God's prayers are answered in His way

I have gotten a job. I had no job experience, so I was basically restricted to fast food, so I have to work on Saturdays and Sundays. I will show how this is relevant later.


God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to tell the difference. 

Many Catholics- and perhaps some protestants- are familiar with the Serenity Prayer, which is the prayer I typed below the picture. Such a prayer helps you remember God knows everything and he is in control. This has helped me through college and getting a job. I prayed that God would do His Holy Will for me when I was placed on academic probation during my fall semester. I honestly did not believe I could possibly get off probation during the spring semester, but I prayed about it and I did, thanks to God! However, I feel called by God to take off a semester, and possibly a year, to work in a town closer to my house and save up to live on campus. (At my school, most people live in the county of the school or the surrounding counties. I hadn't thought about living on-campus until last year, but I got interested.) Anyway, my grandma had multiple health problems and passed away in January. This caused my grades to suffer. However, I prayed, and I got off probation after a lot of work, but I am still taking the semester off. God made us able to afford for me to go to college this year, but my grandma's medical and funeral expenses made this financially difficult. I want to take time off so I can make money and so my parents can save money for me to continue my education and live on-campus.

Sometimes God's answers are a little rockier. My mom warned me my grandma would not likely live much longer around Christmas because she was having hip surgery. The surgeons said the fracture was likely an old one because there was no bleeding. She also forgot how to eat and developed an infection throughout her whole body called sepsis. She went unconscious with septic shock a week before she died, and my mom said a miracle could happen. However, as Catholics, we gave her the Anointing of the Sick Sacrament. She continued to decline and passed away on January 27, 2019. Though I was sad she was gone (especially since she was my only grandparent who lived for me to be born), I knew God was calling her home.

Back to my job. I only work four days a week rather than five, but being fast food, I have to work specifically on Saturdays at four PM. This is when people are starting to grab food and hang out. The problem with this is this is when my church has Mass. (It's the earliest you can go to church and it fulfill your Sunday obligation, although I'm not sure why that was chosen.) Since I live in a small town, our church population is low, and we only have a few altar servers. (We allow girls to serve. The reason I still serve is because we don't have many servers and there are few kids, so banning girls, in this case, is not helpful. By the time the altar-boy issue was revealed to me, the damage had been done.) Basically, since that's in the middle of the day and just before dinner time, and since I live in a small town with no fast food chains-and no where for teens to work- I kind of have to work during that mass and go to a different parish without my family. I also have to just hope other people serve and accept the fact that I will not be available to serve anymore. However, I know God will make things at my church work out. Maybe people will see I'm not available anymore and will step up and serve. Maybe some of them will be boys and will become priests one day. Being unavailable is hard, but maybe God has a plan for something good to come out of that.

Of course, God answers many prayers in different ways. Sometimes dying people get a miracle and stay alive, such as Colton Burpo, who almost died due to appendicitis when he was 3. He went to Heaven, but he returned to Earth. Other times, God is calling those people home. I really believed Sophia Gall, a 16 year-old Austrailian who had Osteosarcoma, would beat her cancer, and she did... because her positive and bubbly personality shone through every obstacle she faced and eventually her suffering ended. Although at first I believed she would stay on Earth, she passed away almost a year ago. Some will wonder why a loving God would allow an innocent child to suffer. Although none of us will ever really understand why, it is likely a sign that He is in control and His will will be done.  As hard as it is to accept, one day we will be in Heaven and understand.

It's been almost a year, Sophia. You are missed very much, and so are you, Grandma. Your birthdays were both October 4th. May God make Sophia's family and mine as happy as possible on that day.

