Electricity and Cheerios

I'm exceedingly grateful for technology this week, particularly fans, refrigerators, and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulators.

I write this sitting sprawled before a fan in an eighty-three-degree dorm room, bleary-eyed, beside an army of empty water bottles, Gatorades, and teas and a stack of half-read reading material, still undecided as to which article to expound upon in the paper due Monday, just remembering the Powerpoint I still must put together. The skin on my soles is sloughing off in nickel-sized sheets, and several nerves radiating from the upper lumbar region persistently remind me that they are not pleased about lugging a backpack all across campus. For now, however, I suppose they are content with the imminent prospect of bed, and have quieted down without the TENS unit to drown out their protests.

My first week at summer college passed in an eventful whirlwind; the second, thus far, has passed in a hazier muddle of backpack-juggling and tiptoeing to class to appease the protestant nerves, and a piano/viola concert that definitely deserved a missed dinner.

Speaking of which, in case you've ever considered missing four meals consecutively, I do advise against it. Protein bars and dry Cheerios can only replace so many treks to the dining hall.

But now this weary pupil must stumble into bed and be thankful for a whole holiday of study time before the exam on Friday. Last week's (rather unexpected) 98 set a pretty tough standard to beat, but there's room still for an increment of improvement.

I don't think I shall ever forget the spleen is on the left.

Vignette of a Day

I retired late yesterday evening, so this morning I had to content myself with rising at the modest hour of eight to avoid the consequences of sleep deprivation. I spent the first waking half hour in bed, puzzling over the dream in which my complicity was requested in the mass execution of a number of my friends, I declined direct involvement but stood placidly by as their demise was plotted, and at the last minute roused myself to warn one of the wiser friends of the scheme via Facebook. Despite the morbid nature of the dream (or perhaps because of it?) I relished its memory as I would a poignant novel, turning it over on my tongue like hard candy until the potency of the feelings dissolved and their lingering tang faded away. I haven't remembered my dreams lately, or else they haven't been so interesting, so it was a treat to have such a meaty one to mull over. And at any rate, the darkness of that dream was countered by bright giddiness of the night's other dream in which some other of my friends moved to my street, and I delightedly declared that I should have to introduce them to my other neighbor-friends.

I dream a lot about my friends.

Once I'd pondered these things my thoughts began to descend into inane things, so I forced myself from bed and turned off my iPod-alarm, set to play my 'lively strings' playlist. I paused just after a stirring opera selection of Puccini's (I'm not quite sure why I put that one on the list, but I suppose it does feature strings). Stretching, I uncovered my bird, read the analogy of the hard-working farmer from Second Timothy, and set about to make tea. I realized after I returned to my room to practice piano I hadn't stirred in quite enough honey, but drank the tea anyhow between Reverie, Rondo Alla Turca, and a somewhat charming though inane little modern piece. (And now I've used the word twice in one paragraph. Oh well.)

When I'd practiced an hour the clock struck ten and my family was just rousing themselves. It was too late and the sun too strong to embark on my custom morning walk, so I settled down in the sunroom to chemistry, propping open eight of the fourteen windows round me to let in the morning breeze and wren's song. At some point I remembered to open the garage door for the wren family who undertook to nest in a basket perched atop a stack of boxes inside. The fledglings scurried away from the opening door.

The afternoon passed in a pleasant blur of studying and chores. I read selections from a missionary diary, an apologist text, a defense of the under-credited scientific advancements of the middle ages, and meditated on my Old Testament reading. At three-thirty, after we hastily tidied the house, a nice lady stopped by to purchase the remaining two chicks of the clutch I inadvertently allowed the silkie hens to brood. When it was ascertained the king snake or like creature who greeted them had vacated the driveway, her three-year-old son came out to play with Christian.

As the evening shadows lengthened I picnicked cross-legged on the front lawn with a biography and some celery sticks. Then finally I walked--walked down the meandering country lane laced with wild roses and Queen Anne's Lace and irises and aster and creeping purple vines and a profusion of dandelions spangling the countryside like stars in the sky--and let my mind wander.

I returned, refreshed, to finish chores, surf the web, and write a blog post. And remembered, yawning, I completely forgot to get around to math and music theory today.

And now I've described the stereotypical day in the life of a homeschooled girl.

(Unfortunately such a degree of productivity is not yet typical for me--don't think all my days have been like this! especially of late--but I'm working diligently to change that.)

I'm not really sure why I wrote all that, but some of my loyal readers (coughDonnycough) have prodded me to post for the past year and a half, and, when put to it, it's hard to think of something interesting to say.

