For now, at least.

The little Road says, Go;
The little House says, Stay;
And oh, it's bonny here at home,
But I must go away.

-Josephine P. Peabody





Ten days to go!

Eleven days to go...

It's officially officially Official.

Background check came back clean, (shocker, I know,) travel dates are all set, and I'm girding up the loins of my body and mind to leave home for three months.

People keep asking me if I'm excited, and some of them say it with this look on their face as though they're expecting me to be acting like I would if Christmas and my birthday and a trip to the Bahamas with my family and a huge scholarship happened to me all at once. Well, that's not how I feel.

Sure, I'm excited.

But I'm also scared. The longest I've ever been away from my Mama is sixteen days. I like clean places. I don't like to see people sick when I can't do anything to fix it. I like automatic washing machines. There are lots of bad things that could happen to me when I'm in a third world country, (as an over-abundance of thoughtful people keep reminding me. And then reminding me again.) I don't speak Amharic. Addis is a big city. I may get sick.

So there you have it. My feelings of anticipation are split down the middle. Half is apprehension, and half is excitement.

But you know what I'm 100% sure about?

My Father has taken care of me since the moment I was conceived, and I don't believe for a second that He's going to to stop now. Is His arm shortened, that it cannot reach across the ocean? Is He weaker in Ethiopia than He is in Mississippi?

Of course not! How ridiculous, my mind answers immediately. My mind. I really do know in my head that God is omniscient, omnipresent, kind, and faithful.

But do I believe it in my heart? Will it make a difference in my life? Will I be able to trust Him completely? Trust Him enough to leave my comforts and my security and go where I believe He's calling me to go?

These questions have flooded me the last couple of months. It's one thing to sit at home, or even go about difficult but more "normal" things and say "oh, absolutely I trust God implicitly." It's another to put that into practice when, well, when I'm going to a third world country by myself for a long time.

I've struggled with wondering whether I'll be able to do it. Will I fail? Will I miss the trust-God-completely boat?

And then, all of a sudden, God helped me see how silly I was being. Worrying about whether or not I'll lean fully on God in the future is not going to accomplish anything.

Leaning on Him now, giving everything, (even my self-doubts,) over to Him now, this is what I must do. This is what I can do. And I'm so thankful that I can. Such a sweet relief, isn't it, to rest in Him all the time?

No. That's not it.

Me: "Do you boys know what is the only food or drink you can live on all by itself for months?" (maybe for years; I don't know about that.)

Ben: "Water?"

Me: "No, but close."

Lee: ::with great confidence:: "Mountain Dew!"





it's milk, by the way.

like the footsteps of doom...

Tomorrow. Is. My. Audition.

I'm nervous. Very, very nervous. I love playing the violin, but playing in front of people, especially when there's any pressure, makes me physically sick. (To be precise, it feels like two or three medium sized dragons are dueling in my stomach, breathing fire, thrashing around viciously... the whole nine yards. I'm only exaggerating a little bit.)

Aaaannnd... yeah. There's a lot of pressure goin' on right now. Oh, yeah, it's just the audition to see whether I get into the music department, what seat I have in the orchestra, and whether or not I receive a scholarship. No big deal.

Oh, wait. IT IS A BIG DEAL.

And I'm nervous. (Hm? Oh, I already told you that? Well, I'm telling you again.)

My game plan these last couple of weeks, and the last two days especially has been: breathe.

When I start feeling nauseated, when my mind races into panic mode, (whatifImessupreallybadly, whatifImessupreallybadly, whatifImessupreallybadly???) I just take lots of deep, deep breaths. It helps.

And then I dash upstairs and play my pieces over and over and over again. The whole piece. Then the problem measures... ten times, slowly. five times medium. then up to tempo. Repeat. Breathe.

I find that while I'm playing, I'm not nervous. It's been such a relief to discover this. "Oh, that's good," you might remark. "You'll be fine tomorrow." But unfortunately, this lovely feature doesn't carry over to performances.

My hands get sweaty. So sweaty I can hardly take a grip on my bow. My legs and hands shake. Very literally. (I always have WAY too much vibrato when I'm performing, and it's not 'cause I'm meaning to.) My heart speeds up... speeds up... speeds up.... til I can hardly hear anything except THU-THUMP THU-THUMP THUMPTHUMPTHUMP. Not conducive to playing well, as you can imagine. And I almost always mess up at least once. I can remember two performances when I didn't.

All I want to do at moments like those is run from the room and never pick up my violin again. Ever.

But, as the reverend Mother told Maria, and as Maria told Leisel, (doesn't it make you happy when something from a favorite movie helps in real life?) "you can't run away from your problems. You have to face them."

Tomorrow, I'll face my audition. And I know, as Rachel Lynde told Anne, "the sun will go on rising and setting whether I fail [my audition] or not."

(That knowledge is about as comforting to me as it was to Anne, by the way. In other words, zero comfort.)

So, now you know. If I'm covered in sackcloth and ashes the next time you see me, just be kind and don't ask how I did. If I look reasonably sane and happy, ask anything you want.

and... this is fair how?

Isaiah: "I'll be a big lion, KK, and you be a little cat!"

The Fine Art of Using Nosespray:

Firstly, it is a fine art.

Secondly, I am a complete failure at it.

::First night with clogged head:: Squirt the nosespray very, very gently. So gently, in fact, that none comes out, thereby doing zero good.

Realize that bravery is essential. Tip head back, give a sound squeeze of the bottle and a ferocious snort of the nose at the same time. Cough and choke and splutter, since a copious amount of the spray went through the nose and down the back of the throat.

