We haven't had a hurricane in Jacksonville since forty years ago when Dora hit--twice. So I can think about this in one of two ways. Either it's, "Hey, we haven't had a hurricane in forty years--we're pretty safe," or it's, "We haven't had a hurricane in forty years--we're due for a bad one." We'll see which way it goes this weekend.

So are we going to be under hurricane warning every other weekend? :-P

BTW, assuming we're not in the middle of a terrible storm, we're having a party Sunday night after church. Everyone is invited! (If you're not sure how to get here, hit the "contact me" link.)

First: Did you vote today? If you don't have any idea who to vote for, get online and find out about the candidates. Yes, it's just a primary, but you still need to go out and vote!

Second: Happy birthday to Lauren! (She voted on her birthday.) She's wearing a shirt and shoes she got for her birthday, so be sure to compliment her. I must say, the shirt is rather appropriate for her, and especially applicable during the school semester! ;-) Lauren, I hope you have a wonderful day and a great year.

I'm a bad blogger--it's been almost a week since I've posted. One reason for that is that the subject that's been on my mind the most was Lauren's surprise birthday party, and I couldn't say anything about that until after Friday night. So happy birthday Lauren (a day early)! Tomorrow she will be 21. She just got one of her birthday presents from our parents--a set of two-way radios. She got them early so she can use them tomorrow, and she's having fun figuring out how to use them. Did you know you have to have an FCC license to use them, even though they're basically glorified walkie-talkies?

I've been redecorating my room, and part of that is putting in new curtains. One set is vintage white curtains with pink eyelet embroidery, and the other set (that I'm making to coordinate with the vintage ones) is white eyelet with pink embroidery. I'm having to put new curtain rod hardware into the wall, and it's becoming a lot more trouble than I was planning on. Because Lauren's old bed is in the way, I can't get the drill to the place on the wall where I'm trying to put the curtain rod. (Actually, Daddy is doing the drilling--I'm doing the saying where the drilling should be.) The beds in my room are loft beds, which means the bed is set up on top of a bookcase and a chest of drawers. That means I had to pick up the bed from its location at head height and, once the pegs got out of the holes in the top of the furniture, scoot it over several inches. If that sentence was hard to understand, it was even harder to actually do. But it's done now, so that's good.

I've actually gone to Home Depot twice in the past week, and I need to go again tomorrow. The first time I was shopping with my mom who was looking at exterior house colors. I was trying to find spray paint and wood putty to fix a chair in my room. In the second trip I actually got the paint (I hadn't been sure if it would match or not). This final trip I'll be getting *another* can of paint because I didn't have enough. So it looks like my dad's saying about every job requiring three trips to Home Depot is true! But I'm rather proud of my skills as a handywoman. Next thing you know, I'll be fixing the plumbing! J/k, not really. We ladies have to leave some jobs for the gentlemen. ;-)

I haven't had any really deep thoughts in the last couple of days, but I figured I should post anyway.

I started a new violin student this evening. I think she's about five years old. She played violin for about two months back in February and March, so she thinks she knows stuff, but when I ask her to do anything, she's forgotten how. Six months is a long time for a five-year-old! She's also very precocious and likes doing things her own way. For example, when I asked her to put the violin on her shoulder, she started off with it on her head, then moved it to her nose. But I've had another student who really prepared me for this one--he was an ADD four-year-old boy! If you ever want to test your patience and see how well you can channel someone else's energy into something productive, try teaching violin to a hyper four-year-old boy!

I'm trying to redo the decor in my bedroom, and I'm looking for a lamp. You'd think it would be fairly easy to find a pink or white lamp, especially since pink is a popular color right now. Not so. There is just one in all the stores I've looked in that would be good, but I was trying to spend less than $25, and it costs exactly $25, plus whatever I spend to get a more interesting-looking shade. But then I went to a lamp store where most everything was around $100, so now spending $25 doesn't seem so bad. It's just that I don't want to spend tons of money on a lamp I might not be able to use in my decor when I move out, which I will presumably do in the next few years. Oh, well.

