hunger.

i would love my dog Copper, if he didn't always beg. i drives me absolutely nuts when i'm sitting at the table and he just sits there looking at me begging. and if i give him a piece of chicken he'll be happy for about ten seconds but as soon as he's swallowed it-he wants more. more. more. more. i don't know how that dog can always be hunger, but he's never satisfied. he's always hungry for more. he always wants more.

while working at the mall, especially around christmas, i see this quality not just in dogs but in people! sure, it's often little kids begging their parents for an icee to go with their pretzel but i see it in adults too. black friday shopping is absolutely nuts...i saw numerous people fighting over stupid things that don't even matter...just so they can get more. another ugly christmas sweater, another pair of jeans that you don't need, the latest and greatest ipod. why does it matter? we're consumers..always wanting more.

recently i was in the windy, snowy city of chicago. my heart broke at how many homeless people i saw. shivering. starving. dying. my heart was torn the most when i saw this lady going to the bathroom in the middle of the sidewalk. she was shivering and had very thin clothes on. how sad is it that we take toilets for granted. i can guarentee you that this lady has never had an ipod and probably only has one outfit, yet we go out and fight for the latest and greatest. it just doesn't seem right. jesus said, 'for i was hungry and you gave me something to eat, i was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, i was a stranger and you invited me in, i needed clothes and you clothed me, i was sick and you looked after me, i was in prison and you came to visit me.'

i hope and pray that we do not turn into my dog. instead of begging for another 'piece of chicken', lets help those who are really in need.

hospital gowns, vicoden, and iv's.

here lately i feel like i've been to the docter/hospital more than i've been home! long story short, i had a fancy kind of infection in my lower back, i was having so much pain i could barely walk or even sit down and so my parents took me to the emergency room and they did a minor surgery and said i was all better. after a few weeks i had a follow up appointment with my docter, thinking everything was ok but once he did some tests he came back with bad news...my infection was back and it was a lot more serious. as soon as he said this i began crying (as you might have read in previous blogs im very emotional;) my docter told me i was going to have to have emergency surgery that next morning. and so when the next morning rolled around my dad and i got up before the roosters and went to the hospital. as soon as i got there they made me take off my clothes and put on a silly hospital gown!!!!!!!! i will never wear one of those things again..just saying. after i was dressed they put a bunch of iv's in me and soon enough i was asleep. after my surgery i figured i would feel much better (thats the normal thing to think right??) but after all my vicoden (miracle medicine) wore off i was in the most pain i have ever been in. my temperature is usually 96..not 98 and for two days i had a 102 fever. i remember laying on the couch crying..i couldn't move, i was in so much pain, and i literally thought i was going to die. i called out to god more those two days than i have in a long time. when i was going through that pain i got to thinking and found out that i wasn't ready to die. i had relationships in my life that i needed to ask forgiveness from, and most importantly i needed to get my relationship with god back on track. i know god didn't cause the infection inside of me but i do know that he has worked good out of it. i realized that christ has gone through so much more pain than i have..and he went through it for me. i've learned to rely on him with every circumstance in my life. i've learned to ask for forgiveness. i've learned of his great love for me and that he is the ultimate healer. he's had his protecting hand over me this whole time. i've learned to trust him with everything i've got, for only he knows my future.

i'm a teenage girl..im allowed to have breakdowns

im an emotional, chocolate-craving girl..what can i say? most of us are:) though my breakdown today didn't have to do with boys, pimples, or what i'm gonna wear tomorrow...surprisingly it had to do with school. i dont know what got into me, but i started crying at the dinner table tonight. my family was talking about the new year and how fast this past year has gone which made me realize how fast my life is going. everyone told me that highschool would go by fast but i had no idea how much truth was to that. i still have two years left but it's just crazy to think about. i've been at blackhawk for eleven years!! i've had the same friends for eleven whole years! i remember being in fifth and sixth grade thinking the year 2013 seemed so far away but now, it's just around the corner. i'm gonna be a junior in highschool in a few months. i'm gonna get my drivers license soon. i only have two more years living at home! well as i was crying at the dinner table my dad told me that highschool's just a chapter in my life and that i will enjoy the rest of the chapters just as much as i'm enjoying this one. i'm so thankful for my school, friends, and family. i am extremly blessed.

ugh why me?

