Expectation.

(Warning: the thoughts contained in this post are typically irrationally and abstract. And it's been worked on for weeks. And all that.)

Okay... so I'm pathetic about posting. I hope to become better about this. And since my last "creative" poem about... well, whatever that poem is about, a lot has happened.

I am a high school graduate. This is a weird thought for me. I'm graduated early (at 16, as opposed to 17 or 18, I suppose). I think this is not so much because I'm graduated, but because of expectation, which is something I've been thinking about a lot.

When a girl graduates high school, there are a few different groups of people who all have different expectations. One camp expects me to go to a university on a nice scholarship (for? I'm still not entirely sure I understand all of the scholarships that are out there.) get my degree and have a nice, illustrious career until I'm twenty-five or thirty, and then think about settling down. Another group says I should get married. The end. Now. (At sixteen? Perhaps they mean court now, and get married on my eighteenth birthday.) Others combine those ideas, throwing in a few twists like traveling, working on political campaigns (me?), picking up sewing or cake decorating, nannying, and other sundry hobbies.

They all ask me, "What are you going to do now?" as if the graduation of high school means some sort of drastic switch where I abandon everything I used to do and start doing something else. I really just want to hold steady on the course, to finish well what I began and then see what seasons God transitions me to.

But people don't expect this.

What is the value of expectation? As a naturally compliant person, I tend to follow peoples' expectations on me, which makes it rather frustrating when some expectations are in direct opposition to each other. I suppose this is why God is teaching me and guiding me, and not all of these people. It's made me careful to evaluate the expectations I have on myself and on others.

I think the most dangerous expectations I have are on myself - I must stay up till 1 tonight to finish my American Literature curriculum, I must pass four tests per month, I must finish YSG by next January, I must learn, I must be, I must be better. Discouraging, yes? I think all of us struggle with expectation, whether ours or others'. It can easily take our eyes off of the God who is to be trusted and obeyed, and onto what we think we ought to do or be.

I am learning a lot of what it means to love, and to have faith. Faith is not an easy thing for me - I am a creature of compassion and joy, not of faith! But I think I am learning.

So what am I going to do? I am learning still. I think that I will finish college this year, continue teaching, maybe travel a little more. Then, next year, I think I will see about traveling and teaching together. But this is God's business.

I expect God's glory, and that is all.

"Alone"

"Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were - I have not seen
As others saw - I could not bring
My passions from a common spring -
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow - I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone -
And all I lov'd - I lov'd alone -
Then - in my childhood - in the dawn
Of a most stormy life - was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still -
From the torrent, or the fountain -
From the red cliff of the mountain -
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold -
From the lightning of the sky
As it pass'd me flying by -
From the thunder, and the storm-
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view -

I am sometimes moved to tears by this poem. I am analyzing poetry for my college and writers guild studies and though I have only just read this poem for this assignment, I am continually touched by the loneliness Mr. Poe felt. How sad to perish alone without ever feeling the love he desperately wanted.

This is exactly why I want to be a great communicator. Because I don't want to be alone, but draw my passions from a common spring. But more than that, because I don't want others to call into an abyss and hear only the echo of their own voice. I want to be a part of that still small voice that whispers, "I know you. I made you." It makes me sad to think that some of the most brilliant and wanting minds died out loving alone and only loving what would bring them loneliness, when there was a God who was willing to fill them with love waiting the whole time.

The sad thing is that there are Poes all around us, disguised as ordinary people. I think about how many people I've brushed off, saying they're not worth my time. But the truth of the matter is that the ordinary people are the ones we're called to reach. We often read about Jesus among the lepers or healing the blind, those exotic conditions that capture our imagination, but Jesus was most often among the ordinary, forgotten people who are just as lonely and oppressed as the traditional missionary audiences we think of.

Can you learn to reach out and love like Jesus loved? The answer is, simply, no. But can you learn to surrender to God's calling and love as much as you can, with his help? Absolutely.

2 Peter 1:5a,7-8: But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your... godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love. If these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren, nor unfruitful, in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Proof...

... that I really am a nerd:

I have a superb reading word per minute!

Average reading speed is 150-400 wpm.

My initial reading speed is 650 wpm.

Less than 5% of North Americans have a wpm over 400.

After taking a speed reading course, my wpm is now 1060 per 45 seconds.

With comprehension.

And I'm so happy.

I am such a nerd.

Around... Sort of

Pretty much the title sums it up. I'm around.... sort of. Since I haven't been posting much, I'll give you my life in a nutshell, which can, roughly, be summed up in my life this past week.

Last Friday: I was commandeered into service by a lady who is half my height but twice my gumption. I spent an hour guarding a door for our homeschool graduation.
(Me: Seth! Let me in!
Seth: NO! Go away.
Me, fifteen minutes later: SETH! They're attacking me with pencils!
Seth: NO! You are obsessed! Go away!
Seth's mom: CATEY! Let people in there before they kill you with pencils!)

