Tag Archives: college

Cold Days and Dream Jobs

Posted on May 15, 2013 | 3 Comments

http://0.tqn.com/d/chronicfatigue/1/0/6/3/-/-/coldhands.jpg

The weeks of sunshine deceived me. “I have to wear flip-flops,” I told myself. Also, “it doesn’t matter so much if I forget to bring a tea bag. I don’t NEED to drink tea.”

Yesterday I went on a field trip with BMS to the wildlife safari. It was a lovely trip, only the flip-flops combined with the lack of tea left me chilled to the bone.

I went into the warm restaurant to splurge on a cup of tea. There was a group of college-age guys in there who wore dirty baggy clothing and dreadlocks. I couldn’t figure out what box to put them into. They looked like gangster hippies. But why would gangsters become hippie, and then go hang out at the local wildlife safari?

That had nothing to do with the story I’m telling, I just thought it was interesting.

Today I ran shivering into the coffee shop, still wearing flip-flops, with no tea in my backpack, but too cheep to spend money on tea again. So I sat down and ate my lunch with some of my friends who were in there.

Then I looked out the window and couldn’t believe my eyes. There were two of my friends from Grocery Depot.

I had once very enthusiastically tried to convince these ladies to go to college, only to be told that their church didn’t usually allow people to go to college. So needless to say, I was very surprised to see them on campus.

“Hey guys!” I said, running out and giving them a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“I just got my GED,” said one of them. “I’m going to do the bookwork for Grocery Depot, and so I want to take some accounting classes.”

“I’m here for moral support,” said the other. “We’re trying to find McKenzie Hall…”

“Oh, I can show you where that is!” I said. I took them down to McKenzie Hall, and helped them find the offices they were looking for. They wanted to talk to the academic advisers for accounting, but both advisers were out of their offices right then.

I showed them how the paper on the door shows when they’ll be back, and how to go online and find the advisers’ email addresses and set up a meeting, etc.

Then we parted ways and I went back to my friends in the coffee shop.

…

Have you ever read “The Catcher in the Rye?” If so, what do you think of it? I’m reading it right now, and while I’m not sure I can say I recommend it, it is very interesting.

In it the main character, Holden, is talking to his sister Phoebe about why he is failing school. He says it just doesn’t interest him.

“Doesn’t anything interest you?” she asks him.

He thinks about this for a while. Then he says, “You know that poem that goes, ‘if a body catch a body, coming through the rye?”

Phoebe tells him that the poem actually says, “if  body meet a body, coming through the rye.”

Holden says that he always thought it said “catch.” He used to imagine a field of rye where children would play, but there was a cliff on one end, and he was the only adult around. His job would be to catch the children if they were running too fast, and not looking where they were going, and headed for the cliff.

So even though he seemed to not be interested in anything, he would like to be a catcher in the rye.

…

Like Holden, I sometimes do random things and think, “if this were a job, I would like to have it for a very long time.”

Today, that’s what I thought when I showed my old friends where to go and what to do around campus.

I would like to find people that haven’t the first clue how to navigate college, and just answer all their questions, and show them where to go, and who to talk to. I wish that could be my job.

…

A random side note: Trying to find an image for this post, I googled “cold days and dream jobs” and came up with pictures of swimsuit models. Somehow I found that extremely humerus.

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Big World, Long Drive

Posted on August 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

“In short words, the reason I went to college was because I found that the more I learned, the bigger my world got, and I wanted my world to be the biggest it could be.”

-Amos Yoder, my grandfather

Monday evening we arrived at my grandpa and grandma’s house in Minnesota.  I hadn’t seen my mother’s parents for six years. In those six years I have become quite fascinated with my Grandpa’s life.

Grandpa lying down for a nap, reading himself to sleep just as I do.

As an Amish boy, Grandpa decided to go to college, and got his master’s degree. He remained Amish, and at the time was the only person ever to get a college degree and remain Amish. Since then there have been a few others, but there are still only a handful of people who have accomplished this.

