"Show me again what I was made for, help me to see you're still leading me."

My life has been such that it has consistently inspired one question: why? A question that is simply phrased, but whose answers are more often than not complicated.

One of the most recent and significant situations that inspired the asking of this question was the changing of my major from music industry to English.

I felt like God let me know that this was what I needed to do. I couldn't begin to understand why, though. Sure, I had an interest in English. I've been an avid reader for almost as far back as my memory extends, but if I were to tell you my chief passion, it was music. Even though I didn't have a clear idea of what I would do in the future, I couldn't really imagine myself doing anything that didn't include music, so why change my major? Immersing myself in literature was certainly appealing, but I didn't see it leading to a career, which is supposed to be the purpose of higher education, right?

But I did it. I moved to the fringes of the music department and turned my attention to the English department, while clinging to my faith that "all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose," and "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord...'plans to give you hope and a future.'" And for the past two years, I have done my best to learn and excel, trusting that it will all come to something, but not knowing what that something is.

It can be hard to be faithful sometimes. Or like my friend Jason Gray puts it, "sometimes it's hard to tell if I'm faithful or a fool to believe you're still leading me." Almost every day the thought "what if I'm being foolish?" has been forefront. It's hard to do things with conviction and certainty with that looming over you.

But, praise the Lord, God is faithful. And it's not hard for him to be so.

Today, out of the blue, while I wasn't even thinking about my future and what am I doing and why am I doing it, I had a revelation. Using that terminology makes it seem really grand, like the skies divided, or I fell into a holy trance and was granted a mystic vision, but it was really much simpler than that. Which, according to my experience, has been the way God usually works. And what I learned doesn't seem like much, but for me, spending every day pushing through my questions, it was monumental enough to affect my breathing. There I was walking in between Kirksey Old Main and Jones Hall on the MTSU campus, and I audibly gasped, then my face screwed up and I was on the verge of tears just seconds after I had been smiling about the wonderful class I just had.

Some glimmer of purpose in all that I'm doing hit me, and it was startling. I was thinking about my passion for story. I could spend the next hour talking about it and I would only scratch the surface of its importance. As I thought of that, I realized that my passion for this has been greatly cultivated in the last couple of years. It was there before, otherwise I don't know why I would have pored over so many stories in my childhood, but it has taken a more defined shape in the last two years. The years I've spent studying literature.

I consider this to be a huge part of me now, and that might not be the case had I not studied literature.

That's not all. Music is still important to me. Just as much as story. In minoring in music, I found that I could learn all the basics about music and much about how it relates to culture, without having to go through all of the classical training involved in studying it as a major. I have felt no calling to be a professional opera singer, but understanding music and being able to create it has been important.

But the greatest thing to me is the marriage of story and song.

In that moment where I gasped I realized that I have been learning all of the tools to wed story and song. Wow.

Some people learn this without stepping foot in a university, but I think this is what it took for me. I don't think my passion for story would have been fully realized outside of this context. Additionally, my writing has improved by miles in a short period of time.

Finally, a small bit of confirmation. God reached out to me and said, "See. I do know what's going on." My weary heart was touched and I didn't care who might walk by me and see my emotion-contorted face.

Having the perspective I do now, I don't know why I didn't connect the dots before. It seems so obviously simple. But maybe that was because I was ready to understand it today. Just like multiplying seemed simple to me at the age of eight, but it would have thrown me for a loop just two years before as I was trying to learn how to borrow from the tens column to subtract 49 from 81. God's timing is perfect.

9-16-10

A recent prayer I penned:

I feel like Paul a lot, in Romans 7. Never exactly doing what I want to do. Consistently doing what I don't want to do. Help me. Save me from myself. What I want to do is love people. What I want to do is live a story. What I want to do is be honest. What I want to do is be vulnerable. What I want to do is bring you glory. What I want to do is have people look at me and see you. Which requires you. Than you for being so faithful. This characteristic of yours astounds me. Thank you for never letting me down, but continually holding me up. Your grace is something I can't comprehend. Let my life be a witness to that. Let my life be such that other people look at me and are astounded because my story, the story they see, is really your story. Enchant them just as I have been enchanted. All in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Lo, are those people?

