twenty things I wish very much to witness or accomplish in my twentieth year, in no particular order

1. A substantially-sized bookshelf in my bedroom. I have yet to find The Perfect One. It seems to me that such a one would be a Bookshelf-Desk-Combo, but I do not know. As I said; I have yet to discover such a thing. I'm keeping an eager eye on thrift stores and such.

2. A position at the hospital. I would really like to start doing my vocation more. It kind of stinks to be learning one thing at school and practicing another at work.

3. Better management of my resources. This one is rather tedious and too like a New Year's Resolution, so we'll say it's so self-explanatory that anything further on the subject would constitute redundancy. End.

4. Survive nursing school - that is, Pass the next two semesters and in-between summer-sessions. This is a pretty big one - and also self-explanatory. I would prefer for my financial affairs and general State of Dignity to remain intact while doing so, but of course those are secondary to General Survival.

5. Visit Jenny and Abigail. Actually, I would like to visit as many TLC folk as I may, but realistically speaking I will probably only get one trip in for my own amusement, and seeing as how things are falling that will probably mean Jenny and Abigail.

6. See Libby graduate. This is somewhat in conjunction with the likelihood of 5, but not altogether so. Anyway. Yeah.

7. Visit Mutti for her birthday. It may take some schedule-manipulation and a skipped class (the horror!) but I mean to do everything in my power to succeed at this one.

8. Convince Dani to pierce her ears. Said event cannot take place until Summer of 2012, but it's never too soon to begin Persuasive Measures.

9. Conduct a Harry Potter film marathon, culminating with the second part Deathly Hallows. Because sometimes, you just have to be a nerd.

10. Find my recipe book and make a batch of chocolate mousse for Missy. (In case you haven't noticed, not all of these are Grand and Universally-Significant.)

11. Translate a book from my Greek New Testament.

12. Start an IV - for real.

13. Get my wimpy self to run thirty minutes, nonstop, on a regular basis.

14. Read through my vast supply of Puritan Paperbacks, including those that are on the Reread list.

15.Write letters. Lots and lots of letters. I have several hundred blank cards waiting to be used. And if I go bankrupt on stamps, at least it's a more dignified way to go than, say, silly bands.

16. Finish writing ol' Barnabas.

17. Write my Tea Story.

18. Rewrite Manaqua.

19. Start taking pictures again.

20. Wash my car - and find a Frog Air Freshener to be Horatio Hornblower and complete my collection. Yeah. I saved the really important one for last.

a motley assortment of notable highlights from my nineteenth year

• running shoes
• my iPod (and the music it carries around)
• getting my ears pierced. 
• tea
• scarves
• my faithful little ESV that travels everywhere with me 
• the love I received from my home-away-from-home Lutheran Church last spring 
• two dear friends (Jenny and Abigail) successfully publishing their books (squee!) 
• time with Mutti and the green-growing things last spring
• a little Puritan paperback called Glorious Freedom by Richard Sibbes
• hiking in Colorado last summer 
• the ministry given to and received from the high school girls' group at my old church. 
• NaNoWriMo. 
• God's continued faithfulness to me in bringing me to a nursing school and sustaining me through the program. 
• an awesome little webcommunity called The Lion's Call, where I hold a dubious staffieship and many thoroughly established friendships. 
• my current hometown and the continual outpouring of love from the Ws and the ERC. 
• the fellowship-through-letters that I enjoyed greatly last spring in my pseudo-exile, and the continual ministry they provide. Abigail, Jenny, Abigail, Rachel, Hannah, Megan, Elizabeth, Jessica, Marthe... that I would know so many people willing to correspond in this fashion (thankfully with varying rates of communication-flow, else I should be always swamped instead of only mostly swamped) in a culture where this has gone out of fashion so much is not something I can take for granted. I love mah peoples. ^.^ 
• my family-family. I am so tremendously blessed to be the second of eight, born to parents who are honest about their sin and passionate about holiness, and who love me because He first loved them. It's not perfection, but it is a joy.
• God - who made tea, and music, and exercise, and nature, and people, and words, and vocations, and above all who Is Who He Is... for the ability to Know Him by His Word and Spirit... for the way He loves us in and through every circumstance and relationship... for the way He works through the broken and foolish things... for the way everything is about Him, and His glory and His perfection...