This past week, my house got broken into. Not just my house, my room specifically. The very first thing I said when I found out was, 'Why did they have to choose our house?!? Cherry Hill (big houses) is right down the road and I'm sure they all have better stuff than here!!!!' I was angry, not just plain angry, I was spitting angry. I felt so violated, my own room. My messy (yet organized) room. It's mine-not theirs! So why did they have to go in there?? Well, for the next several sleepless nights as I laid in bed ready to take on anyone who tried to break in again (in all reality I would've screamed bloody murder if someone came in when I was home) I realized I needed to trust God. I asked him to protect me and he did. I asked him to help me soften my heart so I could surrender my fears unto him. I don't understand why things such as this happen, but I do know God has a plan for me. Those sleepless nights, I learned to trust him. I learned to surrender my worries, my fears, my anxieties to him. He is the ultimate protector. As Bob and Larry would say, 'God is bigger than the boogeyman.....'

silence.

Voices shouting. Cell phones beeping. Brothers fighting. Vacuums roaring. Dogs barking. Doors slamming. Teachers demanind. Bells ringing. Music blaring. Alarms buzzing. Faucets running. Engines starting Stoves sizzling. Toilets flushing. Washers/dryers rumbling. Televisions piercing. Fans blowing. Noice. It's ALL around us. And sometimes, we don't even realize it. We wake up to it and fall asleep to it. When was the last time you sat in complete silence? I couldn't tell you the last for me. I say I can't hear God, and I've finally found out why. My life is a noise mixed in with everyone else's noise. It's like my life is an Ipod stuck on shuffle with an infinite amount of songs. Some noises may be peaceful, classical music but others are hardcore screamo. Hundreds of noises running through my head day after day. It's so hard to be silent. It's so hard to isolate ourselves from societies 'Ipod.' But we must. We must spend time in solitude with God, for he may be speaking to us, but all we're doing is zoning him out with our earphones.

cliche is a weird word.

'dear god, thank you for this food, bless it to our bodies. amen.'
'how are you?' 'good how are you?' 'good.'
'i'll pray for you.'

cliches. let me start off by saying i dont like the word cliche. it sounds weird. its spelled weird. and i dont get why theres an accent over the 'e', it bugs me, therefore im not putting it there.

anyway, i feel like people are so cliche all the time. we fall into a routine and then never change. for example, i paint my nails every thursday night and do my eyebrows every sunday night. why do i do this? because i did them once, i got in a routine, and i never stopped.

if i were to take a poll, i gurantee you that most people only pray before dinner and or bed. why is that? and usually when people pray before a meal, we're so hungry and wanna eat that all we say is thanks for the food, amen. do we even know who we're talking too? the creator and sustainer of the universe and all we abruptly say is thanks for the grub, amen. i wanna know who the person was that came along and said..'we should only thank god for dinner.' we should talk to god ALL the time, not once a day and not only because it's cliche. we should do it because we WANT too.

another annoying cliche, (other than the word itself) goes something like this, 'o hey how are you?' 'o im good, and you?' 'im good.' ok what kind of conversation is that? like for real, you might as well not have even had it. it drives me nuts when someone says, 'how are you?' while walking away. they might as well have said, 'im gonna ask you how you are but i dont reallycare so im just gonna walk away.' im guilty of it too, we all ask people that simple question yet never really care what their answer is. and when someone asks us the question in return, we give the one-word, cliche answer-good. majority of the time we say good just so the person will be satified and walk away. we need to strive to be a people with loving hearts who truly care how someone is doing.

lastly, 'ill pray for you.' im gonna tell you write now that i have said that phrase numerous times and havnt meant it or done it. i think its something we say just so we feel good about ourselves, when really we should be caring about the person we said it too, and striving to pray for them as often as we can. prayer shouldnt be taken lightly yet it is such a cliche phrase that so many people just say it because they feel it as the right thing to say at the moment.

i dont want to be cliche. i dont want my life to be cliche. i dont want to go through the motions of painting my nails on a thursday and doing my eyebrows every sunday. i want my life to be genuine-not cliche...because after all, cliche is a weird word.

ants on an anthill.

