all I ask is that you'll be there/when I return

hey there, anybody who reads this thing. if not - hey there myself.

by the way, this post is loooooong. but it's good. if I do say so myself. :P

oh, and by the way, this is not the deep insightful post that is to come. that's still percolating. I need some really good thinking time before I can get that one out in words. but Roger is preaching on the heart this weekend, so probably that's when it will all pull together.

right now I'm spreading myself in about twenty directions, but I'm keeping God closer to the center than He's been in a long time, and I've never felt so energized and excited about all these different things!
I'm working out about 4 days a week. I started jogging, and though it makes me sore because I'm lame and not used to running, I feel really good. I went to the free yoga class on campus today and it made my body feel really good.
I did a little more job hunting today, and dragged Mitchell along because he knows Covington pretty well and I don't know it at all. we went back to this music store, which looks fairly promising, though it's minimum wage and only about 10ish hours a week. I'm supposed to call again and bug the guy at the end of the month, so.....we'll see. My mom says maybe I can get two 10 hour a week jobs, and that's fine with me. I want this job really badly, but at the same time, I know that's God's in control of what happens with my work situation.
I sort of got offered an internship with a guy I used to help out - he started a non-profit working in India, and I've done a lot of secretarial/admin type stuff for him. He really wants my help again, but I don't have time to do that and a job. He's offering an internship with him, and I'd be basically raising my own support instead of getting paid a salary. It's an option that needs some serious prayer.....and I want to see where these other roads lead.

Swing dancing this weekend! My mom and I were trying on each others' dresses tonight, both of which are super cute dancing dresses, and I'm really psyched for this Sunday to come!!!!

I started teaching my friend Tanya last week, and I just want to say that teaching adults is really fun. They are so self-motivated! And she gets the concepts a lot faster as well. But I do miss some of the aspects of teaching kids; they are a lot cuter, and then tend to see things in really different ways, which sometimes makes me learn even while I'm teaching.

There are lots of miscellaneous things coming up that I'm trying to keep track of and keep things moving for. I'm teaching a Sunday School class at our old church next weekend (awkward much?), because they've been learning about Amy Carmichael and I've been to India. I think it will actually be really good, but I'm a tiny bit apprehensive. I haven't seen most of these people in about 4 years, and I'll be by myself without my parents to hide behind anymore.

I'm getting senior pics taken....soon. Going up to West Seattle, I think, with my friend Sarah (who's taking my pics!). I'm open to cool picture ideas.....

And then there is this 5K walk/run thing to end human trafficking, and I'm REALLY EXCITED about that!!! A lot more so than last year. details: www.worldconcern.org/5k

Piano is kind of a thorn in my side, simply because of the time I don't have to give to it. I'm actually really looking forward to stopping lessons in June, because then I can just play what I want to play and not worry about perfection. I've finally realized that I will never be a performer - it just doesn't "fit" me, and I'm ready to stop trying to force it. I'm excited to accomplish Rhapsody, because it's been an impossible dream of mine forever that is now a possible reality, and that still blows my mind when I think about it. But I'm at the point in my life that I'm switching my focus completely. Now I play for church and that is for God. I'm a teacher. I'd like to play background music for parties and stuff where nobody actually pays attention to what I'm doing, and make a little money that way. I am a really good pianist and I want to learn Chopin pieces, and play them well, but only for my own enjoyment. I never meant for piano to be my life, and I just realized that piano for me is like dance for some people. It's an every day, 1-2 hours a day kind of thing. If it's not going to be a career for me, I have to stop now or it will only get worse. So yes - I'll play forever, and I'd like to play for church even more, but I'm ready to be done with lessons.
At the same time, it breaks my heart every time I think of not having a lesson with my incredible teacher every week. She has become a dear friend and mentor, and I'll miss her so, so, so much. :'(

Oh by the way, Senior Recital/Grad Party open house thing on June 13th. It's a Sunday. So yes - if I drop of the face of the earth about mid-May and don't resurface until mid-June, that is why. I have a recital for my students, then a recital for me, then a senior recital for me, all in about three weeks. And finals. I'll be going insane, but after that it's summer and I'm more free than I've ever been. *huge smile*



On to other things.....I'm not quite drowning in schoolwork. my history class is extremely intense, but I'm enjoying it. I got a 95% on the first quiz and was really happy, which is a nice baby step for me. This quarter I'm working hard on my big perfectionist thing - I can be happy with a normal grade, and I don't absolutely need a 100% 4.0. I still put good hard work into school and give most of my best, but I'm not going to kill myself trying to get a 4.0 when I can invest my energy in so many more worth-while directions. To all these teachers who have had me before, it might seem like I'm slacking. But I don't really care.....this is something I need to do, for me. It's like some kind of unhealthy obsession, this grade thing, and I'm getting rid of it. Good student is good, but perfectionist student is not good. :)

But anyway, there's this quarter-long project we're doing in history - we're in groups of 3, and we have to pick a modern world problem and write a paper and give a presentation on it. most of the topics were perfectly ghastly things like the war in Iraq, arms control, drug trafficking, world trade, and other gushingly political things I don't care to know anything more about. so I picked human rights, and by God's grace I was able to get that group, and then by God's further grace I was able to talk them into doing modern-day slavery/human trafficking as our topic. So I now have over a dozen books sitting on my bed: all very gripping and convicting and informative. My presentation is already made, I have only to get it from the books to my head and then from my head to the paper.
All this to say - this is a crisis that has been near my heart for a long time - since the first time I read a book about it two or three years ago and discovered that it's a problem that can't be ignored. Slavery never went away, it just went underground and festered and grew larger than it ever was before - larger and more invisible. Harder to trace and harder to stand against. But that doesn't justify ignoring it and living a comfortable life. So, I'm going to get no sleep for the next couple of weeks, devouring and digesting each of these books, doing all of the work for my group whether it's good for me or not, and praying. Praying hard. Praying because God might be pulling me somewhere and giving me the passion to go there......I don't know yet.

