In the Quiet

Another winner:

My sisters and I sang this Christmas Eve at Mass.

This is a great cover. Watch and listen. Be amazed!

J.M.J. Dear 2015, Hey. It has been real. A lot has happened, and I'm going to respect you by going through each of your months to give credit where credit is due. January I became a girlfriend. This made me feel special. We had been going on dates since 2014's November. February Valentine's Day came and went, with all of the excitement I'd been excited for: roses, candy, and a romantic comedy onstage that I went to with my boyfriend. March Lent happened. I went to a Lenten retreat which was spiritually uplifting. I gave up hot showers for Lent. April I turned 24. Nothing much changed, except I knew that my goal was to get married at that age. Doesn't look like it's going to happen. Going to have to check with your sibling, 2016. May This month really doesn't remind me of anything incredibly special. I was busy with work and my social life. June Very hot. At work, temperatures rose until the air conditioner started worki...

+ J.M.J. (Fun fact: I wear this ring often. It's from Shopko but they don't sell it anymore, in case you wondered). Recently, one of my readers asked me to write about this topic: "Is hope something that we will or is it a fruit of the things we choose to believe in?" Is that deep enough for you? Okay, let's dive in. What is hope? Well, I think of it as that virtue which allows us to look forward to something that isn't here yet. It may never come, but we desire it to, and we believe, at least to some degree, that it might. I think that sometimes hope is a conscious act of the will. We want to believe something, so we do. At other times, I think that hope is a virtue and a fruit of the things we choose to believe in, like God. He gives us hope for our eternal destiny (heaven).  Isn't that cool?  It's easy to get discouraged in this life. The opposite of hope is despair, and to allow yourself to wallow in such a state of being ...