The Lily Letters

And the angel said unto them, Fear not : for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 KJV emphasis mine) [Jason] Soroski, [a writer for crosswalk.com], observed that in the animated special "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown," something very unusual happens when Charlie Brown’s best friend Linus, recites Luke 2: 8-14. Right when Linus says “Fear not” (verse 10), he literally drops the one thing he holds most precious in the world – his security blanket. As I was re-reading this Scripture and reflecting on Saroski’s reflection about the symbolism of Linus dropping the blanket in which he writes, “The birth of Jesus allows us to simply drop the false security we have been grasping so tightly, and learn to trust and cling to Him instead.”  It made me think about how much we cling to the temporal things of this world; our money, our app...

One of the best things to come from being a sister of SAO was that I gained best friends who helped keep me in line. They helped me evaluate if my intentions were true and of God, or if Satan was knocking on my door. The other day, I was wallowing to one of my best friends whom I had met through SAO. I was telling her about everything that was going wrong in my life right now and then I threw in a casual, “just pray for me.” I could tell in her demeanor something was off and she didn’t even need to say it. I knew she was indicating that, no, she will not pray for me while I host my pity party. Self-pity is described as "excessive, self-absorbed unhappiness over one's own troubles." And lately, I’ve been in a pretty intense and fast paced relationship with it. While I understand there are some aspects of it that are part of mental exhaustion and high anxiety, I know that the majority of it stems from my newly refined pity party planning skills and refusal to shut the pa...