Arrows In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Sacred Romance

Arrows have the power to kill. That is what they convey in this story. Arrows are the bad things that happen in our lives; the things that pierce our hearts and leave us feeling broken. We can let these arrows define us or we can let God’s love show through our hardest times. While the romance tries to tell us we will have a great life, the arrows say that hard times are always around the corner. In the book The Sacred Romance one concept they discussed really made me think. This concept was, “We would like to picture goodness as being synonymous with safety (57).” I have known that being a follower of Christ would bring hard times, but this really opened my eyes. God is good, but with his goodness comes our failures and discomfort. Another

My grandma had been in poor health my entire life. I never remember her being able to walk, she was always pushed around in her wheelchair by my grandpa. My grandma suffered from kidney disease. She had been on dialysis for many years and was tired of making the trip from her small town to the city that had her dialysis center. She was just tired all around. After many years of praying endlessly, almost habitually, for my grandmother to get better, that there was nothing else she wanted, but to go be with her Father. On February 11th 2004 my dad told us that Grandma was going to stop her dialysis treatments and that we needed to go to Berne and be with her for a while. We got to my grandparents’ house and greeted all of my family. Every cousin, aunt, uncle, and significant others for those who were dating. Everyone was there to see my grandma. Three days after she stopped dialysis she passed away. Valentine’s Day has never been the same. Every year I just want to shut myself in a room and cry. I do not want to see couples, or people, or happiness. I want to sit and feel sorry for myself and give up on life for the day. But I do get out of bed, I do leave my room, I go be happy with my friends. I get my mind off of what happened almost twelve years ago. I still remember her and everything she did for my family, and I love her more today than I did when I was

I am the youngest of four children in my family. In order there is Timothy (25), Tyler (23), Kyrsten (20), and me (19). Systematically over the past four years, each one of my siblings has moved out. It started with Tim and Tyler moving into a house that was twenty minutes away from my house. I was okay with that, they came over all the time, and we were still able to have family dinners with them. Then three years ago, Tyler decided it was time for him to go back to college. He did not think that Indiana was the right place for his education, he decided Nashville Tennessee was where he fit in. He called me on August first, while I was visiting our grandpa for two weeks, and Tyler said, “I decided to go to Trevecca. Classes start on the 16th.” I remember having to leave the house and go cry on the back patio so my grandpa would not see me. Tyler was my best friend and I did not want him to leave. He has been in Nashville for three years now and leaving him gets harder every single time. Kyrsten was the next one to leave. Last year she felt the need to move to Nashville and live with our aunt. September 12th 2014 my sister moved to Nashville. I was upset because this meant I was an only child. I hated being an only child. I do not have my license so I could not go anywhere. I only had my parents to talk to and that got super boring super quickly. My only saving grace was that Timothy was still just twenty minutes away. Then he threw