Drink lots of juice and water and tea, hoping to get the burning ache in the back of throat to go away. You won't succeed, but try anyway.

::Second night:: Repeat the above, except it will be on the third try instead of the second that you snort the spray too far, thereby rendering the go-to-sleep-with-a-stuffed-head-a-cough-and-a-sore-throat process much more difficult.

Vow within yourself to take vitamins diligently from now to the end of time.

Five Years

Today marks five years since Daddy went Home.

There is still, and always will be, a blank spot in my life. Sometimes, this blank spot is so small it could fit in my pocket, and sometimes it's a yawning, vast hole, overshadowing everything else. I continue to be surprised by this ebb and flow, for I expected it to always stay the same - bitter, dark, sad, and huge. But as time goes by, I find I can laugh at memories, I can smile without aching when I think of Daddy, and I have much rest and joy in the knowledge that he is with His Savior.

Sometimes, I want him so very, very much. Sometimes, I would have him back from Paradise if I could. Sometimes I'm weak. And sometimes I just need my Daddy.

He was such an integral part of my life that it's really mind-boggling to think "I am going to live the rest of my life without Daddy."

But then I am just grateful for all the years I did have with him.

Happy times when I was reminded every day how much my Daddy loved me.



And I still know he loves me. I still love him. Most importantly, I know that he and I have the same Heavenly Father. That thought is immensely comforting.

a little Jane Austen to close out the night.

This made me laugh, possibly because it's late at night and everything is So Much More Amusing late at night.

-From Sense and Sensibility-

"One subject only engaged the ladies: the comparative heights of Master Harry Dashwood, and Lady Middleton's second son William, who were nearly of the same age.
Had both the children been there, the affair might have been determined too easily by measuring them at once; but as Harry only was present, it was all conjectural assertion on both sides, and everybody had a right to be equally positive in their opinion, and to repeat it over and over again as often as they liked.
The parties stood thus:
The two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was the tallest, politely decided in favour of the other.
The two grandmothers, with not less partiality, but more sincerity, were equally earnest in support of their own descendant.
Lucy, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent than the other, thought the boys were both remarkably tall for their age, and could not conceive that there could be the smallest difference in the world between them.
Elinor, having once delivered her opinion on William's side, by which she offended Mrs. Ferras and Fanny, did not see the necessity of enforcing it by any farther assertion, and Marianne, when called on for her's, offended them all, by declaring that she had no opinion to give, as she had never thought about it."

I do love Jane Austen. I know, I know, it's cliche', but she was a master of dry, satirical humor, and that floats my boat.

our needs are simple, our wants are few.

Me: "I really want some sweet tea."

Mama: (wandering aimlessly around the kitchen with a pen in her hand,) "I just want a piece of paper."

All men created equal

I'm reading a book called The Help by Katherine Stockett. It's set after Rosa Parks took her famous bus ride and right around the time Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed a dream and James Meredith entered Ole Miss as its first black student.

Until my high school history class four years ago, I pretty much labored under the delusion that once segregation ended, it ended. For good. I did know there was still a lot of prejudice and hatred that lasted for a long while in some Caucasian circles, but I really did think that those circles were the minority.

Well, they weren't.

The Help is narrated from three different view points, and one of them is the perspective of Abileen, the black hired help of a finicky, too-good-for-her-britches white woman. Abileen was raising this woman's child, just as she'd raised twenty other children for white people. After the little girl's mama spanked her for using Abileen's bathroom instead of her own, (back then, I've discovered, the "help" was required to have their own bathroom, separate from the rest of the house, because the white people were afraid of catching a disease from the blacks,) Abileen wrote:

"I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side of town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites."

That moment. It came in every white child's life, especially if they lived in the South. The moment they decided that colored folks aren't as good as whites.

As I was reading, (you can buy the book here or get it at your library - it's worth it, but keep in mind it's not for kids to read,) I was overwhelmed with thanksgiving that we've come as far as we have in America.

I see segregation being like a massive door in a medieval castle. Little by little, blow by blow, the battering ram of equality has succeeded in knocking it down, but that didn't happen all at once. The efforts of William Wilberforce, the civil war, the Emancipation Proclamation, the civil rights movement, all these things were blows to the door. Prejudice still lives, especially in the South, but it's so much better, at least outwardly, from what it used to be.

In the early nineteen hundreds, President Theodore Roosevelt invited George Washington Carver, a black man, to be his dinner guest at the White House, and oh, the scandal that ensued!
And now, we have an African-American president for the first time.

The Help was set in Mississippi, and it told about one woman who had to give up her baby girl, because she was too light. The white woman she worked for considered having the daughter of a black servant being so close in color to their own children an affront to white people's respectability.

It was against the law for whites and blacks to marry each other. If they broke that law, the very least, (and the best,) consequence was imprisonment. More often, it was lynching.

Today, all over America, Caucasian families adopt brown children, and African-Americans adopt white kids. There's intermarriage between black people and white people. I don't think we stop and think about how great a blessing this is. It's pretty much normal. It's every day life. And that's so wonderful.

Like I said, prejudice isn't dead. But I really believe it's breathing its last. Maybe, Lord willing, by the time I have children, there will be absolutely no doubt in anybody's mind that "dirty ain't a color."





::Clarification::

I don't view this through rose colored glasses. I realize that racism won't fully die until Jesus comes back. But I do believe that perhaps in another generation, it will be completely dead outwardly... not within some people's hearts, but in our country as a whole.