Saturday: Duo practice. With a guy who hates this kind of speech. Both of our first times. Ever.
(Me: We need to keep the line!
Shane: NO! We need to cut the line!
Me: I'm the interper!
Shane: I'm in charge!)

Sunday: Dad leaves. World ends.
(Me, while frantically trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to get the speech to work without the line Shane cut: Sam! SSSSSHHHH!
Sam: WAAAAH!!!!!!!
Me, while still frantically trying to figure out how in the world I'm going to get the speech to work without the line Shane cut: WAAAAH!)

Monday: We are plunged into madness and chaos of the most devious nature.
(Me: Okay, so Mrs. B will pick us up and take us to Chapter, and there Carli will do her interp, Joss will do her interp, and I'll do my interp with Shane, despite the fact that I have no clue how to live without the line he cut, and then Mom will pick us up, take us to Costco while Joss does VBS practice, then we'll pick up the dog from the vet, go home and have dinner. Anything I forgot?
Mom: Yeah. Sam's running a fever and hasn't stopped crying all day.)

Tuesday: Sam will not stop crying. Oh yeah. And laundry. Lots and lots of laundry.
(Me, while still trying to figure out how to get the speech to work without the line that Shane cut, since we mysteriously didn't get to do it the day before, and foldng a mile-high pile of laundry: When does Daddy get home? Soon?)

Wednesday: Sam is not sick. So why is he such a mess?
(Sam: WAAAAAH!
Me, while still folding the mile-high pile of laundry and trying to figure out how to get the speech to work without the line that Shane cut: WAAAH! Tell me Daddy's getting home soon!

Thursday: Performed speech - in the middle of nowhere while still trying to figure out how to give this speech without the line that Shane cut.
(Me, after driving to this tiny church in the middle of nowhere: Yeah, I'm here to work on a speech.
Kaitlin: Aren't you competing next year?
Me: Yes. But I'm working on one with Shane. It's a duo.
Kaitlin: You are lying to me.
Me: No... seriously
Kaitlin: You have done the impossible.
Me, under my breath: Not quite. Figuring out how to give this speech without the line Shane cut is doing the impossible...)

Today: DADDY'S HOME!!!! And putting the line that Shane cut BACK into my speech!
(Me: I'm right! You may be in charge, but I'm right! And that line is SO going back in the speech!)

Yes, so, essentially, that's been my life. Sound interesting? It was. In retrospect.

And, in addition to all that, I'm up on:

Kids of Faith Online Magazine: the summer issue is up! We have some fabulous stuff in this one, including but not limited to: a brand new contributor (Alyssa!), a review of Do Hard Things (the review was recommended by the Harris brothers, who are the authors of the book!) and (if I do say so myself) the very best installment of Beneath a Dark Sky yet.

Real Teen Faith: my Squire CWG mentor's site. Read my devo about summer training, if you like.

Echoes in ink,
C.

"Homeschool Chemistry Class Found Dead on Kitchen Floor"

(Imagine finding that headline in your local newspaper!)


Today was Co-op. It was really fun. I performed my Apologetics speech (good score - yay) and then went on to do Chemistry, where I was poisoned by my well-meaning teacher and nearly died.


Let me explain.


We're studying the Chemistry of Solutions. One of our experiments involved us dissolving a compound into water to demonstrate exothermic reactions (the kind that give off heat when performed).


We read the entire experiment carefully before beginning. We even wore the safety goggles like they recommend (they recommend we wear safety goggles when we're dealing with salt, so we usually look at their goggles suggestion somewhat critically).

But this time we even did that!

Conclusion of Chemistry experiment: Drano+water= bad news.

We were supposed to mix lye (like Drano) and water to observe the difference in temperature. Well, they didn't mention that when you mix lye and water, it produces a toxic fume.

We're a small homeschool Chemistry class. We have five students (only four were here today), so we usually do our experiments at the kitchen sink (which is where it's recommended!)

My mom also teaches a history class for kids approximately 4-11 years old. They're a pretty small class too, so they meet in the living room.

Our only guy Chemistry student noticed the problem with the gases first. As soon as we started the experiment, he started to itch, so he dashed outside. Within a minute, I started to feel like I couldn't breath. I started coughing, but I couldn't get a decent breath. I tried pulling up my shirt over my mouth, but it didn't work. I ran outside.

Within two minutes, the history class started coughing. My mom thought it was kind of weird how they all started coughing at the same time (they couldn't smell it) but when she started coughing too, she realized our grievous error.

I have never cleared a house before today!

So, my whole class is kind of off right now. Three of the four of us have headaches, all of us are slightly dizzy and everyone, including our teacher, is exhausted.



I'm still coughing.


A list (because I'm visual):

Today is the first time I've ever:

1. been poisoned.

