So I’ve had WAY too much time on my hands at work the last few weeks. I’ve done a lot of thinking about lots of things and so I thought I’d put some of them on paper.
Luke and I don’t have much. We have each other, we have my wonderful family and great friends. We have our little apartment and Alli May. We each have our own history degree. We each have a running vehicle and we each have jobs. We don’t have new cars, a big house, and lots of money in the bank or high paying jobs. We can’t go on extravagant trips, buy expensive new furnishings for our apartment, or even afford to eat steak every night for dinner. Some days of the month we scrape by and eat whatever we have in the freezer, make up recipes and hope we don’t run out of gas on our way to work (ok that last one is mostly me). Sometimes we have to split our electric bill and pay half with one check and the other half in two weeks. We live and think pretty simply. A big night out for us is dinner at Texas Roadhouse and a movie at Hollywood Theatres. Dressing up is something other than tennishoes with our “nice” jeans and collared shirt.
When talking about where we might want to go on a honeymoon if we can get the money, neither of us said to a Hawaiian island or a Mediterranean Cruise, neither of us said anything that was a BIG trip. We both said “a quiet cabin in the mountains”. Simple.
With all this time on my hands to think, and reflect on things, I’ve realized I wouldn’t have it any other way. Sure it would be wonderful to be able to pay all our bills at once with out even batting an eye at the bank account. It would be nice to have a new car that we aren’t afraid will break down. I’d love to own a home with a yard for Alli to run in and a place to call OURS. BUT those things aren’t important. We don’t shop at fancy clothing stores or try to live up to other Midlanders standards. We don’t aim to please anyone but ourselves. We simply live our lives with what we have, love and respect each other, have fun staying in and doing nothing, reading together, playing our Wii, cooking and cleaning up the kitchen together, or sitting on the porch and solving the worlds problems for hours on end. We don’t pretend to have more than we do. We have a lot of hand me down dishes & pots & pans. Our bed is a hand me down, the blankets we have we’ve had for years and years.
But what we do have is REAL, true, honest love and respect. We have awesome family and friends, people that, when those materialistic ones would disapprove of our hand me down ways, will still be around, people God placed to walk with us through life.
I know that someday we’ll be in a better place financially, we’ll never be rich unless we decide to play the lottery someday and happen to win J But I know we’ll be better some day, and we’ll be better for it because of these days, months, possibly years that we will struggle. We may struggle financially, but we are SOLID emotionally.
God really has blessed me in a million ways. I am blessed beyond measure, in ways that I am not worthy. But I am appreciative, I am grateful I am eternally thankful for these life lessons and these blessings that I am continually learning from. We are LUCKY people. I pray that we always know how lucky we are.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Bullying...just rambling
Bullying and Teens
There is a lot in the news lately about teenagers/kids being bullied and doing the bullying in school and out of school, stirs up a lot of weird feelings for me.
I have been both the victim of the bullying and probably should have been punished for partaking in a form of bullying a few times in my adolescents as well.
But I am an adult, I think I’ve learned from those bad experiences and am trying to look at the issue with a non-biased, mature view.
Here’s what I see…There was Phoebe Prince, a pretty young highschool girl from Ireland. Her parents were separated; she was on anti depressants, battled self mutilation and is reported to have even done some “bullying” in her school in Ireland. She was picked on in her high school, called a “whore”, had an empty crushed coke can thrown at her and she hung herself. How do we punish the kids who bullied? Will it stop it from happening again? Does it at all take away from the fact that this girl was battling demons before she met these particular kids and suicide was something she’d already attempted once before? Do we ruin 3-4 other kids lives? Well we already have, these kids were unable to finish High school. They lost scholarships, they have death threats, a large portion of society would recognize them in public. So we bully them, because they were the bullies who supposedly, ultimately, drove Phoebe to suicide…makes sense… :-/
As someone who has been bullied, and as someone who not all that long ago was a teenage girl, I know how helpless you can feel. When the world is against you, you don’t want to go to school, you can not fathom that next week, next month, tomorrow even, this could all be over, and in a few years it won’t even be important. When your friends have all turned their backs on you and talk bad about you and say ugly, untrue things about you to other people ein school. To have people sit in the back of a classroom, people who you were great friends with just a week ago, and listen to them bad mouth and pick everything about you apart. Have them tell your secrets and try to get others to turn against you as well, and sometimes they were successful. I get it, I lived it…but… As an adult now, I know, today might’ve been bad, but tomorrow is a new start. The big difference? As a 16 year old I was 100% emotionally driven in everything I did. Whether being bullied or doing the bullying…it was all emotionally sparked. Thankfully I was very blessed, because I could come home to family who thought I was wonderful. They encouraged me to hold my head up. Told me those mean things that were said were not true if I didn’t allow them to be. Boosted me up and held me high.
