The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Alright, let's get to it. 

Question number one: What did I think about the Quarter Quell itself?

The Quarter Quell was an extremely smart decision from Snow. I'm not gonna lie, that shook them to their core, and I was like, you know what, Snow? Applause for the theatrics, because that was smart. That was something. That's a smart man right there, because that girl put your country in a rivalry. Like, she stirred it up, and you were like, you know what? I'm about to rock this little girl's world, because she played in my face, and I just don't appreciate it. And, like, I really didn't want to have to deal with this inconvenience at all. He was like, I'm about to put you right back where you started. I'm about to put you right back where I know you don't want to go. Matter of fact, I'm about to traumatize all of y'all, because y'all all seem to have gotten too much dip on ya chip. And so now I'm about to remind you and everyone up in this piece that I run this town and that what I say goes. And if I want you back in that arena, you're gonna go back in the arena, and there's nothing you can do about it. Point blank, period. 

So I thought the Quarter Quell itself was very interesting and very smart on Snow's part. And I also really liked, like, you know, the design of the arena. I just think the whole thing was really smart. It was very clever. 

Question number two: How did you feel about the reveal at the end?

There were a lot of reveals, so maybe the plan was revealed. The plan being revealed, it honestly made a lot of sense, and all the clues came together. I think it was also really smart. I just feel bad for Katniss and Peeta. Also Finnick my poor baby is so much deeper than what's originally revealed and I love Johanna’s character. It definitely wasn't predictable if you never saw the movies, I definitely would have been more shocked. I don't know how to put it but I just also feel like Haymitch and his whole secretive situation is something else. The thing is, Peeta and Katniss both peeped it. Like when they were talking to each other like, “okay, I think we can be honest with each other by now, and neither one of us is planning on coming out of this alive because we’re trying to save the other.” And so they revealed that, you know, Haymitch had promised them both to save the other, and then Katniss was like, “then which one is true? Which promise is real to Haymitch. Only he knows.” Like, this man is always lying. Like, really, how can I trust what he's saying at all right now? And in the end, she felt like she couldn't. And I honestly don't blame her, especially because he specifically promised her to try her best with Peeta. And we all know that Haymitch cares for Peeta, he likes Peeta, but he sees Katniss as an asset. They all do. And so he 100% is always gonna try to save Katniss over Peeta. So I feel like she does have a right to feel betrayed by Haymitch because, like, I asked you to do one thing, and that's to keep Peeta safe for me, and you, your excuse is that you couldn't go back, but, it was just the one thing I asked of you. It was literally my dying wish, I don't know, you couldn't be my friend first? I see how that's betraying, and I know that there's a bigger thing behind all the emotions. This is the weight of the world right now, like, the world's at stake that's probably how Haymitchs sees it and he’s not wrong but, you know, when you're in a traumatizing situation like Katniss was, you don't really think about that. So I get how Katniss is feeling. I think her feelings are pretty valid, honestly. 

Question number three: How do you feel about Peeta now? 

I love Peeta. I always loved Peeta from the very beginning. I love his character. He's probably my favorite character, to be honest. I think he's incredibly sweet and incredibly smart. And I know a lot of people think that, like, all the characters are clever, but one of my favorite things about Peeta is that man can lie. He can lie his tail off. He is so smart, and he can talk. Like, he's so charismatic, and I love that. He can literally smooth-talk the mess out of anybody. I am also scared for him. When I read Mockingjay, whenever that will be, I am going to be so sad to read about how they tortured and traumatized him and stuff. Like, it's like, Peeta you know. He’s the least deserving of it. And it's just hurtful because he's just so incredibly sweet and so interesting. I love Peeta as a character. He’s so complex because he’s a boy with such a big heart YET he is so manipulative but not in a way to hurt people. He uses his manipulative charisma to help Katniss so many times. 

Question number four: Did Gale become even more intolerable, or did anything change your opinion of him?

No. Gale is still exactly the same, and nothing will ever change my opinion about him. Love that he has no clue that Peeta didn't actually tap that though. Moving on. 

Number five: What do you think Katniss actually feels for Peeta versus Gale now? 

Yeah, her feelings for Peeta are much deeper than her feelings for Gale, because especially when they kissed, she described their kiss differently. This is what I'm, like, noticing between Gale and Peeta, is that with Gale, it's, like, sweet. It's something I was longing for, something I never felt like, something expected and anticipated. She’s like I do love Gale, but she always circles back to the same thing. “I never ever have intended to marry him, and I still don't see myself doing that. Never has it ever been my intention to marry Gale. Not once.” She always circles back to that point. 

When it comes to Peeta, for one, I want to say she describes her kisses with completely different types of feelings. Completely. She describes Gale's kiss as sweet, basically. She says with Peeta that that kiss had her hungry. Hungry. Hungry. As in intense. As in longing. As in yearning. As in, I don't even know how to explain it to you, but hungry, babe. Hungry. She said, “a different kind of hunger I've never felt.” This is coming from a girl who has literally about starved to death multiple times in her life. So take that into account. 