Every time I try to type a "br" tag to make line breaks, I try to type "bre"! :-P

I hope everyone who is starting school this week is having a good time with their classes. Monday I went to UNF orchestra (we didn't play, we just met and talked), and I met a new freshman girl. She's somewhat freaked out about the whole thing--specifically orchestra, but I think all of college is scaring her right now. I talked to her for quite some time, and I think I was able to help. I'm going to try to become friends with her and see if she's got a church she's going to and so on. Hopefully I can be a witness to her if she's not saved, or an encouragement to her if she is.

This is the most up-in-the-air my life has ever been. I figured out in my senior year of high school what I wanted to major in, and UNF offered both the major and scholarships, so I didn't really have to make decisions there. When I was going through all the stuff with my hands I was afraid I was going to have to come up with a new major and all, but God healed me, so I didn't have to make a new decision. Now I've got a very part-time job, and all kinds of decisions to make. I won't go into everything, because it's late and I have to get up early tomorrow morning to get my oil changed before I go shopping for all kinds of stuff (Lauren, I might even pick up a present for your birthday :-P ).

Because of this, I've been thinking about how to find God's will. I've always heard that you should just pursue God, and He will guide you into His will. I had pretty much just let that go in one ear and out the other. But it is very well supported by Rom. 12:2, which says to be "transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God." That certainly sounds to me like if I am being a living sacrifice (verse 1) and allowing God to transform me, that He will show me His will. But as I think I said in my last entry, there's a big difference between knowing that something is true and actually knowing it through experience. So here we go with experience! God's already proved that He keeps His end of the bargain.

Last night's sermon and a discussion we had recently got me to thinking about counting trials under the "asset column." I was trying to think of some ways in which problems I have had have worked out to the glory of God. I knew there was supposed to be something good there, because God promises it, but I hadn't recently sat down and tried to find it.

The first time I ever really thought about it was a few years back when I was in tae kwon do. I had failed my red belt testing because I didn't break the board with my hand technique. My mother told me to remember how it feels to fail. That failure (whether or not you could call it a "trial" or "testing") helped me to be more understanding of others' failures. I tend to be pretty sharp in a lot of stuff, especially academically, and I would normally be annoyed when people seem to be acting stupid. But failing that testing reminded me that everyone fails sometimes, and when we do, we want people to be understanding, not to discard us as idiots.

A much bigger trial came during the last several years. During the fall of my sophomore semester I started having a tingling feeling in my fingers, especially when I would play violin. Over the course of the year it worsened. I was constantly wearing wrist braces, taking multiple medications that put me to sleep (or messed with my brains so bad I could almost as well have been asleep), and leaving red fingernail marks in my arms from trying to stop the pain. The doctors couldn't diagnose me (actually, they gave me about five, and the last one was a vague and inaccurate "overuse injury"). I couldn't take notes in class, or even take long written quizzes, and I couldn't play violin. As far as I could tell, I might not be able to have the one career I wanted or even live on my own and raise a family. Through a series of miracles (e-mail me if you want the long version), God has almost entirely healed me. That alone is enough to bring Him glory from me. I also have a much greater trust of God than I did before--He really does know what He's doing! All the people who were praying for me over those three years saw their prayers answered. I'm not at a place where I would ever want to go through that again, but as I look back I can now start to rejoice because of the results I see.

It's difficult to see good in trials as you're going through them--like not being able to see the mountain because you're in a tunnel--but God has promised that the good is there. Hopefully as the years go by I'll find more ways in which this trial has glorified God, but I am sure there are other ways I won?t find out about until Heaven. I would like to hear some of the ways God has worked your trials to his glory, if you don?t mind. (BTW, the sermon text was James 1:2-4, if any of you are confused as to what I'm talking about).

Disclaimer 1--I don't want this to be a game of, "so you think that was bad?" If it was a trial to you, and you?ve seen how God was glorified in it, I would like to hear!

Disclaimer 2--I've never written about this (not even in my private journals, because when I was going through it, I couldn't write). I want to give God all the glory due Him without sounding like I'm complaining. If you think I should have explained more about what God did for me or less about the pain, please let me know!