Right now Grandpa is ninety-five and as sharp as ever. He is currently working on his memoirs, writing about the days he spent in Paraguay after WW2, helping Russian Mennonite refugees who were relocating to that area.

Needless to say, I was anxious to ask him about some of these things. Unfortunately he’s kind of hard of hearing, being ninety-five and all. But when I asked him why he went to college, he said the opening quote, which also sums up why I am in college.

Grandpa, Grandma, and four of their children

The first order of business was to introduce Grandpa and Grandma to Justice, their first great-grandchild. This was such an iconic family moment that every camera on the premises was flashing in their faces. Paparazzi jokes were made.

Of course we all gathered around the living room and chatted.

Yes, I know the picture is blurry, but it was the best I could find. I am stealing pictures from everyone’s cameras to do these blog posts, and I’m not really sure who took which pictures.

I found a whole bunch of pictures of feet, which I presume Fred took, as it seems like something he would do. This picture cracks me up because between Jenny and I there are three feet, and the middle one looks like it could belong to either of us.

The top half. I have tea. Does Jenny want it? Hmm.

Early Tuesday morning Amy, Dad, and Aunt Rebecca flew to their respective homes. Jenny, Mom, and I made applesauce for Grandma.

Wednesday, aka today, was the funeral of Susannah, the grandmother of Annette and Janet on their mother’s side. Mark and Janet cut their honeymoon short in order to come to the funeral, and it appears that since their wedding, both of them got sick with terrible colds. :-(

(I just realized that the above paragraph sounds like some of the stuff I read in my grandparent’s copy of The Budget. Wow. Okay, moving on.)

Mom, Jenny and I babysat baby Justice while Annette was at the funeral. I feel like an aunt to that child, not only because I changed his diapers, but because I have a weird urge to post millions of pictures of him on my blog.

But no, I’ll resist that urge.

Okay fine. Just one more.

Goodnight for now. Tomorrow I will post the last installment of this trip, about the road home.

Never mind. I wrote this up on Wednesday, as we were driving, but I couldn’t get both an internet connection and a charged computer battery at the same time and so I never posted it.

Here is a brief summery of how the drive home went:

Driving, driving, driving, carsick, driving, sandwiches from the cooler, driving, sleeping, sleeping, mom making you sleep in the back seat with Jenny so she can sit up front and sleep without getting kicked in the face, sleeping, getting kicked in the face, sleeping, waking, meeting Aunt Geneva in Spokane for breakfast, accidentally talking about my diarrhea problems in front of the waitress, driving, driving, carsick, driving, home.

The end. See you some other day when I have things to post about besides driving.

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Five Stories of a Boring Life

Posted on August 14, 2012 | 3 Comments

The Stick in the Road

I must get healthy. Therefore, I must exercise. But the hot hot summer weather keeps me from brisk midday walks.

The solution, of course, is to walk in the evenings. That is what I did today. Only I didn’t get started until it was nearly dark. Oh well, what’s a little walk in the dark?

“Hmm, that’s a funny stick,” I said as I passed a long squiggly object lying in the middle of the road.

Then I realized it was a snake. Suddenly I was weak in the ankles and I power walked all the way home, jumping at every shadow and freaking out every time a shoelace touched my ankle.

I am never walking at night again.

The Diaries

I collect other people’s diaries. I find them at garage sales every so often. The people who write in these diaries have the most boring lives you could imagine. But I still like to read them.

Jenny told me that she can’t imagine reading someone else’s diary. It would feel so invasive. But I said that I hate the idea of a record of someone’s life getting thrown out, unappreciated, forgotten.

Then Mom told me that her dad, my grandpa, used to dumpster dive behind a bakery. Grandpa has always been an avid dumpster diver. This bakery would give him spoiled food for his pigs, but he would still go through their dumpster looking for more.

