NEWS.

Like, really big news!

Well, first off, I didn't get that big scholarship I'd wanted. I came home from skiing yesterday, exhausted yet excited because I knew that I'd soon find out whether or not I'd be invited to go down to Georgia for scholarship weekend. The phone call wouldn't have let me know that I GOT the scholarship, but it would bring me one step closer to being able to attend the college I'm being pulled towards right now. Anyway, I got a call from my Admissions Rep. She was so sweet, apologizing that I hand't gotten invited even though it wasn't her fault. That made the news easier, somehow.

But today, I was really feeling the weight of not being awarded all that money. College is EXPENSIVE, people. If you don't have a job, get one and start saving, because all that hard-earned money is going to go a long way if you save wisely. I'm looking into other scholarships outside of the school, but they require more work and time that I don't have. So I was stressing out.

Tonight, I came home a little depressed. I sit down at my computer and what do I see (besides my amazing War Horse Background)?

An email.

No, not from Fozzy (although I always loooove to hear from her). Not from the college, telling me there's been a horrible mistake and would I please come and accept a wad of cash (though that would be nice, too).

It was an email from a Christian writers' magazine that I'd mentioned a while back, right after the writer's conference 2011.

They want my short story.

As in, to publish.

On paper.

Maybe with an illustration.

In only a couple months.


God is so amazing in His timing! I was feeling so let down, and yet here's something to pick me back up--something I've been working towards and praying for and dreaming about for... well, years.

[potential, but it looks like it really is happening] PUBLICATION.

I just had to share that with you. I'm so grateful, scared, and beside myself with excitement. Please pray that I don't send the publishers a really hyper email, singing something about rainbows and unicorns bursting from the clouds, and scare them out of wanting to publish me. That would be bad.


Thanking God [and putting my editing cap on!]~

Elisabeth

Praise Him.

{via}

I had my last devotions of 2011 today. Providentially, the final Psalm the One Year Bible had me read was [no surprise] Psalm 150. It's short, but as 2011 draws to its close, I think it says a lot.
"Praise ye the LORD. Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his power.
 Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his excellent greatness.
 Praise him with the sound of the trumpet: praise him with the psaltery and harp.
 Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs.
 Praise him upon the loud cymbals: praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.
 Let every thing that hath breath praise the LORD. Praise ye the LORD."


There are a lot of things about 2011 I wish I could change; there are some things I wouldn't change even if I had the chance. It was a good year; a hard year; a year of testing and of refinement and joy. Not as bad as some years I can remember; maybe not as good as others.

At the end of this year, there's a lot of memories knocking on my door. Sometimes I'd like to question God; to ask Him why He thought that moment was right to bring a difficult providence into my life, or if He couldn't have let the sun shine just a little longer before dousing all my hopes in a sudden storm. Other times, I'm overcome with gratefulness at how good He has been this year.

I can't change the bad things that happened; I wouldn't change the good things. So, in the end, there is only one thing to do: praise Him.

I must praise God for every gift He's given me this year; praise Him for the trials He's brought me through.

I must praise Him for the sunshine and the rain.

I must praise Him for the times of happiness, for all the times I did something I thought I'd never do and did it well. Those things I'll remember for the rest of my life. And, in the end, I can do nothing but praise Him for the times I failed because I relied on my own strength to get me through, or simply because He had a lesson to teach me.

I'm so thankful for this year. I've learned a lot; grown a lot; written a lot; talked a lot [that's not unusual]; prayed a lot--though not as often as I should. I've made new friends, discovered new gifts, found new passions. I've read a heap of books and loved almost every single one. I've worked for about seven months now and am really encouraged by how kind everyone at the office has been to me. I got accepted into a college that I really like, and there's a chance that I might recieve a good sum of money to make it easier to attend there [that's something I'll have to wait 'til 2012 to find out]. For all these things and more I can only praise God.


Sometimes the providences I encounter leave me gasping for breath, but I can only praise God that He led me safely through. Other times, they leave me breathless with joy, and what better way to show my thankfulness than to praise the Lord?


Well, that's my formal farewell to 2011. I hope and pray that 2012 will be just as good a year, for me and for you.

As far as any New Year's resolutions go, well--pfft. Aren't mine always the same?


God Bless ~

Ps. One of the things I praise God for is my blog! I'm so glad to have the chance to write down my thoughts, post my stories, and read your blogs. In honor of that blessing, I picked my top ten favorite posts from this year. Here they are:

1. I Know I'll Understand Someday [10/16/11]
2. Another Short Story =] (6/18/11)
3. The Happiness [8/13/11]
4. An Apology [5/18/11]
5. Where Do I Start? [9/17/11]
6. Day{s} After [12/28/11]
7. Braking for Turkey [11/20/11]
8. Second to the Right, and Straight On Till Morning [8/28/11]
9. Is It November Yet? [10/13/11]
10. Ideas, Ideas [4/9/11]


What about you? What were your favorite posts from Something Solid Out of Air?

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

Christmas is pretty amazing. Today, it's electrified with an emphasis on presents, on food, on outward expressions of love as family members gather together for one day, exchange gifts, and then hardly see each other for a whole year. It's very interesting to see how people can take something originally understated and hardly acknowledged that first Christmas Night and decorate it and buy it and sell it and sing it until we hardly know what we're celebrating anymore.

