Jane Austen, summer adventures, concerts and music

Yo, dawgs. How we doing? I hope you all are having a spiffy summer! Have you done anything exciting? I've had a great summer, even though I'm still doing school.
May...Kicked off the month with the NCFCA regional touranment. Had our home-school play about the Titanic. It was a fabulous experience and worth all the hours, sweat, and tears poured into it. Two of my sisters also graduated in May and we got to go to Cali for our older sister's graduation.
June...Went to Minnesota for Nationals, which was awesome. Got 14th place in duo with my lil' sis.
July...Went to our Uncle's house at the Lake of the Ozarks for the 4th of July. Ate wayyyy too much ice cream! :) Had a good time boating and tubing. Yesterday I went to a Cody Simpson/Big Time Rush concert with my homegirls. It was an amazing show with fireworks, confetti, beach balls, crazy lights, and amazing singers. I always joke about marrying Cody Simpson, who is like the Austrailian Justin Bieber. :p And Big Time Rush was my friend's favorite band so it was perfect! I frantically listened to BTR and Cody Simpson music a couple days before the concert so I would actually know their music. I've also been having lotsa sleepovers, watching Jane Austen movies, writing poems, researching for debate, and making sandwiches at Subway.

Lately I've been learning how you really can't decide if you're going to have a good day. Last week was like a rollar coaster; one day was good, the next was bad, and on and on. I decided life is a lot like tubing; you can't decide where the waves take you, or how high they are, or bumpy your ride is. All you can do is hold on and have the time of your life. And even if you can't decide if you're going to have a good day or not, you can decide what type of attitude you're going to have. Make lemonade out of lemons, my friends.

I am not creative; my sisters, however, are. So what do I do? Steal their ideas. For instace, my sister Rebekah started something called a joy jar. You get a jar and everyday, write something you're thankful for from the day and put it in the jar. At Thanksgiving, Christmas, or the New Year, you can open it up and look at everything you wrote. Count your blessings.
My sister, Bethany, also started a prayer box. Now, I hate to admit it, but I always forget to pray for people. So I "borrowed" Bethany's idea of having a prayer box and writing down prayers for people and putting them in the box.

Why am I telling you guys this? Because I want you to steal the ideas, too!! :)

Okay. Peace out, my friends.

Nationals

This past week my lil Sis and I had the amazing oppertunity to go compete at the National NCFCA tournament. It was such an amazing experience and getting fourteenth place in our duo was pretty exciting, not to mention a total, complete God thing. We did our duo on a book written by Gene Edwards called, "The Day I Was Crucified."  Here's a link to it (thanks to Magali!) since a lot of you have been asking about it. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycE0Gg575B8&feature=plcp

A prison.
That's all it really was, wasn't it? Not a literal prison, but it was a prison nonetheless. A prison that I, in fact, wore.
A mask.
A mask I had created to protect me from nosy questions and prying eyes. A mask to hide my insecurities and fears. My past. My hurt. But the problem with wearing a mask is this. Overtime, the mask is no longer simply a part of us. No, instead it becomes who we are, our identity. It is much harder to take a mask off than to put it on.
And I learned this: the mask I once wore to protect me now only served to suffocate me. Little by little, it sucked the life out of me.
"Help! I need help. I'm stuck in a prison and I can't get out!!"

Lately I've been reading the book Truefaced, which is what inspired me to write the story above (which is also the same idea I'm going to use for my original next year.) Truefaced basically deals with learning to trust God and others with who we genuinely are instead of wearing masks. And, yes, even though masks-like a prison- might keep us "safe", they don't allow us to truly live. John 10:10 tells us that Jesus came so that we could have life and have it to the fullest. Most abundantly. I love that. I want to learn how to live life without a mask. To live on "real street", as I call it. And most importantly, to live out who God ways I am. My identity and confidence should be found in who God says I am, and nothing less. I encourage you guys to do the same! Live out who Christ says you are-without the mask.

Greetings from California! Today my sister is graduating from BIOLA University here in La Mirada, California. I flew up on Wednesday to spend a couple days alone with my sister before the rest of our family came joined us a couple days later. Rebekah and I enjoyed Wednesday and Thursday together exploring campus, hanging out with her friends, going to the beach at night, going to a delicious milkshake place in Hollywood, exploring downtown Disney, and other fun stuff. Today my family and I all went to the beach. Though it was a little chilly and windy out, we had a good time nonetheless. It's been a good, relaxing week, but I'm starting to look forward to getting back to home sweet home. What are your plans for the summer? Hope everyone is having a great start to summer! 

Here's a poem I wrote! Let me know what you think.

Do you see them? People trapped in prisons of insecurities and fears. Look closely into their eyes and you will see tears. Tears accumulated from Complete frustration, hurt, and desolation. Yet they have no one there to offer comfort and consolation. In their eyes is an emptiness that never dies. You walk past them everyday, too busy to show them there is another way. A way of love, pure love, perfect love from above. You are content to let them be, because the only person you can see in the mirror is "me." They are broken by untold secrets, unfulfilled dreams, and unknown pain. People whose days of sunshine are long gone and they are lost in the blinding rain. Peoples whose lives are shattered. And still others who ended their lives because they were never told the truth that they mattered. You cannot see them because your vision is too dim.