Sometimes the family that owned the bakery would throw their family garbage into the store dumpster. Grandpa would find diaries written by the bakery owner’s wife, and take them home for Grandma to read.

Grandma never would let Mom read them, or tell her what was written in them. She would only say, “ooh, I can’t believe she would write some of the stuff she does! It’s not even appropriate to tell your husband!”

I told mom that this has to go in her Mennonite novel.

Jumpy Cats

Have you ever sneaked up behind someone, and then grabbed them, causing them to “jump?”

This is not an appropriate thing to do to cats. Jenny tried it. She got very scratched up.

(This is a random internet cat, not the actual cat that Jenny scared.)

The Unexpectedly Popular Article

In case you don’t already know, I occasionally write articles for the website Ypulse. Ypulse explores what’s going on in generation Y. They have what they call a “Youth Advisory Board,” which I am a member of.

I had an idea for a while to do a blog post on the trends of today that are going to be mocked in 20 years. At the last minute I decided to turn it into a Ypulse article instead.

The article was titled “That’s So 2012: 10 Trends of Today That will be Mocked in 20 Years,” and it went up a week and a half ago.

Since then, the article has gotten 1,188 shares. Not views, but shares. 803 of them were on facebook, 47 of them on twitter, and the rest through other websites, thought I don’t know which ones specifically.

Of course in the grand scheme of viral things on the internet, 1000 shares isn’t that big of a deal. But it’s probably the most far-reaching internet article I’ve ever written. I mean, I once had a glitch where an inane post I did about snowflakes reached over 8,000 views because the image in the post popped up when people did google image searches for “snowflake,” but I’m not sure that counts, since they were just stealing the image and not actually reading the post. Besides that I only have two posts that ever exceeded 1000 views.

So yes, 1000+ shares makes this little writer quite giddy.

Dreaming of School

Unfortunately, as much as I love the warmth and sunshine of summer, my summers have always been quite boring. I guess there are trips to take and afternoons to swim, and people come visiting from hither and yon, but too much laziness fills the gaps between these events.

I am dreaming of school starting again. Of classes and homework and libraries and cafes and people everywhere. Of seeing free plays because I volunteer to usher, and making new friends, and drinking tea constantly, and walking past the Jehovah’s Witness table with their large sign declaring “HELL: not a place of suffering,” and looking to see who is arguing with them today.

Ah, September, I am waiting for you.

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Sick of Lists

Posted on July 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

I got a small red binder in hopes that I could fill it with lists, and thus organize my life. One of this lists was, “Ideas for blog posts.” All my blog post ideas were lists.

You know, like, “five movies that have amazing fashion.” Or, “my ten weirdest recurring dreams.” But my last post was a list post, and I just wrote an article for  Ypulse that was a list article (not published yet, in case you go looking for it and it proves fruitless) and frankly, I am sick of lists.

The logical thing to do would be to go back to the tried and true method of writing about my fascinating life. During the school year this involves things like theater and interesting people and fascinating tidbits learned in class. But now that it is summer, life is…less fascinating. Still, maybe I should post about it after all. Okay. Here we go.

I love sunrises in theory. When I was sixteen I accidentally woke up early and saw the most beautiful sunrise. Since then, whenever I have gotten up early to watch it, it has always been invisible due to the cloud cover.

Last night the sky was perfectly clear, and so I thought, “Why don’t I wake up early and go watch the sunrise?” I set my alarm clock for a little after five am.

When my alarm rang, there was some brilliant orange in the east, the beginning of a stellar sunrise. I got up, wrapped the blanket around me, and went downstairs. I spent some time making myself cereal and tea, and then went on the porch to watch and eat.

What do you know. By the time I made it to the porch a long thick cloud had gathered on the eastern horizon, and there was no more sunrise. Bah. Some other day, perhaps. I ate my breakfast while shivering violently, and then went back to bed.

