AO Teens

Well hello there, long time no see! Today we are here to momentarily revive the blog with three original poems by Karissa, Caleb, and Alayna. Thanks for reading, enjoy! The Beach in November  By Karissa By the age of nine, I was tired of the sea With her dull gray shattering of incessant weight Heavy against the limitless sky. I was lonely among the muttering breakers, Feeling the weight of the water on my skin, Wishing I was dry and that my feet and hair Were not crusted with salt; And that my eyes were not hot, My skin no longer charred to gold. I returned to the sea, watched the grey sky, And got lost among the lack of sharks’ teeth, Wandering, in search of an answer, In search of independence, or rather of a companion. The sea, whispering, was like an old friend, But in a photograph, colorless, empty, And chilled, with November. The shoreline was grey With soaked seasand; The sobbing of the ocean made it easy To get lost inside myself, and I walked Farther than I had in a long ...

Caleb, Karissa, and Alayna here, with some of our favorite memes to add some humor to your day!  

  Hello, Alayna here! First of all, I’d like to apologize on the behalf of my friends and myself for the blog being so slow lately. Everyone’s schedules are picking back up again and it’s hard to find time to write together! We’re working on a new scheduling system though so there should be more activity now. This testimony is particularly tardy- I’ve been (sort of) working on it for months, but I just couldn’t seem to get it right for so long! But ahem. This isn’t supposed to be an excuse post. I’d better quit the apologies for right now. The world is a pretty depressing place. Everywhere I look I see darkness. The word “2020” is even starting to become a joke! People are scared, lonely, and depressed. They’re finding their identity in how many social media followers they have or how perfect their lives seem on the outside. It’s so easy to get swept away in the tension and petty bickering and to not fight to keep your head above water and your eyes on Jesus. Why waste time and get...

  Hello everyone! All of our current contributors made this collection of our favorite Bible verses. We are very excited to be able to share these treasures of God's Word with you. Thank you for reading and enjoy!!  Margaret’s: “He made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.” --1 Corinthians 5:21 Isabella’s:  “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” --John 16:33   Dom's: “In peace I will lie down and sleep.” --Psalm 4:8 Lily’s: “Some put their trust in horses and some in chariots, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”  --Psalm 20:6 Caleb’s: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” --James 1:2...

Romans 8:18-39  Hello everyone! We wanted to share this passage in Romans 8 with you because it has been very encouraging to us. Romans 8 is one of the most encouraging passages that you can find in your Bible, and a lot of it is very relatable to this whole pandemic. Most notably, verse 18: “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Paul could almost have time traveled to 2020 and then gone back and written that.  Verse 28, one of the most famous and most quoted passages in scripture, says “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” COVID is scary and sin is very real, but we know that all things--even this virus-- will work together for good.   “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all t...

  Hello! We’ve been wanting to do a post on frequently asked foster care questions for a while. We’ve both noticed that people often don’t know much about the system, and we want to help change that!   After asking around, 10 people had various questions that we did our best to answer. If you’re one of these people, thank you so much for asking them! They’re all really good questions, and some of them were hard to answer. We’re so sorry if they aren’t answered exactly the way you were picturing. With this topic, it’s often hard to answer straight-forwardly. If anyone has more questions for us, we’d be happy to answer them in a future post! Just leave them in the comments. We’d love to hear them! Thanks for reading!  Lily: Hello everyone! We’re so excited that we get to answer all of these amazing questions! Here’s a bit of background about my foster care experience before we begin. I told a lot about this in my Finding Joy in Grief testimony, which is a separate post tha...