Blooming Women
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  • About Blooming Women
  • About Being a Contributor
  • Contact
  • Happy Birthday, Blooming Women! One Year Today!
  • Blog—Maniacal Musings—Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
  • Blog—Jessica's Journey—Jessica VanVactor, Guest Contributor
  • Blog—My Armenia—Carol Rickman's Blog
  • Dealing with miscarriage
  • My Story
  • Circles
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Single
  • 5 Stages of divorce recovery
  • The Circus is in Town
  • (You're covered with) The Fingerprints of God
  • Thunder Roared and Love Soared
  • A Period Piece
  • A sneak preview of the Gertie sequel!
  • Six Steps to Cultivate your Femininity in the Business World
  • Chore Zoning or Don't try this at home!
  • The 50 with Meredith Morse—Opera Singer
  • The 50 with Jessica VanVactor
  • Memorizing Joy
  • AT LAST! My interview with Shan White, Life Coach for women in transition
  • Questions and statements we don't care if we never, ever get asked or told again (am I right, girls?)
  • The Date
  • Moonshadow's Spirit
  • Broken Writer + Hypnotherapy = Amazing Trips
  • The "R" Word
  • The 50 with Carol Shepherd Rickman
  • Triumph During Transitions
  • A Kentucky Afternoon
  • Mothers
  • 10 things chemo taught me
  • What if . . .
  • Forgiveness—A poem
  • Mantegories (n. from the Latin; man+categories)
  • Insomnia 101
  • Blooming Bud Interview: Sierra
  • Masterful Mindsets
  • It's in the bag!
  • Important lessons for children: Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
  • Nursery rhymes, and times, and slimes, and grimes, and crimes
  • Things I learned as a single mom
  • Sadie's Soapbox: Dating
  • The Dress
  • 8 Things That Have Surprised Me About Having a Large Family
  • The gift of longing
  • The Semicolon Project
  • Most embarrassing moments—culinary edition
  • MilitaReality—a brat's perspective
  • About those elusive wisps of thought
  • Being there
  • The Giving Mom
  • How I still haven't learned to keep my smart mouth shut!
  • If you give a mom a cookie . . .
  • Cacti and Geraniums
  • The Three Gardeners
  • Beauty is as beauty does
  • Words for Sabra
  • Arm scratching in Baltimore
  • Pornography didn't kill our love and friendship . . . I did . . . and how we got it back
  • Hardening off our little bloomers
  • The Wonderful, Magical Women of Blooming Television
  • Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
  • 25 Date Nights (that aren't dinner and a movie)
  • Hills Like White Elephants
  • Maryland Beaten Biscuits
  • The night we thought the house was exploding
  • A mysterious case of goosebumps or "What is that on the wall?"
  • Militareality—Real stories of military wives
  • Finding my metal in wood
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Chariot of Fire
  • Secret gifts of love
  • The best prank I ever pulled was . . .
  • Connie
  • Dating and other hazards
  • Favorite childhood memories
  • When God speaks . . .
  • Zanie gets into another sticky situation
  • No-see-ums: A little useful information
  • I love my kids, but . . .
  • Meg's poem
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Some of my favorite herbal recipes are . . .
  • I love my cat, but . . .
  • I love all creatures, but . . .
  • The thing all girls and women must see and know . . .
  • The Great Chicken Debacle
  • The Powerful Influence of Brothers
  • How I feel about blooming is . . .
  • Sometimes grandma is up—other times she is simply upside-down
  • Anyone out there as anxious as I am?
  • Some of my funniest childhood memories are . . .
  • You might be addicted to Harry Potter if . . .
  • This month's survey:
  • Another Blooming Bud interview
  • The most valuable life lesson I've learned is . . .
  • The greatest blessing to come out of the most painful thing I ever experienced was . . .
  • The most powerful influence on my life is . . .
  • The thing that could have broken our family, but didn't was . . .
  • The funniest thing that ever happened to me was . . .
  • The time my dad really surprised me was when . . .
  • NEW FEATURE: Interviews with Blooming Buds
  • ANOTHER NEW FEATURE: A survey
  • The most valuable life lesson I've ever learned is . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • One of the most fun days I ever had was . . .
  • The most scared I've ever been was when . . .
  • The people who have been the biggest influence on me are . . .
  • I like to relax by . . .
  • The best way to do . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • The most fun I ever had was when . . .
  • When I grow up, I want to be . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • The most amazing bargain I ever found was . . .
  • Those annoying things kids do and what they mean
  • My shameless self-promotion
  • The thing about getting older is . . .

what if . . .

By Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
An introspective look into a bad behavior of mine
What if we all stopped clicking on teaser links that say things like, "You should see what they look like now!" or "Hot celebs who married hideous spouses." or "These child stars went to the dogs!" What if we stopped sharing them and making them go viral. 

What if, when we hate a story and all the attention it's getting, we stopped clicking, reading, talking about, and sharing, which just perpetuates the very thing we're complaining about going viral? I am so guilty of this. I click and close because it is so offensive, but the damage is already done. Another little lipstick mark goes up on the story. The rubbish is glorified. 

I had, emphasizing the word 'had,' a nasty problem that would begin several times a day with an interesting 'teaser' on the side of my Facebook page. They know exactly how to grab your attention! Crafty little buggers. When I was young, I read nothing but biographies. I wanted to know what made people who they were. I wanted to know how they rose above dire circumstances and became someone useful and helpful. But, that changed as I got older. I went from Clara Barton and George Washington Carver bios to celebrities who had gone off the deep end in one fell swoop. 

The bigger problem is that, if you are not vigilant, you can be sucked into it deeper and deeper. Click to one article and there are 12 more intriguing stories just waiting for that click. And you click and you click and you click and you begin to not believe in goodness anymore.

I had stopped reading about nobility and began exploring the degradation of the human condition. I shook my head when I read about this celebrity or that and even did that tongue clicky thing that is momspeak for 'shame on you, girlie.' 

I realized that I was wallowing in the dregs and gutters of humanity and breaking two very sacred commandments: 

First, from Proverbs 24:17 "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: . . ."  I was doing just that. I was smugly and piously delighting at how low some humans (see: children of God) had fallen. 

Second, the great commandment, one of the big 10, from Exodus 20:3, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."  I was investing more time and energy exploring celebrities than scripture heroes. 

A crucial third point, Psalms 35:15, "But in mine adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: yea, the abjects gathered themselves together against me, and I knew it not; they did tear me, and ceased not:"  How would I feel if this happened to me—I sunk low in my behavior and found myself in the tabloids? 

So, here's my new quest:

1.) Begin my day with a devotional that includes scripture reading, prayer, hymn and doing some family history, studying what made me who I am today.

2.) Go back to the classics for reading pleasure, beginning with what I believe to be one of the greatest stories every told, scriptures aside, Les Miserables.

3.) No more clicking! Unless it is an uplifting story about triumph of the spirit.

4.) Not waste my breath, saying to people, "Did you read that story about . . .?"; 

5.) Not participating in conversations about the trashy degradation of human beings who are children of God and don't need all the negative attention just because it is attention; 

6.) Praying for humanity to get a little more humanity; 

7.) Thinking kinder thoughts of a more noble and loftier nature. What we are doing is just as bad as laughing at the kid at school who has holes in his shoes or the girl who got pregnant her sophomore year of high school. Join me in a quest for more humanity and nobility and compassion. 

Let's stop littering with human beings we think are beneath us. After all is said and done, if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. End of speech. *MIC drop*
Copyright © 2015 by Rent's Due Publications

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