Girl in the Fireplace

Hamlet:
O shame, where is thy blush?
Rebellious hell,
If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones,
To flaming youth let virtue be as wax
And melt in her own fire.

Hamlet, Act III, scene iv

Ahh the holidays have begun! Let the food coma begin, bring on the Christmas music!!!! Wave so long to regular season football, get ready for the playoffs and bowl games! Which, sidebar, Tennessee is going to be bowling this year :) yayz!

Well, Thanksgiving was great to see and hang out with family. I came back to Knoxville Saturday morning so that I could go to the game cause I got front row, holla! Aaaand i ended up being on TV! WIN!

So that was cool and all, and then my parents came up for church on Sunday and that was a lot of fun. Dan's sermon was exactly what I needed to hear. He spoke about Zecheriah and Elizabeth and how God answered their prayer for a baby as "Yes, but not now" I'm excited for how God will use me and answer my prayers.

I have 3 classes, a performance, a paper and then 3 exams then Christmas break. I'm headed to South Carolina for a week to spend some time with friends I haven't seen in a while as well as my sister and brother-in-law. And I'm also excited about being able to go to Passion this year in January. Over all, life is going really fast right now and I'm trying to put on the brakes a little and enjoy the ride.

School Reunion

A thousand times the worse, to want thy light.

Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,

But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.

Romeo; Romeo & Juliet, Act II, scene 2

Watch out people! I am blogging within a month of my last blog...IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!!! Haha not really.

Ever had one of those days that you felt like running away because you needed to clear your head? Well, Saturday was mine. I went to Gatlinburg to go on a 2 hour trail ride in the Smokey Mountain National Park. Well, they don't send out the trail rides if there is any precipitation and regardless of the fact that it was clear the whole hour ride up there, as soon as I got about 5 minutes away, it started snowing. So that was a major buzzkill. But thankfully, I had remembered passing another place that had trail rides back in Sevierville. So I headed back and stopped at a Cracker Barrel before I hit it up. It was great to just sit there, drink my root beer, eat my chicken n' dumplin's and read my book for an hour.

Aaand then I went down to the other trail, which only had 1 hour rides, but was still satisfying. The trail guide asked if I had ridden before, I said yes, he asked if I ever showed horses, I told him no and told him that I moved to much. He also told me that I should. Haha he made that ride a lot of fun and it was very very relaxing. After that, I went to Smokey Mountain Knife Works and bought myself a Celtic Clover knife :) Overall, a great, relaxing day.

Tooth and Claw

"He's mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a horse's health,

a boy's love, or a whore's oath."

~Fool, King Lear, Act III, scene vi

(Tooth and Claw is about a werewolf )

Exciting things have been happening lately. Both fall break and a weekend trip home have happened since I last blogged. Fall break was super bittersweet. Sweet because I was able to be home for Faith Baptist Church's 20th anniversary celebration and hang out with both friends and family. Bitter because they showed a few videos of people that had been there since the beginning of the church and one of the people was the oldest member of our church (Clifford Gilliam, 86) who is basically my grandfather because I didn't have a grandpa on my mom's side growing up and also living 8 hours away from my family...you tend to adopt the people around you as family. But seeing that video of him, made me realize how much I wanted to stay in Youngsville for him, but I know that I am where God wants me right now, here in Knoxville at Calvary.

In my three weeks here in Knoxville between my two visits home this month, I had an Economics test, an Accounting test, an English paper, and a German paper...actually those were all last week...not so much fun :/ but I punched through it and made it home for AnchorSoul alive! :)

Also, I know God has been calling me away from my opening a bookstore dream and leading me to being a Drama Coordinator at a church somewhere. Among other things, I FINALLY found a University with a Theatre Ministry Masters program. I didn't even know they existed, but I randomly google searched it and whoop there it was! After a few emails back and forth with a "recruiter" for Regent University in Virginia, I discovered that all but 8 weeks of this 1.5 year program can be done online! I'm now super excited about it! I know it's still 2.5 years until I finish my Undergrad, but I know this is the path God is leading me down and I am so excited to see how I get to where He wants me (life-wise) and where that is (location-wise)!

New Doctor

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world

That has such people in't!

~The Tempest, Act V, scene 1

Yet again, what I want to blog about strangely goes right along with the title. A new year, a new semester, a new month, a new week and new day. This summer and first few weeks of the semester have be crazy, hard and tiring. But thanks to God, Chunky Monkey, and Chick Flicks...I have persevered! This is the first day of the rest of my life.