Yesterday evening, I watched It's a Wonderful Life and cried my eyes out at the end. Today, we had dear friends over and opened our stockings and put our star on top of the Christmas tree. Tomorrow, we're going to put off opening gifts until Monday so that we can focus on preparing ourselves for worship. Then, after church, we're going to visit my grandmothers and have a delicious dinner with family. I love Christmas for all these things and more (even as I sit here watching It's a Wonderful Life for a second time). But I'm surprised at how warped the message of Christmas has become to the world.

We hear it again and again--"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son...." But just stop right there. He gave His only Son. How did He do that? Jesus Christ became a man--a human being, like you, like me, a human being who faced temptation, pain, sorrow, fear and death. He should never have had to stoop to that measure--to become what He had created. But He did--He did it willingly. Why?

Well. There's me. And you. And others, too. Even though we had fallen from His favor and deserved only His displeasure, God had a plan for our salvation. We couldn't save ourselves, however hard we might try. He had to save us. And so that's exactly what happened on the first Christmas night about two thousand years ago. God became man. He was born of a virgin, born under the law. He became sin for us. In the end, He faced God's wrath so that we would not have to. And this is where it all began. It didn't begin with a fanfare of trumpets up and down the crowded streets of Bethlehem; it began with a choir of angels who were sent to shepherds, alone with their flocks on the outskirts of the town. It didn't begin in a palace or even a house; it began in a cave, in the presence of animals. And when the baby Jesus had finally entered His world, the only bed availible was a hastily prepared manger, much the the displeasure of several cows and sheep, I should think. He wasn't noticed that night; and when He was noticed later in life, it was only to be despised and rejected by men.

And yet He still came. Even to face ridicule, death, and the wrath of God the Father for the sins of the world.

That, my friends, is why we have Christmas today, 2,000 years later. Even after two thousand years, we are still trying to understand it.

And, frankly, I don't know if we ever will.

Merry Christmas, everyone. God Bless you tonight, tomorrow and in the coming year.

I Know I'll Understand Someday

As my life gets busy and my high school days begin to wind to their final round, I find that there are a lot of things I wish I could do.

I wish I could dedicate myself wholly to my writing. I wish that the words would come as easily as they did four years ago, when I finished books in months and could write for hours without stopping. I wish that I could give my characters the time they so desperately need to develop and grow instead of clumsily moving from one to the next and buying them off with memes and quizzes. I wish that I had the time and energy to take every wisp of story in my mind and capture it in words, whether they be part of a poem or a novel. I wish that I could just sit back, breathe, and write. Like I used to.

I wish that I had more time for my art. Painting has become my obsession--the colors are so real and vivid. But I have no time to dip my brush into a spot of paint and run it across a blank canvas. I have no time to sit and think of concepts for paintings that speak to my soul with their colors and textures. I have no time to experiment, to learn by failure, to mix colors to find the perfect shade, to use every brush and notice a difference. I have no time to go to the store anymore and just stand in the aisle and breathe in the subtle smell of paint, or marvel at the canvas that's bigger than me. I wish that I could just slow down, breathe, and create. Like I used to.

I wish that I had more time for my reading. I love to read. I wanted to read every book ever written when I was little. Now I'm working on it, but not in the way I want to. I snap up a chapter here and there, always distracted, never focused on the words, the voice, the author. I try to rush through because "lots of classic books look good on a transcript", not because they develop my mind. I wish I could find a book I love and curl up, just to read. I wish I could enter back into the worlds I once knew, the worlds where I felt everything the author meant for me to feel and not just the superficial emotions I know now. I want that again. But I've forgotten how to find it. Or so it seems.

I guess I want to live again, or live life as I once knew it. I want to have the whole day to myself, to do the things I want to do, without all the confusion of school and responsibility and the pressures that I feel now.

But you know what I'm realizing?

I am living.

It's not the life a twelve year-old girl with straw-blond hair and braces lived. That life has been lived. It's a memory--sweet, haunting, sometimes even trailing on into the life I'm living now. But I am living. As I sit here, wishing for the things I once knew, the life I have is passing me by. There are new chances out there for me, things I never even knew of when I was twelve. They're not the same as the chances I had back then. But they are once in a lifetime chances, chances I'll never get to chase again.

The old things linger on--I still write when I can, paint when inspiration floods my mind, and read when I have a spare moment. I'll always have my passions. I am a writer, an artist, a reader. I'm a person who loves to draw and sing and walk outside on crisp fall days. I love chocolate and the warmth of a horse's breath on my fingers and taking random pictures and making beautiful memories. Those aren't things that are ever going to pass me by. Those are what make me me. They'll always be there, even if it seems like they're fading away.

All these thoughts that have been spinning around in my mind reminded me of the verses in Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

Maybe I'm not "dying" and beginning a new life without the things I've loved ever since I knew they existed. Maybe this is just a time of transition, a time when those things can't play as large a part in my life. Maybe this has been God's plan for my life all along.

 Seasons change. They transition. Trees lose their leaves in the winter, but the leaves always grow back in the spring.

Maybe it's not the time you wish you had, but the time you're given that really matters.

In fact, you know what?

I know it is.

And that's all the writing I've done today.

And for once, it's okay.