Aside from some small, brief moments of panic that I experienced the first week, school this semester has been going extraordinarily well. Hallelujah. I haven't felt overwhelmed, I haven't felt like I'm on the edge of a nervous breakdown, I actually feel like the majority of the work I've been doing is greatly enriching my life, rather than draining it out of me. I can't express how grateful I am.

To ensure this, I've had tunnel vision for the most part. I know the pain and stress that procrastination can bring and I don't want it. My goal has been to get my work done in a timely manner, and then hope to do extra so that when I feel like I need a break, I might plausibly be able to take one and it not throw me into a tailspin.

However, this has meant that I've done little else. That hasn't bothered me too much. As I said earlier, my work this semester has been much more rewarding. But then I ventured to look up, and what did see? Oh, hey...people. I remember them.

I miss them. I've only been in school for two weeks, but I miss them. I miss conversation. I miss just taking time to be in people's presence. I'm grateful that my immediate family is close by, but I've even been separated from them. And as much distance as there is between them and me, my friends feel even further away.

Thankfully, though, I have made plans to meet up with a friend on Thursday afternoon. I'm looking forward to talking to her; something I haven't done with her since further ago than I can remember. I am also looking forward to being back at Camp Formosa for a weekend twelve days from now. It's fitting that the theme for the retreat is friendship.

It's times like these that remind me why I determined to be so diligent in my work; if I goof off, doing pointless things, or drag my feet in apathy, then times like these can't be possible. Or if I try to make them fit anyway, I can't enjoy myself because I know I'm neglecting something I'm going to have to fix later. This I will do no more.

It seems tragic to me that I have to so carefully schedule time with people. But the silver lining in this situation is that the time spent is that much more precious. I look forward to meticulously counting my blessings.

Wacky Wordsmith

Ever present on my mind is what I'm going to do with my life. I always hope that I'm not being neglectful in this area, but at the same time, I understand the virtue in not worrying and being content to just take one step at a time as it is made apparent to me, and not feel anxious for anymore than that.

But as I said initially, while I'm not worrying, I do wonder where my life is headed. What will I be doing in five years? One? I'm not certain.

This evening, after discussing alliteration, my brother accused me of being, in his words, a "wacky wordsmith." (See, as much as he makes fun of me, he knows how to play the game too.) He then proceeded to tell me that I should be a songwriter and that I should get a job in music publishing.


Hmmm....thoughts to ponder.

"'That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was.'"

My last post, earlier on this same day, was on an essay I wrote for my linguistics class. My professor wanted us to write a linguistic autobiography; basically what our experience with language is, what we have thought about it, and so forth.

I don't know if anyone else who has seen it thought this, but after finishing it and reading through it as a whole completed work, I sounded a lot more impressive than I typically view myself to be. I had a lot to say about the subject of language. I didn't know that I knew so much! Not only that, I seemed to myself to be quite interesting. I don't usually envision kids so seriously studying others' speaking habits. Nor do I expect them to read 30 books in a day, lest they be on the level of Goodnight Moon. And I generally consider people who have moved extensively to be rich in experiences not afforded to those who have stayed in one general location their whole life.

I've done all of those things, but really, when I look at them in relation to myself, it doesn't seem like a big deal. Yeah, I was a kid that read a lot, but that's just because that's what I do. Winning the Little League World Series would have been far more impressive, because playing baseball well is just something that I don't do. And yes, I have lived in nearly as many separate places as the number of years I've been alive, but there's so much of the world that I haven't seen yet! I haven't even seen half of the states in my own country, let alone stepped outside of my country's borders.