Once I had actually woken up for good I began the daunting task of digging the nails and rocks and pine seeds out of the cracks in the porch. While I dug I smelled something…an oddly familiar scent that I couldn’t quite place. I sniffed and sniffed, and then it hit me. I was smelling Hansie-smell.

Hansie-the-dog died in November 2010. Almost two years ago. His hair is still in the cracks of the porch. I found that beyond gross. Then I thought, “why is it so much grosser if the hair is from a dead dog than from a live dog? The hair itself isn’t any different.” I still don’t know the answer, but it just is grosser.

Last weekend I went to a church camp in John Day. This wasn’t cabin camping, this was real camping, with tents, no electricity, and no cell service. I love nearly everything about that kind of camping. I love how the food always tastes better, how the world could be ending and  you wouldn’t have to know about it till you went home, how you can’t shower but it doesn’t matter because no one else can shower either and you’re outside all the time. But there is one thing I don’t like about camping: I always freeze at night and the lumpy ground is both cold and uncomfortable. In short, I can’t sleep.

However, this weekend I discovered something potentially life-changing. Most camping trips require you to drive to the camp site. Thus, there is no need to spend the night trying to sleep on the cold lumpy ground. You can sleep in the car!

I slept both nights in the car. It was glorious. Soft and warm. There was even this emergency blanket in the glove compartment. It looked like a giant piece of tin foil, but I had it sitting on the seat beside me, and if I got cold in the night I just spread it over me. This would never work in a tent because it rattled and rustled like crazy and would wake everyone up, but in the car I was all alone and no one could hear.

You can call me a prissy wimp if you like, but I’ll just laugh it off because I’ll be in a good mood because of my good night’s sleep.

(It is true that some people may have trouble sleeping in the car, but I find myself sleeping in cars almost as often as I sleep in beds. Maybe not. But I have taken many many naps in cars during my college career.)

Now, my slice of life post has ended. Tune in sometime soon for another.

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22 Stories about my 22′d Birthday

Posted on July 13, 2012 | 1 Comment

1. I was not at home for my 22′d birthday. I was at the Faith Builders College Student Seminar and Retreat. I will now show a picture of the mansion/castle where the retreat/my birthday was held.

2. Even though I was not at home, my dad and many of my friends and siblings sent me “Happy Birthday” text messages or voicemails. It made me feel loved.

3. My birthday was July 6. That was one week ago. I didn’t post on my birthday because there was no internet access at the castle.

Scratch that. I assumed there would be no internet access that far off in the boondocks. I found a signal on the morning of my birthday, and halfheartedly tried to connect, but gave up when it was slow.

A few times during the retreat I pulled out my droid and thought about connecting.Then I said to myself, “What’s the point? This is a retreat.” And I would stick the droid back in the drawer.

4. The day after my birthday,  my mom sent me the following text message:

Just has the horrible thought that maybe you Can.t check face cool there n didn’t get my happy birthday on your birthday. If so i am very sorry i didn’t call also

I laughed and laughed.

5. Several of my friends decided that they would sing “Happy Birthday” to me 22 times, since it was my 22′d birthday. They only sung it six times.

By the end of the day I was still awkwardly asking people what their names were, and they would say, “well I know what your name is, because I heard the songs.”

Here are three of the song birds.

This picture always  makes me smile. Conrad and Cindy are getting cozy, and Chris is trying to scuttle out of the photo.

6. That night, the three pictured above, along with Holly Kemp, Rachael Mast, and I, climbed to the highest room in the tallest tower.

There, they sang Happy Birthday to me for the sixth and final time.

We also talked about random things. Like Heaven. Which was brought about, obviously, by the enormous and beautiful mansion we were in.

7. Not only was it my birthday, it was also the first birthday of a staff kid named Adaline. I thought that it would be nice to get a picture with her, since we had the same birthday and all that jazz.

Me: Come on little girl, smile for the camera!