And now the hour grows late, so I leave you with a cursorily edited blog post and a random picture of a chicken.

This is my pet rooster, Blue. He follows me everywhere and likes to be held.

My Rest a Stone

It's dark for this time of morning, and I'm sitting cross-legged at the kitchen table, squinting against the bright bulbs above me, listening to torrents of rain rolling off the roof. I pick up the mug beside me hopefully, frown, and swirl it, absently watching the remnant of tea orbit the bottom.

It's been ten months since I last posted, unless you count that ridiculous "announcement" from a couple weeks ago I put up in an attempt to quench a friend's request for a post. (It didn't work.) I haven't had much to say. Rather, I've had thousands of thoughts tumbling through my head, few of them fit to post in a place as public as this.

The truth is, I have little energy for the playful, mocking tone of many of my older posts, and the somberer thoughts aren't of a kind to put into a blog post, generally. Or else, I simply don't feel like standing up on a platform to declare what I have to say, choosing instead to relate it to closer circles of friends. I have lost much of the vigor of youth, and I have not yet acquired the wisdom of age. What could I possibly have to say to the world?

Oh, I haven't been through anything terrible. This past year has not been without its trials, certainly, and ones unique from years prior; what else can one expect from life? But I have passed through nothing externally to account for this heaviness of spirit I have felt. It seems a combination of chemical and spiritual processes have stretched and kneaded me beyond what my physical circumstances alone could have done. So though I have suffered no specific tragedy in my life, my soul weighs heavy with similar burdens and griefs as though it has, a combination of just, godly griefs with what I suspect is some element of depression latching on to the former and perverting them into selfish pangs of despair and self-pity which must be carefully cast out with the help of the Spirit.

With these griefs comes a strong urge for privacy, which largely accounts for my silence here. I hesitate to post even this.

There's also the fact that many of my previous posts horrify me slightly and I've tried to keep as far away from them as possible. You've no idea how many times I've considered deleting the whole blog. But I leave it, if only as testament to how far I've come (or at least, how far I hope I've come). And quite possibly, I shall feel the same way about this post before long. I will ever grow and my writing ever improve; it's about time I learn to move on.

A lot has happened since I last posted (really posted), which I don't care to detail at present, and based on my history probably never will. (But if you're wondering, yes, I was accepted into the camp for which I wrote the essay. I learned a lot from that experience, mostly in bearing up under the grief for the darkness of the world.) Life keeps me busy these days--and yet I hardly seem to get anything done.


I wrote the above nearly six weeks ago. How quickly our lives can be turned upside-down. And yet if our gaze remains fixed upward we are none the worse for it.

It's been said (by an individual whose name I cannot recall, apologies to the individual for lack of reference) that our lives can only be understood backwards, though they must be lived forwards. How true this is. As I underwent the above, the sensation of having passed through greater trials than I really had, I suspected that some circumstance loomed in my future for which my season of growth had prepared me.

That circumstance has now come to pass. I will not detail it here, but it is funny, in a nonhumorous way, because it has answered my longings and prayers to experience a sort of difficulty different than the usual physical ailments I face. I've come to bear up under a good deal of bodily afflictions with little thought, but I've often wondered how I would withstand other trials.

A bit over a year ago (just one? how many years seem to have come and gone since!) after a long period of tears and turmoil I wrote:

...I have come recently to recognize the meaning of this present darkness: that, rather than hindering me from serving as I'm called in the future, my current afflictions are preparing me for the future by instilling the character traits I will need later in life--patience, endurance, empathy, perseverance, faith, trust.

And again, just a few weeks ago:

I suffer from a form of juvenile arthritis, and I feel my disease is preparing me for service--and yes, for suffering for His name--in ways little else could. The daily pain, the medical procedures--what I once thought hindered me from pursuing a happy future I now realize has been preparing me all along for whatever lies ahead. And the days that lie before me may not be happy, but they will be joyful. I have learned to exult in tribulation, and this can only produce hope.

How true these words have proven, that my health has pressed with a dull steadiness upon my soul for all these years, and this constant pressure has readied me for what I am now up against. And I can face this trial even with eagerness, knowing that this still is preparing me for something greater to come. My only regret is that this circumstance involves my family--even more forcibly than it does me. They are forced to leave behind so much for which they have labored, so many visions for the future. It hurts. This is why we are admonished to store our treasures where thief does not steal, nor moth destroy. Our possessions in this world are no more than sand sifting through our fingers.

And we are to build not on the sand that is swept away in the storm, but on the Rock that remains for all eternity.