I suck at this blog thing.  They say it’s the thought that counts, so A+ for effort, right?

Currently I’m at a place in my novel writing where I can’t think of anything else to write about, but I desperately need to post something. I decided to post some of my favorite pictures that I’ve taken. Most of them are newer pictures, a few are old ones that I really like.(Posted in no particular order)

Chronic Lyme disease is not something that is easy to live with. I live in constant pain, I have very little energy, and my memory is getting worse everyday. Often I feel isolated and lonely. There are times I feel like crying because I just get so tired of living like this. Everyday I have to remind myself that this is all for a purpose. That God is using it in my life for His will, and His glory, and that this is all part of His plan to help me grow in my walk and become closer to Him.

For people who aren’t sick, it’s a difficult concept to grasp that I’m always ill. Some part of me is always hurting. It never goes away. Most people are used to getting sick every now and then, they get a flu and they can check out for a few days and rest up, get better then get back into the groove of things. People like me can’t do that. We have to push through, we have to work through the pain.

There are several common responses that my sisters and I receive when people learn that we have a chronic illness. Some of them are quite rude, and some downright hurtful and ridiculous.

“You aren’t seeing doctors to be treated?” There are so many times that people behave as if we’re heathens for not going to the professionals for our treatments. Our family has chosen to go the natural route for many reasons. And despite what many people think, the natural route does work and it’s far less taxing than the treatments by the medical “professionals”.

“God wants you to be better.” This one bothers me because if God wanted me to be better I would be. He has complete control over my health and He does not want me to be better. By stating that He wishes me to be better, it is also saying that he is out of control of the situation, which denies His sovereignty.

The response that takes the cake is not only rude and unkind, it’s downright unbiblical: “You’re sick because of some terrible sin in your life. You need to repent and God will heal you.” I cannot even stress how wrong this statement is. How infuriating it is when a person says this to me. To look at a person who lives everyday in pain, in suffering and instead of trying to lift them up you try to tell them that they are “In sin and need to repent” not only puts off a holier than thou air, it’s wrong scripturally.  An example I have is Job. God allowed all of that sickness, tragedy and tormenting to happen to Job. Was it because Job was sinning terribly? No. In fact, God allowed it because He knew that Job was faithful and even through all of those trials Job would not turn away from God. Does anybody remember Job’s friends? “If you will seek God and plead with the Almighty for mercy, if you are pure and upright, surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore your rightful habitation.” (Job 8:5-6) His friends told him he was in sin and if he only repented all would be well. We are to lift one another up, this is not uplifting or kind. Would you say this to a person who found out they had cancer? Or to a woman who had a miscarriage? No. Because it would be unkind and disheartening. It is the same principle.

Living with a chronic illness is not easy, if you know someone who lives with one, I beg you to please consider your words carefully. Consider how you would feel in their shoes if someone repeated your words to you. In essence these words are kicking a man while he is down. No one wants to be treated like this, so why would you do it to someone else?

I would like to make it clear that this isn’t a rant post, this is a problem that myself and others like me deal with often. People who don’t live with chronic diseases and illnesses don’t understand the implications or meaning of their words sometimes. And personally, I feel that if I don’t say how these sound and make people feel I’m doing a disservice to my brothers and sisters in Christ.

If you have said things like this to someone, please don’t take offense to this, but rather use it as an opportunity to grow. Maybe even apologize to the person you may have said these things to. We all make mistakes and we all have issues. I have many myself. I write this because I want others to point out the way my words may be insensitive or hurtful, and if I want others to do so for me I should do the same for them. Our tongues are powerful tools that can either build or destroy, we must be careful to guard them and ensure that we’re using them for good.

“Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.” ~ Ephesians 4:29

“You’ve Got Mail” is a classic in my book. Kathleen and I have many a thing in common, including our love of daisies. To me, white daises are the best flower. They’re cute, simple, happy, and there’s just something innocent about them.(Pretty sure they actually mean ‘innocent’ in flower language.)

Tomorrow is my 18th birthday! It’s not something that’s ever bothered me. It’s just another number. At least, I thought that until it started getting closer. Now I feel as if there’s this responsibility I have. I’m going to be an adult, I should do stuff. Now, what stuff I don’t know. It’s not exactly as if my health allows me to do much of anything.

I’m going to be starting treatment for my Lyme right after my birthday. Most likely, this year will be spent taking meds, reading, and writing my little fingers off. Throw in some housework and some trips out somewhere when cabin fever starts to kick in. Hopefully a few photography field trips, as well. And most likely, several trips up to Louisiana to visit with family(yay!).

Also, I think I’m ready to start the 3rd draft of my hopefully one day novel! Things will be changing. A lot. Again. Surprise surprise. For those of you who don’t understand. My writing style is typically refereed to as a “Pantser”. Basically I fly by the seed of my pants, winging it all. When I started my first draft I knew nothing about my novel except for the names of my characters and that it was futuristic. I used my first draft to figure things out. The second draft was more of that, working on my weaknesses and figuring out what exactly was supposed to be going on. I would have started my 3rd draft by now, except that I had some major things to work out. You know, like my characters actually having some sort of goal that they were working toward. Downsides of being an ENFP; I’m great at individual scenes, emotion, and characters. It’s the plot and thinking ahead that I get stuck on. Which is big when you’re shooting for a novel that will probably be more than one book… I’m learning though! Failing isn’t something I’m scared of because I have to fail to learn from my mistakes. The likely root of this fearlessness is because I can make sure the mistake never sees the light of day. ;) I am learning, writing a novel is no easy task. But it is fun, and worth the work it takes, and I have a feeling by the time I get to the end of this I’m going to be very happy with my work. I figured out my major problem last night while cleaning the kitchen(when I come up with my best work), and now my charries have goals! Let the games being!