Why innocent children suffer

Happy Mother's day for all mothers out there!If this is your first mother's day without your mother, may God bless you today and help you remember and honor your mom. However, some mothers have actually lost a child. Maybe you're in your 60's and your 32 year-old died in a car accident last month, or maybe your six year-old died last week from cancer. If the latter is the case (even if it was not so recent), read on!
https://www.insideedition.com/headlines/24023-3-year-olds-anguish-on-display-in-heartbreaking-photos-to-show-the-reality-of-childhood
I am a teenager and I've never had cancer or any diease so I cannot imagine how a patient with cancer feels, especially as a child! This applies to any diease! I also cannot imagine what a parent feels! I wish I could remember the source, but once I read, "A child whose parents die is an orphan. A woman whose husband dies is a widow. A man whose wife has died is a widower. There is no word for a parent who loses a child because it just does not make sense." This is very true. Just writing this entry breaks my heart! This may make you wonder why God lets children suffer.

No  one knows this answer except God Himself. However, it began at the fall of Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit and sin became a thing. Suffering can be a consequence of something. For instance, if a little child touches a hot stove after his mother told him not to, he burns his hand. Unfortunately, a burnt hand is a consequence. (Not that he deserves a trip to the ER).

The question remains, "Why do innocent people suffer?" This is not to say suffering is a good thing, but why it happens. He wants us to learn life lessons when we suffer. For instance, some childhood cancer survivors go on to spread awareness of childhood cancer. I know Sophia Gall, a girl who passed away from cancer last year at the age of 16, told us she did not know childhood cancer was a thing prior to her diagnosis. (It was a video of where her YouTube channel hit 100,000 subscribers in 2017.) Cancer is not a good thing, but her bringing awareness to it was. Of course, cancer is not where suffering ends.

If a high schooler had to choose between becoming a lawyer after attending Harvard, you would suggest to them to spend much of their time studying and doing activities so their application would stand out. Harvard rejects more than 90% of their applicants, so you really need to have a competitive edge to go to Harvard. Not only that, but all colleges, especially Ivy League colleges, are quite expensive! Would you tell them, at age 16 and as a sophomore year of high school, to go ahead and become a lawyer, to go ahead and apply to Harvard, or to spend a lot of their time studying, doing multiple extra ciriculars, and working to start making money to go to school? Probably the latter, right? That would mean causing a lot of stress in the short-term and often being tempted to give up! Although, if the teen really wants to get into that school, such stress may pay off, because even if Harvard does not accept them, and even if they end up going to a school with a high acceptance rate, wouldn't they be more successful once they start college? Yes!

As an example related to cancer, Ellie Waters is an 18-year-old from the UK who had Rhabdomyosarcoma when she was 14. She had been planning to become a lawyer, but now she is 18 and wants to be a pediatric cancer researcher. She is suffering from several long-term side effects of chemotherapy, but she wants to work to find medicines to make more kids survive cancer and with fewer side effects. She would not have considered doing so if she had never had cancer.

(I know I suck at making transitions! Working on it!) In short, while no one knows exactly why God allows suffering, we can know it could be part of a plan for God to improve who we are and to make lemons out of lemonade!

Catholics ONLY worship God, but we honor others

One reason why Catholics become protestant is because they think we worship Mary and saints, but we honor them. They are meant to be seen as inspirations to help us become closer to God. Mary prays for us and wants us to honor God, as she was born sinless. That is why God asked her to give birth to Jesus- any other woman and He would have been conceived with sin. When the angel Gabriel came to ask Mary if she would accept God's will, God knew she would say yes. If she had been conceived with sin, Jesus would have been born as a sinner. Now, anything is possible with God, so some may think she could have been a sinner and Jesus could have been immune to this. I don't think humans can really understand this situation outside of faith.



Honoring Mary is not where protestants stop when they say we worship people besides God. (To clarify, I am not saying all protestants think this, I am just saying this for the protestants who are mistaken.) They also believe we worship saints, but we just honor them. I think this is because they made major sacrifices to worship God. Now, the ordained, such as priests, along with women who discern religious life (I do not know what the word is for a woman who becomes a nun), also make sacrifices to God, but we remember special people. "Saint" is French for "holy", so we are all called to be saints, but these saints are special. A miracle has happened in their life that we are thanking God for and we are asking for help in our own trials.
In short, we only worship God, but we look at role models to help us do so. I'm sorry to end this post so abruptly, but I just do not know what else to say.
~Sarah