Response to CT Shooting:

Response to CT shooting:

I write this, completely horrified, immediately after getting off work at a High School. Words cannot even begin to express the emotions that coarse through my veins when I read about this shooting. However, I will do my best to put this in writing. As with every person who hears about a school shooting, our first reaction is shock and horror. Now that I’m getting older and know so many people who work in the school system and currently have the opportunity to work in the system, my emotions and feelings are magnified 100%.  Upon hearing of the shooting, I sat in my office and thought about how many students I could hide in my office if a shooting were ever to occur. I thought about how they would climb on my desk, under the desk, and behind the file cabinet. 25 students is my best guess.

Seriously? Do we live in a world where we need to think like this? I am appalled, much like the rest of you at this occurrence. I think we all can agree that this is not the type of world we want to live in or raise our children in. But this is what is being handed to us and the only people who can make it better is each of us. When a situation like this occurs, we all want to blame someone, obviously in this specific situation – the shooter. It is understandable to feel anger and pure hatred for that man, but complaining about him does not bring those children home to their parents.  That bed is still going to be empty at the end of the day.

Now I do not care about your religious views, political views, or personal views. I do not care if you are an optimistic person, a pessimistic person or a realist.  We need to stop judging each other. We need to stop hating each other. We need to get our act together. This world is not going to fix itself.  Please help make this world a better place.

Stop saying hurtful things about others, because you have no idea what is going on in that person’s mind. Stop arguing with others over pointless things. Let your family and friends know you appreciate them, everyday. If you see a stranger in danger, help them. I do not care if you have never met that person in your life – you were put on this Earth for a purpose, and I am going to bet it was not to stand on the sidelines and stare as others get hurt.  I am not saying we all need to throw on a superhero cape and start saving lives left and right, but I am saying that we each have special talents and gifts that we can put to good use. It is about damn time we started using them the right way. 

The Bible says "Do not Fear" 365 times...

In case you may not know it, I am probably the biggest scardey cat on the face of the Earth. I am terrified of practically everything. For example, I'm scared of my future, I'm terrified of failure, and I despise scary movies with a passion. To prove my point of how absurd my fears are, I will share this with you...I'm scared of furbies, E.T, and having my knees touched. Seriously. Fear is a huge issue in my life and its something I have constantly had to work on. 

Until about a year ago, I never realized that fear was a choice. You can choose to have fear or you can choose to have courage. It's a simple concept in theory, but so gosh dang hard to apply. Once I had this epiphany, I began to put forth a conscious effort to overcome the fear in my life. I started with the silly and weird stuff, like my stupid knee fear and worked my way up to my fears of failure and my future. The only way I was able and continue to be able to overcome my fears is through courage and faith in God. 

There is a quote going around the internet stating " The Bible says 'Do not fear" 365 times. " I don't know if it's true and honestly, I don't care. Any number of times God says it to me is enough. We live in a world were we constantly want MORE, and we believe things are better if we hear it more, if we have more, etc. We should be able to just hear " Do not Fear" once, and have faith in it. But alas, we suffer from failure,we make mistakes and we give into our fears. 

The point of this post is to motivate myself and others to be courageous. It may not be pleasant at first, but with time, it will become easier. The biggest fear I have overcome is my fear of the future. I think I was able to overcome it when I went on a retreat that had this bible passage as the verse for the weekend "For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope." -Jeremiah 29:11.

 God has every moment of our lives planned out. Its absolutely crazy when you think about it! He knows what school you are going to go to, he know which job offer you are going to take, he knows when you are going to cry, to feel pain, to feel extreme joy, and he knows when you feel like you can't take it anymore. He knows all of that, right now. Not only does he know that, but he is willing to take all of the burdens off of you. He is willing to take away all the fears, the tears, the moments where you feel like you are going to explode in pain. He can handle that, and keep you with the moments of happiness, courage and hope. In that moment when you let go of all the hurt, and let God take care of it, then you will feel complete happiness in your future, no matter where it may lead you.

My point is, let go. Let go of your fears and let God take care of them. Trust. He can handle those issues with far more grace than any of us ever could.

I believe in hope.

I'm sick and tired of people constantly complaining.

Lately, I have been paying special attention to those who constantly complain, whine, and moan about their mistakes, faults, and general bad luck in life. Nobody wants to be around people like that.

