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Aid Group Says Abuse Of Child 'Witches' On Rise- (CNN) Superstition and suspicion have led to increasing abuse among Nigeria's children. Children who are unruly, stubborn or have learning disabilities and physical ailments are most likely to be singled out. "Children accused of witchcraft are often incarcerated in churches for weeks on end and beaten, starved and tortured in order to extract a confession," said Gary Foxcroft, program director of Stepping Stones Nigeria, a nonprofit that helps alleged witch children in the region. About 15,000 children in the Akwa Ibon and Cross River states have been branded as witches, he said, and most of them are forced out on the street and abused. Sometimes even Nigeria's pastors are responsible for the abuse, identifying children who they say are possessed. The problem is growing worldwide, even in places like Nepal.

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Beauty Still Remains

Be happy for this moment...this moment is your life.

I don't know why but quotes always smack me like right in the face when I need them to. I've always been a huge fan of quotes, not sure why. Maybe its because i'm just not smart enough to come up with smart things to say or what, but they affect me so much.

Anyways, this post is not about quotes. It's about happiness and life and love and friends and smiling and taking advantage of every second because you will never get it back.

Lately I have been in a rut. If you asked me why I could probably list 10 things that are going wrong right now. But if you asked me what was going right right now I could probably list 1000. And thats what I should be focusing on.

I often take days just like today for granted. Always looking forward to something or being in a crappy mood or something, instead of focusing on the beautiful things in life. Today I woke up and decided that I am in charge of my happiness, not my circumstances. Why don't I wake up like that every day? Yes, we can have bad days but I think at the end of the day there should always be at least one thing that made you smile or give you a moment of happiness amongst the crappiness.

If there is ANYTHING I have learned about life, its that IT GOES ON. The bad cant last forever.

It's 5:54pm, my day is almost over, I will never ever have this day back. Did I make the most of it? I think most of us just think that today is just another day and there is always tomorrow. But what happens if there isn't a tomorrow? What if today was our very last day, did you live it like you wanted?

Anne Frank said, "I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains." And I think thats the point I'm trying to get to. Let's stop looking at the crappy parts and live in the beauty that still remains.

Standing Still

A couple months ago I wrote a blog about change. How much I disliked it and how I had a hard time dealing with it. At that time, alot of what I was dealing with was the thought of a relationship ending. As it turns out, my feelings were dead on. Less than a week later my relationship ended. The change and differences that I encountered during that time and the month to follow were incredibly intense and at times too much to handled.

I am now having those same feelings of change and things being different. In NO WAY AT ALL am I worried about my relationship ending again. Joe and I are in an amazing, solid relationship and even he has assured me, he's not going anywhere :)

But still, these emotions that are starting to take over me and really stemming from my fear of change. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I feel like everything around me is changing and I am standing still. My friends are changing, my family is changing, my job/church is constantly changing and I for some reason am frozen in this feeling of never wanting things to change.

I feel like one month again everything was perfect. I was the happiest I had ever been. I'm sure at the time there was at least one thing I could have complained about, but looking back all I can see is the good. I know everything can change in an instant but why does it have to?

It's not like my life right now is miserable by any means. My life is dang near perfect, again i just don't like change and thats what I feel like is happening.
So how do we cope with change when its our least favorite thing?

"Life is about change, sometimes its painful, sometimes its beautiful, but most of the time...its both."