIS LIFE!)

(APPLE CLASS!)

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dailyaudiobible · 3 years

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03/28/2021 DAB Transcript

Deuteronomy 9:1-10:22, Luke 8:4-21, Psalms 69:19-36, Proverbs 12:2-3

Today is the 28th day of March welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I'm Brian it is a joy and a privilege and an honor and everything else good to be able to step out of everything and come around the Global Campfire and just find a place together with you as we allow the Scriptures to become a part of this new week. In Fact, lead us into this new week, this brand-new shiny sparkly week that we have to live into. And, wow, we won't finish this week until we have graduated into another month. If you can believe that we will finish the first quarter of the year during our week this week. Also, this is a big week. This is holy week. So, today is Palm Sunday, a day that we commemorate Jesus coming into Jerusalem riding on a colt, people putting palms down in front of Him, putting their cloaks down in front of Him and…and shouting hosanna. And of course, this Friday is Good Friday and a week from today is Easter Sunday. So, we find ourselves in the last week of the season of Lent, a season that we’ve talked about on a number of occasions, a season where we have yielded ourselves and opened ourselves and surrendered ourselves, a season of lament, a season of fasting, a season of giving everything to God that it might be rearranged and re-prioritized so that as we move toward resurrection Sunday all things are made new, and we begin…begin to live, truly from that place. So, yeah, we have…we’ve got plenty going on around here and in it all we will continue with our rhythm day by day step-by-step as we continue the journey through the Scriptures. So, we got a brand-new week. We’ll read from the Contemporary English Version this week picking up where we left off. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses is speaking of course. Moses is saying all the things that he needs to say and leaving nothing unspoken as he prepares to turn over leadership to Joshua. Deuteronomy chapters 9 and 10 today.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word. We thank You for this brand-new shiny sparkly week, this week of tremendous importance and meaning to what we believe, this holy week. And, so, we enter deeply into that story as we observe Palm Sunday today. And as we move through this week, we move through it with deep reverence. We have encountered the story of Your return to Jerusalem, and Your betrayal and Your final meal and Your arrest and trial and Your death and Your resurrection. And we have moved through that story and now we are putting ourselves in the story and doing all that we can to live within what it would be like. And, so, come Holy Spirit and draw us near as we embrace the story that brings us salvation. And even as we transition from this month into the next month, we recognize that all things are being made new. Help us to embrace this. As the seasons begin to change help us to embrace that You are making all things new and may we sense new life coming we pray in Your precious name. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Good morning family just heard Angel from California she called in and she said her ministry was praying on the Prayer Wall. So, she makes a concerted effort to go onto the Prayer Wall and…and pray for everyone and I just thought that was awesome. So, I just want to give a shout out to __ Angel from California. Just thank you so much for what you're doing and for your ministry. This is Delta Alpha Foxtrot calling from the central Texas front.

Hello DAB family today I'm calling in for prayer for something that I've been struggling with for quite some time. Before I gave my life to Christ and got serious about my walk with God I was feeling very depressed and I got into a lot of sexual sin and now I'm better mentally but for some reason I still keep going back to those things and I don't want to speak on a side goal or a lifestyle. I know that I cannot obtain freedom on my own and that only through Christ I can, but I truly feel lost. But God put the scripture on my heart James 5:16. It says confess with one another therefore your faults, your slips, your false steps, your offences, your sins and pray also for one another that you may be healed and restored to a spiritual tone of mind and heart. And that is really what I need right now. I didn't know who else to come to except for you. So, I'd really appreciate your prayers. I'm feeling very lost right now and I really need some help. Yeah. So I'd really appreciate that. Thank you.

Good morning DAB family this is Lady of Victory on Friday the 26th of March. How could we not Victoria Soldier pray for you when you have stood in the gap for all of us for so many years that this is just a no brainer? So, God we come to You on behalf of Your daughter our sister Victoria Soldier on behalf of her sister-in-law and nephew in Germany. God You see exactly what has taken place concerning her loved ones God and what is going on and how the enemy God is trying to steal kill and to destroy. God but You came that they might have life and that more abundantly. So, God as we stand in the gap for Victoria Soldier as she stands in the gap for her loved ones God, we ask that You would show Yourself mighty and strong. We ask that Your train will fill the temple where they are with Your glory, with Your power, with Your Majesty. God, we ask that You would defeat the enemy as You already have but that You would allow them to understand that the enemy is defeated and that no weapon formed against them shall prosper and every tongue that rises up against them they get to condemn. So, God whatever portal has been opened to allow the enemy to infiltrate their space we close it we bind it in the name of Jesus we tie it up we throw it back into the pit of hell from which it came and we loose the peace and the authority and the power of the almighty God in their lives. God we’re asking that You would do it for Your glory and for their good that they would see a victory that they would get their hope back that they would begin to put their trust in You. Victoria Soldier be encouraged sis. We love you.

God’s Smile this Dawn Rising I just wanted to call and thank you so much for reading that beautiful hymn. I've rewound it and played it and it has just spoken to my heart this morning. There's so much sadness in my family right now and your words just flowed over me knowing you come from a place of such pain, of physical pain. And your ministry of obedience and love and just walking the Christian walk and you are building me up my friend. So, thank you for your words. It was like soothing salve to my open wounds this morning and I just love you. I just…I love you and I love what you did for me this morning. I love this family, and this is why. Many Gods blessings. Bye.

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geordiesaffer-blog · 4 years

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Well, it's been a long time again, hasn't it? I feel very out of touch with you all after spending most of the past three weeks caring for my mom and helping her get stronger. But, today, I have one word for my life and that is grateful--I am truly filled with gratitude. Just two short months ago, mom was on the very edge of leaving this world. And, last Friday, guess what??? She was released / kicked out / graduated (whatever you want to call it) from hospice! Yes, she no longer was deemed ill enough to be under hospice care so they could no longer provide their services. The hospice nurse was so happy as she said that is not something she sees in her profession very often. She credited the tender loving care and support that mom received from her family with her truly miraculous recovery. I am so filled with gratitude that I get to spend more time with her and very hopeful that she'll live to see a few more family milestones--even at the ripe old age of 93!Therefore, my latest finish (which I began way before mom got so ill), is especially meaningful to me. I put the last stitches in it while sitting with her on her couch as we chatted away... This is "Heart Full Of Gratitude" by Cottage Garden Samplings. Stitched on 40 ct. pearl gray Newcastle with the suggested overdyed threads, this has to be my favorite one of the Songbird's Garden Series so far... The colors are just luscious, aren't they?"Heart Full of Gratitude" finishAnd the details... all so beautifully designed and thought out by Vinniey, the designer at Cottage Garden Samplings. Little pink houses (for you and me!)The handsome Dark-Eyed JuncoThe stunning shades of pink, mauve, and crimson in the rosesOne word: GRATITUDE!Can't wait to get this framed and hanging on my wall!Here are all three that I've stitched so far. I plan on stitching at least three more, framing each one with matching frames, and hanging them together.Wisdom, Love, and Gratitude--three traits we should all strive for in our lives.I've stitched my ornaments for May and June, too, but they're not finished yet so I'll wait to share them with you. I did finish a little gift for a friend on Instagram which I'm hoping she'll like. She likes red and samplers so I thought this little pillow fit the bill perfectly! This is from the book "Cross Stitch Antique Style Samplers" by Jane Greenoff and was stitched on 40 ct. Woodland Newcastle using DMC 221. I omitted the border and made it into a tiny pillow. After I added the cording, I wound two miniature spools with the same red thread and added them to the bottom of the cord. Hope my friend likes it!A little red sampler gift for a friendThe only other needle and thread related thing I've done is make two more masks--one for my husband and one for me. I used one of his dress-shirts--a no-wrinkle one that he'd barely worn as it was always too large. The pattern I used fits so much better than the pleated kind I made previously and there is a pocket for a filter as well as a casing for a nosewire. If anyone is interested in the tutorial, check this site and the video that goes along with it can be found here. I think more are in my future as I fear we'll be wearing masks for quite a while. Our new, better-fitting masksAnd speaking of masks--I saw this on Instagram and loved it. I am in the mask-wearing camp--really would hate to pass on any germs to anyone if I can help it! You don't wear a mask to protect yourself--you wear it to protect others so please be considerate...Please wear your masks when around others!Father's Day was Sunday here in the United States and I wanted to make my husband a special dessert. I'd bought an entire bag of lemons last month with the intent of making a lemon meringue pie, but after the drive home from my mom's on Saturday, I found myself just too tired to whip one up. So, I found this quick and easy (and very tasty!) recipe for "Best Creamy Lemon Bars" online. They taste almost like a lemon cheesecake--very tangy and sweet at the same time with a delicious homemade graham cracker crust at the bottom. I copied the photo on the blog and accented the bars with a bit of whipped cream, slices of lemon, and sprigs of mint from our yard. For the recipe, just click here. I sure wish I could learn to photograph food the way the professionals do! My colors are always a bit "off" for some reason. But, they probably have fancy cameras and lighting equipment, whereas I simply take photos with my phone. Creamy (and tasty!) Lemon BarsSo, it's time for Getting To Know You! Thank you to all who participated last time--it's nice to know that a lot of you consider yourselves shy and would like to change that. At least I'm not the only one out there! My guess is that a lot of stitchers are on the quiet side and enjoy solitary activities like stitching, reading, etc. For today's question, I'd love to know...1) What type of area did you grow up in? Was it a large city, a suburb, a farm, small town, house in the country, or did you move around to a lot of different environments? Although I was born in a large city, my parents left there when I was just five and moved back to my dad's home town--just a tiny village with (back then) only one traffic light! It was a wonderful place to grow up in--the kind of place where you really knew your neighbors and everyone looked out for each other's kids. It was the kind of place where kids would stay out until dark playing games like "Kick the Can" and "Spud." You could walk to the local candy store, school, library, post office--anywhere! I loved it, although I probably couldn't move back to such a small town now after living near a big city for the past 43 years. But, I lived there from the time I was five until leaving for college at age 18 so it will always be a very special place to me... Now, it's your turn... I'd love to get to know you better by hearing about where you grew up! So, with mom on the mend, I'm feeling like I can breath again! Thank you, one and all, for your well-wishes and prayers for her. She (and I!) appreciate each and every one. I'll be around to visit your blogs after a very long time away. Although I read a few when I was staying with my mother, I can't comment on them easily on my phone so I may have visited you, but not left a comment. Will try my best to get around to visit all of you soon...♥♥♥ I just want to leave you with a thought that I think is so timely with everything going on around us these days... Please think before you speak--you may say something that hurts deeply and can never be forgotten or repaired. Take good care my friends! Bye for now... ♥♥♥Pause before you speak... https://www.patternspatch.com/1/heart-full-of-gratitude/ https://stitchingdream.blogspot.com/2020/06/heart-full-of-gratitude.html