Adaline: GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME, CREEPER.

Me: Don’t run away little girl! I’m lots of fun! I promise!

Adaline: 911! Police! Get me away from this person!!!

8. Perhaps most importantly, I listened to four wise men (as in, men who are wise, not nativity scene characters) give wise seminars.

But here’s the thing. Every single one of those seminars was applicable to my life. I went to bed that night feeling absolutely amazed. I hadn’t felt so fed in a very very long time.

9. It was also the birthday of Richard Bean, one of the speakers.

He gave a super relevant talk on sorting through and processing the messages we receive in the classroom.

Later, I mentioned this to my Aunt Barb, and she said, “Richard Bean? I knew him when he was a little boy!”

For some reason I found that humorous.

10. The morning of my birthday was foggy. Chris decided to walk around the pond. I took a picture of it.

11. After all the seminars of the day were given, we were split into small groups to discuss anything we wanted to discuss in the context of a small group.

Talk about spiritually filling. I had a great time in my small group. It was one of the nicest things about the weekend.

(This collage is missing pictures of the leader and his wife because I couldn’t find any. I’d look them up on Facebook but I can’t remember their last name. I didn’t even bother with last names this weekend, except in the case of Mr. Bean, for the obvious reason that his last name is Bean.)

12. Do you remember the story of my friends trying to sing “Happy Birthday” to me 22 times, but only making it to six?

This blog post is kind of like that story.

That is to say, I can only think of 12 stories about my 22′d birthday.

And so, since the post was about the retreat as well as my birthday, I will close with a picture of the entire group I spend my amazing birthday with.


Photo credits: Bad pictures taken by me. Good pictures stolen from the Faith Builders Facebook page.

 

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Castle Books

Posted on April 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

Recently I made a startling discovery: Books with the word “castle” in the title are extremely likely to be VERY good books, the kind that I will want to re-read multiple times, keep on my bookshelf, and recommend to my grandchildren.

Example #1: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

This is a story about a family living in an ancient castle in England in the 1930′s. They are very poor as the family has virtually no income. They don’t even pay rent anymore, because their landlord died and his sons never showed up to collect rent.

Only, of course eventually the boys do show up and Rose, the older sister of the narrator, tries to make one of them fall in love with her so she’ll have money. Unfortunately, all she knows about flirtation and such is info she gleaned from old novels.

The book is mostly character driven, and I must say it is full of bizarre and fascinating characters who fall in love with the wrong people and don’t do what they’re supposed to do and make life interesting.

However, I have decided that it isn’t as useful for me to try and describe a good book as it is for you to go read an excerpt yourself. Which is why I now give you a link to a place where you can read the first few pages of this fascinating novel.

Example #2: The Blue Castle, by L. M. Montgomery

Valancy doesn’t literally own a blue castle in this book. She actually has a fairly dingy life. But she also has a lively imagination, and “the blue castle” refers to the life she imagines for herself, in which she lives in a castle, and has a handsome man. The story is a humerus and touching account of the dramatic turn of events which helps her find that kind of happiness in real life. I cannot even BEGIN to praise this book enough. I don’t even know what else to say without giving anything away. So instead I googled “The Blue Castle free ebook” and found this. Yep, the whole book is online. I would recommend just reading long enough to get hooked, and then buying the book for yourself.

I will paste the first few paragraphs here, for your convenience.

If it had not rained on a certain May morning Valancy Stirling’s whole life would have been entirely different. She would have gone, with the rest of her clan, to Aunt Wellington’s engagement picnic and Dr. Trent would have gone to Montreal. But it did rain and you shall hear what happened to her because of it.

Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.

Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet–never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.

Ay, there lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn’t possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her.

The tears came into her eyes as she lay there alone in the faintly greying darkness. She dared not let herself cry as hard as she wanted to, for two reasons. She was afraid that crying might bring on another attack of that pain around the heart. She had had a spell of it after she had got into bed–rather worse than any she had had yet. And she was afraid her mother would notice her red eyes at breakfast and keep at her with minute, persistent, mosquito-like questions regarding the cause thereof.