Well, enough with the life lesson. After an incredibly busy summer of 4 jobs and attempting to have a life while still helping out at my church, I was really looking forward to the normality of Knoxville. I started right back in my internship at my church, and soon afterwords, classes commenced. I love my Theatre, English and Economics teachers, and my German and Accounting teachers are hard, but good. Surprisingly all of my teachers this year have an American accent (virtually unheard of at the University of Tennessee).

KidStuf has gone great, I love being down there with the kids :) Making/finding props is becoming steadily easier as I get the hang of it. The Children's Pastor gave me some sample gels (the colored things that go on stage lights) to see if there were some we could use. College Drama is also fun. We are doing "God's Chisel" by the Skit Guys tomorrow and I am so excited.

In other news, Monday night I was playing church softball and while I was tagging a guy out at second, he managed to slide into my left pinky (throwing hand) and consequently tore a ligament. I thought it was only a jammed finger, so I played the last two innings. I went to the doctor on Wednesday because it was all black, blue and swollen (that usually doesn't happen to jammed fingers) and they took x-rays and told me I had to wear a splint for a day and go to the physical therapist. So, even though I didn't want to, I went to the PT and she told me to keep the splint on until today after the game and then just tape it and come back next week, grrr. Also, I got a call that my finger wasn't broken or fractured.

Side note, my dad has broken his wrist in church softball and his hand in church basketball, so he is banned from church sports for the rest of his natural life. Good news to that is, since I didn't break a bone, I am not banned. WIN!

Well, peeps, I have updated you on my life. I promise that I will try to keep up to date this year. Peace out, live long and prosper!

New Earth

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world

That has such people in't!

~ Miranda, Tempest, Act V, scene 1

This title is actually somewhat appropriate for this post because I'm going to talk about something that is new to me. I'm actually in the process of writing a play for Christmas. I'm mean...I've been writing drama's since I was 13, and I wrote a play with my Drama Pastor when I was 17, but never anything this big on my own. It's kinda crazy. I mean, I wrote the first draft and let a few people read it, one was my Drama Pastor and one was his assistant and both of them said it was really good. Of course both offered suggestions too, but that's what I wanted them to do. I am pretty excited but now is the hard part...editing. I'm not a huge English person, but I'm working on it and will have some peer editors to help me out.

Now that summer is in full swing I am lifeguarding 2 different places and helping out at the church. It's great and hopefully I'll be able to get a small chunk of college paid for with the money from lifeguarding, but I'm still looking at having to take out a loan which really stinks.

On a completely different note, my sister got married two weeks ago. I'm still kinda getting used to the idea that she's married and I have a brother-in-law. Do all younger siblings feel like this when their brothers and sisters get hitched? They went to the outer banks for their honeymoon and had tons of fun seeing lighthouses, jetskiing, and eating seafood. Alicynes wore my mom's dress and had an outdoor wedding which was beautiful!!! So mom and I were talking about the similarities between her wedding and Alicyne's. The dress, married in May, going to the beach for their honeymoon. So I joked and said "Ok, so I have to wear your dress, get married in May, and go to a beach for my honeymoon? Well, tough. I'm going to get married in November, get a new dress and go to Ireland for my honeymoon lol" And we laughed about it and mom was like "Fine, I don't care, it's not my wedding" and we laughed some more.

It's kinda weird being the only kid that lives at home now and realizing that in 3 years, I'll be out of college and on my own. Maybe I'll be like old times and just live with my parents until Mr. Darcy comes calling. I'm sure they won't mind :P

Well, that's all I got for today folks. Peace, love and word to your mother.

Christmas Invasion

Marry, I will, let them play it. Is not a comonty a Christmas

gambold, or a tumbling-trick?

~The Taming of the Shrew Induction, scene 2

Yes, I know, it's not Christmas. Nor is this post about Christmas. Way to observe.

Sorry again for it being soooo long since I've blogged. Wow, since before spring break. Well, I went to NYC for spring break and it was pretty much amazing...and since then I have been SUPER busy! But that's not the reason for this post...

So this weekend started with an amazing KidStuf awards that was a TON of fun and then Saturday I drove down to Chattanooga for the day to throw my sister a wedding shower and drove back up so that I could be at church this morning and Night of Worship tonight.

Yeah so, I'm usually scatter-brained and/or crazy for everyone who knows me, you can attest to that fact, but I need to have a serious moment today.