Didja notice? I added a few things to the sidebar on the right there. One of them traces the progress of school, just to give you all a little hint as to what's going on in that sphere of my life and (hopefully) thereby stall the urge to simply lather this blog with all things nursing school.

The other one details the progress of whatever 'major' writing project I happen to be dabbling at currently. I'm using this (borrowed in some part from Abigail's blog) more because I think it will help me actually write than because I think you all desperately want to see that little wordcount-number rise by scant increments every few days. It does me good to be able to go in and nudge it up, however so slightly, whether anyone cares to pay attention to it or not.

My current literary-dabble is a complete rewrite of my NaNo10 novel. I did not finish said novel. Over the course of November, I barely eked out 50K before the end of the month, at which point it struck me that if I never had to look at a Microsoft Word screen again, it would be too soon. I think it was so difficult to finish the 50K this year (last year I blew through 100K without any memorable hang-ups) because of a scene four-fifths through. It was a quiet little moment where Barnabas (my poor, dilapidated main character) takes a walk down an empty street and is captivated by the melody of church bells, whereupon he visits the church and has all sorts of Momentous Experiences which never really resolved themselves. But Barney had not reached the church before I suddenly realized that I had got the novel all wrong. I was attacked with the awful suspicion that this scene was supposed to be at the beginning.

Once I began to suspect, it soon became apparent that this suspicion was nothing less than fact. The beginning of the novel, although operating from a very different beginning, made much more sense with Barney making tracks for an old church in an abandoned side of town. But what could I do? I was 38,493 words along (on page 100, to be exact), and I was at that point on the brink of falling behind schedule. I did not have the time to stop and rework the whole thing then and there, though the less rational part of me wished to.

Barney's quiet trek down that street to the church marked the beginning of all real difficulties. Nothing came together plotwise. The story flailed and struggled under my pen. I wrote, but it was with a helpless, hopeless attitude--I knew I would have to rewrite the whole thing anyway.

So, after more than a month of swearing off Microsoft Word and lamenting the fact that I now have fifty thousand words of a novel that is ill-ordered, I've picked up my pen and hobbled somewhat-reluctantly back to the beginning. It's not all horrible. I had a collection of lovely characters, and dear old Barney especially is beginning to show more facets of himself after the respite and rearrangement. I've even worked out a better title for it--maybe.

My goal is to write a little--perhaps only a very little--nearly every day, in spite of nursing school and clinicals and work and my own laziness. The goal of that little is to produce something written each day from which I derive some satisfaction in the job-well-done quarter. And hopefully, in a few decades' time, the novel gets finished, too. Here's to NaNoWriMo, to the fifty thousand words of a plotline written in haste and semi-futility, and to characters that only become more richly colored and deeply drawn the more you twist the scenarios around to fit the storyline. Only time will tell with mine.

You've heard it before. Someone raises a hand ponderously and intones with as much philosophical solemnity as anyone can manage:

Nothing's certain in this life except death and taxes!

There's something about that statement that bites like Reality. There will always be something taxing us - mostly governments, which is why the phrase smarts of irony and persecution - and pretty much everybody dies. These are things you can count on - rocks of comfort to hold onto when you Just Don't Know Anymore.

Ah, well, at least there's death and taxes.

In my college studentship, there are inevitabilities - analogous to death and taxes in the scope of life. I like to call them tests and tuition. There will always be another tuition payment, and there will always be more tests. Sometimes a test is used to assign a grade, and sometimes they are dressed up as 'learning experiences' - but the whole point of education is answering the question: does this sheep-like member of the student class-herd get what I'm feeding them? And I take it - why? Yes, I groan at an upcoming exam or shake my head over the tuition bill. I rage and complain, but in the end I prepare for the test (or don't) and take it; I scrounge up the funds and pay the bill. I swallow it because it's inevitable. It's tolerable, however outrageous or unnecessary it may be, because it's expected.

I draw this analogy because something struck me this morning as I stepped out of the classroom building. This morning, we had skill check-offs for our IV therapy module as well as a written math test to make sure we can manage all those horrendously tricksy (tongueincheekhere) medication calculations. The thought that assailed me with such profundity was this:

Hey! Look! The day's not over! There's a whole afternoon left!