My big issue with all this bullying talk is this, and I hope this doesn’t come off offensive but, the boy at Rutgers who jumped off the bridge after his roommate and another “friend” streamed video of him and another man having sex, on the internet. This is horrible, and I cant even imagine the humiliation and betrayal this poor kid felt, pure desperation to even seriously think of jumping off a bridge. And his poor family. Ugh…But his “Bullies” are no more guilty, than the “bullies” who pick on the slow kid at school, or the kids who played a prank on their friend and took it too far, the hazing that goes into clubs & fraternities. But because the victim in this setting is a homosexual, the roommate likely faces harsher charges and longer sentencing. Why? Why is bullying a person for being homosexual any worse than bullying for being overweight, freckled, skinny, Mexican, blonde, rumored sexually active, dating the wrong girl, having a baby, being poor or being rich? Isnt bullying ALWAYS a hate crime? No matter the victim, to bully is a “hate crime”. Why should some kids get a slap on the wrist, but this kid might possibly get “He and his friend now face up to five years in prison for privacy invasion; there is also talk of additional bias charges”-MSN.
Yes I think punishment is required…but everything on the news is geared towards the fact that the victim here was a homosexual. In the case of bullying, again….isnt it ALWAYS a hate crime?
I have no idea where Im going with this…just felt the need to ramble about it…
There is a lot in the news lately about teenagers/kids being bullied and doing the bullying in school and out of school, stirs up a lot of weird feelings for me.
I have been both the victim of the bullying and probably should have been punished for partaking in a form of bullying a few times in my adolescents as well.
But I am an adult, I think I’ve learned from those bad experiences and am trying to look at the issue with a non-biased, mature view.
Here’s what I see…There was Phoebe Prince, a pretty young highschool girl from Ireland. Her parents were separated; she was on anti depressants, battled self mutilation and is reported to have even done some “bullying” in her school in Ireland. She was picked on in her high school, called a “whore”, had an empty crushed coke can thrown at her and she hung herself. How do we punish the kids who bullied? Will it stop it from happening again? Does it at all take away from the fact that this girl was battling demons before she met these particular kids and suicide was something she’d already attempted once before? Do we ruin 3-4 other kids lives? Well we already have, these kids were unable to finish High school. They lost scholarships, they have death threats, a large portion of society would recognize them in public. So we bully them, because they were the bullies who supposedly, ultimately, drove Phoebe to suicide…makes sense… :-/
As someone who has been bullied, and as someone who not all that long ago was a teenage girl, I know how helpless you can feel. When the world is against you, you don’t want to go to school, you can not fathom that next week, next month, tomorrow even, this could all be over, and in a few years it won’t even be important. When your friends have all turned their backs on you and talk bad about you and say ugly, untrue things about you to other people ein school. To have people sit in the back of a classroom, people who you were great friends with just a week ago, and listen to them bad mouth and pick everything about you apart. Have them tell your secrets and try to get others to turn against you as well, and sometimes they were successful. I get it, I lived it…but… As an adult now, I know, today might’ve been bad, but tomorrow is a new start. The big difference? As a 16 year old I was 100% emotionally driven in everything I did. Whether being bullied or doing the bullying…it was all emotionally sparked. Thankfully I was very blessed, because I could come home to family who thought I was wonderful. They encouraged me to hold my head up. Told me those mean things that were said were not true if I didn’t allow them to be. Boosted me up and held me high.
My big issue with all this bullying talk is this, and I hope this doesn’t come off offensive but, the boy at Rutgers who jumped off the bridge after his roommate and another “friend” streamed video of him and another man having sex, on the internet. This is horrible, and I cant even imagine the humiliation and betrayal this poor kid felt, pure desperation to even seriously think of jumping off a bridge. And his poor family. Ugh…But his “Bullies” are no more guilty, than the “bullies” who pick on the slow kid at school, or the kids who played a prank on their friend and took it too far, the hazing that goes into clubs & fraternities. But because the victim in this setting is a homosexual, the roommate likely faces harsher charges and longer sentencing. Why? Why is bullying a person for being homosexual any worse than bullying for being overweight, freckled, skinny, Mexican, blonde, rumored sexually active, dating the wrong girl, having a baby, being poor or being rich? Isnt bullying ALWAYS a hate crime? No matter the victim, to bully is a “hate crime”. Why should some kids get a slap on the wrist, but this kid might possibly get “He and his friend now face up to five years in prison for privacy invasion; there is also talk of additional bias charges”-MSN.
Yes I think punishment is required…but everything on the news is geared towards the fact that the victim here was a homosexual. In the case of bullying, again….isnt it ALWAYS a hate crime?
I have no idea where Im going with this…just felt the need to ramble about it…
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