Joan of Arc...

Therefore their was still the absolute and almost fascist type of female submission to men that did not end in the dark and middle ages. So just who in the new world was Joan of Arc? She never existed, either that or nobody knew her because she was never allowed to do anything historically significant.

I guess the "stakes (really) were too high"... I wonder what happened to that little girl, the one who "clung to her Father's side..."

Hmm... through this experience, I learned something about myself. I don't think it was something I realized I struggled with until God brought me to it and showed me how I needed to deal with it. I lie to myself so easily. It's so easy for me to fall into a pit of self-denial. I think if it were not by His grace, I would have lingered there for longer, making this whole healing process so much more harder.

Sometimes, I like to think I'm strong. Sometimes I like to think I can make it on my own - that I will not let disappointments and hurts drag me down. Sometimes I like to think that I can overcome hurdles as quickly as they come and think that I've only tripped over a pebble when I've really fallen flat on my face. You know what I experienced? The stronger I wanted to be... the faster I wanted to heal, the slower time seemed to move. I was in a hurry. I was not to be beaten down by my emotions. I was not to lose track of my purpose, my priorities... and sure, those were good things, but there is a time for everything. And I wanted to skip that time.

God places valleys in our lives not so that we can jump over them and forget all about it, but that we can learn to walk through them with Him, to learn to face it with courage and acceptance, to learn to trust and walk by faith. And I believe that through it all - He just wants us to love Him more deeply. I think we've all wrestled with these feelings before. We push His hand, asking Him to take all the pain away - to take it all away so that we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. It's so easy to want escape. We want to run away when it hurts, we want to run away when we don't understand, when we don't know what to do... when we don't want to endure.