I believe that we have a general desire to live in a world full of love, hope and faith. However, we seriously suck at meeting any of those requirements. I consider myself to be a very hopeful person, and I think I probably get shut down everyday for my hopeful and usually cheesy statements.

Attempting to live a downright happy and hopeful life is unbelievably hard every day and it's starting to piss me off. I can't figure out why people don't want happiness or don't want hope. The only thing holding us back is the image in our heads of how our lives are meant to be. We think we should have the access to the best things, the best job, the best paycheck, etc, and when we don't get those things we "hate our lives." 

We have been blessed with amazingly beautiful lives and we should act as such. We should thank God daily, through both our words and our actions! Talk about how amazing your day was with others. Act as though this is the best day of your life. It should not matter if you got cut off on the highway, arrived late to work, or whatever. Get upset momentarily, and then get over it. You're life is absolutely breathtaking. You are surrounded by beautiful people who would do anything for you. Shut your mouth and open your eyes and you might see it. 

Love everyone.

Love everyone.

It's just two words and seems easy enough right? I think in today's world, loving everyone is probably one of the hardest things to do.

Why should we love everyone?

Why should we love those who have hurt us?

Why should we love those who disrespect us?

Why should we love those who clearly don't love us back?

Because Jesus did.

Jesus was hurt by people immensely more than most of us have ever. I took a moment to think about the most hurtful things people have ever done or said to me and it does not come close to what Jesus went through. 

Jesus was beaten, betrayed, and denied. 

Yet, he forgave and loved those who hurt him. 

We are an extremely selfish population. We always want to know what is in it for us. I know that personally, there have been times where I have failed to forgive and love others because there was nothing in it for me. Because I knew at the end of the day, that person was going to say something mean and rude about me. I didn't want to give my love to someone if they were not going to reciprocate it back. It took me a very long time to realize that's not what its about. 

By no means is loving everyone easy. It is undeniably a hard task to do, but just because something is hard does not mean we shouldn't strive for it. This past year I struggled immensely to love another person. They had hurt me, a lot, and I knew they were going to keep hurting me so I did not want to forgive and love. I went to confession and explained this to Fr. He simply smiled and said, "Katty, you have to forgive them. Whenever its hard for you to love them, remember that God loves them immensely, and God sees the good in them, even if you can't see that right now." Well that certainly felt like a slap in the face. Here I was, thinking I knew everything, when I clearly don't. If God can love everyone, Why the heck can't I? 

The only thing stopping us from loving everyone is ourselves. 

Trust in God and in his timing.

Trust can be an incredibly hard thing to do. Trusting involves putting your guard down and letting another person into your life. While it is hard enough to trust a single person, imagine trusting someone that you cannot physically see. Someone that a lot of people hate; someone that a lot of people want you to hate too. Someone who a lot of people don't even believe is real. Trusting that person can be a challenge. I'm talking about trusting God. 

That's a debbie downer way of looking at it in my opinion. Unfortunately, It's the way many within society see it. 

I get frequently told I'm ridiculously optimistic, so I tend to look at things in a different way. Here's how it works in my head... Imagine trusting someone who taught you how to live your life to the fullest and who genuinely wants you to live your life to the fullest ( John 10:10)  Imagine trusting someone who let their beloved son die, so that you could live. (John 3:16)  Imagine trusting someone who is constantly there for you, even when everyone else has walked out. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

That sounds like an easy person to trust. 

The hardest thing to do is trust in God when things aren't going so well for you. It is so easy to get discouraged then. Trusting in God was something I always struggled with. When things were going well, I was a-okay with The Big Guy. I would pray to him daily and brag about him all the time. However, when things starting getting tough, I lost my trust in Him. I hid and became a coward. In those moments I have never felt more alone. I couldn't understand why God would let bad things happen to me or those I loved. 

I still don't think I have an answer for why bad things happen, and I'm okay with that. I'm not God. I'm not perfect. I don't know everything, and I'm not meant to. I do know that I trust in God and the timing for everything he does. Even if at the moment it seems like the worst thing is happening at the worst possible time, I trust and believe that God is 100% in control and knows what he's doing. Even if I don't have a freaking clue. 

Sometimes it's better to just stop for a second, take a deep breath, and tell The Big Guy its all in his hands. In that moment, stop over-thinking, stop feeling guilty, confused, hurt, and alone. Get up and keep going. Because if Jesus could do it, so can you. 

Phil 4: 6-7 

Pray without ceasing.