And that's really the last thing. I've been thinking so much about my future lately, mostly because I'm a senior so everyone is asking me about my future. It neither scares nor stresses me anymore that I have no distinct plan for India - and no distinct plan at all past missions college. God has a plan and I'm submitting to His authority each day. This book Crazy Love that I just finished says this:
"It is easy to use the phrase "God's will for my life" as an excuse for inaction or even disobedience. It's much less demanding to think about God's will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes. It's safer to commit to following Him someday instead of this day.
"To be honest, I believe part of the desire to "know God's will for my life" is birthed in fear and results in paralysis. We are scared to make mistakes, so we fret over figuring out God's will. We wonder what living according to His will would actually look and feel like, and we are scared to find out. We forget that we were never promised a twenty-year plan of action; instead, God promises multiple times in Scripture never to leave or forsake us.
"God wants us to listen to His Spirit on a daily basis, and even throughout the day, as difficult and stretching moments arise, and in the midst of the mundane. My hope is that instead of searching for "God's will for my life," each of us would learn to seek hard after "the Spirit's leading in my life today."

I'm still digesting............



But basically what it boils down to is this: I've been the girl who's going to grow up and be a missionary, for a long time now. I felt an inexplicable drawing to Indian people, and interpreted it as a "calling on my life" to mission work in India.

But I don't want to limit God.
I may have been wrong in my interpretation.

If He still draws me to live in India, I will go and live in India. Maybe teaching English. Maybe working with all my might against this monstrous thing called slavery. Maybe something else I don't know about yet - till He tells me.

But my point is that I don't want to set my identity as "missionary in India" and thus put God's plan inside my own box, forcing it to fit the way I have always expected it to fit. It may look very different. I may be working with Indian people here in the USA, or anywhere else in the world, or indeed it may be in India. What I end up doing may not have anything to do with directly sharing the Gospel each day. But I firmly believe that every Christian is a missionary, and every person without Christ is a mission field. So the where doesn't really matter. I do know for a fact that God has given me a love for Indian people, and so I believe that what I end up doing will have something to do with Indians. But I trust Him to take care of the details infinitely better than I ever could. He gave me passions and skills, convictions for the problems in our world today. So what I do as an adult may not look anything like traditional "missionary" work, and yet it may be just EXACTLY where God wants me to be. I want to be a Christian living where God places me and doing what He tells me to do on a daily basis - and through that "work," sharing Christ's love and His message with everyone I can. Missionary work isn't always (or even usually) about preaching. It's about a relationship with somebody and a radically different life that leads to sharing the amazing truth, maybe all at once or maybe a little at a time. I don't think it ever looks the same twice.



When I came home from India this summer, I suffered from this weird thing, where that passion and that love wasn't there in feelings anymore. I looked at India and saw all the massive problems I'd been living with face-to-face for a month. I saw people and a culture it seemed I would never come to understand. I had trouble talking to people about my trip, because honestly, I didn't want to go back. Absolutely the hardest month of my life. For awhile, India meant humid days and smelly streets and prying people and homesickness and poverty and injustice that you couldn't get away from. Or if you did, it was just this little island, like a ritzy hotel or restaurant, so ridiculously fake that you only thought of the surging dirty waters outside even more. I realized two things:
1) If I had the choice, I would never choose to live in India. It's SO MESSED UP.
2) I don't have a choice.

Seeing those two things side-by-side really screwed me up for awhile. And once I got back home to where my roots were so, so, so, so deep, I really really really didn't want to leave. I still don't want to leave - I want to live here forever. Adventure is mostly out of my system. I love my family, friends, and church so much, and giving that up to live somewhere else will probably be one of the most painful things I ever have to do.
But I'm not whining. Because over the last few weeks God has been doing something amazing in my heart, and giving me some of that passion and love back. I still don't particularly want to live in India. It's an inconvenient and unpleasant place, especially for an American. But I love the people and I want to be part of the solution to those many, many problems. So.....it's in God's hands now.
I'm not in a hurry to leave. I used to want to get to India as fast as I possibly could. Just a couple of years ago, I couldn't wait to turn 18 because that must mean I was really close to moving to India! But now that I am 18, I know I'm still far away, and I'm perfectly ok with that. "God's will for my life" is summed up in "God's will for today." and I will do a much better job following Him today and seeing where all the todays lead, rather than trying to figure out the life plan ahead of time and take control of it all myself.


I'm not sure if anyone is still with me or not, and to be honest I don't really care. I think I just had to put this into words......something tangible, not just a bunch of disconnected thoughts in my head, as it has been ever since I got home this summer. I'm excited to see where my Father leads. He may indeed ask me to do things that are inconvenient, and that I don't want to do. But He will only ask me to follow the desires of His heart, and as long as each day I try to make those the desires of my heart, then really I will spend my life doing what I want to do most. And there can be nothing better, more fulfilling or satisfying, than that.