I feel like they are going through the Quarter Quell and have gone through the Hunger Games together. This is a life-death experience twice now that they’ve gone through. These experiences are going to keep fueling them to just grow deeper and her once again feeling this need to sacrifice her life for him and vice versa. Katniss's feelings have grown deeper for Peeta in a way that they probably will never be able to get deeper with Gale because of the positions they're in and with the war. There are so many things that apply, and there's so many ways for her relationship with Peeta to continue to get deeper and growing, whereas Gale, there just isn't as many opportunities, and it's probably never gonna happen for him. She may not recognize it right away, or even acknowledge it, but she is in love with Peeta. Whereas Gale, she has a strong love for him, but she's not in love with him. Does that make sense? But yeah, I can keep going on about that forever, anyway…

Question number six: What do you think of Haymitch after learning what he was actually doing? 

Once again, I will say this: Haymitch is extremely smart, and I see why he does what he does, but I think his whole secretive thing he always does, and not telling anyone stuff, he has to also take into account people's feelings. Y'all are a family, and you doing things like that, it hurts people, and I get his intentions, and they may not have been bad, but I just think he doesn't do a very well at taking people's feelings into account, and it's just not fair, especially to Katniss, because of what all she's going through. I feel like his decisions were just a little bit irresponsible. At least not on the part of, not letting her know anything. Also I just feel him making the decision to not go after Peeta, I feel like it was more or less that we couldn't get Peeta, and more so “it's not as important to get Peeta for me because we are in the middle of a revolution. I'm not willing to risk anything to get Peeta”, and this is because he cares more about the success of the rebellion and making sure Katniss can be the Mockingjay than anything else. And I just feel it is a little selfish. I see it, and I understand why he's doing it, but that doesn't make it any less selfish. 

Question number seven: What was your reaction to the last few chapters? 

Okay, in the last few chapters, I was a little irritated with Katniss, because I was like, “girl, how can you not see what these people are doing?” But then again, I get it. It's a high-stakes situation. Yes, girl, I understand you. And honestly, the last chapter was really well written and will keep you on your toes. I specifically love the description of Johanna cutting the tracker out of Katniss' arm. It shows how Katniss really continues to be an unreliable narrator partly because she’s in constant survival mode but also because she doesn’t understand herself. 

This series is so incredibly detailed, and it is so intelligent, and it is just insane to me how someone could have a mind like Collins. You know what kind of thinking you'd have to have to put something like this together? I completely understand why some people are like, The Hunger Games is literally one of the best series to have touched the face of Earth. I get that. I understand that, because it's literally so intellectual. I love it so much. And personally, in my personal opinion, I really do think that The Hunger Games deserves the same recognition that Harry Potter got. Sue me, I'm sorry. Die hard Slytherin though. 

The point is, though, these books are so incredibly intellectual, and to think that there are more book connected to the trilogy, I think that goes back in time to Snow and his storyline. There's also another movie coming out about Haymitch and that whole situation, based on his book. I'm not caught up. I've got literally another three books to go in this series before I'm, like, completely caught up with the fandom.

So anyway that's my thought of book two of The Hunger Games Trilogy, Catching Fire. I hope you enjoyed it and feel free to share as well! 

The next book we’ll be getting to is…(drumroll please and thank you): AGNES AUBERT'S MYSTICAL CAT SHELTER!! A 1920’s period based, fantasy, romance, grump x sunshine sitch. Stay tuned. 

Thanks for reading, until next time!🌸

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Trusting God's Plan and Timing.

Happy Saturday everyone, I hope you all are doing great. This week's topic we will be discussing Trusting God's Plan and Timing. As you can see by the title. So as a believer this topic is very important because we as humans naturally have a struggle with handing things over especially when it comes to our lives and we want to be in control of everything. 

If it was up to us we wouldn't go through any struggles, any hardships, or any hard lessons at all. Life would probably be on easy mode but that's not how it's supposed to work because if it was then it's how it would go and that's part of why trusting God's Will and plan for your life is so difficult because we don’t want to go through the hard parts. 

I struggled with this for a very long time because I'm the kind of person who likes to plan my life. I live for a to do list. I LOVE a Pinterest board. I’m not new to this, I'm true to this. I had to learn the hard way that it just simply isn't possible to know every single thing that's going to happen. You cannot control everything around you, especially because you cannot control other people. You can try your best to plan and organize, write everything down and for a while you may think you have it all together but in reality there's no way for you to know that any of what you have planned is going to go your way. And the craziest part is 90% of the time it's not. Sucks but it’s true. 