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pongpalace · 7 years

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curtains for a home

Day 6 of #omgcpwomenweek: Future

big love to @apprenticedmagician for listening to me moan about tenses and then reading through to make sure i hit my mark.

warnings for character death (haus ghost pov)

also on ao3

I wanna live with you Even when we’re ghosts ‘Cause you were always there for me when I needed you most I’m gonna love you till My lungs give out I promise till death we part like in our vows

—Say You Won’t Let Go, James Arthur

It’s usually during the summer, when the Haus is quiet without all the boys there making messes and noise and a home, that Mandy ends up thinking about it. She tries not to, really she tries—it’s depressing enough to regularly lose time because you’ve suddenly run out of ghost mojo or whatever and you have to disappear for a while—but there’s something about the kitchen and it’s curtains that makes her wonder if she would’ve chosen the same ugly pattern had she ever gotten the chance to.

She probably would’ve; Jenny loves them.

If Mandy lets herself, she can easily imagine what else she would’ve done had she had the chance. She thinks she would’ve graduated with a degree in one of the sciences. She hadn’t declared anything yet before… well before, but her biology and chemistry classes had been her favourites, and her parents were pushing hard for pre-med. She can’t remember how she felt about being a doctor at the time, and now she has mixed feelings about it after seeing first hand how demanding a major like that can be. She thinks physio therapy would’ve been a good fit for her though.

Watching the curtains blow gently in the breeze from a window that wasn’t closed properly somewhere, Mandy wonders if she and Jenny would’ve figured themselves out before graduation, or if they would’ve danced around their feelings all four years until they graduated and became a distant memory to introduce to their new families at the 25-year reunion. Mandy wrinkles her nose; that’s an unpleasant thought. She couldn’t imagine spending the past like, 30 years with anyone other than Jenny.

Maybe then, they would have moved in together after walking the stage and finding jobs in the same city. There are athletes who can benefit from a good physical therapist everywhere and Mandy would’ve followed Jenny anywhere she wanted to teach. Mandy never saw Jenny with kids, but from the way Jenny talks about her younger siblings, Mandy thinks she was amazing with them. There’s no doubt in Mandy’s mind that Jenny would’ve had her choice of jobs to pick from.

So they’d rent out a two bedroom apartment that they probably couldn’t afford at first. But what’s a couple more months of getting help from your parents until you cash your first paycheck?

Mandy wishes she knew.

There’d be a fight about who would get the bigger bedroom probably. Mandy would win, but Jenny would pout so they’d compromise by sharing the bigger closet and Jenny would pick out the decorations that made the place theirs. The curtains she’d choose would be ugly as all hell, but she’d love them so Mandy wouldn’t say a bad word about them. If it was possible, the couch would match but Mandy would say a prayer that the carpet colour can’t be changed. They’d get unmatched dishes from a second hand store down the street, and they’d each have a favourite mug, bowl, and plate. Jenny’s days would start earlier, though they’d quickly learn that she’s a mess in the morning so Mandy would wake up early enough to make coffee for both of them. She’d spend the hour or so after Jenny left reading the paper her parents paid for as a you’re-a-grown-up-now gift. She’d look through the crossword, and fill out what she could but it would always be more fun to finish it with Jenny after dinner, when Jenny would make up words to fit the definitions.

“Cinnamons,” she’d call them, snorting with laughter every time Mandy would phonically try to sound out what Jenny wrote in her perfect teacher handwriting.

Mandy would be happy with her job at a small clinic down the road from the hockey rink. As the newbie in the office, she’d take on the newer clients, the teenagers who, between growing pains and the physicality of their sports, needed to see her for routines to strengthen the ligaments of their knees. They’d never do the stretching she sent them home with but she’d perfect her disappointed look early on from watching Jenny practice her’s, and word would spread that the strengthening routines during appointments would get harder if you didn’t stretch at home properly.

But work would still be work and sometimes you needed to unwind. Jenny, with her classroom of energetic eight year olds would understand completely and during the first long weekend of the school year, Mandy would make sure to request the same day off. They’d make sure that they had enough alcohol to keep up with an apartment full of their sorority sisters and the friends they’d make at work. Day drinking on a Saturday would be disguised as a late housewarming party, but that excuse wouldn’t feasibly carry over to the mimosas Jenny would serve at breakfast on the Sunday for those who stayed over.

The two day hangover Mandy would end up with, even after the grease that Jenny insisted she eat, would be a reminder that they’re not in college anymore. It wouldn’t taste as bittersweet as it could though; she’d be happy to have graduated with the memories and experiences, but she’d be realistic in understanding that some college friends aren’t lifelong friends. She’d probably be more upset about growing apart from her sisters if she didn’t expect to always have Jenny in her life.

That night would be when Mandy would let herself finally think about how she wants Jenny in her life. They’d be in the kitchen and Jenny would have on the reading glasses she insisted she didn’t need while she did last minute marking before the school week, hair piled on top of her head, and she’d somehow be the most beautiful creature Mandy had ever seen. The noodles Mandy would make for an easy dinner would boil over, she’d be so distracted watching the way Jenny scrunches her nose while she read, and while Jenny would laugh at Mandy jumping to get the pot off the heat, she’d still get up and help her clean the water on the stove.

In the morning, Jenny would be running later than usual and take her coffee cup to drink on her way to school, pressing a quick kiss to Mandy’s lips in thanks before she would literally run out the door. Mandy would spend the day thinking about it, going between wondering if a three day hangover made her imagine things and worrying that Jenny regretted that they ever moved in together because Mandy’s sexuality was apparently contagious.

Mandy wouldn’t stop worrying until she got home from work to find more candles and flowers that she’d left in the apartment when she’d left earlier.

“I meant to do that properly, like, with discussions about feelings or whatever,” Jenny would say, face flushed from the heat coming off the biggest casserole Mandy had ever seen. “But you just… You’re like, so good to me. And I don’t know if you like, know how much I appreciate what you already do for me and like, it might be selfish or whatever, but like, I want more. I want to wake up next to you, and I want to kiss you, and probably spend the rest of my life with you.” She’d shake her head, and laugh to herself. “I’m like, 80 percent sure I’m in love with you Mandy, and like, you should probably know that.”

Jenny, not one for making big speeches about herself, would finish with a shrug and Mandy wouldn’t be able to do anything but cross the kitchen and answer everything Jenny just admitted with a kiss, hoping that would be enough to convey her feelings.

They would share the bigger bedroom in the apartment, and kisses with coffee would become a part of their normal routine. They’d learn more about each other; that Jenny laughed when she orgasmed and that Mandy didn’t like to be cuddled while she slept, but couldn’t actually fall asleep without a forehead kiss as they rolled to their separate sides. It wouldn’t always be easy—they’d fight about whose turn it was to do the dishes or plan their dates—but being together would always feel right.

Upgrading from an apartment to a house would be a natural progression when they would have the means to do so. There wouldn’t be a fight over the bigger bedroom, but somehow Jenny would still get to pick out the curtains, insisting that the ones from the apartment match the new paint colour that they choose for the kitchen and after seeing how happy the curtains made Jenny in the apartment, Mandy would find that she didn’t have a good argument against them.