That's when another realization hit me: how ridiculous I was to realize this so late. Exams and tuition are inevitable, and I expect them to come and go and come and go - yet somehow I allow them to loom over me as if the rest of my life is on hold until I deal with this one test. I pour so much of my thinking into the test before it happens that I forget to consider what I will do after it. More importantly, I neglect to take shelter in the fact that there are certain unshakeable truths found in the Person and Work of the Almighty. I invest my whole self - identity, state of emotions - in the outcome of a specific test of my intellect, my cunning, my monetary worth. And then I have to scramble when it's over, whether I succeed or fail, because the true nature of that test is shown: temporal, fleeting, and still leaving things very uncertain.

Never forget: there's life after death and taxes.

That's a line from a Relient K song, and it outlines my confession: I forget. There's life after death and taxes. There's life, even, after tests and tuition. Whether that test is passed or failed, or that tuition bill is paid on time or not - life goes on. More than that, life has beauty and meaning transcending that specific moment in my life - not just because of the blue skies and sun reflecting off of the snow, but because of the glory of God reflecting off of me and everyone and everything happening around me. I know I want that beauty and meaning, and I know it only comes from God - but I forget. My hands are always trying to grasp it through successes, grades, possessions.

That moment, stepping out of the classroom with five tests behind me and a whole day ahead, I remembered.

Today, for what is surely the millionth time in my life, I stepped out into the sunshine and laid down my pens and needles. After all my nursing tests, after all my financial maneuverings, after all the studying, after all the taxpaying, after death itself - after all these things, there's something unshakeable which secures life eternal for me, and it has nothing to do with my passing any of these tests. There is life after death and taxes, and it rests completely on the glory and goodness of God. In no other can I find beauty and meaning. He is my eternal resting place. As Augustine said, 'We were made for you, O God, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.'

Or, as the Psalmist says,

And in that purest light of Thine, we clearly light shall see.

I thought of this at work today. Not quite true-to-life, but drawn from some actual events and different people, not necessarily them I work with.

She was nothing to me. She was not less than nothing; my thoughts toward her were infused with a neutral, bland feeling of not bothering to think anything of her. I did not wish her to die, but I did not particularly care that she lived, or what sort of life she lived.

She did not strike me a particularly intelligent or driven. I thought she was rather silly, with her pretty monkey-face and childish remarks, but she was not an idiot. She did not work with diligence or stick to her tasks, but she was not slow or unpleasant.

Sometimes, I admit, she annoyed me. I didn't like it when she wandered away from her work or complained about silly little things or talked about how incompetent I was behind my back (that might have been jealousy talking, but I really didn't know - I didn't care enough to presume anything, of course). Sometimes, she outright ticked me off - but only very rarely. She would do things like take too long of a time on break or wander off and ignore my calls for help, and then pretend like I was simply stupid about it. (Of course, I don't pretend to know what she meant by all that - it might have been a great misunderstanding - but those happen not very often, though they are not impossible...)

Today, she got a splinter in her hand. She was howling about it and flailing hopelessly with a pair of bad tweezers from under the desk. She'd probably gotten it on the railing on the office stairs; it was always leaving them in my hands, and I knew how nasty and painful they were. Some of mine had gotten rather badly infected, too. I grabbed the injured appendage and a pair of surgical scissors and had at it. For just one moment, our minds were bent toward one goal - getting that splinter out. I looked at her, and I knew that that splinter was bad for her, and I wanted the opposite of that.

It was simple, it was silly, but there you have it. And I figured out that maybe, just maybe, I could want the opposite of that more often - that it wasn't that bad, that she wasn't so bad. Because really - is anybody ever nothing to me? Once the counter of someone's worth drops below something, it immediately hits the negatives. There is no apathy; or rather, there is no apathy free from hatred.

We got the splinter out, me digging with the scissors and her manipulating the pressure on her skin with her other hand. It's not everything, but it's something.

Even the pessimist when he thinks, if he ever does, must realise that he has something to be thankful for: he owes something to the world, as [Robinson] Crusoe did to the ship. You may regard the universe as a wreck: but at least you have saved something from the wreck.

-G.K. Chesterton

I'm thankful for dirty dishes and dirty laundry to be washed, for phone conversations with Mutti, for a cell phone that keeps dropping the calls just so we have to come up with a new joke every time I call her back.