so i work at the mall...and let me just tell ya, there are SO many different types of people in this world. i find it rather entertaining to stand back and just watch all the people go by. the hustle and bustle of the mall. different types of people coming and going from every which way. but where are all these people going? and why is everyone always in a rush? why do most people get mad at me when i say they have to wait three minutes for a pretzel? really?..like whats three minutes gonna do? kill ya?
but for real, where are all these people going? people move so stinkin fast. it reminds me of ants on an anthill. i really dont know what the ants are trying to do on their little hills but they're always moving so fast! i don't know where all those people are going in the mall, i dont know what they go home to,,,,do they go home to an abusive spouse? do they go home to a homemade meal ready for them when they walk in the door? do they go home to an empty apartment? do they even have a home? so many different types of people in the world. and im one of them. we all may seem so different but we have at least two things in common: we were all made and crafted by the almighty god who loves us and......we all seem like ants on an anthill.

barbies. tents. eyeliner. hairspray.

jesse: hannah come build a tent with me!
hannah: jesse, you know i'm busy. i don't have time to play 'tent.'
jesse: but you're always busy.

growing up is scary. i now understand why peter pan never wanted to grow up. there's so many decisions to make. so many responsibilities. so much presure.

i remember playing barbies with my dad, we would set up 'barbie world' in the living room and lay there for hours fantasizing barbie and ken's dream world. if we weren't playing barbies we were hiding out under a tent we made. We would lay blankets under the kitchen table and bring in a flashlight and read stories and eat pizza all night long.

lets fast forward a few years to sixth grade. suddenly, my friends stopped wanting to play with barbies or hide out under a tent all night. they stopped wanting to play pretend. now, the cool thing to do was sit in someone's basement talking about boys and gossiping about the girls in our class who still played with barbies. Our barbie and ken dolls were replaced with eyeliner and hairspray. slowly, things began to change that year.

lets fast forward even more to ninth grade. my school's advisor came to talk to my class about college. i didnt want to think about college-that was four whole years away! he told us that we needed to start thinking about our future:where we wanted to go to school, what we wanted to study, etc. well not so long after that my youth group was talking about relationships. my pastor told us that the decisions we make now, will effect us for the rest of our lives. he also said that we should make a list of attributes we want in our future spouse someday. i had had enough! not only did i have to think about college but now my future husband someday?!?

alright, presnt time now. im a sophomore. i have my permit. i have a job. i have a boyfriend. i play soccer. and try to maintain good grades. talk about being busy. im hardly ever home and when i am, im doing homework which makes me in a bad mood. i have two and a half years of highschool left. two and a half more years of living at home. if my life was a remote, the fast forward button would be pressed, making my life seem like it's going one hundred miles per hour. how i wish i could still lay under that kitchen table listenning to my daddy read me stories. and that i still had the time to play barbies every single day. i may be getting older, life may seem to be going faster, and i may often appear to be busy, but my imagination hasnt left me. even though my barbies are in the attic and i can no longer fit under the kitchen table, i still sometimes pretend im a princess locked up in a tower surrounded by monsters. i pretend im an orphan living alone on the streets scrounging for scraps of food. no matter how old or busy we get, let us never lose sight of our childhood memories!

do you want to get well?

John 5:1-9

"Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of blind, crippled, paralyzed--were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, 'Do you want to get well?'"
The sick man said, 'Sir, when the water is stirred, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.'
Jesus said, 'Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.' The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bed roll and walked off."

The first time I read this story, I was really confused. It doesn't make much sense if you don't understand the importance of the pool in Bible times.

The pool in Bethesda was important because every so often (no one knew when) the pool would stir itself and the first sick person (invalid) to get in the water would be healed. Because no one knew when the pool would stir, there were hundreds of sick people surrounding it waiting for the opportunity to hop in. The problem was, only the first person who got in would be healed. Can you imagine waiting there like this man did for thirty-eight years?!? I haven't even been alive for that long! I can't imagine the disappoinment of using all your energy to get yourself into the pool and having someone else beating you too it. And what if the person who got healed was one of the people who had been laying next to you for thirty-eight years? I know I would be pretty mad if one of my friends got there first!

The sick man in this story is a lot like us. He had an illness that affected his life. Just like we are affected by sin. He also made excuses when he was confronted by Jesus! When Jesus asked him if he wanted to be healed, instead of saying 'YES!' he made excuses of why he hadn't gotten into the pool first. God isn't looking for excuses from us. The sick man also walked away from all the other sick people. Look at the last sentence in the passage..it says, 'He picked up his bedroll and walked off.' He had spent every minute of every day with these people for the last thirty-eight years and once he was healed he didn't even help the others get into the pool or better yet tell them about Jesus and how he healed him! It's sad how I'm quick to judge this man when we do this all the time too! Christ has healed all of us of our disease and yet we don't go out and tell everyone about it!

