And there it was.

{via}

You know how people always ask you "that question" on your birthday? You know the one. "How do you feel now that you're *insert any number from 3-25*?" I've always been mildly annoyed by those questions. It doesn't feel any different. It's just another day in the life. Turning 17 isn't what makes you feel 17; all the awesome and not-so-awesome things you experience when you're 17 are what make you feel a year older. And by the time you feel that way, you're 18, and the cycle starts over again.

I got asked a similar question recently. I was sitting there, holding it in my hands, staring down at page 32 with a slightly dazed expression on my face and a pure cloud of golden joy fogging up my vision. "So," my dad asked. "How does it feel to be published?"

The answer?

Not that much different. It feels great, don't get me wrong. I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling I felt when I tore away that envelope and saw the magazine hiding inside, or the feeling I felt when I saw my story printed on a crisp white page, one of those shiny expensive magazine pages and not the flimsy computer paper pages my stories have lived on for so long. I couldn't stop smiling. But I didn't feel all that different. I have a theory. Getting published the kind of experience that totally exhausts you and makes you terribly happy and is often followed by a burst of applause from friends and family. Then when it's all over, you sit back, read your story a few times, and tap your fingers on the table.

That was fun, you think. Now let's do it again.

And I'm already planning to.

Ps. Getting published could also be just like doing a gigantic face-smash into a delicious chocolate cake. I haven't quite decided yet.

'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.

"...A date which will live in infamy..."

{Via}

If you know me well, you'll know that I'm an unabashed history buff. I love history. I watch history movies, read historical nonfiction, talk about historical occurences and recently began to write my very first historical fiction novel: To Bring Mae Flowers. I wasn't always so history-crazed. I used to hate it with a passion. My 3rd grade history book covered things like Roman and Greek history, which, I'm ashamed to admit, I found utterly boring. It wasn't until a couple of years ago that I discovered history for the truly wonderful thinbg it is: a long, long story. Arguably the greatest story ever told. The Bible? That's a history book. All those things really happened. To real people. In real places. The rest of history is like the sequel to the Bible, leading up to the grand ending when Christ returns and writes the final words, which have been known to God for all ages past, present and future, for all to see. I wish I could know everything there is to know about history.... all the nuances and interesting little facts that exist. But it's been my experience that a person is usually drawn to a particular era in history, and so it is with me. I'm a World War II history buff, and proud to be one.

That's why this day is so special.

I'm sure we all know the general story. On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Less than 24 hours later, the United States entered World War II. It's not much of a beginning. Usually we remember grander battles and more glorious entries into war. This attack was quick, unexpected, and deadly. The real fight was yet to come. But every story has to have a starting point. For the United States, this was it.

Do you realize that today marked the 70th anniversery of that point? I personally know one World War II veteran. He's into his nineties and beginning to slow down. The rest of his generation are not far behind in age or health. It's a startling thing to think about, but we're beginning to see what has been called the Greatest Generation die out. For me, it's traumatizing. History is slipping away. Chances to talk to the men and women who were there are becoming scarce. Soon, all of these things will have been written down for the archives, and the last few who remained will have passed on.

I don't usually observe days of remembrance, but today I wanted to. Just for a minute. And I wanted you to think about these things, too, even if you're not totally nuts about the 1940's like I am (although, if you want an awesome period of history to be nuts about, the 1940's is the bomb). Today was a day to remember a starting point. Before long, there will be a little ending as a generation moves aside to make room for new ones. The story goes on. But let's not forget what happened before our chapter began.

Sorry for being a tad sentimental, and for using all those writing examples. Hey, what can I say? I'm a writer: it's what I do.


December 7th, 1941-December 7th, 2011.

Wow.


Seventy years later,

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.

More Than Words

I can't believe that 9/11 is almost ten years behind us. Today, two magazines came in the mail. Both of them were special memorial issues. I sat down and just looked through the pictures, not even reading the articles. The emotion, the bare, raw emotion on the faces of the people in those pictures can't be recreated by anything I write. They're surreal, those emotions. They were singular and unique to every person who felt them, and they will never be felt by anyone else. It's very hard for me, as a writer, to see those deep emotions. They're things that I can't touch, that I have never experienced. Researching and practicing and imagining don't help. There's a time when I need to simply say, "I can't imagine." And it's so true.

There is something about pictures that fascinates me. I feel that as writers, one of our hardest jobs is to actually create a picture with words. It's certainly something I've struggled with ever since I first put down "Once upon a time..." on a piece of notebook paper. Those awful, heartbreaking pictures speak more than words.

I don't want to make the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a writing exercise. It's so much more than that.