Life of Pride
We ran auditions for
Cyrano here at school this past weekend. Crazy, crazy! Last night we finished callbacks - all except for a few. We'll be sending out the cast list Monday morning. I am so excited about this cast! It will be a wonderful semester.
I am also terrified. There is no way I will get all my schoolwork done. God is definitely going to have to take care of both me and Christy.
Wow. I love the way PHC is right now. It is absolutely rejuvenated. I feel the power of Christ. I pray that we stay this way.
My semester may well kill me this time around, but I am absolutely peaceful right now. So far as I know, all my commitments are things I ought to do. That means that God will carry me through. lol! It looks impossible. But I'm not afraid yet.
PHC is starting to feel natural already - only so much is unnatural that I am constantly feeling twinges of nostalgia.
But for every bad thing there is also something nice. I miss my own class so much already. I'm even missing the class that came before mine. Still, I can tell already how much I'm going to enjoy getting to know the new freshmen - and everyone else. I've been insulated by my own friends so much that I've missed many of the excellent people in the lower classes. I'm going to have fun being a big sister.
I miss Gabi very much. Yesterday I was feeling very strange indeed until Em showed up. Then everything settled back into its proper place. I am incredibly comforted by the knowledge that Em is just across the hall. Also, I have my own room. When I slept last night in peace, quiet, and privacy, I knew this was going to be a good semester.
My room is huge! I have one of the rooms that is supposed to hold 3-4 students. It has two sets of bunks, and I'm only sleeping in one of the beds. There are three other beds unslept-in! I am turning the other lower bed into a couch, and today I'm going to buy a few beanbag or fold-out chairs for the tremendously empty corner of the room. I'm going to have to give parties and have lots of folks over. :D
As of midnight, I am now 2-3 hours out from PHC, staying the night in a hotel. T'was a good day of driving, facilitated by a blessed bit of cool weather. My foot is also finally feeling better. Life is good.
I love long drives alone. It is such a great chance to settle things with God. Over the last few days, I've been agonizing over grad school. I have limited time, so I can only apply to places I might want to attend. Then there's always the possibility I might not go to grad school for a year. I don't know.
So I'm just gonna apply to the places I might go and leave it to God to open or close doors.
Meanwhile, I'm looking forward to seeing PHC again. Yesterday I wasn't sure whether I wanted to leave home. The day of driving has done wonders for my attitude. I am excited.
I am working on Honor Code stuff all day today. God willing, I want to complete first drafts of a constitution and by-laws. I've already written a document entitled "The Scope of Honor," which briefly explains the philosophy behind the whole mess. It's only 2/3 of a page single-spaced, but it took me over two hours to draft. :P I hope the rest is easier.
I wrote my packing list for PHC last night. I'm gonna start packing tomorrow afternoon.
Now my fiction deadline is past and I'm done writing the article for PHS about the HomeschoolALUMNI National Reunion, I've finally begun working on an honor code enforcement mechanism. It's a good thing to be doing, whether or not anyone at PHC decides to use it.
These days I second-guess myself about everything. I don't know where I'll be in a year, or even whether I'm making the right choices to help with the play and to try to ignore student government this semester. I feel like a passenger in my life, looking out the window at the scenery, going wherever the track leads.
A few years ago I suffered under the illusion that I was in control of my life. Decisions seemed so easy to make. Now, quite the opposite. I think it is better this way. I only possessed false security before. Now I walk appropriately, with fear and trembling. :)
Bible Delivery Mission completed successfully. Ten pages of fiction - not so successfully as of yet. I have five to go to reach the desired page count, and when I do my story will be far from complete. I think it is turning into a book, or at the very least a novelette. Beats me what Dr. A. will think of having the first piece of a book instead of a short story for the last twenty pages of work.
Here is how my story begins:
"Mikey met the children with the orange eyes one day in late May a week before his eighth birthday. He was sitting by the river, idly tossing rocks into its muddy, shrunken depths, wishing that the water was deep enough for him to go swimming, when someone else sat down next to him. Mikey turned to look, expecting to find Marcus or perhaps Father. Instead, a tiny boy blinked up at him with big orange eyes out of a round face."
At first it was going to be a short, atmospheric tragedy, in which it would never be explained where the boy came from. Unfortunately, I started getting curious, and I wanted to find out myself. :P So here I am, fifteen pages later.
