Derya Little

One reason we must pray for our leaders—especially the Pope, who holds the highest office on earth—is that they are subject to demands and considerations that cheap keyboard warriors will never understand. The burden of leadership is great and often perplexing. Pray for wisdom!

"For Muslims, Judaism and Christianity are just steps on the way to Islam... That is why they treat us as a “People of the Book”, with some tolerance, but evangelization means that you are waging war against Islam." pillarcatholic.com/p/warda-the-wh…

@xavi87319 @TridentineBrew Thank you!

@TridentineBrew I'll recommend this booklet by @DeryaLittle tinyurl.com/yeytu4st 😇

Always a great conversation with Drew!

Thank you, Angela! The lessons the Lord teaches us could become bread crumbs for others :)

People before Google was invented:

The confessional is my safe space.

Ooof. From a very young age, this Protestant belief led me down a very dark path in life. 2-PART THREAD: PART 1/2 I grew up believing this because it’s what I was taught (my dad is now Catholic, and my mom is becoming Catholic, and they are thankful they now know the truth as well). Unfortunately, as I grew up not knowing or understanding how to properly discern the difference between what I was feeling and who I was, I completely fell apart. 10 years of drug addiction, suicide attempts, and a radically confused sense of identity ensued. As a young girl I experienced sexual abuse. This radically affected how I viewed the opposite sex. I couldn’t control the attraction I had to the same sex (although for years I hadn’t acted on it even once), and because I thought the attraction itself was sinful, I eventually gave into it. I figured, “Well, I can’t control it, so I might as well live it since the feelings themselves are automatically sinful” (or so I believed). I felt so angry for so many years at God for this—an anger I now realize was misdirected. I thought, “How could He make me like this and not give me a way out?” Was I doomed to hell? I felt like the punchline of a sick joke, because with this line of thinking, there is no hope of salvation for those of us who have struggled this way. It feels like we were created to simply suffer on earth, die, then suffer for an eternity in hell afterwards. So it is no wonder we flee the churches to find solace in communities that will “accept” us. It’s an attempt to find some sense of belonging in a world that was so clearly designed to work against us. It was life-destroying to be put in this impossible situation with no way out. Sometimes, we cannot control what we are merely attracted to or tempted by, because of our fallen human nature. But because of this false Protestant belief, I believed this temptation itself was sinful. This caused the greatest shame I have ever felt in my life. It wasn’t until I came to the Catholic Church that I learned about the natural law, and a far more precise, profoundly reasonable, and more biblical doctrine of original sin, in which the goodness of our human nature—created “very good” by God—was not completely destroyed, but severely damaged. I learned that this damage caused us to be tempted in many ways, but that ultimately, the sin was not those temptations, but whether we chose to act on them. The sin was in our use of our free will. The Catholic Church also opened my eyes to the natural law—the reality that nature, since it was created “good” by God, had a purpose built into it that we could discern with our rational minds, which God (the “Logos”) gave us when He created us in His image. We can look at the world, created by Reason (“Logos”) Himself, and by the reason He gave us discern right from wrong. We then make a choice: to do what is right, or to do what is wrong. The fact that we are tempted to do what is wrong is not the sin. It is choosing to do wrong that is the sin. If temptation itself was sinful, then we could never do anything good, ever. But that idea seemed to be completely absent from Scripture. The Bible told me that those in Christ are new creatures—the old has passed, the new has come. Jesus also talked about earning reward in Heaven for our good deeds (with His help). But if our temptations alone were sinful, then that would be impossible. Jesus Himself was tempted by Satan, but clearly that temptation was not a sin, because then Jesus would have sinned! The natural law, I realized, was simply the most basic form of how God created us to be—a form we could choose to follow, or not. So what mattered was not the various temptations I had, but whether I chose to follow them or not.

I know there is a Catholic event going on at the hotel we’re staying because parents are yelling at their kids: “Josephine! Bernadette!” Also, there are a lot of half smoked cigars on the patio tables.

Despite all my curmudgeonly whining, it is wonderful to go to Mass without fear. Thanks be to God.

Happy 4th of July from this naturalized citizen! For each like❤️, I'll tell you a favorite thing about living in the US 🇺🇸

Solving all problems with a phone call.

I love it that, despite all my complaints, my children can get a good Catholic education.

I love it that everyone laughs at my silly jokes because I’m a foreigner.

Small talk with complete strangers.

Recliners. No one loves their recliners like the Americans.

Singly family housing is amazing. In Turkey most of us live in apartment buildings. Can you imagine 6 kids and immediate neighbours?

I love it that if there is a food, someone somewhere in America will fry it. Because, why not?

Elevators everywhere. In the 12 years that I’ve been a parent. I only ever had to carry the stroller once.

It would be terrible not to mention Oreos as a favorite thing in the US. Well done, America.

Stop signs are not suggestions. (Except when I forget that I don't live in Turkey anymore and a rolling stop doesn't count. Oops!)