Their parents would stop making comments about it being strange for two women to live together as roommates past their early 20’s when Mandy and Jenny make the trip to Canada to exchange vows, and they’d cry through the vows again in 2015, this time with both their parents and children watching.

They would have had such a good life together, Mandy thinks.

The curtains in the Haus have stopped moving and suddenly it’s taking all of her energy to concentrate on the pattern. She closes her eyes and goes through the motions of breathing deeply; a technique she’s borrowed from watching the boys in the Haus.

It does nothing to ground her and between one faked breath and the next, she’s gone.

#omgcpwomenweek #mandy/jenny #omgcp #omgcheckplease fic #haus ghosts #femslash #future fic #kinda?#major character death #kinda #i mean #we know they're ghosts the whole time #i made myself very sad writing this #ive been sitting on this one the longest #and i thiiiiink it might be my favourite thing i wrote this week #day 6: future

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dcnativegal · 4 years

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My “Spiritual Biography”

Written during Lent 2020 to share with our parish, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Lakeview Oregon.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order… the continuous thread of revelation. Eudora Welty

My paternal great grandmother, Margaret Turner, converted to Christian Science in the late 1800s when the denomination was just starting. Mary Baker Eddy was a single mother, and lived in New England, apparently influenced by the Transcendentalists, and the spare liturgy of the Congregationalists and the Society of Friends. My grandmother, Ruth Turner Lincoln, kept the faith for her 90 plus years, and reared my dad and aunt in Christian Science as well. The 5 direct descendants of Ruth Turner Lincoln are none of us Christian Scientists now, but we were all molded by it.

My maternal grandmother tried Christian Science because my mother was, in my Nana’s words, a ‘high strung sensitive little stinker.’ Apparently, something about worship and the ideas of “The Science & Health with Key to the Scriptures” calmed my mother.

The unfortunate thing about “Christian Science” is that it was started before antibiotics. Mary Baker Eddy could not foresee any real purpose to the male-dominated medical science of the time, which had only morphine to show for its efforts. My mother died at age 55 of preventable medical problems, and her mother, who converted to help my mother, died at 65 after receiving zero treatment or rehabilitation following a stroke. It had been my turn to sleep in the next room to turn Nana in the night, and I was the one who found her dead, cold, in her bed. I was 15.

Is it any wonder that I am a medical social worker, bringing people to health care and health care to people?

God is truly brilliant at making lemonade out of lemons.

One profound gift of the otherwise short-sighted Mary Baker Eddy is her affirmation of the feminine aspects of God. Other mystics, including 14th Century writer Julian of Norwich, discerned the female and feminine aspects of God, too:

Here is Mary Baker Eddy’s version of the Lord’s Prayer:

Our Father which art in heaven, Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,

Hallowed be Thy name. Adorable One.

Thy kingdom come. Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present.

Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Enable us to know, — as in heaven, so on earth, — God is omnipotent, supreme.

Give us this day our daily bread; Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections;

And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And Love is reﬂected in love;

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;

And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and death.

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever.

For God is inﬁnite, all-power, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.

From Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 16–17

This feminine language for God/ess was a gift from the faith of my chilhood. So, too, was a sense of loving prescence which expands beyond any denomination or religion and was a healthy part of my family culture.

If I had to choose only one motto, it would be this one by Thomas Merton: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time.

I recall being very small and stuck in an elevator in one of the many apartment buildings we lived in, wondering when someone would find me. I said to myself, there’s not a spot where God is not.I was rescued, of course, and the voice of a loving God, reassured a 4 year old in a sweet two line poem.

Whether it was my mother’s romanticized liberal politics, Sunday School teachers, or stories about Jesus forgiving 70 times 7, but somehow I absorbed a profound sense of God’s mercy, and therefore our duty to love even our ‘enemies.’ I remember when my bicycle was stolen for the umpteenth time, my mother admonished me to pray for the kid who stole it. I’m sure I was very grumpy about the whole thing but somehow it sunk in that even thieves are redeemable. God shone through those bicycle thieves, and my mother’s forgiving idealism. My mother was crazy, (alas, Christian Science failed to heal either body or mind) but she could also be very loving.

In high school I began hanging out at a community center attached to an Episcopal church on the grounds of the Washington National Cathedral, where presidents have funerals and a stained glass window has an actual moon rock embedded in the center.

The Episcopal Church sucked me in, and the summer I turned 17, I attended a week-long camp in Orkney Springs West Virginia. There I met a black man 9 years my senior, a seminarian, who introduced me to the parish I would call a second family for 40 years, until I moved to the Oregon Outback. I joined St. Stephen & the Incarnation that fall, was baptized there at age 22, (since Christian Science doesn’t ‘do’ baptisms.) I worked as parish secretary before graduate school, was Senior Warden and then chair of the search committee twice over the decades. I met and married my one and only husband, and breastfed my children in its pews. My current partner, Valerie, started attending when she began to winter in DC. God shone through those windows and in the candles we lit every Sunday. Even when I was so depressed that I could only weep and walk around the edge of the sanctuary during worship, I knew I was home and I could share God there.

You know how Alice Walker said in The Color Purple, that people come to church to SHARE God and not find God. She also said, that God made the color purple and gets put out when we don’t stop and admire.

The Episcopal Church showed me that I love liturgy, with the words and song sweeping us to Holy Eucharist. I love the Book of Common Prayer, especially this one prayer from Compline:

Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen.

St. Alban’s Pipeline Community Center had a youth group called Forum which provided discerning counselors to us addlepated adolescents. One of them suggested that I find a therapist. I was apparently the first self-referred teenager the clinic could remember (not court mandated or dragged in by a parent.) At age 16, I started seeing a woman who transformed my life, not the least reason of which was that she was wealthy and decided to put me through social work school ten years after I started to see her. I’ve gone on to find other deeply healing therapists: their names are Patricia, Kitty, Celia, and Darcy. God shone through each of them.

Now after 34 years as a social worker, I am growing into a halfway decent psychotherapist here in Lake County. I feel in a way that I’ve been preparing for this job my entire life. And most days, I also feel profoundly inadequate to the task at hand.

Early in my social work life, I worked on an oncology floor where many of the patients I came to know, died. God shone through the nurses there, who were tough and funny, highly skilled and hardworking. God shone through the oncologists, and the residents and interns, the respiratory therapists and the phlebotomists, and an amazing aide named Adams. If you were dying, you wanted to be bathed by Adams. Sometimes it was harder to see God shining through the terrified patients and stunned family members. In my late 20s, I grappled with the problem of evil in the dying of people who did not want to die. I came to appreciate the story of Job, rewritten in books like “Letter to the Man in the Fire” by Reynolds Price, and “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” by Rabbi Kirschner. I began to see that ‘shit happens’ and that the very same ‘shit’ is not a punishment, nor is it a lesson that the cancer patient somehow ‘chose’ to bring on themselves.

I cannot believe that the inscrutable universe turns on an axis of suffering; surely the strange beauty of the world must somewhere rest on pure joy. Louise Bogan

God has shone through to me in the writings of Anne Lamott. She is one hilarious Christian:

Unfortunately, change is not my strong suit. Neither is forgiveness, or letting go. Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks on it. But the willingness to let go comes from the pain: and pain makes us willing to change, and effort to change changes you, and jiggles the spirit, gets to it somehow, to our deepest, hardest, most beautiful, ruined parts. And then Spirit expands, because that is its nature, and it drags along the body, and finally, the mind.

Anne Lamott, Salon.com, 9/26/03

God has shone through many films, including Best Picture of 2001, American Beauty in which these words are spoken while a guy is courting a girl, impressing her with something he’d filmed, a plastic bag blowing in a winter wind:

He says,

I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force wanted me to know that there’s no reason to be afraid, ever… Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it and my heart is going to cave in.

Alan Ball, in screenplay of American Beauty via character of Ricky Fitts

[Here is the scene: https://youtu.be/V73598mBfKY]

When I was younger and before I became a mother, I discovered that famous letter the poet Rainer Marie Rilke wrote to a young man: I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Now that I am 60, I am living my way into the answers. And the mysteries continue. How is it that the best place for me to be, right now, is in Lake County, with an old school butch from Bly, with whom I’ve been lovers nearly 9 years? How is it that both my offspring are fascinating, profoundly moral, gifted and mostly happy creatures doing good in the world? How is it that a woman came up to me in Safeway on Friday and told me that months ago I made a recommendation to her and she thanked me for the profound improvements in her life since she chose to follow it?

As Martin Luther King Jr put it, Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. (From Strength to Love, 1963)

Thanks be to God. Amen.

#spirituality #pemachodron

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katebruder · 7 years

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A Season of Change

2017 is shaping up to be a big year for us!