Do you hear them? People are crying. They are dying. They are falling. They are calling. They are haunted by voices from their past, a constant reminder that this darkness will forever last. All they can hear are the voices that whisper, "you'll never be anything. You're worth nothing." Sometimes it's not about the cruel things you said, but what you didn't say. Would it really have been that hard to give them a hug and tell them everything will be ok? Overtime, you will no longer have the capacity to hear. The voices will fade and eventually disappear. You cannot hear them because you are too busy pursuing some new whim.

Do you even care? Or can you even see they are there? Open your eyes-look around-they are everywhere. Can you hear them, their heart wrenching sighs of devastation, their hearts longing for restoration? They say beauty is simply in the eye of the beholder, but we often forget that it is God who is the molder. He molds each and every one of us in a beautiful creation, offering us the gift of reconciliation. Peace is established with God thru the gift of his son; it is thru Jesus' death on the cross, victory is won. Our response should be to give nothing less than our best. To proclaim to the dying world that in Christ, their sins can be removed as far as the east is from the west. The real question is not if you hear them crying, or see them dying, but what will you do? Will you dare to reach out loving arms and tell them of the live they can have anew? Will you offer them compassion instead of making them burn with humiliation? Will you offer liberation instead of condemnation?

My Prayer

We can never measure our relationship with God by emotions. It is a very dangerous game to play. We cannot just follow God because we "feel" like it. These past couple weeks have been very different. Last week God was teaching me so much. I "felt" so close to Him. It was great. This week, though, has been very different. God's still been teaching me a lot...but it's definitely been more tough. One of those weeks were you feel overwhelmed and nothing seems to go your way. It's so easy to let yourself get discouraged and want to give up.

Let's face it: life is tough. Sometimes heaven just sounds pretty wonderful! Sometimes I want to be there already. Today during teaching one of my piano lessons provided an interesting example. Every time my students pass a piano song, I reward them with a sticker. Today my student Madison jokingly said, "How about we just skip playing all the songs and I get stickers instead?" Of course, I didn't go for that! :) But it brought up an interesting point. How can we expect to win the battle unless we've fought? How can we expect to get the metal for running the race that we haven't run? Or...how can we expect to get stickers for songs we haven't played? I love what Hebrews 1:1-2a says: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus." I love the first part of that second verse...If we want to win the race, we HAVE to fix our eyes on Jesus. I've been struggling with that these past couple days. When I take my eyes off Jesus, I feel so discouraged and selfish. My prayer is that God would empty me of me. I want nothing left.

The other thing I recently prayed is that God would show me, remind me how petty life life. It's so easy to get wrapped up in the stress and business of life. And believe me, I know. I'm currently trying to get five speeches perfected for our next compensation and prepare music for four totally different things. Plus, work, school, a huge Spanish project...yeah, I know! But I never want to forget that's important in life. Recently tornadoes have been going rampant everywhere in Kansas. This past Saturday, my town was in two tornado warnings plus a watch. When the sirens started going off, we went downstairs to our closet just in case. Right before I went into the closet, I hurried to my room and grabbed something. I remember seeing all the metals I've received thru NCFCA hanging on my dresser...and yet I could care less about them. At that moment, they didn't matter at all. Don't forget what's important.

Well, this has turned out to be longer than I expected so hopefully I didn't bore you to death. :)

Indians and Easter

Mary and I are fighting our invisible enemies. We were very successful. :)

Yesterday we had an Easter bake-sale...This is one of the beautiful cupcakes!

So far, April has been a fabulous month. I am SO excited to have a month to focus on school, music, our home-school play, and preparing for our regional forensics competition, which I'm also super excited about. Today was especially good and relaxing...reading, cleaning my room, working on our Spanish project, and-of course-sleeping in! :) I went to the park with Mary where we enjoyed playing Indians...our newest favorite thing to do since yesterday. It was pretty epic, dodging our invisible enemies. I would highly recommend it. Wishing you all a fantastic Easter!

Emily was reminding me that I haven't posted on my blog in a while so I decided to. It's hard to believe our first forensics meet was two weeks ago! It was a great start to kick off the forensics year. I'm looking forward to Topeka in two weeks and wish everyone good luck for Lincoln next week! Topeka is sneaking up fast and I still need to memorize two speeches and finish writing one. But once that first competition is under my belt and I'm qualified for Regionals, I'm not really worried anymore. So far I'm qualified in four speech events-apologetics, persuasive, duo, and original interp. I'm hoping to qualify for three more at Topeka so we'll see. Enough about NCFCA! :)
I'm having a contact lens fitting tomorrow and can't wait to FINALLY have contacts. I was disappointed to learn today it's going to cost more than I imagined but I hope it'll be worth it. On Saturday, I'm going with one of my friends up to Manhatten, KS for a Japanese festival. I'm not personally interested in Japan, but the friend I'm going with loves Japan so I'm mostly going along for the ride. Anyways, I'll try to post some pictures from it. And, let's see...what else? Today I'm teaching piano lessons. I started teaching another girl recently so that makes four piano students. Next week instead of having lessons we're all going to play at an elderly people's home.

Hope everyone is having a fantabulous day. Good luck at Lincoln.