2. poisoned a class full of kids, including my own sister.

3. been mad at my Chemistry curriculum

4. made a toxic gas by accident

5. cleared a house because of said toxic gas

Well, that's all for now. I've misspelled SO many words because my brain is totally shot. I'll finish Part V of Purple Mold and post that sometime in the near future, unless of course I die of Drano inhalation, in which case, Kylie can write something creative about purple mold in my obituary.

A Short Opinion

I haven't posted in a while, so here are my less-than-entertaining thoughts about life.

Today was co-op. My mom, my friend Emily (of doomed razor fame) and I did an interview for writing class. It was so much fun, but now my brain is dead. That is bad, considering tomorrow is Chemistry (moles... moooooooooles!) and my brain can't be dead for Chemistry.

Today was also Lit class. We're reading Ivahoe, and one of the characters (Locksley is his name) is the equivalent of Robin Hood. All of us LOVE Locksley and LOVE Robin Hood. I personally think it's wonderful that in the wake of great events and substantial, formidable evils and spectacularly glorious bravery, we have such people as Locksley/Robin Hood. If we didn't have them, I'd be tempted to think that people were so very different then, so far from who I am, that I couldn't understand them.

King Arthur is my personal favorite maybe-true person. I like to believe that Arthur was real, in some form. He is so deeply imbedded in English history and mythology that it would be strange if some such person didn't exist, or maybe even several persons who made up, together, this King Arthur that we have come to love.

I was so inspired by this merry brave King that I decided to write about him in one of my stories. It is a rather unusual story, taking places over thousands of years and told in several perspectives. I put in some interesting twists to his character. His name isn't actually Arthur, but rather, his title (since he is a warrior) is the Bear. The word Arthur means 'bear'. He is sort of elected leader of his small city-state that he recaptures from the enemy, but not officially. He works through a weak monarch. He's supposed to be married to a girl named Gwynnhyfvar, who is a Welsh princess, but we all know the story of King Arthur's misfortune with his wife Queen Guinevere. This is the man I wrote to be King Arthur, but not in the same way as so many see him.

Thinks like these add interest to one's story, because they not only add credibility, but they make people, places, events and times real to a reader.

I call people like King Arthur, Robin Hood, Salome and the like the forgotten heroes of history. We don't even necessarily know they existed, and if they did exist, we are certainly not sure what they were really like. But certain actions who never have their source identified, certain character traits, certain things suggested by the story can be applied to these forgotten heroes to give them a new role in a story where they star now as heroes, and not simply characters who are and then are not.

It gives the writer ultimate freedom. If nothing is known about someone but the events and people surrounding him or her, the writer is free to do whatever he or she wants with the person. At the end of everything, this means that these people can even answer nagging questions that we've always had about a time period.

I think they're fun.

Have any of you ever thought about characters or people like these? Have any of you attempted writing them?

Forgive this rambling... it's my excuse for a blog update. : )

The reason I haven't posted in a month....

Well, there are actually a lot of reasons I haven't posted in a month, none of which would sound good - EXCEPT:

As some of you may know, I was pouring out my heart and soul in no fewer than nine writing assignments due between Thursday and now. It may interest you to know that I DID, indeed, get them all done, but that my brain was fried and I didn't post on my blog. Apologies.

Well, now you may see many of those heart-and-soul-poured-out articles on my wonderful friend and fellow writer's online newsletter: kidsoffaithonline.net.

Please visit if you get the chance - the newsletter is just starting to take off. Before a few months ago, Kylie (the editor) was the one and only writer, and then I was on for a month before being taken on as the second writer. Now, much to my delight, I am one of four wonderful young ladies and one amazing young man as contributors on the site.

And - one of the most exciting things for me - Kylie says I get to run the fiction column all by myself!!!! I haven't had my fiction published on a forum in FOREVER!!!!

On a more excuse-for-why-I-didn't-post-all-month- note, I totally killed my hand yesterday (and by killed, I mean, killed). We had friends over and for some UNKNOWN reason we decided it would be fun to play monkey in the middle. Yeah... that was really smart on my part. I am very small - like 5'2" on a really, really good day. My sister is my same height (but she's three years younger) and her friend who was over is an inch shorter than us. The other person playing was my friend - a young man of barely fifteen who quite decidedly towers above me. He is no fewer than eight inches taller than me - and that makes monkey in the middle very difficult. So, I found my newest athletic talent (chortle... what athletic talent?) in volleyball. I could jump up into the air and hit the ball out of the sky, but I would end up on the floor every time. The last time I did so, I tripped over my friend's foot on the way down and ended up smashing into a wall - hand first. At least that loud cracking noise wasn't my head... that's what he said, at least. Now my hand is bruised and I'm having a hard time typing with my right hand (which is bad... because I'm right-handed).

Anyway, for all the blog posts that I should have made, but didn't, visit: kidsoffaithonline.net