Our family has grown, and we are enjoying the ministry opportunities where the Lord has placed us. We are also excited to share some changes on the horizon as we continue to seek the Lord’s calling in our lives. We appreciate your continued prayers and support, and want to share some of the latest happenings in our lives with you.

Family: As you already know, in February, we added a new little human to our family! William Noah Greenman was born on February 21st at 2:01pm here in Lima and we immediately fell in love. It is amazing to watch how fast he grows and changes. It is hard to believe that he is already 4 months old! During February, March and April, Will has had the pleasure of meeting all his grandparents. Their visits were a great blessing as Kate and I were just beginning to learn the rhythm of life with a newborn!

Ever since he turned one month old, Will has been consistently sleeping for 7-8 hours every night and we are so very thankful for that! Will has traveled with us to the beach and has met many of the boys and staff at Scripture Union’s homes. He went on his first flight to Cusco and first long road trip to Ica! Since Will was born here in Lima, he is a dual citizen and carries both Peruvian and US passports.

There have been plenty of challenges and tired days, but we could never imagine going back to life without Will. The Lord has really helped us reflect more deeply about His fatherly love as we experience parenthood for the first time!

Ministry:

Girasoles Graduates – Kate and I continue to regularly follow up with several the graduates from SU’s Girasoles program. It continues to be our joy to regularly meet with these young men and pour into their lives. We are also excited that four more recent graduates are in the process of applying for the government higher education scholarship which would cover their tuition and provide a stipend for living expenses like housing, food and transportation. The process is still ongoing, but all four of them are doing well. Before they can apply for the scholarship, they must be accepted into a technical institute or university—all of them have been accepted!

San Juan de Lurigancho Prison – Over the years, hundreds of children have come through our homes. Even years after they have left, we continue to consider them a part of the Scripture Union family. As family, we rejoice with them in their successes, and we are present with them in their struggles. Last year I was made aware of two of our ex-Girasoles who lived in our Lima home years ago (both are about my age). Unfortunately, they made some bad decisions that led to a jail sentence for both. I have had the opportunity to visit them monthly, and I am thankful for the opportunity to be an encouragement to these guys. I have had the chance to tell them that I have not given up on them because I know that the Lord hasn’t either. It is so wonderful to serve a Lord who is full of grace. My prayer is that the Lord would use these encounters to reveal His love and His grace to these guys.

UWM Retreat – In April, Kate and I had to opportunity to attend United World Mission’s first ever retreat for all the South American missionaries. Thankfully, the retreat was held here in Peru at Kawai (the same Scripture Union retreat center where Kate and I were married). The close proximity to Lima made travelling with a two-month old much easier. The theme of the retreat was, “Rest and Rejoice.” The verse for the week was Exodus 33:14, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” It was the first time we had to opportunity to meet other UWM missionaries in South America. We had a great week of bonding as a community, sharing with the UWM staff from main office in Charlotte, and resting in the Lord.

Work Teams – We are once again, gearing up for a busy season of hosting teams who come to partner with Scripture Union Peru and the Girasoles program. Please pray for all the logistics that need to be coordinated over the next month. We are in the midst of final email communications to coordinate each team’s itinerary, booking hotels, reserving flights and buses, preparing work projects, and organizing our calendars to be able to host the teams. Pray that the Lord would be at work in the lives of each of the team members as they prepare to come and do ministry. Pray for our staff, the children in our homes, and the communities around our homes, that they would be blessed and encouraged by the teams’ presence.

We have already traveled to Ica twice and Cusco with groups and have just a few more trips planned over the next couple weeks. Will has joined us on these trips and we love seeing the boys and staff at the homes interact with him! While traveling with the work teams, we spend the week at the home doing activities with the boys, assisting with a work project like making adobe bricks and depending on the location – delivering water to communities in the desert and putting on a VBS program for the local community. It is always a joy to see how the Lord works through our volunteers to serve the local community and staff and boys at each of Scripture Union’s homes.

A Season of Transition:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. –Jeremiah 29:11

This past year has been a year of many changes, difficulties, joys, and triumphs. It has been a year where Kate and I have really done some searching, trying to discern the Lord’s direction in our lives and understand His calling to us according to His purpose. During this past year, Kate and I have been holding fast to this promise from Jeremiah.

For many years I have felt a desire to continue my education and pursue a graduate degree. My desire has always been to further equip myself professionally and to develop the gifts that the Lord has given me so that I can better serve on the mission field and continue to be used by His Kingdom. My biggest problem was trying to figure out what I wanted to study. Over the years, I have spent many hours researching different graduate programs that I thought might fit with the ministry here in Peru—everything from non-profit administration to Biblical studies to leadership development. Still, I never felt like I had a clear focus. My prayer was, “Lord, when the time is right, make the next steps clear.” Slowly but surely, God has been revealing His answer.

A few years ago, when I was first asked if I would consider directing Scripture Union’s Girasoles Program for abandoned and at-risk children my initial thought was that I would need to learn so much! I was passionate about the ministry, but I knew that there was so much that I didn’t know! I accepted the position, but I also made a personal commitment to dedicate time to research best practices in working with vulnerable children. This lead us to the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) and their annual Summit where we met many different individuals and organizations working with orphans and vulnerable children around the world. CAFO also extended us an invitation to participate in their Collaborate Forum for global leaders in the international orphan care movement. Additionally, having made contacts through CAFO, I was invited to attend the World Without Orphans Forum in Thailand in 2016 where I met even more Christian brothers and sisters across the globe who are passionate about responding to the orphan crisis—and doing so in a way that highlights best practices in ministry with vulnerable children who come from backgrounds of trauma.

The more I researched and networked with other people who work with at-risk children, the more the Lord began to focus my interest and answer our family’s prayers.

We are excited to share that starting this August, United World Mission has approved us for an extended home missionary assignment so that I can pursue a graduate degree in Marriage and Family Therapy at Wheaton College, near Chicago. During my studies, we will continue to serve as UWM missionaries, and we are committed to returning to the field upon graduation. On one hand, we find it difficult to think about saying a temporary goodbye to so many of our friends, SU coworkers, and the children at each of the homes. Still, the Lord has made it clear to us that this is His path for our lives.

Kate and I share a passion to care for and advocate for orphans and vulnerable children, and our desire is to ultimately lead them to the feet of Jesus. As we dream about long-term goals for our future, we have three ministry projects that we hope to be a part of after completing the Marriage and Family Therapy program and returning to Peru:

– First, we are excited to work with recent graduates from children’s homes as well as graduating youth in general who may not have a wonderful support network in place in their lives. An organization based in Charlotte, NC that has approached us about partnering with them as they implement a program to network with local churches to provide volunteer mentors who we can train to help provide continued support. Coupled with this mentor program there would be a formal curriculum of basic life skills to work through with these graduates.

– Secondly, we would like to train caregivers in the current best practices of working with vulnerable children. Having spent many years in Peru, we know that there is a thirst for knowledge, but there is not always a wide range of resources available to build such capacities. We would love not only to focus on training the staff at children’s homes, but also help build a strong network of organizations who could benefit from these types of professional development opportunities and work together towards the same goal.

– Lastly, we want to assist in a church-led movement to provide care for abandoned and at-risk children not just in the context of children’s homes, but also dream about a day when they could be cared for in a family setting. The Peruvian government is just beginning to think about laws and regulations in regards to foster care. We hope to be able to encourage the Church and families to consider how the Lord might be calling them to be a part of meeting the needs of these children. We look forward to opportunities when we are not just training childcare staff, but also individual families who feel called to foster or adopt.

As we prepare as a family to make this transition, we want to pause for a moment and thank you for your ongoing prayers and support for our ministry. There is no way that we would have been able to remain on the field if it wasn’t for the strong partnerships and people who are continually supporting us, encouraging us, and praying for us. We truly appreciate your commitment to us and what God is calling us to do.

As we move toward studies at Wheaton and dream about the years beyond, working in the name of Christ to champion the cause of orphans and vulnerable children, we ask you to prayerfully consider making this transition with us, continuing to work together in partnership.

We cannot wait to see what the Lord has in store for our family and our ministry, and we look forward to sharing His testimony in our lives along the way!

A big hug, Billy, Kate and Will

The post A Season of Change appeared first on 12 Degrees South.

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#A Season of Change

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sassenachiniona · 7 years

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Small Seismic Shifts

I haven’t written in a long time. Once the routine of Abbey vollie life set in, day to day life, though beautiful, thought-provoking, and full of life and laughter, didn’t become a priority to record and to share. I know that a large part of my nature is private. Some of that is hiding behind a mask of wanting to be perfect. Deeply wanting to be profound and thought of as special. Why write about the everyday? That’s simply not remarkable enough. However, there is a string a truth buried within the anxiety - I wanted to be writing about the very deep shifts in my identity that I’ve been experiencing. If I’m going to make myself vulnerable by putting my writing out there, I want it to be the Very Big Thoughts that have profoundly changed the way that I see myself and has given more meaning to what I do in the world.

