Congratulations class of 2025! Whether you are graduating high school or college, you’ve been asked countless times and will be asked countless more: what’s next? Where are you going?
Maybe you have a set course. You are already rocking that U of A t-shirt and you are confident in four short years your photo will flash on the jumbotron at Arizona Stadium as you walk across the platform, Mechanical Engineering degree in hand. Or, as a college grad, maybe you’ve already said yes to that job offer from Tucson Unified School District and you’re ready to take on the world and 24 third graders.
Spine: that’s the technical word for the pointy things that come out of cacti. Most Arizonans use more colloquial expressions like prickers or stickers when referencing them. Either way, they’re nothing to laugh at. If you’ve lived in the Sonoran desert for any length of time, you’ve used a pair of tweezers to yank them from your skin.
After my parents moved to Tucson, my grandfather visited from Florida. Amazed by the beautiful and seemingly soft “fur” covering prickly pear cacti, he stroked the fuzz. The prickly pear gifted him with a few hundred spines that pierced his fingertips. He groaned.
Recently I was doing some yard work and got too close to a saguaro’s spine as I tried to weed around the base of the cactus. The spine pierced my fingernail. I groaned.
A shard, sharpener, and sin: Rachel Whisman says, “One of my students probably thought, “Oh, I bet I can sharpen it just a little more. I wonder how small I can get it so I can still use it.” Then, the pencil was lost in the vortex of the sharpener and there were ramifications to that seemingly innocent action.”
When suffering knocks: Paul David Tripp says, “When hardship will come, we don’t know. How we will suffer may vary. But one thing is for sure: suffering will come knocking.”
Have you ever shared with a loved one how much you “saved” and omitted how much you spent? Have you ever “invested” in yourself by buying a shirt or a haircut? Do cash purchases not really count against your budget?
You may have fallen prey to girl math. A viral TikTok trend, girl math is meant to poke fun at illogical reasoning to justify purchases and make financial decisions seem less costly. Girl math playfully rationalizes purchases by minimizing the actual price of something or emphasizing the perceived value.
Meanwhile, the world is a bluster over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes levied on goods imported into a country from abroad.
I sat across from Olivia. Her hands and her voice shook. “All my life I wanted to be a mom. I was so excited to get married, mostly because then I could finally be a mom. Six months after our wedding day we got pregnant. We were so excited! We began picking out names and preparing the nursery. At four months, I miscarried. I was so angry with God. How could he let this happen? Isn’t this what he made me for?”
She began to cry. I let the quietness sit in the room.
A shard, sharpener, and sin: Rachel Whisman says, “One of my students probably thought, “Oh, I bet I can sharpen it just a little more. I wonder how small I can get it so I can still use it.” Then, the pencil was lost in the vortex of the sharpener and there were ramifications to that seemingly innocent action.”
When suffering knocks: Paul David Tripp says, “When hardship will come, we don’t know. How we will suffer may vary. But one thing is for sure: suffering will come knocking.”
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