#faith is nothing in comparison to pain. pain overwhelms everything. faith. reason. knowledge

[elvesofnoldor]

like anne rice could be such good writer if she just wrote with compassion and empathy for her characters. There was this "baby Jenks" character from the beginning of the queen of the damned and her story was so afforded so much genuine love and compassion it was literally my favourite part of the first part of the book. Baby Jenks' story reminded me of some of the best Sandman one-off characters' story tbh, it was that good. Wish Anne Rice always write with so much love and compassion though. Anyways, It's no wonder, tbh, that Baby Jenks character is actually Claudia (lestat wept for that girl because he was weeping for Claudia from his life, pretty sure at this point Anne Rice consciously projects her own motherhood onto him). maybe at that point in anne rice's life, she has heard enough about things like re-incarnation and all the better places one can go to after death that all that stuff is allowing her to started to make peace with the tragic death of her late daughter?? but i wonder if she ever got to walk out of her grief? cause idk? she kept writing vampire books??? to the end of her life???

like it's honestly such a mess that she wrote IWTV in response to the very tragic death of her daughter. I have to be honest, i cannot begin to imagine just how painful it is to go through something that traumatic, but i also felt like writing a psychosexual gothic horror vampire story is not exactly therapeutic either. It's kind of funny that it takes getting into the vampire chronicles for me to truly understand what vampires really are. But i do, finally. Vampires are not weird fantastical creatures, they are not Death itself, and they are certainly not Life Everlasting. Vampires, like ghosts, are simply a spiritual embodiment of the very rejection of Death. They are very effective device to examine the human condition, because we as human beings all fundamentally reject the inevitability of death and obliteration of the self we currently possess. We inherently fear change, fear loss, the changefulness of life, and the annihilation of self. Vampires embody a certain state of mind that's frankly universal in humans. But I don't think Anne Rice always wrote her vampire chronicles knowing vampires are??? if she ever knew??? Definitely not at the beginning though, when Louis was definitely just her self-insert and he brought Claudia to live with a theatre of vampires and they live happily ever after. I mean, midnight mass really got the Point when it says "the only way to achieve True Immortality is to accept and embrace death, and because vampirism is inherently about rejecting death, it will NEVER be life everlasting". Honestly the only reason that motivated me to read more Vampire chronicles is....well...i wanna know if Lestat can just? idk, be happy? be free? But this dude kept trying to get together with his abuser and i honestly don't even know what to say. Really i do not understand why Anne Rice kept making it happen. I have seen zero evidence that Louis changed to become better person and someone actually deserving Lestat's love. And more importantly, idk man, im not a psychologist but can you stop being a p*dophile??? so um. humm. i don't fucking know about this, lol. Like, im gonna be fucking real here, fuck all that "lestat was a bad person" " lestat was manipulative" shit, please grow a brain!!! Lestat was a good and loving person!! Period! all his bullshit has to do with the fact that he died a horrific and traumatic death and was never able to free himself from the pain and despair that trapped him in his vampiric state. But to let go of his pain and truly be the good person that he always was again, it'd require him to...well, embrace true death. But since Lestat will never end im guessing he will just have to stop being a bonafide vampire and become some sort of dark fantasy faery creature lmao. I'm starting to suspect the reason people think prince lestat trilogy is cringey because her vampires just...aren't even vampires by the end of it lol. Im suspecting that Anne Rice literally had to come up with some fantastical mumbo jumbo to justify her vampire characters finding happiness because these bitches kept walking into the sun and they kept not dying from it. I mean, lestat croaking for reales is kind of depressing so MAYBE i will take this shit. maybe i will still read the prince lestat trilogy lol. I heard there is bloodborne lore in there.

[redeemedbymygoel]

BMH Therapy Training + Applying to Medical School Again?

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. 

~2 Corinthians 4:16-18 (ESV)

The whole month of the Bring Me Hope internship, we've been trained, preparing resources, and researching therapies to implement at camp including play based therapy, sensory therapy, art therapy, and music therapy to name a few. At camp, much of the activities are therapy based since a lot these kids have trauma and therefore trouble communicating so therapies such as the above are good ways to communicate with them and help them to build trust with the volunteers and translators. 

