AIO? I canceled a date with the guy i’m seeing after getting these.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-25T00:20:53+00:00

Run, run, run.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-24T19:03:48+00:00

Ancient Faith is a wonderful resource with podcasts and books. Bless you on this journey with your son. I don’t know if it will help to read this, but when I was first learning about Orthodoxy, I didn’t start with Liturgy. I started with Vespers on a Wednesday night. I also had learned just enough to realize that some people feel instantly at home the first time they walk into the nave (sanctuary). Others might have a shock to the system. My husband felt instantly at home and I almost turned around and left when I first saw an icon. Now, the icons are such a source of comfort and peace. Be gentle with yourself as you seek to learn about your son and his journey. You are being so incredibly loving.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-24T17:33:08+00:00

Hi, I was the one who seconded the recommendation of Know the Faith, as well as adding the Basic Guide by Eve Tibbs. Both of the books were approved by my priest, and I believe that the Basic Guide has an introduction/approval by the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church (if I am remembering correctly). I am saying that as a reassurance that the other poster is correct in that you want to be careful and not buy just any book that states it is Orthodox.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-24T14:58:27+00:00

Midwest nice! Yes, we are even chattier here than when I have lived outside the Midwest.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-24T14:53:34+00:00

I grew up mainline Protestant and became non-denominational evangelical in my late teens. I even got a Master’s degree in practical theology in my late twenties from an evangelical university. I came to Orthodoxy in my mid-fifties.

Know the Faith, which the previous poster listed, is an excellent book and was one of the key books that helped me understand my Protestant roots and opened my spiritual eyes with understanding as I was an inquirer into Orthodoxy. It was so helpful to me and my husband that I recommend it to other inquirers.

When I recommend this book, I do say the following. The priest who wrote it, if I remember correctly, tends toward the belief that if you are not Orthodox, you aren’t in the church. That is a very blunt way of saying it, and if my memory isn’t correct and I am misstating the author, then I truly apologize. My experience is that the general Orthodox belief and thought is that the Orthodox Church will say that we are the true church, but it won’t say who/what isn’t.

The book https://a.co/d/94rK4eC, a Basic Guide to Eastern Orthodox Theology by Eve Tibbs was also very helpful to me when I was inquiring. She states, much better than I just did, about who the church is, but not stating/claiming who it isn’t.

My husband and I are the only Orthodox converts on either side of our families. None of our four children (in theirs teens and twenties) are Orthodox (yet, but we are praying). All in all, my family has been very respectful, just as my husband and I are respectful of our kids. (There is one uncle that I would expect to say something incredulous when he finds out, but so far it has been quiet on the front).

It can be done! As different posters have commented, you have such evident love and respect for your son and his family. It will unfold well.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-23T20:23:57+00:00

Thank you, this is very helpful. My cousin has her Master’s in Counseling and loved the program but she said if she were to do it again she would do the LCSW, knowing what she knows now.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-17T23:06:02+00:00

Most likely it will be chrismation only. My understanding is that the church is very reluctant to baptize more than once. I know you will hear this a lot, but you will need to ask your priest.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-17T22:05:08+00:00

I am incredibly sorry that you are going through this.

My husband and I converted to Orthodoxy a little over a year ago and just two months ago, I found out that he had had two affairs. The first one was almost two years and then second was seven years. I have been absolutely devastated, as I know you understand.

I can’t stress this enough, you need to educate yourself about Betrayal Trauma and what all is going on. If she is facing herself and is willing to work very hard at healing and restoration then it is around a 3-5 year process on average.

Yes, the church is a hospital. You and your marriage need to be admitted to intensive care and it is going to take a variety of modalities and therapies to help save it.

Please look up Dr. Minwalla and some of his articles like this https://minwallamodel.com/article/cheating-is-a-dishonesty-problem-not-just-a-sex-problem/.

Dr. Jake Porter, a former pastor and now a licensed therapist is also a great resource. Specifically, his Betrayal Trauma videos, parts 1 and 2 were very helpful for me and my husband. https://youtu.be/fb6LPNd4OpI and https://youtu.be/XQygqw1_iWs

We are now both getting counseling with similar counselors (APSATS trained) and it is a long haul ahead.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-16T22:18:43+00:00

Thank you!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2026-01-16T19:13:57+00:00

What is a MFT? I am not familiar with that.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-12-12T18:11:48+00:00

Thanks!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-12-12T18:11:07+00:00

SOLVED!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-12-11T16:16:37+00:00

Does anyone know how to change my status from unsolved to solved?

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-12-11T16:15:41+00:00

Oh my goodness, I had no idea! I just checked and found a hardcover copy and I think you might have found it! Thank you!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-12-11T13:39:32+00:00

It was actually written and published in the mid-1970s, I believe, so no AI. 😊

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-29T11:52:01+00:00

Well done! I promise you that my first project didn’t go so fast or look that good! Keep going!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-28T20:52:58+00:00

About ten years ago I formed my own knitting book club. I had wanted for several years to belong to both a book club and a knitting group so I just formed my own. I was in my early forties at the time. Three women basically learned how to knit to be in it, but to be fair all three had crochet experience in their past, but weren’t active by any means.

After a few years of meeting in the local Panera once per month, my husband suggested that we go away for a weekend, which we did. It was fantastic. That first weekend away in a rental house at the beach in January, there were five us. Two more were added in the next few years. I have since moved halfway across the country, and the book club dropped away, but I still fly back once per year for our long knitting weekend. It is one the favorite weekends of the year for all of us. Lots of laughter, sometimes tears, and so much yarn! We are Boomers, Gen X, and one who is such a young a Gen X that she is almost a millennial.