“Suppose,” thought Valancy with a ghastly grin, “I answered with the plain truth, ‘I am crying because I cannot get married.’ How horrified Mother would be–though she is ashamed every day of her life of her old maid daughter.”

Example #3: Howl’s Moving Castle.

I began reading Howl’s Moving Castle in 2010, while going to Bridgewater College in Virginia. It was in my school’s library. I never checked it out, but if I had downtime at school I would head to the library and continue reading where I had left off.

It was a magical book about a girl named Sophie, the eldest of three sisters, who knew that nothing exciting could ever happen to her because she was the eldest. This alone had me laughing, because any reader of fairy tales has seen the trend of “oldest kid fails, middle kid also fails, youngest kid succeeds” prevalent in them.

Sophie’s life really gets exciting when a terrible witch casts a spell on her, turning her into…an old lady.

I love folklore and fairy tales. I also love cleverness in books, and Howl’s Moving Castle is filled to the brim with cleverness. After I left Bridgewater I wanted to finish the book so bad that I looked for it at second hand stores, used book stores, and every library I could think of. Recently I found a girl on YouTube who is recording her own e-book of it. I listened for a while, and got so hooked again that I couldn’t wait for her to finish. I went and bought the book at Barnes and Nobel. Seven bucks and totally worth it.

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Why I am in College

Posted on April 11, 2012 | 6 Comments

Every once in a while, a professor will ask, “why are you in college?”

The students always answer, “To get a better job. To get more money.”

Recently I realized with a giggle that I am going to college in order to become poor. Despite my writing ambitions I am quite resigned to the fact that I will end up as a poor missionary wearing second-hand clothing and stocking my kitchen with ugly plastic missionary barrel cast-offs.

My sociology professor this term was talking about dead end jobs. I always thought of a dead end job as just being a really boring low-paying job, but no. A dead-end job is one in which there is no way for you to move forward, and to work your way up.

So what do you think about dead-end lives?

I once wrote a post about college called Women and Higher Education, in which I was very much for women going to college. When I first went to college I realized that there was no need for me to have a dead-end life. I could learn more, and push myself, and work towards something.

Of course there was something that I failed to mention in that post which a lot of people pointed out in the comments. Namely, there are ways to learn and grow and keep yourself from a dead-end life without going to college.

I should also point out that many, if not most, of the people I meet in college are themselves in a dead-end life. What if you are in college, not to learn, but to scrape by in hopes of getting a job you like that pays you a lot of money? Is that sort of like trying to do the minimal required to be a Christian so as to avoid Hell, without really having a hunger and a desire to know God and to be with Him?

Hmm.

Disclaimer: I am single. I have never had to support or help support a family. Therefore, I have a somewhat clouded view of the importance of money, I am sure.

But. In some ways, I view beauty as my currency of choice.

There is sunshine and flowers. There is a life waiting for me where I can have tea with prostitutes and paint a pink elephant on the wall of an orphanage. There is a place where I can learn how societies work, how the industrial revolution shaped the western world, how to write effective argument. Still, I sit next to people who are thinking of dollars and cents, and are basing their lives around getting more of those green-inked notes.

On Easter morning I wanted to go to a sunrise service, but I couldn’t find one. So I decided to get up at 6:00 and go watch the sunrise, just me and God.

I was tired. The clouds were up, and I didn’t see much sun rising action at all. But it was so beautiful, the fields and the solitude and the crisp air, pink-tinged sky, and Him.

I thought about what I owe God, for what He did for me on that first Easter morning when he conquered death. I thought, “do I only serve God because I owe Him?”

I didn’t like that thought. I thought there must be something more.

And then, in that sleepy surreal moment, I burst into tears. “I just want to see Your beauty,” I said.

