The Pope who gives us hope

~ Laura ~ Leave a comment

If you haven’t been seeing all the news stories and posts on social media, Pope Francis visiting the U.S. had kinds of been a big deal. Instead of being trampled by other enthusiastic pilgrims, I’ve been living vicariously through them by watching the live feed, other videos, and news stories.

Because Pope Francis is reaching so many people and touching so many lives, I figured, why not share his love in this space? Here’s a reminder from him that there’s hope in the world:

A woman’s reaction to his address at the Inter-religious Meeting at Ground Zero

From Ave Maria Press:

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Kissing all the people after Mass!

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A moment from Mass with Cardinal Dolan (shared by Lino Rulli):

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Pure joy (from Brandon over on Instagram) – I’m making it a life goal to be that grandma:

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He was already driving away, but Pope Francis stopped his car to bless a boy with cerebral palsy (look at the comments on Facebook to see a ton of non-Catholics who love and support our Pope!):

Did you hear about people asking if Pope Francis is democrat or republican? Well, there’s this:

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Pope Francis is a pope for our times. He is not high and mighty. He is one of us. He gives us hope, and he teaches us how to love better by doing things like eating with people who are homeless instead of government leaders. Find out more about Pope Francis’ visit at the Vatican news source.

Have other stories that have inspired you? Share them in the comments!

To Life,

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Life Lately

~ Laura ~ Leave a comment

It’s been well over a month since my last post. Whoa. I’ve missed this outlet, this creative time to hash out my thoughts and connect with you. Time to hop back on the bandwagon!

Last month I drove out to Kansas to begin my last year of college. It’s quite bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter. I’ll miss many things about college (HA! Not you, homework!), and I’m sure tears will be shed. But overall I’m ready for the next chapter of life to begin come May. We’ve been soaking up apartment life (see above picture) and loving having more space to call our own. The weather is so gorgeous. It’s such a nice time of year to enjoy! We went on a lovely picnic to a pond today 🙂

Classes have not been super challenging. Drawing is time consuming, but I’m thankful for mandatory creative time that doesn’t involve academia. My synoptic gospels class is quite mind-blowing (almost have my theology minor done!). And business classes are pretty normal.

I’ve been thinking about our culture a lot, and what my place is in it. This picture is of our campus group praying outside a Planned Parenthood a couple weeks ago. It almost gives me chills. Doesn’t it seem like a symbol of our society? Look how little we are compared to the evil going on. So many people have been feeling burnt out about this. I have too, but there is always hope. More to  come on this.

Senior year has been easier than junior year. Last year felt like this impending doom of “real life” was always on the horizon. Now it’s closer than ever. But we’ve grown in maturity, and I know I’m going to be okay. Life is as beautiful as we make it!

It’s been a while since I’ve shared in this space, but I plan to share more as the year progresses. Won’t you follow along? Subscribe here for my monthly exclusive updates, and follow on social media (see sidebar) for even more.

To Life,

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Courage, dear heart

~ Laura ~ 4 Comments

Courage Dear Heart by Laura at A Drop in the Ocean

Let’s be real, folks. Our world is a molten hot mess of depravity right now.

I’ve kind of wanted to go cry in a corner at various times over the last couple months and ignore the world. I did actually get off of the internet for a couple days because I had just had enough. It’s exhausting to see this all going on, and frustrating at times having little control to change it. Sometimes it feels like talking to a brick wall because the conversation has lulled. Either people have spoken their minds, or people choose to remain removed from the issue.

Now the waters seem to have settled after the initial shock. We’ve written about the Planned Parenthood videos and gay marriage being legalized, shared our disgust, and now mostly gone back to our everyday lives of getting by.

We have become accustomed to evil.

At the same time, we know this all is horrible.

But it’s also the norm.

So what in the world are we supposed to do?

If you think back to the holocaust or slavery or the civil rights movement – all social issues of their times – society didn’t change when people got sad. Society didn’t change because people found out about bad stuff happening. Plenty of people had to have known about those atrocities.

The world changed because a brave few had enough guts to stand up, expose evil, and demand the atrocity that was going on be stopped.

No one person is probably going to change the world (#RealityCheck). But what if instead of allowing ourselves to hide in a corner and go back to our ordinary lives, we let the gravity of this time sink in and radically change us?

What we if we actually decided that enough is enough?

That the truth we believe in is worth defending at all cost?