Lately I've been thinking about a ton of stuff. Mainly school but a lot about life also. This summer I'm going to be working 3 jobs so that I can continue to come to the University of Tennessee because I really feel like God is calling me to be here for this season in my life. Where He wants me and what he wants me to do after college is a completely different story, because I have no idea! God has really been convicting me of not handing stuff over to him lately and one of them is my relationship life, or lack thereof would be a better way of putting it. I started talking to this guy back in NC and I was thinking "Wow this is so cool! I'm going to have a boyfriend this summer." But the more we talked, the more I realized that he isn't very spiritually mature. I started making excuses for him being that way but I started feeling guilty and I knew it was the Holy Spirit convicting me, I just didn't want to admit it. Then this morning at church the Pastor spoke about leaving all the extra baggage we have and I felt super convicted that this guy would just be extra baggage right now. It was hard, but I had to end up sending him a facebook message explaining that I feel like it wouldn't be right for us to be together. And that really took a weight off my chest.

Well, I really feel that God is telling me to spend more time with Him, and He'll bring in who He has for me in His timing, not mine. And if that ends up being in the next few days or in the next few years, I have decided to leave that to Him and give Him control.

The Parting of Ways

Parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow

~ Juliet, Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2

D-Now...what is it? Awesome, a time for God to move, powerful, moving, and fun! Disciple Now is a weekend that we get a speaker to come in and we just spend a weekend really focusing on our relationship with God. I've gone to it all but 3 of the past 8 years. And this past year I had the opportunity to be a leader for the one at Faith. But now, I am taking part of one for college students at Calvary. We finished up this morning and I loved my first college Disciple Now at Calvary Baptist Church!!!!

So, since the last time I blogged, it's pretty much been uneventful yet incredibly eventful at the same time. How is this possible? Well, it's pretty much same ole same ole, but a LOT of it. The biggest thing that's happened needs a little background...I'll save that for later on in the post. Another big this that happened is that I had my first speech last week. After taking a pre-speech test online to determine my speech anxiety, it saying I had "significant speech anxiety", me pretty much dying of laughter, and my teacher saying that she will tell the person who made the test that it was wrong, I decided to speak about Haiti and how we can't forget them because they still need our help. After interviewing Amie via facebook and doing research on my own I ended up getting a 95 on my speech. I was pretty happy about that and my teacher told me that I knew about my topic and that I was passionate about it.

And on Wednesday night, I stayed up until 4AM writing a paper, got 4 hours of sleep, didn't have the most brilliant day Thursday. But I got to spend 3 hours driving around shopping for props which was a great de-stresser for me.

Ok, now background to big news. I have been involved in church drama, every aspect of it, since I was about 7 years old and I love it! So much so that I have actually been praying for about the past year if that is what God wants me to do with my life and for opportunities here to be involved. After 6 months of praying if God wanted me to be involved with Calvary's drama, the Music Pastor here sent out an e-mail to the choir and KidStuf team that he was looking for an intern to help him out. I e-mailed him back and asked for more information, praying that if God wanted me to do it that he would just make it blatantly obvious to me. When I got the e-mail of what the intern would need to do, it was scary how perfectly it described my talents. So, while still praying, I sent an e-mail back saying that if he still needed someone, that I was interested. And the big news is...I got the internship and its the most fun I have ever had at any job.

Aaaaand that brings us to this morning. Quick rewind, last night around 10:30, I got a text from the music pastor asking if I maybe could be in KidStuf this morning, I said yes and then proceeded learning the script. We get to church from our host home, all the student's cars that were left at the church overnight (mine included) was covered in post-its. We then get to choir practice and the Music Pastor tells me that he just found out that the girl I might have had to replace was able to do KidStuf, she just hadn't told him. I was completely ok with that because I wasn't ready for it as much as I would have liked to have been anyway haha. Choir practice and Sunday School went great, it was the last session of D-Now and it was an awesome wrap-up talking about community. We then walk over to the church and I decided to stop by the KidStuf area just to make sure everything was going to run smoothly, turns out 3 main props weren't down there...ok, so then I go find Kevin (Music Pastor) and say "Giant mirror, non-slip mat, ladder." After a moment of a very confused look, he figured out that I was talking about the props and told me he forgot. (Now he knows that when I'm looking for something, or talking about a drama that's about to take place, I neglect to use complete sentences) He tells me where I can find the props I need. After sorting all that out I realize that there isn't anyone to run Power Point downstairs...I find Kevin again and we figure that I can go down there after choir and help them out, he then promises that I won't be doing anything next Sunday so I can sit with my parents...What goes through my mind? 'BWAHAHAHAHAHA I've heard that one before' But it turns out they got it all sorted and I was able to stay in service this week.

If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not. I love helping in drama, and part of that is running around 5 minutes before you go on finding props :D I just love it!