I was particularly mind blown to be trained on music therapy because my first year of college, I had been a music major interested in doing music therapy. Admittedly, I chose music major for all the wrong reasons: I did it to spite my parents and avoid pre-med because I did not want to fit into my parent’s expectations of me. That year as a music major was painful from strict, critical teachers to being overwhelmed by taking too many credits, and finally the pressure of failing grades. (It didn’t help I did not know Jesus yet either...) God quickly used my failure as a music major to humble me to major in science.

Within the first drop/add period of the first week of sophomore year, I changed all my classes from music major classes to pre-med classes, and I thought I'd never again get a chance to do music therapy. Five years later, God placed me in this internship and I learned we would be using music therapy to help these kids at camp, and I realized how infinite in wisdom the Lord had been to bring me towards science and teaching to redeem my reasons for doing music therapy for the right reasons! 

If He hadn’t allowed me to fail music major and be so scared of my violin teacher, I would never have changed my major to Chemical Biology (having done better at music than chemistry in high school). If He hadn’t allowed me to fall in love with Chemistry by tutoring other classmates, I wouldn’t be a science teacher now. If He hadn’t continued to break me in a thousand pieces that year of my sophomore year, I wouldn’t have seen my need for Him and been saved. If He hadn’t put me in a school where the students were so tough but yet I could see it was very much related to the environment they grew up in, I wouldn’t have grown a heart for at risk kids nor applied to this internship!  

A sister and I have been studying the Joseph arc in Genesis this month so I am blown away of the real life connections of the humbling of Joseph's brothers to repent and redeem their sinful ways by God using Joseph to test them a second time 20+ years after they sold Joseph to slavery! Though I am more like the brothers, this verse holds truth in God’s work in my life,

“So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” - Genesis 45:8

It is God that caused all these circumstances to happen and He will continue to do so for eternity because He is omnipotent and sovereign. Even more so, I am reminded of how the Lord can redeem and do anything He wills in our lives as we keep our eyes (by His grace) on the prize of the upward calling, of which I am no where near perfect. 

Interestingly, on Sundays, my church has been going through 2 Corinthians and during the month of April, a huge theme has been 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 which looking heavenward to the things unseen. A question I'm asked often is if I'd ever consider applying to medical school again due to a God given passion for learning science and this month I thought about this a lot. Honestly, there’s nothing in a worldly sense hindering me from going through the process again such as finances, ability, or even a new family to worry about.

Still, in meditating on 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, reading Genesis, and reading Life on Mission with the internship, I realized that right now what God has set in front of me is the mission for His people- to see those around me come to Christ and have all of eternity to enjoy God forever. It dawned on me that when I am in Heaven, I won't immediately know everything since only God is omniscient. Heaven is by no means going to be boring because we’ll “suddenly know everything”. 

The possibilities of learning even more about the human body without the hindrance of sin than I could ever have imagined is, though unseen, real with Christ's righteousness that guarantees my eternity with Him. Therefore, what am I ‘worried’ about in not being able to glean all I can about science in this life? What I'm more 'worried' about is something I can't do in heaven, which is share the gospel with those who are under His wrath in hell for eternity. In heaven, I won't see lives of spiritually dead sinners come to life and be transformed into Christ's likeness as I have been. 

Therefore, my answer to the question is no, I won't consider applying to medical school for the sake of my own knowledge until God has determined my current mission in Cleveland or as a teacher is done. Why? The mission He's put me in today has a time limit where learning the knowledge of God's fallen creation likely does not. Even if it does have a time limit, that's okay, because whatever God has in store for me in heaven is going to be so much more satisfying that I'm not going to even yearn to go back to learning in the limited ways that I gain knowledge now. 

I’m not saying either that no Christian should apply to medical school! Prayerfully apply! It’s a wonderfully sanctifying experience in which all the worries and anxieties can be given to God for His glory as I have written. This message is for those who may be struggling to know if what they are doing is right- though I can’t tell you what God’s will is, I can say as we follow His Word by faith and acknowledge Him in all that we do, He’ll truly make our paths straight.

“In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.~ Proverbs 3:6″