I realized I haven’t put up any pictures recently! Here are some of my birthday flowers, and Hannah’s birthday double rainbow yesterday! (If you’re feeling confused about birthdays right about now; Hannah’s birthday is on March 5th(she turned 21), mine is on the 7th. We also have a cousin’s who is on the 6th(today!). Cool, huh?)

It’s hard to see, but the second rainbow is off to the right.

Happy weekend everyone!

Disclaimer: Any opinions I express are purely my own, personal opinions. I have absolutely nothing against the people who enjoy this show! :) 

For those of you that are unaware, I am soon to start the third draft of a novel I hope to someday have published. I’ve been working toward this goal for some time now, and have been doing endless hours of research. Reading tips from the pros, reading and re-reading my favorite novels to dissect them and learn what it is I love about them. I’ve also been watching and reading some things I don’t enjoy  for the same reasons. To dissect and learn what it is I don’t like about them.

I’m sure many of us are familiar with ABC’s hit drama “Once Upon A Time”. For those of you who aren’t; The show depicts classic fairy tale characters that have been sent to our world, a small town on the east coast called “Story Brooke”. Snow White’s evil step mother has put a curse on these characters so that they don’t remember their fairy tale lives in “The Enchanted Forest” (their home land). Emma, our main heroine, is brought to Story Brooke by her son, Henry, who lives with his adopted mother. The evil queen who sent everyone to our world and cursed them. They fight to break the curse and return everyone’s memories, and the show goes on from there.

Like many, I watched it every week. For two seasons I did this. As I watched the show each week something nagged at me. There was something about the show I didn’t quite like. I boiled it down to the soap opera writing style. Dramatic, over done and cheesy at times. It was one of the things I didn’t like about the show. However, I realized more recently, when giving the show another shot due to some writing advice I had read, what was actually putting me off.

The show is a rip-off. You may think I’m being harsh, but let’s look at this. Many of the characters are obviously based off of their Disney counterparts. Not the originals.  “Once Upon A Time” changes things up, just enough, that people don’t notice(and maybe to even avoid copyright infringement). They throw everyone into the real world void of magic. They make Captain hook an anti-hero. They throw in Cora, Henry, and Emma, who are not from the original stories. I will say, Mr. Gold/Rumpelstiltskin is by far the best and most original character on the show. He is well written, and the most complex character there is.

Saying that, the show is not just a rip-off, it’s also poorly written. The writers seem to be trying to grasp at the concept of complexity, but they don’t seem to have the understanding of how to accomplish it. The family tree in this show is incredibly confusing. And not in the Steven Moffat, Who is River Song? Good way. Many people in this show are related, almost everyone has met(I’m not saying every character, but many of them have)  at some point or another.

Another point, the one that bothers me most  in this show, is how black and white they paint things. The bad guys are evil, they may try to redeem themselves but deep down they can’t really change. The good guys are perfect. You may argue that they’ve made mistakes, and you would be right. But they aren’t realistic mistakes. The good guys make small mistakes, and they always have a good reason. When one of the good guys on the show kills one of the bad guys(I’m leaving out names to avoid spoilers to those who enjoy the show and haven’t seen this bit yet), the heart of said good guy starts “turning black”. The act of killing the bad guy, who was killing many other people and threatening to hurt others, has made this person’s heart start to turn black. Their reputation of perfection,  never committing any crime or holding issue with any person, has been completely ruined and now they are turning evil(this is where I stopped watching, so I can’t tell you how it was resolved). The character did do something that wasn’t necessarily right, but you could also argue it was self defense and protecting those around her.

The show’s entire outlook on good versus bad is twisted into what society wants it to be. They don’t show that the heroes are human and they make mistakes. They follow the usual, villain says “You’re just like me.” and the hero responds, “I am nothing like you.” then go to prove that they are, in fact, nothing like the villain. This is a big issue to me. Heroes should be broken, they should have made horrible mistakes, had a person they loved and trusted like family betray them. They should have a dark, ugly, and heart breaking past. They should have that, because it’s human. It’s what everyone goes through. We all have stories that would break the hearts of our friends, it’s something that’s unavoidable. Because in order to grow, you have to break. You have to hit rock bottom before you can climb back to where you were and keep climbing to go higher than ever before. We learn from our mistakes, we learn what we believe in by learning what we don’t.

The same goes for villains. Their story should be just as broken, but the difference is they chose a different path. The difference between a good villain and a good hero, is that the hero chose to become better, to let his past shape him into a better person. A villain is the same. Only his path leads to more destruction. Still though, he is a hero in his own eyes, he believes he’s doing what is right. In his own twisted logic, he is a hero. It’s not as black and white as the show portrays it.

That, is my biggest issue with this show. The story feels like a story, the characters feel like characters. They don’t feel real. They don’t feel real because there are no gray areas. There is one line, the line that separates good from evil. That isn’t how life is, that isn’t human nature, it isn’t how we were created. We break, we fall, we rise and we glue ourselves back together, only to do it all over again hundreds of times over for the rest of our lives.