I think to really put the transformation into context, I must start a bit farther back than the time immediately leaving for Scotland. I grew up in the American Episcopal Church. My mother is a priest and my father is a scientist. Both are politically left and quite radical in the way they interact and engage in the world. They are both intelligent academics with their PhDs and all the other requisite degrees. They protested wars, advocated and administered healing to those affected by the HIV/AIDS crisis in NYC in the 80s, and see the world through their very Holy and different perspectives. They are grounded in reality and constantly work to better understand the world. They are both creative, curious, and radical and rational thinkers. I say this because I have the growing awareness and acceptance that I am truly my parents’ daughter. Through my mom, I received a love and fascination of the supernatural, mystic, and fantastic. I knew what spiritual depth felt like and I see the way that God moved her to preach, listen, and affect change. Through my dad, I received an intense awareness of the natural world and it’s workings - the way tides flow in and out, why stars shine, what energy is, how math and physics can explain incredible phenomena, and the way that science is a creative art. Through their combined efforts, they instilled in my an appreciation of art, health, nature, exploration, justice, and constant learning. Through my parents, as we all do, I began to make sense of the world.

I have always been comfortable within churches. In particular, I loved big, old cathedrals, but any church would do. The rocks themselves emitted a mystical and sacred energy and wooden beams spoke of years of holding spirit. I loved the iconography, stone or wood carved lovingly by hands unknown, big brass crosses and gilded candelabras, prayer candles, simple and rustic altars - it all bespoke of sacred longing and love. I could feel how the energy changed when a church was full of people. A church holds their songs, prayers, vulnerabilities, joys, sorrows, and pretensions. My favorite was when the church was empty. The beams would settle and the energy would become still and watchful, ready to be filled again. Other spirits would come out of the wood work. I never felt alone and I always felt watched. Churches always invite me to dance. When all the people would leave, I would stay and leap down the aisle.

When you are a PK (priest’s kid) and presumably, when you are married to a priest, the Church is constantly around you. My life, whether I realized it or not, revolved around the Church the way the earth revolves around the sun - I see the sun for half the day and the other half I can’t see it, but I know it’s always there. I think children always interact with their parents’ vocations in this way - we are aware of the ups and downs, the unspoken stresses, the celebrations, and, of course, all the times that their jobs take our parents away from us. Now, let’s not be confused, science, especially at a prestigious academic institution, takes away parents from their children too but we aren’t talking about that right now.

As I grew up, I would watch my mom preach and Celebrate mass. I would hear the behind the scenes drama of vestry meetings, parish dynamics, diocesan decisions and mandates, and above the din, I would hear the struggle to include women and family into liturgy. How do we take a tradition that is so meaningful and deep and time-tested and make it real and accessible? More on that later.

I was a voracious reader. My favorite genre was fantasy. I loved reading about magic, dragons, far off mystical places. Women witches with powers untold, animals that could talk, tapping into the deep power of the earth and letting those powers move through their bodies and minds to achieve improbable ends. These young women heroes had everything I wanted - adventure, wild powers, a mission, and incredible inner and outer strength and moral integrity. They were tuned in with something greater (not without some struggle and rebellion). Not to mention the cool clothes and occasionally a romance (gasp!). These stories resonated with me so deeply; they touched a part of my soul and I took them everywhere.

I lived in a very urban area and so every summer, I would be sent to camp. Usually, they would be nature or art based. We also would take family trips up to the Adirondack Mountains and stay in a cabin we had there. Every time I was in the woods or canoeing on the water or listening to cascades of water falling, it felt the same as when I was in a church alone - the same holiness, spirits moving about and yet it was slightly different. More ancient, more watchful, the trees could see me and then some. The best was the ocean - so huge and so expansive and so, so wild and terrible and yet, ultimate peace. Each crash of the waves reminding me of something bigger.

Through nature I could marry what I had learned about God and what I had learned about life through the mystical stories that I read. As I grew older, I questioned the Church more and more. Why weren’t we talking about the strong women? I could not find myself represented and the connection to God wasn’t growing as fast as I was.

School wasn’t a place to talk about religion. Neither was camp. America pretends to be secular. I didn’t go to Hebrew school or Catholic School. In high school, I was presented with another option. Quite frankly, I don’t know what to call it. It was a world of spirits, spirit work, astral projections, gods and goddesses. I didn’t see how it could be Christianity and I didn’t see how I could be both.

Then I went to college. My freshman year roommate was also a PK. Her father was an Episcopal priest but from a very conservative background. She was also interested in tarot cards, witchcraft, fantasy worlds. Neither of us wanted to go to Church anymore. We were enrolled in a rigorous college at 17 and had no one telling us to go to church. So we didn’t. I was still interested in energy healing and still believed in wood spirits and ghosts. However, the general spirit of my peers (not the faculty, I want to stress that) was that religion was silly and irrational, especially if you were Christian. Christians historically were the oppressors, the power hungry. They destroyed worlds in the name of God. They shoved their beliefs down other’s throats. They were intolerant. They were privileged. That religion has no place here in our sanctuary of high academia. So by sophomore year, I was done. No more seeing spirits and no more feeling God speak to me through the trees. I rejected it all and turned my back on it. It wasn’t worth the explaining or the defense. Besides, how could I defend something that I, too, questioned and that I, too, couldn’t quite understand? Never the less, there was always a vague mysterious calling - the way the stars shone down or a small tug through the loneliness.

Fast forward to the summer between my junior and senior years at school. I go with two other students with two professors to England. It’s a three week long summer class called England: Myth and Stone. Three weeks of traveling through England - a place I fell in love with years ago - visiting sites of mystical, religious, and intellectual significance and, friends, let me tell you, it was bliss. Reading interesting texts and discussion the symbolic meanings in real time. Tying Christian sites to ancient traditions. I had visions again. The was the first chip in the idea that I had to choose between mysticism and Christianity.

Fast forward to graduation. I have my Bachelors of Arts in Dance and a self-designed concentration called Self: Body, Identity, and Spiritual Movements. I completed my senior thesis entitled PNEUMA: A Study on Breath and Movement. I pulled inspiration from very old, inspiring Christian figures like Hildegard Von Bigen and contemporaries like Neil deGrasse Tyson. I studied the theory behind Qigong and delved deeper into Eastern healing practices. In retrospect, I was still nourishing my longing for spiritual connection through exploration of other cultures. Perhaps I could find God there.

Fast forward another year. I’ve been living with my best friend in the same small college town. I have just completed my 200-hour Ashaya Yoga training. I feel renewed and rejuvenated because I have found another way of bringing God into my life and the lives of others and it’s politically correct to boot (!!). Yogis didn’t oppress people. Not yet anyway.

Fast forward, I’ve moved to New York. I can’t deny my call to come back to the Church any longer. I come kicking and screaming to church most Sundays. I’m sick and tired of teaching yoga so I stop. I feel like I’m collapsing inward onto myself. I consider applying to seminary, scrap that idea. The church that my mom is preaching at says they are politically active and are radical. I watch as they do nothing. A few months before moving, my interest of the intersection between politics, sex, and bodies manifested and morphed into a passion for sex-worker advocacy. So here I was at a familiar crossroads again - I feel called to be a Christian and yet, I’m a sexual being and proud of it and I like witchcraft. If I had it my way, I would speak to cats and darken doorways with my righteous indignation against all things relating to slut-shaming and violence against women. How could I be all who I am and still be a Christian? Not to mention, the church is dying. Congregations are shrinking and no wonder, we’re all frustrated and not getting what we need…but what do we need?

As someone with an intensely independent spirit, a part of Christianity that I have really struggled with is the idea of “following” Christ and “worshipping” God as the Only and the True. I want to worship the Multitudes! Every spirit within every rock and tree and creature (“….has a life, has a spirit, has a name…” — thank you, Pocahontas) came from the same source. The Breath of Life is within us all and there is no greater or lesser value - I’m not going to blindly follow someone who’s message got bastardized down the line into a tool for political oppression and violence.

Fast forward through a year of deep depression and internal hibernation. I apply to be a volunteer at the Iona Abbey. I came to Iona with this question of “Who is Jesus and what does he mean?” in mind. Why are we worshipping him if he is human? What does being the Son of God really entail? Why do we think of God as a parent? Is Christ the Messiah? Do we need a Messiah? I keep coming back to something my friend, who is Jewish, said: If the Messiah came, wouldn’t the world be different? I would ask myself and ask the liturgy and those around me. In particular, one phrase in the liturgy and one retired minister helped me put Jesus into context above all else - God sets a pattern for us to live in Love and Jesus was the embodied version of that pattern. Jesus tended to the poor and spoke “truth to power” and stuck by his moral compass. He was so provocative and inspiring that he was killed. He threatened the status quo. My own personal motto is at the top of this blog: Radical Embodied Compassion. Jesus’s life, actions, and motives were radical in his teachings, he embodied God and the Holy Spirit, and he was radically compassionate - bringing in people from all kinds of backgrounds to his table. Sharing with them, speaking with them. The world did change. When Jesus died and the church was formed. A whole new way of being was formed through the collective work of those who followed his teachings. Jesus was first and foremost a Rabbi. He was someone who cared so much about God and the way humans treated the earth and each other. The world did change. He questioned authority and challenged the power of the emperor and of Pontius Pilate. He challenged the status quo and called out other Rabbis who were exploiting those who came to pray and find God. He shook the boat. If that’s not changing the world, I don’t know what is. Because Jesus did it, so can I.