My entire life I had a vision for how I wanted my life to go, who I want it to be and how things are going to plan out for me and when they didn't go my way I would honestly freak out and think the worst of the worst. I'm sure you can imagine that it can be pretty stressful and hard to go through that three times a week. Imagine how frequently I would get worked up behind even the smallest of things. Why was I panicking in a corner every time time something didn’t go right? Hardships and inconveniences are a part of life and things are not going to work out exactly how you want. That is such a high stress way to live your life and over time it starts to wear you out mentally and physically and emotionally and in a lot of cases becomes dangerous for a person's health. I literally thought I was going insane at times but no ya girl just didn’t get her way. 

When I first gave my life over to the Lord I struggled with this so incredibly bad. It was something I had to learn to surrender to Him or else I was never going to have a true relationship with Him. Until I learned that He is God, and He is in control of everything a lot of things were going to continue to be difficult. At first I saw it as something that I had to prevent or Him being in control was a bad thing. I was frustrated that I didn't get to be in control of my life in every way that I wanted to be but as I grew closer to Him and I learned that He knows so much better than I do. His plan for my life is much better than my own and in reality all the struggles that I’ve gone through probably wouldn’t have happened or been nearly as bad had I had Him in my life sooner. A large amount of what we go through is because of our actions and the actions of the people around us. All of that changed for me when I gave my life to God because I no longer made such stupid decisions and I no longer had people around me that were hurting me. 

Now when it comes to His timing that can be a completely different ball game. It was one thing for me to learn that He knows better than I do and that my life is in better hands with Him. I also had to learn that when it comes to things that He promises me I have to be patient. (still learning :))

At first you start to think that God isn't doing something when you want to do it because He's against you or because He thinks you're not ready and you may think you are ready but you will never know because you're not Him and once again He knows better than you do. 

Trusting God’s timing and the difficulty that comes with it once again plays into wanting to control the many aspects of your life. I had to realize that sometimes things don't happen when I want them to for a reason and I cannot tell you how many times I look back and see that I'm grateful it didn't happen when I wanted. 

One of my biggest flaws is that I worry a lot and I want to know not only what's going to happen but I want to know when and how. I need all the details because I am a very detail oriented person. It was difficult to not worry about the details and just trust that things were going to go the way they needed to. I am an excited kind of person. I anticipate things really strongly and when I'm excited about something it's on my mind 24/7. 

That is something that's really hard to go through because when you're constantly thinking about one thing, it makes the anticipation so worsening that you start to become uncertain about the very thing that God promised you. You begin to wonder why it hasn't happened. Then when you realize okay, maybe it's not time yet, you start to think, “when will it be time?, why isn't it time? I feel ready. Why doesn't God think I'm ready?” IT GETS ANNOYING AFTER A WHILE OKAY?! 

Being in your own head all the time is not good for you and it put me in a spot I didn't even realize I was in. When God promises you something one of the main things you need to do is humble yourself. Yes there needs to be trust, yes there needs to be confidence in who He is and how much He loves you but you also need to take the time to remember that constantly worrying about how things are going to go and asking Him why things haven't happened the way you want them to is not being humble and it will bite you in the butt. 

We have no business questioning God and anything that He does in general so constantly wondering in your head how and when things are going to happen is a recipe for disaster. It's easier said than done, don't ever mistake that but it needs to happen or else you're never going to find peace and God is going to continue to see that you're not ready because you can't do something as simple as humble yourself before His plan and timing. If you can't do that, why in the world would He give you what you're asking for. 

It is so important to realize and recognize that God wants to bless you just as badly as you want the blessing if not more but He isn't going to just do it because He wants to or because He sees that you want it. If He did that then you wouldn't be able to handle it the way you need to because you weren't ready and He loves you more than to allow you to mess things up for yourself. That is part of the many reasons why he knows better than you do. 

I can't sit here and act like I know the true secret behind not worrying about how things are going to play out because if I'm being honest with you I haven't gotten it down 100%. Nobody really does that, it's the hard honest truth but the important part is trying your best and knowing when the struggle is getting in the way of your relationship with God and the things He wants to do for you. 

My best advice is obviously to continue to pray and continue to rebuke and to stay in The Word.  If it is truly something that you're struggling with, talk to God and be honest with Him about it because He can see how you're feeling and what you're thinking anyway so the best thing you can do is just say it out loud to Him and be honest with how you're feeling and what you're thinking and I guarantee you He can help you find peace of mind because He loves you and He wants you to be okay. You could never ask for His help too much. He will always be there for you and all you have to do is spend time with him and get to know Him because that's truly all He wants in the end. 

That's all I have to say about this for now. I really hope that this helps someone who may be struggling with this because I know what it's like and it is something that is extremely difficult to go through. It's not fun at all and if I'm able to help someone in any way then I'm more than happy. 

I hope you all continue to have a lovely Saturday and I love you all so much. 

Smooches and thanks for reading! 🌸

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