Everything that has happened in my life, I have taken in stride. I've just been who I am and have behaved accordingly. Every experience that has come along, I have received, and then moved on to the next. It reminds me of a scene in Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows. Harry, in the middle of winter, jumps into a freezing pool of water to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor, which he believes will aid him in destroying Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes, Horcruxes being fragments of Voldemort's soul that he has placed inside certain objects in order to secure himself immortality. While in the water though, things don't go smoothly as he hopes and his friend Ron turns up out of nowhere, jumps in and saves Harry and retrieves the sword. Then after retrieving the sword, Ron destroys one of the Horcruxes that's already in Harry's possession. In the relief of the present drama being over, Ron apologizes for his recent abandonment of Harry and Hermione (that was why his appearance was so spectacular, because he had been nowhere around for weeks) and the following exchange between Harry and Ron occurs:

"'You've sort of made up for it tonight,' said Harry. 'Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life.'
'That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,' Ron mumbled.
'Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,' said Harry. 'I've been trying to tell you that for years.'"

And so Ron gets a great lesson in impressiveness. How things feel often doesn't compare to how they sound.

I'm just me. Just like you're just you, and probably feel just as unimpressive as I do. However, we're both capable of impressiveness, and that should always remind us to not fall into the so easily destructive habit of comparing ourselves to one another. Each of us are individuals. One may be impressive in one way, and the other impressive in another way, but each have equal value.

Reflections on language.

This is an essay I just wrote for my linguistics class. It seemed like something fitting to post here, likely because of the autobiographical nature. It's much more like the blogs I typically post than the academic essays I typically write. You all get the chance to read it before my professor. You should count yourselves privileged. ;-)

Here it is:

Linguistic Autobiography

For as long as I can remember, language in its various forms has been a subject of interest to me. As sure as I am that I gained a conscious awareness of language at some point early on in my life, I don't remember it, so for my current purposes it's as if it's always been there. My parents like to tell a story about the first time they believe I ever read when I was no more than two or three years old. My parents, younger brother, and I were in the car one day, driving around our hometown and one of the many places of business we passed was a KFC restaurant. My parents weren't the type of people who would constantly point out words and letters to get their child to start recognizing them and essentially memorize what they are before developing the cognitive function we call reading, so they were pleasantly surprised when my small voice sounded from the back seat and said, “That says 'Kentucky Fried Chicken.'” Shortly after I started kindergarten, I rose to be one of the highest readers in my class, and I remember reading an entire book, one that had quite a few words and fairly advanced sentence structure, to my mother at the age of six.

As I grew, I continued to read. If one could be said to devour books, I certainly did. I remember making a trip to the library once around the age of eight and borrowing thirty books. By the next day, I was ready for more. This exposure to language, I think, aided my consciousness of it. Spending as much time looking at words as I did naturally led to me thinking more about them.

Before reading, though, like most people, I did learn to speak. I always chose my words carefully and strove for correctness. I don't know for certain how I developed a sensitivity to correctness in language, but I expect it was influenced by my mother. Both of my parents spoke with a high level of awareness of speech, but my mother paid particular attention to her choice of words, how she pronounced them, and how she strung them together. I was born in Arkansas, as was my mother, and until the first time that our family moved out of the state, that was the only place she had lived and she fought hard against what she calls her “southern roots.” She always wanted to be more intentional with her use of language than was common in the people around her. By the time I began my formal education and was introduced to the rules of English grammar, I took to them quickly, and the subjects of English, language, reading, and spelling were always my favorites.

Despite the fact that I did learn to use language first through speech, I remember being shocked at the idea that language could exist without writing. Sometime early in my education, a teacher introduced me to Sequoyah, the man credited with the invention of the Cherokee alphabet. Letters and the use of them in forming words that can be seen rather than heard was so common to me and so definitive of how I viewed language, that it was mind-boggling to think that a language could exist for so long without having an alphabet. In my mind, people spoke based on the dictates of written language, not the other way around.

In opposition to the time I spent reading was the time I spent talking. Just because I learned to speak first doesn't mean that I preferred speech over writing, and I think this was reflected in how I viewed the place of writing in language. Many people would often joke that they thought I couldn't talk because of how rarely I spoke when I was in their presence. My tendency to think about language due to how much I read, along with my relative quietness, led to me paying close attention to the speech of people around me. I would study the way people said things, their choice of words, the way they organized them to communicate, their pronunciations. I would notice patterns in families, whether it be between parents and children or individuals and their siblings.

