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Showing posts from October, 2018

The Monster Within

"I hate what I've become The nightmare's just begun I must confess that I feel like a monster"~Skillet, " Monster " Today is Halloween, a day when ghosts, goblins, and monsters come out of the shadows and freely roam the Earth. Well, sort of. The origins of the holiday as we know it stemmed from that belief, but in reality, it's more of a day to dress up and have fun. However, there is a type of monster that we need to watch out for, one that, unfortunately, can show up at any time and in any place: the monster that lives within our own hearts. In some people, this monstrous version of themselves is quite obvious. Just in the last week, those of us in America heard about at least two of them: one who sent bombs to politicians and one who murdered 11 people as they worshiped in a synagogue. Those were just the ones who made the national news. In big cities, there are even more of these monstrous people wandering about. Where I live, I hear about at

I Choose Joy

"The time has come to make a choice, and I choose joy."~" Joy "-For King and Country Ever since I got a link to the music video for this song, I loved it. Not only are the costumes and setting of the video fun, but the song itself is as well. I sometimes struggle to be joyful when I hear about all the things happening in our world, and this song was great at encouraging me that it is not only possible, but also freeing. In pursuit of the kind of joy mentioned in the song,  I joined the Faith Gateway Defiant Joy online bible study led by Candace Payne (aka Chewbacca Mom) and Mandisa. Each week of this six week study had a Joy Lab, which contained one or more activities to do to help cultivate joy in our lives. These challenges ranged from finding old pictures of ourselves to carrying around rocks for an entire week. (The pictures were to remind us of times in the past where we were joyful, and the rocks were to represent the struggles we face that weigh us down a