Okay, I may be diving into an already-opened can of worms, but this is too long to be a comment. Besides which, it could probably go as a comment on anyone's blog! :-)

The way I see it, waiting and being proactive are not mutually exclusive. Waiting for God's will (whether in dating or anything else) does not mean sitting on your hands and doing nothing. It means not looking at every guy/girl and saying "Is that Mr./Miss Right?" but rather pursuing God and becoming the person He wants you to be. In I Corinthians 7, Paul is discussing the pros and cons of marriage. One thing he says is that singles can pursue God more than married people, who must also work to please their spouses. He clarifies that marriage is not a bad thing, but that neither is singleness. So as singles, we should be pursuing God, knowing that there will probably come a time in our lives when we will have spouses, and not just God, to please. Our action should come in the form of following God, not in the form of following that cute guy/girl.

Waiting is not refusing to talk to anyone of the opposite sex, either. It is acting on whatever God is telling you. If He tells you this is not the time for dating, then don't worry about it. If He tells you this is the person you are supposed to date, go ahead with that, too, trusting that God knows what He is doing.

It's amazing how God works. So often we have this nice, neat little plan about how our lives are going to work, and God proceeds to ignore it and do something far greater. It's like us building a little shack out of sticks and thinking "This is a great house." Then God comes along and builds a mansion in the same place. It doesn't seem too great when He's knocking our little shack down. "Hey, I had a great little house, and now You're knocking it down!" But if we'll follow God and let Him do what He wants to do with us, we'll wind up with something even greater than what we had imagined. During this last year, God finished knocking down my little life-plan of sticks, and it wasn't comfortable AT ALL. But now I'm starting to see some of the huge foundations He's laying, and I really think I'm going to like the mansion.


It looks like my only job this fall will be teaching violin--pretty cool. I was going to teach school, too, but that was getting in the way of everything else. I was excited about teaching school at first, but I had gradually become less and less comfortable with the idea. It's not that I don't think I could do it, because I'm sure I could. I guess it's just God helping me figure out what to do. So I'll be teaching group violin lessons with an after-school program called Cathedral Arts Project, and teaching private violin lessons at home, at church (with the School of Music), and with Shoshannah Arts (which is very similar to the School of Music, and which I'm really excited about being a part of).

Tonight Lauren and I had a rehearsal for a gig that's a week from Saturday. Most of it was our normal stuff (I even got to play first violin, yay!), but there were some different pieces, too. One was The Rose, which is beautiful, and another was Music of the Night. That's a cool piece, but a little odd for a wedding. But it's the groom's favorite song, so we're playing it. Hopefully no guests think we're making a commentary on him!

This was the second time recently I've played with people who aren't in my normal trio or quartet, and it's amazing the difference it makes. I'm learning to be thankful even for the less technically proficient members of my group! Not that any of these were bad players, but I now really appreciate my usual group. We should all take time to work and socialize with people outside of our usual groups. It's almost always enjoyable and eye-opening, and even if it's not, you will learn to be more appreciative of your "usual group."

Okay, sermon over, now it's time to try to fix this place up a little. :-)

So here I am. There's nothing I can do right now for my job search, and my garden doesn't really need attention (for once). I can't do any more bobbin lace until Mrs. Mouzon tells me how do do this final step, and I don't really want to start any other kinds of needlework projects. I could clean, but I'm not really in the mood for that right now. Pretty sad reasons for starting a blog, but there it is.

I am a recent college graduate--I got my Bachelor of Arts in Education with a specialty in Music Education in December. During the spring I worked part time at Chets Creek Elementary School where I did my internship, and now I'm looking to teach music in a private school until I can get enough gigs and private violin students to support myself. I've got some good possibilities out there right now, but God has really been teaching me to trust Him. You have to, when you have seventeen different choices and don't know which way to go!  

As you have probably figured out, I play violin and do lots of different kinds of needlework. Before that gives you a certain picture of me, let me also say that I was in tae kwon do for two years until my school closed. There's another martial arts school I'd like to attend, but that will have to wait until my life settles down enough for me to actually attend classes more than once a week!

I'm going to close this entry so I can finish figuring out how to make this thing look the way I want it to. I'll finish introducing myself and start giving you some of my "great insights" later!