That our reputation doesn’t matter when it comes to defending the life and dignity of the vulnerable?

Now THAT would stir things up.

Many of us who believe in truth and morals are used to being the minority. Obviously. We expect to be told we’re wrong. We expect the media to misinterpret us and belittle us. We know our religious liberty is at stake. We know Christian morals are no longer the law of the land.

But you know what? We’re not victims here.

I am not a victim.

You are not a victim.

Certainly we’re affected by our life circumstances. But life is how we respond to whatever is thrown at us. Though we may want to hide in a corner sometimes, we can’t. Too much is at stake. And if we did, who would be changing the world?

I think we keep things quiet because we are more scared of standing up for ourselves than we are of bad things happening to other people.

And that just won’t do.

We are called out of comfort to stand witness to the beauty, truth, and goodness that is our faith. We are equipped by our Mother Church who gives us the foundation to articulate the dignity of life and love as God intended. We are called to profess the goodness of every human person, not to simply go on living our own isolated lives. Life is about more than our little lives.

In these moments when we tire of “the issues”, we have to remember that it’s not people we’re fighting. It’s principalities and evil (Ephesians 6:12). And God’s go our back, guys! It’s not just us against big, bad people who are out to get us. We are facing deep-seated evil, and moral relativism unlike the world has seen in a while. This is our opportunity to do more than talk, to substantially make changes in our communities and families to support the dignity of the human person.

This is where we show the world who we are.

This is where we have to radically put our trust God, because we cannot fight evil with our littleness. But love conquers all. Love has already won thousands of years ago on the cross. Do you believe that? Do you trust in him who created you for such a time as this? Because he created you for a purpose. Living at this time is part of the plan.

We have to trust HIM, because we cannot do this ourselves. It simply can’t be done. And that is frustrating. We are troubled because these atrocities are terrifying and we can’t control everything going on. But we can rest peacefully knowing God has it under control.

If we allow God to use us to create a better world, and give him all of our weaknesses to transform, there’s no telling what he will do through us.

As Aslan would say, take courage, dear heart. You are on the side of love and life. You belong to a people of God that evil is in the midst of a reckoning with. The battle is rough and the soldiers are few. But we are mighty. We serve God who loves and equips each of his children for the purpose we were created for. And spoiler: truth always wins.

To Life,

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Photo courtesy of Lori Branham on Flickr and is used in accord with it’s license without necessarily representing the views of the photographer.

Daring to face the giant

~ Laura ~ 2 Comments

How dare she sit there eating salad and sipping wine while nonchalantly talking about crushing babies?

I don’t know how someone could be so callous. 

She’s going to rot in hell for everything she’s done. Good. She deserves it.

These, and worse, are what I’ve heard many people say about Dr. Nucatola – Planned Parenthood’s Senior Director of Medical Services – recently pictured in a viral video. The video shows her talking over dinner about Planned Parenthood’s practice of passing body parts of aborted babies on to mediator-type organizations which then transfer them to medical research labs.

The video revealed a horrifying practice especially to those who had never heard about this before.

But it’s interesting to see how people respond.

Many people are incredulous at how an organization can do such a thing. They take their anger and disgust out on this woman. The anger and disgust is understandable, but personally attacking this woman does not help. Because guess what…

We ask how dare she do this. How dare she abort babies and crush skulls and manipulate how abortions are done to produce prime body parts?

Yes, how dare she.

But how dare we neglect to stop this. How dare we stop talking about it. How dare we go on with our daily lives as if nothing is different. How dare we avoid big topics in order to continue our comfortable lives?

Jenny’s post on this topic resonated with me because like her, this news did not surprise me. I have heard about this before. It did not emotionally jar me or make me cry. It did not break my heart.

And that disgusts me.

I am so used to hearing about attacks on human dignity and life. I am so used to people not being valued. I am so used to hearing about people being killed that it doesn’t phase me anymore. Don’t even ask me to watch a horror movie or go in a haunted house. But babies being ripped apart? Yeah, that’s happening. People being beheaded? Oh yeah, that ISIS thing has been going on for a while.

But THESE ARE HUMAN LIVES WE’RE TALKING ABOUT!

As someone who talks about the dignity of every single unrepeatable life, how do these stories not have a huge impact on me? How am I not sobbing at the thought of innocent lives being literally ripped apart?

You know, I don’t have a great answer. But I GET what Jenny said:

When I was younger I used to wonder about the German people and why nobody tried to get out ahead of Hitler, how an entire nation could have fallen under his evil spell.