So here we are at the present day. It’s May 3, 2017 at 14h17. It is a beautiful day here. I am looking forward to going on a long walk to explore and to swim. There is still so much of this island that I haven’t seen yet there is so much more of my Being exposed to me. How my deep and complex soul came into being through a love of science, a love of God, a passion for justice, and a deep comfort with the human body, sexuality, and healing. It is only through the mystical that I can access a true connection to God. It is through the Holy Spirit that I can feel connected to the ocean and to the trees. It is through Jesus Christ that I feel connected to my passion for justice, to a way of being that feels right and morally secure. It is through Mary Magdalene and Mary, Mother of Jesus that I feel connected to my divinity and beauty and raw feminine strength. I thank God for it All.

#personal #unedited #christian #scotland

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annaelis-blog1 · 7 years

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Blogging to remember!

Last January 18, 2017. I took my MCAT at San Beda College as pre-requisite for admission to their College of Medicine. It comprised of simple arithmetics, grammar and punctuations, and a little bit of essay about the social issues currently. It was relatively easy, and if I were to compare it – I would compare it to the NCAE I took when I was in 3rd year high school, and the USTET I took August 2012 (not that I remember those really clearly, but because the experience wasn’t traumatizing like NMAT)

My essay was about the economic growth of the Philippines, I’m not sure if I remembered it clearly but the question kind of went off like this, ‘despite the potential of the Philippines to grow economically from 1965-1985, why didn’t it thrive unlike it’s neighboring countries in South East Asia?’. I know that I didn’t answer as ideally as I should have, but since I saw a #MarcosNoHero placard around San Beda that time, it got stuck inside my head and I just wrote about Marcos, about his dictatorship and plunder cases.

Today, (April 3, 2017) – TWO MONTHS AFTER THE SAID MCAT AND THE SAID WEIRD ESSAY – I was scheduled –FINALLY!- for an interview. I received an e-mail and a text message about what I should wear, where and who will be with me. It was kind of frustrating since I was promised confidentiality on my part (when I took the MCAT) that only my applicant number will appear on the notifications/announcements. Instead, it beared my full name down to the last initial!

Since I am unsearchable through facebook (courtesy of my preference for my nickname rather than my full name) I took the opportunity to peek through the facebook profiles of my future colleagues and/or classmates! HIHIHI ~

The text had 24 names, divided equally into the morning interview session and the afternoon interview session. I was blessed to be in the first batch to be interviewed, since I took the MCAT earlier than most of the applicants. I was in the afternoon session, meaning I had time in the morning to look through my closet for the corporate-iest corporate clothing I had (the email and text message said to wear corporate clothes).

My grandmother wanted to tour Manila while she was visiting for my graduation so my mother and grandmother took advantage of the moment to tour and also give me moral support. I wore a pale pink long-sleeved (idk what that was) I brought from a thrift shop and a neon peach pencil skirt I bought several months ago from sale somewhere – the conclusion after an hour long debate on what I should wear – my mother insisted I wear her clothes! HER CLOTHES! Of course

We arrived at the campus at around 11:30am and my mother insisted we take pictures, I was soooooo embarrassed ‘cause my mother was insisting on it like, just ‘take a picture on this weird looking poster right here’. I tried to compensate and had our picture (I and my grandmother) on that garden with a fountain.

We went to the church and prayed a bit. Then the clock chimed twelve, and they played a prayer on the speakers everywhere. I remember it being the ‘Lord’s Prayer’ and me thinking, hey – I wanna hear this prayer everyday for the rest of my medical student life!

At around 12pm, I could not contain my anxiety (a bit, and also the fact that they –mom and lola- talked a lot and they made me nervous) so I told them I better go ahead. My grandmother was reminding me about my bag and where I should put it while in church to avoid it being stolen or something - while that was deeply appreciated - It added anxiety to my already anxious-self.

So I went to the Medicine Building, looking like a carrot with my neon peach pencil skirt. A door had instructions posted in it, it went like this: APPLICANTS FOR INTERVIEW PLEASE GO TO ROOM 22B and a little map on it. Room 22B was in the second floor so I saw some Bedan med students on the way there.

I went to ROOM 22B. It wasn’t surprising how I was the only one there. The room seemed like a holding area for students for interview. I paced around a bit, trying to see myself there. The lighting was a bit dim, but that could be easily changed – apart from that, the room looks nice, conducive for learning! Although the wooden catholic cross was hidden by the projector screen.

At around 12:45pm, I had company! His initials were K.A.D. and I met him in pinoy.md and through facebook! He’s nice and friendly, and his mom accompanied him! I suddenly felt bad I made my grandma and mom go away. Soon, we were around seven in the holding area. Another acquaintance I met through a facebook group with initials E.E. arrived, and we just talked about med school in general.

A man, sir Rey(?), went to the room at around 12:55pm. He asked of our surnames, I said my measly 2-letter surname to him and he gave me a number with a pink background. The color of the background dictated who our interviewer will be.

At around 1:05pm, I went to the bathroom for the last time, having the gut feeling the interview is bound soon. When I returned to the room at 1:10pm, sir Rey(?) told me to go downstairs and go to the door which had a pink background on it.

I was led to a small office with a computer chair – I remember the computer chair because I feared falling on it or slipping the wheel and making a fall somehow! Haha! How the mind works when one is nervous.

My interviewer was a male, he introduced himself and I I remember just ‘Enrique’, I don’t remember his surname at all (or maybe Enrique is his surname?). He didn’t offer his hand, so I didn’t offer mind cause that would be awkward (I wish I had though, it bugged me). He asked for my name, so I replied. Then he called me Doktora (my name) after that.

He had a lot of papers in his hand, it had the questions on it. First, he read the general instructions. ‘You will be given a set of hypothetical situations in which you should answer briefly and honestly. You will be given a maximum of five minutes per question. This interview will comprise of a maximum of 30 minutes. I will be taking notes while you are speaking, but please continue speaking’ something like that.

Hypothetical situations (not in any order, just how I remembered it) and my answers: (not the actual verbatim, of course! Just the way I remember it! I excluded the stuttering of course! But yes! I answered in English):

(1)

Q: Your father had a drinking spree and could not go to work the day after because of a bad hangover. He asked you to write him a medical certiciate so his boss will excuse him, or else, his boss will suspend him. As a newly licensed physician, what will you do?

A: I will advise my father to go to a clinic due to body weakness of malaise, however I will not write the medical certificate for him because it would not be professional.

(2)

Q: Your mother bought you an all-expense trip to Europe unfortunately, it coincides with your already rescheduled final exam.

A: I am very determined in becoming a medical doctor. I will simply tell my mother to give the trip to my sister because I am passionate and determined in reaching my goal.

(3)

Q: As a medical intern, you are presenting a case to consultants, residents and fellow interns. A consultant told you as you were presenting that your case presentations lacked some stuff.

A: As a student I know that I will not be able to make a case presentation perfectly. I will take note of what he commented and will put it on my next case analysis. Yet, I will continue presenting my case emphasizing on its strengths rather than on its weaknesses or what it’s lacking.

(4)

Q: You are looking through some proposals for a new drug. The project will sponsor 5million to the best proposal. Among the proposals was a paper made by your sister and it was among the TOP 3.

A: I will suspend all biases and look through all of the proposals as objectively so that the person who will be chosen will deserve it.

(5)

Q: After an exhausting day with no snacks, you finally had time to go to Mcdo and you bought apple pie, fries and a burger. A street child goes to you and asks for food.

A: (This was fortunate because I did not like McDo! I love Jollibee!) It has always been a habit of mine to give street children food rather than money. Of course I will give the child my apple pie and I will ask him if he has friends so they can all share the small feast I can offer.

(6)

Q: In a group project, a leader assigned you some work to do. You noticed that the tasks were not equally divided. A groupmate of yours offers to help you.

A: I believe in the assessment of the leader because I know that people have different sets of strengths and weakness. Yet, if I was assigned a task I find hard to do, I will accept the help given to me.

(7)

Q: You are a group leader. Two of your members have difficulty working together because of personal differences.

A: I will advise my members to set aside their personal differences and work objectively and professionally.

(8)

Q: No matter how much you try, you will can’t understand the topic of your upcoming exam. You tried and tried but you could not understand it.

A: I will use my resources such as the library, the internet. I will ask my classmates if they could help me. If I still could not understand it, I will ask the professor for the things I find most difficult. And should I still fail to understand it, I will do my very best in the exam.