How can we respond to this story? We need to admit our illness. 1 John 1:8-9 says 'If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselvs. A claim like that is errant nonsense. On the other hand, if we admit our sins--make a clean breast of them--he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrong doing.'
We also need to respond to the question, 'Do you want to get well?' We need to stop making up excuses for God. Our God is a god of second chances..he wants to heal us of our illness. John 1:11-12 states 'Jesus came to the world that was his own. But his own people did not accept him. But some people did accept him. The believed in him. To them he gave the right to become children of God.'
Lastly, we can not walk away from those who need Jesus. Romans 3:23-24, 'All people have sinned and are not good enough for God's glory..they are made right with God by being made free from sin through Jesus Christ.' We have been healed but there are still thousands of people laying by the 'pool'. Don't just get up and walk away. God has saved us so that we can help save other people.

smile:)

so these last couple days have really really sucked and ive been in really bad moods. today i have the house to myself. so i decided to pour myself some chocolate milk, pop some popcorn, jam out to music and make a list of the random things that make me happy...

orange juice with extra pulp. big, scary thunderstorms. a novel that sucks you in. the hair on a cats nose. goosebumps. my grandma's cooking. dancing. mountains. fall. pumpkin spice lattes. christmas. when the clock stricks three during the school year. watching soccer. the feeling you get when you first wake up. drawing with chalk. speeding on the highway. brushing my teeth. bright colored flowers. bear hugs. meeting new people. payday. chicago pizza. taking pictures. trampolines. chips n salsa. giving my dog a bath. twizzlers. listenning to the wind blow. carmel apples. watching the clouds. blues music. going to new places. the sound of waves crashing. going on walks. candles. shopping. painting. my little brother. hiking. waterfalls. the smell of a sharpie. the smell of laundry. complimenting people. laughing. singing in the shower. the feeling of a new hair cut. staying in your pj's all day. hot chocolate with extra marshmellows. having exact change at the checkout. campfires. a spoonful of peanut butter straight from the jar.

everyone, whether rich or poor, has an abundant amount of daily happenings they can count on to make them smile :)

beauty.

10,000.

what do you think of when you think of 10,000? i think thats a big stinkin number. i think i would like a $10,000 bill in my hand. i think of all the thousands of people in this world. i think of all the mistakes i've made and how i could use 10,000 redos! 10,000 is a big number
10,000. thats the amount of steps an average person takes in one day. thats a lot of steps! if you think thats a lot then get this..the average person walks 115,000 miles in a lifetime. 115,000 miles is more than 4 times around this big blue planet of ours! now that is a lot of steps! this made me wonder how im using my steps. am i using them wisely?
to get across an average room it takes about ten steps-thats 1/1000 of your daily average. What if taking those ten steps could impact eternity? what if your walk across a room could help point someone elses steps in the right direction. ten steps is all it takes to change a life..are you willing to take those steps?
witnessing can sometimes be scary and nerveracking. you dont know what to say nor do you know what the other person's response is going to be. will they be mad and tell you to shut the beepedy beep beep beep beep up? Or will they quietly listen to what you have to say? But what if we didnt say anything? theres more to witnessing than just talking, we must use our steps wisely and step out of our comfort zone. we need to get out of the 'christian bubble' and spend time with people who need to see the love of jesus christ. what if people only had your life as an example to look at and the were asked the question 'does that person love jesus? is christianity even worth it?' how would they answer?
in bible times your name wasm ore than just a word. your name reflected and told who you were. what do you think people think when they hear your name? are you using your steps in a good influential way?
so many people have a bad view on christianity because so many 'christians' are not taking their steps wisely. they say one thing and do the other. romans 12:2 says, 'do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world but be transformd by the renewing of your mind.' we need to understand that we are the gospel. we are the only good news some people will see. we must be a living testimony for those around. people. watch you. and people will remember what they see. may be be shining lights.
i recently took a step out of my 'christian bubble' and got a job where i work with several non-christians who think its weird that i dont swear, or party, or drink, or have sex before marriage. i have had several opportunities to be a shining light. and my co-workers remember that. i stand out at my work place by what i do and dont do. ( yes i mess up all the time and am no where near to perfect but thats a whole different blog post:))
in luke 19:10, jesus says, ' i came to seek and save the lost.' in mark 1:17 he commands us to be fishers of men. jesus spent most of his time with the sick and needy people, we need to do the same. we need to stop investing in ourselves and start investing our life and our steps in others. we need to be willing to let go of our wordly passions in order to put god's people at top priority.
i want to end with this: romans 5:8 says, 'but god demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners christ died for us.' christ's redemptive steps..christ stepped out of the ultimate comfort zone-heaven itself-to rescue us. jesus embraced the worst this planet had to offer (us) with open arms of acceptance, forgiveness, and love. may we follow christ's steps and not waste our lives. you have 115,000 miles-what are you going to do with them?

