Just Shine On

Posts Tagged ‘encouragement-for-teens’

Almost a year ago, I wrote a blog post on today’s music and the dangerous glorification of drugs (which you can read HERE). My music listening habits have shifted from “One Direction Radio” to “Life Of Dillon”, which has a lot more lyrical EDM songs. In between all the various messages that are transmitted via song lyrics, I was somewhat surprised by one song in particular: ‘I Took A Pill In Ibiza’ by Mike Posner. I was doing some homework and playing music off of my iPad the first time I heard it.

At first I thought it was just another song about using drugs, but then I started to actually listen to it…and I was slightly shocked.

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I am just one person, living in a grieving country; a small part of this troubled world. We the people, are heartbroken about the increasing amount of tragedies that contribute to a river of blood which knows no borders.

I read the news and every day I read of a bombing in one place, a shooting in another, attacks that are taking place worldwide and with different motives. I will not use this post to point fingers, Read the rest of this entry »

Something about the gray day and the dark beauty has me brooding over nothing. As I wander around campus, the silence is comforting but there’s only one place I want be.

I make my way to the other side of campus and run across the street to the one building that I can hide from the world in. As soon as my foot hits the first step leading up to the doors, a sense of Read the rest of this entry »

GUEST POST
The March for Life is an important Pro-Life event that happens in Washington D.C. and other places around the United States each January. I had the awesome opportunity to interview triplet sisters who went on the March this year, and then got stranded on the highway during the blizzard that stalled many Marchers’ return home. They share their experience below. I hope you enjoy their witness story!

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(Left to right: Alexis, Kristen, and Lauren.)
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*****This was actually something I posted on on my personal FaceBook and Instagram, but the more I thought about it, I decided it would be a nice little blog post too. So for those of you who didn’t catch it, I hope you enjoy reading my little pep talk!*****

I think one of the biggest lessons 2015 taught me, is that you can’t save people, you can only love them.

2015 started with me finding out that one of my teammates had run away from home. I begged him to come home, but I quickly realized that no matter how many times I called his dead phone, or texted him, or sent him FaceBook messages, he wasn’t going to change his mind. All I could do, was pray. Things have worked out alright for him, I’ve heard, and for that I am glad.

That was just the first of a few instances this past year, where I think  Read the rest of this entry »

Be a real rebel. Be in it, not of it.

I think this is a very important concept that we all need to understand. Have you ever felt like you just don’t belong anywhere? Maybe, like me, you have a few different circles of friends that you drift in and out of. We enjoy the company of all of them, but we just don’t fit in. That’s OK, because none of us were made to fit in! We can only find the perfect love and acceptance that we want so much, when we turn to God. He put us on this earth, not to blend in with the crowd, but to stand out and point others to Him. We live in this world. But we don’t belong here. We need to be rebels and prove we are in it, not of it.

Enter the college scene. I have experienced my first semester of college. Within that first semester, I have been exposed to many trends Read the rest of this entry »

It was just over 2 years ago, that I created my blog here, Just Shine On.  Naturally, it was time to update my About Page, so I just did that. My life has changed in some big ways! One of those big changes has been moving to college. I applied and was accepted to six Catholic colleges, and submitted the below essay, to each of them.   I recently found this essay on my computer, and thought sharing it with you all, might be a great post.  The essay prompt was: “Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?” 

I hope you enjoy reading it. Read the rest of this entry »

Last month I celebrated my 18th birthday. But turning the big one-eight wasn’t the only thing that made this past birthday so special. It was also the fact that my birthday landed on a Sunday this year. I spent a good amount of time thinking about this one night last month, as I held one of our hens and watched fireflies glow in the dusk, on a perfect early July night.

Celebrating my birthday on a Sunday might not seem like much. But for me, it means the world. You see, Read the rest of this entry »

A couple weekends ago, I went on my last high school retreat with my youth group. My youth minister and the CORE members did an awesome job running it, but I think one of my favorite parts (besides Adoration, which is always a great experience,) was the witness talk that was given. Our witness speaker happened to be a seminarian, which I thought was awesome! If you’ve been following my blog from the beginning, or if you know me personally, then you probably know I have a lot of admiration and respect for priests, and the vocation to religious life in general. So you can imagine how excited I was about this witness talk! The seminarian gave a really great testimony about his call to the priesthood, and the different things that happened throughout his life, that he now realized was God trying to speak to him.

The discussion guided by my CORE member, again led me to the conclusion that I often come to when I think about what the priesthood means to me: Read the rest of this entry »

I wanted to get into a very tough subject, and talk a little bit about today’s music and drugs.

In recent years, I have done a lot of exploring in terms of different music genres. Lately, I have listened to ‘One Direction’ radio on iTunes radio, just because one day I decided, “Hey, I’m going to give them a try.” I was never into them when they first became big, and I’m still not a ‘Directioner’, by a long shot. Despite this, I found that they are indeed talented vocalists and I could appreciate their efforts.

But iTunes radio also plays songs from a variety of other artists in the same genre as One Direction. The more I listened to this music, the more I noticed some disturbing Read the rest of this entry »