Prayer is potentially the easiest, and at the same time, most challenging thing to do daily. No matter where I turn to seek guidance in my faith life, one thing is always consistently repeated...In order to grow close to God, you have to maintain a consistent prayer life. You must be persistent in prayer. 

Jesus asked us to pray, every Sunday at mass, we learn the benefits of prayer, so why do we struggle with it so much? Quite frankly, I suck at being consistent with my prayers. I tend to have times in my life where I will ask the Big Guy what's crackin' every day, and then other times in my life where the only time I pay him any mind is before my meal when I pray Grace, or at mass on Sunday. There is something very wrong with this picture.

I think Mother Teresa was a genius. A while ago, I read some writings she had on prayer. The way she spoke about prayer was immensely powerful. I encourage you to look up some of your writings, specifically her book "No Greater Love", in my opinion is phenomenal. 
I really like one quote within the book. Mother Teresa writes, "Perfect prayer does not consist in many words, but in the fervor of the desire which raises the heart to Jesus." I think sometimes I forget that I don't have to have a long and elaborate prayer to God. Prayer is essentially just a chit chat with God. It can be as short or as long as we like. God is just happy to have us there. 

Another important thing I constantly forget is that sometimes you don't even have to say anything at all. Silence can be a form of prayer. Sometimes we just need to shut up, and listen to God. He will tell us what we need to hear. 


I guess the point I'm making is that prayer shouldn't be hard and scary. We should love to pray, everyday. 

Philippians 4: 6-7 

It's your heart that beats inside our chests.

I was struggling to determine what I should write about first, when one of my favorite songs came on and sparked my attention. The song is titled "Deuces Las Cruces" by Memphis May Fire. A majority of you have most likely never heard the song, so here it is for your listening pleasure.

Fair warning, for most reading this you will be shocked by what your ears are about to hear. This genre of music is typically too intense for most people. I happen to love it. What is most impressive about this song are the lyrics. The part that stuck out the most to me was this...

" It's your heart that beats inside our chests. We'll do our part, and you'll do the rest. We'll go where you need us to be. We'll plant the seed."

I'll let you get into my mind for a moment. I over think everything. Sometimes I spend hours of my day analyzing just a single sentence, or perhaps in this case, a set of song lyrics. The line "It's your heart that beats inside our chests" was one of those analyzing moments for me. It's his heart that beats inside my chest? What?! Mind blown. What a phenomenal lyric. I spent most of yesterday realizing exactly what it means. I so easily forget that my body, my hands, my feet, my mind, all of me, is not my own. It's God's. He placed me on Earth for a purpose, I couldn't tell you in the slightest what my purpose is, but I know it's there. 


After I stopped spazzing over that song lyric, I moved to the rest. "We'll do our part, and you'll do the rest. We'll go where you need us to be. " You know that purpose I mentioned earlier, well it gets even more intense! Yes, we are all placed on Earth for a purpose, but not only that, we all take part of something much bigger. Do you realize that without you it can never be complete? It's like spending days working on a puzzle only to realize that the last piece is missing. The puzzle will never be complete. It will never feel whole. You will never feel satisfied. We all take part in something so much bigger than us. We all have a calling. You know what I'm talking about, that feeling, that tugging, pulling you to do something that sometimes you just don't want to do. Sometimes we have to just shut up and do it. Don't stress over it too much though, because all we have to do is put forth our best effort to complete our part and God covers the rest, because he is the bomb diggity. He is complete perfection.

And finally, the last line, " We will plant the seed." This is something I heard all the time while I was at school and it took me awhile to genuinely understand it. Planting the seed refers to sparking a small fire in someone's heart for their faith. Think about planting a seed for a tree, obviously a seed starts out incredibly small and unless it is provided with the proper resources it will never grow. However, when a seed is given what it needs - water, sunlight, etc it has the potential to grow into a powerful and beautiful tree. Here is a real life example. My freshman year of college my friend, Katie, invited me to join her bible study. That invitation was a planted seed. With the help of a lot of other faithful people, prayers and  proper resources I have been able to grow into the devout woman I am today. Anyways, what struck me about this line is that we are only called to plant seeds. We are not heros, we are not saviors, and thats okay because we're not meant to be. God is the hero, the savior. He saves souls, not us. I forget that a lot.   I have to consistently remind myself that I'm not a superhero. Anything good you see in me is because of  God.


Philippians 4: 6-7