i hope this made sense, i just read two really good books and this is a short summary of both of them. i highly recommend them. Dont Waste Your Life by John Piper and Just Walk Across the Room by Bill Hybels.

iced water.

so i wrote this a long time ago but i just found it and liked it..so im posting it:)
i ran today for the first time in months. it wasn't as easy as i had anticipated in fact the only thing that kept m egoing was that i knew that a cup of iced water was awaiting me back at home. i love running. i feel so free and like nothing or no one can stop me. no worry or fear can get in my way. i love the feeling when you finish. so relieved and proud of yourself. but the thing i love the most about running is that our life is compared to a race all thoughout scripture. if we would run our life race with as much focus and determination on GOD that i had on that glass of water than our 'life races' would be so much better. i feel as if i've put 'iced water' in place of GOD. wordly things have been my determinations instead of the almighty GOD-the sustainer of the universe! may we all run for the lord. les us finish the race that was marked out for us.

ahhhh!!!!

i have so much on my mind right now..i just realized ive been staring at this blank post for the last 40minutes. i know i havnt blogged in quite some time but i will soon. im going through a lot and prayer would be great! god bless!

my prayer.

to: god
i've had a pretty sucky week in my eyes but its made me think a lot which has kinda turned it into a good week. i realized that my deffinition of a good week is so much diferent than yours. i've learned that you've placed pain and suffering in my life for a reason-you're preparing me for the future.
here lately, when i have faced hardships i've been running and hiding. i thought that if i would pretend that nothing was going on then my problems would go away but in all reality-they didn't.
i was being two faced. i was pretending to be someone i wasn't. i was pretending to be someone who had a perfect family and a perfect relationship with god. i was pretending that my life was like something out of a movie....and that everything was going well. but it wasn't. and it's not. i was mad. i was mad that my life was falling apart. i thought it was your fault. but i've realized something. it's not your fault. you've placed suffering and pain in my life to prepare me for something in the future. im being tested. lord i surrender. i've realized i cant do it on my own and im tired of trying. im tired of failing. im tired of being hurt and not running to anyone but myself. god im sorry. im sorry for ignoring you. im sorry ive neglected you. im sorry for everything. lord i thank you for trials. i thank you for suffering. i thank you for pain. i thank you for teaching me. i thank you for never letting go of me even when i have let go of you. i thank you for always forgiving. and god-most importantly, i thank you for loving even me.
from: your servant

healing.

if you are continually being wounded...you will never be healed.

what if you had one month left to live?

i recently led a group of people in a bible study on living your life to the fullest..here is my outline. hope you enjoy!

What if you went into a regular check-up and the doctors told you that they found something that was out of place? What if that something was a cancer? What if they told you, you only had a month to live? What would you do? What would you need to let go of? Who would you need to talk to? How would the way you lived your life change?

James4:14 says you are not even guaranteed tomorrow and yet we waste so much of our time putting stuff off until tomorrow

I want you to think of a gravestone. They are three things that are on each and every gravestone. Those things are the year you were born, the year you died, and in between those two number is a dash. We cant control the year we were born nor can we control the year that we die but what we can control is the dash. So i wanna know, what are you doing with your dash and how are you going to spend it? How are you spending your life? Will people remember you when that second date comes? I know a big thing for me that has kept me from living my dash the way i know God wants me to is that I havnt let go of my past. I haven’t forgiven.

So many people, myself included, live in the past, we can’t let go of something that happened to us. Maybe someone close to them died, maybe their parents split up, maybe they went bankrupt, maybe they were abused, the list could go on. In order to live today, to live the dash to the fullest, we need to let go of our past and our mistakes and forgive.
Living a life full of unforgivness is a miserable way to live. Maybe it’s someone close to you that you can’t even be in the same room with anymore. Maybe it’s someone you haven’t seen in years. And maybe the person is you.