This only increased after my family made its first big move. When I was six, we moved from Arkansas to Tennessee, and I was exposed to a whole new group of people. Not only was I surrounded by native Tennesseans, Nashville, the city where we moved to, had a higher population of people who came originally from somewhere else than the area where I had lived previously. From that first major move, my family continued to relocate often, moving as far away from the region of the South as Maryland. Through all of this, I was exposed to a wide variety of accents and dialects. Each new person I met meant another opportunity to analyze language.

In middle school, my thoughts on language were allowed to expand even further. I went to an academic magnet school in Nashville and they started exposing their students to foreign languages immediately. In fifth grade, I studied six weeks in Spanish as well as French. Then in sixth grade, I did six weeks of study in German and Latin. Out of all of them, I particularly liked German and I ended up taking four semesters of it at MTSU. In studying a different language, I began to turn the thoughts I was having about it toward my own language in order to gain a new perspective I had never had as a native speaker. As a result, not only did my interest in studying my own language increase, my interest in language in general grew like it never had before, and I developed a fascination with the way people communicate.

My life thus far seems to have lent itself to nurturing an affinity for language that seems to have been there from birth. I have a feeling that my love for language will only increase as my life continues. Now that I'm aware of this love, indeed ever since I became aware of this love, I am motivated even more to spend time and energy contemplating and learning about language. Each new discovery I make sparks new interest, so the more I know the more I want to know.

Counting eggs and forgetting blessings.

As I have mentioned in recent writings, I went back to school this past week. It was simultaneously great in blessing and in trouble and frustration.

My classes themselves were amazing. I really think I'm going to like this semester. Each subject is fascinating and I have an exceptional group of professors.

But everything else hasn't turned out so well. The greatest evidence of that is that it's Sunday night, my last class this week ended Thursday afternoon, and I still don't have my homework done. There has been obstacle after obstacle to climb over. I'm thanking God that tomorrow is a holiday.

Aside from the fact that I like to be on top of things anyway, I have extra incentive. This fall, I have made a lot of plans. The realization of those plans depends mostly upon how well I'm keeping up in school. I really don't want to sacrifice any of them. But if I'm to see them come to pass, getting as far ahead as I can is a must. In my mind early this week, I had all of my immediate homework done by Saturday, and all of my freetime until heading back to school on Tuesday would be spent doing extra work. Just having that scenario playing out in my head made me feel so good.

But it didn't happen. And I panicked. Funny how catastrophic everything seemed even though I'm not technically behind. I'm right on schedule. You hear that, self? I'm right on schedule.

Tomorrow is a new day. Tomorrow begins a new week. Both are a great grace. And none of my plans have to be forfeited yet. I will cross those bridges as I come to them. Let this stand as a reminder to not count my eggs before they hatch.

Another reminder I'm grateful for is the reminder of God's love and care. My pastor said this morning that he had been thinking a lot about me and my family. Then, this evening a friend told me that I had been on her mind. Both were like God saying to me "Hey, I haven't forgotten you."

The Lord is good.

Irrational distaste.

To some of you, my next statement, or rather the one I am preparing you for, may be shocking. But to look at things in a positive light, that may not be an entirely bad thing. We can look at shock as something to get our attention, to change us in some way, change our perspective, change how we feel, make us more aware of realities around us. Anyway, I digress. What is this statement I am so slowly meandering toward?

I often have to temper a great dislike of the television. Most of the time, I don't just hold a passive disinterest, I actively feel negatively when thinking and/or looking at it. In general, if I had my druthers (to borrow a phrase from my grandmother) every TV in the vicinity would just disappear. Less space would be taken up, they wouldn't collect dust, and life would just generally be better. In fact, I sometimes feel so strongly that if I were an aggressive type, I'd probably be more inclined to smash them, or dismantle them, or tear them apart in some way before they disappear.

Is this rational? I am well aware that it's not. I strive for being rational, but that doesn't mean I always am. If I were, there would be no need for striving.

