As soon as worldly people see that you wish to follow a devout life they aim a thousand darts of mockery and even detraction at you. The most malicious of them will slander your conversion as hypocrisy, bigotry, and trickery. They will say that the world has turned against you and being rebuffed by it you have turned to God. Your friends will raise a host of objections which they consider very prudent and charitable. They will tell you that you will become depressed, lose your reputation in the world, be unbearable, and grow old before your time, and that your affairs at home will suffer. You must live in the world like one in the world. They will say that you can save your soul without going to such extremes, and a thousand similar trivialities.  St. Francis de Sales

“To love is to will the good of the other.”

- St. Thomas Aquinas

This is by far one of the best Christian/bible memes I’ve ever seen.

I think I've been pretty tolerant and accepting of the garbage going on in my brain and my eyes. I've never gotten mad or resented God for letting this happen, but some days I do get a little upsetti. Sometimes about actual important things like dealing with the fact that I'll never be able to drive and be fully independent like I want to be, and sometimes just about little annoyances like how today the blur around my vision is painfully obvious like an eye booger you can't get rid of no matter how many times you pick and rub and rinse and ughhhh 🙃 I'm doing all I can to help myself physically and mentally (and genuinely, things are much better, nothing is getting worse at least) but please just pray for me, that my problems don't get worse and I'm able to accept the things I can't change. Thank you

Praying for you. You’re so strong and courageous for sticking through it, only God knows how hard it is.

Remember that satan is not a cool guy who you can party in hell with. He hates you with a hatred not found here on earth.

He wants to drag you down to suffer the pains of hell with him because you are made in the image of God and he hates God and all that is good.

Yo I feel like the idea that the only historical women who counted are the ones who defied society and took on the traditionally male roles is… not actually that feminist. It IS important that women throughout history were warriors and strategists and politicians and businesswomen, but so many of us were “lowly” weavers and bakers and wives and mothers and I feel like dismissing THOSE roles dismisses so many of our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and the shit they did to support our civilization with so little thanks or recognition.

YES. This is such an important point. Those ‘girly’ girls doing their embroidery and quilting bees and grass braiding were vital parts of every domestic economy that has ever existed.

This is precisely what chaps my hide so badly about the misuse of the quote “Well-behaved women seldom make history,” because this is precisely what the author was actually trying to say.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a domestic historian who developed new methodologies to study well-behaved women because they were

1) so vital, and

2) their lives were rarely recorded in the usual old sources.

“Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history; against Antinomians and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all. Most historians, considering the domestic by definition irrelevant, have simply assumed the pervasiveness of similar attitudes in the seventeenth century.”

Original article: “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735” (pdf download from Harvard)

If you didn’t know: Abagail Adams (John Adams’ wife) led a very successful effort to fund the American Revolution. How did she and her tiny army of women do it?

They made lace, and sold it to the aristocrats. Real lace (the stuff you see on old outfits in museums, not the machine-made stuff you might be familiar with from today) is stupidly difficult to make, takes a lot of time and skill, and, well:

If you watch this through, you’ll hear her say this is DOMESTIC lace. This is not fancy, this is for household objects. You can imagine what it would take to make some of the elaborate pieces you see on old aristocratic clothing, and see why it was so expensive and valuable. (Incidentally, if you’ve ever heard the music from the musical 1776, in the song where Abagail and John are trading letters and he’s like “ma’am we need saltpeter” and she’s like “dude we need pins,” THIS IS WHAT THEY NEEDED THE PINS FOR. That song was based on real letters between the two.)

And this is all those revolutionary Revolutionary women did, every free moment of every day. They pulled out their pins and their bobbins and they made lace until they couldn’t see straight, and they sold it to revolutionaries and royalists alike, anyone who would pay. Yard upon yard upon yard of lace to earn cash to translate into rations and bullets.

The war was won by a women’s craft. Not even a “vital” women’s craft like cooking or cleaning. It was won by making a luxury item whose entire purpose was to say “look how wealthy I am, I can afford all this lace.”

Lace was not the only source of income for the Revolution. But it was a major one, and it is extremely fair to say it turned the tide.

And until this post, I bet you didn’t know.

I still have agonizing periods where I wonder whether I actually believe or if I'm just going through the motions. But I always try to snap myself out of them by saying "Why would I bother going through the motions if I didn't believe?"

"Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys."

-C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (Screwtape, a demon, calling God "The Enemy")

As someone who has experienced some dark nights this is very comforting

Show yourself a Mother to me now

Mary, Mother of Jesus, show yourself a Mother to me now. 

Image from Brick House in the City. 

Details of Saint Mary Magadalene (1635) and Saint Cecilia (1606) by Guido Reni

You never know if someone needs this. Reblog this, even if its not your ‘blog type’. Just do it.

Yes, please reblog

Do it. Now.

i sat here and thought about reblogging this or not but then i realized how many people feel suicidal, and i  have too its not dan and phil but i could honestly care less, bc i rather have someone not die then make sure i strictly stay to my ‘blog type’ 

Blog type doesn’t matter. Caring for people does.

This isn’t my blog type but *deep inhale* 

SAVING SUICIDAL LIVES IS BETTER THAN KEEPING IT TO MY BLOG THEME SO DEAR YA’LL WHO ARE SUICIDAL I’M HERE SIS/BRO/SIBLING!! STAY STRONG!!

Fine I promise.

REBLOG THIS IF YOU SEE IT!! ITS IMPORTANT!!

<Promise.>

I DON’T EVEN HAVE A BLOG TYPE I JUST POST RANDOM SHIT BUT THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!! YOU ARE LOVED!!! YOU MATTER!!!

children are being exposed to so much sexualization and sexualized content nowadays that even elementary students are frightening their teachers with the stuff they're saying even if they don't understand what it means. just the amount of misogyny and porn rot that has trickled down to literal children being exposed to it constantly and thinking its just hilarious and funny is terrifying.

Ah. Love smart women