I'm thankful for the little sum of Christmas cash that was mine before I spent it all on used books and music. I'm thankful for the fact that work is over, for bread'n'butter and Mr'n'MrsW in the kitchen, for piles of unopened (used books!) packages on my bed to greet me when I stagger into my room. I'm thankful for Andy Gullahorn and Andrew Osenga, whose music I am thoroughly belatedly discovering and not losing a bit of enjoyment for the lateness.

I'm thankful for being sore in muscles and in spirit, for knowing that I've been pressed to my limits but not beyond, and especially for the knowledge that though the muscles may grow and the soul may develop, everything I am is found in another's work, another's life, another's strength.

I'm thankful for the feeble little conversation at work where I threw caution to the wind and told one of my coworkers about the Chesterton book I was reading. I'm thankful for the hope that maybe I can get that person to read something, since they seemed interested.

I'm thankful for Mama and Papa, for the thought of them an hour away and the clumsy calm that is my family's household. I'm thankful for the love they have for each other and Christ. I'm really thankful for The Prodigal God, the book they gave me and all my siblings. It's beautiful.

I'm thankful for Libby, safely (I pray) returned to school and beginning to rearrange her life according to the demands of student teaching. I'm thankful for all those seventh graders who will supply her with stories and struggles, for the ways grace will find her and she will find grace in it all.

I'm thankful for Ruth, looking forward to finishing things off (driver's test!) and starting other things (a new semester!). I'm thankful for the life Christ has given her, for her passion for him, and pray that she would not be bogged down in the mire of decision-making and measuring-up, but that His love for her would be her motive and ministry.

I'm thankful for Dani, and very thankful for music and how she has found the voice of God calling to her from it. I'm thankful for her maturity in pursuing that, and I pray that her perseverance and joy in the artistry of creating and communicating music for others would be deep and increasing exponentially as she ultimately delights in her Savior.

I'm thankful for Ben and Greg, whose names I can't yet separate in my mind. I'm so thankful for the ways they are stretching high from head to toe and from soul to soul. I'm thankful for their own desires to pursue Christ and His Word, for the passions and talents that God has given them. I pray that God would keep Ben strong and focused, that he would not be frustrated by the thwarting of his plans but see in that the inevitable triumph of God's greater, unsearchably good plan. I pray that Greg would remain tenderhearted and perceptive, that his eye for details would lead him to know how to better love others, and that he would be gentle in his actions, especially towards himself. I pray that God would give them both an increase of joy and contentment, and that they would both be learning to fight for truth and mercy.

I am thankful for Keeta and Kevin. I thank God for the way He has given them to our family, to try us with their shortcomings and shame us with their strengths. I pray he would help them to seek each other's good above their own - lead them more and more into a true and renewing knowledge of Him- let my parents' hearts be comforted as they watch Him leading them from glory to glory.

While I think of my family, I am thankful for the faith of my grandmothers, so very different in matters of tone and pitch and yet both eager to see their children and grandchildren growing and resting in the Lord.

I am thankful for thankfulness. It is not always mine to be thankful for.

This is my personal list of favourites from the last year (which is already disappearing over the horizon behind me, so I'd better finish this up before it's mid-December and time to write one for 2011). Admittedly, it's horridly scattered and ill-informed and over-lengthy, but as I had an even number of five that I could think of immediately, it was convenient as well as fun.




5. An Airplane Carried Me To Bed - Sky Sailing

A pretty nothing, perhaps, but a very pretty nothing - and I still maintain that Adam Young's creativity and innocent eyes-wide-open-ness is a healthy dose of something Christians should seek to imitate. I know I am biased to say this in two ways: first, by the fact that Adam Young is a Christian himself, and one who writes a blog which is sort of like reading the sort of things I should like to write and can't (no duh - he writes those lyrics, and I couldn't); and secondly, because I grew fond of his songs while I was inundated with cheap country music at my job up in the northern parts of the country and came to enjoy the fixed innocence of Adam's lyrics and style in comparison to the studied tawdriness of most country music. (I am not slamming all country music; I still nurture a soft spot for some of it, and I can tolerate most of the rest. Exposure to much of that latter part in a nonstop dosage for six to eight hours straight is... overdoing it. But I digress.) At any rate, yes, this is the Adam Young of Owl City. I like Owl City, and since this is basically acoustic-Owl-City (more of the singer-songwriter feel than the electricalness), I like it even better, though it doesn't have the zing!song factor of something like Meteor Shower. If you hate Owl City, I highly doubt this will change your mind. Still, it's adorable. Yayness.