That, I think, sums it up. It’s not just about getting to Heaven to see God’s beauty, but finding all the reflections of His beauty on earth. Seeing Jesus in people, looking at the sky, receiving by giving. College is the place where I grow, where I learn, where there are people who need Him, and where I can prepare for a life on the mission field.

That is why I am in college.

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My Secret Hopes and Dreams

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 9 Comments

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I said to myself, “I just want to be happy.”

Myself answered, “would you rather be happy, or have a wild ocean life?“

I said, “a wild ocean life.”

Then I went to sleep.

This is a post about what I want out of life, how I came to those conclusions, and how I am pursuing those dreams.

To begin with, I will talk about babies.

What is it with woman and babies? If I spent years studying neurological science in women, or God’s ordered plan for families, or both, could I understand it?

When there was a newborn in the church,  all my friends used to gather in a line, waiting for a chance to hold it. I was, I will confess, never in that line. I didn’t really like babies. They were hot and sticky and I always ended up accidentally dropping them. If being a woman meant that I had to like babies, well phooey, I would just fail at being a woman.

I guess I just thought I would never like babies. Never want one, never need one.

However. About a year ago, my cousin Randy and his wife Shelley had a baby girl named Jocelyn. I went to visit her, and held her, and before long I was starting to have dreams that Jocelyn was my baby. Furthermore, they were very pleasent dreams.

So for what it’s worth, I now have a secret wish for a baby someday.

Of course, the subject of babies leads naturally into the subject of husbands. As odd as it sounds, the main reason I want a husband is for the convenience.

Problem: I’m sick all the time and have a hard time making enough money to support myself.

Solution: Husband!

Problem: I am going to go on the mission field, but am scared of how lonely/depressing it would be to go alone.

Solution: Husband!

Problem: I want to adopt a baby, but still firmly believe that a child should have, if possible, a mother and a father.

Solution: Husband!

If I were planning my romance, it would go like this. There would be a guy, and I would fall for him, but I wouldn’t know if he liked me or not, and no one would know that I liked him, etc, so as to have zero zilch drama.

But in the meantime I would get to know him and realize that he was perfect for me.

Then, one day, he would realize that I was perfect for him too, and he would say, “Hey Emily, let’s get married and jet off to Africa.”

“Okay,” I would say, and we would get married and jet off to Africa.

Impossible, you say? There is no such thing as a romance without drama, you say? Well. A romance without drama is one of my secret hopes and dreams, however far fetched it may be.

But bigger, much much bigger than babies or husbands, is my hope and dream to be on the mission field some day.

Maybe this one shouldn’t be in the same category. With babies and husbands, the hope is one born of natural desire that most women will experience without being able to help it. The mission field idea began with a hope of being involved in  something bigger than myself, which is a natural enough desire. However, after years of random trials and wild ocean life, I realized that the way to be involved, really involved in something bigger than myself, was to give everything to God without holding back.

God said, “I want you on my mission field.” Thus, the desire to be a part of something bigger than myself transformed into a desire to be on God’s mission field, permanently, for the rest of my life.

I have one more dream to share. My dream to finish college.

Although I felt very strongly for a while that God wanted me to get my degree in communications before I went on the mission field, I began to doubt myself this winter. My friend Phebe and my sister Amy both went on long mission trips, returning with pictures and stories of poverty and sadness and people who needed Jesus. I thought, “what am I doing her, going to college, when I could be out there, accomplishing great things for Christ?”

This doubt churned round and round in my brain, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Once I was talking about this to my cousin Randy and he said, “Emily, this is my opinion. I think there are missionaries, and then there are effective missionaries. The effective missionaries are the ones who have spent time in preparation.”

That really struck a chord with me. I had felt before that God wanted to prepare me by sending me through college, and now the same feeling returned. Because truth be told, I love college. I mostly love learning.

What are your secret hopes, dreams, and desires?

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