Why do I feel this way toward an inanimate object that is not, nor can it be, anymore bad than a teacup? Because so often the TV represents things with which I have little patience or tolerance: wasting time, the glorification of that which is unholy, grossly exaggerated materialism, the promotion of mindlessness, and there are probably others.

As soon as I am living on my own, I am tempted to not even have a TV. Having never lived without one, I can't know for sure how well that would work out. I might find that for all my steaming, not having one around would make me actually want to use one on occasion. We'll see. I am rather certain that I don't want to pay for any programming, so if I have one, it will likely only be used for occasional movie watching (movies being a topic which could also inspire a rant, albeit a less intense one). But even if I did find myself longing for one, I still think my life would overall be fine, and I would soon get over it and move on to something better.

Ironically, or perhaps not, all this is brought to you by a grown-up (can I call myself a "grown-up") who was once a kid that watched a lot of TV. Like most kids usually are, I was up on pop culture. Practically every show on TV, those directed at my age group at least, was my favorite. I watched them all with few exceptions. Hours and hours, and days and days of my life were spent with the screen flashing in front of my face, and at the time, I enjoyed every minute.

But I think maybe now that's why I feel so opposed to it. I realize how much time I spent, and it's shocking to me now. There were so many other things I could have been doing that would have brought much more benefit. Avid reader though I was, I could have read even more books! I could have played more. I was a kid, so I did indeed play, but as I've mentioned many times before, I wasn't a typical child, so playing wasn't as big of a part of my life as my peers. Looking back on it now, I wish it had been. But then, I guess I wouldn't have been me, so that's why it's a good thing wishes aren't always granted. Getting back on subject, so much of the time I spent watching TV was thoroughly meaningless. And most of the things I was filling my brain with weren't beneficial, in some cases possibly destructive.

Thus the position I have come to today. My opinions on the whole subject were much more reasonable seven, eight, nine years ago. I had started to realize how I could be better spending my time and energy, but I hadn't yet reached the cynical peak at which I am currently. Maybe there's some way I can regain that balance.

Until then, no one buy/give me a TV, since I know that's what all of you are clambering to do. I will appreciate your generous spirit, but that appreciation will have some serious competition, and at the very least, your gift will not get used. A much safer and less expensive option would be a deck of playing cards. With a gift like that, you might just become my best friend. But beware, I would expect you to play card games with me from that point on. Give at your own risk.

Trying to remember the line of a song that references Ferdinand Magellan and failing.

I'm getting the road trip itch again.

This time, it's not because I haven't journeyed more than 50 miles from my house in the past two weeks (was it really just two weeks ago that I spent more than 8 hours in my car?). It's because of a new gadget I acquired this evening.

I am now a proud owner of a Magellan Roadmate 1212. That's a GPS, for those who don't know. I haven't played with it much yet because it needs to charge. The only charger that came with it is one for the car, so it is currently outside sitting in a cup holder. And I am waiting patiently inside.

I made the decision to purchase this device relatively quickly according to my standards. I've been thinking for a while that I would like to have one, but didn't seriously consider it more than a couple of days. I'm one of those people who visits Google Maps nearly daily, indicating that I'm always wondering where some place is located, usually in relation to me, and usually so that I can see if planning a trip is plausible. When you spend a great deal of time traversing pavement, a GPS makes sense. For a while, however, I have contented myself with finding directions on the Internet, and hoping that I'm not such a terrible navigator that I end traveling hundreds of miles in the wrong direction. On the whole, that strategy has worked well enough.

Until two weeks ago, that is. I think that particular incident pushed me over the edge, and made me seriously consider that having a GPS would be a good thing.

What incident am I referring to? Oh, yeah, I never did share this experience with you, did I?

Jason Gray was playing at the Mall at Johnson City in East Tennessee. My brother and I wanted to go and we invited friends to accompany us. One of them started the journey with us here at our house, the other one we were going to pick up on the way at her school in Jefferson City. I started the trip optimistically, but between here and Jefferson City, I got lost. More than once. One wrong turn this way, backtracking, another wrong turn, more backtracking, etc. We finally made it to Jefferson City, then I made another couple of wrong turns trying to leave town. We made it to the mall one hour and fifteen minutes after the concert was supposed to start. I was hoping that Jason would still be standing around and we could say "hi" at least. By the time we found the stage five minutes later, there was a crew tearing everything down and Jason was nowhere to be found.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. I had fun, don't get me wrong. We chilled in the mall for a while, then managed to spend over an hour and a half in a Books-A-Million and didn't even make it around the whole store before we were forced to leave due to it closing. But driving that far away to see someone then not seeing them is a bit of a letdown.