These continents from overhead
look like tiny paper shapes,
intricately set in place.
Below the misty mountain clouds,
there's a lovely silver bay
where sunset sailors often hide away.

4. The House You're Building - Audrey Assad

This is something of an odd-duck-story. Poor Audrey; I saw her in concert with Tenth Ave in '09, and her act was simply her and a piano. Not having much fondness for pianos as a general rule at the time (they're growing on me, I promise), and since the nature of the act made all the songs seem rather unvaried and dull, I thought: 'Good lyrics. Could never listen to a solid album of that.' and set her aside (shallowness, thy name is Anna). Well, early this last fall iTunes put her up as one of their freebies - a lovely little single called The House You're Building (the title track). I recognized the name and thought, 'well, hey, it's free!' I downloaded the song - a beautiful, not-just-piano hymn describing God building his church with us, living stones, broken though we are. And then, in an ironic turn of events and phrasing, I was sold. I can say, with all solemnity, that her lyrics are definitely better than the casual 'good,' and her music is not boring. Sweet grace, total dependence on Christ, wrestling with human relationship, simple confession of love and trust - mmm, yes. The final touch of irony? The song I was immediately struck with by its beauty and razor-sharpness was the last - a simple, piano-and-voice melody. Go figure.

Bind up these broken bones.
Mercy, bend and breathe me back to life -
but not before you show me how to die.

(Nota Bene: I can't put these remaining three in any definite hierarchy, because I love them all and they all are rich in such different and yet such similar ways. Yes, they're all Christian artists, which isn't something that can be said to make my 'best of' list each yet, but 2010 was extraordinary in that nearly all of my most-squeeworthy-artists released albums that surpassed my highest expectations (which, they being squeeworthy, were very high). I'm not whizzish enough to figure out how to make them rearrange themselves at random every time the page refreshes, so I've contrived what I think anybody could look at and say, 'Oh, she would order them that way.' Ta-da!)





3. The Shelter - Jars of Clay

I love these guys. They've been around for fifteen years, and they've been very intentional about not playing to the tune of the Christian music industry's 'popular stuff' (ho hum, somewhat familiar with Andrew Peterson there, eh?) - yet somehow everyone knows about them, their musical style has never stagnated, and their lyrics are stunning (did I mention their theology is excellent?). Also, they're very entertaining in concert (grin!). So - let's see: good theology, good lyrics, good music, lack of conformity to popular Christian music... yes, they're definitely likable in my book.

What's more, they've contrived an album here that does what it preaches. This is an album about Christians living in community, so they dragged sixty-some people from the Christian music industry to make this project: Brandon Heath, Audrey Assad, Mac Powell, Derek Webb, TobyMac, Burlap to Cashmere, Mike Donehey (!), Dawn Richardson, David Crowder, Amy Grant... The result is lovely: a call for Christian service, but much more than that. No mere cry for social outreach and self-betterment; this is a cry to look to Christ first, who is our head, and then to live as His body. The call goes out repeatedly for believers to turn from their lies and false gods, and turn towards to Christ. I'm sure to quote the whole album if I don't catch myself, so I shall simply mention that it is eminently quotable, and you should find out why for yourself. Seriously: it's a beautiful listen that'll jog you in the stomach toward Christ - and it's only $5 on Amazon for the month of January. There. Shameless, ain't I? (But seriously, for that price - can you argue?)

So, God, bruise the heels we've dug in the ground
that we might move closer to Love.
Pull out the roots we've dug in so deep.
Finish what you've started.
Help us to believe.