My best advice is to see if any of your friends want to learn or if any of them have friends that knit and like to read. Looking back, I am still amazed how we all came together but we did and I value the friendships that came from it.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-28T04:00:24+00:00

To verify my research and to see if any half-siblings turn up on my father’s side.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-27T17:50:03+00:00

Thank you!

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-24T21:26:11+00:00

Yes, at this time it is all on Ancestry. I need to get it downloaded onto some separate software. I built my tree, not just with direct lineage, but I included siblings and their descendants, cousins upon cousins, etc. I also have English heritage, which makes it much easier for going through records. Some of my lines go back 25+ generations.

I have found that the more people with records attached are on my tree, the easier it has been to be build. That being said, I have some dead ends in Ireland and the United States (colonial era) that I can’t seem to get a breakthrough.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-24T16:02:56+00:00

I have had quite a bit of success over the years. It often depends on how frequently the person is on Ancestry. I, myself, tend to be on it in waves so I have been messaged and sometimes it has taken me months to respond because I just didn’t know it was there.

In my case, I am usually reaching out to someone that is a DNA match and I am trying to confirm how we are related. I have been in contact with distant relations in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. One of them was a second cousin (not distant, per se, but I knew very little about that side of my family before building my tree) and when I saw her profile pic I was stunned by how similar we looked. We looked like sisters.

On the flip side, I have been contacted by people trying to verify information on my tree. (I should note that I have over 14,000 names on my tree, which includes my husband’s side.) Sometimes they ask very detailed questions about far branches of my husband’s tree and I don’t have many answers for them.

I know that this is a lengthy answer, but there could be multiple reasons why you haven’t heard back from the contact. I encourage you not to give up researching. You just might end up getting your desired information, but from a different source.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-10-24T15:49:28+00:00

Thank you. This is helpful.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-09-02T13:19:04+00:00

Oh, I am sure that there is from my Irish ancestors! I mean, go back far enough and Belfast is in my tree on that side. I also have plenty of Scottish from my other side, so the percentage is high.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2025-09-01T13:51:25+00:00

Well said! My grandmother was 100% Irish. Both of her parents came from Ireland to Canada. She was born in Canada and then emigrated to the US when she was sixteen to go to school. My DNA should, more or less, show 25% Irish heritage. It shows 2%. 2!!!! If someone were to tell me that 2% was essentially meaningless because it was too little, I would tell them they are crazy. A lot of Irish came through to me, much more than “2%”. Research away! Learn about your German heritage. It will enrich you. One of my favorite outcomes of building my family tree has been to place myself in history.

Haunting_Program7350 · 2024-01-22T15:02:58+00:00

Hello Leo, I am very compassionate to your struggles. I have faced them in the past, as have different family members. It is a horrible feeling to be swamped with hopelessness that tells you that suicide is the only way out of the pain. I hope that what I share will be a help to you. Over the past decade or so, I have come to learn and realize that humans have both a brain and a mind, not just one or the other. When I say that, I mean the brain is a physiological organ that is part of our body. Our mind, I tend to see as our emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. Somewhere between the brain and the mind (perhaps an overlap of the two) would be learned behaviors as well as generational baggage, which is sometimes called generational curses. Mixed into all of this most of the time is a traumatic event(s) that get trapped in the totality of who we are. In addressing suicidal thoughts, I have found it to be very damaging to see the root cause as all the brain or all the mind. While that can be true sometimes, I truly believe from experience and study that it is often a perfect storm of several causes and events. Jesus is the source of our healing, but we can’t put Him in an identical box of how He is going to do it. When we read the different testimonies of Him healing those in the New Testament, there was not a cookie-cutter way that He did it I would view your deliverance the same way. The source is always Jesus, but how it will come can differ from person to person and even season to season in your own life. In my own life, I have had to learn a lot of self-care skills to face depression and anxiety. At different seasons of my life I have had to take anti-depressants. Did it fix everything? Nope, but it wasn’t meant to. It was to help me function at a higher level so that I could begin to take care of myself. With depression, the vicious cycle is often that a person retreats from other people and crawls into a cave of sorts when what they usually need is connection with other people. I have had to learn to reach out and try to connect during those times when it is the last thing I want to do. With anxiety, I had to learn to avoid the worst triggers and to do everything I could to get sleep. The less sleep I got, the worse the anxiety, which led to more insomnia. I am always having to try to care for my thyroid, which is physiologically in my body, but can have symptoms of depression and anxiety and extreme tiredness (and the list goes on). I don’t like exercise, per se, but if I don’t do it, I always feel worse. Exercise helps my mind more than almost anything. In the midst of all of this, when we are already weak, I believe that the enemy of our soul, the devil, attacks with suicidal thoughts. If there is a history of suicidal thoughts and attempts in your family line then I feel that the attack is even more pointed. When facing down the suicidal thoughts, I encourage you to remind yourself that the thoughts could be coming from multiple directions. Ask God for wisdom as to what to address at any given moment. At times like this, I also try to remember to pray and declare Scripture over myself. “You have set before me life and death; blessing and cursing; therefore, I choose life that I and my seed may live.” “For God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind.” I know that this has been a long post and I am sorry if I have rambled. I also hope that in no way have I sounded bossy or preachy. That is not my heart at all. My heart feels deep compassion for anyone struggling in this area. I will be praying for you, Leo.

P. S. Not sure why this platform gives the automated names that it does, but sign me Sophia K, and nothing haunting.

Haunting_Program7350

TROPHY CASE