I was very excited to get my first tattoo. It was my eighteenth birthday and my best friend had offered to pay for it as a gift. I had been looking forward to getting a tattoo for quite some time! To me it was a symbol of who I am and of my freedom. She even picked out a place for us to go and have it done. I was a little leery when she drove me out to a part of town I didn’t know very well and it didn’t look very nice. This was about 20 years ago…
Last year I began a study on Ash Wednesday, Lent and Easter. There in that study I found that the season of Lent actually starts with Fat Tuesday, also known as Carnival. Fat Tuesday is a huge holiday celebrated all over the world. It is a day where people gather together to celebrate before the 40 days of fasting for Lent. It is a time of fulfilling all of our gluttonous desires before we have to sacrifice the things that we enjoy and remember our shame and sorrow. Carnival (or Fat Tuesday) is a huge party where people feast, dance,…
This past season has been terribly difficult for me. We jumped right out of Halloween, a time of terror for me, right into Christmas, a time where the mind control programming is overwhelming for me. It all started with Black Friday. Black Friday actually lasts about four days, as the frenzy of shopping the sales extends into Cyber Monday. If you have ever been out during Black Friday, or have been caught up in it yourself, then you have seen the power of its grip over people. Without realizing it, you have intense urges to buy. The sales are too…
When I first started to go to church just over three years ago, I had a very distinct idea of what church was. It was a place where the good people go. The people who are perfect and don’t do any wrong. People quite the opposite of me: drug addict, tattooed, ex witch, etc. I knew that everyone was certainly nice and kind and loving. No one had any serious problems because once you became Christian you became perfect. Wrong. It didn’t take long to realize those were all completely fabricated lies that I learned while growing up. There is…
Have you ever felt alone? Unloved? Unworthy? I know I have. I have many moments in life when I felt I was not only unloved, but unlovable. I wanted to be loved, but never felt that I could measure up to being good enough to be loved. I wanted desperately to feel approval from my parents, but never did. I wanted to know that I was valuable and important to someone, but no matter how many times my husband told me I was, I could never believe it. I wanted to look in the mirror and see someone beautiful and…