After that, I was surprised that the interview concluded. It took around 10 minutes? I’m not sure. The interviewer, doctor Enrique(?) wished me luck and he told me, he’ll see mee soon. I don’t know what that meant. I guess, I have a strong standing!

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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junker-town · 7 years

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Every NBA figure who's spoken out about President Trump's travel ban

Four head coaches and many more players have said they’re against President Trump’s travel ban.

Players, coaches, and executives around the NBA have spoken out against President Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries since the executive order was passed on Saturday.

Specifically, four NBA head coaches have sharply criticized the ban, including Warriors head coach Steve Kerr. Notably, Kerr’s father was killed in an act of terror when Kerr was a freshman in college.

No NBA player or executive has explicitly come out in support of the ban, to SB Nation’s knowledge. One player asked, Timberwolves forward Gorgui Dieng, who is Muslim, gave a neutral answer about the ban but also said, “I think I’ve got a right to be here.” Senegal, where Dieng was born, was not one of the seven countries listed in the executive order.

Here is a complete list of NBA figures who have shared their opinions on the ban. Their complete thoughts are not included in every instance, but click on their names to see everything they said in full.

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr

“I would just say that as someone whose family member was a victim of terrorism, having lost my father, if we’re trying to combat terrorism by banishing people from coming to this country, (it’s) really going against what the principles of what our country’s about and creating fear. It’s the wrong way to go about it. If anything, we could be breeding anger and terror and so I’m completely against what’s happening.”

Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy

“We're getting into the days of now we're judging people by their religion, trying to keep Muslims out. … None of those seven nations have been responsible for an American death, but we're barring everybody. It's just playing to people's fears and prejudices and everything else, and we're getting back to the days of putting the Japanese in relocation camps and Hitler registering the Jews. That's where we're headed, and it's just fear-mongering and playing to a certain base of people that have some built-in prejudices that aren't fair.”

Raptors head coach Dwane Casey

“I'm old. It's scary because it kind of reminds you about what happened back in the 60s, when I was growing up. Even though it's different issues, it resembles that in a lot of different ways. A little bit more sophisticated, but it's similar. And it's a slippery slope. For every action, there's a cause and effect and a reaction by other people, so we have to be careful. Again, I'm a U.S. citizen, a proud U.S. citizen, but we have to be careful how we're handling our business in the States.”

Raptors guard Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry's comments on President Trump's #MuslimBan http://pic.twitter.com/DOIPpOE0AP

— Mark Sheldon (@markdsheldon) January 30, 2017

“Um, I think it’s bullshit. I think it’s absolute bullshit. Our country is the home of the land of the free, and for that to happen, I think it’s bullshit. I mean, I’m not going to get into it too deeply but personally, I think it’s bullshit.”

Raptors president Masai Ujiri

“I just don't get it. This is mind-boggling. I'm a prime example of what opportunity is in this world, basically. Canada has given me opportunity. America gave me opportunity. America has given my kids opportunity. That's what this world is about. For me to see -- I see how many foreign kids we have on our basketball team. Luol Deng ate in my house when he came to playoffs here. He's from Sudan. What does all this mean? It's ridiculous in my opinion.”

Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich

“As you already know, I have lots of thoughts about what we’ve done to ourselves as a country and what we’ve allowed to happen. But we’ll see where this goes. Obviously the rollout today was Keystone Kops-like by any measure with objectivity. Whether you want to say it’s good or bad is irrelevant. But it was Keystone Kops, and that’s scary.”

Nets forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson

People can say what they want, but being denied ACCESS to see your grandchild graduate or to go back to your country is inhumane. #MuslimBan

— R.HollisJefferson (@RondaeHJ24) January 29, 2017

Bucks vice president Alex Lasry

“I appreciate all the fans concerns and prayers for Thon (Maker). And, today a Sudanese refugee who fled oppression and is an incredible young man will make his second NBA start. I’m incredibly excited and proud of him. He’s a symbol of what makes America great and all immigrants believe about America. But what’s going on in the US right now isn’t about Thon. It’s about all the other incredible immigrants and refugees who will make US a better place that can’t come into our country. This is not who we are as a country and doesn’t live up to our ideals.”

Former NBA player Nazr Mohammed

It's a tough day when u find out that so many ppl that u thought were fans or friends really hate u and everything u believe in.

— Nazr Mohammed (@NazrMohammed) January 28, 2017

Thunder center Enes Kanter

I am still in disbelief about the #MuslimBan 'NO' human should be discriminated for their Race, Religion or Ethnicity.#WeAreAmerica

— Enes Kanter (@Enes_Kanter) January 29, 2017

Former NBA player Steve Nash

Freedom and liberty packing up their things...

— Steve Nash (@SteveNash) January 28, 2017

Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart

My first protest was really inspiring - to be alongside such a diverse group of people who care about other humans! #NoMuslimBan #LAX http://pic.twitter.com/mrLyHwy7De

— Breanna Stewart (@bre_stewart30) January 30, 2017

Nets guard Jeremy Lin

As an American, sorry to everyone affected by the #MuslimBan ... this is foreal gettin out of control #teamACLU

— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) January 29, 2017

Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried

Astaghfirullah! They know not what they do!

A photo posted by Kenneth Faried (@kennethfaried35) on Jan 28, 2017 at 9:55pm PST

Faried’s caption reads: “Astaghfirullah! They know not what they do!”

Astaghfirullah is an Arabic interjection used to expressed shame or disapproval. Literally, it is a short prayer asking forgiveness.

After the Nuggets’ Jan. 31 120-116 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, Faried sounded off about the travel ban.

“I think it’s crazy, what’s going on,” Faried told reporters, according to the Orange County Register. “It’s basically messed up. Disrespectful. This country was founded on immigrants, and this country supposedly lets you have any religion, doesn’t matter. And for (Trump) to have a Muslim ban is the utmost disrespect. I’m Muslin, and I take that personally.”

Pistons forward Stanley Johnson

Watching what’s happening around the country and I’m angry that in 2017 this is our reality. We are all Americans and we ALL have power! I challenge everyone to make their voices heard in whatever way they can to fight injustice. #NoBanNoWall #MuslimBan

A photo posted by Stanley Johnson (@omostanimal) on Jan 30, 2017 at 12:58pm PST

Lakers forward Luol Deng

I am a #ProudRefugee. http://pic.twitter.com/4aeMY98vaJ

— Luol Deng (@LuolDeng9) January 30, 2017

Deng later spoke out on President Trump’s travel ban after his Lakers’ 120-116 win over the Nuggets.

“I’ve watched the news and I’ve read a lot. If you really want to look into that, you’ve got to go into facts and what is true and what is not,” Deng said, according to the Orange County Register’s Mark Medina. “From what I understand, I haven’t seen a lot of refugees committing terrorist acts in this country I’m speaking about.

“We don’t know where it goes afterward,” he said. “So, right now, it’s just hope and being patient and seeing where it goes. No matter what, there’s always hope.”

Suns head coach Earl Watson

"I think it's un-American. I think it's unconstitutional. I think it's ridiculous. And I think we can be better than that. We've always been as a nation leaders and everything that I feel is important, things such as diversity, accepting people of all races and creed and religion, we have to understand we cannot go backwards and we cannot hold status quo. Status quo means someone else is getting better and we'll get passed up anyway. We have to push forward with a mindset that diversity is great, which is why our country is phenomenal, and understand that you can't ever create segregation in any form whether it's gender, sexuality or religion. It can never happen. That's what makes America great. I have Muslim friends. I have Jewish friends. I have Christian friends. Nondenominational friends. I have Mormon friends. A lot of those guys were my teammates and became my friends for life. Their families became my family."

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profitamajaya-blog1 · 7 years

Text

Divorce Divides Father And Daughter: Miraculous Reconciliation After 18 Years

Anyone who comes from a family that is broken the pain of divorce. I was twenty-seven years old when my parents divorced. While some people think that a person shouldn't be "affected" by such things once they are adults, I can assure you--I WAS! I ended up being shocked when my parents divorced, and I had no forewarning of this event.

On the day that my dad told my mom that I told my husband, "Something is terribly wrong in California that he was moving out, I felt a great anxiety in my spirit, so great, in fact. I want to phone home." Considering the fact that I was deeply affected that I was three thousand miles away on a remote island in Northern Canada when I felt this anxiety, you can appreciate.

Pain and Confusion Ensue

Soreness and confusion became constant companions as I tried to "understand" what had happened: What right did he have to leave my mother? Whose standard was he using to exercise his right to leave her? What had she done that was so terrible that he could not live with her? I had questions and I asked them of nearly everyone around me. I asked God the same concerns, and in so doing, I realized that my life that is own was quite a mess. I searched the Bible for "the answer" to all my questions about my dad. Since he had been a Baptist minister at one time, I felt certain that he would know and obey what the Bible said about such an important issue.