Now I know. Now I see, firsthand, that none of us are immune to the horrors of our day. And that as the temperature rises, the frog slowly cooks, oblivious to his own imminent peril as the mercury creeps ever upward. And that at a certain point the human mind, when confronted with such appalling and obvious wickedness, shuts down or short circuits in cowardice or fear or apathy or, or, or …

I get it. I am so used to evil that it’s the norm.

I am the reason we still have abortion.

We all are.

Because we’re used to it and don’t fight it anymore. We accept that we’ve lost before the battle is over.

God, save us from our own blind selves. And renew in us the conviction to bring your light to a horribly fallen world. If we don’t speak up, nobody will. 

Time to buckle up, friends. We’re in this war for the long haul. There is a giant Goliath of evil looming around us. But I have good news, and a bit of a spoiler: love, life, and truth ALWAYS win.

To Life,

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6 non-religious reasons to oppose gay marriage

~ Laura ~ 2 Comments

This post is part of the Love Wins series – a series of posts covering topics within the issue of gay marriage (post 1, post 2, post 3, and post 4). The goal of these posts is not to convince anyone to think what I think, but to create a conversation and explore the topics together. I am not an authority figure on this issue, and will not always approach this from a highly academic perspective, but am writing as a Catholic young voice seeking the truth. I hope you’ll follow along and be part of the conversation!

Love Wins A series on gay marriage

 

While my faith is very important to me, not everyone shares my beliefs. I think it’s important in this series to include non-religious reasons why legalizing gay marriage might not be the best idea.

Here are 6 reasons to think about:

1. In moving away from traditional families, we move away from traditional values.

Duh, that’s the whole point, right? Some people count this as progress. And of course we should always learn and become better and develop as a world. But in moving away from traditional families, we’ve become relativistic. People say it just doesn’t matter what anyone does. But anything that encourages a departure from absolute truth is problematic.

2.  There are two different genders for some reason, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s to propagate the species. 

I guess this is good news for people who think the world is overpopulated. I mean, more gay marriage, less people born, right? Well, many countries, including the U.S. are below a replacement level of fertility rate. That means we’re going to have more and more older people with less and less younger people to care for them. That doesn’t sound like a good economy.

3. STD’s are more prevalent among those who are in sexual relationships with a person of the same gender. 

Ever wonder why they ask you when you’re donating blood whether you’ve been in a sexual relationship with someone of the same gender? According to the CDC, “75% of primary and secondary syphilis cases in the United States” are among men in sexual relationships with other men. These men are 17 times more likely to develop anal cancer. This doesn’t sound like a normal and healthy lifestyle.

4. Children are entitled to a mother and a father.

Yes, two people of the same gender are capable of raising a child. But the balance between the differences mothers and fathers provide is not replaceable with two people of the same gender. Some people say it’s not important to have both, that it doesn’t matter. But two parents of the same gender cannot provide the same environment of a traditional family structure.

5. It purposefully deprives children of their biological parents.

Adoption is a beautiful and courageous thing to do. But when two people of the same gender want a child who is not adopted, they have to use a donor. There are too many articles to link here that say what a problem egg and sperm donation is. It’s a hugely unregulated industry I certainly wouldn’t want to encourage people to be part of. As people get older, adopted children or children conceived using donors often want to know their biological parents. Often times nowadays, it’s impossible with anonymous donors.

6. We do not have enough evidence to say that children growing up with homosexual parents do not have any problems down the road.

According to one study, children of homosexual parents:

-Are more likely to be currently cohabiting
-Are almost 4 times more likely to be currently on public assistance
-Are more than 3 times more likely to be unemployed
-Are nearly 4 times more likely to identify as something other than entirely heterosexual
-Are 3 times as likely to have had an affair while married or cohabiting
-Are 10 times more likely to have been “touched sexually by a parent or other adult caregiver.”

That’s just one study. We need a heap more research to know what the long-lasting repercussions are before we say all families are equal.

The fact is that besides philosophical and theological reasoning, there are plenty of reasons why a sweeping decision to legalize gay marriage is highly problematic. I hope you’ll continue to follow along as we wrap up this series looking at a few more topics!

Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin’ or by email to follow along during this series. And help spread the conversation by sharing this post!

Be sure to check out post 1, post 2, post 3, and post 4 if you haven’t already!

To Life,

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Image via Hartwig HKD on Flickr.