ask me

i love that some of my friends have recognized the changes i have made in my life. it has given me a chance to be a witness to them. i have been able to share my testimony and they have been asking me more questions about my faith. i absolutely love it. i will never ever stop sharing the love of jesus christ.

three

the only things that i can assure will happen in three years are that i will be three years old and hopefully three years wiser. i have absolutely no idea where my life will be three years from now. three years ago i was a freshman at georgetown college in the small town of georgetown, kentucky. after three semesters i transferred to austin peay state university in clarksville, tennessee, where i have been for the past three semesters. in three days i will start my first class as a graduating senior. three days ago i was in northern indiana. three months ago i was stuck in bed as my then-boyfriend changed the bloody gauze out of my cheeks from my wisdom teeth extraction. three months from now i may be preparing myself to move 400 miles north in the middle of winter - single.

life changes - fast.

where will i be then?

a lot can happen in 6 months.

grandma

my grandma was my best friend. she loved me and cuddled me and hugged me more than anyone i can remember. i have absolutely no memory of her ever losing her temper with me or being upset with me. her laugh was one of a kind and now i can only hear it in old home video tapes.

my grandma died at the age of 56 on may 6, 1996 when i was 6 years old.

my aunty alana picked me up from school. i was in first grade. she wasn't supposed to pick me up but i was stoked anyway because i got to play with her new baby, tristan. i was feeding tristan cheerios a few hours later when my grandpa and mom came to the house. i could tell they were both upset. i had never seen my grandpa cry before. they took me outside and sat me on the hammock and i felt the knot start to build in my throat. mom and grandpa were here but where was grandma? i knew what was coming. i have always had a sense of when someone was about to tell me news. my grandma, the most loving person in my life, had died. she was an angel on earth and she left us to go back to heaven.

at the memorial service, i remember having my arms wrapped around my mom's neck as she stood in front of everyone in the church. i had never seen so many sad people in one place. my grandma's smile was on papers in everyone's lap.

i was 6 years old and now i am 20 and there is not a day go by when i look around me knowing that she is watching me. i wish my brother could have met her and felt her love. i think she would absolutely adore my step dad. i wonder how different my life would be if she was still here. she would have held my family together, she always did. i am really hoping that since we are moving back to maui, our family will have get togethers like we used to.

just because you like me doesn't mean that i like you back. you can trust me but there is no way that i can trust you anymore. i think it's fake. i think that you have a way of manipulating situations and i don't like that. i risked a lot of you and got a lot of crap from other people for standing up for you. i'm finished trying. maybe that's why so many people have problems with you. you aren't always the one that hurts all the time. you may just bring it all on yourself. don't blame other people for your mistakes. i take the fault for the things i do. i don't change the story. you'll never know what's real when everything you create is fake.

i'm done with you.

tomorrow

i remember in high school when i would think that everything that went bad was the end of the world. i thought that next day would be hell and i would never get out. i have now figured that i need not to be so dramatic.

when i am feeling totally and completely overwhelmed, i know that i will get through. this is just school; it is just a boy; it is just a job. it is all only one day in my whole life. i am healthy, i have a family that loves me and people in my life that won't let me down.

i may be doing poorly in one of my classes but i know that right now, my life is very much worth living. i will make it to the next day and i will deal with it when it comes.

butterfly

in the movie "jack" with robin williams, a bunch of people try to fit themselves into an old tree house. everything seems to be okay, but the wood is whining and it sounds as if the whole thing is going to go falling down to the ground at any second. the frame switches to a butterfly that lands on the window sill of the tree house and the tree house crashes down.

i feel like that is my life and i'm just waiting for that butterfly. i keep taking on more responsibilities and stressing myself out. i want to do everything. i don't like oppotunities to slip by. i don't like to think back wishing that i had done something when i had the chance.
this semester i took on seven classes. i work a couple nights a week at the restaurant and spend almost every afternoon and saturday out at high school track meets, coaching sassy, stubborn teenage girls. 2 days out of the week i am on campus until 8pm. i am raising money for my mission trip and getting my paperwork in line. i was just getting by until we got the news that my step dad got a job on maui and they're moving back and selling the house here so i need to find an apartment, and a roommate. then try doing that without a car.... my car broke down on the high way in the middle of the night in the middle of BFE last week; it's going to be $1000 that i don't have right now. and now within the next week i have an anatomy exam, sports marketing exam, management exam, 2 anatomy lab papers, 1 marketing plan, and a 7pg anatomy research paper due. i make a to-do list everyday and i have to put "eat" or else i'm so busy i forget. where's the butterfly? i'm waiting for something else to come along and have everything go crashing down.

usually when people think of butterflies they refer to the airy feeling in one's stomach when they fall in love or the free spirit of the fluttering insect. i have neither. i don't have time for those kind of butterflies.