About two years after the divorce, the whole family gathered in California for one of those BIG attempts to bring reconciliation. I felt sure that dad would listen to God's Word, so I reached for my Bible and said, "Dad, look at exactly what God needs to say about what you yourself are doing."

He stood up and loudly cursed me, the Bible and the whole family before I could find the carefully selected passage of scripture that would straighten this mess out. Then he walked out. Needless to say we were all in shock. The shock of that cursing lasted a time--eighteen that is long for myself, and twenty years for my brother and sister.

Difficulty in Letting Go

Eighteen years is a long time. Think about it. It generally takes eighteen years to graduate from high school. A"lifetime that is whole of events takes place in eighteen years. During those full years, contact with my dad was minimal. A card from him on my birthday, Christmas cards, the odd phone call which always stirred up the pain. Someone would hear about something he ended up being doing and he would again be the subject of our conversation for weeks. My mother never stopped talking about him. She never ever let him go.

My mom maintained her relationship with God throughout this long painful separation. She read her Bible, went to church, cared about us kids and loved her grandkids. She worked as a secretary and saved her money so she wouldn't be a burden on anyone when she retired. But, always, she was obsessed with talking about my dad.

I would personally say that most of our conversations about him were judgmental. After all, we read our Bibles; we knew what he had done was wrong. She had done nothing that the Bible sanctioned as reason for divorce. By the time of his marriage that is third knew he wasn't coming back to her. Still, his actions and their effect on our lives were frequent topics of our conversations.

After numerous years, we gave up hope for my dad to ever be reconciled to his family. I doubted he was even a Christian. I felt he was a totally lost, immoral, unstable, unsavory person. That was a very time that is dark me. Gradually, I got used to the darkness in my soul--it that is own seemed.

A Death Sentence

Mother did retire and she moved from California to Canada to be near my children. She had missed out on much of the growing up of my five children, and she desired to get to know them. She bought a condominium two obstructs from my house and the kids enjoyed having "Gran" close live so. One after moving here, she was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease year.

Lou Gehrig's illness was a death sentence. There was no cure. There is no treatment. I spent four months praying and God that is asking to my mother. Finally, the answer came: "Help her die." She was accepted by me diagnosis and did all I could to help her.

I want I could tell you that I was a "good little Christian" who praised and thanked God every day for His righteous judgments, but the truth is that I questioned God. I really felt he was the one who had done this great wrong to his family, and to allow my mother to die this cruel death that it was unfair of Him to let my dad go free when. Finally, I asked God, "How do this situation is seen by you?" The answer He spoke to my heart would one day transform all our lives.

About a year after my mother died, I felt something stirring inside of me--a desire to see my dad. In the long eighteen years of separation, I had only invited him once to visit my home. During that visit I had tried again--and unsuccessfully, again--to confront him with the Bible. I had no reason to expect that another visit would end differently, but I honored that desire regardless and invited him for a long weekend.

Attempted Reconciliation

My dad came armed with his arsenal that is own of. He knew what to expect from me. I hadn't planned anything specific to confront him on--I didn't need to, I had a whole list of offenses I could whip out at any given minute. So, the weekend progressed--awkwardly, but quietly.

I had no idea that Spirit was about to move in on us in a way that is powerful. I simply invited two gentlemen friends over for lunch. They lead a prayer group I attended and I hoped they would "say something" important to my dad. If not, it was a real way to let others meet my dad and see the man that has so wounded me.

We were sitting around my dining room table when one gentleman began telling the story of a young soldier in Napoleon's army who had gone A.W.O.L., been caught and was now about to face the firing squad. This man that is young mother came to Napoleon and pleaded for mercy for her son. Napoleon replied, "He doesn't deserve mercy," to which the mother implored, "But, sir, if he deserved it, it wouldn't be mercy!" At that, Napoleon allowed the boy to live. After telling this story, the gentleman said, "I have no idea why I told that story. It just came into my head."

God’s Answer to a Prayer

I felt the strangest sensation of heat come over my head and into my chest as he had been speaking. Without wavering, I said, "I know why you told that whole story." I switched toward my dad and gently said, "Dad, when mom was dying, I felt that God was being very unfair. So he was asked by me what He had to say about the situation. Would you like to hear what God had to say about you and mom?" The room was very quiet. I could tell that my dad was afraid to know. But, after a moments that are few indicated that he would.

I felt the heat increasing as I reached deep into my soul for those words, "He said, ‘I could not heal your mother, because she would not forgive. But the wounds are seen by me upon your father's heart, and I have pity on him.’" The power of Spirit hit both of us "like lightening. in the moment I spoke those words"

We endured up, pressed our chairs back from the table and fell into each others arms, sobbing. After quite a while of crying and kissing, we sat down again. Even the two gentlemen present were crying! I realized that I could not remember even one of my dad’s offenses on my "list." The list that is whole erased from my memory--and sixteen years later on, its nevertheless gone!

clash of clans hack Daughter/Dad Relationship Redefined.

From that day on, my dad and I have had a relationship that is far beyond mere "reconciliation" or "recovery." We never had a relationship like this before--ever! This is a totally new relationship! We talk on the phone every weekend, we plan visits around special holidays, and we go to conferences together. Where before my dad had been closed to the "things of the Spirit," due to the wounding caused by my own judgmentalism and legalism, now he is hungry for more. Right away my dad began having powerful dreams which he KNEW were from God. He shares these dreams we discuss their possible meanings with me and.

In the 16 years because this tale took place, my Dad has become my very best friend and confidant. We share our lives, our dreams and our entire spiritual journey with each other. We love sharing our story with others and many have rekindled hope for reconciliation with a grouped family member from our candle of love.

0 notes

junker-town · 7 years

Text

Every NBA figure that's spoken out about President Trump's travel ban

Four head coaches and many more players have said they’re against President Trump’s travel ban.

Players, coaches and executives around the NBA have spoken out against President Donald Trump’s ban on refugees and citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries since the executive order was passed on Saturday.

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr

Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy

Raptors head coach Dwane Casey

Raptors guard Kyle Lowry

Kyle Lowry's comments on President Trump's #MuslimBan http://pic.twitter.com/DOIPpOE0AP

— Mark Sheldon (@markdsheldon) January 30, 2017

Raptors president Masai Ujiri

Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich

Nets forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson

People can say what they want, but being denied ACCESS to see your grandchild graduate or to go back to your country is inhumane. #MuslimBan

— R.HollisJefferson (@RondaeHJ24) January 29, 2017

Bucks vice president Alex Lasry

“I appreciate all the fans concerns and prayers for Thon (Maker). And, today a Sudanese refugee who fled oppression and is an incredible young man will make his second NBA start. I’m incredibly excited and proud of him. He’s a symbol of what makes America great and all immigrants believe about America. But what’s going on in the US right now isn’t about Thon. IT’s about all the other incredible immigrants and refugees who will make US a better place that can’t come into our country. This is not who we are as a country and doesn’t live up to our ideals.”

Former NBA player Nazr Muhammad

It's a tough day when u find out that so many ppl that u thought were fans or friends really hate u and everything u believe in.

— Nazr Mohammed (@NazrMohammed) January 28, 2017

Thunder center Enes Kanter

I am still in disbelief about the #MuslimBan 'NO' human should be discriminated for their Race, Religion or Ethnicity.#WeAreAmerica

— Enes Kanter (@Enes_Kanter) January 29, 2017

Former NBA player Steve Nash

Freedom and liberty packing up their things...

— Steve Nash (@SteveNash) January 28, 2017

Seattle Storm forward Breanna Stewart

My first protest was really inspiring - to be alongside such a diverse group of people who care about other humans! #NoMuslimBan #LAX http://pic.twitter.com/mrLyHwy7De

— Breanna Stewart (@bre_stewart30) January 30, 2017

Nets guard Jeremy Lin

As an American, sorry to everyone affected by the #MuslimBan ... this is foreal gettin out of control #teamACLU

— Jeremy Lin (@JLin7) January 29, 2017

Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried

Astaghfirullah! They know not what they do!

A photo posted by Kenneth Faried (@kennethfaried35) on Jan 28, 2017 at 9:55pm PST

Faried’s caption reads: “Astaghfirullah! They know not what they do!”

Astaghfirullah is an Arabic interjection used to expressed shame or disapproval. Literally, it is a short prayer asking forgiveness.

Pistons forward Stanley Johnson

A photo posted by Stanley Johnson (@omostanimal) on Jan 30, 2017 at 12:58pm PST

Lakers forward Luol Deng

I am a #ProudRefugee. http://pic.twitter.com/4aeMY98vaJ

— Luol Deng (@LuolDeng9) January 30, 2017

0 notes

profitamajaya-blog1 · 7 years

Text

Divorce Divides Father And Daughter: Miraculous Reconciliation After 18 Years

Pain and Confusion Ensue

Difficulty in Letting Go

A Death Sentence

Attempted Reconciliation

God’s Answer to a Prayer

clash of clans hack Daughter/Dad Relationship Redefined.

0 notes