Caffeine time.
Yikes, the pickles I get myself into! Today I need to produce ten (doublespaced) pages of story, which is not at all the same thing as spewing out ten pages of essay. I have to get the last bit of my summer DRW in to Dr. A. today, so that he can assign me a grade for my six summer credits in four days' time. AI!
But I'm glad I didn't work on it yesterday. I am sure that God will bless my efforts.
I also need to watch my Frisbee team do its thing this evening, even though I can't play myself because of my fractured ankle. I need to go because I have unfinished business with my teammates. I want to give Marcus, my team captain, a Bible. I'm a little scared about that, so if you read this during the day, drop God a prayer for me, 'k?
All right, to work!
I found my favorite anthology of science-fiction short stories,
The Omnibus of Science Fiction, which I bought several years ago. It contains only masterpieces from the late 1920s-early 1950s. Last night I reread the atmospheric piece, "The Color Out of Space," by H.P. Lovecraft. It begins as follows:
"West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut. There are dark narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically, and where thin brooklets trickle without ever having caught the glint of sunlight. On the gentler slopes there are farms, ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the lee of great ledges; but these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling and the shingled sides bulging perilously beneath low gambrel roofs."
Here Lovecraft breaks so many "rules" of good, crisp writing. He loads his prose with adjectives and adverbs and uses many intransitive verbs. Yet this is for a purpose. You can already guess what sort of story this will be - folksy and wild, from the depths of memory. You have already begun to travel with Lovecraft into the darkest recesses of New England forest.
Could I ever write this well? And what is a "gambrel" roof, anyway?
EDIT: Yikes! I just searched on Wikipedia for the answer to the latter question and found this bit in the entry: "The horror writer H. P. Lovecraft often mentioned such roofs in descriptions to indicate an ancient setting." Really? Do tell.
I'm tired of ooey gooey feelings. I don't want any.What a selfish, foolish post that last one was! It expresses honestly how I feel, but all that means is that my heart is selfish and foolish. Lanier from
ylcf.org puts the matter so well:
There was a time in my life when I actually allowed myself to think that God was going to give me the exact opposite of all my heart cherished just to build character in me. Events had dragged my ideals through the mire—and my expectations along with them—and I had begun to doubt that the dream of love was a valid hope. . . .
It was my younger sister who finally called me to task on the matter.
“Lanier!” she exclaimed one day when I ventured to suggest my new ideas. “What are you talking about? If we ask Him for bread, does He give us a stone?”
If we ask him for a prince, does He give us a boor? If we appeal for His guidance, does He turn His back?The answer, of course, is NO! I'm sure God has a wonderful story planned for me somewhere along the line. I trust Him with it. Forgive me for my lack of faith, my Lord and my Savior.
How ironic that it would be almost time to leave home again, just when I'm putting down roots. I love my church community. My family friendships are so much stronger. I'm witnessing to people. The homeschooled 20-somethings throughout Missouri are all getting to know each other. I'm doing more writing. This could be a good life.
Time to pull all that up and transplant myself to Virginia for another nine months. Frankly, I don't want to go. There'll be some good times and some growth, but college isn't real life. College is a season. I'm ready to be done with this season.
Grad school? Dashed if I know. I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about anything.
Romance? Bleh. Romance is so complicated. I'm not expecting it any time soon. To be honest, I'm not sure I even trust the idea of romance. Everyone always says the ooey gooey feelings go away in the first few years of marriage anyway. I'm tired of ooey gooey feelings. I don't want any.
EDIT: Despite reservations, I am glad to be going back to PHC. I think it will be fun. :) Maybe I'm just a little nervous about the upcoming year.
Yesterday evening I sprained and slightly fractured my left ankle. I am glad it didn't happen over this past weekend, or in three weeks' time. I am glad that Ashlea and my sister Mercy were there to help me get ice and to move around. Beats me how this will help me witness to my team, but I know it will - and has already - because I prayed this week as always that I would serve my team and be a witness for God.
Meanwhile, ow. It hurts. At least I don't need a cast... but so much for showing off my new Frisbee skillz during the first few weeks back at PHC. The ankle's supposed to take 4-6 weeks to heal. I hope I will be able to move back into the dorm and otherwise get around without too much trouble in a little over two weeks.