I don’t know what kind of stuff all of you are carrying around, but guys-the bags get heavy and carrying these things around with us make life exhausting and God didn’t create us to be this way. I know it is hard to let go, everyone has wounds – some big and some small, but if you keep holding on to them they eventually become a part of you. God created us to be free. God created us to live life to the fullest. To live in the dash- to live today, not in our past. We need to let go and forgive just as we have been forgiven by him.

We need to forgive and let go today because like James says, there is no guarantee that we will live tomorrow.

Back to the gravestone thing, it reminds me a lot like a race. We can’t control when the old man shoots the gun, and we can’t control when all the coaches are yelling at you to stop at the finish line but what we can control is the twenty minutes or so between the start and end of the race. And let’s say that you had a great start and are running and feel as if no one or nothing can ever put a stop to you. But what if suddenly you look down and see that your shoe is untied and when you look down that causes you to trip. Or what if at the beginning of the race you get spiked in the knee and start bleeding. Or what if your own spike gets stuck in a huge mud puddle and you fall and get covered in mud. Well it doesn’t matter how many times that you fall in a cross country meet, the officials are not going to disqualify you and that is just like life. No matter how many times you mess-up God will still forgive you. We can’t live off of our mistakes or the things that have happened to us in the past, we need to live today.

We need to live our dash to the fullest for we do not know when the second date is coming. It could be tomorrow, next year, or several decades down the road. But we need to be ready. We need to let go of our past. We need to forgive. We need to live the dash to the fullest. We need to live today.

fear.

the bible says 'do not fear' over one hundred times yet i live in a world of fear. im fearful to take my next breath. im fearful to step outside. im fearful to do normal everyday things. but why? i dont understand. why do so many people live in fear when the ALMIGHTY CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE tells us not to be afraid. i dont get it. is it because we dont trust him? why wouldnt someone trust the sustainer of the world? i cant even fathom it but yet i live in a world of fear and i feel stuck. i cant get out. i feel defeated. but im trying harder than ever. trying to escape and conquer my world of fear.

isaiah 41:10
so do not fear, for i am with you; do not be dismayed, for i am YOUR GOD. i will strengthen you and help you; i will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

pain.

Death. Cancer. Divorce. Abuse. Bankruptcy. Trials. Temptations. Hardships. The valley’s of life. Why do things such as these happen? These very things have kept me up all night long. Why does someone have to face these things? Why? Why can’t life just be easy? It is for some people-or at least it seems like it. Something i've learnd are that valleys are inevitable. They’re gonna happen. We can’t stop them. They are also unpredictable. We never know what they are gonna be or when they are going to happen. Something encouraging is that they are temporary. They’re not going to last forever even if it seems that way. Lastly, valley’s, trial, hardships, etc, are purposeful. God will bring us through them. He will teach you something. And more than likely you will grow closer to him because of those times. So cling to him no matter what and praise him in the storms of life. He will never leave you.

divorce hurts.

It’s a Friday night and as the clock strikes five, everyone is rushed into the living room to wait and look out the window for her. When her limited edition 2009 perfectly clean, black jetta pulls in the driveway everyone rushes around as if we are in world war two and being bombarded by nazi soldiers. They won’t even look at each other anymore and usually the only way they communicate is through email or me. She never gets out of the car and is almost always talking on her cell phone, but we still have to grab our stuff as quickly as possible and run outside and get in the car as fast as we can so she will drive us away to our home for the weekend. I feel like a bag of rocks being dragged around from house to house. This place isn’t a home. A home is where your family is. A home should be comforting and inviting. Why do I feel so out of place here? I’m so confused. I’m so lost. Why do things like this happen? Divorce. It hurts. It sucks. It’s extremely painful and exhausting. I don’t understand it. They always say that they don’t ‘love’ each other anymore, but did they ever love each other in the first place? Sure, maybe it was puppy love in high school but did they really love each other unconditionally like they vowed on their marriage day? If they did then why are they divorced? Do such feelings really change? If they didn’t ‘love’ each other why would they get married in the first place? And they always say they will still love us, but if they really loved us, why would they want to put us through so much pain and hurt and disappointment and neglectment? Sure there are some situations when it is best for the kids, but I still just don’t understand it. Why this? Why does this have to be the outcome? Divorce. It hurts.