2. Counting Stars - Andrew Peterson

What can I say? Andrew continues to unfold the Gospel to the listener in beautiful ways, using creation and both the Old and New Testament effortlessly to draw the reader 'from glory to glory,' gazing at the face of Christ that grows ever clearer. I can't possibly say how many ways this album (much less Andrew's broader spectrum of work) has blessed me; they increase every time I listen to them. The album opens with Many Roads, a song about the Providence of God in drawing the listener to the singer for the mutual encouragement of both, hones in on the faithfulness of God to believers and their children. He delves into a bit of personal testimony, sings a lullaby to his daughter, prays let the great God of my fathers be the great God of my children still... I won't try to summarize the whole album; it simply bends ever nearer, straining to see through the darkened glass, beckoning the listener with it to the feet of Christ. He is our God; in Him, we have a royal Priesthood, a hope, a sure and strong presence in the blackest hole of a dismal world. Yet he is not satisfied with simply beholding as through a glass with the eyes of faith, and the last track explodes with the longing for Christ's return, when we shall see Him with our physical eyes:

Mighty God, how I fear you,
and I long to be near you -
How long? How long is this the song that we sing?
How long until the reckoning?
I know that I don't know what I'm asking,
but I long to look You full in the face.

1. The Light Meets the Dark - Tenth Avenue North

(It'sfivedollarsonAmazonalsogobuyitthismonth.Srsly.)

So... yeah. If you didn't see this one coming, "I shall think you a greater simpleton." I shan't sport with your intelligence by squeeing, but this album joined me midway through my little excursion up north and just ... as the inside of the album cover so aptly put it, the point of the album is to keep hammering the message of the Gospel home - and that's the one thing we all need hammered into our brains the most, because it's the one thing we're most prone to forget. The first album (incidentally also $5 on Amazon this month; that place really gets things right once in a while) was crafted to send out the essence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: that God's love is continually demonstrated towards me, a sinner, not in giving me that one thing I think I need to be happy, but in giving me His own Son to Redeem me even while I was still his enemy. Their second, therefore, is meant to continue that path: the invitation of the Gospel has been accepted. What next? Well... wonderfully, the album answers that question by simply preaching the Gospel. After we're 'saved,' to borrow a much-misused colloquialism, we still need God. Our salvation is utterly dependent on Christ, always. We don't work to gain God's favor in the first place, and there's nothing we can do to keep his favor once we get it. It is only and ever secured in Christ. That's the foundation for the album, but it moves on from there to challenge believers to greater honesty and courage in the gospel. If God doesn't need our righteousness to save us, why do we live like we need our righteousness (particularly in the eyes of others) to be saved?

The opening call is to believers to find healing in brokenness (Healing Begins), which transitions into the reminder that God is the one who saves the lost (Strong Enough to Save). The third track reminds the believer that the source of their identity is in Christ's recreating work in their lives, not in their own past successes or failures, while The Truth Is Who You Are (quite possibly my favorite track of the lot) points quite clearly to Who Christ Is. All The Pretty Things is the cry of a believer to Christ in the face of temptation, and On and On is Christ's response to the believer (and more strongly, I think, the whole Body) stumbling in that temptation. Any Other Way, which sits in between the last two, talks about the true nature of Love - our love for each other, and God's love for us - and how that Love has to involve pain and hurt for it to be truly enough. Hearts Safe (A Better Way) is something of an unanswered question from the believer to God in the face of a loved one rejecting the Gospel. House of Mirrors again calls the believer to transparency and honesty in Christ rather than self-perfecting in self-righteousness. Empty My Hands is a beautiful song, as I'll describe below, and as you listen to it you're quite sure the album couldn't finish on a better note - but then, at the very end, Oh My Dear provides a personal story from one of the band's members describing the practical application of the previous ten tracks.

I do not mean to discredit those who have taught me in my life or imply that God did not use them as teachers. But I think in many respects music is a gentler and more impressive instructor, and I have learnt the gospel not exclusively, but especially, from this band. And perhaps the hierarchy rings true after all, at least down to the last two: because Andrew and Tenth's music has been with me over the last few years, one of the richest examples of the ways God uses the broader church to drown our sick souls in his life-bringing Truth. The lyrics below from Tenth aren't, as I said, from the last song on their album, but it is for me very like the last track of Andrew's album: the resounding cry of the believer's heart, in honesty and brokenness, in humility over sin and rejoicing in salvation, surrounded by all the heartaches born of a broken world and the messes our own sin creates: Christ, come to us and fill us up!

'Cause my mind is like a building burning down:
I need your grace to keep me - keep me from the ground.
And my heart is just a prisoner of war:
A slave to what it wants, and to what I'm fighting for -
so won't you empty my hands,
fill up my heart,
capture my mind with You?

How long, O Lord?