I'd really like it if that didn't happen again. I'm hoping that old Ferdinand's namesake will help to ensure that it doesn't.

If things go as planned, I'll have a chance to test it for the first time in about two weeks, on, incidentally, another trip to see Jason Gray. It's funny, to my mind at least, to think that my love of live music inspired the purchase of a navigation aid. :-)

As lights extinguish and other eyes close.

I think, maybe, I've figured out at least one of the reasons I light up at night and find it to be such a delightful time to be conscious and busy doing things.

I constantly feel responsible for other people. This does not always translate into me actively taking care of them or doing things for them. Rather, it means that I'm always thinking about them, trying to be aware of any moment when I do need to help them, or talk to them, oftentimes feeling helpless, doing nothing more than wondering what I can do.

There is rarely a moment when it's just me. Even when I may be somewhat physically sequestered, my heart and mind are still with other people. I can't feel released to move and act independently because I'm not independent.

Until the world starts to fall asleep, that is. As lights extinguish and eyes close, I feel like a weight falls off of me. However tired I felt before, this release of burden grants me fresh energy, and I suddenly feel inspired to do things I was too weary to attempt in the day. All of the people I feel responsible for are now sleeping (or at least confined in their beds, attempting to sleep) and the best thing I can do to help them right now is leave them alone. I am free.

I should have come to this conclusion sooner. I've been this way since childhood. In my five-person family, I've been most often the privileged one with her own bedroom (there have even been times when my parents didn't have their own room, yet I did) and ever since the youngest of our number was born, my poor brothers have never had their own room. Yet with this extra blessing of personal space, there has still been a substantial amount of time when not even I have had space to call my own and in those moments are when this characteristic is most apparent.

The first examples that come to mind are all of the times I've had to share a bed with my littlest brother. There have been countless nights when it seemed like all he wanted to do was talk to me, tell me stories. I would listen for a long while, even joining him in conversation and jumping into the tales of his imagination, but after a while, I felt that enough was enough. It was time to go to sleep. As he would get quiet, I would feel this tension in my body that I didn't know was there start to release. As soon as I was sure he was asleep, I felt released to go to sleep. But only when he was asleep. Lying there quietly wasn't enough to coax me to relax. There was one night we were staying at our grandparents', Austyn around the age of four or five, and he rather kindly listened to me when I told him it was time to be quiet. But as we were lying there in silence, I noticed he wasn't going to sleep very quickly. After a time, he decided to inform me, just in case I didn't already know, that "Emily, I can't go to sleep." "Just lay there and be still. You'll go to sleep soon." Minutes turned to over an hour. Still awake. He naturally felt inclined to start talking again. Even after my utterances of "shhh," the silence only lasted a few moments, then he started talking again. Not loudly or intrusively. Just a few words. But I finally felt desperate. Even though he had so sweetly laid there in silence for a very long time and had done nothing to disturb me, I could not go to sleep, couldn't even relax. I needed him to go to sleep, so very much. I turned to him with tears and pleaded, "Austyn, please, please be quiet and go to sleep. It's very, very late, and I can't go to sleep. I need you to please be quiet and go to sleep." "......okay, Emily." And he finally went to sleep and I finally relaxed and soon followed him into the land of dreams.

With this obviously ingrained in me from an early age, am I doomed to be a creature of the night forever, I wonder. Will these moments alone be the only times I find it possible to relax? Will I continue my tradition of midnight blogging and writing down in various forms my thoughts and the things I feel within me, because I never can tell what I feel or think acutely enough in the day to be able to bring it out of me?

Time will tell. Until then, I am slowly unraveling the mysteries of my affinity with the night.